It’s just over a year now since my initial post on The Devouring Mother. Since then I’ve been observing the various goings on in the world with an eye to the archetype. So, I thought it might be fun to go through some of the more poignant examples to see what mommy dearest has been up to lately.
Munchausen by Proxy
Munchausen by Proxy is the subset of behaviours of The Devouring Mother where she either seeks unnecessary medical attention for her child or actively harms the child in order to elicit that attention. Perhaps the biggest news in this category that’s happened in the last year was the releasing of Pfizer’s documentation around the trials it conducted to determine the safety and efficacy of the “vaccine”. This was information that was originally planned to be kept secret for 75 years until a judge ordered it to be released. We now know why they wanted to hide it.
Although it’s been obvious from the real world data, the documents show that the company, and by extension the government authorities who were charged with reviewing the documents, knew full well that the “vaccine” was, to put it politely, of limited benefit while there was plenty of evidence of harmful side effects. Any other medication with such a cost-benefit profile would have been pulled from the shelves immediately but the vaccination program rolls on with the plan to sell apparently endless boosters despite the fact that even the official line is that any benefit is measured in months if not weeks.
It’s the rolling out of such a medication to children and young people where the Munchausen by Proxy symbolism becomes clearest. It was clear from the earliest data out of China and is now borne out by more than two years’ of data from around the whole world that sars-cov-2 is of less risk to children than other respiratory viruses. There was never any need to give young people an experimental treatment and plenty of reasons not to and there is less reason now that the virus is endemic.
The consequences are now becoming clear. Witness the regular occurrence of professional sports people (all young) clutching their chests and falling to the ground. The increase in deaths among professional sportspeople is crystal clear as is the increase in death among young people in general. We even have a “new disease” called SADS as a blanket term to cover the people under 40 who die of heart attack despite having no clinical symptoms prior. This was, of course, perfectly predictable and was in fact predicted by dissenting experts right from the start (Professor Bhakdi being the most eloquent of them).
There are plenty of other examples of Munchausen by Proxy in action. How about all the photos of politicians or other celebrities posing with masked up schoolchildren even as it’s been clear that wearing masks hinders childhood development. How about New York City having a law that 2-4 year olds must be masked (only just dropped this week). Here in the state of Victoria, the “science” was different. It was determined that grades 3-6 must wear a mask at school while apparently everybody else did not. Let’s not even get started on the idea of puberty blockers and other medical interventions for confused teenagers trying to come to terms with their sexuality.
It’s all Munchausen by Proxy; harmful and unnecessary interventions which have the effect of making the “child” dependent on the “mother” in one form or another.
Gaslighting and Hypocrisy
Gaslighting is the stating of what is patently false, contradictory or absurd as if it were self-evidently true. The effect is to make the “child” question their own sanity while being tacitly encouraged to acquiesce no matter how ridiculous the thing being acquiesced to. Gaslighting is a common tactic among abusers of all kinds of which The Devouring Mother is a subtype. And, of course, it’s also the perfect description of the modern public discourse in every western nation. There is no longer any attempt to make things make sense, to make them rationally follow from each other, to ensure at least the semblance of logical coherence.
I’ll just give some of the examples that come to my mind most easily. How about the then Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, addressing the UN by telling them we helped write the charter of human rights and, more than that, we practice what we preach on the subject. At the time he spoke, Australian citizens were not free to enter or leave the country, just one of several obvious human rights violations Morrison’s government was perpetrating.
Then there was Canadian Prime Minister, Trudeau, lecturing the EU parliament about the dangers of authoritarianism just weeks after he called an obviously invalid state of emergency and forcibly prevented peaceful and law abiding Canadian citizens from exercising their right to protest their government.
More recently we’ve had the usual spectacle of WEF delegates blabbering on about reducing carbon emissions after having flown into Davos on private jets from around the world. Meanwhile, FIFA had a good strong crack at taking the gold medal in hypocrisy by announcing it was celebrating pride month in the same year in which it elected to host the World Cup soccer tournament in a country where the punishment for being gay is the death penalty.
Sometimes, though, among all the nonsensical drivel that constitutes the public discourse in the west these days, the clouds seems to part and it’s as if we are being addressed from on high by The Devouring Mother herself. Usually this comes through some political speech or other. Joe Biden’s “my patience is coming to an end” is one such example as was his speech where he proclaimed that unvaccinated Americans were going to have a winter of death and destruction (way to unify the country, dude).
