Approaching the Colossus

We've mentioned looking into Christopher Langan’s CTMU reality theory on a few occasions. This post will introduce that project.

If you are new to the Band, this post is an introduction to the point of this blog that needs updating. Older posts are in the archive on the right. Shorter occult posts and other topics have menu pages above. 

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

Image adapted from Colossus by Alex Olmedo.

There are a few things to consider before examining Christopher Langan and his CTMU (Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe) reality theory. It represents a singular challenge for us and is not something done lightly or in a single post. This will lay out those considerations - the whats and whys as well as our own relevant strengths and limitations. The Band usually avoids being explicitly personal, but that same singular challenge forces us to be more self-conscious for reasons that will be clear. After this post, there is some scheduled business to attend to before returning to Langan and the CTMU. Another installment to the arts of the West and a wrap up the recent tour of the House of Lies with some implications. But by then we should have finished enough of our long-running preparation to come back around and get into the CTMU directly. 

Start with who Chris Langan is, what his reality theory is, and why the Band is interested in looking at it. The first two lead into the second – his intellectual profile as world's smartest man and the ambitious nature of his project make it a formidable challenge to the Band’s essentially Christian world view. Click for a link to the main CTMU paper that we are working from.

That relatively few people can even understand the CTMU makes this more important to address. The opacity lends a mystique to the theory that isn’t Langan’s apparent goal – in our experience he is as direct as his material allows – but exists all the same. Not being able to read it means not being able to assess it. This is apparent in the whiffing of his critics, whose dismissals reveal their own comprehension limits and will be addressed in a moment. But it also means that those not given to triggered gamma self-immolation can't determine how it relates to their own beliefs either. Awareness that someone of Langan's ability has declared a conclusive answer to the nature of reality becomes more rhetorically potent if that answer is unreadable. We propose to read it.

That gets to the challenges his thought presents for us, and how we can work around them. The CTMU is Langan's signature achievement, and that same intellectual profile that gives him his credibility eclipses our not insignificant cognitive abilities. This means our reading cannot claim to be definitive, nor can we comfortably second guess Langan's intentions. Unavoidable artifacts of being eclipsed...

But challenges also bring benefits. Engaging the CTMU forces us to push our limits and stretch our thoughts in unfamiliar ways. A recent post on parameterizing the concept of church over time would not have occurred to us without reading Langan. Likewise the addition of deontology to our Ontological Hierarchy. Before we start, we expect to further refine our ontological hierarchy as a way of visualizing basic relationships of reality as broadly conceived. Even our definition of reality emerges as something in need of clarity.

Plus it’s really interesting. The inherent challenges of the CTMU means it gets way less attention than it deserves. If we can remedy that in our small way, then we should. 

Take the  "conspansion" diagrams from the linked CTMU paper. This refers to how objects and events "shrink" internally through the parametric production of future states within present ones over time. So that the universe appears to expand relationally. Con-spansion - simultaneous contraction and expansion.

The mechanism of conspansion is akin to how further defining a set simultaneously increases the number of elements while attributively contracting the range of possibilities. This is an important aspect of Langan's conception of the universe as reflexively self-fashioning, and it's derivation is typical of how he melds knowledge domains.

Langan is someone we’ve mentioned on a few occasions. He's sometimes billed as the smartest man in the world, and with an IQ that may top 200, there’s no point quibbling with the provability of that claim. It’s certainly close enough to give an accurate indication of the scope of his intellect. Just reading his CTMU and contemplating it in its totality is sufficient corroboration of his cognitive profile. 

The numbers may not be exact. But it puts things into perspective.

To be fair, that is a flacid definition of genius at the top. The Band defines genius as intelligence plus accomplishment. High ceiling and something memorable achieved with it. 

We are not interested in debating whether the CTMU is a work of genius-level accomplishment - it may well be. But his pure cognitive firepower is overwhelming. The conceptual shifts, complexity of integrated structure, intensity of information density... The sheer scale and integrated scope of his vision - if you can see it - is awesome.

The Band realizes that the masses tend to be most impressed with mental feats, and he has plenty of those in his bio.

But Rain Man-type savants also perform amazing mental feats and no one really cares about their opinions otherwise. Let alone looking to them for theories on the nature of reality. And that raises the central problem for Langan’s public profile and the related lack of attention on the CTMU. He's too intelligent for most of his critics to even grasp what he's saying.

This is where the comprehension gap comes in – the inability to meaningfully communicate or comprehend beyond a certain difference in intelligence. 

The comprehension gap problem is exacerbated for Langan by the Dunning-Kruger effect, the related currency of false authority that makes up "academic expertise", and Vox Day's socio-sexual hierarchy. The first refers to the tendency of the mildly clever to think of themselves as much smarter than they are. And since they can't meaningfully "see" past the comprehension gap, they can't perceive their own limitations. This is endemic in university where such midwits obtain mastery of some "discipline" - itself a flawed silo that at best partly represents aspects of reality - and confuse it for actual comprehensive understanding. Like physicists blathering about numerological solutions to questions of existential origins. Highly proficient within a certain disciplinary silo, but too limited to see either the intrinsic limits of themselves - or their silo - for the problem at hand. 

An IQ of 130 is pretty rare. Most physicians don't have one. Neither does the average professor. It's also inadequate for the sort of theorizing that the Band does. Let alone the likes of Langan.

 

Vox Day's socio-sexual hierarchy is an immensely useful concept that we've posted on before. The comprehension gap problem is compounded by the extraordinary number of gammas in that midwit zone and in the appeal to "scientific authority" camp. Not only can they not perceive the difference between modern institutional scientific presuppositions and the scientific method, their entire fake self-perception of "genius" is predicated on the misperception.

When confronted with things outside their little silos that contradict their assumptions, retarded ironic defensive rage ensues. And they mentally and psychologically can't see it.

Langan's combination of incomprehensible intelligence, embrace of physicality, and complete disdain for credentialed authority is a trifecta of gamma triggers elevated to Platonic Form tier.

Here's a perfect example of a not all that bright gamma taking issue with the idea of the communication gap. Click for a link. This gamma's certainly not a 130 - probably closer to slightly above average. A 110 perhaps. Note how the headline promises a "myth" before moving into a tepid appeal to methodology as the metric of reality. It ends in a quibble, conceding to common sense that intelligence gaps impede communication "but that this always does happen once a specific difference in IQ points is reached seems doubtful”. We can't guarantee a precise magic number... is a conclusion considerably different from the impression given by the headline. And almost certainly by design since a journal knows better than most that more people skim headlines than process articles. Being well more than 2 SD north of said gamma, we'd guess the motivation is a mix of misunderstanding and butt hurt. 

Imagine what Langan has to deal with...

Perhaps we can rephrase.

It is impossible for much smarter people to discuss smart things with significantly less smart people. And painful to learn through experience that they can’t. 

