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 

 

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#30 - Renouncing Patriotism And The Nationalist Boomerang

Todd, Chris, and Rich discuss how the left always inadvertently triggers heated nationalism with its self-defeating renouncement of patriotism and Zinnification: exploiting idealistic naiveté; how Zinnified agitation propaganda attacks national unity by destroying symbols and cohesively fictitious myths. 

 

Also: 

• “Racism” isn’t a "white thing" nor exclusively an American trait
• The ridiculous notion that propaganda-farting fleshbots are “changing minds”
• The slow crawl of social progress 
• Paying Granddaddy’s social debts
• Immigration and "becoming American"
• “Socialism rules!" Then why was there a Berlin Wall?
• Your special personal experience doesn’t matter
• Child Worship? But, children are literally ignorant

 

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#29 - Guidance Is Internal

Chris & Rich sit in on the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. We discuss the achievement, the courage of those undertaking it, and how subsequent generations were cheated of their signature crowning moment in history. 

 

ALSO: 

-Data overload, informational suffocation, and how the compulsive "current events man" is actually less informed.

-Are we "really" evolving?

-Patriotic appreciation vs. copycat anti-Americanism

 

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#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

 

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#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?   

 

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#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 

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#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

 

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#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.

 

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#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.

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#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?  

 

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#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

 

 

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#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 

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#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

 

 

#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.

 

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The Demon (2014)

Recorded shortly after Robin Williams committed suicide in 2014, this was one of the most popular episodes from the old podcast. It covers many topics Friar Chris and I discussed in the previous podcasts, including the fraud of "normal", misguided identity, the emptiness of success, depression, and the performers need for praise and validation. Some of the early ideas surrounding the Social Media Disease such as personal “branding” and virtual facades are here as well as kernels of things that will become familiar to the regular listener, such as The Marrow of Humanity.

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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

 

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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.

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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. 

 

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