But I think perhaps Boris Johnson’s speech late last year on the subject of climate change takes the cake for being the most Devouring Mother-esque. In hectoring tones befitting a parent addressing a child, Mr Johnson stated it was time for all of humanity, no less, to “grow up” and deal with climate change. Apparently, our “adolescence” is coming to an end and it’s time to clean up our bedroom or something. Johnson said we must listen to the scientists who had, after all, got it right on corona.
Which scientists was Johnson referring to that got it right on corona? Surely not his fearmonger-in-chief, Neil Ferguson, whose doomsday predictions have been consistently orders of magnitude wrong. Of course, Mr Ferguson was so worried about the virus that he broke the rules of the first lockdown to go and shag his mistress, a married woman. But he was not alone in the British government in disregarding “the science”. Johnson himself did so in order to hold a birthday celebration. His health minister, Matt Hancock, broke them to cavort with the woman he was having an extramarital affair with (is fornication a requirement for holding high office in Britain?) And that was all before Partygate hit the headlines.
It’s fair to say that the Johnson government took hypocrisy to previously unattained levels but that did not prevent him from lecturing the rest of us on climate. The message is clear. If you disagree with “the science” whether of climate change, corona or whatever other apocalyptic fever dream comes down the pipe next, you are nothing more than a selfish teenager. What you have to do is fall into line, do what you’re told and not notice the obviously hypocritical behaviour of your elders. That’s what’s called being a grown-up.
Enabling Behaviour
The USA is still the spiritual heartland of The Devouring Mother, if I can put it that way, and it’s there that we see enabling behaviour in its clearest form. Enabling is when somebody in a position of power encourages a person in a subordinate position to engage in harmful behaviour. If a teenager is getting involved in drugs and crime, we expect the parent to step in and put a stop to it. Mostly, such behaviour continues through neglect on the part of the parent. But in a small number of cases the parent, or perhaps an aunt or uncle, will actively promote the behaviour, usually because they themselves are drug addicts or criminals. That’s what’s called enabling and it fits the pattern of The Devouring Mother by ensuring the child does not grow to independence but remains dependent, perhaps literally addicted, to a lifestyle in which the “mother” holds power.
One of the enabling behaviours we see in the US is, if I’m not mistaken, specific to the state of California where laws were changed so that shoplifting became a lesser charge than it once was. This has led to the seemingly endless videos online of people casually walking into stores with bags, emptying the shelves and then walking out unimpeded. Interestingly, it seems that what is being stolen is mostly high end merchandise such as clothing and sunglasses. Presumably this is because such items are easy to sell on the street.
We can usefully contrast this phenomenon with Britain a couple of hundred years ago. As most people are aware, Australia was originally a prison colony populated largely by criminals sent from Britain. There wasn’t a lot of high end merchandise to steal back in those days. People were more concerned with the basics such as having enough food in their stomach. Thus, a number of the convicts sent to Australia had committed no greater crime than stealing a loaf of bread to feed themselves. This was crime born out of desperation and it was treated in the harshest possible terms. The sea voyage to Australia at that time was no picnic and carried with it a significant chance of dying on the way. Needless to say, people who were stealing loaves of bread were doing so as a last resort. The stakes were too high to do it for any other reason.
That doesn’t appear to be true in California where permissiveness rules the day. But this permissiveness is enabling behaviour that has the effect of encouraging people into crime. If you steal a bag of sunglasses, you’ll need to sell them. That will almost certainly bring you into contact with the people who sell stolen goods for a living and now you are part of a criminal network. Having been rewarded for your behaviour once, you might be tempted to do it again. It’s in this sense that such laws are enabling. Assuming that the insurance covers the store for their loss, the whole system now actively perpetuates theft and encourages people who might not have otherwise taken the step to take up a life of crime.
But it’s a second kind of enabling behaviour that is more relevant to corona and that is the subject of drug use, abuse and addiction. In this connection, this particular image, an advertisement from the New York City subway, struck me as being symbolically ideal.
