Here are key nuggets of information summarized from your text extracts, with a focus on themes relevant to your concerns as a parent regarding misinformation, fringe beliefs, community influences, and how such ideas sometimes find appeal in the Internet age.

Note: Although your extracts are not directly about flat Earth beliefs, they touch upon social dynamics relevant to conspiracy subcultures like flat-earthism.

**Nuggets of Information:**

1.

**Group Identity and Outsider Appeal:**
Social movements, especially fringe ones, often rely on a sense of group identity and opposition to mainstream authority.

Those who resist consensus (such as vaccine refusal or flat Earth beliefs) are sometimes valorized within these communities as brave contrarians, used by broader society as negative examples but finding belonging and purpose among each other.

**Role of the Internet and Social Media:**
Social media blurs the distinction between real and fake, making it easier for fringe ideas to circulate and gain traction.

Online communities foster a sense of belonging and can amplify misinformation, leading to “echo chambers” where dissenting ideas are rarely challenged and believers feel part of a chosen group with “special knowledge.”

3.

**Community and Isolation:**
The importance of belonging and community is repeatedly emphasized, particularly with young people feeling isolated or alienated.

Belief in alternative narratives, like flat Earth, can be a way to find camaraderie and meaning—a core dynamic in grassroots and counter-mainstream movements.

**Resistance to Authority and Mainstream Narrative:**
There’s an undercurrent of distrust towards government, experts, and “official” stories.

This skepticism can fuel everything from vaccine hesitancy to flat Earth beliefs.

Rationales often frame believers as independent thinkers resisting conformity.

**Sense of Mission or Higher Purpose:**
Movements and activists often derive energy from the belief they are correcting an overlooked truth or injustice—this can be found both in activist circles and in flat Earth subcultures, where adherents feel responsible for “opening others’ eyes” to hidden truths.

**Appeal to Youth and Outsiders:**
Youth, particularly those feeling disaffected, are more susceptible to radical or fringe ideas.

This is due to the search for identity and meaning, especially in the digital age where new movements and ideologies are just a click away.

**How This Applies to Flat Earth Belief:**

- **Organizations & Promoters:** Flat Earth societies exist worldwide (notably the Flat Earth Society in the UK/US, FECore, and others online).

- **Celebrity Backers:** Various minor celebrities (like musician B.o.B, basketball player Kyrie Irving) have publicly flirted with flat Earth ideas, often citing “independent research.”
- **Arguments Used:** Flat-earthers often claim NASA photos are faked, cite “no observable curvature,” and misuse principles of physics or perspective.

- **Why Resurgence?

** Social media, distrust of authority, and anti-establishment sentiment fuel interest, along with a desire for community and uniqueness.

- **Who Believes?

** Generally, those with lower trust in institutions, a distrust for science or experts, and sometimes feelings of alienation or a desire to stand out.

**Conclusion/Advice:**
Flat Earth belief is usually an eccentric stance rather than “something dark and dangerous,” but it can coexist with broader anti-science or conspiratorial worldviews.

The primary risk is exposure to a mindset that devalues evidence and fosters distrust of reliable sources.

Rather than panic, a conversation with your son about critical thinking, evaluating evidence, and the importance of reliable sources is recommended.

Relationship with his friend can be maintained, but healthy skepticism and awareness should be encouraged.

**Summary of Extracts with Relevance to Flat Earth Belief Resurgence and Contemporary Society**

- **Tradition vs. Modern Uncertainty:** In traditional societies, people lived under close supervision and trusted rumors, with customs and traditions largely unchosen and unquestioned.

This suggests that tightly knit communities often accept collective beliefs without much individual scrutiny.

- **Uncertainty and Social Transition:** The present era is characterized by societal confusion and a sense of being at a crossroads.

There is collective uncertainty about the direction society should take, and authority structures (like “superpowers” playing in space) are questioned due to practical limitations and diminished belief in a clear, promising future.

- **Loss of Norm Clarity:** While there are still recognized social norms, adherence feels less certain, and people question whether deviations—like belief in unusual ideas—are genuinely threatening or just a reflection of changing times.

- **Crisis and Apocalyptic Thinking:** References to societal fears and apocalyptic predictions (Mayans, global cooling) indicate that each age has its own anxieties.

These anxieties can foster a fascination with unconventional ideas or grand conspiracies explaining why the mainstream narrative is wrong.

- **Mistrust of Authority:** Modern people may view themselves as “pests and destroyers,” obliged to “repent” for environmental or societal sins, but also skeptical of official narratives and institutions—possibly contributing to flat Earth beliefs.

- **Desire for Control and Tangible Results:** People gravitate toward experiences and activities that provide certainty and observable results in a climate of unpredictability.

Conspiracy theories can offer neat, comprehensible answers versus the ambiguity of expert knowledge.

- **Youth and Rebellion:** New generations seek to turn life into a celebration and to live by “the laws of space”—potentially a metaphor for seeking novelty and rejecting imposed authority.

- **Globalization and Anxiety:** Ongoing world changes (such as China's rise, corporate power, and global institutions) stir anxiety and suspicion, contributing to distrustful narratives like flat Earth theory.

- **Generational Shifts and Anxiety:** Millennials and younger people “first felt” the new instability, which can make them vulnerable to communities or ideologies that offer a sense of certainty, identity, and alternative “truth.”

**Conclusion:** The extract paints a picture of a society in flux, where traditional guiding structures have weakened, and uncertainty breeds anxiety.

This environment can create fertile ground for the resurgence of beliefs like flat Earth theory: they offer clear, simple, and rebellious answers against a backdrop of mistrust toward authority and experts.

Such beliefs may not inherently be “dangerous” but can be symptomatic of deeper needs for belonging, certainty, and meaning in turbulent times.

**Implications for Parents:** Flat Earth belief, in this context, often arises not from sinister or dangerous intent, but from broader societal anxieties, identity-seeking, and a desire to reject perceived elite control.

Open conversations about critical thinking, the sources of information, and how to handle unconventional beliefs are less likely to isolate your child and more likely to foster resilience against adopting less healthy worldviews.

Here is a summarized report, drawing from the key ideas in your provided extracts, focusing on contemporary flat Earth belief in the internet era:

---

**Contemporary Flat Earth Beliefs: Overview and Social Context**

**Resurgence and Spread:**
- The spread of flat Earth beliefs today is not simply due to ignorance, but is deeply tied to modern technology and the internet.

Social media enables fringe ideas—including flat Earth theory—to reach and connect global audiences quickly.

Individuals who feel disconnected from mainstream narratives or authority (such as governments, scientists, or the media) find alternative communities online where their doubts are validated.

- Distrust of "elite" or mainstream information sources is common.

Many young people, in particular, turn to online communities for guidance in the absence of strong, positive real-world role models or supervision, as traditional forms of cultural transmission and authority have weakened.

- Media, including sensational or alternative news outlets, play a pivotal role in popularizing implausible beliefs.

Exposure to eccentric guest speakers or outlandish claims, when given serious airtime, can make these ideas seem more valid, especially to youth.

- The ease with which unconventional ideas travel online means that extremist or fringe beliefs once limited by geography can now emerge in any home or community.

**Key Organizations & Public Figures:**
- Organizations: Notable groups include the *Flat Earth Society* (UK/US), *International Flat Earth Research Society*, and regional Facebook or YouTube communities in Brazil, Italy, and elsewhere.

Many of these are loosely organized but share material, organize conferences, and promote online content globally.

- Public figures: While mainstream celebrities avoid association, a few known personalities (such as US athlete Kyrie Irving and, briefly, rapper B.o.B) have publicly pondered or supported flat Earth arguments, spurring media attention.

Most, however, either retract or clarify such statements facing backlash.

- The presence of flat Earth arguments in Arabic-speaking countries, as in your extract, reflects a broader global presence, often linked with distrust in Western science or authority.

**Arguments Flat Earthers Use:**
- Misinterpretation of visual evidence (e.g., the horizon always looking flat).

- Claims that NASA and other institutions doctor photos and data to support a globe Earth “hoax.”
- Reliance on perceived inconsistencies in scientific explanations (e.g., why do we not feel Earth’s motion?).

- People attracted to such beliefs often have a sense of alienation or skepticism toward authority and may feel their identities affirmed within these communities.

Here are key nuggets of information summarized from your text extracts, with a focus on themes relevant to your concerns as a parent regarding misinformation, fringe beliefs, community influences, and how such ideas sometimes find appeal in the Internet age.

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Will We Be Sorry We Shut Down?

from the magazine

Will We Be Sorry We Shut Down?

Paris Diarist Autumn 2021
Covid-19

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues around the world, we might ask whether it has not already profoundly changed our way of life. Might we find ourselves to be like those prisoners who miss their cells, once released, finding in their newfound independence the bitter taste of anxiety?

This past year and a half, so focused on safety, brought a remarkable lightening of social burdens: fewer contacts, social events abbreviated or made optional, long trips impossible. And the little thrill of clandestine dinners and difficult travel in Europe or elsewhere depended on the context of prohibition. The popular cliché in France of a post-Covid return to the Roaring Twenties should not fool us: many French people (and, more generally, Europeans—and doubtless, this is true of many Americans, too) no longer want to return to their offices, and they wish to keep working from home. Many are leaving big cities and settling in rural areas, dreaming of a simple life close to nature, far from the frantic consumerism and noise of urban life, sheltered from the vicissitudes of History.

It’s not clear, in other words, that everyone will experience the return to normal as a liberation. The pandemic caused us to worry, but it also delivered us for a while from a still-greater worry: the anxiety of freedom. To parody Pascal, who explained that the misfortune of humanity consisted in the inability to sit quietly in one’s room, alone, we might say that the misfortune of humanity after Covid will perhaps be to be shut up in one’s room—and like it.

There would be historical precedents for such an attitude. While young people, after the French Revolution, celebrated tumultuous desires and strong passions, some authors took a different turn. These include, in France, Xavier de Maistre, author of Voyage Around My Room; the Swiss Frédéric Lamiel, in his torrential Journal, devoted to the minuscule events of his daily life; and the Russian Oblomov, who passes his short existence in bed. All stand against the two types of human beings prominent in the nineteenth century: the bourgeois, whose whole existence hinges on profit and calculation; and his adversary, the bohemian or the revolutionary, who wants to change the world and establish justice. Confronting these active characters, the lovers of banality insist on the wonders of insignificance, the greatness of inertia, the truth of laziness. They will have twentieth-century successors in Samuel Beckett, E. M. Cioran, Franz Kafka, and Robert Walser but also in the movement on the fringe of the ecology of catastrophe—“collapsology,” which preaches negative growth, the end of travel, and retreat into small communities, while waiting for the end of the world. Here we have a whole underground school that has reappeared along with the policy of confinement.

Seclusion has a sweetness that recalls the long tradition of Western monasticism: the monk’s cell, minus transcendence, plus social networks. Even before the pandemic, this hidden history had found new life, adorned with all the virtues of resistance to global warming: we must stay home to avoid the greenhouse effect, adopting a vegetative immobility and banning the movement that produces too much carbon. The universal cell of contemporary humanity, from Los Angeles to Beijing, is the couch facing the screen.

Will we once again thirst for great open spaces, or will we give way to the propagandists of stunting? For these militants, the call for struggle is not the need to save the planet but the need to punish the human race. Life must be changed—that is, reduced as far as possible to the minimum. There are so many who want to convert us, professing the best intentions, to a morality of troglodytes.

We will perhaps find that Covid has given birth to a new anthropological type: the curled-up and hyper-connected human being with no further need of others or of reality. We might then interpret the famous verse of Rimbaud, “real life is absent,” in the following way: “real life is the absence of life.” For all those who still promote the spirit of exploration and a taste for connection with others, this would be a double catastrophe: to the deaths from the virus we would add, as a kind of expiation, the penitence of shrinkage.

Photo: FTiare/iStock

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The New Aging

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Note: Although your extracts are not directly about flat Earth beliefs, they touch upon social dynamics relevant to conspiracy subcultures like flat-earthism.

Title:

Content: Our Burning Planet

YOUTH RISING 2023

Meet the bold Gen Z learner who uses his break time at school for his climate activism

Otsile Nkadimeng speaking at the Daily Maverick The Gathering 2023 Earth Edition in Cape Town, South Africa. (Photo: Felix Dlangamandla)

To be a teenager at this moment is, to put it as a Gen Z would say, ‘not it’. But young climate activists like Otsile Nkadimeng are fighting for change while also juggling school and planning a future.

“Gen Z just happens to be the generation that appears when that countdown clock is no longer in hours or minutes, but it’s down to seconds… We don’t have time to say climate change will be someone else’s issue. We cannot shrug off the responsibility.”

These were the words of Otsile Nkadimeng, an 18-year-old climate activist and lead organiser of Fridays for Future South Africa and co-founder of the Sundial Movement, from Edenvale, Johannesburg.

Nkadimeng is in matric at Jeppe High School for Boys, in Kensington. When Daily Maverick spoke to him on Zoom on a Monday afternoon, he was wearing his school uniform. He was in the midst of mid-year exams; having written one that day, he was preparing for another on Thursday. He uses his “break” time for activism work.

Read in Daily Maverick: Change will come not from power but youth, so step aside, say climate activists

The young activist appears eager, expressive and confident. He speaks genuinely about his passions and finding his way in the SA climate activism space.

Speaking about his activism, he says: “When I first started learning about the climate crisis, it seemed to me, if there’s a problem, it can be solved. But the fact that no one seemed to be doing anything is sort of what activated me. I had to do something… It’s sort of like that John Lewis quote: ‘If not us, then who? If not now, then when?’”

‘Climate shock’

He started in climate activism in late 2019, after hearing Greta Thunberg’s “How Dare You” speech at the 2019 UN Climate action summit in New York. Googling her, he found out about Fridays for Future, the youth-led movement that Thunberg started to pressure policymakers to act on climate change. Fridays for Future South Africa didn’t have open applications at the time, so he signed up with Extinction Rebellion and became an activist.

“I had joined to learn, but that’s where my activism really got started,” he told Daily Maverick.

But Nkadimeng described soon feeling completely overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude and scale of the climate crisis. It would hit him in the early-morning hours — what he calls “climate shock”.

“The process of me learning about the magnitude and scale of the climate crisis, led me to completely fall apart in the climate space for what was pretty much a year. I shut down… I was just captured by this crisis and not knowing what to do about it,” he says.

There are different terms for what Nkadimeng experienced, of course. It’s also not unusual. Often termed climate anxiety or eco-anxiety, this feeling can manifest as what the American Psychological Association describes as “a chronic fear of environmental doom.”

Otsile Nkadimeng at the June 16 Youth Parade for Justice and Peace to the Union Buildings in 2022. This was his first protest with the Fridays For Future group. (Photo: Supplied)

Read in Daily Maverick: Climate anxiety is real. Why talking about it matters

When asked how he learned to cope with climate anxiety, Nkadimeng responded: “The honest answer is I don’t think I do.”

But he gets by with a little help from his friends.

Comfort in community

In August 2022, Nkadimeng co-founded the Sundial Movement, which acts as a network for high schools, allowing students to communicate on the climate crisis and take collective action on key issues. Just months after starting Sundial, the organisation boasts a network of about 31 schools — with 17 located in Gauteng, and 14 in the Western Cape.

An avid debater, Nkadimeng describes how he would network with students from other schools at debating tournaments, and encourage them to join the Movement.

Schools participate by holding school-sanctioned sit-ins, walkouts or informative assemblies about climate change, says Nkadimeng. Parktown High School for Girls, in Johannesburg, and Springfield Convent, in Cape Town, both held walkouts in collaboration with Sundial, late last year.

Nkadimeng said it took creating the Sundial Movement to realise that he wasn’t alone in feeling the way he does about what’s happening to the planet.

“There’s not really a lot of other people my age that operate in this space – at least in the way I do – that I can talk to about how I feel as a teenager,” he said.

“Being in this space and doing what we’re doing, literally is on-the-job training. There is no amount of preparation as a young person you can get for the type of fight we’re up against.”

As he met more young people through the Movement, he began to see that many in his generation shared the will to act, but were battling with the thought that it couldn’t be done in the window we have. The importance of community cannot be overstated; we all felt the effects of isolation during the pandemic. He sees the Sundial community as a space to talk honestly, take collective action and to learn from each other.

Read in Daily Maverick: Eco-anxiety: The mental health effects associated with the climate crisis

“The biggest challenge is battling climate anxiety; battling the notion that we can’t do it… With Sundial, it’s all about how do we [respond to climate change] in the very short time that we have to do so, with as many people as we need to do it, without driving people into the ground.”

After matriculating, Nkadimeng envisions playing more of an advisory role in Sundial, and intends to turn his attention to Fridays for Future and the youth advocacy group, So We Vote, of which he is the executive director. He also plans to study locally (but not something climate-related — he doesn’t want it to take over his life).

Otsile Nkadimeng pictured at his first protest as a Climate Activist outside Standard Bank on 12 March 2021 against Standard Bank’s financing of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. (Photo: Supplied)

Similar to the organisations, 18by Vote and Gen Z for Change in the US, Nkadimeng says So We Vote is trying to use social media and Gen Z networks to register young South Africans to vote ahead of the 2024 general election.

“The name is in response to everything that’s happening in the country,” Nkadimeng says, describing South Africa’s many crises including climate change, gender-based violence, energy and education.