This is neither arrogance nor insult, any more that noting a giraffe can see further than a porcupine. IQ has some inexactitude that comes with any assignment of a precise number for a multifaceted attribute. But differences in overall cognitive ability are painfully clear. If this is troubling or upsetting, that’s a measure of not being that smart. If they were smarter, it would be as obvious as sunrise. The alternative model is the midget opining emphatically on a shelf he can't see.

Drop below a certain point and metaphoric thinking isn't possible.

If that's not the case, it's easy to grasp with a visual metaphor - the big one doesn't fit in the little ones.

The two standard deviations difference in IQ, or about 30 is a rough measure, not "mythic". IQ is a general summation while individuals have aptitude peaks and valleys within that. In some areas they overperform and in others underperform. Nor does it mean that no communication is possible – the Band has shared basic information and instruction across about a 6 SD gap or ~90 points. What is means is that beyond a certain gap, unfiltered full capacity of thought isn’t meaningful communicable. The composite frame of reference, interlocking conclusions, shifting secondary implications, and conditional consequences can’t be cogently grasped. The person on the upper side of the gulf has to slow down and simplify, and this isn’t intuitive either. 

Some perspective.

We aren't just blathering. At peak, the leader of the Band has tested at slightly above 4 SD over the US average of ~98. 

The most generous evaluation of our absolute peak, graphically presented in maximal gamma triggering format.

Thought experiment. This is highly speculative for several reasons, but consider that an approximate range of 30-50 is applied to chimpanzees. Very approximate and not uncontroversially - species differences undermine the applicability of a human metric to a non-linguistic animal. Adding to the imprecision - the Band was a relatively late bloomer rather than a prodigy, meaning the relative gulf peaked in the later 20s. On the other hand, animals exhibit some pattern recognition, basic cause and effect logic, and reality-based learning  that human FTS-2 doesn't. That skews the comparison the other way. So very generally...

If we take that as a rough marker, the gulf between us and our average classmate was at least comparable to that gulf between our average classmate and a chimp. Basic communication could be bewildering, group interests inexplicable, and over time we learned through negative reaction what and how we could say things. We also became adept at detecting thought structures and capacity in others. Fortunately, once we realized what was happening we learned quickly. 

Think about that for a moment though. The need to "learn" people has nothing to do at all with psychopathic coldness. It's an illustration of how much of a factor the gap can be on interpersonal experience.

Now we instantly disengage the moment some contention or dispute reveals a limited comprehensive capacity, There's no point in continuing because it's not an issue that more information can fix. The gap also means is that someone in the middle of the bell curve becomes incapable of even recognizing extremely high intelligence. Because it falls outside their ability to process or comprehend. They can't think it, so they can't "see" it. The highly intelligent can be shocked at what registers as “smart” to the masses. That's because it has to fall within rough gap range from the average - otherwise it doesn’t register at all. 

This is where mental feats come in. They seem like little bursts of mental magic totally beyond the powers of even what passes for a smart person to the masses. Ways to make the otherwise invisible register. But from our perspective, the exceptional intelligence tells are functional. Information processing speed and capacity. Working memory. Ability to combine ideas across knowledge domains to generate insights. Pattern recognition of all kinds. Logic. Learning curve and adaptability. The list goes on, but it makes the point.

Now, Chris Langan has an IQ between 2.5-3.5 SD above ours. 

We had to extend the graph. And it shows. We are way outside of his gap. On the wrong side. Talking intensely with us would prove tiresome and limiting for him in significant ways. The chimp analogy starts to become uncomfortable. But the whole point of getting unusually personal and sharing out experience above was to point how widely we can see. Especially when it comes to the wide-scale associative conceptual abstraction and association we’re best at. There's tons of technical knowledge and ability that we are ignorant of, but we are not accustomed to struggling with well- presented complexity. And we can barely see what he's doing in a holistic way. Taking in his conceptual scope, intricacy and information density maxes us out in an unfamiliar ways. 

No one not to the far east of the bell curve could write the CTMU.

Let alone present it as cogently as he does. We certainly couldn't have produced it. It’s all we can do to keep it in sight at times. And yes, we are aware of the charges his wording is unclear or there are too many neologisms. How else does one use language and concepts derived from disciplines to address questions that the disciplines are incapable of addressing? That's precisely what we are talking about when we bring up comprehension gaps.

Speaking of triggering...

The scope, information density, and conceptual richness are simply too much even for most smart people to hold onto. So they quibble with isolated aspects that they can grasp, while missing how those are subordinated to the larger structural logics. But “disciplines” are self-evidently insufficient on their own - otherwise they'd have answered the big ontological questions they've instead whiffed on. Most of Langan's critics can't even see the onto-epistemological limits of the disciplines they base their critiques on. That they self-actualize through. Making them incapable of the critical stance they profess to take. 

Instead we hit limits of discernment and make-believe. And as any exceptionally intelligent person has experienced when "arguing" with someone who can't grasp the limitations of their frame of reference knows, the problem isn't lack of information. It's a lack of processing capacity. They can't simultaneously grasp their disciplinary silo and it's place in larger integrated infocognitive frameworks. Making a meaningful sharing of ideas impossible. If capacity limits could be surmounted, they wouldn't be... capacity limits. There's a parallel between the limits of disciplinary range and the limits of the discipline-huffers who can't see them.

But instead of recognizing limitations, beast-huffers prefer self-indicting rage over the reality that people more intellectually capable than them are aware of realities that surpass them.

A crude analogy is attempting to explain to a baby in a certain developmental stage that it doesn't become invisible when it covers its eyes. The conceptual capacity isn't there to process the necessary contextuals to grasp the why the frame of reference is inadequate. 

In various interviews and other comments, Langan has expressed annoyance at being ignored by the mainstream knowledge industry. What a sham academia must be if there is no place for someone of his obvious intellect. He is correct that it is a sham, but that’s not the only issue here. He’s too smart. Consider what the Band has written about university in the beast era. Where on earth would someone 5 SD north of the professoriate even be understood? Or as the smart Bandling - the one east of us on the bell curve - pointed out, what discipline would he teach in?

This isn't the operant principle in practice that official science - Science! - actually runs on. That dances to beast narrative. Honest description or identification of what is objectively real is not at all the point.  

If there is one thing Langan appears to miss about beast science, it's that the free-wheeling gonzo physics that captured his imagination in the 70s has nothing to do with academic science as an institution today. There are the odd intellectual outliers scattered hereabout. But they work in self-absorbed isolation. They certainly aren't charting the institutional course. The system itself exists to perpetuate beast narrative atop a self-evidently fake materialist onto-epistemology. It doesn't want to identify reality. So there's no place for someone who does. And the sort of self-indicting atheistic clown posturing on the internet is definitionally not one of those intellectual outliers. Meaning the [recognize the gap and disengage because it's pointless] axiom has to kick in.

