Escaping The Cave

#31 - Humanist Puritans, Wokeflake Jesus, Manchurian Crusaders

The extreme left's totalitarian purity test and its search for Utopia's messiah; self-righteous moral certainty and the narcissistic narratives of the secular humanist religion. Then, agitation propaganda creates armies of proselytes and militants while unleashing an uncontrollable and destabilizing primal hatred for "the evil other." No one's immune; would you even know if you're devouring propaganda? 

ALSO: 

• Silent Collaborators
• The Sunday School of political insemination
• Political missionaries always rapping at the smart phone's door
• Being right vs. "looking" right
• Ignoring history
• You're solely responsible for protecting and maintaining your own mind 

 

*Like it? SPREAD IT!  F**k The Zuckerbeast & Twitter. YOU are my marketing team.

*Also check out https://toddzillax.substack.com/

#28 - Wordknapping, Propaganda's Effects, A Reckoning

"He who defines is your master." More on twisting definitions as a malicious propaganda tool, how institutional propaganda systems affect a population, and where a species oblivious of its own shortcomings ultimately ends up.

Also: 

-Communing with the organic dead

-There's no such thing as collective critical thought

-Intelligence as a handicap

-Foreshadowing a Walter Lippmann re-think

 

*Like it? Share it! F**k The Zuckerbeast & Typhoid Jack. YOU'RE the marketing team.

*Subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.

*Also check out www.escapingthecave.com

#27 - Propaganda: Agenda + Journalism

Definitions, journalism as a euphemism for propaganda, Amash goes rogue, Antifa gets played by Patreon's punching bag, I have a creative reparations solution, FOX gets savvy and begins filling a void. Part two coming soon. 

Also, 

-What happened to our Nuremberg rally?

-More on these ridiculous Democratic debates

-Justice isn't real  

-Is the extremist worm turning?   

 

*Like it? SPREAD IT!  F**k The Zuck & Twitter. YOU are my marketing team.
*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net and www.escapingthecave.com 

#26 - Broken Beasts of Intellectual Burden

A digital detox update and re-connecting with the organic world, Trump's 4th of July spectacle and the predictable "outrage", why I'm rooting against the US women's soccer team, the ridiculous debates, and half as many young people consider themselves "gay allies." Why? Beware the boomerang!

 

Also: 

-Social media is the new talk radio

-Visceral emotive manipulation and monetized propaganda

-Algorithms as propaganda delivery systems 

*Like it? SPREAD IT!  F**k The Zuck & Twitter. YOU are my marketing team.
*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher. 
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net and www.escapingthecave.com

#23 - The Social Media Disease - Distraction Sickness, Electronic Eyes, Thought Shaming

Hi New Zealand! Find yourself logging onto to the LaBrea Twitter Pit or Facebook and suddenly you've lost far more time to it than you intended?  Me too. More on Digitally Enhanced Avatars, Digital Detox as a treatment for a distorted virtual perception/socialization as well as depression, anxiety, cynicism, and generalized anger.

 

Also,

-The universal nature of both our inner and shared stories

-Propaganda is a story.

-What happens when conflicting propagandas collide?

-Social Vengeance Warriors moving beyond "justice" and discrimination into thought control.  

 

 

*Like it? SPREAD IT!  F**k The Zuck & Twitter. YOU are my marketing team.

*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher. Am I missing one? Let me know! 

*Check out www.christophermedia.net and www.escapingthecave.com

#22 - Pick Your Authoritarian Wisely

Wrapping things up with Chris & Rich, we discuss how public relations is, literally, a euphemism for propaganda, manufacturing opinion, euphemisms and twisting words to fit the propagandist's purpose, informational overload creating political non-entities, and partisanship rotting political, cultural and social institutions. 

Also: 

-Abandoning basic American principles; Patriotism's vicious backlash 

-Social upheaval or an authoritarian police state resulting from the governed revoking their consent

-The Great Utopia is not only impossible, its illusion is held together only by chains

-The ridiculous argument that people are voting "against their own interest"

-Morally self-righteous bigotry and Wokeflakes poking the Crackerbear

 

Like it? SHARE IT!  F**k The Zuck & Twitter. YOU are my marketing team.

 

Check out www.escapingthecave.com

#21 - Social Media Disease - Virtue Batsignals, Puritans, Exhausted Majority

Todd, Rich, and Chris discuss the unwiring of social evolution, totalitarian tribes spawning skittish clones, and an exhausted "center" with nowhere to land that's not infested by puritans. Also: the outright refusal to see our own team's propaganda, the "wisdom" of youth, and more on thoughtless opinions and how "branding" affects Social Media Political Influencers.

