‘Spiritual emergency’※1 is a term introduced by two transpersonal psychologists — Stanislav and Christina Grof — in 1989, to describe a disturbing spiritual experience which has some aspects of psychosis, but which should not be treated as ordinary mental illness. Instead, insist the Grofs, a ‘spiritual emergency’, if properly handled, can ‘have tremendous evolutionary and healing potential’.
I want to place this manoeuvre within the history of New Age spirituality and transpersonal psychology, and its troubled relationship with evolutionary theory and eugenics.
In The Art of Losing Control, I tried to find out how westerners find ‘ecstatic experiences’ today, and to what extent such experiences could be good for one — good in a pragmatist, eudaimonic sense of leading to greater flourishing.
『The Art of Losing Control』※8 では、西洋人が「恍惚とした体験」をどのように捉えているのか？また、そのような体験がどの程度まで人にとって良いものなのか？つまり、より大きな繁栄につながるというプラグマティスト的 ※9 、ユーダイモニック的 ※10 な意味での良いものなのか？を探ろうとしました。
As these historians explored, materialist philosophers and scientists have sought, since at least the 17th century, to marginalize and pathologize religious ecstasy, labelling it ‘enthusiasm’, ‘hysteria’, or various forms of psychosis, and describing it as symptomatic of either an over-active imagination, low intelligence, or brain disease.
For materialist thinkers like Jean-Martin Charcot and Henry Maudsley, ecstatic or mystical experiences were proof that you’re sick, insane, evolutionarily degenerate, unfit for civilized society, and should possibly be locked up.
On the other hand, various counter-cultural movements — ecstatic Christianity, Romanticism, the New Age — defensively declared that ecstatic experiences could be the greatest thing that ever happened to you. They could be proof that you were divinely-inspired, superhuman, elect.
There’s still this unfortunate dichotomy in western culture: either ecstatic experiences are proof you’re degenerate, or they’re proof you’re divinely elect.
I want to focus particularly on the attitude to ecstatic experiences found in the New Age occulture in the 1890s, because that’s where the roots of transpersonal psychology lie.
What one sees in the pioneers of New Age spirituality — in everyone from Madame Blavatsky to Vivekananda to Frederic Myers to Sri Aurobindo to Aldous Huxley — is a reaction to the triumph of Darwin’s materialist theory of evolution, and an attempt to incorporate aspects of evolutionary theory into a new spirituality.
This leads to a sort of spiritual Darwinism, to the idea that mankind is spiritually evolving to a higher level of consciousness, and mutating into a glorious new species possessed with hitherto latent potentialities.
What one also often finds, in this frame of thinking, is the idea that a select few are having special experiences (cosmic consciousness, peak experiences, samadhi, merging with the Supermind). This select few are the elite, the vanguard of evolution, the Nietzchean supermen, the first strains of a whole new species — homo novus.
This categorization of some well-to-do ecstatics as evolutionarily progressiveis a defensive manoeuvre against medical authorities like Henry Maudsley who would deem you primitive and insane if you admit to a spiritual experience.
It says, in effect, ‘we couldn’t possibly be primitive or insane — we’re fine, upstanding, successful, respectable members of the upper-class elite. For people like us, ecstatic experiences are actually proof of our evolutionary advancement.’
You see this class-based defence of ecstatic experiences in the papers of the Society for Psychical Research, the Edwardian organisation which in many ways laid the seeds for what would become transpersonal psychology.
エドワード時代に設立された心霊研究協会（Society for Psychical Research） ※25 の論文には、このような階級に基づく恍惚体験の擁護が見られます。同協会は、多くの点で後にトランスパーソナル心理学※4 となるものの種を蒔いた組織です。
It was co-founded in 1882 by Frederic Myers, who declared: ‘the kind of adversary present to my mind is a man like Dr Maudsley…I want…to save the men whose minds associate religion and the mad-house.’
The SPR, in its attempts to prove the legitimacy of spiritual experiences like telepathy or visions of the dead, often highlighted how respectable their witnesses were (‘this ghost-sighting was witnessed by the Duchess of Bedford’ etc). And indeed, it was an extremely well-connected organisation, with not one but two former prime ministers among its members.
Later, in Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley would also use his white, male, upper-middle-class privilege to oppose the labelling of drug-induced ecstasy as pathological or delinquent, and insist instead it was mystical and progressive.
エッツェル・カルデーニャ（1957年11月9日生まれ）は、スウェーデンのルンド大学のトーセン心理学教授であり「CERCAP（Centre for Research on Consciousness and Anomalous Psychology）」の所長を務めている。心理学的催眠学会、臨床・実験催眠学会の会長を務め、現在は『Journal of Parapsychology』の編集者である。開かれた科学的探求といくつかの超常現象の有効性を支持する意見を述べている。超心理学協会はカルデーニャに2013年チャールズ・ホノートン統合貢献賞を授与した。著書に『Altering Consciousness』、『Varieties of Anomalous Experience』などがある。
Over the next months and years, there will be many people exiting cultic bonds and beginning the often torturous process of healing their brains, hearts, and relationships. Some will have the resources to become activists who can reach out to their former communities.
They’ll be exiting QAnon, alt-right groups, anti-vax mom groups, anti-lockdown rally groups, anti-mask groups, and the online subscription communities of narcissistic messianic wellness influencers who offer love in one hand and terror in the other.
Many will have suffered from a triple isolation: from the outside world, from fellow members who offered toxic alliances disguised as friendship — and to whom they could not confess their doubts — and from their own sense of internal guidance. (cf. Stein)
The cultic group or ideology will have stolen precious, intimate things: marriages, family bonds, altruism, their capacity to trust. It might be very hard for them to grasp that there are people in the world who are earnestly trying to listen and tell the truth about things.
The injuries will be moral, social, and financial. With online indoctrination there can also be cognitive injuries: social media addiction issues, attention span loss, insomnia. When I left cultic groups I couldn’t string two sentences together on the page. My brain was not my own.
In order to restore a brain that had always read and written obsessively, I used to sit in my car on a country road and listen to the NPR news cycle, over and over again. Just to hear something that proved there were attempts in the world at clear and truthful communication.
If a survivor makes it back to social media to tell their story, they are re-entering a battle zone. Or a bar after going sober. They need space, time, and support in this space, on this screen, just as they need IRL resources, health care, and green spaces to collect themselves and start over.
This means it can really help to listen generously, thank them for showing up, avoid nitpicking, patronizing them, or shaming them with questions about why they got caught up. If they say something you don’t understand or 100% agree with, make a cup of tea and think about it.
These folks are precious resources moving forward. They know where they were. They know what worked and what didn’t work to bring them back. If they’ve gathered the gumption to return to the hellsites of Facebook or Twitter and share what they know, roll out the carpet for them. Throw a party.
Half of Donald Trump’s Twitter followers are fake, according to Newsweek. These are likely Russian orchestrated bots, and part of the extraordinary stealth data machine Trump built to get his way into the White House. These (and others from many accounts) will spam and troll your social media accounts.
President Trump has granted a waiver to Kellyanne Conway and Stephen Bannon so they no longer need to comply with White House ethics rules, according to The Daily Beast. This allows them to work with corporations and lobbyists with whom they worked before. This mean the uber wealthy Mercer family is now directly using its influence machine in coordination with the White House (more on them here). They own Breitbart and Cambridge Analytica which psychographically target your social media profiles.
The Daily Beastによると、トランプ大統領は、ケリーアン・コンウェイとスティーブン・バノンに権利放棄を認め、ホワイトハウスの倫理規定を遵守する必要がなくなったとのことです。 これにより、彼らは以前働いていた企業やロビイストと一緒に働くことができます。つまり、超富裕層であるマーサー・ファミリーが、その影響力を行使してホワイトハウスと直接連携していることになります（詳細はこちら）。 彼らはBreitbartとCambridge Analyticaを所有しており、ソーシャルメディアのプロフィールを心理学的にターゲットにしています。
Nothing will beat the bots and Trump more than people power.