The CTMU is described as a “reality theory” or theory of everything, although trying to classify it hides as much as it reveals. Most attempts at a grand theory of everything to explain the totality of reality and our existence in it start from purely materialist assumptions. This means they can never answer the question of origins in a satisfactory way and are necessarily DOA. Necessarily because the origin is the most important element. And if limited to material causality, the genesis of the material is outside the possibility of explanation. 

But one miracle means no longer operating in the strictly material. And that means that the system now has to account for the role of metaphysics. Failure to do so renders the game pointless. Lucrative, and lots of titles, accolades and nice buildings, but pointless.

The pretense that a purely materialist framework can address the origins of the material makes ultimate answers impossible. Which keeps the massive institutional grift paying out until the wheels finally fall of systemically. And that means a steady market for endless flings of made-up spaghetti at the discursive wall. None of which will ever stick - because they can't - or even be remembered in a few turns of the cycle - but are  good for the resume in the moment. Click for an example that is actually revealing, just of things other than claimed.

With sufficient cognitive horsepower, a pattern emerges in the materialism grift where the theorists’ primary purpose appears to be denial of human significance. 

It’s a fundamentally satanic perspective where rejecting the metaphysics of Creation or the inborn sanctity of man is the goal. This invariably consists of manipulating some equations, then declaring them keys to the fundamental nature of reality. While assiduously ignoring how this structure came to be.

And believers in this mythopoeia will attack the CTMU as not being empirically verifiable or predictive...

Langan sees through this ontologically-gelded myopia instantly and set out to build the CTMU to consider the physical and the metaphysical. Including the problem of origins. But that means rejecting the entire flawed onto-epistemologial and semiotic frames that modern institutional Science! takes as starting axioms. A non-starter. And an example of being too smart for the discursive silos that make up modern academe.

Then throw in the Dunning-Kruger gammas...

The CTMU is built completely differently. It accepts certain scientific premises, but is an attempt to theorize the totality of reality by working logically from what that must entail. Given that there is a reality that we can perceive and engage in some fashion, what is necessary for that to exist? This leads him through a dizzying array of ideas and conclusions that we’ll try and break down when we engage the it directly in the posts to come. 

And this gets to why we are motivated to address Langan and the CTMU. Readers of the Band know that our world view is fundamentally Christian. We do accept that there are aspects of scripture that are allegorical and limits to a fallen intellect looking at a valley of shadow through a glass darkly. But we also believe the account to be essentially True. Divinely inspired Truth, in fact. Creation, the Fall, and the necessity for redemptive sacrifice. Over the course of the Band we have reasoned to our satisfaction that what can be known logically and empirically of reality is consistent with those metaphysical aspects that are beyond our apprehension. Click for a post.

Different context but the point stands. We have no problems accepting limits of discernment and understanding. We're finite and fallen.

The CTMU acknowledges the metaphysical, but conceives of it's relationship to the material in a more continuous way that we would. It arrives at a concept of God, but with a recursive tautological account of universal self-creation that isn’t compatible with directed Christian Creation. This means that the smartest man in the world has devised a reality theory that differs from Christian dogma in significant ways but can’t be dismissed out of hand like the materialist numerology of beast Science!. A much more serious thing that it would be were it granted the academic attention Langan has mentioned. That's onto-epistemological erasure. This is much different.

Given that the Band’s motto is what can we know and how can we know it, we are almost compelled to visit such a creation. Not to try and “disprove” it – we aren’t capable of that without misrepresenting the complexity. But to ascertain how and why it differs from our Christian notion of Creation. And to see if there is anything that we can learn from the exercise. 

Readers are also familiar with our Ontological Hierarchy – the graphic representation that ontology and epistemology are layered and related from a human perspective. 

This is the most up-do-date version of it, with binding logos between ontological levels, the extension into self-erasure of evil, and the related epistemological and deontological tiers on the right. The need to add explicit objective morality came to us from an earlier reading of Langan. The Good, Beautiful, and True are old Platonic terms that just refer to abstract qualities of ultimate reality as it crosses into the capacity for temporally-sequenced human conceptualization.

The Ontological Hierarchy isn’t a reality theory per se because it acknowledges a noumenal or transcendent “level” that can’t be theorized beyond the necessity of its existence. Nor are the transitions between levels perfectly quantified, partly because theoretical quantification isn’t applicable to understanding all levels of reality. It’s a form of abstract epistemology that is of limited descriptive value for empirical reality and not of value at all for ultimate. This is one assumption where we diverge from Langan. Different but interrelated and tied together by Logos describes the aspects of our being-in-the-world without comprehensive theoretical unity. 

We also assert that there are intrinsic limiting filters to the human ability to grasp onto-epistemological clarity. 

Langan does address we're calling "the viewer’s share" – the reality that reality only exists to us in our perceptions of it. His concept of telesis implicates us in the formation of the universe as localized telic operators or telors. We would suggest that this improperly conflates representation and reality. Langan suggests the reality and representation are isomorphic to the point of conflation. More to come in later posts. 

Quantum uncertainty involves a viewer’s share as well. Though there, the incompatibility between the abstract formulas and human perceptual experience suggests opposite sides of an Ontological Hierarchy divine. Or limits of discernment, where abstract quantitative reasoning fails to correspond with fallen empirical perception. Langan doesn’t differentiate between onto-epistemological levels but prioritizes logic in a single unified conception of reality. This is also something we’ll take up in detail later.

The other is something Langan doesn’t take up and yet another thing we’ll look into further. That’s the semiotic filtering – the communicative reality that our discussion of any level of reality is dependent on material signs. 

Letters, numbers, and pictures. Reality may only exist to us in our perceptions, but our perceptions only exist to others in our signs. And representation is materially different from the thing represented. Even if the conceptualization that results - the mental picture - is the same.

Langan conceptualized reality in linguistic terms – not identical to human language, but an SCSPL or Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language. Where processing and configuration, syntax and content and mutually generate in total self-containment - to the point where SCSPL "linguistic" expression is perfectly homologous or identical with the reality it describes. Reality becomes infocognition - information "content" and cognitive processing "syntax" as one indivisible reciprocal reflexive self-fashioning. Where theory of reality and reality are isomorphic. What we call semiotic filtering would add that his act of theorization results in a material construct intended for readers. Is this significant?  

The Ontological Hierarchy is not a reality theory because it doesn’t offer an comprehensive explicatory theoretical account of reality. It is a descriptive visualization of how reality appears to us, meaning that the viewer’s share is built in. We aren’t dependent on any philosophical model because philosophical models are inherently limiting. But if we had to find the closest analogy it would probably be phenomenological because we assume an “objective” – meaning external – reality that temporally precedes our existence in it. 

Bernard Jean Corneille Pothast, A Happy Family, 20th century, oil on canvas, private

This is what we mean by “material reality”. A physical environment known empirically with apparently consistent properties that we are born into and come into consciousness in. Catch a ball, hear a noise, bump your head – all are purely material aspects of being in the material world. Infants and animals respond to physical stimuli. Before we can think, we are.