 

Like it? Share it. F**k Twitter. You're the marketing team.

More: www.escapingthecave.com

#20 - The Social Media Disease: Net Rage, Poking the Ape, Unleashing the Id

Cyber Space Monkeys continued. In part 1-of-3, I'm joined by Chris & Rich to discuss the effects of social media on individuals and society as a whole. Propaganda kerosene and the disinformation detonator, the connection between road rage and net rage, much of the IDW: for-profit social media brands and "right adjacent" influencers producing "content" for handouts, Nicholas Carr and how the Internet physically changes our brains, good deeds done solely to post the selfie, and more.

Like it? SHARE IT! F**k The Zuck & Twitter. You're my marketing team.

#19 - Hey, Hilltucky! Reptilian Truth & The Outrage Fever

No Politics! Lots of drilling to the "get the f**k away from me!" meltdown core. 

-Bulls**t Jousting

-The truth probably won't set you free

-Sausage Party Hope and the fueling Audacity of Belief

-How & why disinformation works: a first person play-by-play.

 

More: www.escapingthecave.com

Visit: www.christophermedia.com

Also: www.christophermedia.net

You found it. Now, subscribe, ya jerk. What's the matter with you?

#18 - Propaganda 101: Corrupt Data & Telling Truth From Falsehood

“There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.”  “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” -Lippmann. At 35:25: The difference between clever & smart and more on the DIKW pyramid and what happens when citizens ignore corrupt data. 

The first 35-minutes: 

- Justin Amash and the criticism from the left.

- Mueller's fumble and the Democrat's ensuing demand that he star in their 2020 reality show/campaign ad.

- To Impeach or not Impeach: just do it or STFU!

- Democrats are politically impotent to stop anything Trump does. How does that "protest vote" look now?  

 

More: www.escapingthecave.com

Subscribe: iTunes and Google Play 

 

 

#17 - The Social Media Disease: The Illusion of Knowledge & Democratized Opinion

Technology enables, and social media perpetuates, informational anarchy and prioritizes the cheap appearance of knowledge over fostering knowledge itself.  Also, how the Internet changes cognition and the abandonment of expertise to the holy opinion: "my ignorance is equal to  your knowledge."

Also: 

-The DIKW pyramid and drowning in data.

-The Id on Parade, the natural state of man, and Leviathan.  

-What happens when reasonable voices abandon the public square to mindless mobs of roving avatars?

-When avatars attack

-A classic full-frontal Toddzilla rant salvaged from The Lost Episode about Twitter, and more.  

 

Elias Aboujaode's Virtually You: 

https://www.amazon.com/Virtually-You-Dangerous-Powers-Personality/dp/0393340546

 

Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: 

https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750

 

Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death: 

https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1558613196&sr=1-1

 

 

Need more Toddzilla?

1) Seek help.
2) Click the links.
3) Gorge on your way to therapy.

More episodes/subscribe:
My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com
Also visit: www.christophermedia.net

Subscribe: iTunes and Google Play

#16 - The Social Media Disease: Virtual Mobs, Conformity, & External Truth

Unsophisticated media consumers and the failure to take personal responsibility for our own intellectual maintenance. The surrender of the individual's intellectual autonomy to the conformist mob. How mobs-cells no longer need to leave the couch and are now free to anonymously molest & terrorize the "other" via Twitter, Facebook, and their phones.

Also:

• Social Media Influencers and how the Media 101 Model applies to them
• Emerson on independent thought, conformity, and consistency
• The abandonment of external truth and the path to authoritarianism 

"ToddzillaX" on most social media. LIKE, SHARE & SUBSCRIBE!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjdLR140l--HufeRSAnj91A

https://www.twitch.tv/toddzillax

 

#15 - The Elephantitis Pandemic; Winter is Here

Haidt's elephant and how it relates to our constitutional crisis, rising authoritarianism, and our likely dystopian future. "Evolution didn't end with opposable thumbs."

• The thin veneer of civilization
• Self-dehumanization
• Extremists v. Moderate
• The Social Media Disease

 

 

#14 - Political Orphans & Constitutional Hospice

Parties, their power-first representatives and constituents, fundamentalist ideologues, extremists, etc. are failing everyone.

Government institutions are melting down and the faith of the governed along with it.

Hey! What could possibly go wrong?!?

 

 

Need more Toddzilla?

1) Seek help.

2) Click the links. You can listen on your way to therapy.

More episodes/subscribe: www.escapingthecave.com
My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com

#13 - The Boomerang Effect: "Hold My Beer"

Confused as to why your righteous demands aren't being met? Behold! 