The ad purports to be about “safety”, specifically the risk of having fentanyl mixed in with your daily drug hit. It is true that fentanyl is a real problem in the US. It’s also true that the way to be sure that you don’t accidentally take fentanyl is to not buy drugs from shady characters in back alleys. If you want to be even more sure, don’t take drugs at all. But that’s not what the ad says. In fact, the ad says you can be “empowered” by following our five easy steps to “safe” drug addiction. By doing so, you won’t just keep yourself “safe”, but your community too (are fentanyl overdoses infectious?)
All of this is complete BS, of course. Taking drugs is not safe. That’s half the fun. Part of what makes chronic drug use so pathetic is that all the fun is gone. You now need the drug just to feel normal. There is no more “upside risk”. The risks are all on the downside and if you use for long enough the risk will turn into a certainty. To pretend that this state of affairs is “empowering” is absurd. Being a chronic drug user is the opposite of empowering. You become enmeshed in multiple layers of dependence. Not just dependent on the drug, but dependent on the “system” which now includes the state which will provide your naloxone and your fentanyl test strips; all for your safety, of course.
Having your drug laced with fentanyl is only one of the many risks associated with chronic drug use and so this advertisement fits the wider pattern of The Devouring Mother of focusing on one of the risks and pretending that “safety” is achieved by addressing it alone while perpetuating the wider context which is itself the problem. That wider context, in this case drug addiction, is dependence and that is how The Devouring Mother wants her children: dependent.
Summary
These are just the more poignant examples that have stood out to me over the last year. They come against the backdrop of the economic chickens coming home to roost in a big way via inflation, energy shortages, “supply chain issues” etc. Giant problems, we are told, which require giant solutions. There’s nothing for you, the lowly citizen, to do except sit back and leave it to the experts. That’s what Boris Johnson meant when he said we have to “grow up”. The time of adolescence is over. We’ve all been naughty boys and girls and it’s time to do what we’re told.
This leaves the question of where the Rebellious Children have turned to now that Trump is gone, Jordan Peterson is looking shaky and other lesser names from the same camp got duped by the corona hysteria. Thus far I don’t see much sign of any alternative movements although we may see a fresh wave of populism now that the standard of living of many people is noticeably declining.
It’s also possible that the Rebellious Children will simply drop out. That is what seems implied by the labour shortages in seemingly every western nation. Of particular interest are the medical, teaching and other professions where those who refused to take the mandatory medical procedure simply quit. What are those people doing now? That would be an interesting question to know because it’s clear at this point that “the system” is not going to return to “normal” and the people running it have no intention of doing that even if they could. You can either accept the increasingly crappier deal on offer or go and create your own. It’s the latter group that might produce something interesting in the years ahead although it might have to happen out of sight where mommy dearest can’t see.
Talking to people on the ground here in rural Aus, it’s strange a lot of those who were the big covid cult cheerleaders now keep a polite silence with those who were sceptical like myself. The topic doesn’t come up much as it seems they have admitted internally that they went a bit silly, but won’t dare admit to the rebels that they were wrong.
It really is just classic primate political behaviour, in which the search for truth in a conversation/argument is secondary to one upping each other in power struggles. Perhaps a symptom of cultural decline and a return to the most brutal form of discourse. It’s more important to them that they don’t seem silly to others rather than really analyse whether extremely damaging government policy was justified and what that means for our country.
Regarding the devouring mother, the feeling I get is that people are getting the impression that she has gone a bit senile while still holding considerable power, and many go through the motions to keep her happy while in reality beginning to ignore her and laugh behind her back. I think we are starting to reach the phase where we all just admit that the government is corrupt and self serving, but shrug our shoulders and do the best we can, expecting nothing good to come of it in a sort of resignation. From the elections results it’s seems urban Australia still has hope for something, but it’s not shared amongst those I speak with out here.
As to what the rebels are doing, I have noticed a lot of people starting their own little businesses lately, in particular women creating home based businesses. As a farmer I’ve also noticed a lot of people starting to look at agricultural work, probably because a lot of us do not give one flying frypan about Vaxx status and are actively seeking to undermine any policy of that nature. I know a medical professional who quit at the mandates and went fishing in the high country for months on end, and now does various farm labour jobs and has never been happier, or according to him, healthier.
Skip – even down here in Danistan it seems we’re not going to see a repeat of the madness. Our Dear Leader has ruled out bringing back mask mandates, for example, and even on public transport where they are supposed to be mandatory, compliance is pretty low. It’s pretty much only The Greens who care any more as far as I can tell.