Robert Hannah, Master Isaac Newton in His Garden at Woolsthorpe, in the Autumn of 1665, 1850s, oil on canvas, The Royal Institution

Abstract thought – logic – extends thoughts beyond the purely sensorial material. This is where we hypothesize things that can’t be seen – everything from moral principles to… well… reality theory.

The Ontological Hierarchy is hierarchical because the things known abstractly that can’t be perceived directly are considered “more” true or real than the material things that can be. This is the epistemology part of onto-epistemology – the modes of knowing abstract realities are considered to be of greater truth value that the subjective and unreliable senses. Abstract reality itself is timeless and unchanging - unlike entropic, shifting material reality. This is how we get to ultimate reality as the most True and faith the most certain.

Langan recognizes that a noumenal ultimate reality in a Kantian sense is external to his logical-empirical account of reality and excluded as a result. Faith doesn’t really enter into his work.

His ultimate reality/God is the level of reality that has no ontologically or temporally prior explanation or situatedness. But he does assume that it can be adequately framed through conceptual structures of abstract human logic. And like the parameters of a set, distributes across all reality "below". Another point for closer scrutiny.

The Band perceives the levels of ontology and modes of epistemology as appropriate to their own domains. If you need to eat, material activity is more pertinent that mathematical formulas. But obviously there is overlap – mathematical formulas can lead to higher material crop yield. This means that there are continuities as well as differences along the OH. Humans themselves have aspects of all three – body, mind, spirit – despite inhabiting material space and communicating with material signs. We realize that we can be accused of a dodge - claiming not to be a reality theory lets us off the hook by leaving the connections somewhat vague. But that's also the recognition of our intrinsic limitations. We are not being clever when we sidestep ontological continuities. We aren't clever enough to fully grasp them.

Another motivation behind looking at the CTMU is to see how someone much smarter addresses some of these questions. The hope is that it may clarify and refine our own descriptive efforts.

Then there is the issue of temporality.  

Empirically, time seems basically linear – we are born, days pass, we age, days pass, we die. Consciousness begins and ends. Whatever happens after is after. Temporally sequenced. 

The problem emerges when we attempt do translate the experience of time into the semiotics of abstract quantification. The language of math.  

Physicists can show that mathematically, time is neither constant nor theoretically linear. 

Higher dimensions likewise allow for the possibility that our perception of temporal linearity is a limit of our three-dimensional existence. And yet...

Sequencing still happens. The theory postdates the theorist. The world precedes the perception of it. We don’t exist materially prior to birth. After birth, we do. We are small before we are big. And any creation is preceded by its creator. These are material facts of existence. And any string of numbers or printouts that say otherwise are a) largely irrelevant to material existence and b) things that come into existence after the person who created them. 

Thought experiment.

Yahoo Serious, Young Einstein British Quad Movie poster, 1987; Salvador Dali, Profile of Time, conceived in 1977, first cast in 1984, bronze

Consider the paradoxical results of  material-abstract relations with theorizing the relativity of time as an example. The physicist has to appear before the theory. Therefore time either exists objectively and prior to the physicist with extant properties awaiting discovery or the relativity of time is created - spoken into existence - by the act of theorizing because reality is created by the observer. Since the stability of the perceptual universe is an anchor of Langan's theorizing, we suspect he would lean towards the former. But in either case, the sequential arrangement of material physicist then abstract theorizing supersedes any relativistic conclusions the theory draws. Relative rates don't effect priority order. And sequencing implies some sort of temporal dimension.

See the differences between linked onto-epistemological levels? Their importance becomes clearer when we realize that theory is a semiotic artifact that appears at a moment in time.

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Langan theorizes reality as a self-generating linguistic process where the syntactic operations and content are mutually recursively self-creating. His formation is actually much more complex than that– we are not doing it justice at all and will be more through in posts to come. But even with temporal recursivity in what he calls telesis – the reality-forming work of telic operators general and localized – verbs are used. Descriptive action. And that implies some sort of sequencing. Bringing us to  temporality.

This is different from what the Band refers to as true a-temporality. The absence not only of time as a physical property, but of any sort of before-after sequencing at all. We associate this with ultimate reality. Before the Creation. It is something we cannot even conceive of because thought itself is sequenced. But the definition of a temporal sequence presumes the preceding a-temporal originary state from which it comes. That's what the Band calls God qua God. Not the identity of an extant reality, but the apophatic ground against which Langan's totalizing definition of reality is positively conceptualized. The latter is closer in relative ontological scale to a Neoplatonic world-mind or demiurge than true transcendence.

And if the smartest man in the world - who juggles knowledge domains like data points and acknowledges the necessity metaphysics as well as materiality reasons out an alternative to our Christian framework? That's something we have to address seriously. Because not many can. 

We're not 100% sure we can. And that brings us to why this has taken so long. 

We may not be smart enough. 

The Band does possess certain attributes that do equip us for this sort of task. Like Langan, we see the intrinsic limits of “disciplines” and recognize the need to treat knowledge and thought as unified wholes. We are also comfortable combining disparate types of concepts to build composite structures and insights. For example, we don't care whether he uses "set theory" in orthodox ways, only the meaning of the ideas his usage expresses. But the IQ gap means he is far more capacious in what he can bring together and cognitively powerful in generating structures and insights.

In our thinking about thinking post we described how greater intelligences can pull together more information and connections and by holding more together at once, see broader and more complex patterns. Langan can encompass so much at once and manipulate vast fields of data through overlapping lenses. We get the impression that the whole CTMU exists in his head as a fluid logical totality. And that he can work on it in that totality. We can't hold the whole thing. Where he is holistic, we have to become sequential and rely on extensive notes. This means we don't see it the same way, opening up all kinds of possibilities for misunderstanding.

It is true that IQ is a general measure and that individual aptitudes within it vary. 

These sorts of breakdowns always understate the interrelated aspects of intelligence. But it does a good job of pointing out how many components there are to it.

The Band is especially strong at broad abstract conceptual visualizations and pattern recognition across domains. The skills most needed to follow something like the CTMU. In these areas, we may even scrape the bottom of the gap between us and Langan. We are also inclined to think past and across disciplines and recognize the limits of materialism, making Langan's approach intuitively sensible to us. This mix of aptitude and attitude is not common - it's why we observed there are not many who can take this up. But it still may not be sufficient.

A general average means peaks come with valleys.

 As the interminable typos in our work show, we are less inclined to fine detail and precise accounting.  We can barely glimpse his big pictures but his information density just blows us away. At times, the CTMU seems fairly clear and at others it’s a fog of symbols.

The time has been necessary to even try and do it justice. We only have limited time for the blog. And there's never a point engaging a straw man of your own making. In addition to the CTMU paper we’ve watched an in-depth video - which is something we never do – in order to better understand. But ultimately we are on the unfamiliar ground of not being sure we haven’t misunderstood an important idea or missed a significant implication. As such we will be more cautious and less aggressive than usual. 