ボットやトランプを打ち負かすには、人々の力に勝るものはありません。
Here’s what to do:
ここでは、その方法をご紹介します。
Share and like. Liking is great but the best thing you can do for content you trust is to share the post. Even better, post the URL of the content directly into your Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit accounts.
Fight fake news. These are sites that consistently run Trump and Russian propaganda: Breitbart, Infowars, Sputnik, and Russia Today. There are many others. If your friends post from there, comment on them by questioning the content and report the content to Facebook and Twitter.
Beware the trolls. When you read the words “fake news” or “conspiracy” from people who don’t normally interact with your feed, these are likely people paid by Russians to troll you, or the accounts have been hacked or hijacked by malicious spamware. Block these accounts and report the posts to Facebook and Twitter.
Reach out to your Republican friends. Remind them that this is not about party politics. This is about the U.S. Constitution, the sanctity of everyone’s vote, and the very freedoms we all cherish.
Spread the word. Let you friends, family, and followers know what to do.
言葉を広める。あなたの友人、家族、フォロワーに何をすべきかを知らせてください。
The war for your hearts and minds is being waged on social media, and things are about to heat up. There hasn’t been a time in history when your voice mattered so much. 皆さんの心を奪い合う戦いが、ソーシャルメディア上で繰り広げられ、事態はますますヒートアップしています。歴史上、あなたの声がこれほど重要視された時代はありませんでした。
You may have never heard Jared Kushner speak, but you’ve been influenced by the stealth data machine he built as a means of bringing his father-in-law to power. Kushner is by all accounts a power-hungry egomaniac who is really pulling the strings in the White House. Kushner introduced his father to Peter Thiel, the Facebookfounder who helped guide his digital war efforts. He’s been a close family friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, and is believed to have engineered an alliance between his father, Bibi, and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kushner is suspected of taking data stolen by Russia and other sources to build a database of likely voters, then used it to build a misinformation campaign helped by Russian-built bots, trolls and the fake new sites Breitbart and Infowars. He also had meetings with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Putin’s banker. He’s the son of a convicted criminal and used to run the real estate development firm built by his grandfather and father on dubious foreign cash sources.
Mercer is the uber-wealthy owner of one of the world’s largest hedge funds, Renaissance Technologies. Mercer’s company owes $7 Bn in back taxes, but this didn’t stop him from spending millions in donations to conservative political action committees and on Trump’s campaign. Mercer also owns Cambridge Analytica, a psychographic targeting firm which identifies personality traits from your social media likes and dislikes. Cambridge Analytica is thought to have influenced the Brexit vote, worked for Ted Cruz’s campaign and was ultimately hired by Jared Kushner’s stealth data machine. Mercer also owns Breitbart News, which created a lot of the fake news peddled to stoke people’s fears and biases.
Robert Mercer’s daughter and the heiress to his fortune. A decade ago, Mercer was running a Hell’s Kitchen bakery. Now she’s advising the President. She introduced the President to his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon as well as adviser Kellyanne Conway, and is rumored to have influenced the appointments of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Mercer’s man inside the White House. A notorious Islamaphobe and former chief propagandist at Breitbart News, he wants to wage a world war against Islam. When he threatened to resign because of infighting with Jared Kushner, it was Bekah Mercer who convinced him to stay.
Manafort was forced to resign as Trump’s campaign manager because of his links to Ukraine, yet he continues to advise the President on Russia-Trump matters. Manafort was paid $10M by one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s key oligarchs to promote Russia’s interests in the US and abroad. Manafort is yet to register as a foreign agent, is under scrutiny for dodgy real estate deals in Manhattan and conveniently lived in Trump Tower while on Putin’s payroll.
He served as Trump’s National Security Adviser for just 18 days after it was revealed he had been “compromised” by the Russians by then acting Attorney General Sally Yates. He was famously pictured sitting next to Vladimir Putin at a Russia Today gala in Moscow, has been paid by Russian firms and was working on behalf of the Turkish government to try abduct one of their political opponents living in the U.S. He retroactively registered as a foreign agent and is now widely believed to have turned against his former boss Donald Trump and could be talking to the FBI, turning into a State witness against his former boss.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, “Putin’s Man in State”
Tillerson is basically one of Putin’s oligarchs and his best friend in the West. Trump had never met Tillerson before hiring him in their first meeting. As a former Exxon CEO, he stands to benefit personally from the lifting of Russian sanctions which would result in resumed drilling in Russia’s Arctic Sea.
The son and daughter of Industrialist Edgar Prince. Erik is a notorious mercenary who gave the world Blackwater, which killed Iraqi civilians during the war there. Betsy is Trump’s Education Secretary and recently supported a state’s rights to discriminate against LGBT students. They are super wealthy and made healthy donations to the Trump campaign super-PACS. Prince is said to have negotiated a back-channel between the Russians and the Trump organization engineered by a United Arab Emirates sheikh. Betsy is married into the DeVos family.
DeVos is heir to the Amwayempire and runs Spectrum Health. Spectrum Health is important because his company is the subject of a FBI probe into server links between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank. It’s believed the server could have been cross-checking a database of potential voters put together by Russian intelligence and Spectrum Health (using private data?). Such a database could have aided Jared Kushner, the Mercers and Breitbart in strategic targeting for their fake news machine primed by Russian bots and trolls.
He worked Flynn, Sessions and probably everyone else on this list to buy them off with money in an effort to soften US policy to Russia. Trump invited him into the Oval Office with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. In that meeting, Trump handed confidential information and admitted to firing “nut-job” FBI Director James Comey for investigating him over Russia.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, “Obstructer-in-Chief”
He lied about meeting Russian Ambassador Kislyak and is supposed to be recused from all matters Russia but still fired FBI Director Comey. He also brought to the Trump campaign Carter Page, the man who allegedly took a bribe from Russian President Vladimir Putin (on behalf of Donald Trump) in exchange for the dropping of sanctions.
Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis), “The Defense”
These men are believed to have taken money from Russia and pro-Putin companies to fund the Republican campaign efforts in 2016. Here’s a short list of Republican Congressmen involved in the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees investigating Trump-Russia who are believed to have received money from Russia or their allies: Congressmen Devin Nunes (R-CA), Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Trey Gowdy (R-SC) and Senators Richard Burr (R-NC), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Tom Cotton (R-AK), and John Cornyn (R-TX).
As autumn draws in and we head towards the various holidays of the harvest season, I have been reflecting on the reason why you wouldn’t be going to your weird uncle’s house for Thanksgiving even if it wasn’t for the on-going pandemic: Q-Anon. As you know from the back catalogue, here at the blog we are slightly obsessed with QAnon (in a chill way, between buds). So, in the interest of specificity, I have been thinking about how at its heart, QAnon is just a reheated version of medieval Antisemitic beliefs updated for people who have not taken the divorce well.
Of course, I have also written before on how Antisemitism is hardwired into medieval Europe. Part of this is down to the fact that it is codified into Christianity writ large. (Anyone who denies this should be immediately asked to explain how the conversion of the Jewish people at the Apocalypse is not, in fact, Antisemitic to you immediately.) Part of this is because that they were just kinda jerks, I guess. Having said that, the incidents of the twentieth century show that really if we want to talk about Antisemitism it is modern Europeans who really took it to the next level.
