Willfully Obtuse

[Mike]

We are now, I fear, in the middle of an unspoken pandemic. It's the pandemic of the willfully obtuse. Far more harmful than covid or the jab, it spreads insidiously and often goes undetected.

When I look around my country today (and the world), what I frequently see are falsehoods wrapped in a packaging of partial truth. This is how very bad ideas are sold to the masses. This is the trick.

I maintain that most people are at least dimly aware of this, but they still embrace the packaging and ignore what's inside because they do not want to grapple with the personal responsibility involved with updating their thinking..particularly when that update represents unpopular opinions.

It feels good to have a sense of moral high ground. It's intoxicating. All the endorphins start pumping and one feels a deep sense of meaning, particularly when there's large crowds reinforcing it all. There's something very profound about issues of race, sex, gender, equality, inclusion, to vax or not to vax, and so on. It engages one's sense of right and wrong, and when emotionally charged it's quite easy to lapse into aggressive self righteousness and intellectual blindness.

The intellectual blindness is a safeguard against someone spoiling the euphoric sense of moral righteousness. It's easy to become addicted to that feeling, and people will protect it and defend it with the same desperate vigor and denialism a heroin addict uses to manipulate family and friends.

In other words, It's a feeling they're protecting, not an idea. Which is to say that things like social justice and vax issues have become something like religions in the sense that:

1) introducing facts kind of spoils the party
2) it is considered offensive and rude to even ask certain reasonable questions

Social justice is just about righting historical wrongs and correcting generational disadvantages; getting the jab is the right thing to do because it's unselfish and must be done to protect grandma and grandpa. So simple, so easy. No further thought required. It's the sparkly packaging concealing the sinister truth inside. It gives the average person a wonderful excuse to ignore their conscience while evangelizing to those who don't; they have the advantage of maintaining all their friendships; they can feel like they're on "the right side of history"; they are relieved of the responsibility of having to think any further on the matter; plus, it just feels good.

Critical thinking and honest expression often means going against the grain. It doesn't always feel good. It often requires some degree of courage. It may mean sacrificing relationships with family and friends. It may mean losing a job. It may destroy your reputation. But it's the only way to preserve your soul

[Open Minded Dude]

I really love the last sentence, says it all for me. Stay true to your highest self, that what it's about. Maybe we even came here to this planet in the first place for that including facing all the sh't(storms) around us.

[wondering]

Mike, I always love how you ferret out the kernel of truth and meaning in something that is scattered, multi focal and complex. And that's with a dart in your neck!! Truly amazing! 😂😂😂

[avid]

Posted by Mike (here)
Critical thinking and honest expression often means going against the grain. It doesn't always feel good. It often requires some degree of courage. It may mean sacrificing relationships with family and friends. It may mean losing a job. It may destroy your reputation. But it's the only way to preserve your soul

One feels like a pariah to those who have given in, one’s family and friends, you try desperately to protect them/cure them, despite angry resistance.
You are isolated, rejected, out on a limb, just knowing you are right is worth going on, trying to save what one can.
Here, in this forum, I have had such fantastic support, trying to save my family, and just had a major breakthrough where our research has been productive, potentially saving a dear person. This is a catalyst to promote the truth to the resistant, whose resistance is waning - eyes are now being opened, so thank you all for all the fantastic support, fingers et al crossed progress will still happen ❤️❤️

[Pam]

Your dang tooten it feels good to have the moral high ground, and I spent a lot of time reveling in it. My brand was that my righteous behavior and good intentions that just weren't understood and certainly not appreciated. When I could finally see that was a theme I used drawing up the same old narratives to evoke a feeling of "righteous indignation" it actually started to become humorous. I still do, I just don't buy the stories. Occasionally I'll spend a while entertaining them and then realize ultimately I don't want to pay the price for where that kind of thinking leads me. I keep intending to have a t shirt made with that on the front. Righteous Indignation. so I can at least have some fun with it.

