Hello, I’m picking this up after quite a few days from the first publication, and I’ve been wondering what exactly I’d like to communicate in this article, if don’t give it a scope it may extend forever because the very nature of its subject is infinite; so I believe the first part of this post introduces quite well my concern about the activity of thinking, and how important it is that we engage in creating new ideas and concepts intentionally.

The motivation behind writing about this is really simple: I’d like to be the person who starts conversations, who asks questions, and proposes topics that will stimulate others to think. Now, this might actually sound easier than it is; if you read my last article, you will find that my point of view is that most people believe they’re thinking, while they’re really just reacting, and there’s a world of difference between the two.

A lot of what we do on a daily basis is the product of learning, a blend of experience and knowledge, both imposed on us by the official education programs and also chosen willingly according to our circumstances and interests. I don’t believe that choosing between “A” or “B” by digging into our memory or past experience is equal to thinking, countless experiments on conditioning show rats also do this, and you haven’t seen a rat write a book or create a new non-fossil fuel, just to provide a bit of a hyperbolic contrast.

The Age of Data

I said at the end of my previous article that I believe conditions for humans are way better in this day and age in general than in those of past centuries, but somehow that doesn’t seem to reflect in the average individual’s potential. This is something that haunts me as I’m a strong believer and promoter of the liberation of human potential; but the thing is, what makes the individual stronger, tends to make the externally-imposed organization unreliable and unpredictable. This is to say, individuals concerned with developing their capabilities consistently are a threat to Status Quo; if you just think about how we’re currently organized as a system, people who spend the most part of their lives working, sleeping, and consuming data in a monitor for fun/entertainment are a sort of “gloomy ideal” of a human being, as they keep the machine in motion.

And don’t get me wrong, tour my blog and see that I’m a consumer of such goodies myself, I love playing games, I use my cell phone to search for art, I read other bloggers from time to time, and so on. If there’s the capability of accessing this wealth of information and having a good time with your digital gadgets, why not?

But let me ask you something: is this a part of your life that you enjoy daily, or is this basically your entire life?

If the honest answer is the second one and it causes you discomfort, I want to say it without any type of judgment, I want you to keep reading this section of my blog, I want you to be on my team because you’ve been held captive and you have enough guts to acknowledge it and seek freedom. See, people are meant for so much more; even if you’re consuming this content, this is raw, difficult-to-digest stuff; this is not meant to be viral, what I write is for people who are looking for more from this life than just cheap crap served to the masses by media, like feeding pigs. I’m not talking about funny memes and nice stuff that makes us laugh, those are part of keeping things human, keeping sanity, I’m talking about toxic ideology, propaganda, and artificial needs imposed on us.

I’m not mad at consumers, I’m mad at very smart and arrogant people who feel they get to idiotize a whole generation and get away with it, and this is something I aim to fight.

A Historic Tension for Compliance

I gave up the idea of making these couple of articles a perfect “manifesto” of my own posture concerning society because there are too many black holes, and knowledge gaps and simply because I believe shaping our own worldview is a constant effort that requires openness to change and, of course, to admit your own ignorance and mistakes.

But that doesn’t subtract from the effort, as a matter of fact, I believe it dignifies it. You see, I will not comply with the twisted “new-internet-ethics” of “cancellation” and people who think they have the right to crucify you by finding that little post, tweet, interview, etc in which you said “x” and “y” and that makes you worthy of punishment. This is immature bullshit, and I believe is just another emanation of a society that’s descending more and more rapidly into a collection of angry mobs and mindless collectives. Individuals change, we all change, individuals think, individuals learn things, experience new things, and then based on that, they add to their understanding of things around them. Do not submit yourself to that type of bullshit.

What does it all have to do with thinking? Why so emotional, man?

Because everything that I am antagonizes the modern-day deception and massification of “thought”. And this is not new, manipulation of masses is probably as old as the first civilizations that attained some sort of “modern central government”, I mean think about it, how do you achieve real population control? How do you take over 5000 individuals (thinking about a hypothetical, very small, ancient society), manage to put them to work on the same objective, and embrace a set of beliefs? You really need to work on it, need to work on a set of ideas that by observation of the culture surrounding you, you understand can potentially provide a common framework that’s relatively easy to adopt by a large number of people. It doesn’t matter not that all of them are on board, once the largest part is brought to compliance, most of the non-convinced ones will simply follow because taking their stance now is going against the flow, and that doesn’t typically end up well; in previous ages, those “deviants” from generally accepted culture ended up as outcasts of some type if they were not strong to cause trouble, and executed if they were actually capable to bring others along with them against the prevailing order.

