"The door has been open since before anyone learned they needed permission to walk through." - "And the Father is waiting." ... these lines hit home better than anything I've seen in a long time, Thanks EKO!
“We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are, and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”-Madeleine L’Engle
Know thyself. Taking full responsibility for ourselves is a choice and a lifestyle. Inwardly, I think most understand that to have the experience we desire in this expression of life, we need to understand who we are, and to the degree possible, our inner world. EKO, thank you for consistently helping us to know ourselves better.
People have a herd instinct comparable to the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the beasts of the field. God's divine design. For all ranchers and herdsmen it is an essential tool of control. Maybe the new media's power to manipulate us humans is a wake-up call. An illumination of the line between God's plan and man's plans. Thank you EKO. "The dividing line between good and evil (God and man) goes through each person's heart." Soltzinetzen
Maybe it's all needed to prevent a global population, that is severely retarded in its spiritual and cultural development and far too advanced technologically, from utterly destroying itself and the planet?
We're terraforming the planet, exploring space and making plans to populate other planets while we can't deal with life threatening crime, disease, or feed and shelter half the population adequately while countless trillions of dollars are wasted yearly.
Maybe God is far more capable, all seeing, and resourceful than we give Him credit for?
Maybe God can leverage our technology to save us from our own destruction even as evil men are scheming to destroy us with it?
Maybe God's plan is to infiltrate our own evil plans and quietly subvert them from the inside out. Turning darkness into light by divine alchemy. By planting and sprouting a divine seed deep underground in the darkness where no one could see?
Maybe God is using ultimate power and absolute Love to transform our confused and destructive state of existence into a clear and stable path forward?
Maybe that hidden sprout of power and Love will soon be ready to break through the surface and manifest itself for all to see?
Fortunately there are a few churches that aren't cages, but they are harder to spot because they don't look like church buildings. Think eight people in a living room, for example, or folding chairs in a repurposed store building. Seek and you will find. The search is worthwhile, but that only becomes apparent later. Staying isolated because of previous bad experiences cripples spiritual growth. Better to discover the full dimension of the life Jesus intended, since we'll all be there when every knee bows before the Throne.
Beside the Holy Bible itself, the most difficult and rewarding book I've read is the 3 volumes of George MacDonald's "Unspoken Sermons." It was written mid-19th to early 20th century. It explains, with amazing spiritual insight, many sayings of the LORD God's Christ. If you've got the moxie to stand being told how wrong you are and how right you can be you should not omit George MacDonald's "Unspoken Sermons" from your reading life. Here is a link to the people in Scotland who are, singlehandedly, bringing the work of George MacDonald back to life:
You claim « female survival depended on reading and following group consensus » (…) « women are wired to prioritize consensus over individual assessment when the two conflict »
Yes, dear eko, don't forget the subjection suffered and the submission demanded of these women for millennia. Women's emancipation is very, very recent in this context, whatever form it takes, whether it is celebrated or criticized.
In my opinion, everything you describe here about the influence and effects of social media on humans (and communities) applies to women as well as men. Because I know so many men who are prisoners of these networks!
Except maybe the "empathy" aspect, the argument that women (generally) are more focused on emotions and the inner self... But this too can be strongly questioned. Men also have these characteristics, which can be more or less developed depending on the individual.
From a strictly moral and psychological (not physical) point of view, I believe that it is very difficult and uncertain to decide what distinguishes a man from a woman. And we must admit that the individual variations are great. I only beleive that females and males are meant to complete each other.
The fact remains that a good part of these "masculine/feminine attitudes" are in fact social constructions that benefit some.
As you rightly put it, but for women AND man : « The problem is outsourcing your internal authority to whatever consensus the algorithm amplifies. ». And later : « Sovereignty means placing the full weight of authorship on your shoulders. No consensus to follow. No system to credit or blame. Just you, making decisions in uncertainty, owning the consequences completely.»
“Wicked” was a term for good, awesome when I was in 5th and 6th grade, and that was in 1975.