“What can young people do? The crises are getting worse. What do we do? What we can do is vote. So we vote.”

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) reported that, of a total eligible voting population of just over 40 million, only 26.2 million South Africans registered to vote in the 2021 municipal elections.

The mid-year population estimate by Statistics South Africa, published in July 2022, shows South Africa has a population of 60.6 million, with 20.6 million people aged between 15 and 34 years.

“[So We Vote] is informed by the idea that once a generation becomes a significant voting demographic — registered and with the potential to vote — it scares the hell out of politicians.

“If the majority of young people registered to vote and actually voted, and [politicians] saw that young people were making up the majority of the voting demographic in the country, there is so much that can change. It would mean politicians would need to hear us, and actually answer us,” he continued.

Nkadimeng has solidified his place as a leading voice among young South Africans who are bravely calling for action against climate change, and systematic and institutional changes. He hopes that So We Vote, coupled with the work Sundial is doing at a ground level, will help to galvanise young people around climate change and “spark them to be more politically active.”

“We need to make climate change a massive political issue,” he said.

“We haven’t not dealt with climate change because there are no solutions. The solutions exist, the people who can implement them exist, it’s just that there are some people who don’t want the solutions to be implemented. And those are the people who are in power, and that’s what we’re fighting.”

But first, he says, he “needs to fight his exam on Thursday.” That’s just the youth-activism life. DM

To read all about Daily Maverick’s recent The Gathering: Earth Edition, click here.

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**Nuggets of Information:**

1.

Title:

Content: October 27, 2022 7:00 AM EDT

Time has released more than 5,000 covers since our founding almost a century ago. The new issue’s is the first one where the viewer’s eyes create the image.

In the run-up to the COP27 climate conference—the U.N. meeting at which global leaders will negotiate the next steps toward managing that crisis—we sought a cover image that could speak to the intensity of the current climate situation. So we turned the cover (or rather, covers) over to one of the world’s most prominent contemporary artists, Olafur Eliasson.

Eliasson creates sculptures and large-scale installations that employ elemental materials such as light, water, and air to enhance the viewer’s experience of the ordinary. To accomplish the effect on TIME’s cover, the Icelandic-Danish artist used a technique called afterimaging. Following the instructions on the page—staring at the green heart for 12 seconds and then flipping to the next page—allows your eye to “re-imagine” our overheated planet in the greens and blues that are the colors of a healthy earth.

Read more: Olafur Eliasson’s Poem to Accompany His New TIME Cover

“An afterimage is basically created within your own perceptual apparatus—by your eyes and brain, that is—whenever you look at something. You don’t generally see or notice them unless you look at something for a long time and then turn away to look at a blank surface,” he says. “The colors that you then see—the colors that are produced on your retinas—are, generally speaking, the complements of the colors printed in the image: blue for orange, red for green, and so on.”

Eliasson applied that optical illusion to an image of the globe, which has been tilted to show a face of the earth that is different from the view most readers will be familiar with, to “heighten the strangeness of the image.” Looking twice, after all, is what Eliasson’s cover asks us all to do. And it’s no coincidence that the visual anchor at the center of it all is a heart. “This image is not actually there on the page, but inside you,” he says. “You create it. You make the world.”

He spoke to TIME about the thinking behind the cover.

TIME: Can you point to a singular moment when you discovered that you could tell the story of the climate and nature through your art? What do you love most about working with the materials of light, color, and nature?

Eliasson: It’s true that I did not initially begin my practice as an artist by working on the topics of climate change and the environment. Like many people of my generation, I grew up taking nature for granted as something unchanging. My interest in working with materials like light, color, water, fog, and other natural phenomena grew out of my desire to dematerialize the art object, to make things that were less physical than, say, ephemeral or atmospheric. I was very interested in the larger context that surrounds an exhibition and in expanding what we consider to be art and whatnot.

In 2003, around the time that I created The Weather Project—the large artificial sun in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, in London—I began thinking about the weather, about how it affects our lives, and our moods, and our experiences, and how we in turn affect it. From there, it was not a great leap to thinking about how we are affecting the planet as a whole through human-induced climate change. My friend Jonathan Safran Foer said it quite succinctly with his book title: We Are the Weather.

When TIME’s declared the “Endangered Earth” to be Person—or rather Planet—of the Year for 1988, the cover of the magazine featured a plastic-wrapped globe by artist Christo. In the 30-plus years since, despite a trove of urgent scientific facts, the issue of climate change has still struggled to gain global acceptance. Why do you think that is? Can the urgency of climate change be communicated more effectively? Why do you think some of the world’s leaders aren’t grasping the immediacy of the situation?

A lot has been written and said about this topic over the years, and my thinking about it has especially been inspired by the research of Elke Weber, professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton. She and others have pointed out how certain biases in the way we think affect our actions and keep us from acting to do what needs to be done: that we prefer to maintain the status quo rather than to change things simply because of the uncertainties of acting, or else that we think by doing one thing, we have done enough, whereas climate action requires us to change many of our habits on many different levels, from what we eat to how we travel and to how we build our cities. These are changes on an individual level, but especially on a systematic, societal level.

There is a lot of evidence that fear-based communication about the dangers of climate change are not as effective as communicating concrete actions, but this is still the main way that the climate emergency is communicated in the media. I think the experiences of the pandemic, and the struggles to enact comprehensive, science-based policies to combat the virus, have taught us a lot about the limits and possibilities for enacting change to habits on a large scale. I do think that you need to give people a positive image of the future that they are working towards—a more equitable, sustainable world for all, both humans and non-humans alike.

I love that your work makes the viewer experience something—whether it’s the sun inside the Tate Modern or huge chunks of glacial ice for Ice Watch. Can you talk about the importance you place on actually experiencing nature and the climate through your art? And how do you experience it?

There is something extraordinary about the direct experience that art can offer at a moment when so many of us encounter the world via digital devices. Whether it is a live music performance, theater show, or art exhibition, there is something about being in one’s body at a certain place and at a certain time, sharing an experience with others that cannot be replaced by our devices—as we learned during the pandemic. Especially when you think about something as large-scale and seemingly distant as climate change, it is often precisely this experiential level that is missing in motivating action. If you can provide a concrete, tactical experience of climate change—as I tried to do with Ice Watch in 2014, 2015, and 2018—you can bring home the reality of the threat to people who only know it via the media, via news and photographs. Of course, today things are a bit different than they were even four or five years ago, when I last brought Greenlandic ice to let it melt in public space, in London. Now I think more and more people have direct experience of the effects of climate change—whether it’s more powerful storms and flooding, or extreme heat and droughts and forest fires.

In the afterimage you created for TIME’s cover, what would you like the reader to experience?

What I find so fascinating about afterimages is that they are created not externally by me, but internally, in the eyes of the person observing them. In fact, you always have and create afterimages, whether you are aware of this fact or not. Here it is made explicit; you are asked to bring something to the image on the cover of the magazine. It is for you to complete. It is my hope that viewers take away from this some idea of how much their own perception of the world contributes to making it. And if we can see the world anew—or even just our representations of the world—then we can think about it in a new way too, and I hope even change it.

What gives you hope about the future of our planet and the climate?

I recently had the profound pleasure of working with many kids and young people on a project called Earth Speakr, which we created on the occasion of the German presidency of the European Council, in 2020. For this I created an app that allowed kids to record spoken messages in which they talk about their hopes and dreams for the future of the planet. Then, using augmented-reality technology, they could project an animated face onto any object in their environment, so that the object they had chosen could speak their message for them. We took their messages and shared them with politicians and other powerful adults to show them the kids’ thoughts and concerns about the state of the planet. It was deeply inspiring to see how articulate they are in voicing their ideas. I have the feeling that the young people today are thinking very much from a standpoint of the future—unlike my generation, which often seeks refuge in history and visions from the past. This gives me great hope for the future of our planet.

More Must-Read Stories From TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com.

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EDIT POST

**Group Identity and Outsider Appeal:**
Social movements, especially fringe ones, often rely on a sense of group identity and opposition to mainstream authority.

Title:

Content: What is a Grassroots Movement?

Grassroots movements have played a pivotal role in shaping societies and driving change throughout history. They are often associated with passionate individuals coming together to advocate for social, political, or environmental transformation. In this article, we’ll delve into the concept of grassroots movements, exploring what they are, their characteristics, and their impact on society.

Understanding Grassroots Movements

grassroots movement is a type of social or political movement that originates from the ground level of society, driven by ordinary citizens rather than established institutions or organizations. These movements are decentralized and often lack hierarchical leadership structures. Instead, they are characterized by the collective action and shared goals of individuals who are deeply committed to a cause. Here are key aspects of grassroots movements:

1. Bottom-Up Approach

At the heart of a grassroots movement is its bottom-up approach. Unlike top-down initiatives that are often led by governments, corporations, or established organizations, grassroots movements are driven by the people themselves. They emerge organically from the concerns and aspirations of individuals within a community.

2. Inclusivity and Diversity

Grassroots movements are inherently inclusive and diverse. They bring together people from various backgrounds, including different ages, races, genders, socioeconomic statuses, and political affiliations. This diversity enhances the movement’s strength and credibility, as it reflects a broad cross-section of society.

3. Lack of Formal Hierarchy

Grassroots movements typically lack formal leadership hierarchies. Instead, decision-making is often achieved through consensus or democratic processes. Leaders may emerge based on their dedication, experience, and ability to inspire others, but they do not hold the same centralized power as leaders in traditional organizations.

4. Passion-Driven Activism

Grassroots activists are motivated by a deep passion for their cause. They are willing to invest their time, energy, and resources because they believe in the urgency and importance of the issue they are addressing. This passion is a driving force behind the movement’s momentum and resilience.

Characteristics of Grassroots Movements

1. Grassroots Mobilization

Grassroots movements are known for their ability to mobilize people on a local and sometimes national or even international scale. They use a variety of strategies, such as community organizing, social media, and grassroots marketing, to reach and engage supporters.

2. Grassroots Funding

Funding for grassroots movements often comes from small, individual donations and volunteers rather than large financial institutions or corporations. Crowdfunding platforms and direct appeals to supporters play a significant role in financing these movements.

3. Grassroots Campaigning

Grassroots campaigns focus on public awareness and advocacy. They use strategies like community meetings, protests, letter-writing campaigns, and social media activism to influence public opinion and pressure decision-makers.

4. Grassroots Impact

Despite their decentralized nature, grassroots movements can have a substantial impact on policy and public discourse. They bring critical issues to the forefront, hold institutions accountable, and often drive tangible change through their persistence and determination.

The Historical Significance of Grassroots Movements

Throughout history, grassroots movements have played a pivotal role in promoting positive social and political change. Here are a few notable examples:

1. Civil Rights Movement

The Civil Rights Movement in the United States is one of the most iconic grassroots movements. It aimed to end racial segregation and discrimination. Led by figures like Martin Luther King Jr., it utilized nonviolent protests, boycotts, and grassroots organizing to challenge systemic racism.

2. Women’s Suffrage Movement

The fight for women’s suffrage, which granted women the right to vote, was another grassroots effort. Women’s suffrage activists organized rallies, marches, and letter-writing campaigns to advocate for their rights.

3. Environmental Movements

Grassroots environmental movements have had a global impact. Examples include Greenpeace’s efforts to protect the environment, the anti-nuclear movement, and more recently, climate change activism led by figures like Greta Thunberg.

4. LGBTQ+ Rights Movement

The LGBTQ+ rights movement has made significant progress through grassroots activism. It has focused on raising awareness, advocating for legal rights, and changing societal attitudes towards LGBTQ+ individuals.

The Modern Role of Grassroots Movements

In the modern era, grassroots movements continue to be powerful forces for change. They have adapted to new technologies and communication tools, allowing them to reach a wider audience and mobilize support more effectively. Here are a few contemporary examples:

1. Black Lives Matter

The Black Lives Matter movement, which emerged in the 21st century, is a powerful example of grassroots activism. It advocates for the rights and equity of Black individuals, challenging systemic racism and police violence.

2. #MeToo Movement

The #MeToo movement, driven by social media, has empowered survivors of sexual harassment and assault to share their stories and demand change. It has led to important discussions about consent, gender equality, and accountability.

3. Youth-Led Movements

Youth-led grassroots movements, such as the March for Our Lives, have brought attention to issues like gun control. They demonstrate that young people can be powerful advocates for change.

4. Environmental Activism

Environmental grassroots movements continue to be crucial in addressing climate change and environmental issues. Movements like Extinction Rebellion and Sunrise Movement advocate for urgent action on climate-related challenges.

The Impact and Future of Grassroots Movements

Grassroots movements continue to shape society, and their impact is undeniable. They serve as a counterbalance to entrenched power structures and provide a voice for marginalized or underrepresented groups. The future of grassroots movements will likely see continued adaptation to new technologies, as well as an ongoing commitment to social, political, and environmental justice.

In conclusion, a grassroots movement is a powerful force for social and political change, driven by individuals who are passionate about their cause. These movements are marked by inclusivity, decentralized structures, and a bottom-up approach. Throughout history and into the modern era, they have played a crucial role in addressing critical issues and shaping societies around the world. The future of grassroots movements promises to be just as impactful, driven by the dedication and determination of individuals who seek to make a difference.

Clare Louise

Those who resist consensus (such as vaccine refusal or flat Earth beliefs) are sometimes valorized within these communities as brave contrarians, used by broader society as negative examples but finding belonging and purpose among each other.

Title:

Content: Health News & Commentary

They Spent Years Telling Us Peer Pressure Is Wrong, Now It’s Their Weapon of Choice

"Instead of accepting that there is a perfectly rational explanation for refusing a rushed vaccine with the worst safety record in modern history for a virus that presents next-to-no risk for most people – prime ministers, presidents and premiers have insisted that defiance is a selfish act that demands constant social pressure."
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Shops in various European countries have erected physical wire fences to separate vaccinated and unvaccinated customers.

Footage from a Kaufland supermarket in Romania has surfaced depicting a sign at the entrance dividing customers into aisles separated by two-metre high wire barricades, draped with plastic, open at the top and the bottom.

Despite these literal walls placed between people, many continue to deny that segregation is taking place.

After months of independent reports contradicting the global narrative, the World Health Authority has admitted that both vaccinated and unvaccinated people spread Covid at roughly the same rate, and that being vaccinated (in this particular case) does not stop transmission.

If governments remained true to their word about ‘following the science’, this revelation should have signalled the end for vaccine passports.

Instead, nearly every government has come out in recent days to double-down on their booster-shot programs to combat a new Covid variant. Omicron is noted for being vaccine-resistant and mild, mimicking a weak flu and yet politicians have successfully used its existence to guarantee the continuation of authoritarian health orders.

Our governments have forgotten that ‘unvaccinated’ does not mean infected. For the first time in history, completely healthy people have found themselves permanently restricted by biosecurity regulations designed to temporarily isolate infected patients until their recovery.

Romania’s shopping centre fences provide a visual representation of what Western nations have done by stealth. Australia has built its fences out of fear, segregating people via a noxious combination of threats, fines, and social pressure.

By far the most damaging aspect of Covid propaganda has been the psychological war waged on the population.

Humans are social creatures. Our behaviour is mostly shaped by the social norms we observe around us. The localised imitation of each other provides the foundation of ‘culture’ and has created an incalculable tapestry of variations across the world. We are so malleable to suggestion that we form behavioural bonds at a family, peer, work, sport, community, city, state, and national level. These expected social norms exist in constant competition with each other and the wider world.

The addition of homogeneous Covid propaganda to this system has attempted to create a single pattern of behaviour – a blueprint if you will – for humanity. It is an exercise in social engineering instead of a natural progression of advantageous behaviour discovered through trial and error. This kind of mono-thought is particularly dangerous because it is inflicted upon society regardless of merit. All socialist societies suffer from this structural error and in short order, it leads to the collapse of nations and the decimation of their civil unity.

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Covid mania has evolved into a new type of socialism that blends total state control with woke-political theory and the ambition of global corporate entities. Like all authoritarian regimes, it propagates itself via the control of information (in partnership with Silicon Valley) reinforced through the bombardment of fear (courtesy of weak politicians).

Considering how much time our current generation has spent congratulating itself for being morally superior by ‘erasing the past in revenge for historical harms’ – it is interesting to note how frequently the majority have fallen for textbook propaganda.

Over the last decade, several dangerous ideological movements have managed to motivate significant sections of society into acts of self-harm.

The Climate Change eco-fascist cult has convinced everyone from children to CEOs to punish society for being successful. It has imposed a parallel currency of Carbon Credits to micromanage citizens while pouring profit into the pockets of Green companies trading on the promise of a fictional apocalypse. Meanwhile, Black Lives Matter – the Marxist race-baiting organisation encouraging teenagers to destroy private property and assault strangers – has turned harmonious societies across the world into racist crucibles.

These two political movements utilised social media to create an intense environment of peer pressure that stalked impressionable minds. It is easy to understand how young people found themselves lured into a virtue-signalling hierarchy where reblogging propaganda invigorated their online popularity. Soon after, the corporate world went from a predatory marketing campaign designed to soak up these brainwashed customers, into a cannibalistic cycle of shame where CEOs bullied each other into compliance and those who refused found themselves viciously attacked.