Welcome to “Humanity Organized to Accomplish Civilization – 101”. It’s been, of course, a lot better in some stages of history than in others; the more authoritarian the leaders and the more compliant the masses, the worse it gets. It’s not the same to be, for example, a hippie in the U.S 70’s rebelling against war in Vietnam as being a Cathar in medieval France; two types of rebels with significantly disparate amounts of risk both in quantity and quality.

And, this is where I’m trying to get at: I’m old enough to understand certain things won’t really change, and work with them (this is the type of thing that make you lose followers, f.y.i):

• Percentually, there are a lot more compliant, than non-compliant people in any human system that’s relatively stable. This should be obvious.
• A lot of these compliant people are not very smart, while fewer others are.
  • The non-smart ones, behave most of the time as animals would: stimuli – response. They won’t even entertain thoughts that question their reality, the adequateness of the system or set of principles they live by, etc. This is your core mass.
  • The smarter ones may have their doubts, and their moments of questioning, but by all means, they also have a desire to function within society and end up adopting culture out of necessity and sometimes out of fear.
  • Then we have the deviants (hi I’m Josué, nice to meet you): The deviants are interesting because they end up leading others or being eliminated/neutralized.
    • A deviant analyzes a lot, and is far more conscious of their identity, individuality, and expectations.
    • A deviant is also very analytical of the society and culture surrounding them.
    • They will take actions based on these analyses, as their very nature doesn’t allow them to become a compliant person, at least not for long.
    • The actions they chose to deal with their nonconformity, will determine the impact and fate of this person in their culture. There are many variants and I will not dare try to explore them all, but let me mention some I believe are interesting:
      • They’re shunned by those immediately around them, and, not able to withstand it, seek comfort in self-destruction, they blame themselves for not being acceptable.
      • They engage in a form of resistance, whether that be membership in a countercultural group or militancy in such a movement ranging from expressing themselves through the arts to vandalism or terrorism (using these words as per our mainstream interpretation of them).
      • They engage in an extremely hard personal crusade to be the one who calls the shots and end up becoming the oppressor. Yes, deviants are the ones that end up subduing people, because that’s where their quest for power takes them. That doesn’t mean everyone in power has these attributes, some have inherited privileges and are educated by their deviant parents to be the continuation of the story, no way around it; and this is as shitty as it gets, I do believe it’s better to be ruled by a natural deviant than by a weak successor who’s really just a weak compliant sheep holding power by inheritance; this is a major flaw and modern leaders should avoid it, it’s far too primitive and eventually clouds the achievements of the deviant who attained power by merit.
      • Some, get to infiltrate the smart people (mainly deviants, but also smart-compliant people) through the dissemination of their thoughts and become thinkers and thought leaders; many of these have been persecuted, incarcerated, and put to death (we call them “intellectuals”), depending on a mixture of their circumstances, their decisions and I guess, chance. There’s a random element to things, as hard as it is to admit it.

Do you think this is grim and negative? Read Machiavelli.

No matter how charismatic, no matter how loved, no matter the image of justice they may show you, leaders are deviants. Compliant mass follows deviants, and deviants are people capable of taking the hard decisions, sometimes for the greater good but most of the time for their own continuation in power or benefit. I don’t think there’s a way around it, there’s a subtle difference between a psychopath and a natural leader, and some of the worst things in human history happen when both these traits are developed in a single person with a lot of supporters.

Kinda Political, isn’t it?

It is.

But even if you swear you’ll never get yourself into a political discussion or even less, a political occupation this concerns you, and it’s highly related to the amount of thinking you do versus the amount of ideological vomit you spit out given an opportunity to engage in discussion.

See, here comes my positive thinking in the midst of these harsh realities expressed: I do believe even the people in the core mass are capable of choosing well, given the right leader with the right narrative effectively engages them, I believe people can follow a course of action that can bring about a more peaceful, relatively just society. But this depends largely, on whether or not the smart people (deviants first, and pulled by them, the smart-compliant) are willing to step up and develop their role in their own time and culture.

If you feel this sounds like a conclusion, it is, unfortunately. It also means there will be a part 3 of this article, and this time I promise this will be the last one, or at least it will be the last publication of the same title, the topic will always be around this section of the blog, evidently. The last part will deal with what I believe can be done by deviants to help shape a society that’s the most balanced and acceptable for the most people; beware of utopias, it will always be unjust, masses will always be more in number and will be easy to fool, real leaders will always be narcissistic, some will be better narcissists than others and only people who are capable to think outside their own culture can effectively influence that these forces remain in check. Don’t despise the masses, they’re the very object of dispute between thoughtful, positive leaders and psychopathic megalomaniacs.

The implications are huge, whether you care about power dynamics or not, since being a free thinker in a culture that’s extremely homogeneous and effectively indoctrinated can be a living hell.

Cheers,

J.V