The QAnon gang seem to have wanted to pick up where the Nazis and medieval people left off, sadly. So, as a part of their little club they have grandfathered in several of the more Antisemitic beliefs at play in the medieval period. I am in no way the first person to have noticed and written on this. For example earlier this month, David Livingstone Smith wrote a short piece on this for Forward. Meanwhile over at the Daily Beast they noted that Mary Ann Mendoza, a QAnon enthusiast, was forced to pull out of speaking at the Republican National Convention after she retweeted an Antisemitic conspiracy theory. I am, however, the cutest person to write about this, so get ready for story time.
QAnonの軍団は、悲しむべきことに「ナチスや中世の人々が捨て去ったもの」を拾い集めたかったようです。そのため、彼らの小さなクラブの一部として、中世に存在した反ユダヤ主義的な信念のいくつかを取り入れているのです。このことに気づいて書いたのは、決して私が初めてではありません。例えば、今月初めには、David Livingstone Smith氏がForward誌にこの件に関する短い記事を書いています。一方、Daily Beast紙では、QAnonの熱狂的なファンであるMary Ann Mendozaが、反ユダヤ主義的な陰謀論をリツイートしたことで、共和党全国大会での講演を辞退せざるを得なくなったことを紹介しています。とはいえ、このことを書くのは私が「一番かわいいの子」なので、物語の時間に備えておいてください。
For a medievalist, the most obvious way in which QAnon and medieval Antisemitism overlap is all of the accusations of child torture and murder. For those blissfully unaware, the major QAnon thing is that there is a secret international society of elite pedophiles which traffic and rape children, but also torture them in order to extract something called Adrenochrome from them. (I say “major” because there is a lot going on in the QAnon conspiracy thing, and I in no way encourage you to look into it.)
Adrenochrome is a real chemical compound used as an Antihemorrhagic. It is synthesised through the oxidation of epinephrine. Of course, that is not what the QAnon people believe or care about. What they care about is my man Hunter S. Thompson’s in no way made up claim that, “There’s only one source for this stuff… the adrenaline glands from a living human body. It’s no good if you get it out of a corpse.” (Yes I know that technically Dr. Gonzo says that, not Hunter, but he wrote it, so shut your face and complain to your mum.)
Anyway, these people spend all the ample time that they have now that they are alienated from their families convincing themselves that Hillary Clinton is personally terrorizing tortured children to stimulate adrenaline which she then uses to keep her alive based on something that a gonzo writer who had his ashes shot out of a cannon by Johnny Depp wrote. I’m not making this up.
※ Stammheim Missal、J.Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles) 、Ms.64 (97.MG.21) 、の洗練された反ユダヤ主義的なディテールです。86
This is a lot like medieval beliefs about Jewish people in that there was a specific and on-going belief that they were engaged in what we refer to as “blood libel”. (Yes yes I have written about that before too. Deal.) This was the concept that Jewish people were kidnapping, torturing, and killing Christian children in a dark inversion of both the passion of Christ and the Mass. Stories were told of Jewish people devouring Christian children just as Catholics would consume the Eucharist, or of luring innocent young children with sweets into a crucifixion. Obviously none of this was true, but that did not stop Christians from wilding out any time a Christian child was found dead and attacking Jewish communities as a result. They would then celebrate by canonising the dead children locally (a practice which the Church repeatedly walked back, to their credit.)
Case in point, the hagiography of [former] Saint William of Norwich who was sadly found dead in 1144. By 1173, a local monk Thomas of Monmouth saw fit to commit what he believed was the passion of the young William to parchment. Much like the QAnon people, Thomas had some pretty, uh, extensive thoughts on how William suffered and died at the hands of his captors. He wrote about the child’s death at length, claiming that William was lured and kidnapped by a group of Jewish people on Palm Sunday. At first he was treated nicely, but then they…
“…suddenly seized hold of the boy William as he was having his dinner and in no fear of any treachery, and ill-treated him in various horrible ways. For while some of them held him behind, others opened his mouth and introduced an instrument of torture which is called a teazle [a wooden gag] and, fixing it by straps through both jaws to the back of his neck, they fastened it with a knot as tightly as it could be drawn.
After that, taking a short piece of rope of about the thickness of one’s little finger and tying three knots in it at certain distances marked out, they bound round that innocent head with it from the forehead to the back, forcing the middle knot into his forehead and the two others into his temples, the two ends of the rope being most tightly stretched at the back of his head and fastened in a very tight knot. The ends of the rope were then passed round his neck and carried round his throat under his chin, and there they finished off this dreadful engine of torture in a fifth knot.
But not even yet could the cruelty of the torturers be satisfied without adding even more severe pains. Having shaved his head, they stabbed it with countless thorn points, and made the blood come horribly from the wounds they made. [Jesus had worn a crown of thorns before his death.] And so cruel were they and so eager to Inflict pain that it was difficult to say whether they were more cruel or more ingenious in their tortures. For their skill in torturing kept up the strength of their cruelty and ministered arms thereto.
And thus, while these enemies of the Christian name were rioting in the spirit of malignity around the boy, some of those present ad judged him to be fixed to a cross in mockery of the Lord’s Passion … after all these many and great tortures, they inflicted a frightful wound in his left side, reaching even to his inmost heart, and, as though to make an end of all, they extinguished his mortal life so far as it was in their power.”[1]
Aside from the, you know, batshit ideas about how people just looooovvvvee torturing children, for reasons, The William of Norwich story also shares a hallmark of QAnon theory: the idea of a shadowy world wide “cabal” of Jewish people who are secretly controlling the world. In addition to basically any political actor they do not like, the QAnon people enjoy throwing in wealthy and powerful Jewish people as a part of their conspiracy, namely George Soros and the Rothschilds. Because, you know, these individuals with pretty much diametrically opposed political views can all get together and agree that they just love a spot of child torture or whatever.
This is linked to the older conspiracy of the New World Order, which takes its cues from the literal Nazis, and slightly further back to the fake idea of a fake thing called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This was a text from 1903 that alleged to be the minutes of a very real meeting of a shady cabal of Jewish elders who were secretly plotting to take over the world. As you do. This belief crops up in QAnon itself from time to time, but is also on display in the William hagiography, where Thomas of Monmouth claims the boy met his fate because…
“…the chief men and Rabbis of the Jews who dwell in Spain assemble together at Narbonne, where the Royal seed [resides], and where they are held in the highest estimation, and they cast lots for all the countries which the Jews inhabit; and whatever country the lot falls upon, its metropolis has to carry out the same method with the other towns and cities, and the place whose lot is drawn has to fulfill the duty imposed by authority.”[2]
So yeah, in the minds of medieval Christians there was always a secret Jewish conspiracy to murder and torture innocent children because, “every year they must sacrifice a Christian in some part of the world to the Most High God in scorn and contempt of Christ, that so they might avenge their sufferings on Him; inasmuch as it was because of Christ’s death that they had been shut out from their own country, and were in exile as slaves in a foreign land.”[3] There may be no mention of adrenochrome, but we see the same idea that as a group these powerful individuals simply hated the “purity” of god-fearing Christian children and enjoyed torturing them as a result.
At play in the medieval conception of the nefarious and secret Jewish cabal was also the same thing that we see in QAnon, a firm belief that while all of this child torture was clearly going on, it was being allowed because it suited the needs of the powerful. Much as the Clintons or Obamas surface alongside the shady Jewish conspirators of QAnon there was a medieval perception of Jewish people as linked to and protected by royalty, which William alludes to this in his hagiography with his remark that the Jewish cabal is located in Narbonne alongside the “royal seed”. The idea was able to flourish because, well, it is true that Jewish people literally were linked to the monarchy in a number of ways.