I feel sorry for people who believe that kind of story line, or whichever theme they like to entertain and make it their daily reality. They usually seem to be some form of victim status or a virtue signaling status. My theme was so good I was able to incorporate both into one theme and even add a double dash of martyrdom. Pretty impressive if I do say so....

It's ok to see it in others and there is so much to see these days but if you can see it in yourself it is a huge benefit. It is freeing in so many ways I never guessed it would be. That kind of thinking actually consumes considerable energy and really is a diversion from the here and now.

PS...still chuckling about your nurse,car story. ...Can't we still be friends...that is so very funny.

[Satori]

Posted by Mike (here)
We are now, I fear, in the middle of an unspoken pandemic. It's the pandemic of the willfully obtuse. Far more harmful than covid or the jab, it spreads insidiously and often goes undetected.

When I look around my country today (and the world), what I frequently see are falsehoods wrapped in a packaging of partial truth. This is how very bad ideas are sold to the masses. This is the trick.

I maintain that most people are at least dimly aware of this, but they still embrace the packaging and ignore what's inside because they do not want to grapple with the personal responsibility involved with updating their thinking..particularly when that update represents unpopular opinions.

It feels good to have a sense of moral high ground. It's intoxicating. All the endorphins start pumping and one feels a deep sense of meaning, particularly when there's large crowds reinforcing it all. There's something very profound about issues of race, sex, gender, equality, inclusion, to vax or not to vax, and so on. It engages one's sense of right and wrong, and when emotionally charged it's quite easy to lapse into aggressive self righteousness and intellectual blindness.

The intellectual blindness is a safeguard against someone spoiling the euphoric sense of moral righteousness. It's easy to become addicted to that feeling, and people will protect it and defend it with the same desperate vigor and denialism a heroin addict uses to manipulate family and friends.

In other words, It's a feeling they're protecting, not an idea. Which is to say that things like social justice and vax issues have become something like religions in the sense that:

1) introducing facts kind of spoils the party
2) it is considered offensive and rude to even ask certain reasonable questions

Social justice is just about righting historical wrongs and correcting generational disadvantages; getting the jab is the right thing to do because it's unselfish and must be done to protect grandma and grandpa. So simple, so easy. No further thought required. It's the sparkly packaging concealing the sinister truth inside. It gives the average person a wonderful excuse to ignore their conscience while evangelizing to those who don't; they have the advantage of maintaining all their friendships; they can feel like they're on "the right side of history"; they are relieved of the responsibility of having to think any further on the matter; plus, it just feels good.

Critical thinking and honest expression often means going against the grain. It doesn't always feel good. It often requires some degree of courage. It may mean sacrificing relationships with family and friends. It may mean losing a job. It may destroy your reputation. But it's the only way to preserve your soul

Bump, bump. Right on target.

This belongs in the category of “I wish I had written that.”

[Mike Gorman]

Hear, hear Mike! I was rudely reminded of how utterly lost so many of the 'public at large' seem to be when I viewed a very recent report from Austria. We know that country has broken the pattern, and over reached to locking down the 'unvaccinated' and indulging in an obvious scapegoating on these people. The Austrian citizens walking about town largely agreed with the measure, and expressed a gleeful outpouring of blame and condemnation. When challenged by the reporter that the 'fully vaxd' can still transmit the illness so many of them were oblivious and uncaring. I am reminded that we are amidst an Information War, with so many among our number making the propagandists job way too easy: absence of independent, critical reasoning!

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Posted by Mike (here)
getting the jab is the right thing to do because it's unselfish and must be done to protect grandma and grandpa .... It gives the average person a wonderful excuse to ignore their conscience while evangelizing to those who don't;

That's an interesting little rabbit hole to look down: the conscience. Because aren't they actually following the conscience by getting the jab to save grandma and grandpa?

I think the compelling force, in the first instance, is their conscience. But here's the kicker: whose conscience is talking to them - the native conscience that's belonged to them since birth, or an artificial construct?

