So Were Here: Some Advice on the Road Ahead

As the world falls apart around us, I'd like to talk about the two group - or societies - which are at the root of what I see to be happening.

We are living in a world where no one thinks clearly: discussion of politics happens in terms of a "folk psychology" that is very, very opposed to the mind sciences of the 21st century - in philosophy of mind, consciousness studies, experimental and behavioral psychology, cognitive science and psychodynamic theorizing - in how the mind is thought about, and how a subject matter is treated.

I am horrified at what I'm watching on CNN. The topic is Trumps official decision to make Steve Bannon his chief strategist. Steve Bannon has consciously admitted to his website - under his editorial leadership - being the "home of the alt right". This is happening right in front of us. Anderson Cooper, ever the neutral - and because of that, potentially evil - respondent, handles conversation between Trump apologists and liberal critics. The moderation hardly qualifies as a moderation - inasmuch as something of incredible significance is happening, and the anchor, in maintaining a "neutral stance", essentially accedes to the flow of the existing social dynamic, which is just another way of saying: conditioning you - the audience - to a normalization of Trump appointees and Trumps methods, until all is set. Set for what? That's what I fear. The CNN anchors interest to be "neutral", even in the face of such impending lunacy - the acceptance and tolerance of specious reasoning and incomparable comparisons - validates forms of argument, and thus, enables the perversion of reason, representation, and sane thinking that is required to live and thrive in a democracy.

There is an almost Orwellian process occurring in our media - CNN, in particular, FOX news being long the paradigmatic exemplar of the most obscene propagandizing - in which stupidity is allowed and tolerated, even as reasonable and intelligent people complain - again and again, the blank faced, internally regulated narcissist republican spews more specious garbage, as if, in the interaction being had, a point wasn't just made.

This is a very frightening situation to be in. The issue is education - mental clarity, and the capacity to represent complex chains of ideas without losing the "gestalt" of the whole. Sense Making - the effort of the educated liberal, is LOST on the ears of the naive, poorly educated CNN watcher, as the voices and the emotions and the identifications with political parties supervenes as the primary process in determining how the person shall think.



Attentional processes are essentially constructed by the above diagram. In every mental act, we are situated - we are somewhere to which are body is probabalistically biased to process in a particular way. It is affective - non-verbal; it functions as an impulse, a direction, an orientation. The non-verbal domain is the evolutionarily OLDER domain - often referred to as the reptilian brain, the very brain that Republic Donald Trump incessantly manipulated in every single f-ucking word he spoke.

The I is me - my witnessing self. The witness - as any self-aware person knows - is in a sense "anterior" to the interaction with an object. All objects are intrinsically fed through real-life-interpersonal experiences, and so, all thinking follows the 'tune' of interpersonal experiences of being positively known by others.



We live in a culture that has distorted this process to the extreme. What nobody, or very few realize, is that their neurological dynamics are shaped by these processes such that they reflexively dissociate unwanted information. We are thus liars - not because were evil, but because were trying to protect ourselves from suffering, or in the bodys language, metabolic fatigue.

I knew Trump would win because I felt that part of me that would have been excited by Trumps presence. I KNOW Trump. That is, I watched the Apprentice, and so, my brain has a personal relationship with him - Donald Trump - the "object" representing an archetypal other.

If people merely empathize i.e. attune to the feeling relation that people have to certain ideas, concepts etc, you can "get" why and how they are being motivated. Yet - the media never talks about these things - and why is that, if not because the media wants to manipulate you?

I hate being cynical - but I feel it is warranted, because something absurd is happening, and people are mindlessly "adjusting" more and more to a changing political and cultural atmosphere. I hear liberal Jews descrying the perversion of reason - and yet, I think to myself: "hasn't this ultra conservative backlash happened before"? Yeah - just 83 years ago, in 1933, in Germany. We see things shaping up quite similarly - if you see the shifting conversations and the "new allowances" we make for Trumps inveterate lying; we hear childish reasonings about "Bannon controlling Trump" as if that point should take priority over an ideological and characterological feature.

Watching the news POISONS the mind - if you aren't clever enough to recognize the lapses, breaks and holes in reasoning processes. If - as I believe - you watch the news and are barely able to follow the conversation or make sense of any of the topics being discussed, your mind will collapse all information in terms of the superficiality of affect - which of course, often seeks to act upon feelings of insecurity, vulnerability, and speak to the "solutions" that many peoples mind-brains turn to to regulate their affect.

Didn't Trump say "he knew how to speak to people"? This man is so arrogant, that I am convinced he holds the average person with disdain - that they are stupid unaware idiots who succumb again and again to superficial charm: the lower part - feeling, and not the upper part: content.

A New World

I can only look ahead and believe that there will one day be a time where people are educated about how their brain-minds self-organize as a single unity - a single consciousness, but a consciousness inherently connected to the beings of others.

Hatred, arrogance, and anger, are pointless, delusional feelings which deny the fundamental co-emergence of our being. It never makes sense to fall for what happens WITHIN the matrix.