They royal connection is linked to the fact that Jewish people were expressly forbidden from taking part in ordinary trades or even just peasant life in the medieval period because of, you know, all of the Antisemitism. They were instead explicitly forced into roles as money lenders. This is because of the conception of lending at interest as a sin, usury, during the medieval period as I have written about before. Jewish people, however, were not prevented within Judaism from lending to those outside of their religion. So because they could lend money at interest they were then forced to lend money at interest if they wanted to live, well, anywhere in Europe.
Because lending money was very useful to many rulers, many of them would place Jewish people under their explicit protection. Hell, in England Jewish people were explicitly invited into the Kingdom after the Norman Conquest by royal invitation. As a part of this, Jewish people usually paid taxes on their lending directly to the crown and were often subject specifically and only to royal law. This rankled Christians who a) were mad because they were in debt to a bunch of people they saw as outsiders, and b) they felt like the Jewish people they were in debt to were getting better treatment than they were.
Lest you, like the medieval Christians, think that being under royal control was somehow a good thing, I refer you to the words of one of my least favourite Holy Roman Emperors, Louis IV of Bavaria: “You, the Jews, your bodies—as well as your property—belong to us and to the empire, and we can do to you, treat you, and handle you the way we want and consider proper.”[4] SO yeah, less of a good thing, and more of a vibe that Jewish people were literal chattel, something like animals. You know, special treatment! Connections! Not a perpetual state of subjugation that they as a group are completely unable to control and have been forced into by the powerful.
As depressing as reflecting on all of this is, it is also important to reflect on it. We need to face down the very real wrongs that medieval society perpetuated and reflect on how they built the world around us. We also need to study these things so that we can pick up on the ways in which modern conspiracy theories like QAnon are Antisemitic as hell and also extremely and unbelievably unimaginative. These same tropes are recycled time and again so that those who perpetuate them can give their beliefs credence. They see Antisemitic legends like the story of William not as the disturbing reflections of an unequal society that they are, but as a deep truths that those of us who haven’t succumbed to a deeply racist and unbelievably stupid conspiracy theory are refusing to engage with.
It is incumbent upon all of us to engage with these medieval legends like that of WIlliam of Norwich so that we can repeat this one actually true thing– blood libel is not real. It was not real when Thomas of Monmouth wrote an extended wank fantasy about it, and it was not real when whichever shady mofo who is profiting off selling Q merch reheated it to sell to a bunch of alienated Boomers in a collapsing empire. William of Norwich isn’t a saint because this didn’t happen to him. There was no group of Jewish elders in Narbonne casting lots to decide the fate of young children. And there aren’t a series of underground caves in the United States where children are being tortured to extract a drug which Donald Trump is systematically shutting down.
When people in the medieval period had a difficult life, it wasn’t because Jewish people were taking advantage of them – it was because they lived in a deeply unequal society where power and money were concentrated in the hands of the ruling class. When Americans now suffer it has nothing to do with some shady Jewish people reveling in their misery – it is because they live in a deeply unequal society where power and money are concentrated in the hands of the ruling class. This isn’t a conspiracy. There is no secret. Life is hard because rich people want to be richer and they don’t care about you. It has absolutely nothing to do with Jewish people, and there are no children being tortured in secret, that is happening in the open in sweatshops. You want to get mad at something? Get mad at inequality and also Antisemitism while you are at it. You don’t have access to secret knowledge, you are just a dick.
Today at Going Medieval HQ we are excited to have a guest blog by kick-ass art historian working on medieval medical visual culture, and the other half of Medieval Dick Twitter, Dr Sara Öberg Strådal. Follow her on Twitter for excellent meme action, updates about growing your own medieval pigment garden, and generally correct opinions.
本日、Going Medieval本部では、中世の医療用視覚文化を研究している美術史家であり、Medieval Dick TwitterのメンバーでもあるSara Öberg Strådal博士をゲストにお迎えしています。 彼女のTwitterをフォローすると、素晴らしいミームアクションや、中世の顔料庭園を育てるための最新情報、そして一般的に正しい意見を得ることができます。
If you’re blessed enough to not have heard about QAnon. Congratulations. You should leave this post right now and go and do something nice for yourself.
QAnon is a super strange radical internet cult that believes that Donald Trump is a divine saviour who is working against the Deep State to save America. Every other day there is a new coded message, a so-called “Q Drop”, predicting mass arrests and explaining that MS13 are bad because they are funded and run by Democrats. IDK. At best it is borderline incomprehensible, and at worst it is also super racist. Followers of Q will interpret any aspect of Trump’s presentation and twitter presence (his back-combed hair signified coming mass arrests) and personal biography (see the fairly fringe belief that Trump can time travel and did so to get his uncle to write some shitty children’s books to predict his rise to power).
Don’t worry though, the movement is also imbued with the weirdo apocalypticism and eschatological thinking that permeates American evangelical Christianity. They believe that Hilary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Jay-Z, and Marina Abramovic take part in the trafficking and torture of children to consume their adrenochrome (a chemical compound that exists) to maintain their youthful appearance (a result of adrenochrome which does not). This obviously very closely echoes the blood libel allegations, which this blog has talked about before, that would precede persecution, murder and expulsion of Jewish people from European towns and regions throughout the later medieval period. (The TL/DR of blood libel is that if a gentile kid went missing, medieval people would accuse the local Jewish population of killing said child in an unholy mass and consuming its flesh and blood. As you do.) This form of anti-Semitism is one of the most persistent Western cultural phenomena, so I am not surprised that it pops up here as well (just disappointed).
Medieval conceptions of knowledge are different from our modern ones (obvs). Medieval thinkers and scientists operated under a different system and with a different set of intellectual dogma. I could list all the things that were understood or invented during this one-thousand-year period (Earth was round! ‘Retrograde’ motion of Mercury was observed! Surgeons could cure cataracts!) but I’m not going to because this is about a medieval concept that has been overhauled and largely forgotten in modern discourse.
Medieval people believed that the world was divinely ordered. Thus, through the close study of nature, it was possible to begin to comprehend The Divine. St Augustine, Church father and man-crush of pretty much every medieval thinker, calls Nature a ‘handmaiden’ for divine contemplation. Therefore, the study of numbers, also known as Numerology was A Big Deal. Often drawing of Pythagorean or pseudo-Pythagorean (e.g. when medieval or classical authors would pretend they were Pythagoras to give their ideas more authority) writings, medieval scholars would extrapolate on the importance of different numbers and their correlation with past and future events.
For medieval people, all numbers were imbued with meaning and significance. For example, the number three stood for the Holy Trinity; four was the cardinal directions and the elements; and nine is the number of heavenly choirs. These are just a few examples – many different numbers were important to medieval scholars, because they provided clues to the true nature and will of an all-knowing, all-powerful God. For medieval thinkers, the world was a system where all information and facts originated from the same divine source and striving for knowledge was understood as recovery of knowledge lost after the fall of man, so this system makes sense. That is why the greatest thinkers of these periods relied so heavily on the scholars that went before them, on the received knowledge handed down from earlier generations. Scientific exploration served to uncover the mysteries of God and to reconnect humans with the divine knowledge they had lost after being kicked TF out of Eden.
Because God was in everything, and the world was ordered according to his wishes and demands, focusing intently on Scripture and on the texts produced by Church Fathers makes a lot of sense. QAnon, on the other hand, is the absolute dumbest people alive trying to apply this way of thinking to memes.
In this tweet for example, the astute QAnon commentator is ‘demonstrating’ that the Q Drop on the right (arguing that Barack Obama’s parents studied Russian because they were Soviet Agents during the Cold War) has been confirmed in a tweet by Trump about Meghan Markle because he used the word ‘Cold’ and posted it at 8:44.
Irenaeus, the second century Greek Bishop, calculated the Number of the Beast based on the Greek word Lateinos. By adding all the numerical values attached to each letter he got the number 666.
