Why we can't expect the "normies" to wake up
...and think logically about current events. Too much of their reality would have to crumble.
I was reading a Tess Lawrie article this morning which prompted the following response. This is the Tess Lawrie article.
I wonder if we are looking at this problem upside down? I wonder if we are expecting too much of our fellow humans? What if compliance to a narrative is "normal" for the human being? What if questioning the paradigm IS abnormal behaviour.
If we have a "normal" enough childhood, we slot comfortably into a narrative and can stay there for most or all of our lives. There is an almost infinite number of tribes operating within the narrative, so if things get a bit rough around the edges, we can shift from one tribe to another without ever exiting the narrative. However, some of us were born into families that were already excluded from the narrative. I had a psychic mother and a mystical father, and neither found themselves a comfortable resting place within an organization that gave them safety. They tried to go it alone, and somehow in my childhood, without ever, to my knowledge being told, I learned to keep this part of my life and our lives, secret from the outside world. I knew it was not safe to talk about it.
But being an intelligent child, I could not accept that my family (including myself) were either mad or bad, so I had to look around for an explanation that satisfied both the non-material world facts I lived with, and my very demanding sense of logic. During my adult life I tried to find my safe place by exploring every weirdo belief system and cult I could find. I went to their meetings, I followed their practices, and was warned so often that they could capture my mind. I used to joke that if they could get my mind they were welcome to it. I did the same with political organisations and even health modalities, forever seeking that group of people who thought like me. What a blessed relief it would be to conform to a narrative and so feel safe. But it never happened. I have lived my life outside of any obvious narrative, as I watch people I once respected for their apparent independence of thought, allowing their minds to be captured by a narrative within THE narrative, so that they can feel safe.
But what if our society depends on individuals sharing a narrative?
What if we MUST share a narrative for our society to survive?
Are those who have found a narrative they are comfortable with, the normal ones? What if that is what humans beings really are? Of course they are going to protect their mental homes, every bit as much as they would protect their physical homes, from invasion. What if those of us living outside a comfortable safe narrative are the odd ones out? What if we question everything, not because we are clever, but because we feel unsafe as our default state and have learned how to live there, exposed, vulnerable and alone, outside of the protection of human society?
We can understand how the narrative controls even ourselves, when we catch some aspect of ourselves that has been living comfortably and blindly within it's rules. I have caught an aspect of the narrative in me recently, related to health. I was brought up outside of mainstream medicine, but I had not spotted that I have conformed to a mainstream narrative rule, that health is complicated and that it is hard work to stay healthy, and that it takes pain, effort and dedication. That belief pervades both mainstream and holistic medicine. But is it true?
A few years back I discovered a quick exercise that removes depression by generating the happy drugs in the brain, quickly and easily - about 3 minutes of our precious time. Will anyone use it when I explain it? No. No-one wants their existential angst reduced to a 3 minute exercise, so they won't even try it. (As you can see, a mere 5 likes on the article below - I can’t even get people to read it.) And even I, who has changed my mood successfully over many years using it, and even controlled unbearable pain with it, still forget to do it when I really need it. Why will even my brain not take it on as my default behaviour?
Recently I have been experimenting with some bio-hacks that come largely out of Asian traditions, but not exclusively, to treat the various forms of neuropathy and dysautonomia that have beset me since my run in with covid or 5G - I suspect the latter.
Last night I did a new exercise - 3 minutes worth to treat peripheral neuropathy - thinking "It can't be this easy". Instantly my symptoms dropped to about 20% and I woke up symptom free this morning for the first time in 9 months. Time will tell how long lasting or reliable this treatment is, but I will have to fight my own disbelief that it really can be this easy. I have also being doing some very easy vagus nerve exercises. When I came across them, I rejected the possibility that they could really work to fix dysautonomia. Too easy, my mind says. But they are working. Our culture entrains us, even we rebels, into thinking everything is so hard, and it is just so hard to give that belief up. Surely we can live some part of our lives on auto-pilot? It seems not.
So seriously, is it reasonable to expect that "normies" are going to be able to integrate the idea that not only can we not trust our governments, our churches, and our medical profession, but that these three bastions of normal life are actually out to kill us? Shheeesh, that is hard enough for we outsiders to fully absorb. It must be nigh on impossible for insiders.
Translate the Sanskrit please.
A recent course included the following suggestion: are you willing to trust-fall into the Universe? Your nice essay looks at that well. I too struggle sometimes to do the things I know assist me to live a life with expansive freedom.
I also addressed the question of 'waking up the normies,' that began as a reply to (the almost red-pilled) Steve Kirsch, who asked paraphrased, 'How do you wake people up, because I have had zero success?' You may find my answer interesting and extends your good take on this deep question. If curious, see https://gduperreault.substack.com/p/thoughts-covid-reset-yogic-and-uncategorised/comments.
Like you, I have made huge positive changes in my life with some simple practices, that the people around me haven't tried. Some of that can be attributed to what Jung has said is the human animal's most dominant characteristic: torpor. The complete lack of initiative to change. I've described it this way: most humans, if they are faced with a choice to change their life or die, will choose death. The examples are legion. That leaves unaddressed why torpidity is rampant!
Now to look at your vagus nerve exercise.