That’s really interesting to hear about hte medical professional doing farm work. From what I can gather talking to a couple of friends who work in that field, conditions were already horrible before corona and now the bureaucrats are just running rampant. Same in schools. Of course, the downside is that they are going to weed out all the doctors and nurses that are willing to think. That’s probably not gonna be good for the health or education system long term.
Out of curiosity, what sort of people are you noticing looking for farm work? Young? Old? Professional tree changers? Working class who lost their job due to mandates?
“Professor Bhakdi being the most eloquent of them”
Beware of Professor Bhakdi. He publishes his work in a right-wing publishing house here in Germany (Kopp Verlag). So he is guilty of association and therefore not trustworthy.
At least, that is the official opinion by the German government and media. Since I am no longer under their spell, I am a happy customer of the Kopp Verlag, as they have quite a few interesting books on self sufficiency, healthy living and controversial historical topics (e.g. the two world wars).
Secretface – hah. I was wondering how they’d try and smear Bhakdi. Guilt by association is the best they could do, I guess. Interestingly, I’m noticing some right-leaning voices, particularly in the US, talking about gardening and cooking these days. Apparently eating well and taking care of your health is now a political issue. I’m waiting for the article about how getting 8 hours sleep every night makes you a far right extremist.
On the drugs: Fentanyl really is a safety issue, easily capable of killing children and pets if they so much as touch a wrapper.
Safety for a user, well…safety from a persecuting super-ego, but not from the drug. Which brings us back to Momma.
On farming: I’m the exception, having bought the property years ago because I knew more than a decade ago it would come to this.
People discovering gardening, but nothing earth-shattering.
The minute some actual change needs to be initiated, both farmers and urban initiatives immediately scream for subsidies.
Which brings us back to Momma.
Simon – Maybe the government-media-complex only have to use guilt by association because it works so well. They don´t have to put in more effort to refute Prof. Bhakdi´s claims, if it is enough to label him as a Nazi associate. So they can get rid of unwanted opinions in a very efficient way. They are so successful with this tactic, that at the large book fairs in Germany the booths of the Kopp Verlag and other supposedly right-wing publishing houses are attacked by politics activists. Not to speak of Government-critical political parties and movements…
I have the feeling that more and more aspects of life are becoming politicial, as the devouring mother wants to extend the control over her children. Therefore, stuff like gardening, cooking and exercise are sabotaging her as these are indepent/self-sufficient activities.
Simon -Mostly those in their 20s and 30s who I gather are dropping out of the system. There is certainly an anti mandate theme and it seems ex healthcare and teaching are well represented. Not many at all are working class, most are university educated. It seems it might be that very dangerous group, the dissatisfied young intellectuals, who historically are the hotbed of revolutions. There has also been a massive movement of people born in the country or on farms moving back there from the city over the last two years for obvious reasons.
I’m on the banks of the Murray but on the NSW side, and a ridiculous (and unsustainable for local infrastructure) amount of people have moved over this side of the river from Melbourne the last few years. Half the people I speak to at the local Cafe are recently arrived ex Melbournians.
Hi Simon,
So you’ve gone through art school for years and are looking forward to a career in the arts – if lock downs don’t kill off the entertainment industry – and your first job is being the face of fentanyl addiction. Hopefully not a career highlight.
Thanks for the update on The Devouring Mother. She’s been busy, but success for that has within it the seeds of the end – maybe.
Hey, I’ve been contemplating lately that when people are talking about Climate Change, which is an allowed subject of discussion, they might actually be discussing all manner of other concerns such as say, energy, the economy, or the future. Dunno, but I’m cogitating upon that story. What do you reckon? It was the recent election results, and making sense of them, which alerted me to this possibility.
Cheers
Chris
Michael – I expect the growing-your-own trend will increase steadily in the years ahead now that inflation is biting. Here in Australia, the price of a lettuce is now $12 so you could make some reasonable money growing backyard lettuces (of course, iceberg lettuce is one of the harder plants to grow especially here where rainfall is relatively low). I also noticed the price of compost has gone up too so the financial value of my backyard compost heap has increased and all of a sudden growing vegetables makes financial as well as culinary and health sense.
Secretface – it’s true that more parts of life seem to be getting politicised. But it’s also true that most of that is just hot air and isn’t backed by any actual enforcement. Even during the peak corona hysteria, I was managing to not follow most of the rules. There was nobody to enforce them. People will slowly learn that over the years ahead. Of course, that will create its own problems. Some of the rules are actually worth having.
