Zowee! I’m an ODD duck? Thanks, Charles.

April 23, 2025

Don’t worry. I’ll explain the title.

To begin:

We seem to be living on earth in the 21st century AD as a morphing mutant species.

 

Did you ever stop to consider that the single word “species” functions as both singular and plural! Which makes our current (but what’s current? when did “it” begin, how far back is far enough) situation? condition? transmogrifying flow? Or, even more impossible: how to figure out (that’s left brain talk), discern (might be right brain too), intuit (definitely right brain, supposedly linked to “source” (but what’s Source? Whose god we talkin’ about here?) Oh shit! let’s just stop now shall we? Enough of the verbal nonsense that pretends to cover REALITY, whatever that is!

A childhood memory pops in:

My mother, throwing up her hands in dismay: “Ann! Just who do you think you are?!”

Well, here are a few labels that, had I ever agreed to “go into therapy” at any point, might have stuck, at least for awhile.

Look ’em up!

GAD generalized anxiety disorder

OCD obsessive-compulsive disorder

ODD oppositional defiant disorder

The label of the last one sounds closest. But maybe the label “contrarian” is precise enough. That’s what my older son called me a few years ago. I had to look it up! BTW: given the way the world has morphed since then, he’s becoming more and more contrarian himself. Welcome, son!

Please remember that whichever behaviors and linguistics (or lack of) count as mental “disorders” depends on who you ask, or  more generously, says this sarcastic bombastic Sagittarian —thanks to all the many psychiatrists for their ongoing contributions to the latest DSM — here is one response via somebody’s version of rapidly mutating AI . . .

Oh wow. Over 450 ways of pretending to cutting up human psyches into tiny atomized slices, all of which “require” treatment, i.e., one or more psychiatric drugs. (Get “diagnosed” and you automatically to get “treatment” i.e., drugs). And that was 2022. How many more in the past 2.5 years . . . less the the obedient jabbed folks who have already died . . .

Hmmm . . . so how many humans in the U.S. supposedly suffer from a “mental illness”?

Well, again from nearly three years ago, according to

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness

 

In other words, more like one in four in 2022, that’s already 25% of the adult population.

And children? From the same source, same year:

Aside from the fact that the census is undoubtedly wrong (nobody in my house wanted to be counted . . .) I don’t believe these statistics. Way way more than that. Let’s face facts: it’s now “normal” to “suffer from” some kind of “disorder” and get on psychiatric drugs! BIG PHARMA’S WET DREAM!

Hmm . . . how’s DOGE treating you, NIH? A quick duck duck go search, on first page:

Now let’s add to the population of supposedly classified (or unmentionable) abnormal “disorders.” Examples:

ETs posing as humans? (I can’t help but see Elon that way). Shapeshifting reptilians? Hybrids? How about those unclassified, just out there, and either celebrated, despised, or feared: like elite bloodlines? Jews? Zionists? Drag Queens? Transgenders? Woke Democrats endorsing DEI? Some of the above so-called or not-so-called disorders are supposedly visibly “different” than “the majority” (whatever that is; and what’s the sample? All humans on earth? In your town, your state, your country?), some not. I.e., skin color is a tell. But so are behavioral and linguistic cues. But what’s real, what’s pretend, or fake, or pretending to be faked? Or masked?. Or clones of all the above? How about NPCs?

Then there’s the autism spectrum, currently in the public eye, thanks to RFK Jr. What is it, 1 out of 31 children now labeled “autistic”? And clearly, this is not just a matter of loving to stick labels on people. All these syndromes, etc. mirror largely unaddressed, unprocessed increasing environmental and cultural toxicity. Where is the grieving process that needs to attend our terrible discoveries?

At this point, who the hell knows the “Real ID” of seemingly human or humanoid creatures walking around upright on the face of this earth at this seemingly end-point in history? This point of no return?

The point is (yeah, I mean a larger point, even though a point itself has no dimension . . .): however we label the multifarious “Others,” they, i.e., WE all deserve both empathy and compassion.  Which, however, does not automatically guarantee or even denote the ability to understand one another fully (to “walk a mile in each other’s shoes”) by means of the linguistic and bodily signals my now fading generation could count on 7 decades ago. I.e., the usual, traditional, common-sensical means of “coming to terms” with one another do not apply, and have not applied for a very long time. No wonder we experience internal, interpersonal, societal and cultural chaos!

All this is to make a more general point. I applaud Charles Eisenstein’s articulate, compassionate efforts to both comprehend and ascribe value to, not just autism, but to all forms of what we used to be able to assume was “human” life on earth. Frankly, this article mesmerized me. Thank you, fellow ODD! You taught me that newly self-applied label!

There is nothing “wrong” with anyone, and . . .

