Cait Johnstone is one of the best bloggers around today. She is one of the few worth responding to in a comments section. Usually when I finish a response in a comments section I find I have something worth passing on beyond just that comments section. Here is the URL to the article I am responding to.
May 23, 2021
Well, Cait, I am still thinking of how best to respond to your narrative about narratives and oligarchy.
The thing is, I am old enough to have lived through all this before. Back in the 1970s we had all seen through this false narrative the oligarchy was weaving and we were going to create something new. It didn’t happen.
However, all anyone had as an alternative to the oligarch’s narratives were other narratives. Many of these were totally whacked out. With no real option proposed, everyone got tired of all the foolish counter narratives and went back to sleep.
The forces of darkness came up with a new narrative that was compelling to a lot of people and has prevailed for awhile. But the key to finally defeating them is not to come up with a better narrative, or any kind of narrative. Story telling is for children.
Adults develop schema; mental maps of the world. They master the cognitive cycle so as to develop and refine their schemata. They let the truth roll itself out.
The problem I have with Caitlin is that she does not really understand this or does not make it clear enough. There are no multiple truths, multiple narratives. Truth is what it is; everywhere, every time, for everyone.
The ability of sociopathic oligarchs to rule depends on keeping the population in an infantilized state where they live in a world of story telling and never learn to draw and test a map of reality. This is why it has historically been so dangerous to think in an adult way; you were a heretic, a thought criminal, a traitor. It is still difficult and hazardous.
Once upon a time the king sat on his throne and told everyone what to think and how to think it. That went out of style after the French Revolution. We have had the kind of situation described by Caitlin, of an oligarchy controlling their herd by controlling the stories their two foot cattle tell themselves.
The key to making this work is in convincing people that there is no universal truth; everyone has their own ‘truth’. This is hammered in by ‘liberal education.’ Like playing an organ, an oligarchy can control public perceptions by emphasizing one ‘truth’, damping another down.
That is now also becoming impossible. Social media has broken the master’s organ. However, now all we have is cacophony.
I recall Cait seems to have begun noticing this in one of her postings. The elite has learned that it does not need to play its own tune. If they can keep the public divided into many extreme narratives, they cannot unite to replace the oligarchy.
So it is not about people ceasing to listen to the master’s narrative. It is not about everybody following their own narrative. It is about a critical mass of the population rising from infantile thinking, deciding to live in the truth, and building a system that works for the whole of society.
In other words, Caitlin, the solution is not for everyone to just go off and try to live in their own fairy tale. That will still leave the oligarchs intact and they will eventually find some way to reassert control. It is about first of all, putting adults in charge. tr
Competents in charge 