This is really good. When I worked both in software and later in bicycles, I gravitated towards maintenance & debugging. I often quoted Vonnegut's observation that "A big problem is that everyone wants to build and no one wants to do maintenance". Also far too many of the "tear down and build new" people have little understanding of all that's involved in keeping anything running and thus actually design and build inferior new things.
I agree. That kind of thinking also creates another problem which is everyone involved in building new has no experience of maintenance, so their new builds are difficult or impossible to maintain.
Over time this creates a culture of short termism and planned replacement. Toasters are the famous example. They are no longer repairable, so they make them cheap. Houses and commercial properties are going the same way.
Once that becomes a culture then it isn't long before anything old becomes suspect just because of its age.
Many years ago, I bought a Chevy Monza. It was a fast little car with a too-large engine (Chevy had been unable to create a Wankel-Rotary engine & needed to justify its R & D department). The engineers didn't realize that the monster engine would have to be pulled to change the spark plugs or that the front tires would need constant replacement.
Good essay. "The preservation of civilization's progress relies on each generation recognizing and valuing the achievements of the past. Failure to do so risks squandering the advancements that have been made throughout history."- Hegel.
I think to blame it all on anti-White bigotry is the wrong conclusion. The fundamental foundational work at the base of the cultural Left's desire to destroy Western culture is Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth. He was also the philosophical midwife of modern Islamic Terrorism, believing that only Islam could be mobilised to destroy the West, with its cornucopia of abundance, also believing (incorrectly) that once the bloody revolution had occurred and Islam had served its purpose, it could be discarded and replaced by the socialist utopia. Ironically, socialism has been proven to be exactly the wrong medicine for former colonies- those countries which embraced free markets rapidly started the journey towards becoming rich, which those countries which embraced socialism, Keynesian economics or opted for a return to indigenous tradition remained poor. India oscillated between socialism and Keynesian economics after gaining independence, with its citizens remaining in the most destitute poverty, but in 1991 it embraced the market and has been raising living standards ever since. It is but one example of a universally proven system of upward living standards.
But anti-White cultural envy is a very real thing and can lead to resentment and destructive nihilism. The way to defeat it to inform critics just how incredibly lucky we were. If you believe Niall Ferguson, then the reason for the West's success was our killer apps: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. It's worth noting that most or all of these weren't Western innovations. Many cultures had some of them, but no one had combined them all together.
Plus, they really weren't the only things needed. First, we needed the printing press- a (relative) leap forward in the cheap mass dissemination of knowledge. Second, we needed Protestantism or something like it- a disruption in the absolute authority of the religious or spiritual over objective knowledge. We also needed geography to be on our side- access to coal and navigable rivers to transport it with orders of magnitude less labour. Most of all, we needed property rights- for the sovereign or state to be subject to the law as well its protector- without the innovation of English Common Law, rulers and their coteries of supporters owned almost everything, even the labour of their subjects. Cornucopia required free men, even if originally they might have been a limited segment of society.
We were incredibly lucky- the chances of these ideas, technologies and cultural structures coming together all at the same time are close to astronomical. The rest of the world was also incredibly lucky- despite all our Western sins enacted rising up from the brutal state of man in nature, a process which took centuries, that self-same system of ideas has raised 90% of the world's population up out of the most abject, malnourished and awful existence, living short and diseased lives. An idyllic pre-industrial past is a romantic lie, an Eden lost which never happened. Those who believe otherwise confuse the atomisation and alienation of living in cities, cheek by jowl, with the cornucopia and abundance of modernity and its precious gifts to humanity.
I think we are in violent agreement. I am not blaming anti-white sentiment for it. That is a symptom of the deeper diseases; envy being foremost among them. We are just going through a temporary phase of anti-whiteness because we extended all our Great Stuff to everyone in the mistaken belief we are all the same. That isn't working so I suspect it is coming to an end.
I also agree with most of your summation of the West versus the rest. Except the luck part. We who live today are the beneficiaries of what our ancestors did, so perhaps you and I could be said to be lucky. But I would not use the word luck to describe our ascent. Some good fortune was there along the way of course. Britain is made of coal, for example. I am sure you are aware of the observation about which direction our main rivers flow too.