Similarly, this intrepid QAnon interpreterwants us to remember that Q is the 17th letter of the alphabet, so Julian Assange being indicted on 17 counts is a significant message?
Another example of the fucking batshit crazy nonsense these people get up to can be seen in the QClock:
また、QClockには、このような人たちが行う狂気じみた行為の一例が見られます。
This is some Nostradamus-type bullshit where avid Q-followers look at this graphic-design-is-my-passion-jpg, and then mine Trump’s twitter to find evidence that all Things That Happen are part of a complex battle against the Deep State and that a fragile 71-year old woman is literally eating children.
In this one regard, QAnon, the weakest minds of a generation, are operating within the same closed intellectual ecosystem as medieval numerologists, they believe that the truth can be found in a particular text filled with clues to be uncovered. But, whereas medieval thinkers were using logic and laying the groundwork for modern scientific inquiry, QAnon followers believe that they are finding the hidden meanings behind the nonsense tweets randomly generated by a very angry racist and a confusing infographic.
All of this is, of course, a bunch of disturbing nonsense, but it’s also interesting because the QAnon fools are proving both modern conceptions of knowledge, wherein we are “discovering” and learning more as a group, and medieval people, who think we are recovering knowledge to get back to a divine whole at the same time. No one is learning anything from this at all, except maybe that there are limits to your family’s patience. Good luck to all involved.
Sports-presenter turned conspiracy-theorist David Icke took centre-stage in April, appearing in a video for London Real, in which he suggested COVID19 was caused by 5G (perhaps as part of the global plot run by a secret order of alien lizards, which Icke has consistently described). The video was watched millions of times on YouTube and on LondonLive before YouTube and Ofcom stepped in to get it taken down.
The same week, a documentary appeared called Out of Shadows, recycling the 2016 ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy theory that a secret order of Democrats and Hollywood celebrities run a paedophile ring centred on two Washington pizza restaurants. The documentary got two million views in a day.
同じ週にドキュメンタリー「アウト・オブ・シャドウズ（Out of Shadows）」が登場しました。2016年の陰謀論「ピザゲート」を再利用したものです。民主党とハリウッドセレブの秘密結社がワシントンのピザレストラン2店舗を中心に、小児性愛者の組織を運営しているというものです。このドキュメンタリーは1日で200万回再生されました。
We’ve also seen a conspiracy theory that COVID19 is part of a plot led by Bill Gates and the World Health Organisation to get the world to take his vaccine and implant his chip surveillance. Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones of Infowars have claimed for over a decade that Gates’ huge funding for vaccines is actually a eugenicist plot to reduce the world’s population. This theory was taken up and enthusiastically spread this week by an anti-vaccine entrepreneur called Dr Shiva, who claims he invented email. A TV interview with him has been watched six million times in a week.
Now in some ways this is predictable. The pandemic has led to a breakdown in knowledge and certainty. We don’t know much about the virus or the best way of dealing with it, but we know it’s killing a lot of us and we’re afraid. This is happening to the entire human race at the same time, and we’re all connected on the internet.
This is creating a unique opportunity for fringe beliefs and fringe thinkers to take centre stage. Some might be interesting — Universal Basic Income, say — but some really belong back on the fringe.
I have been disheartened to see leading influencers in my community — that’s to say, western spirituality — spreading the conspiracy theories I mention above. I want my community to be of service to humanity during this crisis, rather than actively spreading bad ideas (particularly anti-vaccine conspiracies — finding a vaccine seems our best hope for getting out of this without 1% of the population, 75 million people, dying of the virus).
As various New Age influencers have said this week, ‘conspiracy theory’ is a charged term. It can be a way of simply dismissing a topic without considering it.
Some things dismissed as ‘conspiracy theories’ might really have something behind them. UFOs and extra-terrestrials, for example, are dismissed as conspiracy theories, but to me it seems probable there is life on other planets and that some of it is more intelligent than us.
The idea there was a plot behind JFK’s assassination is another ‘conspiracy theory’ which I think may be more than a theory. Child abuse in the Catholic church is another scandal that could have been dismissed as a conspiracy theory when it really was a conspiracy — ie an epidemic of abuse covered up by the Vatican.
Still, one needs a powerful torch of critical discrimination in these murky and liminal swamp-lands. When you get to Pizzagate, we seem to be very much in the subconscious realm of archetypal, magical thinking — secret symbols and codes, hidden orders of powerful and evil perverts. We are in Dan Brown territory here.
My first thought was, there are certain personality traits that make one prone to being ‘spiritual but not religious’ — free thinking, distrust of authority and institutions, a tendency to unusual beliefs or experiences, a tendency to detect ‘hidden’ patterns and correspondences, and an attraction to alternative paradigms, particularly in alternative health — which would all make one more prone to conspiracy theories.
There seems to be some evidence for this. This 2018 study by Hart and Graether, from the Journal of Individual Differences, found, in two surveys of 1200 people, that the strongest predictor of conspiracy thinking was ‘schizotypy’, which is a personality trait that makes one prone to unusual beliefs and experiences, such as belief in telepathy, mind-control, spirit-channelling, hidden personal meanings in events etc. People who are ‘spiritual but not religious’ have been found to score more highly in schizoptypal personality traits than both the religious and the non-religious.
これにはいくつかの証拠があるようです。『Journal of Individual Differences』誌に掲載されたHartとGraetherによる2018年の研究では、1200人を対象とした2つの調査で、陰謀思考の最強の予測因子は「統合失調症傾向（スキゾタイピー）」であり、これはテレパシー、マインドコントロール、スピリチュアルチャネリング、出来事に隠された個人的な意味などの「異常な信念や経験を持ちがちな性格特性」である。「霊的ではあるが宗教的ではない」人々は、宗教的および非宗教的の両方よりも、統合失調症の性格特性でより高いスコアを獲得することがわかっています。
We have to be a little careful here, as there is a risk of tautology. The scientific definition of ‘schizotypal’ basically includes ‘having spiritual beliefs’, so it’s not surprising spiritual people ‘score highly in schizotypy’. So this paper is not really telling us anything other than the sort of people who have spiritual beliefs and experiences are often also into conspiracies. It doesn’t mean they’re wrong or mentally ill. But it may mean they don’t score highly in belief-testing and critical thinking.
This article found that being into ‘spirituality’ and alternative medicine correlated with being anti-vaccines, while this article found both anti-vaxx attitudes and pro-alternative medicine beliefs were connected to magical thinking. You can be pro-vaxx and into spiritual thinking as well, by the way — Larry Brilliant, the epidemiologist who helped eradicate smallpox, was given his mission by Ram Dass’ guru, Neem Karoli Baba, as he recounts here.
Finally, two important articles from religious studies. The first is a 2011 article by Ward and Voas from the Journal of Contemporary Religion (behind a paywall alas), on what they describe as the surprising new phenomenon of ‘conspirituality’ — the overlap between New Age spirituality and conspiracy thinking. They describe ‘conspirituality’ as
最後に、宗教学から2つの重要な論文を紹介します。一つ目は『Journal of Contemporary Religion』誌に掲載されたWardとVoasによる2011年の論文である（残念ながら有料）。彼らは、「コンスピリチュアリティ」という驚くべき新しい現象、つまりニューエイジの精神性と陰謀論の重なりについて述べている。彼らは「コンスピリチュアリティ」を次のように説明している。
a rapidly growing web movement expressing an ideology fuelled by political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldviews. It has international celebrities, bestsellers, radio and TV stations. It offers a broad politico-spiritual philosophy based on two core convictions, the first traditional to conspiracy theory, the second rooted in the New Age: 1) a secret group covertly controls, or is trying to control, the political and social order, and 2) humanity is undergoing a ‘paradigm shift’ in consciousness. Proponents believe that the best strategy for dealing with the threat of a totalitarian ‘new world order’ is to act in accordance with an awakened ‘new paradigm’ worldview.
