Does anyone else remember that for the first two decades of this millennium, Americans were bombarded with warnings that really bad people wanted to attack us because they hated our freedom? How there were these really bad dictators around the world who harbored terrorists and brutalized their own people? So worried were we about this that we deployed our military on its longest campaign to date, to the tune of trillions of dollars and millions of lives. Spreading freedom and democracy around the world was the name of the game.
Whatever happened to all that? Are we still spreading freedom and democracy? Are these things that we still value? I bring this up only to remind you all that narratives get created, exploited, and the dropped, and little is ever said of them again. When I was in elementary school they told us that there was a hole in the ozone and that the sun would cook us all up. Whatever happened to the hole in the ozone? When’s the last time you heard that one mentioned? Acid rain was going to get us, the rain forest was going to be gone, the polar ice caps were going to melt and the cities were going to be underwater.
I’m not trying to deny that we face huge environmental problems. We do have problems, but rather than look at them comprehensively, we get fed myopic narratives that stir up fear, guiding us collectively into courses of action that serve a larger agenda. Be assured, this process is not random. The authors of these narratives and agents of this agenda have read Gustave Le Bon’s The Crowd, you can be sure. They have read Propaganda by Edward Bernays. They have studied you, my friend. Have you studied them?
Narratives come and go. Remember Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction? Remember Assad? ISIS? Haven’t heard much about ISIS or Al Quaeda in a while, have we? Were they defeated? Are they still at large, plotting against us? Remember the Yellow and Orange terror “threat levels”? Did anyone ever ask exactly how they determined that? Oh no, they can’t tell you what information they base these threat levels on. That’s top secret. But now you can’t bring water onto the plane, and you need to take your shoes and belt off. Just get used to it.
Narratives dominate the airwaves, stirring up a bunch of arguments, leading us into accepting major changes to our lives and society, and then they disappear.
If you are not aware of how covid and climate change are narratives, then you have been captured by them, just as was intended. The only way to free ourselves from the parasites that drain our mental energy, drive us into unfathomably deep debt, send us to pointless wars, and mandate away our liberty is to realize that we are hosting parasites. I feel so bad for so many people I see who are completely depleted, bled dry by numerous kinds of parasitic forces. I can see that they are being sucked dry, but if I try to point out the parasites to them, they often get angry and defensive. There is no helping someone who doesn’t want to be helped.
For those who do want help, there is help. There are ways to remove these parasites. The tumorous mass of military and financial dictatorships can be starved, just as fasting can cure cancer. Violent revolution is like chemo-therapy. It may kill the cancer, it may kill you both. Agorism, (peaceful resistance, consensual re-organization of society) is like fasting. Kills cancer and parasites without killing you.
We simply have to cut them off. Stop watching them. Stop listening to them. Stop using their money. Stop buying their products. As Etienne de La Boetie explains, only our consent and participation enables tyrants to rule. As we are on the precipice of the most horrifying technical dictatorship the world has ever seen, it has never been so important for people to realize that the power is ultimately ours. Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights.