The world is pressing us to respond. We need to respond with awareness, intelligence, and compassion.

a reply to: Astrocyte

I don't understand your criticism of Anderson Cooper. The point of journalism is to report from a neutral stance, and let the audience make their own decisions based on objective facts. In this sense, Anderson Cooper is the only one truly doing his job.

a reply to: Wang Tang

But the neutral observer is a metaphor. It isn't actually a real thing, because wherever you stand, you either constrain or enable. There is only a flowing conversation, and the anchors constraining or flowing of it. If Cooper assumes a phony neutral stance (it is phony, as Von Goethe long ago averred, all science is a relational process, all conversation is a relational process, and all meaning is relational process) relative (note the role context plays here in determining the nature and appropriateness of constraint and enablement) to insane reasoning processes made by Republicans, he is in effect mediating and enabling the acceptance of this form of conversation. He is not being neutral towards it, but tolerating it as a legitimate way of speaking - even as it HAPPENS AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS.

Does this not then problematize the issue of free-speech? If people do not, in fact, a priori possess the capacity to think reasonably, but require a certain education to build up a functional capacity, then free-speech can have disastrous consequences, as were seeing when a presidential candidate gets to say whatever he wants - and in doing so, excites and enlivens others to do the same.

Speech is not neutral: it has effects, it generates unwanted social consequences.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Sure Anderson Cooper probably has his own personal opinion but he is maintaining his neutral stance in public as a professional journalist, as you would expect him to.

On the other hand, it seems pretty ignorant of you to label all Republican reasoning as insane and attack anyone who doesn't align with your own views.

Say all you want about the Republicans, they are not the ones starting violent riots all across the country.

a reply to: Wang Tang

On the other hand, it seems pretty ignorant of you to label all Republican reasoning as insane and attack anyone who doesn't align with your own views.

I never said that. I was referring to the situation I was observing - and so within that situation, the Republicans I was specifically referring to were Trump supporters. And yes - as a scientist, I very much can say and will note how and when specious reasoning occurs - and how it occurs as a function of dissociation. Pretending we aren't embodied, embedded and physically conditioned structures - the very thing republicans and conservatives repeatedly stand guilty of - is the very core of the problem we find ourselves in.

Say all you want about the Republicans, they are not the ones starting violent riots all across the country.

The vast majority of peaceful protestors. The problem is, the ignorant, serial lying womanizing elitist won the election. Hence the demonstrations.

a reply to: Wang Tang

i don't know what anderson cooper your talking about. the one i've seen and watched that is on cnn is one of the most liberal biased reporters there is on TV.

you have no problem telling what side he comes down on.

a reply to: hounddoghowlie

Ok well I don't watch Anderson Cooper so I'll take your word for it. That just further invalidates everything OP has said. I was giving him some benefit of the doubt...

a reply to: Astrocyte

1. Trump being POTUS will not lead to the end of the world as you imply. You are angry and upset that Trump won, but that's an issue YOU need to deal with and get over. Nobody but yourself can come to terms with his victory.

2. Watching CNN. FOX, BBC etc. is not the problem. Accepting everything that is said on these stations as being honest and truthful without utilising your own critical thinking skills and rational thought processes after being fed the information is the real issue.

3. This is certainly not the lowest point in human history and we will adapt and survive to the big changes heading our way.

a reply to: Astrocyte

starred and flagged.

Fantastic post

I agree with your point that people felt like they knew Trump, they identified to the object, even if Trump may sound like a edgy, over-the-top millionaire. However, I believe they didn't vote «for» Trump, although they managed to relate to him. In a sense, Trump didn't win, Hillary lost, and what she represented. The American people voted against a System, against political and economical elites who are cut off from the real world of poverty, suffering and loneliness affecting millions of people.

Making sense is a very tough and important subject of our times. The establishment fails to make sense. The big eras when tons of people were dying for God, for a city (think about Rome), for great absolute ideals, are bygone. Today, our System presents itself as a mean and an end. The society of the spectacle is made of images devoid of any signification, devoid of any spirituality. No wonder why so many people are on pills cause they feel like they're leading lonely and pointless lives. What are we told to do? «Go to school, swallow what they tell you, undergo the pollution, the political lies etc to get a poorly paid job for a bossy a**hole and if you're lucky enough, you'll have a nice house with a white fence, two kids and a dog you'll name Fido» ...

So I think that the quest of modern times, will be a quest for meaning, a quest of a sense to give to our lives.

a reply to: SolomonKayne

Your post makes a lot of sense.

If anything, I believe Hillary lost because she is boring and un-charismatic. Trump excites people into a frenzy, both for and against him. Trump has woken up our country, for good and for bad. People feel a sense of purpose in speaking out against Trump. People feel a sense of pride in America again. People sense that out of anyone, this racist bigoted multi-millionaire entertainer is our best chance at overthrowing a nonsensical establishment and bringing some sense back into politics.

Let's be honest, no one really wanted Hillary to win. People just wanted Trump to lose. But you can't deny that now that Trump won, we are entering an exciting time in American history.

People are so caught in the media frenzy that they think that existential-level stuff can somehow be solved with politics.