The market of ideas is often coercive – frequently ruthless – and sometimes profitable. ‘Crazes’ come and go inside society as humans develop an intense interest for one activity or ideological movement before growing bored and moving on. However, when the government passes policy to institutionalise the behaviour, mandate it, or generously reward it (which has happened with both Net Zero policy and demands for office quotas) these transient fixations become artificially extended.

Unlike a harmless obsession for Furbies or Zumba, all three of the current ideological movements (Climate Change, Black Lives Matter, and Covid) include extremely harmful and abusive social qualities which are rewarded by authoritative bodies.

Covid is easily the most destructive of the three.

The message coming out of the world’s governments is that people who refuse to get vaccinated are dangerous. These dissidents pose an immediate and serious threat to the personal safety of others through a deliberate and malicious action, which in turn justifies ordinarily illegal civil retribution.

Instead of accepting that there is a perfectly rational explanation for refusing a rushed vaccine with the worst safety record in modern history for a virus that presents next-to-no risk for most people – prime ministers, presidents and premiers have insisted that defiance is a selfish act that demands constant social pressure.

This does not come solely in the form of online bullying. Governments have inflicted laws which lock citizens out of the economy and actively mark them as a segregated sub-class who are easily identified by the peer group.

It is called ‘painting a target’.

Politicians have done this for many reasons, the most obvious being that the constant abuse and victimisation levelled at the unvaccinated by their family, friends, and strangers creates a mental hell that breaks most people. In general, humans want to be an accepted member of the group and inciting constant torment means that politicians can conscript the public to do what they cannot legally get away with – harassment.

Segregating part of the community for vilification also scares people into compliance. Those who withstand this assault serve a purpose too. It is helpful to have a small group of people who resist because they provide the perfect ‘stick’ with which to threaten everyone else. ‘If you don’t do what we say, you’ll end up like these people…’

The last reason is to create a scapegoat for both government failure, and for the whole of society to shift their frustration, anger, hatred, and blame onto.

We have seen this numerous times throughout the pandemic, where politicians like Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has described Covid as a ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’ – a statement left uncorrected. Even New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet punished the unvaccinated by moving the ‘freedom’ date from December 1 to December 15 due to several Covid outbreaks in fully vaccinated gyms controlled by a vaccine passport system. Logic would suggest that restrictions should have been placed on the vaccinated, but instead it was the unvaccinated who, already essentially locked in their homes, were issued with an extension to their arbitrary detention.

Health professionals – who represent authority figures garnishing these sinister overtures with credibility – have done everything from trying to raise healthcare taxes on the unvaccinated, to locking them out of essential healthcare and suggesting they be left to die as punishment.

2GB radio host Ray Hadley said on November 30 that ‘anti-vaxxers’ were like Hitler or paedophiles – two of the most reviled groups in human history. He did not offer to justify that nonsense comparison, nor could he, as Hadley was describing law-abiding citizens who simply wished to opt-out of a dangerous drug trial and be left alone to get on with their lives.

If he had vilified any other group of people – such as a religion or race – Hadley not only would have found himself sacked, but there would likely be legal proceedings taken against him.

The Hitler comparison is ironic, in that there are plenty of parallels between the behaviour of Covid’s propaganda to the early stages of the Nazi regime. Australia’s system of medical tyranny is used to justify segregation, discrimination, dehumanization, and exclusion from society to the point where premiers are gleeful at the prospect of the unvaccinated starving on the street. All of the worst regimes in history believed they were ‘saving people’, and this one is no different.

It is a very strange place for Australia to find itself in after the decades successive governments spent a fortune educating children on the dangers of bullying and peer pressure.

Public money was invested (and clearly wasted) in educating children and parents about peer pressure in order to stop people from being bullied into dangerous activities for the sake of social status.

The government and its teams of experts know exactly how this psychology works. We have a morally lacklustre generation of politicians prepared to exploit the social dependency of humanity to expand their power, protect their investments, and hide their failures.

This ends when people stop policing each other, and shift their attention to the depravity of those in charge.

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Content: Skip to content
The Well

Why we are the only humans in the Universe and why it matters for our collective future

The acceptance of our cosmic loneliness and the rarity of our planet is a wakeup call.
Key Takeaways
  • For millennia, tribal divisions governed humanity. But what was good for our ancestors and their survival now seeds deeply destructive and predatory behavior. Humanity needs to unite.
  • One way for humanity to unite is to realize that we are the only humans in the cosmos. Even if life exists elsewhere, it won't be like us.
  • Therefore, the human voice is unique in the cosmos. If we ruin our project of civilization, the Universe will once again become silent.

We need to change the way we see each other and our relation to our home planet. For thousands of years, tribal divisions have ruled the way we humans have organized ourselves in groups. Unfortunately, what was good for our ancestors and their survival now seeds deeply destructive and predatory behavior.

We don’t care about the other living creatures with whom we share this planet. We don’t care about the planet. We don’t understand what is needed for our survival as a species. As the news tells us daily, we remain profoundly divided, prone to isolate ourselves in groups that define the way we think and behave. Widespread political strife, cultural intolerance, and tribal entrenchment are symptoms of a deeper problem: Our focus on material greed and unstoppable growth is choking civilization and the planet along with it. Civilization is at a crossroads. To move beyond, we need to reframe our connection to other living creatures and to the planet we all share.

A new unifying narrative

We need a new unifying narrative that has the power to awaken humankind to a very urgent truth: that despite our political and religious differences, we are a single species living on a fragile and rare planet. This narrative must break down the tribal walls that separate us; it must make a convincing case that we need to work together if we are to protect our way of life and the planet that harbors it. Scaring people about the dangers of global warming, social unrest, and mass extinctions is not working. We need something new, something that we can all share, that we can all relate to, that can awe and inspire us into action — a positive, constructive, inclusive message that resonates with young and old alike, from Baby Boomers to Generation Z. We need a new narrative of mythic proportions that unites us as a species and brings our planetary fragility to the forefront. We need to restructure our project of civilization.

The essence of this new narrative, which I present in a forthcoming book, is that the Universe has a history only because we are here to tell it. But this story is not just about the Big Bang and the expanding Universe, of myriad galaxies and stars, of electrons and quarks, of planets and moons. It is a story of the interconnectedness of the nonliving with the living, of the uniqueness of our planet and its biosphere, of our cosmic loneliness and its deep moral implications. The way we tell a story makes a difference. And the story of who we are and of our planetary role needs to be retold.

Consider the nascent Earth 4.5 billion years ago, a hot ball of molten matter, bubbling and boiling as it slowly took shape. Debris from leftover protoplanetary matter in the form of comets and meteors collided mercilessly with young Earth, causing major havoc but also delivering life’s essential building blocks: water and a variety of chemicals, including some simple organics (that is, chemical compounds with carbon). We could call this the cosmic angry-gifting era. The onslaught would only quiet down some 600 million years after Earth’s origin, around 3.9 billion years ago. If elements had gathered to make some kind of living creature before then, the poor thing was probably destroyed without a trace. Life may have had many false starts, lost in the dust of time.

We are the only humans in the Universe

To understand the history of life on Earth, we must understand Earth’s life history. This is true for any planet that may harbor life, whether in the past, the present, or the future: The history of life on a planet is contingent on the planet’s life history. And here is the amazing consequence of this fact: given that no two planets have the same history, life is not a repeatable experiment. Even if different life forms share the same biochemical principles across the Universe, being carbon-based and gene-driven by Darwinian natural selection, each world will harbor its own kind of living entities, which will mutate and evolve according to chance and the world’s unique changing environment. The living creatures on a world carry the indelible imprint of the world’s properties and history.

The preceding argument speaks to us directly. Life on Earth is unique: If there is life elsewhere, it will be different. We can state with confidence that we are the only humans in the cosmos. And given that we are, for better and for worse, the dominant intelligent life form on this planet — I do love and respect whales, dolphins, monkeys, dogs, cats, etc., but they don’t write poetry and build radio-telescopes or nuclear bombs — we are unique in our kind of intelligence. If there are intelligent life forms in other stellar systems, “they” will not be like us, even if they may share some of our traits, such as an approximate left-right symmetry. Furthermore, any existing alien life form is so far away that, for all practical purposes, we are alone. This means that the spectacular transformation that has unfolded on our planet from a barren ball of molten rock to a thriving abode for life matters in a very central way, what I like to call biocentrism.

The next time someone repeats the tenets of Copernicanism, that we are nothing in the vastness of the cosmos, that science teaches us how worthless we are, please beg to differ. We matter. We matter for our uniqueness as thinking molecular machines capable of transforming raw materials into revolutionary technologies, products of four billion years of evolution on a planet that matters for its uniqueness as a stable abode for the prolonged existence of life. These two inter-related conditions — the existence of intelligent life and a planet that offers long-lasting shelter for its creatures — are not likely to be encountered with high probability in the cosmos. If there is intelligent life elsewhere, it will be rare.

Biocentrism

We have learned much about where we are and what we are made of. Our amazing tools have greatly extended our vision of the world and of the Universe beyond. We also have learned that there is much that we don’t know, and much that we will never know. Our reach is wide but limited. Nature need not comply with our flights of fancy. Science tells us how nature works and not how it should work. As we began to send probes across the Solar System, we were struck by how different these other worlds were, how magnificent and barren — and how indifferent to life.

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We have longed for the harmonies for too long; we have longed for cosmic companionship — divine or alien — for too long. We must accept that we are alone in the cosmos, if not in absolute terms — as we can never be certain of what lies beyond the reach of our instruments — at least in practice. This makes us very special indeed. And it creates a new purpose for humankind.

Note that this is very far away from a return to an anthropocentric worldview, to pre-Copernican times when the Earth was the center of Creation. (I call it biocentric to make the distinction clear.) Biocentrism is necessarily post-Copernican. I am saying that we are unique and important — but not for having been created by a god, or for being the result of a purposeful cosmic directive.

We are unique and important for being self-aware living entities capable of asking questions about their origin and future. We may not be the measure of all things as Protagoras of Abdera proclaimed long ago, but we are the things that can measure. We experience the world, we measure it, and we tell stories about what we see and what we feel. And what we are finding out is that we may very well be the only ones asking such questions — or, at the very least, the only ones we know of, which effectively amounts to the same thing. Even if “they” exist and tell stories, their stories will not be ours. There is only one human voice in the cosmos. And if we ruin our project of civilization, the Universe will once again become silent.

A planetary wakeup call

The acceptance of our cosmic loneliness and the rarity of our planet is a wakeup call, ringing to awaken a new collective consciousness. I believe it to be the new unifying myth of our generation, with the power to go beyond tribal divides and bigotry, to lead us into a new era of human flourishing. But for this to happen, we need to change how we relate to life and to the planet that allows us to exist. We are not above nature, and we don’t own it. We are a part of it and depend on it for our existence.

Life is rare. We are rare. This planet is rare. Treasure life and planet, worship it, learn from Indigenous cultures and their sacred connection to the land. This is the moral imperative of our time, what we owe future generations and the life we share this planet with.

Related

Up Next

**Role of the Internet and Social Media:**
Social media blurs the distinction between real and fake, making it easier for fringe ideas to circulate and gain traction.

Title:

Content: I don’t know about you, but lately I’ve been experiencing whiplash from the ethical and moral hairpin turns becoming so common in the public life of our country. Just a few of them: Vaccination, who should be required to get it and who (if any) should be exempted? How should the subject of sex, sexuality and gender be discussed (or not) in our schools? How do our two major political parties maintain the sort of civil dialogue essential for governance in a democracy? Is this new phenomenon called social media going to go on and on with its destruction of the fabric of society, via its inability to distinguish real from fake and good from evil?

We’re on a winding mountain road in a vehicle with a steering problem and not-so-good brakes, and on top of that, we’re driving without a compass. That analogy describes the post-modern reality where the Western First World is now finding itself. We are living in an age that Friedrich Nietzsche predicted in his book, “Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future,” published in 1886.

It is, of course, impossible here to do any justice to the complexity of Nietzsche and this work. I can only make reference to one or two points. However, relative to what I’m addressing, I would mention his demand that the “religion of the New Testament,” with its focus on making personal sacrifices and respecting the poor and the weak, must be rejected and replaced by an ego-centered type of religion that rejects any sort of abstinence (sexual or otherwise) and admires autocratic power based on the true nature of man. Man’s true nature is “the will to power,” the striving to obtain the goal of the “Ubermensch,” the “Superhuman” (see his book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” 1883).

Needless to say, the average bloke today is not well versed in the philosophy of Nietzsche. But the reason Nietzsche was such a genius is he sensed things going on beneath the surface of western culture: the breakdown of the Christian ordering of society, which he noticed (and rightly so) was taking place among intellectuals in Europe, especially Germany. Nietzsche foresaw where things were heading and his writings also helped (if that is the right word) us get there — even if almost everybody has forgotten, or never knew, his role in it.

If there is one thing that sums up the post modern quandary, it is this: We no longer know where to find the stones to build a commonly recognized foundation for our societal structures that will allow us to collectively distinguish good from evil, right from wrong and truth from falsehood. Postmodernism is the social reality in which people feel these distinctions are always relative and circumstantial. If you question 100 secondary school or college students in the U.S. today, I’m willing to bet more than 50% will readily affirm these sorts of distinctions are merely relative and are malleable. This is the First World reality now.

With the transformation of secondary education during the past 30 years to become more and more STEM focused, there is little to no room left for education about philosophy, ethics, morality, civics or solid character building. And on top of this, in public schools, religion is no longer employed or talked about as a valid way to establish ethics and morality. The only “religion” left now in our schooling (even through college) is the religion of self fulfillment, self improvement and especially self identification — of course, this leads to “identity politics” and endless affirmations of people’s differences and individual rights.

Furthermore, among young people especially, social media provides the perfect environment to foster and promote the worst possible personality traits in regard to moral and ethical behavior. The ‘distancing effect’ of electronic media encourages cruel and heartless behavior — with relatively little repercussion for wrongdoers, many of whom find a way to remain anonymous.

What Nietzsche predicted has come to pass: We have become a society in which the “highest and best good” promotes and embodies the ever-expanding primacy of self fulfillment and individual freedom. Smashing the little guys and the old values in the process is fun and games. It is absolutely no accident we now find ourselves having just barely survived four years of an autocratic (almost thoroughly fascistic) president, who won’t go away. To many Americans, Trump still represents a man who built his whole life on self fulfillment and sheer unbridled will-to-power. To many in our compass-less age, that is a man to be greatly admired — even if the motivation for that admiration is buried deep in America’s subconscious.

Politics in the U.S. has become more and more about will-to-power and less and less about shared-power compromise. We have collectively enabled this to happen by affirming over and over what we need are more and more scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians: i.e., STEM. No. What we need are more and more people who have been taught how to distinguish good from evil and truth from falsehood. The subtleties of social and political life cannot be reduced to issues solved by STEM. The most important purpose of state-sponsored education is to provide responsible, well-informed participants in democracy — not to provide more engineers.

I thoroughly understand and accept that our public schools cannot be used to inculcate any one religion or denomination. However, in order to have a way to talk about good and evil, truth and falsehood, we have to have a reference point, a North Star as it were, in order for us to have some common frame of reference, a framework for discussion.

Society cannot be held together if everyone is allowed and encouraged to follow their own ethical and moral system, having mutually exclusive starting points and having no compass to find the Pole Star. This is especially true in our digital age in which mutually conflicting “realities” fly around the planet at the speed of light.

But we do still have a basic framework shared in common — it still can help us, at least to some degree. About 90% of Americans hold a belief in some form of monotheism or belief in a “higher power” of some sort (as per Pew Research Center research). There is still a Pole Star for us to use — even though clouds cover it from time to time.

We must take care not to banish any and all reference to a higher power or to God from our classrooms and our legislatures. While we must never require that all believe in “the Christian God” and “Jesus the Son of God and my Personal Savior,” it will not be wise to leave God out of our social dialog altogether. How can we get our bearings? How can we find North — and South, East and West?

We can’t get out of the woods without a compass.

John Nassivera is a former professor who retains affiliation with Columbia University’s Society of Fellows in the Humanities. He lives in Vermont and part time in Mexico.

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Online communities foster a sense of belonging and can amplify misinformation, leading to “echo chambers” where dissenting ideas are rarely challenged and believers feel part of a chosen group with “special knowledge.”

3.

**Community and Isolation:**
The importance of belonging and community is repeatedly emphasized, particularly with young people feeling isolated or alienated.

Belief in alternative narratives, like flat Earth, can be a way to find camaraderie and meaning—a core dynamic in grassroots and counter-mainstream movements.

**Resistance to Authority and Mainstream Narrative:**
There’s an undercurrent of distrust towards government, experts, and “official” stories.

This skepticism can fuel everything from vaccine hesitancy to flat Earth beliefs.

Rationales often frame believers as independent thinkers resisting conformity.

**Sense of Mission or Higher Purpose:**
Movements and activists often derive energy from the belief they are correcting an overlooked truth or injustice—this can be found both in activist circles and in flat Earth subcultures, where adherents feel responsible for “opening others’ eyes” to hidden truths.

**Appeal to Youth and Outsiders:**
Youth, particularly those feeling disaffected, are more susceptible to radical or fringe ideas.

This is due to the search for identity and meaning, especially in the digital age where new movements and ideologies are just a click away.