I believe many people's conscience has been rewired and reprogrammed, and replaced with...god knows what – machine code it seems. Something cold, metallic, and barren. Dogma in other words. Many of these people are what we call NPCs.



The overarching effect of dogma is the erosion, nay, cancellation of critical thinking. Which you covered Mike, and I agree. It's still present though, somewhere deep in the brain, it's just being overridden and ignored. Instead these people are receiving their cues from this cybernetic or let's say 'genetically modified' conscience, which they've been programmed to believe is theirs (it's not), and this conscience is higher and better than anyone else's. To keep it whole and stay relevant, to feel powerful and stave off 'status anxiety', they have to constantly self-validate that conscience by virtue-signalling - and the louder the better.

As a result of programming, the NPCs have martyred critical thinking on the altar of pseudo-piety, masquerading as empowerment, and regressed to a primitive, emotionally incontinent state (I very much include the wokists and SJWs in that equation).

Many have been reduced to the emotional maturity of children (who have not yet developed critical thinking). Emotional maturity is, essentially, that vital capacity to face conflict, failure, frustration, distress and defeat without complaint or collapse. I've said before that when you herd people by their emotions, eventually they will become so hyper-sensitive that they'll live purely on the edge of their anger, not their empathy, and certainly not their intellect.

[lake]

I consider that this thread (linked below) relates to this thread ....

https://projectavalon.net/forum4/sho...-war-is-hidden

[happyuk]

Posted by Satori (here)

Posted by Mike (here)
We are now, I fear, in the middle of an unspoken pandemic. It's the pandemic of the willfully obtuse. Far more harmful than covid or the jab, it spreads insidiously and often goes undetected.

When I look around my country today (and the world), what I frequently see are falsehoods wrapped in a packaging of partial truth. This is how very bad ideas are sold to the masses. This is the trick.

I maintain that most people are at least dimly aware of this, but they still embrace the packaging and ignore what's inside because they do not want to grapple with the personal responsibility involved with updating their thinking..particularly when that update represents unpopular opinions.

It feels good to have a sense of moral high ground. It's intoxicating. All the endorphins start pumping and one feels a deep sense of meaning, particularly when there's large crowds reinforcing it all. There's something very profound about issues of race, sex, gender, equality, inclusion, to vax or not to vax, and so on. It engages one's sense of right and wrong, and when emotionally charged it's quite easy to lapse into aggressive self righteousness and intellectual blindness.

The intellectual blindness is a safeguard against someone spoiling the euphoric sense of moral righteousness. It's easy to become addicted to that feeling, and people will protect it and defend it with the same desperate vigor and denialism a heroin addict uses to manipulate family and friends.

In other words, It's a feeling they're protecting, not an idea. Which is to say that things like social justice and vax issues have become something like religions in the sense that:

1) introducing facts kind of spoils the party
2) it is considered offensive and rude to even ask certain reasonable questions

Social justice is just about righting historical wrongs and correcting generational disadvantages; getting the jab is the right thing to do because it's unselfish and must be done to protect grandma and grandpa. So simple, so easy. No further thought required. It's the sparkly packaging concealing the sinister truth inside. It gives the average person a wonderful excuse to ignore their conscience while evangelizing to those who don't; they have the advantage of maintaining all their friendships; they can feel like they're on "the right side of history"; they are relieved of the responsibility of having to think any further on the matter; plus, it just feels good.

Critical thinking and honest expression often means going against the grain. It doesn't always feel good. It often requires some degree of courage. It may mean sacrificing relationships with family and friends. It may mean losing a job. It may destroy your reputation. But it's the only way to preserve your soul

Bump, bump. Right on target.

This belongs in the category of “I wish I had written that.”

Agreed. Bump.

I'm stealing this.

[Mike]

Posted by Star Mariner (here)

Posted by Mike (here)
getting the jab is the right thing to do because it's unselfish and must be done to protect grandma and grandpa .... It gives the average person a wonderful excuse to ignore their conscience while evangelizing to those who don't;

That's an interesting little rabbit hole to look down: the conscience. Because aren't they actually following the conscience by getting the jab to save grandma and grandpa?