Astrology became ‘the thing’ well by the time we were listening to “The Age of Aquarius” by the Fifth Dimension in 1969.
The results are part of a cycle, not an apex. The vehicle is at an apex. Yes. You are right on regarding tribal consensus and the rest of your concept, but don’t exaggerate.
Do the research necessary to keep this from being sensationalist. You have a great point. Keep in grounded.
Only mentioning that here it comes off when you say “The very word ‘wicked’ flips from evil to empowering.” Like it had never been that before. Yet it was a cool word of an entire generation.
It also sounds like you’re saying astrology wasn’t a trip we got off on as a reason to trust the stars or intuition rather than logic ever before. “Even men in the pickup artist community figured it out. Learn some astrology. Talk about her chart. Read her palm. She lights up every time.” Yeah, they did that then, too.
So it’s a cycle now magnified by all the rest of your stats, which we have never experienced before. 💯Excellent read.
I once knew pragmatic man whose wife had become an ardent astrologist. His summary of astrology: "It strikes me as 5,000 years' worth of statistical analysis." That sounds about right, don't it. In my early days I was close for a while with a Greek sorceress whose specialty was astrology. I gave her my birth info and she did my chart. She was amazed by the fact that the stars said I should take aspirin every day of my life. I took that as good advice. All the rest I've forgotten.
WHEW!! That one overwhelmed me. I had to stand up, take a walk, a few deep breaths, brew some coffee and eat some chocolate to get my mind to settle down. Thank U EKO. You finally answered a question that has been sorely testing me. For decades I have been observing, monitoring, and measuring the downfall of religion. Religion clearly reached its evolutionary peak in the 50s and 60s and then began to devolve into its downward slide in the 70s. In hindsight that is easy to see since it was a natural progression and regression cycle. Examples of which are to be found all around us in all walks of life. But at the turn of the new millennium something fundamental changed. The prograde/retrograde pattern suddenly and mysteriously changed almost overnight. What had been a steady downhill slide, suddenly became a vertical free fall over the edge of the cliff!
But what caused that sudden free fall? I've been collecting the pieces of that puzzle for years but was still unable to fit the pieces together to see the big picture. I had all the pieces, but was missing the correct perspective. The female pattern. I was actually applying it backwards. Today you showed me how to flip the pattern around, and BAM! Now it all makes sense. Like the old Johnny Nash song, "I Can See Clearly Now". The path in front of me is now illuminated.
Jimmy Cliff made a famous version of "I Can See Clearly Now" recorded at FAME Studios in Florence Alabama backed by some white musicians known as The Swampers. What a world! What a time to be alive!
MA11, I want to understand your question. Please explain. Is it because the female gender had typically been the cultural/civilizing function? And we lost that when we started playing the disease to please game, regardless of Truth? I am totally missing this, please help.
Maybe this is related? I just remembered that 1992 was the political "year of the woman" when a record number of women were elected to congress. I naively thought that good, we'll get some good reforms in nutrition education, healthcare, etc., like RFK is doing. Instead, I was horrified when I realized instead, it turned into "control systems on estrogen!!" The nanny state became more solidified. In case anyone thinks I'm being offensive, I am female.
A very astute observation RN!! Thank you for sharing it.
I see that as an end result of the deliberate and calculated long term destruction of the marriage/family system. Inject women into government who have no long term experience of a happy productive marriage/family and what do you get? Ungrounded, immature and unwise leadership which is easily manipulated with a system such as the one EKO just described for us in this article.
DISCLAIMER: In no way whatsoever am I saying this to shift the blame for failed governance away from men. Despite these few failures by women in governance, the lion's share of the blame for failed governamce still sits on the shoulders of failed men. This handful of female governance failures are simply being heaped on top of the pre-existing mountain of male failures.
MA11, I'm especially interested in issues relating to addiction and processes enabling them. Trying to manage others' behavior is an addictive process termed "co-dependency." It is a no-win situation. Both the "Controller" and the "controlled" are prisoners. It enables the men to remain immature, and continue to operate without having to be held accountable. AND, it leaves the controller free to mind OB (other people's business), while leaving theirs unattended. I'm not excusing men, but I think they're blind to what is really going on. It hurts me so badly to see my brothers in Christ being so duped by their SO's, and feel so powerless to help without "minding OB!"