**How This Applies to Flat Earth Belief:**

- **Organizations & Promoters:** Flat Earth societies exist worldwide (notably the Flat Earth Society in the UK/US, FECore, and others online).

Title:

Content: A SOJOURNER’S VIEW: How Filipino youth could be the hope of the fatherland in this computer age

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CEBU CITY (MindaNews / 21 June)—In my last column published in MindaNews last June 11, I entitled the piece, “Quo Vadis the Filipino youth today on 125th anniversary of our Independence?” In this essay, I asked the question: “So how are the Filipino youth today able to maneuver through this volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) society? Faced with this rather bleak reality, how can the Filipino youth of today (those of the Millennial and Gen-X generations) be expected to even consider the question: how can we be patriots?”

I ended that column by introducing the reader to Mr. Camilo Osias—first Filipino Superintendent of Schools (1915 to 1916), Assistant Director of Education (1917 to 1921), later Secretary of Education (1940s), a lecturer at the University of the Philippines (1919 to 1921), 1934 member of Constitutional Convention in 1934, National Assembly member in 1935, Senate President (1952-53). I wouldn’t be surprised if the Filipino youth of today hardly know this very distinguished Filipino scholar and statesman.

In 1940, he wrote a book entitled “The Filipino Way of Life: The Pluralized Philosophy” published in New York. Written almost 80 years ago, long before the current popular philosophical theories are taught in our universities (decolonial, post-colonial, post-structural and post-modern theories) as well as the advancement of computer technology with the dawn of the Information Age, Osias’ philosophical framework finds resonance in contemporary Philippine society.

The idea of being a pluralized society has become far more acceptable now than just before and after the Second World War. Today we Filipinos—especially among the youth—there is greater consciousness that we live in a Republic characterized by different classes, ethnicities, religious and cultural traditions, genders, sexual orientations, age differences, level of physical and mental capacities and other categories of identities. And yet we are called to be united if our Republic is to advance in her vision to be a truly free, just and sovereign nation-state! And we her citizens are all called to be patriots!

Osias’ vision of how a pluralized society is encapsulated in his appropriation of a Tagalog word—TAYO (an inclusive word to mean we or us, i.e., including people speaking and including people spoken to). But when pronounced tayô: it means condition, social position or stance. Thus, tumayô means to take a stand, to stand up, to rise, to position oneself; and magtayô means to set up, to build, to erect, to put up and to construct. TAYO is thus the perfect Pilipino word to capture the essence of Osias’ pluralized philosophy.

Here’s a quote from his book indicating what is the vision of his TAYO philosophy:
“Under the… Tayo, or pluralized concept, there is no room for the practice of ‘Let (Juan) do it.’ Everybody must do his duty and bear his share of the burden and responsibility. Participating, thinking, and doing are prominent features of the pluralized philosophy. The people must be… schooled in the lessons of justice, liberty, and democracy… They must value peace and order, personal freedom and political liberty. Young and adults alike must learn to conceive and develop democracy by experiencing and living democracy.

“The pluralized philosophy presents efficiency, freedom, and happiness as the trinity of objectives most worthwhile in life. It is wedded to democracy and seeks to deepen faith in, and increase devotion to, democracy. There must be a continual striving for democratic objectives following democratic processes. The Filipino way of life—yes, the human way of life —recognizes the value and sanctity of human personality and seeks co-operation and solidarity among individuals within the nation and among nations.”

But an important question—which naturally did not arise in Osias’ era—but which confronts us today in this post-modern world is this: Is this pluralized philosophy relevant to the lives of today’s Filipino youth considering how different their lives are to those of Osias’ generation? Compared to the post-war reality, the VUCA landscape has turned far more complex with major shifts in geopolitics the US/EU/Japan clique no longer holds dominion as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa; but recently Iran and Saudi Arabia want to join) alliance is getting stronger as well as in terms of the urgent issues demanding global responses (e.g., the impact of climate change, the rise of pandemics and the contentious migration waves, fundamentalist resurgence, the popularity of populism and so many others).

And the youth of today has little convergence with those of the 1960s-1980s by way of their socio-political engagements. They are ensconced in their own world and it is not fair for those of the baby boomers and Gen-X generations to expect them to be copycats. After all, they live in a very different context their parents and grandparents would not have imagined might arise in just a few decades since their youth. This especially because of how the computer and other technological gadgets have become integral in the everyday lives of our youth today.

The high-tech revolution is unstoppable and is fast progressing into new apps, algorithms, social platforms and all that that jazz. Unlike their elders, they maneuver through these labyrinthian corridors with ease often leaving their elders perplexed! It seems they are now slowly starting to lose interest in email, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter with the fast entrance of artificial intelligence beginning with ChatGPT, the sibling model to InstructGPT trained to follow an instruction in a prompt and provide a detailed response. Despite the fears expressed by the moguls of the internet world, including Elon Musk, AI technology is bound to grow by leaps and bounds. And now we are hearing this thing called Singularity which would produce the mythical bionic man!

So is it possible to bridge youth activism (among millennials, Gen-Z and the next generation) and the computer technology? Jon Traya—a Davao-based millennial philosopher-architect-artist-businessman—is offering a possible model. An Osias disciple, as he appropriated the TAYO philosophy, he has crafted an app that the Filipino youth of today might want to consider. That is, if they do want to have some kind of engagement in responding to the country’s socio-political ills. Which can be done online, without having to go out and march in the streets! Here is Traya’s Manifesto for TAYO (which was publicly released last June 12, Independence Day):

We believe it is time for a new economic and social organization model.
We believe in the power of community to create a more inclusive, egalitarian, and sustainable system. We cast aside the traditional models of capitalism and communism, which prioritize profits and political ideologies over the needs of people and the planet.
We forward the concept of the third space in this digital world, where people from diverse backgrounds and experiences may come together to collaborate and co-create a better future; A space unbounded by the constraints of the past and creatively open to new and innovative ideas that challenge the status quo.
We are committed to building social networks in an atmosphere of trust and cooperation; to leveraging the unique strengths and resources of our community members.
We believe in the power of the collective and the importance of equal access and opportunity within our community.
We surmise that the traditional models of capitalism and communism/socialism have failed to deliver on their promises of prosperity and fairness for all—it is now time for a new approach that recognizes the interdependence and interconnectedness of all individuals and communities to emerge.
We propose an alternative model in the context also observed by Camilo Osias—the pluralized idea.
We propose TAYO.
TAYO has been unconsciously guiding us in our worldview (“kalibutan,” “palibot,” “libot” or around us). It is rooted in our being, in our language, embracing us, and somehow escapes our consciousness. Now is the time to be cognizant of TAYO.
TAYO emphasizes the power of networks and social connections in shaping ideas and economic outcomes.
TAYO recognizes the importance of building social capital, leveraging indigenous knowledge and cultural traditions, and equalizing access within the network.
TAYO seeks to build communities rooted in the ideals of inclusivity, equity, and sustainability.
We invite all those who share these values to join us and be guided by the spirit of TAYO in building a better future for all. Together, we create a kalibutan that is all-inclusive, a we-all-world not limited to species, color, race, ethnicity, ideology, territory, or religion as its basis for unity but recognizes plurality and interdependence of all.

TAYO is We. We Stand, We Build, Us Together. The Collective We.

Only time will tell if this TAYO agenda will take off and resonate with a mass of our Filipino youth. But there is already an available app, that in your computer appears in the company of the other apps. In a sense this is a genuinely Filipino app taking advantage of a foreign technology.

If you are interested, check out https://tayoapp.com, available for both Apple and Android.

A few days ago we celebrated the 162nd birthday of Dr. Jose Rizal who was born in 1861. Rizal is known to have written: “The youth is the hope of the Fatherland!” If he were born today, what would be his suggestion as to how the Filipino youth could truly be the hope of the Fatherland?”

(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Redemptorist Brother Karl Gaspar is Mindanao’s most prolific book author. Gaspar is also a Datu Bago 2018 awardee, the highest honor the Davao City government bestows on its constituents. He recently moved to his new assignment in Cebu City.)

Your perspective matters! Leave a comment below and let us know what you think. We welcome diverse viewpoints and encourage respectful discussions. Don't hesitate to share your ideas or engage with others.
The MindaNews Podcast
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MINDAVIEWS

TOP STORIES

- **Celebrity Backers:** Various minor celebrities (like musician B.o.B, basketball player Kyrie Irving) have publicly flirted with flat Earth ideas, often citing “independent research.”
- **Arguments Used:** Flat-earthers often claim NASA photos are faked, cite “no observable curvature,” and misuse principles of physics or perspective.

What NBA star claimed that the earth is flat?

- **Why Resurgence?

** Social media, distrust of authority, and anti-establishment sentiment fuel interest, along with a desire for community and uniqueness.

- **Who Believes?

** Generally, those with lower trust in institutions, a distrust for science or experts, and sometimes feelings of alienation or a desire to stand out.

**Conclusion/Advice:**
Flat Earth belief is usually an eccentric stance rather than “something dark and dangerous,” but it can coexist with broader anti-science or conspiratorial worldviews.

The primary risk is exposure to a mindset that devalues evidence and fosters distrust of reliable sources.

Rather than panic, a conversation with your son about critical thinking, evaluating evidence, and the importance of reliable sources is recommended.

Relationship with his friend can be maintained, but healthy skepticism and awareness should be encouraged.

**Summary of Extracts with Relevance to Flat Earth Belief Resurgence and Contemporary Society**

- **Tradition vs. Modern Uncertainty:** In traditional societies, people lived under close supervision and trusted rumors, with customs and traditions largely unchosen and unquestioned.

Title:

Content: Olympiad News
Baric bottom of mass control
Growing pressure and sudden change
In a society that is called traditional, people lived under supervision.
In order to avoid uncertainty, I cite the main features of a traditional society: complete self-sufficiency without the need to trade with other countries; a high level of religiosity; a rigid class hierarchy; the predominance of collective labor over individual activity; a large role of family ties; the dominance of society over the individual.
Private life in such societies, contrary to stereotypes, is always tightly controlled by customs, and those who violate customary norms are severely and publicly punished.
Cruelty is included in the conditions - the guilty are not going to be corrected, the punishment should serve as a clear example for others.
The more terrible and painful it is, the more the lesson is remembered.
The culture of traditional society is based not on a rational, but on a religious-mystical view of reality.
Of all the ways of obtaining information, rumors are the most trusted, all members of society have an idea of   customs and traditions, but no one has the opportunity to choose them.
Therefore, not only real crimes, but also acts and feelings that do not coincide with cultural and moral values, which are considered generally accepted, are subject to punishment.
And close contact with the team and relatives makes a person completely under control.
Modern societies, which have been developing in the world since the end of the 18th century, changed the position of the individual, seeking, first of all, the liberation of his consciousness, but it took quite a long time before it was possible to introduce new norms - freedom of belief, conscience, thought.
Modern man lived in cities where the control of family and environment weakened as housing conditions improved.
The isolation of city apartments allowed a person to hide and anonymously enjoy the new fruits of civilization - to think and act in his own way, as he wanted.
These fruits appeared as a result of technological progress: the internal combustion engine and electricity changed the economic system.
The development of technology required freedom of thought, openness, exchange, trust in the new.
Modern Russia caught by surprise, as a result of the social revolution, and suddenly freed from constant supervision, the communal man walked freely until he was again chained in the grip of the state, which completely took control and punishment.
But the state in an intensively modernizing society, free from a single system of values, is not total, even when it is totalitarian.
There are always loopholes: blind corners where the persecuted are hidden, rented apartments where meetings are held, forgotten libraries where books are stored that are forbidden for distribution.
Dissidents in the USSR knew that they were being followed, that sooner or later they would most likely be arrested, or sent to a mental institution, or expelled from the country, but it was possible, hiding and carefully, to reprint banned books and articles, to create illegal publications.
All the more freely behaved those whose task was not the fight against official power, but simply the expansion of cultural and scientific horizons.
Closed film screenings and exhibitions, theatrical underground, apartment buildings, home circles for the study of semiotics and psychoanalysis, entire libraries of photocopies - all this existed in the era of stagnation.
The world around us mastered the fruits and traumas of individualism, only its fragrances reached us.
Although most of the Soviet people even then continued to live according to the laws of traditional society.
Not only in Russia, the world of modernity and the world of traditional ways collide in time - this problem is characteristic of many societies, as a result of which they tend to widely use violence against citizens for the sake of the idea of order.
There is not much new here, the transitional stage has always been accompanied by the emergence of new hierarchies, simply special order services, instruments of violence with the function of control, as well as the fusion of criminal structures with the authorities.
What is new, in my opinion, is that the modern world, built on the idea of   technological progress, makes life transparent.
Cellular networks, social networks, security cameras, facial recognition systems, recording private conversations and correspondence, drones and broadband Internet, as it turned out, not only contribute to security and friendliness, but literally increase the control zone to infinity.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the future transparency of humanity was not only dreamed of, but also feared its consequences (remember Eisenstein ’ s “Glass House ”), but now we are faced with its complex and unusual properties.
The private life in which we hid, literally before our eyes ceases to be such.
The individual, newly free and independent, finds himself again dependent and controlled in the wind of social emotion.
His political views are examined by the state security agencies, his sex life by social activists.
Athletes vigilant eye of medical control accompanies from morning brushing of teeth to evening date - will not it come across in toothpaste, a tablet for headaches, in a glass of aperitif of something forbidden?
Public people spend a lot of money to hide from the public eye wives, children, home and yacht, illness and addiction, but they do it poorly.
The political struggle for ideas is replaced by the struggle for shelter, for the monopoly of the secret of private life, for the secrets of true connections and priorities.
Now it is not the family or the community that controls any human actions, but everyone who is ready and able – and the notorious freedom and privacy, the ability to independently, on their own, to solve issues of their own feelings melts under the pressure of both new and old ethics.
So far, violence seems to be winning.
The idea of suppressing all actions that fall under suspicion seems effective.
But even if you lock everyone in the colonies and seal the windows with paper, sooner or later there will be a kind soul that will take out on a flash drive, on the retina, on the fingertips information about what is happening inside.
And with this information, the amount of which is growing, something will have to be done.
The authorities use an old tool - an indicative frightening punishment, believing that the more it sows horror, the less free, uncontrolled actions will be committed by wards citizens.
But this method, as we know from history, was never universal and worked only in close union with social norms.
Of course, attempts are being made to introduce common (traditional) values into society, but post-industrial society is much more complex than the traditional one, and these attempts are doomed - it is never possible to return to the past (although sometimes it turns out to delay the old way of life in new circumstances).
But new values do not promise freedom of individual choice.
There will be no conclusion.
The phase that we are now experiencing guarantees only maximum instability, as in weather forecasts, where sudden changes in pressure lead to drought, hurricane, frost, and even to an unexpected thaw.
The author expresses a personal opinion, which may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.
Downloading

This suggests that tightly knit communities often accept collective beliefs without much individual scrutiny.