But mentality is the determinant. Even today there are cultures with advantages our ancestors did not have and are unable to muster the cooperation, spirit or ambition to do anything. There are poor countries with lithium deposits less than fifty feet underground and yet they lie there.
Here is Jordan Peterson interviewing serial entrepreneur Magatte Wade. She owns businesses in both her original homeland in Africa and in America. It took her less than 24 hours to set up a business in America. In Africa, it took two years and she has to interview with a government bureaucrat every time she wants to hire a new employee. Even when an African country isn't socialist, it has socialism embedded in its government.
It's also worth noting that we want their lithium, their cobalt and their copper, but we won't let them develop their coal, or more importantly, their natural gas- because of climate goals and ESG finance. The top three wealthiest countries in Africa are mutually exclusive to the top 10 countries with the most renewables deployed. Some call it energy apartheid, other's green colonialism- although others have taken efforts to deliberately mislabel this awful by-product of green climate ideology. Thee is no such thing as a low energy rich country.
We've handed them a ladder with all the bottom rungs deliberately removed.
Most of the Counter Enlightenment movements have been Romantic (art) in nature. Hitler yearned for the heroic, blood and soil, and wanted to dispense with capitalism once it had paid for his war. Socialism romanticises human nature, and yearns for a utopian future. Fascism believed that the national leader should sit at the head of the table in an extended family of business leaders running corporations, like a benign elder dispensing wisdom and diktats. Woke and the dark green climate movement are interwoven, they imagine an idyllic romanticised past, and a future returned by deindustrialisation to an imagined Eden. I've actually had a conversation in comments with an ardent climate activist, who honestly believed local people in South America were better off before modern farming. When I pointed out they were living on less than a dollar a day, and provably so, he blocked me.
All those opposed to the Enlightenment and modernity are romantics of one form or another, imagining either an idyllic past or a utopian future. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty to criticise about the West. What the Left calls Late Stage Capitalism is actually a failure of government to level the playing field of externalities when it comes to economies of scale and guarantee competition. Even when they are not entering into collusive and mutually beneficial relationships with large corporations, they inadvertently create Crony Capitalism because their lack of consideration of the inequalities generated naturally by legal and regulatory costs automatically favours the corporate behemoth over the small baker offering luscious crispy bread like most have never tasted.
We seem to be in agreement with this as well. I veer towards realism, and aim for realism. My articles here are an attempt to explore our world. I find the act of writing focuses the mind and helps clarify what I think.
I agree also there is much to criticise about the West. I am broadly pro-markets but agree things can get out of hand, and everything the government touches seems to be a disaster.
I find most of what I see to be based in some kind of secular religious conviction for the most past, from communism to the greens.
Canterbury Cathedral just hosted a “rave in the nave” The left has a strong urge to destroy everything that has to do with Christianity and Western civilisation since the jacobins during the french revolution tore down ancient monasteries, desecrated graves and vandalised works of art.
Yes the Left for me is home to the aggressive losers in life basically. If I can't have a good life you are not getting one. All of it dressed up as grievance or righting some wrong. A farce.
I liked the reference to those helicopters departing the Saigon embassy. That is the perfect encapsulation of the themes you lay out. I don’t know if you’ve ever read any accounts from people that were on the scene, but they’re fascinating. Hearing the stories of people who actually lived out all the scenarios discussed here is surreal.
I've read a few accounts of Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge moved in. Harrowing stuff. Teenage boys with weapons and no education.
But the scenes you alluded to illustrate it for many. That end point. Knowing it is all over. And yet people want to defund the police and go light on crime etc. Just crazy. I do think there is a contingent in Western nations who live in fantasyland and need a dose of reality.
Spiff, your ability to collect and organize facts is astounding. Of course, a large percentage of Americans realize that our nation's days of greatness ended with Oliver North and John Poindexter. Our infrastructure is a disaster. Our airports are an embarrassment. Our budget is non-existent. 75 years of bossing the world around has come back like the Ouroboros chewing its own tail off. As Barry Soetoro made clear, he is changing the USA to fit his worldview.
It is not surprising that modern movies depict disasters - since so many are expecting the end of the world. In the fifties, most sci-fi fantasies were extensions of our parents' fear of Communism. Now, if the world doesn't split in two, leaving greys and reptiles to rule over the survivors, it's a rom-com.