Sometimes hitting rock bottom is the only way some people can stop their destructive path. What's interesting about rock bottom is that it offers you no other option. Move to the left, move to the right and you're still at rock bottom. All you can do is see the light above you and start climbing your way toward it or stay at rock bottom. Rock bottom is like being at the bottom of a dry well. It is the exhaustion of all your options except the correct one.
Some people are more adept at navigating the complexities of life. Some people are better at accepting and following therapeutic help, be it medical, friendship, family, church. community etc.
Those who are poor navigators and poor "accepters" always have rock bottom as a means of last resort when all other options fail.
No matter if you learn to navigate or accept help, or slam yourself against the bottom, the Kingdom awaits everyone. Some will make it through its narrow door to true freedom in this mortal life, and some will walk through its wide doors of freedom and immortality through the resurrection. Only one thing is certain. The doors of the Kingdom, big or small are open to everyone. Father wishes everyone of His children to have eternal life. Only those who willingly reject it and turn away from Father will find themselves without life.
Furthermore, I firmly believe that was the year the "grievance industry" really took hold. I was attending university at the time and saw it firsthand on college campuses.
Little did I know, that the college campus was a war zone, when speech codes were thoroughly embedded in the bureaucracy. I believe one could trace the skyrocketing cost of college education from this point.
I considered myself an old-fashioned equity "feminist," believing in equality of opportunity, and instead was totally confused about the options being presented for "gender" identity/sexual freedom; what I later learned was called "gender feminism, by reading a 1994 book by Suzanne Hoff Sommers called "Who Stole Feminism." Very sad. She also wrote a book called "The War Against Boys."
In the years following, I saw this movement extend to the larger culture, until we have now total mass confusion. This started with the gender feminism movement, which became the multicultural movement... to police state.
Wow, I didn't have a clue I was going here. Is any of this relevant to the discussion here, if not, "never mind." (As Gilda Radner used to say!)
What I'm referring to has nothing to do with the female gender specifically. It has to do with how advanced technology was suddenly injected into an evolutionary process to subvert it. It just so happened that it leveraged the female abilities that EKO showed us to carry out the subversion. Who's to say they couldn't have gone a different route and deployed systems to subvert male abilities instead? Perhaps they already have...
MA11, Again, from a perspective of recovery, humans, unfortunately, need to hit bottom before we become willing to change. Rock bottom is good solid ground!
I Agree 100%. Sometimes you need to start over with a clean slate. Rebuilding a house on top of a faulty foundation will only lead to another disaster. Our civilisation has to come clean before it can make things right. It's the concept of putting new wine in old wineskins.
Maybe the boomer generation had to drive the thing totally over the cliff, so the next generations can clearly see what didn't work and, prayerfully, yes, rebuild on solid foundation, of persons as "images of God," instead of what they "appear to be." I was reminded of how the darker it is, the more clearly the light shines, and according to the physics of Chaos, Coherence becomes a strong magnetic attractor. Sanity is a coherent attractor
The internet porn industry certainly comes to mind. What are the things that men respond to? Narrow focus, dominance, corporate success, hero worship...what tools exploit those?
"The door has been open since before anyone learned they needed permission to walk through." - "And the Father is waiting." ... these lines hit home better than anything I've seen in a long time, Thanks EKO!
“We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are, and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”-Madeleine L’Engle
Thank you, EKO.
Know thyself. Taking full responsibility for ourselves is a choice and a lifestyle. Inwardly, I think most understand that to have the experience we desire in this expression of life, we need to understand who we are, and to the degree possible, our inner world. EKO, thank you for consistently helping us to know ourselves better.
"....following consensus is more comfortable than bearing the weight of your own authority...."
"This is counterfeit spiritual seeking. It mimics connection to Source while actually leading away from it."
Pretty much the definition of how Satan works.