 

Eisenstein is very good at elucidating his own biases. Here’s mine:

I cannot help but notice that anyone medically diagnosed as mentally ill and therefore, on psychiatric meds, seems to think of him or herself as a victim, i.e. to believe their supposed cut and dried psychiatric DSM classification; I assume that this (logially?) (emotionally?) “follows” from their continuing trust in doctors and all kinds of authorities as gods to be “obeyed.” On the other hand, who knows what the drugs themselves do to their native ability to think, both critically, and imaginatively. To actually take charge of their own ensouled, sovereign lives!

So many do seem to turn into NPCs!

REALLY!

STILL?

FIVE YEARS ON FROM THE COVID CON?

Oh, and for readers also “suffering from” my addiction to contrarian mind-bending, how about this? What if conservatives, instead of liberals, dominated universities? Would that be any “better”? You decide.

https://www.sensible-med.com/p/what-if-it-were-the-other-way-around

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Personal Encounter with the Demonic

April 22, 2025

Several days ago, I was out on my morning walk with puppy Scampi when I came across an old friend, about my age, whom I shall call here, Sarah. Sarah was on her bicycle, riding around the compound where she lives, round and round, what she does every morning. I waved. She waved back.

Later that day, we both happened to be in Aldi, at the place where five people can check out electronically all at once. Seeing her there, and when our eyes met, I greeted her, “Hello Sarah! How are you doing?”

“I’m doing fine . . . Actually I’m NOT; just so upset about what’s happening to this country.” Said with great emphasis.

“Well, I’m still a Trumper,” I replied, loud enough for those around us to hear (dangerous, in this academic town).

“I know.” She replied. “And that’s why I don’t come to your Community Dinners.” (She used to come, years ago.)

Before she could get going on the rant that I could feel was coming, I told her “Actually, I’m both.”

While I realize that without shrinking the bloat in the federal government the entire country will soon go broke, I also very much appreciate how some of DOGE’s efforts are resulting in many thousands of people having great difficulties. As an example, I told her about noticing clearly immigrant little kids dressed up for school with backpacks, waiting at the bus stop with shy parents who don’t speak English, knowing that they all live in the “project” behind. “Who knows,” I thought at the time, as I passed them on the sidewalk, “what would happen to them if money to to fund that project gets axed. Or if their parents get deported.”

At this, my felt appreciation of both sides of the current political polarity, she looked puzzled, taken aback. But then when I mentioned Elon Musk, she turned suddenly rabid. “Oh, he’s just an African nazi,” she shouted, red-faced, as if the devil himself had suddenly climbed inside her and was spewing fire.

At this, I just put up my hands, shook my head in wonder, turned and walked away.

How I wish I had stayed, to tell her how we here in Green Acres Permaculture Village work with the inevitable political differences that arise between us. It’s been a necessity that we learn to do this, ever since what I still call the covid con— and what nearly everybody else around here still sees as a real epidemic, requiring masks, distancing, etc. etc, — cleaved us in two.  In fact, during that strange time, the fear virus coursing through culture was so very virulent, that we stopped Community Dinners entirely for about a year.

Here’s how we do it: we just “stay with what we have in common.” And inevitably, what we have in common is much greater than what divides us. What divides us is merely ideas, those usually instilled into our brains on screens by outside sources, rather than gained through real lived experience, on the ground, where we live and breathe and relate to one another as equal, sovereign souls.

I’m reminded of Mattias Desmet, who introduced the idea of “mass formation” to us back during the covid con. Remember this? from 2022:

The Psychology of Totalitarianism

This man is showing us, with his language, how to bridge the gap between opposites; to live in the spacious presence between them, rather than condemning either pole as “the other.”

I subscribe to his substack. Here’s his subtly argued, both/and post from 4/19/25.

The Snitch Line of the Minister of Health

 

As a kid who grew up in the 40s and 50s, I can’t help but feel nostalgic now, and I wonder about Sarah, who also grew up then. How she must be suffering, to have succumbed to the cultural MK Ultra GOVERN-MENT (govern the mind) social divide, to having “picked a side,” and is now battling it out. I know full well, that as she pedaled back to her lonely apartment, while the ego part of her was still hot, underneath she did not feel good about either herself or the world. Hate does not heal.

Daily, hourly, minute by minute, I pray that I shall be one of those who help heal the divisions most people alive today are so immersed in that they do not realize it is possible to both dive below them to what we have in common, and to allow ourselves to rise above them, above all the quarreling, to look down with compassion upon sufffering humanity.

How did we allow ourselves to get to this point?

How did we allow ourselves to succumb to the (required, designed) madness that pits us against one another while the totalitarian state gradually, seemingly inevitably, clamps down?

Let’s stop.

Center, re-group.

Love ourselves.

Love one another.

Love unceasingly.

BTW: just as I turned from Sarah, one man turned from elecronically making his own purchases. He looked at me, knowing, appreciating.

It’s time we speak Truth, unceasingly . . .

. . . with Love.