I think the compelling force, in the first instance, is their conscience. But here's the kicker: whose conscience is talking to them - the native conscience that's belonged to them since birth, or an artificial construct?

I believe many people's conscience has been rewired and reprogrammed, and replaced with...god knows what – machine code it seems. Something cold, metallic, and barren. Dogma in other words. Many of these people are what we call NPCs.

Attachment 47975

The overarching effect of dogma is the erosion, nay, cancellation of critical thinking. Which you covered Mike, and I agree. It's still present though, somewhere deep in the brain, it's just being overridden and ignored. Instead these people are receiving their cues from this cybernetic or let's say 'genetically modified' conscience, which they've been programmed to believe is theirs (it's not), and this conscience is higher and better than anyone else's. To keep it whole and stay relevant, to feel powerful and stave off 'status anxiety', they have to constantly self-validate that conscience by virtue-signalling - and the louder the better.

As a result of programming, the NPCs have martyred critical thinking on the altar of pseudo-piety, masquerading as empowerment, and regressed to a primitive, emotionally incontinent state (I very much include the wokists and SJWs in that equation).

Many have been reduced to the emotional maturity of children (who have not yet developed critical thinking). Emotional maturity is, essentially, that vital capacity to face conflict, failure, frustration, distress and defeat without complaint or collapse. I've said before that when you herd people by their emotions, eventually they will become so hyper-sensitive that they'll live purely on the edge of their anger, not their empathy, and certainly not their intellect.

Wow that's really well said there.

I was operating on the assumption that many were at least dimly aware that they were ideologically possessed (perhaps in the way you detailed or perhaps in some other manner). It made sense as I was writing it but looking back perhaps it was a bit naive. Not sure now..

I think a sense of moral high ground can be as addictive as crack cocaine. In that way the truth is secondary to the feeling. The only thing that matters is the high.

Have you ever been caught in a lie and defended it angrily and passionately? I think most people have done this a few times in their life, for one reason or another. You become lost in the character you're playing in the moment. It's like some form of method acting, or maybe it's more like the mental gymnastics the characters in '1984' have to engage in: "doublethink", or holding 2 contradictory "truths" in your mind at the same time and deploying one and compartmentalizing the other (and vice versa) when it's convenient to make an ideological point; and, crucially, also compartmentalizing the fact that you just played that mental trick on yourself.

It's a mental illness in a way (as you once suggested in a thread here). But there are still opportunities in that process to exert a sense of control over one's thoughts and stop the lunacy. At least I hope there is!

Ultimately I don't think they're following the conscience to save grandma and grandpa; I think they're allowing themselves to think they're following their conscience in order to justify what at the end of the day is some form of intellectual laziness/moral cowardice.

P.s. I think I may be compartmentalizing now myself because I don't want to believe the situation is quite as sinister as you're suggesting! The artificial construct idea is terrifying to me. But I sense it may be true in some way. I've suggested before that I think something like demonic possession on a large scale is very much in play at the moment. Very possible.

I think what we think of as demons are at the top of the heirarchy, then malevolent ET's, then something like A.I. Could be wrong of course.

[Gemma13]

I place a malevolent E.T. species at the top of the list too.  Then, for me, Demons and A.I. become a chicken or the egg question?

[onawah]

Extra Dimensionals certainly (ie Demons), not just Extraterrestrials.
Archons are EDs, and various sources connect them directly with AI, as well as with regressive Reptilians who are reportedly controlled by AI.
And there appears to be a kind of hierarchy with those three.
I think a serious source of confusion has been about whether we are in a technological, planetary war and/ or a spiritual, dimensional war.
It certainly appears to be some of both, but I think an awareness of each is critically important, and the ability to differentiate.

Posted by Gemma13 (here)
I place a malevolent E.T. species at the top of the list too.  Then, for me, Demons and A.I. become a chicken or the egg question?