Excellent essay.
very well said eko. jesus never needs validation. he is and always will be our collective thought where love is paramount. Freedom rings.
God loves paradoxes. Be free by submitting.
People have a herd instinct comparable to the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the beasts of the field. God's divine design. For all ranchers and herdsmen it is an essential tool of control. Maybe the new media's power to manipulate us humans is a wake-up call. An illumination of the line between God's plan and man's plans. Thank you EKO. "The dividing line between good and evil (God and man) goes through each person's heart." Soltzinetzen
Maybe it's all God's plan?
Maybe it's all needed to prevent a global population, that is severely retarded in its spiritual and cultural development and far too advanced technologically, from utterly destroying itself and the planet?
We're terraforming the planet, exploring space and making plans to populate other planets while we can't deal with life threatening crime, disease, or feed and shelter half the population adequately while countless trillions of dollars are wasted yearly.
Maybe God is far more capable, all seeing, and resourceful than we give Him credit for?
Maybe God can leverage our technology to save us from our own destruction even as evil men are scheming to destroy us with it?
Maybe God's plan is to infiltrate our own evil plans and quietly subvert them from the inside out. Turning darkness into light by divine alchemy. By planting and sprouting a divine seed deep underground in the darkness where no one could see?
Maybe God is using ultimate power and absolute Love to transform our confused and destructive state of existence into a clear and stable path forward?
Maybe that hidden sprout of power and Love will soon be ready to break through the surface and manifest itself for all to see?
Excellent essay
Fortunately there are a few churches that aren't cages, but they are harder to spot because they don't look like church buildings. Think eight people in a living room, for example, or folding chairs in a repurposed store building. Seek and you will find. The search is worthwhile, but that only becomes apparent later. Staying isolated because of previous bad experiences cripples spiritual growth. Better to discover the full dimension of the life Jesus intended, since we'll all be there when every knee bows before the Throne.
Awesome analysis. Makes deep sense. Thank you!
Sheer brilliance! I wasn’t able to finish. Will tomorrow. Wow.
Beside the Holy Bible itself, the most difficult and rewarding book I've read is the 3 volumes of George MacDonald's "Unspoken Sermons." It was written mid-19th to early 20th century. It explains, with amazing spiritual insight, many sayings of the LORD God's Christ. If you've got the moxie to stand being told how wrong you are and how right you can be you should not omit George MacDonald's "Unspoken Sermons" from your reading life. Here is a link to the people in Scotland who are, singlehandedly, bringing the work of George MacDonald back to life:
> > https://theroomtoroam.com/ < <
Good luck! Happy Thanksgiving! Godspeed to all people of goodwill everywhere.
My 2 cents:
You claim « female survival depended on reading and following group consensus » (…) « women are wired to prioritize consensus over individual assessment when the two conflict »
Yes, dear eko, don't forget the subjection suffered and the submission demanded of these women for millennia. Women's emancipation is very, very recent in this context, whatever form it takes, whether it is celebrated or criticized.
In my opinion, everything you describe here about the influence and effects of social media on humans (and communities) applies to women as well as men. Because I know so many men who are prisoners of these networks!
Except maybe the "empathy" aspect, the argument that women (generally) are more focused on emotions and the inner self... But this too can be strongly questioned. Men also have these characteristics, which can be more or less developed depending on the individual.
From a strictly moral and psychological (not physical) point of view, I believe that it is very difficult and uncertain to decide what distinguishes a man from a woman. And we must admit that the individual variations are great. I only beleive that females and males are meant to complete each other.
The fact remains that a good part of these "masculine/feminine attitudes" are in fact social constructions that benefit some.
As you rightly put it, but for women AND man : « The problem is outsourcing your internal authority to whatever consensus the algorithm amplifies. ». And later : « Sovereignty means placing the full weight of authorship on your shoulders. No consensus to follow. No system to credit or blame. Just you, making decisions in uncertainty, owning the consequences completely.»
To put some things in historic context:
“Wicked” was a term for good, awesome when I was in 5th and 6th grade, and that was in 1975.