This 2015 article, by Egil Apsrem and Asbjorn Dyrendal, responds to Ward and Voas’ article by suggesting ‘conspirituality’ is not a new or surprising phenomenon, but instead emerges from the historical context of the 19th and 20th century ‘occult’. They write:
The cultic milieu is flooded with “all deviant belief systems” and their attendant practices. Moreover, the communication channels within the milieu tend to be as open and fluid as the content that flows through them. The resulting lack of an overarching institutionalized orthodoxy enables individuals to “travel rapidly through a variety of movements and beliefs”, thus bridging with ease what may appear on the surface as distinct discourses and practices. Political, spiritual, and (pseudo)scientific discourses all have a home here, and they easily mix. Joined by a common opposition to “Establishment” discourses rather than by positively shared doctrinal content, conspiracy theory affords a common language binding the discourses together.
In other words, the Occult is a Petri dish for the breeding of all sorts of mutant hybrid memes, some of them helpful, some of them toxic (depending on your worldview).
Let me add to this emerging discourse by suggesting that conspirituality theories are a form of mystical or ecstatic experience. I want to compare two forms of mystical experience.
The first is a sort of extroverted euphoric mystical experience: ‘Everything is connected. I am synchronicitously drawn to helpers and allies, the universe is carrying us forward to a wonderful climactic transformation (the Rapture, the Omega Point, the Paradigm Shift) , and we are the divine warriors of light appointed by God / the Universe to manifest this glorious new phase shift in human history.’
The second is a paranoid ‘bad’ trip version of the euphoric ‘good’ trip. ‘Everything is connected, there is a secret order being revealed to me, but I am not part of it. It is an evil demonic order, and it is trying to control me and everyone else. They have a Grand Plan and it is taking shape now. But perhaps I, and one or two others, can wake up to this Grand Plan, and expose it, and at least hide from it.’
The first trip is a euphoric ego-expansion (I am God! I am the Cosmic Universe evolving!) and the second is paranoid ego-persecution (The Universe is controlled by Evil Demons who are against me!)
In both, the individual awakens to this hidden reality. But in the first, they are a superpowered initiate in the hidden order and a catalyst for a Millennarian transformation, in the second they are a vulnerable and disempowered exposer of the powerful hidden order. (Millennarian, by the way, means that, like Robbie Williams, you believe in a coming Millennium, or Age of Love).
These are two sides of the same coin, two sides in the same game. Both are examples of mystical / schizotypal /magical / dream thinking. In both, the ego is part of a grand cosmic drama — in the first, they are the divine appointed catalyst for Phase Shift / humanity’s rebirth, in the second, they are the heroic exposer of the Hidden Order.
William James, father of American psychology, made this point in The Varieties of Religious Experience, where he writes that paranoia is a form of diabolical mysticism, a sort of religious mysticism turned upside down. The same sense of the ineffable importance of the smallest events, the same text and words coming with new meanings, the same voices and visions and leadings and missions, the same controlling by extraneous powers; only this time the emotion is pessimistic: instead of consolations we have desolations; the meanings are dreadful; and the powers are enemies to life.
If we look at the history of the occult (I recommend Gary Lachmann’s Secret Teachers of the Western World as a popular intro), ever since the Reformation there have been secret orders of spiritual-political ecstatic globalists dedicated to a Millennarian project of global transformation. That’s what Renaissance magi were into, and Rosicrucians, and the Masons, and the Illuminati — the foot-soldiers of the Enlightenment were positive conspiracy theorists. So was HG Wells and his ‘Open Conspiracy’— he was supposedly a rationalist, but really he was preaching a sort of occult-scientific polyamorous universalist new religion. So were Theosophists like Annie Besant. So were New Age pioneers in the 1960s like Marilyn Ferguson (author of The Aquarian Conspiracy, one of the best-selling books of the 1980s) and Barbara Marx Hubbard, champion of a globalist evolutionary spirituality. You can probably think of people into this sort of scene today — spiritual-political ecstatic globalists waiting for a golden New Age of global justice, perennial philosophy and polyamorous love.
Globalist Millennarians tend to be quite optimistic (‘we are becoming Gods! We can live forever!’) and quite well-connected — they connect together with fellow globalist Millennarians through think tanks, associations, conferences, networks and festivals. Barbara Marx Hubbard, the indefatigable champion of ‘evolutionary spirituality’, is an example. She thought homo sapiens was about to ‘phase shift’ into homo universalis, on December 12 2012 to be precise, and she thought she and her friends were the divinely-appointed catalysts for this Millennarian transformation. She was extremely well connected and spread her ideas through all kinds of organisations and networks like the Committee for the Future and the Centre for Integral Wisdom. Indeed, networking was part of her spirituality (she called it ‘supra-sexing’.)
On the other hand, you have paranoid conspiracy thinkers who are anti-globalists, like Infowars’ Alex Jones or evangelical Lee Keith (his book cover is below), who may see ecstatic globalists as an evil and demonic hidden order pulling the strings of global events. Anti-globalist paranoid conspiracy thinkers trace the very networks that ecstatic networkers like Barbara Marx Hubbard work through. ‘See!’, they say. ‘They all know each other through these think-tanks and informal organisations.’
※ リー・ペンの『False Dawn』は、バーバラ・マルクス・ハバードのような恍惚としたグローバリストを「悪魔に支配された優生主義者の世界国家エリート」とみなす、偏執的な反グローバリストの陰謀の一例です。この種の陰謀は、マリリン・ファーガソンが1981年に出版した『The Aquarian Conspiracy』のような恍惚としたグローバリストのニューエイジ本への反応として、1990年代以降、アメリカの福音派右派で盛んになりました（1991年のパット・ロバートソンの『New World Order』がその良い例です）。
Where one group are ecstatic, optimistic, super-empowered, insider (and entitled) conspirators, the other are resentful, pessimistic, paranoid, disempowered conspirators. One group think they are an elite evolving into a new God-like species (see for example HG Wells’ ecstatic globalist conspiracy Men Like Gods), the other group thinks this secret elite alien species wants to become Gods and control everyone else (see for example Anthony Forwood’s paranoid conspiracy book They Would Be Gods).
Their thinking styles are in some ways quite similar — schizotypal, magical, prone to seeing secret influences, hidden connections, and Grand Plans. Above all, both over-estimate the competence of elites to control the world . They under-estimate the dumbness of elites and the chaotic cluster-f*ck of actual politics. Both think the elite are superhuman — either divinely-inspired or demonically-controlled.
I think it is possible to be prone to both these forms of magical thinking, to switch between ecstatic, optimistic Millennarianism and paranoid persecutory conspiracy thinking. From ‘everything is connected and I’m a central part of this wonderful cosmic transformation!’’ to ‘everything is connected and I’m at risk from this awful global plot!’ I think someone like Robert Anton Wilson, perhaps, was prone to both sorts of thinking.
Now we can dismiss this sort of thinking as simply bullshit religious enthusiasm. Both forms of it. And I feel a strong tendency at the moment to do that, to simply call bullshit on both ecstatic phase-shifters and paranoid conspiracy theorists, and instead try to be as rationalist, sober and un-enthusiastic as possible.
The value in mystical globalism is it can lead to positive things — HG Wells’ ecstatic globalism helped to inspire forms of global governance like the UN Declaration of Human Rights, for example. You need a bit of cosmic optimism to try and get anything changed.