Life is always changing and art (I use the term loosely) repeats life just as life imitates art.
Interestingly, it's been decades since a movie depicted aggressive space-aliens attacking humans. I can only conclude that the Reptilian monsters (goblins? demons?) that have fooled us into accepting the illusion of a 3-dimensional universe are comfortably in charge and living off our fear.
I always though zombie movies were a latent fear of invasion. Same for alient invasion movies - literal aliens taking over your homeland. Perhaps the move from aliens to zombies reflects the same fear but with political correctness.
I don't think America's greatness is over. I think what is ending is naivety. The Western liberal belief we are all the same, a blank slate. That with some nudging everyone can become a full blown democrat who is cool with gays and women working. That isn't happening. And frankly America will sort itself out when the realists take over. Same for most Western nations.
Zombie movies show how the elites fear the masses, while vampire movies show how the masses fear the elites. Monster movies seem to go from periods of nothing-but-zombies to nothing-but-vampires depending on cultural currents. I don't know where Godzilla fits in.
Could be. I can certainly believe our overlords view us as little more than a mob of aimless morons who will turn on each other if provoked, but still dangerous at the individual level. So you have a point.
I've been growing dissatisfied, not for the first time, with online detailing of everything that is wrong, round and round. It was the same in the aftermath of the 2008 credit collapse. What are some solutions? What is the world we want to restore/build? What are the tangible things we can do?
If it was easy I suppose we would all be talking about it.
I'm making plans for more local, IRL connections and discussion, about such topics, see if we can build momentum toward something more solid and positive than collapse and deconstruction. In a state of collapse that is what is going to matter most anyway, who do you know?
I think we all want solutions. But in a sense we all have to contribute. Think global but act local.
That said most don't seem aware there is any problem. People who read this Substack obviously do and seek out information. But the majority seem oblivious.
I think solutions are not easy for what we face. The capture of institutions is nearly total and they are in the grips of a religious fervor for all things woke. A certain amount of destruction is needed for people to get the idea.
Fire away. It is all useful. If there is one way the liberal progressive types fail it is their fear of open discussion and their effeminate need for avoiding confrontation. It is healthy to openly discuss.
I share your frustration. I see many issues where people moan or are pessimistic. I have done it myself. Solutions are harder to come by. But perhaps we should all be more brave and offer some up for discussion?
If all goes as planned I will be giving a lecture locally about my "Rules for Reolution," as a means to tamp down any thoughts about violence, but also an attempt to stir up a local conversation about local sovereignty and sustainability. Curious too to see who shows up, assuming anybody does, lol.
Meanwhile a very primitive emotionally retarded sub-adolescent who is unsuited to run anything (except into the ground) may soon be re-elected as President. He is of course a religiously and culturally illiterate nihilistic barbarian. Some even pretend that he is their cultic deity's chosen person to re-Christianize America.
And what kind of collective wisdom does his MAGA inspired movement represent or endorse?
His rallies are exercises in mass psychosis, as indeed are all of the rallies associated with the election of the next president.
Joe Biden is of course worse than awful. But look at the pathetic "quality" of the dingbats that competed against the Orange Jesus for the GOP presidential nomination.
The US is of course in a state of mass TV created psychosis. It is also essentially a "culture" of death. Its most powerful institution is the military-industrial/"entertainment"-propaganda the death saturated "values" of which permeate every minute aspect of American "culture, and by extension the entire world. What kind of in-your-face-message do "beautiful bombs" communicate and the existence of thousands of US military bases both at home and world-wide.
The modern dreadfully sane every-person of whats-in-it-for-me consumer society is a propagandized individual, participating in illusions and, effectively, self-destructing.
At present, a culture of total war, a "culture" of death, is ruling, while the people are engrossed in self and other destructive consumerism.
These two references provide a useful description of our TV created zombified mass psychosis.
This is really good. When I worked both in software and later in bicycles, I gravitated towards maintenance & debugging. I often quoted Vonnegut's observation that "A big problem is that everyone wants to build and no one wants to do maintenance". Also far too many of the "tear down and build new" people have little understanding of all that's involved in keeping anything running and thus actually design and build inferior new things.
I agree. That kind of thinking also creates another problem which is everyone involved in building new has no experience of maintenance, so their new builds are difficult or impossible to maintain.
