The Soul of America

How do we contrast the content of our age with the content of past ages?

Historical Diaries
Contemporary Human Archetypes
Contemporary Culture

The Transparency Society, by the author of The Burnout Society

Incoherence, chaos, confusion

• We then try to make our experience coherent with immense amounts of expression, journaling, therapy, meaning-making, essay-writing

Extremes (of speed, emotion, sensation, performance, socialization / isolation). Technology is an amplifier.

Major questions:

• What is worth paying attention to? How do we guard our attention whilst living in dense environments?
• What desires is it ok to indulge? What is excess? Why?

Movements
"Human flourishing" = Humanism
On Hippie Escapism
Seeking God or Community

Elite
Contemporary Elite Culture

Drugs
On Marijuana
Opiates, Fentanyl
Coffee
Tea

Technology
Information Overload

Entertainment
AV entertainment, McCluhan, Postman
Social media
Porn / onlyfans
UFC & WWE: modern colloseums

Diseases
Parasites
Heart failures
Cancer
Myopia
Diabetes
Asthma
Lyme
Auto-immune / CFS

Environment
Microplastics
Pollution of air and water
Global warming, Ibrahim Karim, EMFs
Green Building

Sexuality and Gender
LGBTQ+
Sexual freedom
Polyamory and the Honoring of Desire
Marriage
Kink
Consent

Mental Health
Phenomenology of Rajas
Depression
Anxiety
Schizophrenia
Bipolar
OCD

quote ficthe
illustration of the connections

Media, technology and marketing
In our age of mass electronic media, we face an unprecedented amount of distraction. This has been said many times, so details are not needed. Let's look at the consequences and the reactions to this.

There has been great interest in what I would call the mental immune system. We see tens of thousands of youtube videos on 'How To Increase Focus', '5 Tips To Stop Distraction', etc. This correlates to an increasing interest in Eastern practices like yoga and Buddhism, which have comprehensive, traditional theory and regime to both understand the nature of distraction, and develop one-pointedness.

This is the silver lining. On the darker side, we have what is probably the most addicted and sick population in known history. We see an extreme and unnatural distortion of energy and attention that leads to mental and physical illness.

Our media also gives us a great awareness of nearly invisible and global issues, and our technologies of world travel and communication gives us increased ability of global coordination.

• eating sugar
• cannot trust media environment. who can we trust? experts disagree. all sides presented to us. we must develop discernment, intuition.
• past, didn't want to drink, don't keep alcohol at the house
• now, extremely short time gaps to check social media, or googling some trivia, a kind of information addiction
• life moving at a much quicker pace requires us to be more conscious than before
• immense amount of resistance and distrust of our environment must be developed
• historically unprecedented
• plato's oligopolic man, hijacking our attention
• turns into a yogic discipline of mind. building up of psychic defense. that leads us to spirituality, or into extreme issues of addiction, we are likely in the most addicted age, that leads into mental health
• also leads to a great awareness of nearly invisible and global issues, and global coordination.
• or an extreme distortion of attention, energy, and libido that leads to mental (then physical) health issues and cultural issues

Public health and chronic illness
Just as we cannot trust our media environment, and must build discernment and immunity, we
Many our are calling the declining health of everyone, rich and poor, an epidemic of chronic illness.

• first with pesticides, then opiates and fentanyl, then everything PUFAS, PFAS / forever chemicals, mercury in the water, lead in the soil, then covid, scientism, distrust of doctors and the medical establishment
• autism, towing the line between physical and mental
• new relation to health, constantly thinking about our health, tracking, measuring, what would considered in every other age to be a disease in itself (dyspeptic, hypochondria) is now normal and even encouraged through fitness trackers, sleep trackers, extreme amounts of testing
• both good, because there are things like lead poisoning, and bad, because it is takes us away from the more beautiful and uplifting aspects of life, focuses us on disease, and drives people neurotic and insane, extreme fear in covid (link to brookings), large amounts of psycho-somatic illness, jumble real allergies to pesticides and unnatural foods, and fabricated allergies

Climate and our relation to the Earth and world problems

• ties to public health and media
• UN climate standards, world order, we all affect each other not only through the economy but also through the environment.
• Nuclear energy
• Along with the end of moore's law, we have to worry about effeciency again, after becoming very bloated
• Ties, again to degrowth
• Wasting 45% of our food
• Ecology and the lack of nutrients in our soil, a movement away from industrial agriculture.
• Changing from patrifocal to matrifocal societies

Groundlessness

• antithesis of returning to climate and soil
• not focusing on climate and soil, living in a world of symbols and abstractions
• eating food that is fake, not nourishing, not bio-compatible, because it stimulates the senses
• sex that is not real
• virtual reality is the pinnacle of this, already happened in virtual spaces that evolved from second life, eve online, runescape, maplestory, internet forums and social media like twitter, now in in fortnite and roblox, and will eventually be in VR
• growing up on the internet, detachment from a surrounding culture, sense of disconnection to physical place, a desire to move, or fly around to unite with real kindred spirits one has met online

Culture, identity, social justice, and progress

• massive change and illness changes culture. could be better or worse, but fragments it, at the very least.