However, ecstatic globalism can lead to self-entitlement, to an inflated sense that you are the appointed vanguard of humanity, and that history and the Universe is definitely on your side. That’s dangerous. There can be a dangerous over-concentration of privilege and power, working mainly through informal or undemocratic channels.
The value of conspiracy thinking, meanwhile, can be that it holds power to account. Power can be over-concentrated — the World Health Organisation is excessively reliant on funding by Bill Gates, and the Gates Foundation should be more transparent and accountable, considering the massive influence it has over global public health.
Scientific authority can be awfully, horribly wrong sometimes — many ecstatic globalists in the 20th century really did support eugenics ( including HG Wells, Annie Besant, Julian Huxley, Alexis Carrel and Teillard de Chardin). They thought the world should be run by an elite of spiritually enlightened scientists who would decide who was enlightened and who was ‘unfit’ and therefore deserved to be sterilized, locked up, or exterminated. There was no secret conspiracy about this — they proudly declared their opinions. So you can see why paranoid anti-globalists might have their suspicions of secret eugenic plots today.
In general (and in conclusion), there is a value in non-rational forms of knowing, such as dreams, intuitions, inspiration and mystical experiences. These can be important sources of wisdom and healing. Many great scientific discoveries and cultural creations have come from ecstatic or schizotypal inspiration, from Newton’s discovery of gravity to Milton’s Paradise Lost.
I am prone to this sort of ‘benign schizotypy’ myself, and on the whole it enriches my life and work. There is a reason schizotypal thinking has survived for millennia — sometimes it is highly adaptive. It has played an important role in our cultural evolution.
However, it is crucial to balance the capacity for ecstatic / magical / mythical thinking with the capacity for critical thinking. That’s what I’ve tried to do in my books: balance the Socratic and the ecstatic, or the left and right brain, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Too much Socratic thinking without any ecstasy, and you end up with a rather dry and uninspiring worldview. Too much ecstasy without critical thinking, and you may be prone to unhealthy delusions, which you then spread, harming others. You may be so sure you’re right, so hyped in your heroic crusade, you may block things that are really helpful and spread things that are really harmful.
One should be free to believe whatever you want, but in this instance — a global pandemic in the internet age — our beliefs and behaviours profoundly impact others. We need to try and be extra careful in what we believe and what we share, so as to practice mental hygiene.
There is so much fake news out there — I was taken in yesterday by a story that the IMF had cancelled almost all its developing country debt. The story was on a website called IMF2020.org (since taken down). It looked totally reliable. And I so wanted it to be true! I so wanted to share some good news. But alas, it was fake.
2) How likely is the fact? The less likely, the greater the burden of evidence.
2) それが事実の可能性は？可能性が低ければ低いほど、証拠の負担は大きくなります。
3) Is there anything out there suggesting it’s fake? Rather than looking for evidence to support our beliefs, can we search for evidence against our beliefs?
4) Can we emotionally accept our belief might be wrong?
4) 自分の信念が間違っているかもしれないことを感情的に受け入れることができるか？
We can try to practice that sort of mental hygiene on ourselves, but how does one practice effective public communication to counter-act conspiracy thinking? It seems very hard. One’s instinct can be, like Skeptics and New Atheists, simply to call the other side names: ‘idiot, moron, woo-woo, bullshit’ and so on. That sort of shaming probably doesn’t work.
The introduction to the European Journal of Social Psychology’s special ‘conspiracy theory’ issue suggests conspiracy theories are emotionally grounded and socially supported— so an outsider calling you names won’t have much impact. Instead, like de-radicalization or de-culting programmes, perhaps it takes a trusted friend from inside your network to challenge the beliefs in a sympathetic and non-threatening way. That is slow work when one in five Brits say they might not take a COVID-19 vaccine, and even superpowers are trading rival theories as to how the virus emerged. Our herd immunity to bullshit may be breaking down.
『European Journal of Social Psychology』誌の「陰謀論」特集号の序文によると、「陰謀論は感情的な根拠に基づいており、社会的に支持されているため、部外者が陰謀論信者を罵倒してもあまり効果はありません」とのことです。その代わり、脱過激派プログラムや脱カルトプログラムのように、ネットワーク内の信頼できる友人が、共感を持って脅威にならない方法で信念に挑戦する必要があるのかもしれません。英国人の5人に1人が「COVID-19」のワクチンを受けないかもしれないと言い、超大国でさえウイルスの発生方法について対立する理論を交わしているのだから、これは時間のかかる仕事です。私たちのデタラメに対する集団免疫は崩壊しつつあるのかもしれません。
In 1996, James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg published “The Sovereign Individual,” a manifesto that predicts the decline and fall of the nation-state and its institutions. They describe the imminent rise of “digital cash” as a replacement for fiat currency, and suggest that “sovereign individuals” will increasingly wrest control from failing governments and weak, inflationary fiat currencies. One recent reviewer described the work as “implementation details for Atlas Shrugged.” Jacob Rees-Mogg, the younger son of William Rees-Mogg, later played an influential role in advocating for “hard Brexit.”
1996年、ジェームズ・デイル・デヴィッドソンとウィリアム・リース・モグは、国民国家とその制度の衰退と崩壊を予測したマニフェスト「ソブリン・インディヴィジュアル（The Sovereign Individual）」を発表しました。彼らは、不換紙幣に代わる「デジタル・キャッシュ」の台頭が間近に迫っていると述べ、破綻した政府や弱くインフレ気味の不換紙幣から、「主権を持つ個人」がますます主導権を握るようになると提案しています。ある評論家は、この作品を "『肩をすくめるアトラス』の実装詳細 "と表現しています。 ウィリアム・リース・モグの次男であるジェイコブ・リース・モグは、後に「ハード・ブレグジット」を提唱する上で影響力のある役割を果たしました。
Steve Bannon has enthusiastically embraced the “generational history” concept popularized by William Strauss and Neil Howe. Their book, The Fourth Turning, is widely considered to be a pseudo-historical, quasi-Hegelian study of the so-called “cycles” of history.
Where “Sovereign Individual” posits we are on the brink of the “fourth stage” of human history (the previous three being hunter-gatherer; agricultural; industrial), Strauss and Howe conceive of the world in terms of deterministic and interlocking generational cycles that repeat throughout history. For many years, Bannon has believed we are on the brink of a violent and revolutionary “fourth turning,” and he has done his level best to help accelerate its emergence.
Shortly after founding Wikileaks in October 2006, Julian Assange described nation-states as “conspiracies,” and identified specific strategies for disrupting them. “To deal with powerful conspiratorial actions we must think ahead and attack the process that leads to them since the actions themselves can not be dealt with,” he wrote. Assange clearly articulated the network dynamics of state control. With the express goal of destruction of the state, Assange’s efforts are, in fact, naturally allied with advocates of “sovereign individual.”
Likewise, “leftists” (whether actual or performative) aligned with Assange are advancing the drive towards ‘autarchy’ and destruction of the state—whether they realize it or not.
So-called “red-pilling” has been seen in the United States as synonymous with allegiance to the Republican party. The truth, however, is more complicated.
In the broader context of the “sovereign individual” movement, “red-pilling” is an online induction mechanism that gradually draws people into an information milieu aligned with its goals, with celebrities and key figures in the “intellectual dark web” serving as gateways.
Elon Musk, Kanye West, Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens, Don Jr. and Ivanka frequently wink and nod at each other. Musk announced his “full support” of West’s abortive 2020 presidential candidacy, before saying he no longer did a week later. Don Jr. made sure to note West, Owens, and Kirk hanging out together. While it is tempting to dismiss these characters as circus clowns, they have considerable capacity to draw people increasingly further into the “sovereign” information sphere.
