Swallowing The Parasite Whole

Mere Credulity

Michael O’Fallon & The Sovereign Nations Team have brought together a wealth of complimentary minds from various disciplines and the ways in which those separate vantage points enhance one another is inspiring. The recent podcasts and lectures of Dr James Lindsay (for both New Discourses & Sovereign Nations) on the parasitical implications of gnosticism in the West are helping to bring sharply into focus that which many of us lacked both the premise and vocabulary to articulate with such clarity. We are currently experiencing its spoiled fruits and starting to glimpse how most of us have, in our own youth, through our education, training, culture consumption and even, or especially our Faith, have been initiated into the Cult of Transformational Progress and its Radical Vision for post humanity.

‘The Gnostic Parasite is the 5th lecture in the brilliant Sovereign Nations Mere Simulacrity series (a nod to Lewis), in which Dr Lindsay sets out a very comprehensive argument for the necessity of what he calls ‘The Handshake Of Faith & Reason:

As the events of 2020 onwards played out, I saw that despite access to uncorrupted data & testimony, the vast majority of highly propagandized media consumers & the institutionalized workforce could, or would not overcome their conditioning, for various reasons. I observed that lies were more readily accepted than truth. People en mass had been hollowed out from the inside, reprogrammed, rewarded for parroting lies and policing each other. Tyrannical rule was fomenting from not only the top down, but bottom up and crucially, inside out. I only set up this twitter account because I saw the dynamics of this parasite at work across domains and had also recognized it in myself, which is painful to acknowledge and process, like working through grief and shame. In December 2021 I wrote:

Dr Lindsay coins that ‘mutual understanding and support’ as the working together of ‘Athens & Jerusalem to box out Alexandria’. In other words, the reciprocity of Faith & Reason in keeping philosophical hubris in check and at bay

When we appreciate that we have not really lived in a ‘secular’ society, despite the progressive posturing, the admonishments from our Overlords & even our indoctrinated friends and family, to ‘Trust The Experts, Trust The Science’ is a particularly irrational fideism. If we can recognize the so called secularizing of prior religious functions, dynamics and expressions, reclothed in bureaucratic & technocratic garb, we might begin to answer this:

From childhood we invest ourselves in our training, our aspirations, our hopes and our future vision with its personal and professional goals. We trusted our institutions and our organizations, blind to the fact that corporate mission statements were being crafted, policy rewritten, legal precedent changed and governance reshaped to reflect new values of Global Citizenship - post humanity - with the concerted effort to rewrite reality itself, thereby us and future generations - whatever they may be.

Were we right to operate in Blind Faith, with implicit trust? As children that was all any of us had the capacity to do. Our Education System, Media & Culture (including State affiliated Churches) established the strategic and tactical means by which we largely remained as children. Dependent, stunted, distracted, entertained, self obsessed instead of self reliant and crucially, cut off from the Traditional methods and content of learning which could have strengthened our immunity to the Parasite. Worse still, our desire for the Parasite was cultivated and our weakest aspects targeted as receptors. The Parasite can only get under your skin, inhabit you because it feeds on susceptibilities, insecurities, vanities, confusion, dissonance, ignorance and most of all, pride. It remakes you on the inside, it remakes institutions from the inside, it co-opts and confounds. It disrupts, dismantles and destroys.

A facet of maturing to adulthood is the capacity to overcome learned helplessness, to avoid as much as possible, forms of dependency on State apparatus and to develop enough robust skepticism to hold public officials and ‘experts’ to account, definitely not to blindly trust them, for they are like us all, fallible and even, or especially, corruptible. The learned helplessness of blind trust in the ‘Anointed’ as a virtue (white coat syndrome, credentialing fetishists etc) ‘Where’s your PhD?!’ functions as a kind of immature fideism born of laziness & pride. Outsourcing that which we could not, or would not do for ourselves. Of course our own knowledge, skill & experience will be limited, we will have to exchange with others who can supply what we can not. It’s on us to balance Reason & Faith in this respect. Buyer beware, Sellouts also. In December 2021 I admitted:

There will undoubtedly still be ways in which I’m unaware of being deceived, played. I’m fallible. I can sense when I really ‘want to’ believe in something, or someone, but I’m learning to accept the absence of gratification in remaining with doubt, a position which can be unsettling and humbling. CS Lewis illustrates it well in a discussion between John and [the lady] Reason, in The Pilgrim’s Regress:

The Mere Simulacrity Sovereign Nations lecture series has not only set off a cascade of questions for me, in attempt to understand its philosophical and theological underpinnings, but also brought to mind another vital dynamic to investigate and understand in order to help others - that of what I’ll call ‘Mere Credulity’.

My training is in Music Analysis and Choral Conducting. Over 25 years I conducted Youth Choirs, coached students for National Youth Choir entrance, delivered professional development choral music programs for non specialist teachers and had a mercifully brief few years delivering the Chartered Institute of Personnel’s Certificate in Training Program which had more pseudo science in it than you could shake a talking stick at. Pure wizardry and it was in that role I learned all the trendy hocus pocus of Facilitation, being a Guide On The Side, not a Sage on the Stage🤡. My favourite teachers & directors had all been top tier Sages on that Stage - incredible experts in their fields. I smelled the co-learner BS from the outset. I couldn’t stay in that pretending role for long.