• ties to public health and climate disasters and social justice and media and groundlessness

• Lack of trust in tradition as 'old white men' who have ruined the world

• founding father's are cancelled. religion has been cancelled. western canon has been cancelled. liberals / progressives, in bad taste to be patriotic, denying all the atrocities committed in the history of america, jumps of accusations of fascism

• a quest for identity, return to matrifocal, more grasping at indigenous traditions rather than noble / aryan heritage, or a rootlessness

• Looking of purpose and mission outside of glorifying the state, or chasing wealth, or tribalism

• helping others

• also aided by media, which shows someone in america starving children in africa, always exposed, but now more than ever, as we can consume an endless amount of it, video is much more powerful than text, and our videography has gotten extremely good, with cinematic music, etc, the power of documentaries

• climate change as a religion, veganism as a religion, which is exagerrated, but really it is finding purpose in trying to help others, but because there is no bible for social justice, or 'revelation', the ethics and virtues are very inconsistent, and often lead to strange places, such as 'antifa' who would probably describe themselves as social justice, or ugly and hypocritical vitriol

• heart in the right place, but the lack of comprehensive guidance, we can see the contrast with a more saintly approach to service and justice, as in gandhi, mlk, mother teresa, st francis of assissi

• a weaker, but interesting or present force, identity around ENTERTAINMENT media. circles around intense fanfiction. 'marvel or DC'. tumblr subcultures. star wars, star trek, comic book nerds, lotr nerds, harry potter nerds, etc, and now influencers / twitch streamers, paying money to them. cults of personalities

• subsection:

• another camp, not justice, but accelerating progress, and the promise of itense power. peter thiel and sam altman, discussion below.

• Deification of technology as a way to get us out of this mess, human maximalism, the belief in more and more technology and progress, meaning in progress

• going to mars, AI will change the world

• greatly intensifying the problems of media and technology, without culture, greatly enhancing it

• Technology as a black box! Almost a deity. We are still far from interpreting these massive neural networks, and their emergent properties. It is almost magical, but seems to be useful for many things. A new priest class, the monopoly of open AI, the promise of great wealth concentration and power, people in SF, who work at openAI, talking about which company will be first to a trillion dollar valuation, chatGPT the fastest growing app

• another camp, doubling down on nationalism in reaction to this

• conservatism, virtue, values

• steve bannon (idealogue behind trump), alexander dugin (idealogue behind putin), xi jinping, victor orban, eric zemmour, prime minister of italy, bronze age pervert, revival of thinkers like julius evola, republished by the hungarian political party, loved by both bannon and dugin

• peter thiel also here, a mix of both.

• who am i? christian nationalism in the US, nationalism in India and eastern europe.

• or a who am i that returns to spirituality, as we will see below

Doomerism, mental health, and psychology,

• connected to all the above
• those alienated from both nationalism and social justice, take refuge in absurdity, surrealism and self-aware humor, and doomerism (absurdist deep fried memes), or great addiction.
• infinite jest, christopher lasch, jim from the office
• many in freefall, lack of grounding
• anxiety, adhd, depression, bipolar disorder
• some hormonal, from the physical illness
• trendy to call people 'schizo', fundamentally, trusting no one, and not knowing what is true, thinking everyone is a fed, everything is a psy-op, and the truth is never what it seems (flat earth, moon landing fake, nuclear weapons are a hoax), coupled with the revealing of actual conspiracies that further betray trust (epstein's pedophilia ring, government hiding UFOs, common knowledge of CIA backed coups in other countries, false flags, and assisinations )
• dovetails with spirutalism as we will later see, as the occult and psychic powers (astral projection, manifestation, prophecy, channelling, contact with other realms) are becoming more and more mainstream
• others from lack of cultural guidance, nihilism, intense skepticism, confusion over what to do
• also tied into drug addiction, nihilism, school shootings, suicides, rappers like lil xan and lil peep making top charts, main thing is about they are alienated, dark, dont give a fuck, black hoodie energy, gen Z idolizing barred out depressed nihilistic xan addicts in their music. the last generation was what? rock, punk, metal, which is anti-authoritarian. before that, rock, reggae, psychedelics were not xanax.
• progression of what drugs we are doing!
• from marijuana and LSD / hippies, to cocaine / wall street bros and hard rockers / glam rock (when was that era), to xanax, opiates, fentanyl or ayahuasca, ketamine, mdma

Spirituality

• caused from above
• addiction -> hit rock bottom, join a 12 step program from addiction and find their higher power, turn to buddhism to combat endless anxiety, depression, distraction, unfulfillment, suffering,
• new age faith healing to combat chronic illness
• experience grace and turn to religion
• pixar / disney / oprah spirituality. continuation of paulo coehlo and some strands of 60s counterculture. finding your bliss, following your heart, finding that one things that calls to you. (counter-point 'so good they can't ignore you', ethics of authenticity), which is more the ethos of the older generation. become really good at serving your community. also quite unprecedented.
• wanting of order, structure, and discipline and turn to religion,
• or if they don't want the discipline, but want order, they turn to astrology.
• or ayahuasca / mushrooms and turn to spiritualism
• who am i? question of lack of identity can also become spiritual, the answer becoming infinite awareness.
• non-duality, both in the new age, and this revival of advaita and buddhism, 'we are all one', using a poetic interpretation of the discoveries of 20th century physics, 'a unified field', we are all energetic beings
• obsession with UFOs, life greater than us, the mysteries of the universe