During this extraordinary journey we conscious ones have found ourselves embarked upon, this confusing voyage through, past, inside, increasing data dumps of info, disinfo, misinfo, speculation, sure bets, hopium, “breaking news,” fake news, etc. etc., with more and more “influencers” popping into view all of a sudden — recent examples, SG Anon and Derek Johnson — most of whom claim behind the scenes “intel”; then there’s the always furious Stew Peters, who suddenly appeared on the scene as a full-fledged news anchor, despite his background as a bounty hunter! His recent Died Suddenly film, viewed seven million times in its first 24 hours, is coming under increasingly skeptical attack. What’s real and what’s fake, hype, disinfo, etc., in that very disturbing film? Were the mistakes, if any, sloppy, or intentional? Is Stew Peters “controlled opposition” and this film designed to destroy “conspiratorial” thinking about the so-called vaccines?

Then, finally in this litany, there’s Elon Musk, who does truly seem to be releasing Twitter from its left-wing myopia, and yet, and yet, who is Elon Musk, really? Especially now that he claims that his Neurolink should be ready for human trials within six months?

 

Back when I was young, in the pre-internet age, we used to speak of “the news” — and all be referring to the same phenomenon, what we now call the MSM.

Yet, even in the early ’70s, while (briefly) married to a newspaper editor, I kept wondering why “the news” was usually dark, bleak, signifying what’s going wrong, rather than highlighting what’s good, right, true? Dick would remind me, patiently, that bad news sells papers, which in turn attracts advertisers. Oh, I knew that of course, but still!

At that point in my life I thought in binary terms, good news and bad news. As if, the inherent mystery of reality could be captured! As if the map could be identical with the territory, and furthermore reflected in linear conceptual/verbal chains. This causes that, which causes that, which leads to that . . .

So I’d walk around town, and imagine myself looking for good news and writing about it. So different than the other! Instead of investigating a car crash, or a robbery, I would focus on the kindness of strangers. This extended thought experiment made me wonder about both the slippery nature of reality and the inherent bias in human perception.

Because, after all, no matter how “objective” I might want to be, my perception is always colored by everything I’ve ever seen, heard, imagined, dreamed, felt . . . Plus, no matter how wide my perspective, there’s always an infinitely wider one; no matter how granular my analysis, it never probes far enough, deep enough, never bottoms out.

And “facts”! What are facts? I started to call them “factoids,” way before CNN briefly picked up the moniker, because, I thought, so-called “facts” are radioactive, they have a half-life. Reality doesn’t stand still, doesn’t offer rock hard sense data for us to pick up on, upload to our brains, work with, spit out again as equally rock-hard “evidence.” Change is the name of the game. Everything is always changing, moving, expanding and/or diminishing, growing and/or decaying, and often both, depending on . . . everything else! What context is large enough to give “definitive” meaning to any “fact” (factoid)?

And if I was “like that” back in my 30s, and furthermore, had already been stunned into continuous skepticism, even cynicism, regarding so-called official, mainstream news, by the assasinations of the ’60s (Kennedys and King), plus the so-called official commissions to investigate them . . . when I think back on it now, my own encounter with reality had left me so disturbed, so PTSDed, that I wonder: how did I actually continue to live, to speak, to enjoy exchanging ideas with others?

It’s strange how such epistemological and psychological relativism as my own can be . . . not eclipsed . . . not set aside . . . but somehow allowed to run parallel with regular life in the human world. While my mind ran wild, wondering how to parse the seeming chaos of phenomena and remain sane, I rarely spoke of this inner disturbance. Nobody else seemed to be bothered but me.

 

Well, that was then, and this is now. Half a century later I am joined by millions of others who have come to acknowledge that we are deep inside World War III, and that this war is not fought with guns, but with ideas, words. And that in this more abstract kind of war, deception, feinting, pretending, are also the name of the game. See Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

Each of us circles round and round inside our own silloed, solipsistic 360° view of “reality” filtered by the biases of both our own unique nature as well as everything we’ve ever experienced and think we have learned about “reality.” Multiplied to infinity now, by “virtual reality.”

Oh, of course, each of us gravitates towards certain others, like birds in a flock, increasingly defined by what “channels” we tune into on the virtual reality spectrum. In that sense, we are not solipsists. Instead, we are all inside Teilhard de Jardin’s noosphere, the virtual “cloud” — of unknowing, while desperately trying to determine if that cloud, rather than  filled with constantly shifting ghostly forms, actually contains stable, steady forms; ones we can trust. So that we can say, with surety, this is aligned with, gives evidence of, buttresses, opposes, disproves or proves, that.

In other words, it’s true, there really is no such thing as “objectivity.” Why, because there’s no such thing as the unblinking, all-seeing eye, the “god,” separate from “his” creation.

 

 

Oh yeah? Say the “religious” among us? The ones who assume, and this is their bottom line assumption — that there IS a clear distinction between the creator and the created. That they are not one, but two. The original polarity, we might call it.

Myself? I’m a pantheist. It’s all divine, all of it, no separation.

All distinctions that we humans make are “made up.”

Once we see reality in this fashion, then World War III, the info war, becomes both more and less difficult to wade through. On the one hand, we know we are making it all up. On the other hand, why is so-and-so making it up in this way rather than that? What’s “the agenda”?

And, personally, for it all comes back to me, how might that agenda attempt to direct/control/enslave my life?

Which is where “spin” comes in. Not sure when this word entered the lexicon to describe the way “the news” works; nor its more recent iteration, “narrative;” together they describe linear (“causal”) chains (of ideas, words, which pretend to represent “data points,” “facts”) aimed in particular directions, thus pointing to particular agendas, stated, or otherwise.

“The news,” now, more and more, refers to immense networks of “data points” connected to one another in multifarious ways. Two examples:

It’s as if we’ve reached the apotheosis of our left-brained “learning curve.” As if, only if we get infused with AI (see Neurolink), will we even care to, much less be able to, “keep on learning.” At least in this manner. In the manner that calls for us to ignore the more subtle calls within our own being, and within Nature herself, calls that whisper.

Pay attention.

Be aware.

You are a sovereign soul, at one with all.