Skip – fascinating. I’ve always said hte country-city divide is the biggest cultural difference within Australia. Who knows what will come of the combination of dissident professionals and farmers. I’m not surprised there are so many Melbournians up there. I considered making the move myself, although I was looking at Tasmania instead. Melbourne really was a nightmare for most of 2020-2021. The worst is over now but the city is just a shell of its former self. Lots of homeless and people with mental issues on the streets now and I’d guess about a quarter of the foot traffic from a few years ago.
Chris – a few years ago, I might have agreed that this is all a ruse to gently get the public to fall into line and behind the scenes there are people who know that it’s really about resources (peak oil). I don’t think that’s true anymore. I think the people in charge really are as dumb as they seem. Or, to put it more politely, they are faced with problems they can’t solve (because nobody can solve them) and they are reverting back to the subconscious which is, in fairness, what we all do when the pressure is on.
Simon – funny/sad examples of the archetype at work lately! The logic of the Fentanyl ad is identical to vax propaganda: how to keep you & your community safe. Great example of how to spot an archetype: it’s not really about the subject under discussion, be it vaccination (despite theories re microchips, depopulation etc.) or treating addiction or cutting carbon emissions, but about compliance & malleable passivity.
Skip – that’s an inspiring story about the guy finding health & happiness after trading medicine for farm labour. Re urban Australia still having hope for something, what I’m seeing a lot of right now is lots of folk breathing a sigh of relief: like, now the government’s doing something, making the right noises & moves, so they can just get on w/ hedonistic pursuits, guilt-free, while making all the right noises too. The increased presence of independents has generated huge optimism, but none of them are going to disrupt business as usual. People want to have a more sustainable (safer) world w/o disrupting their Lifestyle.
Shane – exactly. It’s the malleable passivity that I find particularly concerning. That to me is a classic sign of mental illness. But more importantly, if it goes on for too long we’ll have a whole generation that has no will power of their own.
Hi Simon,
That’s true, we can’t know what they’re thinking. Reverting to the sub conscious is a very worrying conclusion to the tale though.
I guess what I was trying to communicate (and probably poorly so) was that basic literacy about resources, energy and limits is very poor within the wider community, which I believe you alluded to. It is one of the great risks of specialisation. But, also a good understanding of those topics does not make for pleasant and soothing lullaby’s. All the same though, I am wondering if at some sub conscious level, there is a vague understanding that things are going wrong (perhaps due to the past patches and tools not fixing the current bout of problems, yet they are the patches and tools available to that way of thinking) and people heap their concerns on the topic of concern which can be discussed instead: Climate Change.
I have spoken to people who are genuinely concerned about that particular topic. They seem very upset about the topic, and yet they struggle to pro-actively do anything which might possibly address the core issues of the topic. It is a level of disconnect I’m struggling to comprehend, and your use of archetypes is a very useful structure because the belief system doesn’t have to make sense or even have the core tenets of the problem addressed, as long as the rules are followed as handed down by the archetype (I guess). Please correct me if I’m wrong here.
Cheers
Chris
Chris – The classic H L Mencken quote is relevant here –
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
The climate debate looks a lot like that. Enormous amounts of money are riding on that debate. Having said that, I think you’re right in that there is probably more than the usual amount of anxiety floating around these days and it is looking for something to latch onto. The political hobgoblins are a ready target. People do not change their own behaviour because the system is actually there to keep them in line, not promote individual action. Note that the system self-perpetuates by creating more anxiety. That’s what happens when people’s words and deeds do not match up, as is the case with the entire climate debate and most of the rest of the public discourse.
Its hard to know if many people are actually aware of the resource limit issue at all, even at the subconscious. Whenever I bring it up with those most passionate about climate change they usually resort straight away to techno optimism, or just flat out deny the possibility. Those that do engage usually go away and ‘research’, which usually involves looking at various bits of propaganda for either the renewables or nuclear industries and assure themselves that everything is OK, while ensuring to never bring the topic up again in case their belief system is challenged.