Over time this creates a culture of short termism and planned replacement. Toasters are the famous example. They are no longer repairable, so they make them cheap. Houses and commercial properties are going the same way.
Once that becomes a culture then it isn't long before anything old becomes suspect just because of its age.
Many years ago, I bought a Chevy Monza. It was a fast little car with a too-large engine (Chevy had been unable to create a Wankel-Rotary engine & needed to justify its R & D department). The engineers didn't realize that the monster engine would have to be pulled to change the spark plugs or that the front tires would need constant replacement.
Good essay. "The preservation of civilization's progress relies on each generation recognizing and valuing the achievements of the past. Failure to do so risks squandering the advancements that have been made throughout history."- Hegel.
I think to blame it all on anti-White bigotry is the wrong conclusion. The fundamental foundational work at the base of the cultural Left's desire to destroy Western culture is Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth. He was also the philosophical midwife of modern Islamic Terrorism, believing that only Islam could be mobilised to destroy the West, with its cornucopia of abundance, also believing (incorrectly) that once the bloody revolution had occurred and Islam had served its purpose, it could be discarded and replaced by the socialist utopia. Ironically, socialism has been proven to be exactly the wrong medicine for former colonies- those countries which embraced free markets rapidly started the journey towards becoming rich, which those countries which embraced socialism, Keynesian economics or opted for a return to indigenous tradition remained poor. India oscillated between socialism and Keynesian economics after gaining independence, with its citizens remaining in the most destitute poverty, but in 1991 it embraced the market and has been raising living standards ever since. It is but one example of a universally proven system of upward living standards.
But anti-White cultural envy is a very real thing and can lead to resentment and destructive nihilism. The way to defeat it to inform critics just how incredibly lucky we were. If you believe Niall Ferguson, then the reason for the West's success was our killer apps: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. It's worth noting that most or all of these weren't Western innovations. Many cultures had some of them, but no one had combined them all together.
Plus, they really weren't the only things needed. First, we needed the printing press- a (relative) leap forward in the cheap mass dissemination of knowledge. Second, we needed Protestantism or something like it- a disruption in the absolute authority of the religious or spiritual over objective knowledge. We also needed geography to be on our side- access to coal and navigable rivers to transport it with orders of magnitude less labour. Most of all, we needed property rights- for the sovereign or state to be subject to the law as well its protector- without the innovation of English Common Law, rulers and their coteries of supporters owned almost everything, even the labour of their subjects. Cornucopia required free men, even if originally they might have been a limited segment of society.
We were incredibly lucky- the chances of these ideas, technologies and cultural structures coming together all at the same time are close to astronomical. The rest of the world was also incredibly lucky- despite all our Western sins enacted rising up from the brutal state of man in nature, a process which took centuries, that self-same system of ideas has raised 90% of the world's population up out of the most abject, malnourished and awful existence, living short and diseased lives. An idyllic pre-industrial past is a romantic lie, an Eden lost which never happened. Those who believe otherwise confuse the atomisation and alienation of living in cities, cheek by jowl, with the cornucopia and abundance of modernity and its precious gifts to humanity.
I think we are in violent agreement. I am not blaming anti-white sentiment for it. That is a symptom of the deeper diseases; envy being foremost among them. We are just going through a temporary phase of anti-whiteness because we extended all our Great Stuff to everyone in the mistaken belief we are all the same. That isn't working so I suspect it is coming to an end.
I also agree with most of your summation of the West versus the rest. Except the luck part. We who live today are the beneficiaries of what our ancestors did, so perhaps you and I could be said to be lucky. But I would not use the word luck to describe our ascent. Some good fortune was there along the way of course. Britain is made of coal, for example. I am sure you are aware of the observation about which direction our main rivers flow too.
But mentality is the determinant. Even today there are cultures with advantages our ancestors did not have and are unable to muster the cooperation, spirit or ambition to do anything. There are poor countries with lithium deposits less than fifty feet underground and yet they lie there.
Thanks for reading, and for your great comment.
Here is Jordan Peterson interviewing serial entrepreneur Magatte Wade. She owns businesses in both her original homeland in Africa and in America. It took her less than 24 hours to set up a business in America. In Africa, it took two years and she has to interview with a government bureaucrat every time she wants to hire a new employee. Even when an African country isn't socialist, it has socialism embedded in its government.