Nancy MacLean has described this process as inherently deceitful. In her book “Democracy in Chains,” she says that Charles Koch, after many failed efforts to bring people to the sovereign epiphany, realized it was necessary to go about it in a stealthier way. Because if Americans understood the implications of his vision and what that meant in practice, they would never support it; in fact, they would actively oppose it.
ナンシー・マクレーンは「このプロセスは本質的に人を欺くものだと述べています。彼女の著書『Democracy in Chains』によると、チャールズ・コッチ氏は、人々に主権者としての自覚を持たせようとして何度も失敗した後、もっとこっそりとした方法で行う必要があると気付いたそうです。なぜなら、もしアメリカ人が彼のビジョンの意味するところ、そしてそれが実際に何を意味するのかを理解したら、彼らは決してそれを支持しないだろうし、むしろ積極的に反対するだろうからです。
So Koch, working with economist James Buchanan, identified a kind of technology in the form of a series of incremental “interrelated plays” that could be employed both in series and in parallel that each would be met with approval of the majority of the people, but would ultimately result in the destruction of the state and the rise of the sovereign individual. At some point, it would be too late to go back.
Lately, Charles Koch has adopted something of a “charm offensive,” aiming to appear friendlier and less extreme. But indeed his devotion to the sovereign cause has never wavered. Arguably his latest posturing is just another “interrelated play” designed to advance his life’s obsession.
Likewise the initiatives of CNP-affiliates Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens, Scott Presler, Cassandra Fairbanks, Brandon Straka, Ali Alexander, Steve Bannon, and so many others should be seen as “interrelated plays.” Indeed, party affiliation is now meaningless. Fairbanks, who first identified as a Bernie supporter and then became a Trump supporter, now bristles at the “alt-right” label prefers to be called simply a “populist.”
The rise of artificial intelligence as a means for amplifying what we are already doing and doing more of it, along with the meteoric rise of cryptocurrencies challenging fiat control suggest to some that we are already past the tipping point. I am not so sure, but we must first recognize what’s happening if we wish to do something about it.
※ 野生で発見されたミーム（2021年3月4日）。The Handbook of 5GW, Daniel H. Abbott, Ed. (2010)
第5世代戦争
We previously discussed the concept of 4th Generation Warfare and how it was used to lay a 30 year groundwork for the events that led up to January 6th. More recently, we have seen discussion turn to so-called “fifth generation warfare,” which has been articulated by the writer Daniel H. Abbott in his 2010 book, “The Handbook of 5GW.”
前回は、第4世代の戦争という概念と、それが1月6日に至るまでの30年間の下地作りに使われたことを紹介しました。最近では、作家のダニエル・H・アボットが2010年に出版した『The Handbook of 5GW』の中で述べている、いわゆる「第5世代戦争」についても議論されるようになってきました。
Really a synthesis of a variety of ideas expanding on Lind and Boyd’s concepts from 4th Generation warfare, the thrust of 5th gen warfare is to wage war on the context of battle itself. Where two sides may have entrenched positions, develop a new context entirely that offers advantage to early adopters. Cryptocurrency, NFTs, and things that seem “crazy” now are examples of areas of battle that nation-states are currently ill-equipped to address.
By the time they figure out that they pose a significant threat, major irreversible shifts may already have occurred. And indeed, this is what proponents of the so-called “Great Awakening” believe will occur. In the 5GW framework, communications is infinitely fast, hierarchy is jettisoned in favor of networked insurgency, and every participant is a combatant either actively or passively. Weaponizing the reactions of civilians as a tool of battle is also fair play. It is a framework for continuous and total warfare.
Ultimately 5GW is about hacking mass perception of reality. It will be increasingly important to distinguish what is actually happening from what people think is happening, and to find trustworthy ways to tell the difference.
For example, while many people were expecting some sort of QAnon “Great Awakening” violence on March 4, 2021, and laughed when it didn’t materialize, we noticed something else that day: a transaction of 11,980 BTC (about $600 million USD) involving a wallet associated with persons tied to Cambridge Analytica. Other chatter has pointed towards plans for financial manipulation; this is still under investigation.
We like to think we live in a democracy. The daily machinations of party politics, while important, tend to make us think it is the primary field of play. Arguably, however, true power plays out within interlocking global networks of interest. As this series has shown, serious ideological conflicts may play out between networks over the course of decades. We are still litigating the New Deal, the gold standard, Vatican II, climate change, fossil fuels, and domestic surveillance.
When powerful networks subvert the mechanisms of a democracy, it becomes a plutocracy. Some may argue that this has been true of many democracies for some time, while others argue they are still salvageable. I believe we can defend our democracies, but only if we measure and manage the degree to which capture of the state has already occurred. We urgently need to develop a consensus mechanism for understanding state capture and work towards solutions that limit it. Repealing Citizens United is a necessary first step.
I tend to think that 95% the problem is getting a good diagnosis, so I spend time there. But for those looking for that 5% of practical advice once they learn about the cancer, here are some ideas I hope can help.
1. Forget about political parties, left and right, and nation states; think instead about networks and power. The global oligarch network behind the “sovereign individual” agenda requires a kind of feudalism that subordinates people in proportion to their wealth. This network exists both inside and outside parties and in many nations. It no longer makes sense to think of concepts like “left and right” and “Russian interests” when we are literally talking about a globally networked set of factions. In fact, the “dirtbag left” is functionally aligned with CNP and Russian oligarchs and Falun Gong, and seem content to work together in common cause. Abandon counter-descriptive frames.
2. Think like a historian. It’s easy to get lost in the moment. As disinformation researchers pore over digital ephemera and we react to the latest dispiriting news, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. By maintaining a 10,000 ft. overhead perspective and looking at power as a networked phenomenon that persists through time, it’s easier to see themes and motives that can lend context to seemingly disparate information. This will become increasingly important as networked warfare tactics attempt to scramble people’s ability to consume and make sense of information. Both imagination and a long-term perspective are essential.
3. Check yourself. A common tactic in 5GW is to attempt to weaponize your cognitive bias in an effort to draw you into a reactive faction. Once a faction is sufficiently well defined (and has identified and labeled its enemies) it can be weaponized at scale with specific information payloads. If you find yourself being drawn into such a group and reacting emotionally, back off and center yourself.
Our world is awash in personal data. Firms like Peter Thiel’s Palantir have picked up where prior systems like PROMIS (which was at the heart of The Octopus) left off. The domestic surveillance debates from the Church Committee era are far from settled.
Today, Thiel is very active in advancing the “Sovereign Individual” agenda. In fact, he wrote the foreword for the latest edition of the Rees-Mogg/Davidson book. Thiel allies Bret and Eric Weinstein took a stab at an “interrelated play” in 2020 with “Unity2020,” a campaign to draw audiences from the left and right together in service of the sovereign agenda. Thiel has also provided $10 million in funding to the populist candidacy of Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance. And of course, Thiel and Musk were co-founders of PayPal.
A new blockchain-based social network called “PanQuake” 🙄 is being designed with the intent of being fully decentralized. While some firms are seeking to do this in ways that are ethical, PanQuake is being designed and informed by a network of known disinformation actors (the people who brought you Pizzagate, Seth Rich, and parts of QAnon, including, allegedly Julian Assange’s mother) who seem intent on seeding the seeds of global destruction by creating an uncontrollable social messaging environment. We’ll see how that ‘pans’ out, but this appears to be their intent.
In a world where everyone is a target of information warfare, and where networked insurgency is being actively and openly used to capture the instruments of the state, we might wonder if we can do anything to resist this encroachment of power.
Arguably, we can take action to curb the effects of these influence campaigns, but we have to first understand what’s happening. My hope is that with this series of essays we might be just a little closer to such an understanding, and be better equipped to turn the tide towards a more democratic and just future.