Astrology became ‘the thing’ well by the time we were listening to “The Age of Aquarius” by the Fifth Dimension in 1969.
The results are part of a cycle, not an apex. The vehicle is at an apex. Yes. You are right on regarding tribal consensus and the rest of your concept, but don’t exaggerate.
Do the research necessary to keep this from being sensationalist. You have a great point. Keep in grounded.
You’re proving my point.
The mechanism cycles because it’s evolutionary hardware.
What changed?
Algorithmic amplification at 2 billion user scale.
The 60s had books and magazines and communes.
Now we have VC-funded government surveillance apps with behavioral psychology built into notifications.
Same trap, unprecedented scale.
Right— I am agreeing!
Only mentioning that here it comes off when you say “The very word ‘wicked’ flips from evil to empowering.” Like it had never been that before. Yet it was a cool word of an entire generation.
It also sounds like you’re saying astrology wasn’t a trip we got off on as a reason to trust the stars or intuition rather than logic ever before. “Even men in the pickup artist community figured it out. Learn some astrology. Talk about her chart. Read her palm. She lights up every time.” Yeah, they did that then, too.
So it’s a cycle now magnified by all the rest of your stats, which we have never experienced before. 💯Excellent read.
I once knew pragmatic man whose wife had become an ardent astrologist. His summary of astrology: "It strikes me as 5,000 years' worth of statistical analysis." That sounds about right, don't it. In my early days I was close for a while with a Greek sorceress whose specialty was astrology. I gave her my birth info and she did my chart. She was amazed by the fact that the stars said I should take aspirin every day of my life. I took that as good advice. All the rest I've forgotten.
WHEW!! That one overwhelmed me. I had to stand up, take a walk, a few deep breaths, brew some coffee and eat some chocolate to get my mind to settle down. Thank U EKO. You finally answered a question that has been sorely testing me. For decades I have been observing, monitoring, and measuring the downfall of religion. Religion clearly reached its evolutionary peak in the 50s and 60s and then began to devolve into its downward slide in the 70s. In hindsight that is easy to see since it was a natural progression and regression cycle. Examples of which are to be found all around us in all walks of life. But at the turn of the new millennium something fundamental changed. The prograde/retrograde pattern suddenly and mysteriously changed almost overnight. What had been a steady downhill slide, suddenly became a vertical free fall over the edge of the cliff!
But what caused that sudden free fall? I've been collecting the pieces of that puzzle for years but was still unable to fit the pieces together to see the big picture. I had all the pieces, but was missing the correct perspective. The female pattern. I was actually applying it backwards. Today you showed me how to flip the pattern around, and BAM! Now it all makes sense. Like the old Johnny Nash song, "I Can See Clearly Now". The path in front of me is now illuminated.
We are an effective team!
Johnny Nash, born and died in Houston Texas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Nash
Jimmy Cliff made a famous version of "I Can See Clearly Now" recorded at FAME Studios in Florence Alabama backed by some white musicians known as The Swampers. What a world! What a time to be alive!
MA11, I want to understand your question. Please explain. Is it because the female gender had typically been the cultural/civilizing function? And we lost that when we started playing the disease to please game, regardless of Truth? I am totally missing this, please help.
Maybe this is related? I just remembered that 1992 was the political "year of the woman" when a record number of women were elected to congress. I naively thought that good, we'll get some good reforms in nutrition education, healthcare, etc., like RFK is doing. Instead, I was horrified when I realized instead, it turned into "control systems on estrogen!!" The nanny state became more solidified. In case anyone thinks I'm being offensive, I am female.
A very astute observation RN!! Thank you for sharing it.
I see that as an end result of the deliberate and calculated long term destruction of the marriage/family system. Inject women into government who have no long term experience of a happy productive marriage/family and what do you get? Ungrounded, immature and unwise leadership which is easily manipulated with a system such as the one EKO just described for us in this article.