It's also worth noting that we want their lithium, their cobalt and their copper, but we won't let them develop their coal, or more importantly, their natural gas- because of climate goals and ESG finance. The top three wealthiest countries in Africa are mutually exclusive to the top 10 countries with the most renewables deployed. Some call it energy apartheid, other's green colonialism- although others have taken efforts to deliberately mislabel this awful by-product of green climate ideology. Thee is no such thing as a low energy rich country.
We've handed them a ladder with all the bottom rungs deliberately removed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o74rQmLRqtA&t=3499s
I totally get it. And I agree what we have done is a disgrace. And to think the most green among us think themselves saints.
Most of the Counter Enlightenment movements have been Romantic (art) in nature. Hitler yearned for the heroic, blood and soil, and wanted to dispense with capitalism once it had paid for his war. Socialism romanticises human nature, and yearns for a utopian future. Fascism believed that the national leader should sit at the head of the table in an extended family of business leaders running corporations, like a benign elder dispensing wisdom and diktats. Woke and the dark green climate movement are interwoven, they imagine an idyllic romanticised past, and a future returned by deindustrialisation to an imagined Eden. I've actually had a conversation in comments with an ardent climate activist, who honestly believed local people in South America were better off before modern farming. When I pointed out they were living on less than a dollar a day, and provably so, he blocked me.
All those opposed to the Enlightenment and modernity are romantics of one form or another, imagining either an idyllic past or a utopian future. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty to criticise about the West. What the Left calls Late Stage Capitalism is actually a failure of government to level the playing field of externalities when it comes to economies of scale and guarantee competition. Even when they are not entering into collusive and mutually beneficial relationships with large corporations, they inadvertently create Crony Capitalism because their lack of consideration of the inequalities generated naturally by legal and regulatory costs automatically favours the corporate behemoth over the small baker offering luscious crispy bread like most have never tasted.
We seem to be in agreement with this as well. I veer towards realism, and aim for realism. My articles here are an attempt to explore our world. I find the act of writing focuses the mind and helps clarify what I think.
I agree also there is much to criticise about the West. I am broadly pro-markets but agree things can get out of hand, and everything the government touches seems to be a disaster.
I find most of what I see to be based in some kind of secular religious conviction for the most past, from communism to the greens.
Canterbury Cathedral just hosted a “rave in the nave” The left has a strong urge to destroy everything that has to do with Christianity and Western civilisation since the jacobins during the french revolution tore down ancient monasteries, desecrated graves and vandalised works of art.
Yes the Left for me is home to the aggressive losers in life basically. If I can't have a good life you are not getting one. All of it dressed up as grievance or righting some wrong. A farce.
But religion is something that drives them crazy.
As Spiff said, they're aggressive losers. Since they can't create anything, they have to destroy other people's creations.
Great essay!
Nothing like an invigorating theft to get the blood up 😜
I started thinking about it when I read your piece.
I liked the reference to those helicopters departing the Saigon embassy. That is the perfect encapsulation of the themes you lay out. I don’t know if you’ve ever read any accounts from people that were on the scene, but they’re fascinating. Hearing the stories of people who actually lived out all the scenarios discussed here is surreal.
I've read a few accounts of Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge moved in. Harrowing stuff. Teenage boys with weapons and no education.
But the scenes you alluded to illustrate it for many. That end point. Knowing it is all over. And yet people want to defund the police and go light on crime etc. Just crazy. I do think there is a contingent in Western nations who live in fantasyland and need a dose of reality.
Spiff, your ability to collect and organize facts is astounding. Of course, a large percentage of Americans realize that our nation's days of greatness ended with Oliver North and John Poindexter. Our infrastructure is a disaster. Our airports are an embarrassment. Our budget is non-existent. 75 years of bossing the world around has come back like the Ouroboros chewing its own tail off. As Barry Soetoro made clear, he is changing the USA to fit his worldview.
It is not surprising that modern movies depict disasters - since so many are expecting the end of the world. In the fifties, most sci-fi fantasies were extensions of our parents' fear of Communism. Now, if the world doesn't split in two, leaving greys and reptiles to rule over the survivors, it's a rom-com.
Life is always changing and art (I use the term loosely) repeats life just as life imitates art.
