First published by the ever groundbreaking WinterOak site on 23/04/25 most of these occurred to me while walking our dog (pictured below). Say hello to Luca the Bearded Collie whose only response to modernity, as much as I can ascertain, is that it is just too loud. I read a great anecdote about the poet WS Merwin (also paraphrased in my favourite observation - no.45). Who, whenever he met a new dog, would look into the animals eyes and ask ‘what do you know?’. What indeed?
50 observations from inside the belly of modernity:
If a politician of any stripe is speaking, even if truth, it will be in the service of a greater lie.
Everything you see, everything you hear and everything you feel via the glass of mass media, even if true, is in service of the lie.
Any accuracies in history are in service of the lie.
The ONLY consideration guiding the behaviour of multinational corporations is profit.
All ‘global’ crises are wealth and power transfers in disguise.
The use of any technology results in the loss of memory. The more powerful the technology the more profound the loss. At the apogee we will forget who we are.
Nature is abundant. There is no scarcity. Economics is bunk.
Everything is connected. Science is useful when this maxim is temporarily suspended, terminal when it is forgotten.
Knowledge at a high dosage can be fatal. The internet is an overdose.
The contention that the universe lacks purpose is consuming far more energy than the inverse ever did.
The quest for power is sufficient justification for its prevention.
Nearly all people are good. Unfortunately a tiny proportion of us have learnt how to manipulate the rest.
This few are hell bent on deceiving us into feudalism.
Digital identification and digital currency are the work of Satan and must be resisted at all cost.
The odds that we just happen to live at a time when all is revealed are vanishingly small.
It is highly likely that all our sacred cows will be slain, science is a temporary arrangement of current understandings.
The way in which we attend to the world changes the world.
We are pulled at least as much as we are pushed. This is everyone’s experience.
Power is the exchange of freedom for fear.
Centralisation is the purest manifestation of fear. Be not afraid.
Freedom is so fundamental even love depends on it.
The internet is the tree of knowledge, the smart phone the apple and AI is the snake.
Artificial intelligence is the ‘artificialising’ of intelligence.
In any domain AI is superior only if we first submit.
The propaganda against having children is an attack on innocence.
Progress is a rebranding. We are Aztecs with a marketing budget.
All wars are lies. The ordinary human cannot conceive of war without prior deception.
Either humility or certainty is the correct response to the universe. The resolution of this debate will decide our fate.
The vacuum created by the removal of God attracts the very worst people.
Ground up has a chance, top down will always be destroyed by infinite possibility.
To understand the least thing fully you would have to perceive the whole grammar in all its accidence. Until everything is continuous.
Nothing is discrete, everything is continuous.
The words entertainment and propaganda are now interchangeable.
Politics may sponsor, but can never inform, art.
The left are weaponised by false compassion, the right by real prejudice. Both are wrong.
Democracy is too easily domesticated to fight evil, only anarchy is wild enough.
Bribery is now delivered mostly after the event.
The side effect is the intention. Look at the outcome not the tagline.
Everything with an acronym is corrupt.
Psychology is deception dressed as a science. Freud was a Fraud.
The soul is resilient, nothing else has ever come under such relentless attack.
Even the lost know there’s something very wrong. Like a distant strain of music, lost, then heard again, their souls call out through the interference.
Thoreau was right: “In wildness is the preservation of the world”.
All of our ecological effort should be focused on the local: caring communities, living soil, drinkable rivers, breathable air, clean oceans.
In a hall of mirrors there is no eye to catch.
Whilst reason never discovered truth or beauty it is shameless in claiming credit.
The purpose of the glass vampire is to separate us from our intuitions, from our very humanity, from our souls. As Rilke said “Du mußt dein Leben ändern,” – “you must change your life”.
We must turn the internet off.
We are surrounded by the continuous presence of the divine. All it asks is our attention.
Love is all. All will be well.
Great observations. Amazing how 'progress' has been sold to the general public where every step in 'progress' has been another notch in enslavement. Internet of course being one of the big ones.
Would you please lead planet earth Michael? A revolution needs a leader. The bullet points provide much food for thought, well encapsulated!