I’ve spoken to otherwise intelligent people who believe that something like bitcoin or the newest thing Musk is promoting will save us/the planet in the same way that born again Christians speak about the second coming. This has always struck me as where our religious belief lies now in the west, in the progress-centred techno utopian vision. Climate change is completely wrapped up in this belief system, and can only be discussed in these terms – Greedy humanity/fossil fuel companies killing poor mother earth – genius engineers save earth. It’s really quite humorous when you break it down.
Getting it out of these terms is probably what is required. I’ve actually started to say to people that climate change will benefit Australia and that life prefers warm periods to ice ages. With more rainfall and our position in the southern hemisphere insuring that extremes of temperature are moderated by the surrounding oceans unlike the more continental North. Therefore we should build more coal fired power stations.
Then I delight in the look on their faces. But what is interesting is that I find they will accept this easier than they will resource limits. Perhaps they just want good news.
Skip – as the meme goes.
The Australian reaction to climate change is especially weird. The climate here is so variable that we should actually be better placed to deal with change than the bread baskets of Europe and North America where they are used to regular weather patterns. I think that’s true of Australian farmers. But, of course, everybody lives in the city now where the problems of climate change are usually nothing more than a few days of uncomfortable weather. Of course, we’ve also built large parts of Sydney and Brisbane (not to mention whole cities like Lismore) on flood plains. Flood plains gonna flood.
Chris – I have notice that climate change is often used as a stalking horse for exploring more radical views and positions, especially from outward** leaning folks. The range of permitted discourse in the West at present is stunningly narrow, and it appears to me at least the the permitted topics such as climate change get abused to compensate – which ties into your original comment. Whether or not this is conscious I’m unsure, but it is certainly notable.
** I initially wrote ‘rightward’ here, but there is a blurring of directions at present where many traditionally right and left views are merging into various new things that don’t fit the traditional directives. Outward (as in away from the centre) is my attempt to reconcile that.
Simon – I think a lot of anxiety about climate change, locally at least, is a response to the Oz megafires (though pandemic panic eclipsed their impact) & floods in the meantime. A lot of Sydneysiders were wearing masks & having respiratory problems before Covid, because the smoke, even around Sydney beaches, was so dense for weeks. And since then, the deluge: good luck getting major repairs done anytime soon unless it’s a pressing emergency – building industry can’t keep up w/ the work. All just minor inconvenience in the broader scheme of things, but it’s new to a lot of folk & they want the grownups to fix it quick.
Shane – I agree but it’s all just “droughts and flooding rains”. Nothing new. I suspect what changed, at least in relation to bushfires, is we are managing the bush even worse than we used to. Solar panels and wind turbines will not solve that problem but they will make somebody an awful lot of money.
Shane – Sydney is interesting because it is a terrible location for a big city. It is hemmed in by extremely infertile mountain bushland that is ready to burn at the smallest spark, that has the added bonus of funnelling huge amounts of rain straight down upon the city. Unlike many other large Aus cities it also has no protection from a bay or gulf, leaving it exposed to coastal damage from those big east coast lows.
If it wasn’t one of the biggest and most beautiful harbours in the world it probably would have stayed smaller. I wouldn’t be surprised in the far future if it is much smaller and many people relocate over the mountains to places like Bathurst, Orange etc where there is better soil and less risk.
Shane – very true. One of my ever growing list of novel ideas is a story where the residents of Sydney have to pack up and cross the great divide. I’d probably try and find a way to tie it in to climate issues just to make it topical. For example, all of Sydney would be underwater if Greenland and Antarctic ice melts.
Probably everyone has noticed by now and I am just a bit slow, but it just occurred to me that the Devouring Mother is the perfect explanation for the crazy transgender epidemic. What better way to create obedient children then to remove some glands and make them permanently and vitally dependent on the medical system at a very young age.
It all makes perfect sense when looked at it from this angle.
Roland – I haven’t tried to verify the numbers, but I’ve seen it reported from a few different sources now that US college students are far more likely to identify as one of the LGT etcs… than any other demographic. So, yes, it’s the acquiescent children. I suppose that the ones who get surgery/medical interventions could remain children in a physiological sense their whole life which reinforces the idea of The Innocent archetype too.
Skip – that’s encouraging in a way, Sydney’s failure, unlike Melbourne, to cut it as one of WEF’s ‘Smart Cities’, especially given that Sydney’s supposed to be slightly more populous.