• Narratives, mythology, religion, and how they bind us together
• The Grand Design & Ideological Religions
• Making Enemies of Allies
• Haidt's Elephant
• Intellectual refinement and allowing yourself (and others) to make mistakes and change your mind
• External Truth and Reason
• Authoritarian creep
• No Hitler references!

www.escapingthecave.com

https://soundcloud.com/toddzillax

 

Use as directed. 

 

 

#12 - Media 101: It’s The People

Are you wondering why every source of "news" and information sucks? It's because everyone from MSNBC to NPR to FOX to Alex Jones to Social Media "Influencers" operate according to the same for-profit model: drawing eyeballs to their product to sell someone else's.

The re-resurrection begins by re-laying the foundation. More on the way.

 

Need more Toddzilla?

1) Seek help.

2) Click the links. You can listen on your way to therapy.

More episodes/subscribe: www.escapingthecave.com
My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com

#11 - The Social Media Disease: Cyber Space Monkeys

First Social Media Disease antibiotic treatment. Starting with an X-Pod flashback to 2014, Todd discusses Cambridge Analytica before turning to more recent effects of our collective addiction to social media on society and how a bilateral abandonment of a commitment to basic common facts--in favor of tasty propaganda--is having a dehumanizing effect and rapidly eroding the social contract. Also: cyber space monkeys, avatars showing off for each other in the Matrix, and the digital-organic hybrid: meme belching Cyborgs.

Need more Toddzilla? First, seek help. Second, click the links below. You can listen on your way to therapy.

More episodes/subscribe: www.escapingthecave.com
My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com

 

Hitchhiking and Philosophy

The final episode of the Friar Chris Series begins with a discussion about the differences between bicycle touring and backpacking then moves on to deeper topics, including (@ 15:45) my experience volunteering on the Gulf Coast in the immediate aftermath of Katrina and the corrosive and corrupting effects of tribalism and dogma in the Disaster Relief Industrial Complex. We then move on to (mostly) explore the fundamental ideas behind why he and I chose hitchhiking and what we learned and experienced while traveling the country as “disposable” vagabonds loitering out on the fringe. SPOILER ALERT: Sausage Party Hope lies within!

Cheat Sheet:

36:40 - Institutional incompetence, the loss of confidence leading to the rage that we found everywhere in 2008-9 which, ultimately, gave birth to Tea Party Extremism.

50:28 - The philosophy/theology of a guiding hand synchronicity operating system, audacity, and the (unresolvable?) conflict between unprovable theology and a commitment to truth.

1:04:10 - The driving fundamentals including freedom (and the resulting paradox), the search for purpose, the fear hump/internal narrative feedback loop.

1:38:50 - The re-humanizing effect of organic interaction and the authenticity one can witness when playing the role of the culturally invisible man.

1:49:55 - Hopping the freight train.

1:56:30 - The surprise of a pervasive, unexplained, and unsolicited, generosity.

2:04:40 - The folly of depending on distorting electronic eyes. (Internet/media)

2:15 - Egocentric Identity and the pain of re-birth

2:16 - The Return, The Call/Splinter, and how these ideas transcend mythology and religion

2:28:30 - On Chris McCandless 10-years later

 

More episodes/subscribe: www.escapingthecave.com
My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com

Self-Delusion, Solutions in Truth, and A Side of Crow

In this sprawling episode, Todd attacks Quixoteism & "personal truth": the human tendency toward egocentric self-delusion and how the Sausage Party Hope resides in the commitment to observing objective reality. He also discusses artist "activism", content control and the new feed, third party futility, and the need for one political religion or the other to inter the opposing half of the country inside ideological "concentration camps". You're also given the gift of laughter as he dines on his Twitter "marketing" crow. 2018 says, "Never Say Never!" 

Subscribe to Escaping the Cave on iTunes/Google Play or visit www.escapingthecave.com #MAGA? #MeToo? #NotForYou. Use as directed.   

Ideological Religions & The Talking Dead

Laying the foundation for future podcasts, Todd talks about identity politics being mutually exclusive with “equality”, ideological drift, political doctrine as competing and hostile secular religions, cyber mobs, and the zombifying effects of dogma.

NEW FEED! Subscribe: iTunes or Google Play

Detecting the Disinformation: Tribal Warfare, Slithering Fascism (2014)

Recorded in 2014 shortly before the first podcast ended, this episode discusses my initial Facebook purges, Trumpism (before Trump), the social damage inflicted by echo chambered disinformation (fake news) on facebook as well as the human inclination toward delusional tribalism. Not recommended for those looking for Sausage Party Hope! Definitely recommended for those wanting to reflect back on the not-so-distant past and reminisce on how we got here. And how things not only haven't changed, but gotten worse. 

 

NEW FEED! Subscribe: iTunes or Google Play