Title:

Content: Map of city events
View map
The psychiatrist told how society is fraught with the lack of norms
Society
A shot from the film "Frost" / 1964
According to one of the VTsIOM studies, concepts such as “justice ”,“ labor ” and “patriotism ” are more significant for older people than for young people: they are positive in 14-25 percent of respondents 60 years and older, while among respondents aged 18-24 years, only 3-5 percent respond to them.
But can there be a strong society with different basic concepts?
Let ’ s try to deal with the expert.
Surprisingly, a freedom-loving creature named man feels more comfortable if he lives in a system of clearly defined coordinates: it is bad, it is good, it is worth it, it is not.
And our expert, Doctor of Medical Sciences Andrei Zhilyaev, is sure that most of our problems are associated with the destruction of the pre-existing axioms, the replacement of which has not yet been found.
— Unfortunately, we have to state that we have broken the transmission from generation to generation of axioms that lived the older generation.
In other words, they are not applicable as an experience to the younger generation, ” Andrei Gennadievich is sure.
Exactly the opposite.
Wanting to bet, I'm starting to remember.
Grandfathers taught our generation not to ask employers questions about money, it was considered indecent and praising themselves and their talents. "You live modestly - you will die in honor," added grandmothers, not forgetting to remind: "the best decoration of a girl is modesty."
And what now?
Do not ask for money - so they will pay their fellow competitors, and for extra modesty will have to pay - trampled!
The axioms of our time are different: modesty is the lot of the poor, without self-promotion - nowhere.
You can not "speak" - you are a fool and an unfinished intellectual...
And the school is no longer a teacher, but a provider of services.
- Today we have the right to say that we have identified certain vectors of displacement of public morality, - explains Andrei Zhilyaev. - Immutable truths from the recent past have been lost or destroyed.
You are right: the same modesty was in the priorities, and around this most important “pillar ” a lot was built in our lives.
And now on the agenda is the opposite trend, going beyond the reasonable and overcoming the edges of the most pretentious outrageous.
Modesty has become a forced quality, condemned or ignored.
Until recently, it never occurred to people to dedicate someone to the intimate details of their lives.
Moreover, if a person had a tendency to completely “turn out ” in public, demonstratively exposing his life and himself in front of others, this was called mental exhibitionism among specialists and was considered a sign of a mental disorder belonging to the hysterical spectrum.
This did not seem to be the norm, but there were clearly recognized criteria of these norms in society.
This is important because in the absence of the norm, a person is deactivated and is not able to build relations with either society or with himself.
In the justice of the sad statement resembling a diagnosis, Andrei Zhilyaev is sure:
Look at what is happening unbiased.
All trends that once belonged to hysterical manifestations, passed into the category of socially encouraged.
Take a look at the blogosphere – it is almost entirely in the zone of demonstrative declarations, consists of a competition of self-opinions and attempts to throw out everything that is intrinsically hidden.
It turns into a parody of the mental and psychological norm.
Maybe all this is not scary?
But the expert is sure: you can not underestimate the situation.
People who still remember other positions of public morality can be held within the framework of those norms that hold everything “reasonable, good, eternal ”.
But children, alas, now absorb those ideals that will carry later in life - the samples of today.
We are already seeing the first generation that has not caught the norms we are talking about …
These people are 30-35 years old, explains Andrei Zhilyaev.
Some of them were brought up at home on the samples that were alive in the “genetic memory ”.
And someone grew up on what he saw around him.
The problems that these people face are obvious.
But they themselves have children, reminds the expert!
They grow in a world of new morality, with a sense of priority of the individual and personal values, when egocentrism and selfishness are presented as the norm and it is through the prism of selfishness that everything else is considered.
It ’ s all about “me ”
At that moment, the “heat ” appeared against our will in our conversation.
How so, I asked the expert, what kind of negative notes I hear in your voice, if your fellow psychologists, and, in fact, almost all modern psychology, are simply “turned ” now on the attitudes to individualism and the priority of personal interests?
And the same personal growth trainings, and various coaches talk about it!
- What you are talking about is a reflection of the essence of what is happening, - explains Andrei Zhilyaev. - And psychologists in some special cohort I would not allocate here.
It is important to understand that a person is made a person by transpersonal values, since personal interests are limited in time by the length of human life.
When we talk about the primacy of personal values, we devalue those concepts on which society is based.
A self-sufficient person, by and large, does not need society.
Those who are deep in themselves, whether it be a yogi who has attained enlightenment, a deep sage philosopher or a schemer, these individual, special people left society, lived on their own and did not rely on society.
In other versions, the fixation on personal interests was called philistinism.
By the way, have you ever wondered why modern leaders are extremely reluctant to introduce psychologists into teams?
Yes, because another psychologist talks about the primacy of the personal devalues the very idea of   the value of the collective, cohesion, common goals and objectives.
And we stopped believing in sincerity, notes Andrei Zhilyaev.
And we manifest ourselves in situations that previously assumed only one reaction, sometimes inadequately.
For example, earlier, the specialist explains, it was impossible not to help a person in a difficult situation - whether it is a fall on the street or a fight.
- They beat a woman on the street, and people, instead of intervening, shoot the story on their phones.
Insulting someone, mocking someone, the same thing.
True, there is some “justification ” for this, because getting involved in a conflict can be fraught.
For example, recently discussed such a story: people, villagers, hit the car returned home after serving a prison sentence, a man, a local resident.
Why was shot down, says Andrei Gennadyevich: because he stabbed five people and went with a bloody knife to walk around the village.
I was in the mood to use the knife again and again.
He was hit, tied up and handed over to the police.
But those who hit the killer were put on trial - for a hit.
It would seem that these are disproportionate things, because it was a murderer, but those who by their actions reduced the level of social threat suffered.
Now, if, God forbid, something like this were to happen, would there be one who would risk resisting?
A shot from the film “Moscow does not believe in tears ” / 1979
- Yes, this is a blatant case, - continues Andrei Gennadyevich, - but there is a lot of other, one nature with this: we no longer call the police if we are harassed by telephone fraudsters, because "it is more expensive for us", we will calmly pass by a person lying on the road.
All this is an illustration of the fact that another axiom has collapsed: the state is no longer our protector, the individual must protect and shape himself.
And she does it as best she can...
Distrust in society to each other, the expert says, has been formed more than once.
Once the film crew of “Vzglyad ” conducted an experiment: they offered passers-by on the Arbat chic soccer balls as a gift.
People didn ’ t take it – suspiciously!
Then the phenomenon of alertness was just beginning to manifest itself.
— The primacy of the personal leads to human disunity, which contradicts the appeals of various declarations proclaimed both in our country and in Europe, — continues Zhilyaev. — And they call, among other things, for the consolidation of efforts, the formation of a national idea and other similar things.
But we already have "my house on the edge" - the main thing.
And it is already clear that if we do not care about other people, there are no those who are ready to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others.
How to cement society?
These tiny episodes add up to a mosaic canvas.
— We have in the trend were borrowing from alien, imposed on us psychology.
This is the heaviest legacy of recent times.
Not impoverishment, not economic difficulties, but the psychology of individualists, - Andrei Gennadyevich is sure, - because it is transposed into the future precisely from the position of collapse and attempts to replace the main ephemeral economic prospects.
We even have appeals addressed to the future, shifted to the economic side: “You can earn ”,“ You will receive interest … ”
Extrapolation of this at the level of official linguistics is the very “service ” that destroys the spiritual essence of society.
After all, social statuses in society have always been formed on several levels.
The seller provides a service - this is one thing, and the doctor, teacher, policeman can not provide services, their occupation involves high involvement in the process and responsibility.
Alas, but we are already faced with the fact that other doctors are more concerned with the regulation than the meaning of the activity...
Living without meaning will not work.
The collapse of unshakable, albeit simple, axioms is a problem with many consequences.
Terrible consequences have a loss of sense of activity, since meaningless action leads to psychological burnout.
Have these episodes increased?
The loss of meaning is massive.
“Sisyphov ’ s work is because it is devoid of meaning, ” explains Andrei Zhilyaev. – We are talking about an absolutely unconscious law, the essence of which is that any psychological action seeks to be completed, and the completion of the action is the achievement of meaning, result.
This law was formulated once by the psychologist Blum Zeigarnik.
- Repairers of the road, respecting their interests, block it.
Often this makes no sense, it ’ s just more convenient for them – fenced off the territory, no need to run and rearrange the dividing cones.
But the real point is that the track is "going".
It should be comfortable for the driver.
And when does, say, a credit institution work?
From 9: 00 to 18: 00, that is, when people are also at work.
There are hundreds of such examples.
We live in a place of secondary meanings.
The Queen of the Gas Station (1963)
Ugly Reflection
The logical question: what then?
Zhilyaev is sure: this problem is not easy to solve, but not as difficult as it may seem.
It is necessary to teach people, especially young people, to form goals and meanings before the process of solving problems begins.
The process and the result must be separated, because in fact we see that everyone is for himself.
Law of the Jungle.
How much should we intervene in the process?
Andrei Zhilyaev is convinced: it is necessary.
— After all, very soon we will begin to collect the harvest sown by us or by our connivance: the extreme cynicism and lack of spirituality of the new generation in the complete absence of patriotism, since all these “stupidity ” are alien and uninteresting to the“ individual ”.
Our children learn life from obvious examples: they do not see a successful working person become a noticeable member of society, but they often listen to clowns, who were brought to the peak of popularity by pseudo-success, which implies exclusively the possession of material assets, people who received their preferences on ugly phenomena like hype and outrageous, and even cynical enough to allow themselves social mentorship.
Our children are faced with distorted humor, turned into a mockery of people, filled with terrible naked aggression.
We already see the second generation rising after the collapse of axioms, and we see the confusion of young parents — why children are so — but protecting their child even in acute cases of aggression.
And children grow up in a society that would more accurately be called a herd of competing units.
And man became man because he learned to cooperate with others like himself.
Foundation laying time
Note that axioms are the basis of the crystal lattice on which our society stands, points Andrei Zhilyaev.
And we have changed the approach to the family, which is increasingly being formed as an economic community.
Something else has come to replace the family: the interaction of two egoistic concepts.
Talk about money and deposits, all economic...
It is as if we are not creating a family, but a new legal entity, LLC 7.
Alas, members of such “families ” often do not understand the formulas of love of the old format: love is respect, trust and tolerance for shortcomings.
Society without deep meanings turns the family union into a kind of enterprise that has its own goals, but this enterprise destroys the conflicts that are now turned into war.
The dispute drifted towards the quarrel, and in order to win, it is necessary to insult, humiliate the opponent: he is the enemy!
Behind these emotions, the object of the quarrel itself slips into oblivion, and only a heavy aftertaste remains.
But theorems also prove it.
Do new theorems have a chance to become axioms?
— We caught the trend that we had seen before in developed countries, and how negligent students learned basic truths, but could not approach them critically.
But both in the West and in America, a lot of good things have been taken from our Soviet experience.
If you were walking in the forest along a familiar path, then decided to shorten the distance, breaking through the bushes, but in time realized that you would get lost, you need to return to the path, right?
Maybe it's time to do it.
Without Axiom, it is impossible.
And most importantly, they have to be created.
Of course, this is not easy, but most importantly - who should actually accept them?
The answer of the expert will surprise many: yes, the state!
It should formulate for itself clear, necessary meanings.
But, besides, everyone has to do it – for himself, for himself.
Otherwise, nothing will happen.
DOSSIER
Andrey Gennadievich Zhilyaev is a Russian psychologist and psychiatrist, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, Chairman of the Board of the Eurasian Association of Medical and Environmental Technologies.
LIKE THEIR
The concept of “European values ” is a set of axiological maxims, that is, the basic principles of the arrangement of the family, society and the state, political and economic, legal, cultural, ethical and other norms that unite a significant majority of the inhabitants of Europe (the Western world), serving as the basis of their identity.
An ideology based on these values is called Europeanism, or Europeanism.
The presence of European values is considered the fundamental basis of the European Union (EU) and the basis for European integration, but not all experts share this concept.
DIGITAL
49% of Russians consider the most positively perceived word (symbol) “justice ”.

- **Uncertainty and Social Transition:** The present era is characterized by societal confusion and a sense of being at a crossroads.

Title:

Content: A reading-room.
A Moment Between Past and Future
37 0
In "Izbe-chitalnya" we have today an article by science fiction writer Vsevolod Glukhovtsev.
A moment between past and future.
Dear readers!
Not so long ago, on the pages of this blog, there was a material dedicated to the absence of a coherent ideology in Russia, that is, a system of goals, tasks, managerial decisions of a nationwide scale, in the amount of creating social positive, hope, attracting masses with images of a beautiful future - well, or not so pathos, a future with obvious evolution, long-term stable development.
Hope is our earthly compass, this is said remarkably correctly, it is better not to say, society in principle cannot fully exist without a great goal.
There is no doubt that we have such a problem in Russia, but it is only part of a much more global problem – which I will discuss below.
In fact, as I ’ ve said more than once in the “Collective Intelligence Experience, ” regular readers of the blog probably remember these philosophical passages and the discussions around them.
And now I would like to concentrate all that, add something else and again present for public review and discussion.
I ’ m almost sure that some of my conclusions will seem crazy – and okay, this is the privilege of science fiction writers, we can safely say what an ordinary person may, and would like to say, but is afraid to be called crazy.
And we are fine, we have the help to pulsate ideas.
Here I want to share them, hoping to cause an explosion of thoughts, emotions, comments; a sinful deed in advance I grin, anticipating someone ’ s brutally scorched exhaust pipes (in the dialect of the inhabitants of the current wild field, this situation is called “vibuh and pozhezha dupi ”)... - I think readers appreciated my refined humor of a hereditary intellectual...
They were joking and will be.
Let's start a serious conversation.
In my essays mentioned above, the pillar thought was the following: modern humanity – at least what I call “Europogenic ”, and to which we certainly belong, formed by the ancient Christian cultural paradigm – so, this humanity is in a total crisis, generated by the lack of a guiding perspective idea.
In other words, society as a whole does not know where to go.
And here, having collected the previous postulates, I intend to develop this thesis as concentrated as possible with the formation of clear conclusions.
I will start with the position of the most general: a normal self-developing system (hereinafter referred to as SRS) physically grows, occupies an increasing amount of space - this is its natural vector or even tensor, so to speak.
Any healthy human society: a tribe, a people, a state, a superpower is just such a SRS and it increases exactly as, materially, in volume, in mass, determined by two main parameters: territory and population size.
What we habitually call “world history ” is essentially a history of politics, or rather, of geopolitics, of the actions of the largest and most influential states and empires.
Yes, of course, any state is an entity that is born, grows, seeks its place in the world, falls into crises, it happens that it dies, it happens that it is reborn...
But in empires all these processes occur so powerfully, pictorially, that whether, especially instructive, and therefore it is their descriptions that make up the lion's share of the corpus of historical sources: the empire of Alexander the Great, the Romans, Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, Napoleon... and so on.
It is understandable, because, first of all, the actions of superpowers contribute to the unification of different human communities, in other words, they contribute to globalization.
And the united humanity formed in the course of this process, of course, also grows, captures the physical space.
What are the obvious markers on the way to the formation of global humanity?
Probably, it is possible to note quite a lot of such points, but for us the greatest interest is the middle of the XIX century: when the physical surface of the globe with the peoples inhabiting it was actually revealed, and technical progress, after a rather long formation of methods of scientific knowledge, was designated as the most important social factor.
Of course, technological progress in our usual understanding has always existed, since primitive times, but historically it turned out that purely scientific algorithms and models of thinking (differential, integral calculus, Cartesian coordinate system, etc.), led to discoveries made “without leaving the office ”, with the help of the head, goose feather and sheet of paper, and these discoveries, in turn, became a springboard for progress. given before.
It took about one and a half centuries for knowledge in the field of mechanics, thermodynamics, hydraulics, electromagnetism to be embodied in machines that concentrate and transform arrays of energy, many times surpassing the previous ones.
And it is natural that the machines of the middle of the XIX century in terms of the sum of simultaneously operating subsystems became inconceivably more complex, sophisticated and, naturally, more valuable than anything that was created before, and these complexity and high cost are an adequate fee for the ability to concentrate and direct huge energy flows in the channel needed by the operator, to put it simply – to give gigantic forces into the hands of a person.
In some articles here, I gave an example of an image that is extremely sympathetic to my writer's gut: every technical construct is nothing more than a "magical technocostume", wearing which, a person turns himself into a completely fabulous creature, becoming a participant in the "technocarnival":
a) chauffeur + car = centaur;
b) pilot + combat aircraft = dragon … etc.
In short, techno-suit, even the most primitive, like a protective shell, helmet and spear is a fundamental strengthening of the operational capabilities of a person, and even steam locomotives, steamships, electric motors (already in 1839 an experimental electric ship was built, a little Pushkin did not live to see him - this is for understanding the era)!..
- It was clear to any sensible politician what colossal advantages technical progress brings first of all in the military plan, and it is more fair to say, of course, scientific and technical, STP, because the evolution of technology has no basis other than scientific research, including fundamental ones.
My next thesis, I suppose, will cause some controversy, but I am convinced of it: since then and until recently, about 150 years, with all the obvious costs (terrible wars, environmental problems...)
NTP was the main inspiring idea of humanity, it was perceived as the main and elixir of growth, and the hope of humanity, its Eldorado, Belovodye, the magical shore of hope.
Let ’ s not forget: humanity is a normal SRS, it is growing physically, and the NTP gave it both unprecedented losses and a gigantic increase in the population – I will not prove this, everyone will easily find figures and graphs.
Well, where the population growth, there is the growth of the territory, a growing society needs new lands and skies, but with them in the last few decades, the situation is purely ambiguous.
Last year, exactly half a century was marked by the highly acclaimed report of a group of researchers led by the American Dennis Meadows “Limits to Growth ”, developed under the auspices of the no less famous Club of Rome.
The report became a sensation, causing an explosion of polar opinions and fierce controversy.
Let me remind you that back then, in 1972, the Meadows team predicted the exhaustion of the resources of our entire planet within thirty years, that is, by 2002 - with such consumption of these resources by collective humanity as then, in those years.
But it has been 20 years since the supposed deadline.
Thank God, there is no universal catastrophe, resources have not dried up, they are still being drawn to this day, but Meadows and his comrades, I must admit, were right in something.
Maybe even in the main.
Today we see various social measures aimed at inhibiting global consumption (whether these measures are spontaneous or conscious is a special topic): a protracted economic recession, a pandemic, managed local wars – in other words, we see a total crisis in something similar to the Great Catastrophe of 1914-1945, however, which has completely different causes and significant differences, in particular, it proceeds incomparably softer than a century. back.
But I have no doubt that this is a deep, existential crisis of Europogenic society.
This society, in fact, has nowhere to grow, here I fundamentally agree with the statement of the problem, and I undertake to confirm it.
Thus, normal society grows spatially.
The original primitive tribe fed from the surrounding ecosystem (forest, field, river, lake...) within a radius of several kilometers, and with the emergence of cattle breeding, agriculture, the area of   cultural development grew significantly for two main reasons:
(a) The technologies required territories, pastures, arable land and steam land;
b) the constant supply of food has led to a demographic, if not an explosion, then a strong rise, and more people, of course, just need more place to live.
And so on - the Russians rushed to Siberia because these expanses carried precious furs, the Spaniards to America, a source of gold and silver, the British to India, the French to Africa... somewhat conditionally, but essentially so.
All this was before the outbreak of the STP, and the rapid breakthrough of technology in the late XIX-early XX centuries absolutely logically led to the idea of   the development of extraterrestrial space.
Frenzied progressing humanity urgently needs more and more expanses, and it is quite natural that the eyes turned to distant planets, nebulae, stars and other romance, and it is good that such a romance was, because it provoked quite sober calculations.
I am ready to assert that the idea of space exploration was the main stimulus of Europogenic mankind in the twentieth century, its blissful dream.
It began to take hold of minds at the beginning of the century (“Aelita ” was written in 1923, exactly a hundred years ago), but the Great Disaster, of course, cut down the topic for a long time, everyone was not up to space, would have lived.
But after World War II, people returned to it at an incomparably different technological level, and after the first space flights, people really felt the exciting proximity of huge mysterious spaces, and the dream that we are about to rush there, into unknown distances, joyfully seized many minds.
In the social dimension, society saw before itself the space of great achievements, was inspired by the idea of unlimited exploration of the Universe, which created a generally healthy mood, the expectation of a promising future, that is, the basis of a social positive deeply desired by the authorities.
We are now forced to admit that those hopes have not been realized, having sunk into two intractable problems, or rather, it is the same problem in two guises:
(a) The extreme complexity, hence the riskiness and accident rate of space technology;
b) its ruinous cost.
In other words, over time, it turned out that the practical development of extraterrestrial space is unrealistic: technical systems here are so complex, so many subsystems must work in them at the same time that their impeccable joint work is extremely unlikely, at least somewhere, but some kind of failure will happen.
And spending on this is very burdensome for budgets, of course, only superpowers can afford to play in space, and even then only limited.
And after the first turbulent years of progress, cosmonautics trampled on the spot, there is no question of any settlement of mankind on distant planets, with great efforts, several people only visited the Moon, which ended.
More than half a century has passed since then, the matter has not progressed one step, even the superpowers did not play in such expensive toys.
So the dream of millions gradually melted away.
But the masses cannot live without a guiding idea, this puppeteers know very well, even if they say about a “society without ideology ”.
“No ideology ” is already an ideology, and what else, namely: after the collapse of the USSR, Europogenic society tried to infect with a moral virus such as“ buy and have fun ”; we recognize that it is extremely easy for us by our human nature to get on this needle.
When you can actually buy more goods and services today than yesterday, and tomorrow more than today - not because it is vital for you, but because it is cool and fun, and in general, life is a game of shopping and a demonstration of prestigious junk.
Well, in fact, it kindles well, gives a vector of life to an individual, thereby stabilizing society.
This unspoken ideology of “status consumption ” worked quite effectively – but, of course, smart puppeteers were well aware that this could invigorate and structure society temporarily, that this is only a respite, during which it would be good to find a real, spiritualizing idea.
And if it does not work, then you will have to invent something that moderates consumer appetites.
This, of course, is unpleasant, you can cause an explosion in a society accustomed to contentment and comfort - therefore, here, too, you need a sensible socio-psychological treatment of the population, which is carried out today, not without squeaking, not without noticeable turbulence, which affected you and us - the era of satiety has curled up, and the new time is alarmingly looming pandemics and local armed conflicts.
And still, no flammable idea is not visible: people live because it is necessary to live, home, life, family, again echoes of status consumption - we can no longer imagine how you can live without a car, a smartphone, the Internet, while it is desirable that it was not worse than others, so as not to experience mental discomfort...
This is life today, not the future.
The future, by and large, is not.
Not yet.
I fundamentally believe that society cannot exist without a goal-setting idea, even if it is deceptive, like a carrot before a donkey.
And I would be a bad philosopher and writer if I didn ’ t think about it and make predictions.
Philosophy is the “forward-looking ” of humanity, I said it and will say it, well, I will not forget to repeat that a science fiction writer can and even should produce hypotheses that look good“ crazy ”.
Life will show what will be justified, what will not be justified, but one of the tasks of the forerunner is to stir up society, make it think, worry, argue, and, you see, in the dispute the truth will be born.
First of all, I want to draw attention to the fact that the exhaustion of progress, in particular, the exploration of space, concerns large powerful machines designed to enhance the physical power of man (as a rule, these are so-called heat machines, but I prefer the term “fire machines ”, it is brighter and even more correct, if you think about it).
In fact, the classic STP of the XIX-XX centuries was dedicated to this: to merge a person with a mechanism the more powerful, the better.
A person behind the wheel of a car, the steering wheel of an aircraft, submarines, the remote control of a nuclear power plant - all these are biotechnological complexes, characters of technocarnival.
And it reached its maximum, to the maximum power around 1975 – about, of course – and then either stood up or the pace of progress fell, because the bio-operator of such a complex, Homo sapiens (hereinafter – HS), due to biological limitations, simply does not cope with the greater volume and unpredictability of physico-chemical processes than those that managed to conclude in fire machines half a century ago, so that attempts to create something even more complex (controlled thermonuclear reaction, space aeroplane...) became like a fuss with a herd of mustangs: catch seems to have been caught, but tame is not very good.
Therefore, a dead end.
What is not a dead end in the last forty or fifty years - it is quite obvious that these are the means of informatics and communication, the machines are small, weak, not so much serving the transformation of a person into a powerful biomech, but improving his information and analytical capabilities, that is, the focus of progress is noticeably shifted from the executive to the coginitive-staff, so to speak, the weakest place of the technocarnival figure is being modernized - the bio-operator.
And the more obvious trend for me in recent years is the shift of the epicenter of scientific research in the field of biology, especially genetics, which hints at the possibility of a fundamentally new modernization of man, not by attaching an external technocostume to him, but from within, genetic modification, up to the formation of a new species whose genome is quite different from CS, and we can assume that this genome is more perfect, its owner, let ’ s call it Homo gene mutatio, HGM, is able to perceive a larger volume of the universe.
Some fairly convincing data (referring those interested in the works of the famous neurophysiologist N.P. Bekhtereva) indicate that our sensory system is very limited, we simply do not catch much of the existing.
What we habitually call reality, perceived through the filter of our five senses, is only a part of being, and it does not seem to be very large.
Well, what can I say, Plato with his “cave ” described this picture two and a half thousand years ago: a huge shining world is visible to us in fragments from the twilight cave of sensory communicates (“ idols of the genus ” according to F. Bacon), and gene modification can be considered as an opportunity to reveal access to the completely real reserves of space-time hidden from the CS, only vaguely guessed behind the visible surface of events.
Once I was deeply touched by the ingenious simplicity of the thought of V.I. Vernadsky, and the impression was that the academician himself reacted to it somehow in passing: he said it, but then he did not develop it.
Maybe he just did not have time, I do not know; but in general he was very interested in the problem of finding a fundamental criterion that distinguishes living matter from non-living.
It is clear that the living and the inanimate are radically different forms of the organization of matter, and it is extremely important for the natural scientist to build a system of signs that clearly separate one from the other.
Now, of course, a well-established ensemble of these criteria has been formulated, but Vernadsky ’ s thought seems to cover them with a parachute: in his opinion, the difference between the living and the inanimate is in the structure of space-time; what we call the living is a multidimensional space-time continuum, much more highly organized than the inanimate.
Well, this prompted me to think this: an indirect indicator of the perfection of a particular system is what we somewhat vaguely call “beauty. ”
I undertake to assert that the more beautiful the object, the more highly organized the system it is, the greater the energy and labor invested in it, if it is artificial.
Well, the most beautiful, I would even say beautiful, I will undoubtedly declare the Earth ’ s biosphere (remember Shishkin ’ s picture “Forest Dali ”!) - with the uniqueness of all this in space inexplicable from well-established positions (Fermi paradox).
It is Vernadsky ’ s idea that allows us to explain this uniqueness: the fact that we see how living forests, fields-skies are in fact the surface of yet unknown hyperspace-time, the sensory system and the brain of the CS is able to perceive this continuum only in the image of the extraordinary beauty of the earth ’ s expanses, which are very different from other world space.
I would say that the planet Earth in space is a “white hole ”, the antonym of a black hole, failure to nowhere.
This, on the contrary, is the road upwards, from small space-time into the expanses of light living space.
And all of this leads us to the hypothesis that genetic modification of a person in the foreseeable future will lead to the fact that the HGM will be able to see what is simply not able to see the HS, only vaguely seeing it in the charm of landscapes, horizons in a light haze, sunrises, reflections of clouds in the lake blue...
Here I will decide to express what used to break through the same Vernadsky, Chardin, Lem in Solaris, but what is the twentieth century! - they will tell me, this is all good old Tengrianism!..
I don ’ t mind that comparison either.
And the essence is this: planet Earth, including the invisible part, the noosphere, is a sentient substance, a thinking being whose intelligence is obviously superior to human.
In principle, we can assume that the Earth in one person and the researcher and the laboratory, where it deduces in the course of evolution different bi-realties – like any researcher by trial and error, creating dead-end variants such as invertebrates, dinosaurs, abandoning them, and finally, finding a promising project in the face of the family of hominids, creatures that must evolve before reprogramming themselves, open up “rolled ” dimensions of biospatial space and biotime and make full contact with the soul of the planet.
At Lem Solaris easily communicated with HS, catching human images and turning them into some biogens, well, with the planet Earth in such a hyperproductive contact, suppose, is able to enter HGM, for which the inhabited continuum will be an immanent complement to himself, that is, the person and the personality of the planet will become if not a single whole, then something close to it.
The brain of HGM and the noosphere are in a positive resonance, making up an integral operational capacity, and in other words, modified humanity and the Big Earth will make up a living space.
I call this concept neo-geocentrism, predicting that the space-time reserves of our beautiful planet, when opened to our HGM descendants, will be much more spacious, comfortable, rich than the inhospitable dead spaces of the current universe.
What will it look like? … Well, here even my writer ’ s imagination gives back.
Until I made the painting.
I don ’ t know if I ’ m right to make these hypotheses.
Perhaps our coming century will be very different.
But in the fact that we live at the crossroads of ages, I am sure.
The old one is exhausted, the new one is not yet to be seen, except that its ghosts vaguely roar somewhere beyond the horizon of existence.
But this new must come, must illuminate the world, without a grandiose goal, society will sour and decompose, in general, the entire history of mankind, and the evolution of the biosphere indicate that the goal is an absolutely necessary component of the CCS.
In any case, neo-geocentrism as part of the worldview complex of HGM can become the basis on which further development will unfold.
As far as it is justified, it will not be justified – let ’ s wait, we will see.
And I would highly advise everyone interested in prognostic, futurological problems to closely monitor the achievements of genetics.
The ghosts of the future world are here somewhere.
(c) Vsevolod Glukhovtsev
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There is collective uncertainty about the direction society should take, and authority structures (like “superpowers” playing in space) are questioned due to practical limitations and diminished belief in a clear, promising future.

- **Loss of Norm Clarity:** While there are still recognized social norms, adherence feels less certain, and people question whether deviations—like belief in unusual ideas—are genuinely threatening or just a reflection of changing times.

- **Crisis and Apocalyptic Thinking:** References to societal fears and apocalyptic predictions (Mayans, global cooling) indicate that each age has its own anxieties.

Title:

Content: How Humanism Loves People
Victor MARAKHOVSKY, publicist
23.09.2021
The material was published in No. 6 of the printed version of the newspaper Kultura on June 24, 2021 as part of the theme of the issue “Why are the dark times for culture? ”.
To find admiration for a person as an entity is a difficult and unbanal task.
Man in the mirror of the modern pop-worldview is a natural pest and destroyer of life, who must become conscious, repent and begin to behave well.
Next year marks the tenth anniversary of the last untwisted end of the world (2012).
It was, as we remember, the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar.
In fact, by the time the bearded Spanish people arrived on the shores of Mesoamerica, little remained of the great civilization, and the calendar was used mainly by their neighbors, the Aztecs, and coexisting city-states.
To truly appreciate how humiliating was the expectation of the Mayan-Aztec apocalypse by modern civilization, it is enough to recall what picture was caught by the cruel European conquerors.
To do this, you should look into the same calendar and read about the rituals that accompanied each new month and year.
Reading is not for the faint of heart, because after a few minutes, the brain begins to scream protestingly from all these “during the first month, children were sacrificed, usually on the tops of the hills ” and“ the second month was opened with a holiday of skin stripping from a person. ”
The deep meaning of the endless atrocities to which the Mesoamerican sages subjected the subordinate population was considered by them to be very sublime and was directly related to the Maya / Toltec / Aztec ideas of reality.
In short, they were convinced that eternity was cyclical, that they were already living on the fifth world, and that the fabric of reality itself was not torn just because all who inhabited it — men and gods — endlessly fed it with sacrificial blood.
And not only a stranger, but also his own: every self-respecting Aztec was obliged to periodically arrange a ritual bloodletting.
Without this, according to the authorities, even the sun did not rise, maize did not grow and rain did not pour.
Moreover, at the end of each world cycle, the gods who reigned over the already dilapidated world performed a ritual sacrifice of themselves - and, thus, gave rise to a new circle of existence.
Mesoamerican culture is interesting for us mainly because it is, according to a number of researchers, a kind of historical canned product.
That is, a developed archaic world order that survived in a little changed form until the moment when it was caught (and horrified) by a European.
Looking at the descriptions of Mayan or Aztec life, we see, perhaps, a reflection of their own Eurasian-North African world, as it was before the first millennium BC.
In any case, traces of human sacrifices (including children, including their own) are easily found in Egypt, in the Iliad, in the Old Testament, in the Elder Edda, and in India, though persecuted, did not stop until the end of the XIX century.
There is reason to believe that these atrocities were inextricably linked with the most archaic picture of the universe — the essence of the cyclic and largely aimless, biting itself by the tail, destroying itself and generating again.
It seems that the idea that history is not only an eternal return, but also a movement up and forth (albeit through inevitable catastrophes), really began to spread throughout the world only with Christianity — a faith based on the thesis of the perfect Sacrifice, final and absolute, brought for all people and thus opened the gates to them and paid for the ticket to eternal life.
But this does not mean, of course, that European (and, more broadly, Christian in general) civilization has abandoned the cyclical, the destruction of the world and its revival.
In fact, the expectation of decline and the "dark ages" began with the new doctrine - and very often turned out to be true (both the Christian East, the Christian Mediterranean, and Christian Europe had to survive many "minor apocalypses", when the barbarians knocked their swords at the gates of another Rome, which became a vicious Gotham and betrayed it to fire).
It will sound quite bold, but perhaps the opinion that the apocalypse is canceled, the barbarians will not come, and the future is more or less cloudless, arose in England during the heyday of its power (in any case, Marx worked there, and most of the utopias of the 20th century also came from there).
It is hardly by chance that the birthplace of political optimism was protected by the seas and ruled by an island empire that effectively plundered and enlightened a fifth of the world and a quarter of humanity.
How great was the optimism and faith in a brave new world, says the caustic pamphlet Kipling 1911 "Gods of Alphabetic Truths", in which the chief poet of the empire ridiculed the absurdity and instability of such an expected world, where "everyone is paid for what he is, and no one pays for his sins."
Kipling was sure that such a world would surely perish.
The world war, long buried global optimism, was three years away.
However, the entire XX century, two human stories (in a caricature depicted by the Strugatsky in the image of "The World of Humane Imagination and the World of Fear of the Future") were arguing among themselves: one story went to the stars, conquering somewhere in the future planet after planet friendship and help (and this was done not only by Soviet fiction, but, for example, "Star Trek" It is hard to overestimate the American view.)
Another story was waiting for apocalypse after apocalypse.
“We will all die of nuclear war, ” the“ frightened ” story claimed.
We are all going to die from plastic and waste pollution.
We're all going to die of global cooling.
Each century has its own apocalypses – and in this sense it is extremely curious to look at how they sometimes invert when the era changes.
For example, the horror of global cooling by the beginning of the 2000s was victoriously replaced by the horror of global warming (which is now somehow rebranded as “climate change ”).
And the horror of overpopulation today, when most of the world ’ s nations have already switched to the so-called “constricted reproduction ”, which means, in fact, delayed extinction, is in fact archaism, although for a number of reasons it is still heavily exploited.
In fact, in quite a few countries on the horizon of 30-40 years looms the apocalypse of extinction, and it is, I must say, much more proven and mathematically obvious than the apocalypse of Greta Thunberg.
But this obvious and direct threat does not go to any comparison with Greta ’ s apocalypse, neither in terms of the level of PR, nor in terms of the petabytes of propaganda that are being pushed into the media sphere.
In this sense, the inversion committed in the last two or three decades by human humanism itself is shocking.
It will sound unexpected, but now it is extremely difficult to find in what is called the “humanistic mainstream ” of advanced countries, traces of sympathy for the person proper.
No, a person is seen as something quite harmful (voracious and leaving behind a greasy carbon footprint).
To find the admiration of man as an entity is a difficult and unbanal task: no Shakespearean “in deeds is like God. ”
Man in the mirror of the modern pop-worldview is a natural pest and destroyer of life, who must become conscious, repent and begin to behave well.
What is this “good man ” — it is equally clear that from the sermons of Greta, that from the materials of the World Economic Forum:
• a creature that does not own anything,
• eating something environmentally neutral (soy meat and even, according to the latest trends, crickets and larvae),
• not propagating,
• living in coliving
• and even riding a bicycle as far as possible, for harmlessness and even without a trace is a modern virtue.
The bad man is the happiest man of the expectations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: someone living with his family, raising children, well-fed and prosperous, and working to conquer nature, so to speak, in his own land.
There are some reasons to believe that this is the apocalypse of our 21st century: today ’ s official world mainstream is active (and even quite successful) propaganda of the need to preemptively sacrifice your own children (and, in a sense, yourself) in order for the world to stand further and revive.
It is easy to see that there is much more to this worldview from the bloody horrors of the Maya than from the optimistic expectations of European Christian thinkers and scientists.
And this suggests that the world is perhaps really still cyclical and a significant part of it (the most advanced) has approached its own apocalypse.
And this is the case when we should make every effort not to be too advanced.