Simon – a woman I knew moved to the Blue Mountains in the late ’90s because she was expecting a tidal wave. Meanwhile, for many mountain dwellers, the fires meant repeat evacuations at short notice. Timing is everything…
Roland – also, a person preoccupied w/ redefining & projecting their gender identity is a person w/ less time & energy for noticing anything else. So, create a problem: it’s your gender, not the culture/society that’s the problem. Offer a solution: drugs, surgery, support systems, social media forums, unlimited information about the issues… Oh, & demonise critics of all the enabling to intensify distracting social division etc.
Shane – woops, just realised I responded above to Skip’s comment but with your name.
Yeah, I met a woman that got caught up in the fires in the Blue Mountains. Sounded bloody scary. I can certainly understand why those people would be freaked out. Having said that, a lot of people who move to the mountains don’t even understand how to fire proof their own property (as much as possible) let alone the concept of bush management in general.
Roland – I like your thoughts regarding transitions to different genders and the created dependency on the devouring mother. I have the theory that this fetishization of “sterile” ways of life (homosexuals, transsexuals) is part of a depopulation movement due to upcoming ressource constraints, but I am not sure whether this happens on a conscious level.
@Secretface I think a depopulation movement might be part of it. The fetishisation you mention is certainly getting pushed hard by the powers that be.
But maybe another reason is, that this is a mammalian reaction to overpopulation. We have been mammals for about 300 million years, so we had plenty of time and opportunity to develop strategies to deal with all sorts of issues, and this particular strategy seems highly effective with minimal collateral damage.
Maybe these two reasons are actually one and the same….
Obviously we are not consciously aware of it, but there would be a lot in us that was put there by evolution. We are a lot older than we realise. Every single one of us.
I sometimes do wonder if dragons are a distant echo of our ancestors being bullied by reptiles for more than 100 million years.
Re the depopulation/sterilisation movement: I’ve thought recently too about our selecting for seedless (sterile) foods in recent decades and whether that doesn’t literally feed our current fetishes around gender. Not to mention the now all-to-common fertility troubles even among traditional hetero types. It’s all subconscious but kind of revealing once you notice it…
And Roland, your comment about dragons — it’s always seemed to me that the cultural phenomenon of dinosaur stories and toys for kids is just a “scientific” cover for fairytales and mythological creatures. But like so much that science has tried to overtake (astrology, alchemy), they keep some of the superficial likenesses but another all the underlying psychological and moral purposes. More sterilisation at work.
*smother, not another in the post above. Autocorrect foils again.
So a significant percentage of our future elite might end up being neutered. Such an old hat. The chinese emperors did that and i believe it was common practise in quite a few civilisations, that you had to get castrated to rise to high public office. Can’t these lefties come up with something more original?
Spengler would be delighted to see how certain things happen at certain times in the lifecycle of a culture respectively civilisation.
I wonder if it is possible to view Spengler as a revolving door of archetypes?
AM – interesting point. Seems we can’t even let viruses evolve naturally anymore but have to help them along in the laboratory.
Roland – Make Eunuchs Great Again. Interestingly, the Chinese brought in eunuchs at a time when they were entering the civilisational phase, so that fits Spengler’s model.
It’s almost like the massive urban phase of civilisation demands those who run it to be completely unmoored of any desires or urges outside of the systems needs. Anything that has the potential to differentiate its cogs must be dissolved away so it’s left with a formless mass to man the stations, all interchangable.
Out in the great unwashed many people are still breeding like rabbits. It’s actually very difficult to find space in birthing wards in regional hospitals due to the baby boom over the last few years. All these articles about people having no children does not at all reflect the facts on the ground here, so it must be contained to certain areas.
@Roland – That is why I added that I was not sure whether this depopulation movement is something consciously developed. It could definetely be a mammalian reaction to overpopulation. Currently, I am not sure whether this strategy will be really successful, because the agenda is rammed so hard down our throats that I could envision some kind of counterreaction.
Regarding our old age, I have read somewhere that epigenetics is able to transfer experiences from one generation to another. Maybe this also works through multiple generations. I had quite a few dreams where I thought to live through the life of some of my ancestors.
Skip – does any of the sexual politics make it to the bush? I would have thought not.
@Skip in your neck of the woods overpopulation wouldnt be a thing, but the reproduction rates in most of the western world are below replacement level, so I guess it is working.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-fertility-rate
@Secretface I guess the movement could be the conscious rationalisation of the unconscious mammalian drive.