Posted by Star Mariner (here)
That's an interesting little rabbit hole to look down: the conscience. Because aren't they actually following the conscience by getting the jab to save grandma and grandpa?

I think the compelling force, in the first instance, is their conscience. But here's the kicker: whose conscience is talking to them - the native conscience that's belonged to them since birth, or an artificial construct?

I believe many people's conscience has been rewired and reprogrammed, and replaced with...god knows what – machine code it seems. Something cold, metallic, and barren. Dogma in other words. Many of these people are what we call NPCs.

Attachment 47975

The overarching effect of dogma is the erosion, nay, cancellation of critical thinking. Which you covered Mike, and I agree. It's still present though, somewhere deep in the brain, it's just being overridden and ignored. Instead these people are receiving their cues from this cybernetic or let's say 'genetically modified' conscience, which they've been programmed to believe is theirs (it's not), and this conscience is higher and better than anyone else's. To keep it whole and stay relevant, to feel powerful and stave off 'status anxiety', they have to constantly self-validate that conscience by virtue-signalling - and the louder the better.

As a result of programming, the NPCs have martyred critical thinking on the altar of pseudo-piety, masquerading as empowerment, and regressed to a primitive, emotionally incontinent state (I very much include the wokists and SJWs in that equation).

Many have been reduced to the emotional maturity of children (who have not yet developed critical thinking). Emotional maturity is, essentially, that vital capacity to face conflict, failure, frustration, distress and defeat without complaint or collapse. I've said before that when you herd people by their emotions, eventually they will become so hyper-sensitive that they'll live purely on the edge of their anger, not their empathy, and certainly not their intellect.

That's a very accurate description of what I'm seeing, a very regressed, escapist, childish state of being.
Though the real selves are still in there somewhere, they are left with practically no voice at all, and with little to no impetus or ability left to change or grow.

I don't know if there was ever any validity to the theory that Earth is moving from one dimension to another, and that the dimension we are moving through in the interim is inhabited by EDs who don't want us in their space and are busily trying to eliminate us. as we are leaving them with no place else to go.
But it doesn't sound entirely implausible...

Posted by lake (here)
I consider that this thread (linked below) relates to this thread ....

https://projectavalon.net/forum4/sho...-war-is-hidden

That thread is a gem!

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Posted by Mike (here)
Have you ever been caught in a lie and defended it angrily and passionately? I think most people have done this a few times in their life, for one reason or another. You become lost in the character you're playing in the moment.

I think it's exactly that. Cognitive dissonance brought on by media indoctrination and groupthink. If you look at cults and religious zealotry it works the same way: the lie imprisons and enslaves you (think the followers of Jim Jones, Heaven's Gate – Scientology). In a worst case the conscience is laid bare for reprogramming, even deletion (think Nazi war criminals, Islamic terrorists).

Posted by Mike (here)
P.s. I think I may be compartmentalizing now myself because I don't want to believe the situation is quite as sinister as you're suggesting! The artificial construct idea is terrifying to me. But I sense it may be true in some way. I've suggested before that I think something like demonic possession on a large scale is very much in play at the moment. Very possible.

I don't think it's as bad as wide-spread demonic possession, but there are dark and Archonic influences at work. These particular constructs are embedded across the cultural landscape, in movies, television, advertising, music, almost everywhere you look and listen. "Progressive" social movements (like wokeness) are full of it too. By bombarding the population with base energy they remain anchored to a low-frequency, and become ignorant of (and maybe hostile towards) higher forms of expression including what is pure, rational, and God-centred.

The covid scare is just another construct, with "scare" being the operative word. It's almost entirely fear-driven, the goal at the end of the day being obedience and control.

When you put all these things together you get the schizophrenic mess that is society today.

[thepainterdoug]

MIKE

All I can say is this is a great post. The kind I wish I wrote, and the kind I have probably already wrote in my head over these 2 years.
Very well put and spot in in my opinion.
pd