DISCLAIMER: In no way whatsoever am I saying this to shift the blame for failed governance away from men. Despite these few failures by women in governance, the lion's share of the blame for failed governamce still sits on the shoulders of failed men. This handful of female governance failures are simply being heaped on top of the pre-existing mountain of male failures.
MA11, I'm especially interested in issues relating to addiction and processes enabling them. Trying to manage others' behavior is an addictive process termed "co-dependency." It is a no-win situation. Both the "Controller" and the "controlled" are prisoners. It enables the men to remain immature, and continue to operate without having to be held accountable. AND, it leaves the controller free to mind OB (other people's business), while leaving theirs unattended. I'm not excusing men, but I think they're blind to what is really going on. It hurts me so badly to see my brothers in Christ being so duped by their SO's, and feel so powerless to help without "minding OB!"
Sometimes hitting rock bottom is the only way some people can stop their destructive path. What's interesting about rock bottom is that it offers you no other option. Move to the left, move to the right and you're still at rock bottom. All you can do is see the light above you and start climbing your way toward it or stay at rock bottom. Rock bottom is like being at the bottom of a dry well. It is the exhaustion of all your options except the correct one.
Some people are more adept at navigating the complexities of life. Some people are better at accepting and following therapeutic help, be it medical, friendship, family, church. community etc.
Those who are poor navigators and poor "accepters" always have rock bottom as a means of last resort when all other options fail.
No matter if you learn to navigate or accept help, or slam yourself against the bottom, the Kingdom awaits everyone. Some will make it through its narrow door to true freedom in this mortal life, and some will walk through its wide doors of freedom and immortality through the resurrection. Only one thing is certain. The doors of the Kingdom, big or small are open to everyone. Father wishes everyone of His children to have eternal life. Only those who willingly reject it and turn away from Father will find themselves without life.
Like the Prodigal who returned after he "came to himself."
Furthermore, I firmly believe that was the year the "grievance industry" really took hold. I was attending university at the time and saw it firsthand on college campuses.
Little did I know, that the college campus was a war zone, when speech codes were thoroughly embedded in the bureaucracy. I believe one could trace the skyrocketing cost of college education from this point.
I considered myself an old-fashioned equity "feminist," believing in equality of opportunity, and instead was totally confused about the options being presented for "gender" identity/sexual freedom; what I later learned was called "gender feminism, by reading a 1994 book by Suzanne Hoff Sommers called "Who Stole Feminism." Very sad. She also wrote a book called "The War Against Boys."
In the years following, I saw this movement extend to the larger culture, until we have now total mass confusion. This started with the gender feminism movement, which became the multicultural movement... to police state.
Wow, I didn't have a clue I was going here. Is any of this relevant to the discussion here, if not, "never mind." (As Gilda Radner used to say!)
Totally relevant! You're expanding my own view. EKO planted a seed and from that grows roots, stem, branches, leaves...all good.
But what caused that sudden free fall?
What I'm referring to has nothing to do with the female gender specifically. It has to do with how advanced technology was suddenly injected into an evolutionary process to subvert it. It just so happened that it leveraged the female abilities that EKO showed us to carry out the subversion. Who's to say they couldn't have gone a different route and deployed systems to subvert male abilities instead? Perhaps they already have...
They have. Through women.!
MA11, Again, from a perspective of recovery, humans, unfortunately, need to hit bottom before we become willing to change. Rock bottom is good solid ground!
I Agree 100%. Sometimes you need to start over with a clean slate. Rebuilding a house on top of a faulty foundation will only lead to another disaster. Our civilisation has to come clean before it can make things right. It's the concept of putting new wine in old wineskins.
Maybe the boomer generation had to drive the thing totally over the cliff, so the next generations can clearly see what didn't work and, prayerfully, yes, rebuild on solid foundation, of persons as "images of God," instead of what they "appear to be." I was reminded of how the darker it is, the more clearly the light shines, and according to the physics of Chaos, Coherence becomes a strong magnetic attractor. Sanity is a coherent attractor
The internet porn industry certainly comes to mind. What are the things that men respond to? Narrow focus, dominance, corporate success, hero worship...what tools exploit those?