We can't critique his logic. The nature of the CTMU is that it subsumes anything sententially real. And anything that isn't sententially real is excluded from the reality that the CTMU theorizes. Tautology - true statements in any circumstances, or statements that can't not be true - is a basis of Langan's theory. 

But we can discuss some assumptions and framing. So that's where we'll be focused.

We respect Langan’s work and his self-evidently vast intellect. We even hope to learn and evolve from him. The encounter is humbling. But it’s also necessary. And we don't need to discuss ourselves any more, but please feel free to share any comments.

We hope our readers will enjoy it.

Montague Dawson, Galleon in Moonlight, 20th century, lithograph

Happy Easter!

Peter Adams, The Resurrection, 2018

12 Axioms

A break from the usual to share some observations from a real life exchange about the beast system and how to navigate the fake narratives that make up its House of Lies. 

If you are new to the Band, this post is an introduction to the point of this blog that needs updating. Older posts are in the archive on the right. Shorter occult posts and other topics have menu pages above. 

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularly and it will be up there.

Ted Nasmith, The Ships of the Faithful

The Band is generally disinterested in analysis of current events. The ubiquity of lies and deception + no historical perspective from being in the middle of things + not being privy to the minds of decision-makers limits insights into the present. Time spent on news narrative is generally time wasted. And there are other observers and interpreters more suited to what value there is to be found there.  

The same people who were surprised that we exclude the histrionic degeneracy of the imbicile-fest called tv from our lives...

...were later surprised by our exclusion of all mainstream social media too. We don't even have Twitter or Facebook accounts. 

In other news, we are neither self-loathing nor inclined to lick the fingers of those that despise us either.

But the House of Lies is where modern life plays out. The Functionally Two Species model does comment on that life [click for the post]. And while the beast system of with it’s foundational lies of secular transcendence and Progress! was centuries in the making, the level of disconnect has recently hit terminal levels. From mass delusions around fake elections to fake plagues and toxic “vaccines” to the mind-numbing mix of gross ignorance and retardation around Ukraine – it’s an apotheosis of FTS-2 brainlessness and fruit-fly tier memory. To a point where it’s impossible to ignore. Even for those disinterested in current events.

There’s no point in dismantling the fake narratives.

The House of Lies has become so disconnected from reality that the entire world view of its idiot inhabitants is a grand unified liars’ club. There’s no there there – no anchor in fact to even start to try and build a truthful account on. 

Readers know enough to ignore beast blather from a collapsing empire anyhow. 

What we can do is share a few axioms drawn from observations of this rancid clown show and some attempts to explain it offline.

These don’t deal with specific lies as much as structures of the House of Lies. Because while specifics are murky and deceptive, there are identifiable patterns in how the beast system lies that let you know that a narrative isn’t even trying to get at the truth. That it’s creating a fake reality or false consciousness to serve some other end that they need to make sure you aren’t aware of. Consider that for a moment. In fact, that could be the first axiom…

1) No need for lies if the truth is beneficial 

This is the general moral bellweather and should be obvious. The truth is easy in itself. No need to concoct complex tales, stage events, devise false corroborations, get everyone on the same page, etc. Just say what happened as you understand it. Gaps in knowledge will be apparent and the story will be consistent and coherent. 

If something is going through the effort to build a fake reality and withhold the truth, it’s because it doesn’t want you to know what is really happening. In a personal case, this can be to make the liar look better. But on the institutional level, the preeminent reason is because you would object. The House of Lies purveys false realities so you comply with things that are not in your interests.

This is a particularly good illustration because it's meta-accurate. There's the deception of the anglerfish. Then there's Disney's use of colorful cartoon characters to lure children into the lies, degeneracy, and pedophilic grooming of the real beast system.

 

The vast majority of the idiot masses are so incapable of thought, devoid of memory, and dependent on external command that they can no longer even articulate their own self-interest. Where they would rather imbibe feel-good lies on the way to the abattoir than have to consider contradictions and draw conclusions. Rather rage at and cancel  revealers of the lies then the filth constructing false realities to destroy their way of life and ultimately them. There is no solution to this barring some divine intervention – FTS-2 is functionally a different species for a reason. Replacing mass fruit-fly tier memories with usable capacity is as materially unlikely as teaching the actual rabbit population physics. 

Before being compelled to a Christian reverence for life, the Band shared globalists’ conclusions about the necessity of culling the herd. Watching them virtue-signal mindless self-destructiveness, we can still understand the beast’s contempt. We just can’t condone it anymore.

The first axiom sets the moral compass on the self-interest level. We know lies serve evil on an abstract level because they deviate from alignment with reality and Logos. This simply makes it personal – the liar isn’t only violating God’s will by bearing false witness and placing their will over reality in a satanic inversion, they’re doing it to harm you directly. On every level, the House of Lies is objectively, morally evil and should be rejected by anyone who isn’t the same. And with that said, we can move to more specific tactics and techniques to watch out for.

2) If something changes, it’s no longer the same.

Beast narrative draws on assumptions based on a socio-cultural context that no longer exists. Referencing relations and conclusions from then and pretending they are applicable now. If you approach new scenarios with old thought patterns you are unaware of new threats and dangers.

It's the same place... Pay no mind to a few small changes...

Boomers are particularly susceptible to this because their world view is so simplistic and heavily imprinted, but it’s not limited to them. It applies to the entire West. Nothing about the current legal, political, economic, educational, demographic, moral, or cultural nature is the same as it was 40 years ago. We explained how keeping the word – the reference – while changing the reality fools those trapped in fake narratives in an earlier post.

Cut to the chase. If society is legally, politically, economically, educationally, demographically, morally, and culturally degraded from even a few decades ago, old observations don’t apply. At least not directly. Take “Russia”. Trying to see things through a lens of 1980s socio-cultural assumptions is not just retarded, it provides cover to the entities that are actively destroying our countries and culture. The Cold War West image of the West and the world fits contemporary globalism about as well as the 100 Years War. Less well, because it’s actually a full inversion of the Cold War narrative. There’s still a godless, amorphous, soulless tyranny attempting to crush national and personal self-determination. Except now it’s the globalist beast based in the US and  Europe but aspiring to world hegemony.

When something is proposing outdated paradigms as relevant, they’re lying. And playing along provides cover for the actual destruction they’re planning for you.

Therefore…

3) If you don’t see the larger structure, you’re in the larger structure.

Note the widespread venom now spewed towards Russian culture and people. Not the government or policy, but culture and people. We could write poetic meditations on the beauty of the Russian soul with paintings by Shishkin, Levitan, Aivazovsky and others, but who cares? The larger question is why is acceptable within the beast system to make collective character judgments for one group and not all groups? 

Roman Bozhkov, Landscape, oil on canvas, 21st century

Don't have to look at historical masters either. Contemporary Russian artists are still creating works of haunting beauty using fresh takes on old master techniques. Bozhkov's subtle lighting, atmosphere, and reflections have a poetic aura that would be at home in any era.