I’m not a scholar or a writer. I have no reputation, no authority, all my research is private and motivated by the desire to understand how and why we got here. In reading one source I want to learn more about the influences it drew on. Sometimes that’s linear, other times not. I’d like to hone my thinking alongside others. I’m grateful for fertile exchanges of information and analysis. Community of like minded kin is essential. This isn’t a one person, leave it to the expert option. That’s how we got here. The scope of the difficulties we find ourselves in is much bigger and broader than politics & culture, spanning centuries and rooted in how we understand ourselves and our relation to all else. The 2nd Mere Simulacrity lecture; ‘Hermeneutics and Perspectivalism’ (something I never expected to find myself sitting through - let alone enjoying!) given by Dr William Roach, prompted me to look for help in comprehending unfamiliar terms because I could sense an understanding forming in me that I want to be able to articulate clearly. After stumbling around incomprehensible rarified stuff, I found an old Masters thesis by Thomas A. Howe which went back to philosophy essentials with great clarity for a non specialist.

If you follow me regularly you’ll know I’m on the scent trail of the Doctrine of Objective Values and Philosophical Realism, but until recently I had no idea that’s what they were called. I simply knew them as ‘that’ which I’d had the benefit of in my own education yet had been lost, cast out and I want to find out how they may be permanently recoverable and transmissible. I wasn’t raised in Christian Faith, but more, the ‘Faith of Material Progress’. Church buildings & Christian cultural artifacts admired for their material beauty and Science answering all the important stuff. Hushed reverence for the works of Man and God relegated to a superstitious mindset. I’d have laughed to know how fascinated I’d be years later with teachings of Orthodox Church Fathers and my deep love of CS Lewis output. The Screwtape Letters was the punch between the eyes. The catalyst for me around 15 yrs ago.

Having initially been asked to co-teach a religious studies class to 12 yrs olds in the late 90s, I ignorantly scanned bookshops for something which didn’t make me glaze over. There was an off the peg scripted scheme of work my co teacher (the Head Mistress) was using but I wasn’t confident with just that. I had no understanding to ground it in. Neither did she as it turned out, but that didn’t seem to be a problem apparently! I managed to pick what I now think were probably unbeknown to me at that time, two of the most heretical books; ‘God In Us’ (Anthony Freeman) & ‘Honest To God’ (John Robinson). Why did they appeal to me? I’d recently finished reading Daniel Goleman’s Epic Contrivance EQ which had recently been released, pseudo science buzz in Education at that time. I didn’t know back then that it would become a blueprint of sorts for New Consciousness programming & a means for mapping emotional response with the aim of data capture, harvest & control. At that time I was unaware of CASEL.

I was idealistic and as so many of my peers, without conscious metaphysical foundation or philosophical orientation. I only had pseudo psychology as a (house of cards) frame of reference and was looking for some kind of orientation framework to support my understanding in the classroom when the kids needed help. Something other than reading a script and playing the games.

I only taught the class for 1 year but there followed 25 yrs of esoteric reading and having initially been fascinated with it, I’ve come to reject it and it’s really exciting to finally understand the philosophical principles I’m holding in doing that. It sure beats being asked ‘Why do you think that?’ And shrugging ‘I dunno - I just do!’. This is basically the level of reasoning so many of my colleagues demonstrate in the face of Woke ideology & praxis even when they don’t agree with it - they still can’t articulate why with any coherence. None of us can afford the luxury of that any longer and it’s on each one of us to do what we can to properly orient ourselves. That’s why I focus on the path to reclaiming and renewing Objective Reality as the centre and bedrock of Education. In my opinion, all else is downstream from that; the culture wars, the political theatrics, the attacks and destruction on my own discipline and others - it all dies or renews depending on the Foundational Premises we choose to embed and enshrine in our programs of study, their policies and praxis.

I very much want to work in collaboration with others who understand this and are starting to see the big picture, or are further along than me in the process. Revelations of the rotten foundations of our Education System are useful and necessary. There is much great work that has been done on that, as I referenced at the outset. The Education System I and others want to see established and thriving is long overdue for building anew. That build must be fortified and damp proofed; protected from the parasitical consumption and mind mold which has devastated at least 3 generations of students, creating the corrosion from within we face today.

That will necessitate a lay comprehension of the reciprocity of ‘Jerusalem & Athens’ in our foundational worldview. Lewis, as ever, is my primary guide; he understood the role of language and the foibles of human nature like no other. Before I can gain a richer understanding of The Handshake Of Faith And Reason, I’ve got to unpack what I’m calling ‘Mere Credulity’; the conditioned hive mindset formed by passive consumption of Media & Education Thought Reform tactics and blind authoritarian trust in the cult of ‘Experts’ - but that’s for next time. Come along with me, it’s not an easy ride.

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