Interestingly, it's been decades since a movie depicted aggressive space-aliens attacking humans. I can only conclude that the Reptilian monsters (goblins? demons?) that have fooled us into accepting the illusion of a 3-dimensional universe are comfortably in charge and living off our fear.
I always though zombie movies were a latent fear of invasion. Same for alient invasion movies - literal aliens taking over your homeland. Perhaps the move from aliens to zombies reflects the same fear but with political correctness.
I don't think America's greatness is over. I think what is ending is naivety. The Western liberal belief we are all the same, a blank slate. That with some nudging everyone can become a full blown democrat who is cool with gays and women working. That isn't happening. And frankly America will sort itself out when the realists take over. Same for most Western nations.
Zombie movies show how the elites fear the masses, while vampire movies show how the masses fear the elites. Monster movies seem to go from periods of nothing-but-zombies to nothing-but-vampires depending on cultural currents. I don't know where Godzilla fits in.
Could be. I can certainly believe our overlords view us as little more than a mob of aimless morons who will turn on each other if provoked, but still dangerous at the individual level. So you have a point.
I think zombie films show a fear of death and the afterlife. Of course, THE WALKING DEAD television series gave it a great shot in the arm.
Yes, no doubt that is a massive factor. A fear of oblivion which is exacerbated by a meaningless life.
I've been growing dissatisfied, not for the first time, with online detailing of everything that is wrong, round and round. It was the same in the aftermath of the 2008 credit collapse. What are some solutions? What is the world we want to restore/build? What are the tangible things we can do?
If it was easy I suppose we would all be talking about it.
I'm making plans for more local, IRL connections and discussion, about such topics, see if we can build momentum toward something more solid and positive than collapse and deconstruction. In a state of collapse that is what is going to matter most anyway, who do you know?
I think we all want solutions. But in a sense we all have to contribute. Think global but act local.
That said most don't seem aware there is any problem. People who read this Substack obviously do and seek out information. But the majority seem oblivious.
I think solutions are not easy for what we face. The capture of institutions is nearly total and they are in the grips of a religious fervor for all things woke. A certain amount of destruction is needed for people to get the idea.
I didn't mean to be negative about your article, I was just perhaps voicing my own frustration of late.
Fire away. It is all useful. If there is one way the liberal progressive types fail it is their fear of open discussion and their effeminate need for avoiding confrontation. It is healthy to openly discuss.
I share your frustration. I see many issues where people moan or are pessimistic. I have done it myself. Solutions are harder to come by. But perhaps we should all be more brave and offer some up for discussion?
If all goes as planned I will be giving a lecture locally about my "Rules for Reolution," as a means to tamp down any thoughts about violence, but also an attempt to stir up a local conversation about local sovereignty and sustainability. Curious too to see who shows up, assuming anybody does, lol.
Sounds very interesting.
The solutions are implied in the diagnosis: Don't do those things, and don't tolerate people who do.
Meanwhile a very primitive emotionally retarded sub-adolescent who is unsuited to run anything (except into the ground) may soon be re-elected as President. He is of course a religiously and culturally illiterate nihilistic barbarian. Some even pretend that he is their cultic deity's chosen person to re-Christianize America.
And what kind of collective wisdom does his MAGA inspired movement represent or endorse?
His rallies are exercises in mass psychosis, as indeed are all of the rallies associated with the election of the next president.
Joe Biden is of course worse than awful. But look at the pathetic "quality" of the dingbats that competed against the Orange Jesus for the GOP presidential nomination.
The US is of course in a state of mass TV created psychosis. It is also essentially a "culture" of death. Its most powerful institution is the military-industrial/"entertainment"-propaganda the death saturated "values" of which permeate every minute aspect of American "culture, and by extension the entire world. What kind of in-your-face-message do "beautiful bombs" communicate and the existence of thousands of US military bases both at home and world-wide.
The modern dreadfully sane every-person of whats-in-it-for-me consumer society is a propagandized individual, participating in illusions and, effectively, self-destructing.
At present, a culture of total war, a "culture" of death, is ruling, while the people are engrossed in self and other destructive consumerism.
These two references provide a useful description of our TV created zombified mass psychosis.
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/undreaming-wetiko-introduction
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/articles/invasion-of-the-body-snatchers-comes-to-life