Now, let's generalize. Start by comparing this to the contemporary Art! that the beast offers...

Evgeny Lushpin, The Walk Home, oil on canvas, 2015

How about this guy? [Puts on Clott "never saw that one coming" Adams hat...] Could it be that the animus towards Russians is directed in part because they they favor beauty and logos over the poo-flinging trash excreted by the modern globalist "West"? 

We think we're on to something! Look at the next one...

Alexander Averin, Summertime, oil on canvas, around 2000

Turns out they can paint figures too...

The Band is not claiming that collective traits don’t exist. What we are pointing out is how beast myths of equalism and tolerance vanish when it’s politically expedient for the beast agenda. Of course the idiot masses drool along in slack-jawed outrage for as long as the glowing screens command them to. But for those who aren’t functionally retarded, blatant inconsistencies from the same source indicate they’re in the world of rhetoric, not logic. And we’ve known since ancient Greece that rhetoric is not based in truth value. 

So...

4) Why this now?

Because we don’t have fruit-fly tier memories, the Band recalls past events and compares them to the present. Looking for similarities and differences. At the same time!!! We see the same frame structure of [designated thing to be outraged by du jour] play out over and over. 

One manufactured world moral crisis after another. The Sandinistas and contras in Central America to Apartheid to Saddam to Islamic terror, etc. One mass hysteria laser pointer after another that disappears from public consciousness -if not in reality  - as soon as it exhausts its usefulness. 

Ukraine would be more of the same, only now social media amplifies and reifies mass narrative formation in way it never could before. 

What hasn’t changed is the question that really matters. If the outrage narrative – not the event but the collective mass reaction to it - is manufactured, what are the reasons for this narrative now? Consider the recent subjects of mass retardation from the disengaged and objective observer perspective.

Trump is a venal civic nationalist that would have been a moderate liberal a few decades ago [See #2].

Covid is a mild virus with a mortality profile similar to a bad flu at worst and then susceptible to robust natural immunity.

Ukraine is a sorry puppet state that harbors a variety of unsavory entities and has had the applicable Russian security issues clearly laid out for years. 

Nothing about these things is rational grounds for an all-hands-on-deck mass freak out by every institutional platform and organization. And it’s the same platforms and organizations in each case. 

This means the answer to why now is somewhere other than the nonsensical subjects of the top-down manufactured responses. All three serve the larger beast agenda - the ongoing and intentional destruction of Western economies by the neo-liberal world order under such labels as the Green New Deal, Build Back Better, or the Great Reset. Trump’s tepid civic nationalism was an obstacle and the others have used idiot fear and outrage to undermine personal and national self-determination, attack food and energy security, and curtail freedom of movement. Leading to...

5) If the reason isn’t a reason, look for the real one.

If the House of Lies – or anyone really – is offering an “explanation” for something that doesn’t actually explain it, they’re lying. There is no actual causal reason to demonize a head of state for controlling a country’s borders and strengthening the domestic economy. There is no actual causal reason to coerce and compel mass experimental genetic toxins, lockdowns, and masks for an historically insignificant viral infection. There is no actual causal reason Russia’s incursion into the Ukraine should equal $10 gas. But these self-evident lies are offered up straight-faced to justify nakedly evil globalist predation. And the idiot masses nod along.

Some "explanations" are so self-evidently untrue that no "proof" is needed. At which point, accepting and acting on them leads to our having to hypothesize that humanity is functionally two separate species.

Think a little further. There's no reason for that matter that there isn’t a North American food and energy self-sufficiency policy already implemented. Since the given reasons for these outcomes aren’t actually causes of them, the real reason is elsewhere. See #3.

6) The slippery slope is holistic. And steep.

If the socio-cultural context is changing, any meaningful reaction has to reflect that. There are two main patterns in detaching “analysis” from reality. The common one is the magical thinking that defines the whole stack of inverted secularist dogmas of the post-Enlightenment West.  Pretending what is wished for can replace what is. The other is more subtle and focused – a form of binary thinking that a lot of dumb people that think they’re clever fall into. That’s forecasting something by trying to extrapolate the consequences of one changing variable while assuming everything else stays exactly the same. 

Reality is complex and multi-faceted. Societal change occurs across an incalculable array of interlocking butterfly effects. Each status quo is a simply a momentary snapshot of this vast flow. Like a grain of sand in an landslide. Any credible projection needs to look at the entire trajectory of the last X years and then extrapolate. Not pretend that this special moment on the socio-cultural collapse train will remain frozen except for that one thing they’re fixating on.

It's sort of like planning how to keep the table from sliding on a sloping floor and thinking you're prepared...

The slippery slope is not only real, it’s holistic. And each individual line of degradation contributes to the overall mudslide. 

7) If you can’t define it, it’s an emotional projection

This applies to using words as if they were referring to what they always did while changing what they currently refer to. Consider the outdated left-right paradigm. You hear it all the time. Now define what they mean as a set of concise coherent ideologies.

We'll wait...

Conservatism isn't a coherent political philosophy because it's inherently reactive. But "conserve" does have a coherent definition. This semantic grift is the opposite of conserving a traditional social order. It literally inverts the meaning of the attitude it claims to profess.

Once you become aware of this meaning switch, you'll see it everywhere.

What does the modern “right” stand for? How about the modern “left”? How do these align with the historical associations of the terms? The answer to the last question is simple. They don’t. So there is no point in using them apart from deceptively creating a false impression. Trying to make people think something is other than what it is. Think about it. Why would anyone speaking in good faith use terms that don’t mean what they’re being used for?

Well... the entities connected to the "left" today - the globalist oligarchs and cultural atavists in the Democrat party etc. don't give a rat's ass about "labor". So we'd suppose you can learn how to call yourself something that means the opposite of what you are, but the cuckservative "right" already has that covered.

Good golly, the "American Conservative" is a disgusting smear of feces...

If something has no consistent meaning beyond a vague positive/negative resonance, what it actually means is [thing I like/don’t like], depending on which nonsense term the user identifies with emotionally. Which is as meaningful a key to understanding reality as your dinner preferences. The two primary drivers of the late-stage American empire are globalists and neoconservatives. Their opponents would be those who value free will and personal moral accountability. Actual nationalists, coherent individualists, real Christians, etc. Left and right have become meaningless nonsense terms that can't be coherently defined. That is, shorthand for unreflective emotional reaction in lieu of hard choices about reality.

The neoconservatives are intellectual descendants of Trotsky that oozed into American “conservatism” under the guise of opposing the Soviet Union. That is, extreme genocidal atavist “left” in the early-20th century usage. And the idiot cucks that welcomed them took their hated of Stalin and desire for revenge as "loving freedom" or something equally stupid. 

Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Tower of Babel, 1568, oil on wood, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

The globalists are related in their hatred of human dignity and spiritual potential, but don’t fit any traditionally political structure. Well, beyond the literally satanic craving of centralizing power by exerting will over reality. The impulse of Babel. 

In short, it’s metaphysical. See #13

8) Conceptual abstracts require real implementers

Metaphysics  - or ideology for that matter – frame and inform scenarios but don't materially exist as things in themselves. They're abstracts. They operate materially through material individuals and structures. This is pure ontological hierarchy - idealized abstractions lack material forms.

Theophany of Divine Love, early 13th-century illumination in the Biblioteca Statale di Lucca, MS 1942 edition of Hildegard of Bingen's Liber Divinorum Operum, written 1163 to 1173

Metaphysics are literally not materially extant – it’s in the name.

Ideology is either a) some things someone(s) wrote in a particular context and/or b) an abstracted description of collective belief and/or action. 

None of which is capable of doing anything on it's own.

The oft-bleated “that wasn’t real Marxism” is such a retarded position because there is no real Marxism. It’s an abstraction, not a material entity. More specifically, it's a collection of poorly-written 19th-century blather that intellectually limited sociopaths apply in diverse circumstances. It has no empirically objective existence, only in the claimed motivations of actual people. That is, definitionally not true Marxism or Marxism qua Marxism. The only possible critique would be "my applicational interpretation of it is better than his is". When none of them actually are because the source texts are as idiotic as the idiots drawn to them.

Globalism is the same – a descriptor for a variety of actors who share similar power-seeking dyscivic goals. It’s an abstract construct that has to be administered and enacted by real people. And those people are sociopathic freaks who prevent organic socialization and natural social selection from doing what it always did. We are now in the later stages of dysgenic devolution akin to the old Mouse Utopia experiment. Meanwhile the freak-rulers exploit the degraded capacity and rampant appetite of the idiot masses to accrue more power. 

Ultimately the only metrics to measure "true globalism" would be socio-cultural destruction and personal or institutional power accrued. Cloaking this techno-satanism as an economic ideology simply obscures how it's the same ancient anti-human, anti-beauty, anti-God evil adapted to current technological levels.

We’ve recently lost assumed rights to open speech, bodily autonomy, association, medical privacy, due process, financial security, community, etc. The Band can remember a world where people could ride in the back of a pick-up truck. Now you can be fired for a tweet. Basic self-determination doesn't just come back without some massive reckoning. Because the increasing totalitarianism is an orchestrated macro-scale movement from individual and national sovereignty to globalist control. See #6. We’ve posted on centralization – it’s the mechanism of globalist control. But it’s administered and run by actual people. The “elites” are people. And Russia is demonstrating that they’re as susceptible to a Kinzhal missile as we are.

9) There is no collective “we”, just larger stables for the masters.

Globalism is meant to sound like reassuring group harmony, but consider the mechanisms by which uncontestable rules are imposed. Does anyone poll the group before stripping "rights" and transforming organic preferred culture? Words are meaningless without actions - we can only judge morality by actions and outcomes. By the fruits. And by the fruits, globalism in all its metastases is just a new manifestation of an old will to power. Another collectivism imposed by force by centralized sociopaths adapted to current technology and social organization. Like communism, only with digital currency flows and information control rather than industry. Plus way more overt satanism. And like any totalitarianism hiding behind the fig leaf of some collective good, it’s really a just another tyranny. Albeit it way more overtly satanic.

It's why older images of demonic tyrants are always generally applicable. The faces come and go and the labels change - communism, corporatism, etc. - but the structure doesn't. A monstrous elite tier floating parasitically on a subjugated populace. It's why ignoring what is materially happening to argue over ideological made-up words is such a sign of self-erasing retardation. 

It doesn't matter what they call themselves or what their stated motives are.

When demonic freaks blather about owning nothing and eating bugs, it explicitly doesn’t refer to them or their private enclaves.

Economically, the dissolution of national distinctions & barriers to capital flows - the two are intrinsically linked – is presented as an unexamined moral good. But in reality, actual people preside over this degradation of the human condition while reaping massive material rewards. Pretending human action is really some sort of demented offspring of Hegel’s inexorable spirit of history makes it easy to claim inevitability or draw up facile fake moralities. But there is no mass identity, only individual predators and prey in varying degrees of concert or opposition. Those who wish to actualize their God-given free will and those who wish to grind them under their heels. Anyone accruing personal power and privilege while blathering about the “greater good” or the “current year” is objectively a liar and probably a psychopath. Judge the deeds, not the words. 

10) "Ockham’s Razor" has become a tonic for Dumb People

There is at best no correlation between the simplest explanation and the truth. At best because the correlation is likely a negative one, given the complexity of the butterfly effect interactions that make up reality. 

Hiroki Sayama, Visual, organizational map of complex systems broken into seven sub-groups. 2010

Multi-component interactions across domains make up complex systems. And material reality is made up of countless interacting ones in a dizzying interplay of complexities. Dominant patterns can be detected, but monocausual linear and binary thinking are almost doomed to uselessness. Despite their "simplicity".

Take Ukraine. The liars and their lobotomized dupes have this “fighting for freedom” narrative that is definitely simplistic. It’s also so stupid that it’s actually annoying to even have to think about. Understanding the main thrust of the Ukraine situation doesn't take the number of parameters in the above chart, but it needs a heck of a lot more than slack-jawed idiocy about "freedom". Which is itself a nonsense word with a complex history of mass distortion and ontological impossibility.

Ukraine is a puppet creation of the same unaccountable unelected globalists that run the puppet juntas “Western democracies”. "Led" by a degenerate midget installed by globalist elites. Pedestalizing this turd as a hero is a perfect confluence of beast moral inversion and the functional mass retardation of FTS-2.

 

Processing complex situations with different historical roots requires a rudimentary understanding how geopolitics actually work. Some glimmer of the globalist beast system that's jacked Western society, and the role of Ukraine in their ongoing malfeasance. How narrative is engineered in the House of Lies through mass manipulation of technology, media and massive fraud. In other words, things further beyond the reach of the moral and mentally crippled masses than Tantalus' grapes.

Then there's the instant over-the-top reaction that is self-evidently orchestrated top-down. It's the mass-moron fear spell from a recent post on the functionally two species nature of modern humanity translated to faux-outrage over a country few were aware of a few months ago. Certainly not during the years of shelling civilians that ultimately helped precipitate Russian intervention.

Like the rationally inexplicably decision to illuminate degenerate cesspool San Francesco city hall. Maybe the lights look sharp glimmering off the discarded syringes and vials...

Here's a list on ongoing conflicts right now. To say nothing of the last few decades. On the surface, Ukraine should be as globally trivial as any other conflict to the fruit-fly minds of the average clod. But the absolutely hysterical reaction by every wing of the corrupt globalist narrative machine suggests otherwise. See #4, #11.

So why the orchestrated reaction? Multiple things overlapping. An existential struggle beginning between the globalist elite and the nationalist powers. Expect China to move at some point. The hysteria towards both of them – and Iran - is driven top-down by their threat to the neo-liberal world order. Russia represents the first time globalist ambition has been confronted by old-fashioned military might. Which is sufficient to explain the severity of the reaction. Governments, tech, media, etc. simply follow orders and their master is frightened. There are other things like the US bioweapon labs and so forth that add more nuance to the existential lines being drawn. To the actual globalists – see #7 & #8 - this is potentially apocalyptic. Hence the strident absurdity of the coordinated response.

Blathering about the simplest explanation guarantees getting it wrong.

1l) Public "Opinion” is Dictated

Response is coordinated. "Public reaction” is not organic. It’s orchestrated. This is far from a new observation, but recent events have made it obvious in a way it wasn't before.

Graphic from a recent post shows the process by which the fake narratives making up the House of Lies are produced by a network of narrative engineers & uptaken by a network of narrative huffers. That is, FTS-2 or the idiot masses, who then support or "stand with" their lying overseer abusers.

We were focusing on the trauma aspect of this as a hypothesis for why the masses are as emotionally and cognitively crippled as they are. But it also catches the more general process of being given "opinions" that serve the destructive ends of those giving them.

Twittter, Facebook, big media, etc. don’t reflect public opinion, they create it. And they deliver narrative content written by the same architects of the neo-liberal world order. This is where 70 years of diminishing IQ, educational degradation, and the cumulative damage of a toxic culture come in. The vast majority are so incapable of thought that they can no longer even articulate their own self-interest. There is no solution to that, and without a Christian reverence for life, there’s a dark logic to the globalist desire to cull the herd. 

It's a common misconception that the idiot masses are driven by desire for the luxe life. They may daydream of extreme wealth and privilege, but raw acquisitive greed only actively motivates a relatively small percentage of the populace. What most will sell personal, familial, and cultural health for is being able to do nothing. Passive, low-grade consumerist sloth. To sit motionless before a screen and absorb processed carbs and grease. And often intoxicants of various kinds.

Pro-tip. Ignore the fake binary they want you to get caught on and consider the aggragate.

This is partly human nature but enhanced by the meaningless nihilism of modern life. People whinge about "jobs" while enjoying material ease and comfort unimagined in past eras. The problem isn't actually that it's hard - most soft modern protoplasm have never experienced work that's hard. It's that it's meaningless. There's no tangible accomplishment. No one actually gives a rat's ass about your "report". It's socio-historic contribution is actually less than nil because the time and effort wasted on it could have been used for something worthwhile. Anything. 

But subordinating most of your waking hours to existentially irrelevant inanity in generally pathological social environments is inherently stressful. And once conditioned to meaningless stress as the norm, meaningless passivity becomes the tonic.

Imagine a meaningful existence of family and faith. Of truth, beauty, and goodness...

We do.

Body, mind, and soul are linked. The passive consumption of the lowest-frequency toxic junk isn't limited to the physical. The bag of suet that "lives" for hours of screen time is no better a steward of their mental or spiritual lives.

At least the turtles are moving and creating in a beautiful natural setting, though that alone in insufficient to break out of the House of Lies.

It's not just the obese and/or deconditioned majority. There's a segment that believes they "look after themselves" while still accepting the larger structures of the House of Lies. 

Ever-changing "health" dicta, a conga line of "self-help" and fake spiritualists... same end result as the suet bags, just with better BMI and fewer mobility issues.

Like this cheap luciferian occultism sweetened with the false promise of low-effort self-divinization. Do what thou wilt for the sloth-addicted huffers.

Disconnecting from the screens, developing anti-fragility, and back to the land self-sufficienty won't cure a terminally ill society. But it’s still better than the narrative-huffing alternative.

12) The enemy of the enemy is better than the enemy

Putin or Xi are not on the “side” of Western nationalists. Thinking in terms of two sides is part of the problem. See #9.  They are on their sides, as they should be. But they’re enemies of our enemy, and that’s significant. They’re not forcing toxic genetic “therapies” on us, or inverting human nature, or digital money and pod life in teeming failing cities ruled by psychopathic totalitarians that want us impoverished or dead. Because while material reality is a complex and multifaceted web of butterfly effects and endless agendas, abstract reality does orient around absolutes. And the one binary that matters is the moral one. Anyone opposing the beast aligns with a primal divide.

Abstract absolutes can't materially exist - see #8. They manifest more or less imperfectly through material agents. Who are themselves complex and multifaceted in ideology and motivations. Insofar as those oppose the beast, they align with our opposition to the same.

Checking the imperial designs of globalism is a net benefit, full stop. Now obviously there are many possible pathways from there in a lot of different directions. But whatever comes next will not follow the same trajectory of what was before. Because it’s also obvious that the post-War era – and perhaps the entire post-Renaissance era – of the West is ending. Best-case scenario is a lot less ease and abundance but new organic communities form. Others are less good. Who prevails in this clash of powers matters to all of us. There’s a serious difference between reality-facing groups with rival interests and satanic totalitarian atavists perched atop the food chain.

In the last of our Thomas Covenant posts, we noted how Lord Mhoram's epic clash with the forces of darkness is applicable to multi-level truths in reality. His attack is preceded by an assault on Satansfist's army by the Waynhim - an unaligned eldritch race that had no involvement in the clash up to this point. But Foul's evil is repulsive to them as well, and despite their differences from the Lords, took their shot for their own moral reasons. Mhoram seized on the unexpected distraction to sally forth and... well... look at the picture and read the post...

The point is that in the face of true evil, the non-evil, even if at cross-purposes - have common cause.

And that means...

Bonus) It’s metaphysical

Post-Enlightenment materialism is a monument to human vanity. Auto-idolatry based on the self-evident falsehood that the infinite exists within the finite and limited human minds can fully grasp the fullness of abstract absolutes. What we call secular transcendence for short. We've traced this over several years of posts showing the empirical and logical necessity of levels of reality beyond the material. We express them in the ontological hierarchy, but that’s just a graphical metaphor. The point is that the false claims of the modern world are ontologically and epistemologically false. They can’t work, which is why the system founded on them is collapsing under its own fakeness. 

This also means that people who refuse to recognize the full ontological significance of the current situation are powerless to even understand it, let alone fix it.

Samson Gabriel, The Blind leading the Blind, 21st century, oil on canvas

The fiery abyss is right. But they should be wearing masks and standing with Ukraine.

The servants of the beast certainly believe it’s a metaphysical conflict. Recurring occult rituals and symbols make that painfully obvious. The secularism and “atheism” of the de-moralized, posturing, self-fluffing lackwits is a form of spiritual unilateral disarmament. 

With sufficient perception and intelligence the larger patterns in the House of Lies can be somewhat puzzled out. But once the metaphysical angle is understood they snap into focus, no exceptional perception or intelligence required. And that’s the globalists’ uniquely sharp animus towards Christianity explained in sentence.