These anxieties can foster a fascination with unconventional ideas or grand conspiracies explaining why the mainstream narrative is wrong.

Title:

Content: Who are Millennials?
Characteristics and Values of the Generation
In the 1990s, the so-called generational theory was developed in the United States.
According to her, between people born in the same period, there are many things in common: their values, as well as their attitude to the most important areas of life, for example, family and work.
Millennials, meanwhile, are called representatives of Generation Y, born in 1981-1996.
About their distinctive features - in the article "Tape.ru".
What is Generation Theory
Generational theory is a concept that American writers William Strauss and Neil Howe formulated at the end of the 20th century.
With its help, they tried to describe the repetition of the cycles of generations in the United States.
For the first time the world got acquainted with this idea more than 30 years ago, in 1991, when their first joint book called Generations was published.
It describes American history from 1584.
At the same time, the presentation of information was unusual – through the biographies of individuals of different generations, in which it was possible to find a lot in common: for example, similar views on the world and values.
Six years later, in 1997, the authors released a new book, The Fourth Transformation.
In it, Strauss and Howe continued to develop their theory.
This time, they proposed the idea of a four-part generational cycle and repetitive patterns of thought and behavior in U.S. history.
According to it, one generation can include people who were born in about 20 years of time.
At the same time, a larger generational cycle lasts 80 years and includes four generations.
According to the authors, when it comes to an end, those worldviews that were in trend at the very beginning, again become relevant, and new generations appear.
For what reason did Strauss and Howe decide that people born in the same period of time can be united by the same concept?
In their works, they explained this by the fact that:
Firstly, members of one generation are in the context of the same historical events and the same age; secondly, the social circle of a person consists mainly of his peers, and this gives people a sense of belonging to something common, determined precisely by the time frame.
Note that initially this theory was applicable only to the American population, but later it began to be used by other peoples.
The authors also agreed that their idea may be relevant not only for the United States, but for the whole world.
Despite the fact that the concept developed by Strauss and Howe quickly gained wide acceptance and support, many met it with criticism.
And not without reason.
The theory has no really scientific evidence base.
Qualitative research on this topic has not been conducted; some sociologists accuse the authors of, first, hypertrophied the distinctive characteristics of generations, secondly, too carried away by generalizations, forgetting that each person is individual; In addition, Strauss and Howe themselves, after a time when the theory became international, did not take into account the characteristics of other races and nationalities.
At the same time, the founder of the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences, Theodor Shanin, emphasized that “despite the incessant talk about globalization, the difference between communities remains deep, and often increases. ”
One way or another, generational theory continues to be explored, and a more detailed study of it may indeed be beneficial.
Modern generations
At the moment, humanity, according to the theory, can be divided into four main generations.
Boomers - 1946-1964 years.
At the end of the economic and cultural crisis.
Generation X, 1965-1980.
They come into the light in the age of upheaval.
Generation Y (millennials) - 1981-1996.
Their period comes during a downturn.
Generation Z (Zumers) - since 1997.
They are born during a crisis.
In this article, we will focus on the analysis of Generation Y – millennials born in the Soviet and post-Soviet times.
Who are Millennials
Millennials are people who were born at the very beginning of the digital era (1981-1996 birth years).
Gen Y is 28-43 years old
The generation received its name from the authors of the theory of generations of Strauss and Howe in 1987.
As the modern millennials are called, the Pepsi Generation - which testifies to their belonging to the capitalist culture.
Generation Next - this definition speaks of their progressivity.
The Peter Pan Generation is a name that demonstrates the tendency of these people to delay the moment of entry into adulthood.
Millennials have witnessed a huge number of changes, both in the socio-economic and technological spheres.
The pace of life in this period began to accelerate greatly, and the main trend was globalization.
“I think what generation you belong to really matters in character formation.
Childhood of modern millennials had in the 1990s, which left an imprint on their behavior, - says "Lente.ru" psychologist and administrator of the psychological center "Doctor Psycho" Anastasia Saurina. - It was a time of rapid changes ".
Parents of millennials did not always have enough time for proper upbringing, so often representatives of this generation have a desire for the ideal, as well as an eternal search for praise and attention Anastasia Saurina psychologist
And if their parents - representatives of generation X and boomers - at one time worked a lot and were focused on constant attempts to maintain a financial position, then millennials by the time they grew up in this regard had a little more freedom.
That is why, according to the psychologist, many of them began to pay special attention to obtaining pleasure from life.
They loved to travel, socialize with friends and attend various entertainment events.
In turn, technology and globalization have made all of this more accessible.
Millennials and Family
Millennials are far more liberal than the older generation.
They value freedom of speech and freedom of choice, they are not afraid of change, they are positive about new trends.
In this regard, their attitude to marriage is also often not so conservative, unlike their parents.
They value family relationships, but often prefer to achieve their desired career goals before marriage.
In addition, this generation is serious about finding a life partner.
They are willing to spend several years on these searches.
Millennials strive for self-expression, in marriage they are characterized by partnership, but they just feel this ground.
They are one of the first to question the traditional views on the roles of men and women in relationships, but they do not always manage to establish a new framework Anastasia Saurina psychologist
As for the upbringing of children, millennials, according to the expert, there is a fear of being bad parents.
They want to be better than their ancestors, but they do not fully understand how to behave differently.
All this gives rise to a lot of anxiety, because we can say that they are pioneers in the XXI century.
Millennials and careers
According to Anastasia Saurina, millennials can often be found in leadership positions in business, and this, of course, affects the promotion of goods, services and services.
“Anxiety in the pursuit of consumer attention makes them invent more and more shares, pour in budgets and go to new sites, and interact with a younger generation of opinion leaders, – the expert explains. – It is important to stay on two chairs of fashion and habit ” .They rush in the choice between their true preferences and newfangled trends.
And not always this choice is due to their own desires Anastasia Saurina psychologist
According to the psychologist, it is possible to distinguish certain types of millennials:
Careerists are workaholics who strive to achieve high positions and high incomes by all means.
And their antipodes are those who are not ready to die for material ideas.
To such people we can also include downshifters (people who give up many material goods in favor of peace of mind) and rentiers (people living on real estate, land, securities).
Career goals don ’ t make sense to them.
The main difficulties in the life of millennials
The most frequent problem of this generation, according to Saurina, is burnout and moral exhaustion in various spheres of life: from career to family.
For what reason is this happening?
Financial issues
“Most millennials are responsible adults, with mortgages, consumer loans, stable pay, and families with children.
In this picture, typical problems with finances loom: will I have the strength to pay off my debts?
Will I be able to get my child to school and give him a good education, tutors and hobby clubs? ” says the psychologist.
Pressure of Society
Many millennials throughout their lives feel the condemning views of older generations, who are much more conservative.
A person of generation Y often echoes the thoughts of others within himself: for example, if there are no children, then it means that they are urgently needed, if the child is only one, then when is the second?
But no one asks the question: will young people have enough strength and resources for all this? "- emphasizes Saurina.
Too high pace of life
The pace of peace in the twenty - first century has indeed increased.
Millennials were the first to feel it.
“The swiftness of life forces them to make quick decisions that do not always work for the benefit, which causes the most severe stress that they drown in alcohol or antidepressants, and sometimes there is simply no time to pause to deal with everything.
And this closes the circle of eternal running for the sake of running, ” the psychologist notes.
According to the psychologist, modern millennials are like squirrels that spin in the wheel of “home-work-family-credits-expectations of society ”
“At the same time, millennials are afraid to be on the sidelines, because the young, energetic and progressive approach, how to compete with them? – the expert asks. – Often, representatives of Generation Y are already beginning to look disdainfully at young people for their dancing until the morning and naked stomach, at the same time striving to look on their wave, dress stylishly and be friends to their own children, forgetting that they need parents. ”
Inability to talk about your problems
Millennials, according to the observations of Anastasia Saurina, often hesitate to ask for help and talk about their problems, even less often they turn to a psychologist, again worrying about what others and parents will say about it.
“Complaining is a shame, they think, ” says the psychologist. – In the end, they do not allow themselves to live losses, feel sorry for themselves and appropriate their own feelings.
In such a hustle, in fact, it ’ s easy to lose yourself and your desires. ”
What can we do to prevent this from happening?
3 Tips for Millennials
It is possible to cope with the above experiences.
To do this, Anastasia Saurina recommends:
1.
Use the method of open dialogue.
As often as possible to honestly talk to loved ones about their experiences without blaming themselves and others.
This will allow you to learn to contact yourself, as well as improve relationships.
2.
Find a neutral interlocutor who will listen without criticism and advice.
Most often these are psychologists and support groups.
3.
Learn to accept problems and ask for help.
You do not need to be heroic once again, it is better to save the resource and seek support from someone who can provide it.

- **Mistrust of Authority:** Modern people may view themselves as “pests and destroyers,” obliged to “repent” for environmental or societal sins, but also skeptical of official narratives and institutions—possibly contributing to flat Earth beliefs.

- **Desire for Control and Tangible Results:** People gravitate toward experiences and activities that provide certainty and observable results in a climate of unpredictability.

Conspiracy theories can offer neat, comprehensible answers versus the ambiguity of expert knowledge.

Title:

Content: Archive | Countries | Persons | Catalog | News | Discussions | Jokes | Contacts | PDA
| Central Asia | Afghanistan | Kazakhstan | Kyrgyzstan | Tajikistan | Turkmenistan | Uzbekistan |
News & Events
|
Friday, 18.11.2022
12: 19 Quantity will not go into quality: about the new population of the Earth, - Mikhail Delyagin
12: 15 The world is at a crossroads.
Part III.
To win, Russia must change - ideologically, psychologically, socially - A.Fursov
11: 44 The American Dream.
Is it worth rejoicing at the success of the Republicans? - S. Kozhemyakin
11: 31 Long-term strategies of Russia in relations with Iran in the Ukrainian context - M.K. Bhadrakumar
10: 22 Verden near Bakhmut: Ukrainian meat grinder, - A. Sitnikov
09: 33 Taliban welcomes Moscow format on Afghanistan
08: 55 Administration of the Department of Medicines of the Ministry of Health of Kyrgyzstan detained for importing fake pills
08: 39 US turns brainless NATO into bloodthirsty zombie - China Daily
08: 21 Ankara and Washington remove allied masks, - Gleb Prostakov
08: 18 A Russian who offered training on seduction of Kazakhs was banned from entering Kazakhstan
07: 31 Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences temporarily headed by academician-seismologist Kanat Abdrakhmatov
07: 24 Former rector of Kyrgyz National University Iskander Isamidinov dies
07: 06 Enemies all around.
Kyrpresident ’ s administration has developed a law on NGOs: dangerous and controversial, - 24.kg
06: 37 In Kazakhstan, the work of McDonald ’ s is suspended.
No supplies
The arrogance of the West has tired China, - Timofey Bordachev
00: 12 Bandera Gestapo Rampages In Badly Surrendered Kherson, - SP
The G20 summit in Indonesia outlined the contours of the new world order, - Yuri Svetov
00: 03 Chinese Defense Center.
What forces will the Celestial Empire fight, - A. Khramchikhin
Thursday, 17.11.2022
22: 30 Former leader of the Russian national team could not call the game against Tajikistan “football ”
21: 12 Putin ’ s strategy for the winter period, - Mikh.Rostovsky
21: 09 Uzgen Kyrgyz continue to rally against the transfer of "their" land to Uzbekistan
20: 45 Authoritative state politician (ex-secretary of state) Krymbek Kusherbayev becomes independent director of Embamunaigas JSC
20: 17 Kherson disaster of the Kremlin (view from Kazakhstan) - Vladislav Yuritsyn
19: 47 Kulibaev "Halyk Bank" sold its Tajik "daughter"
19: 35 Kazakhstan JSC "Bereke Bank" (former Sberbank Kazakhstan) headed by Andrey Timchenko (instead of Nursultan Taskaranov)
18: 47 KazKNB captured a gang of terrorists (7 people) armed with "bottle-meth"!
18: 35 The case of "Kazphosphate".
Will the Nigmatulin crime family still be held accountable?
18: 15 "The Whore" continues.
Moscow and Kiev extended the “grain deal ” on old terms
The court in the Hague ruled that the Malaysian “Boeing ” in 2014 was shot down by the Russians
16: 31 64 - "for".
The list of Kyrgyz deputies who voted for a new border with Uzbekistan has been published
16: 27 in the red.
Preliminary results of the midterm elections in the United States, - Alexander Domrin
15: 16 US on the verge of change: Republicans are preparing an attack on Biden, - Polina Konoplyanko
14: 26 Sovietization of Ukraine: how it was (history) - A.Kolpakidi
14: 21 Around the Chinese: Russia flooded with new brands of household appliances, - MK
13: 33 In Kyrgyzstan, on the threshold of winter, the chief for energy supply was changed (Marat Orozbaev headed Kyrgyzkomur)
11: 40 Died legendary Soviet figure skater Olympic champion Alexander Gorshkov
11: 38 Azerbaijan calls Central Asian Turks to war in Karabakh
10: 46 Goals achieved: Russian missiles knocked out critical infrastructure of Ukraine
10: 42 "We cut off from the root the attempts of those who wanted to come to power", - the leader of the Kyrgyz National Security Committee Tashiev boasts
Ukraine will help the United States to “move ” Russia and China in Central Asia, – Eugene Chausovsky
09: 54 Gas hub in Turkey.
Due to the energy crisis, Europe, not Russia, was in a difficult position - Sytky Ergyuney
09: 51 Kazakhstan and external factors - Daniyar Ashimbayev
09: 43 Donald trump became a “suitcase without a handle ”, – Dmitry Bavyrin
08: 46 Onal Bekiev headed the staff of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Kazakhstan
08: 40 How Russia had its piece of China - Port Arthur (story), - Alexander Shirokorad
08: 37 Censorship?
Kyrgyzstan bans screening of human rights documentaries - 24.kg
Syria may become a place for settling accounts for the terrorist attack in Istanbul, - Igor Subbotin
Ankara took the first step towards the creation of the army of the Great Turan, - Victoria Panfilova
00: 17 G20 against the background of the inflated crisis.
A summit rich in provocations - A. Krengel
US accuses Ukraine of supplying banned weapons to Azerbaijan
Wednesday, 16.11.2022
23: 14 The Central Bank of the Russian Federation - an enemy sabotage organization inside Russia? - V.Katasonov
Archive
© CentrAsiaTop
CenterAsia |
The world is at a turning point.
Part III.
To win, Russia must change - ideologically, psychologically, socially - A.Fursov
12: 15 18.11.2022
Andrey Fursov
Without theory we are death, death, death.
I.V. Stalin
Here it makes sense to distract a little from the question of deep power and say a few words about the work of the last (68th) meeting of the Bilderberg Club.
It was held on June 2 – 5, 2022 in Washington, and the issues discussed at it echo the content of the above “edict ” by Chatham House.
Of the 115 participants from 20 countries and one international organization, 53 were Anglo-Saxons (33 of them from the United States), 53 were from 14 countries and 9 were Dutch.
The latter I have singled out because the British (Windsor) and Dutch (Orange) royal houses have been closely linked since the end of the seventeenth century, not only politically but also economically: the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688, which brought the Dutch statthauder William III to the English throne, was only the political design of the merging (merging) of the two East Indies. companies - English and Dutch.
In other words, in the modern world, Great Britain and the Netherlands should be considered as a whole, which, however, does not exclude situational internal contradictions.
Let ’ s look at the agenda of the 68th Bilderberger Meeting.
In fact, it is also a "map of the world", from which a certain program of action follows.
So...
1.
The emergence of a rogue country.
Declare it an enemy of the civilized world.
(See also Postwest.
It is clear that the rogue country is Russia.)
2.
NATO expansion to the east and the supply of nuclear weapons.
3.
The problem is in China.
Analysis of the experiment in Shanghai, how to successfully drive people into lockdown.
4.
Adaptation of the population to the social rating and the eye of the "big brother".
5.
Indo-Pacific changes.
Indo-Pacific zone against China.
An attempt to relocate production localized in China to other regions of the world.
6. Russia.
Levels of sanction impact.
The strange nature of the Russians.
Poland ’ s ability to accept American aid in sufficient volumes for the EU via the Baltic Sea.
7.
Relations between sovereign governments and global corporations.
(I will note on my own: this was a very important moment, because one of the main tasks is that corporations should put the state under control.)
8.
The emergence of banking information exchange systems independent of SWIFT.
9.
Misinformation.
Work with the major Western media on the correct, from their point of view, representation of the planned world changes.
10.
Energy security.
11.
Health after the pandemic.
(Note: the end of the pandemic is officially recorded.)
Work with smallpox monkeys in developed countries.
Ukraine's preparedness for cholera.
The possibility of an autumn pandemic of a new type of coronavirus.
12.
Strengthening the role of local governments.
(I would like to point out that this is a subversion of the state from below.)
13.
A temporary departure from the principles of the global division of labor.
(Note on my own: selective deglobalisation.)
14. Ukraine.
(First, as the key to further destabilization of the Russian world, and secondly, as the striking force of the globalists who were preparing for a new leap.)
Bilderbergers in Washington set the following tasks for Ukraine: 1) to involve Russia as much as possible in negotiations on a temporary ceasefire (although this has now disappeared); 2) to ensure the uninterrupted supply of gas to the EU through pipes; 3) to transfer to the United States all grain of wheat of the highest varieties of last year's crop "in order to avoid hunger in the world"; 4) to ensure the protection of the Black Sea ports with the help of the military and political cations.
The 68th meeting was concluded by a closed meeting in a narrow circle.
The results of the COVID-19 pandemic were announced.
At the same time, mistakes were noted that need to be corrected.
The security forces of the national-state level through the mouth of Kissinger made claims to United Nations figures, a number of heads of corporations from Big Pharma, some heads of BigTech corporations and bankers that they rushed, not preparing a platform for the deployment of anticoid measures in the United States and Western Europe, as it was done in Shanghai - we are talking about the social rating system in China.
In Europe and America, it was not possible to introduce this.
And now, through the mouth of Kissinger, the "masters of the world game" declared rude: poorly prepared and their lack of preparation and haste thwarted the plans and deadlines for the creation of a world of "new normality".
Another very important thing was recorded: the SVO of the Russian Federation in Ukraine did not allow to realize the task of establishing the power of corporations over states.
Geopolitics is back.
Our NWO significantly "slowed down the process of establishing corporate control over states" and objectively turned out to be a crowbar, driven into the wheel of the ultra-globalists.
But back to the question of deep power.
Its institutionalization essentially means the revival on a new round of the history of structures such as the British East India Company - the "merchant power" (K.A. Fursov), in which the crown (dynasty and state), aristocracy, special services, capitalists, bankers and crime organically united.
And each segment had a function in a single whole.
If the power and economic structures of the new type are replacing the state, then supranational structures designed to overcome state boundaries in their former form will not be needed: the structures of deep power, like the East India Company, are themselves supranational by definition and organically are both open and closed (the “iceberg principle ”).
In terms of analytical, this process will erase the line between political science and conspiracy - a new discipline will appear.
War will also play a significant role in accelerating the development of a new form of power (political-economic) organization, and in preserving in a single whole the meaning of what was the state in the capitalist era (the “power segment ”).
Whether we like it or not, we have entered a military era.
First, the finale of one system and the start, the design of the other always occur in the form of wars or at least accompanied by them.
Second, the "entry" and "exit" of systems and epochs are usually mirror-like.
The "entry" into the capitalist era was the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) - four local, but nevertheless interconnected in space and time conflicts.
It seems that the world is emerging from capitalism and entering post-capitalism, too, through something similar to the Thirty Years' War.
The first two conflicts are Syria and Ukraine.
Further can be Transcaucasia, the Arctic, South and East Asia.
In recent years, a number of works have been published (Nassim Taleb, Pasquale Cirillo, Ray Dalio, Beer Braunmüller, Aaron Clauset, Hugo Bardi, etc., a brief overview of their texts was interesting presented by Sergei Karelov), the authors of which convincingly show that the pause between world wars ends, the controllability of the world is lost and the only way out can be the Great War.
The world has not yet crossed the point of no return, but it is close to it.
I will add: The Great War in modern conditions will most likely not be all-global, but serial-local and, perhaps, thirty years old.
In practice, including everyday life, this, if not completely erases, makes a dotted line between peace and war, between the military and peace aspects and the functions of society.
In particular, social science is largely turning into a scientific form of cognitive warfare.
Taking this into account, it is necessary to restructure the entire complex of social and humanitarian sciences, first of all, history - substantive, disciplinary and organizational, but this is a separate topic.
And although it is urgent, there are more urgent, urgent delays in the current situation.
I have already had to say that the weaker clan-oligarchic regime, which is the Russian Federation, cannot defeat the strong clan-oligarchic regimes of the Post-West, especially if they act as a united front.
To win the Russian Federation must change - ideologically, psychologically, socially.
The USSR survived the war with the "pig" Teuton, superior to it and in 1941-1942, thanks to the unity (with all problems) of the government and the people in the time of trials, the presence of common values in the government and the people, the absence of a catastrophic gap in the standard of living (well, there was no situation in the USSR when 1% of the population owned 70% of the national wealth).
The Soviet elite, figuratively speaking, looked in the same direction as the people.
This was a necessary, though insufficient, condition for victory.
The ruling stratum and a significant segment of the active part of society, whose neck is turned towards the Postwest, is a likely candidate not for victory, but for the fact that the Postwest will roll this neck.
A significant part of the post-Soviet leaders and their servants from the sphere of "intellect" still lives in the post-Western ideological and value field, in the post-Western sphere of goal-setting, and therefore they will not wait "when everything will end" and everything will be as before.
No matter how it ends, it won ’ t be like before.
In this regard, one of the urgent tasks is to deprive the Postwest and its agents in the Russian Federation of the opportunity to shape the agenda in our country in the economy, the media, science and especially in education - it is in it that there is a lot of work, as our ancestors would say, "to remove treason."
Traditional, that is, conservative, values   are right and good, but in the modern collapsing world, they will begin to work effectively only on the left power and economic basis.
In our conditions, only it can become the foundation of responsible power (for 30 years we have been dealing with an almost irresponsible power, in which no one was punished for theft, for shootings, or even for betrayal).
I would like to emphasize that at this stage the left-conservative way of life is not an end, but a means.
He has a good chance, if not to win over the Postwest, then at least an honorary draw.
It will provide a breathing space, a "breathing space" - at a time when the Postwest collapses on its own, this is very important.
In this regard, the war in Ukraine (of course, if it does not last for years - Russia simply does not have enough resources for this) can become a means of significant transformation of society in the right direction, corresponding to the interests of the majority of the population, the essence and logic of our history, as well as our values.
However, it is not enough to play only on its territory: world games are won (or at least drawn) only on the world stage, on a global scale - this was the strength of the USSR.
The logic of events dictates the strategy of the besieged fortress.
This is normal, but you need sorties, knocking the enemy's breath, forcing him to think about the defense, depriving him of confidence.
What can the Russian Federation offer the world?
Economically, not much.
But in the political - quite a lot, namely - sovereignty, its support and protection.
With military assistance (with an economic supplement), the Russian Federation can support a certain number of states in the global south in their struggle for the centralization of power with post-Western predators and their local meadows.
The authorities of these states should not be deceived, but tactically, situationally, they are our allies, because they, like us, the Postwest sentenced to erase the eraser of history.
In the situation of a besieged fortress today, China is also.
The creation of an international alliance of (besieged) fortresses defending sovereignty, their own and other states, against the ultra-globalists with their bioecotechnofascism (BET fascism) is a real task, one of the goals of which is to lift the siege by exporting sovereignty and drive the enemy into a state of defense.
The latter also requires playing not only on the world field, but also specifically on the enemy field itself, behind the enemy ’ s lines.
There, our objective ally is the layers that the ultra-globalists are going to put under the knife.
First of all, it is the middle layer of the West, many representatives of which still share traditional values.
Despite the weakness and conformism of this layer, despite the fact that a significant part of it has been brainwashed in the anti-Russian way, it makes sense to work with it in the framework of a program with the conditional name "midlintern".
It is not necessary that the middle layer of the Post-West become pro-Russian, the main thing is that it resists the ultra-globalists, weakening them, eating up their time.
Let me remind you once again that the three main dangers on the path of the ultra-globalist transition to the new world order (NWO), Schwab called the resistance of the population, the exit from the “project ” of one of the three largest countries in the world and the lack of time.
In turn, the lack of time limits the enemy ’ s space of action, compresses it.
As noted by the great chess player Sigbert Tarrasch, analyzing the strategy of a chess game on the example of one of the games of Capablanca - Marshall, "every cramped position already carries the germ of death."
It is cognitive war, success in it, that dramatically strengthens the position in the temporary race - a key factor in the current conditions.
The conduct of cognitive warfare requires urgent fundamental changes in the field of social science and education, but this, I repeat, is a separate issue.
To conclude, let me note the following.
In the face of the masters of the current Post-West, we are dealing with a world evil that has swung not only to the social, but also to the biological reconstruction of humanity with the culling of most of it, including primarily the Russians.
The current struggle against this evil is a struggle not only for a normal society, but also for the preservation of man as a biological species.
The social and anthropological racism of the British, multiplied by the thesis of Protestantism (the most Judaized version of Christianity) about being elected on a racially property-based basis, received an adequate registration in the new-normalism of the ultra-globalists.
We are dealing with the enemies of humanity.
For those who still doubt this, I will quote from the work of one of the founders of the Club of Rome, Alexander King.
It was published in the collection "The First Global Revolution" in 1991.
The USSR de facto ceased to exist, and it was no longer necessary to hide fangs behind a false smile and rant about how to benefit humanity: "In search of a common enemy against which we can unite," King wrote, "we came to the conclusion that pollution, the threat of global warming, water scarcity, hunger and the like - this is it.
In their totality and interaction, these phenomena represent a common threat that must be addressed together.
But by labeling these dangers as an enemy, we fall into the trap that we have already warned readers about: namely, mistaking symptoms for causes.
All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and only through changed attitudes and behavior can they be stopped.
The real enemy then is humanity itself "(emphasis mine).
But if the ultra-globalists openly declare humanity an enemy, then it must declare them its enemy.
And with the enemy - only according to the laws of war and the rules of conduct in the frontline zone.
As one of the greatest figures in Soviet history said, those who are not blind can see.
And I will add from myself: the enemy is at the gate, we did not call him, he himself came worshiping the devil.
So we need to send him to him.
Source: Tomorrow
Permanent address of the article - https: / / centrasia.org / newsA.php? st = 1668762900
News of Kazakhstan
- Working schedule of the head of state
- Decree of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan dated November 17, 2022 No. 1075
- Senators approved ratification of two agreements
- The largest railway project began to be built in Kazakhstan
- Aida Balayeva: "The family is the support of the state"
- Azat Peruashev took part in the grand opening of the new line of the Kazakhstan Steel Structure Plant
- Personnel reshuffles
- The dialogue on expanding the strategic partnership with the EU deepens
- Results of the NSC special operation
- Working schedule of the head of state
Go to the version with frames
© CentrAsiaTop

- **Youth and Rebellion:** New generations seek to turn life into a celebration and to live by “the laws of space”—potentially a metaphor for seeking novelty and rejecting imposed authority.

Title:

Content: Hippy.
Children of flowers digested by consumer society
02.08.2021, 6: 20, Miscellaneous
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Making love, not war, was encouraged by hippies in the 1960s.
Over the past half century, there have been no fewer wars, and only music, fashion and legends remained of hippies.
In the mid-1960s, oddly dressed personalities began to appear on the streets of major US cities.
Young people with long unwashed hair in bright but dirty clothes shocked decent Americans.
The hairmen clearly did not look like ordinary beggars.
They clumped on sidewalks and lawns, sang songs to the guitar, and sometimes just sat silently, paying no attention to anything around (about “meditation ” then few people knew).
Soon a term appeared to refer to these strange representatives of American youth - hippies.
So in one of the TV programs, the journalist contemptuously called long-haired participants in the anti-war demonstration.
This word he formed from the slang expression “to be hip ”.
Back in the 1950s, among the counterculture beatniks, this meant “being aware of everything, getting into everything. ”
The journalist wanted to insult incomprehensible young people, and she liked the word, and long-haired teenagers, who were becoming more and more every day, began to call themselves hippies.
Local military conflicts that arose in different parts of the world caused the protest of young people born after 1945.
The beatniks of the 1950s were more pessimistic.
It seemed to them that the whole world was falling into Tartarus.
The hippie generation that came to replace them was much more optimistic about world problems.
The new youth tried to turn their lives and the lives of everyone around them into a holiday.
She believed that in this planetary carnival there would be no room for soldiers, weapons, aggression, or passion for the consumption of material values, which, according to the young rebels, their parents suffered.
Hippie slogans like “Flower power ” and“ Make love, not war. ”
The most advanced hippies formulated the goals of the movement in more detail: “The current society is inhuman.
It disfigures a person since childhood, still in the family.
He instills in him the vital principles of acquisition.
Hippies suggest that a person should finally become himself.
The system of life is a commune of individualities.
Everyone lives as he wants, does what he wants, manifests himself as he pleases.
The institutions of modern society that cripple people — luxury, wealth, property — must be destroyed.
Life should be simple.
Mechanization freaks people out.
Closer to nature.
Down with the war.
Down with the Vietnam War.
Love, not war. ”
Such an ideology inevitably provoked conflicts in families.
The father of one of the hippies complained in a letter to American television: “My son told me: ‘ Your family is permeated with the concept of ownership.
You — with your cars, your television sets, your savings — are mortally disoriented.
Only among the poor is hope.
Whatever your children do, it will always be healthier than what you did. ”
“Do you think they admit to being sick or guilty? ” the other parent was indignant.
They think we need treatment. ”
Non-aggressive “flower children ” (as hippies called themselves) did not allow family quarrels to develop into major scandals.
They just left the house, leaving inconsolable ancestors there.
Homeless hippies wandered around large cities, roamed the United States in painted minibuses, hitchhiked to sunny California, where they formed communes on the outskirts of cities and communities in rural areas.
The largest and most famous hippie commune was their community in San Francisco in the Haight-Ashbury area.
Soviet youth learned about the movement of “flower children ” from Heinrich Borovik ’ s essay“ Journey to the Land of Hiplyandia ”, in which the author described in detail his wanderings around Haight Ashbury: “The name of“ Haight Street ” is smeared with yellow paint.
Below is "Love Street"...
We walk on the sidewalk, carefully stepping over our feet.
The owners of sandals and dirty heels sit on the asphalt, leaning their backs against the houses.
Quietly talking.
They are looking at passers-by.
Kissing.
Dreaming, lowering shaggy heads on the chest...
The wall in the bookstore is covered... with small photos on the buttons, on adhesive tape "scotch", on chewed bread.
In the pictures are young men and women.
Decently dressed.
Decently trimmed.
Sometimes with Mom and Dad.
Sometimes driving a good car.
Or on the lawn near the country house.
Ingrid Dietmar is missing.
"$500 reward."
"Anabelle!
We love you!
Call at our expense.
Mom and Dad. ”
There are dozens of such notes.
Typewritten, typographical, handwritten.
And above all the photos is a sweeping inscription in red: “Call of ancestors ”.
information with irony. "
Borovik ’ s article in the magazine “Around the World ” had an unexpected effect: after its release, many hippies of their own appeared in the USSR.
In the United States, the movement reached its peak in the summer of 1967.
The “children of flowers ” themselves declared this time the“ Summer of Love ”.
At that time, up to four hundred thousand young people who called themselves hippies were wandering around the United States.
It was then that unofficial anthem of the movement appeared: the songs "The Beatles" "All You Need Is Love" and "She's Leaving Home", the song "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)", composed by a member of the group "The Mamas & the Papas" John Phillips.
Hippies in general were inextricably linked with rock music, especially with its psychedelic variety.
Hairymen enjoyed listening to the music of such bands as “Grateful Dead ”,“ Jefferson Airplane ” and many other bands.
Psychedelic rock helped hippies enter a meditative trance without the use of stimulants.
Nevertheless, hallucinogenic drugs in the communes were sold almost openly.
Already in the late 1960s, the hippie movement began to transform.
On the one hand, his first adepts, who played in freedom from theschism and everyday amenities, realized that the life of their parents, perhaps, is not quite right, but it is quite comfortable.
They returned home, changed their clothes, cut their hair a little, and continued the typical life of respectable Americans.
On the other hand, the fashion industry has realized the external and commercial appeal of Hippie style.
Shops quickly filled with not cheap clothes under hippies: bright shirts, wide pants, worn jeans flared.
Wicker bracelets, hair jewelry and other jewelry in the same style were in great demand.
Young Americans and Europeans, who did not think to leave home and engage in transmeditation, bought a fashionable outfit at the nearest department store, let go of long hair and considered themselves “also hippies ”.
Such characters were used on the city streets, and they ceased to pay attention.
The bourgeois society of consumption, against which the first hippies so protested, easily digested this movement.
The artist Alexander Iosifov, who has long studied the culture and history of hippies, believes that “the movement had the deepest philosophy.
It encouraged people to live by the laws of space.
At the most difficult moments of history, when humanity reached another impasse, teachers, religious or scientific devotees, all sorts of cultural figures appeared on planet Earth, which were a deterrent to the distortion of the planet.
The hippie movement became such a collective teacher, a kind of balance between what was happening in the world at that moment, and naturalness, sincerity.
At that time, not only the militarization of public consciousness was taking place in the world, but environmental problems were growing in full force.
The existing system of human relationships did not suit the progressive youth, who decided to correct it.
They believed that every person should understand why he lives on earth, what is wrong in him, whether it is possible to complain about external circumstances, without first changing his inner world, without clearing himself of all deviations.
The society of material goods pushed young people to the fact that they should be successful, earn a lot.
At the same time, the vector of spiritual values was simply washed out.
Hippies argued that the ethics of success must be contrasted with the ethics of brotherhood.
This is how urban communes and rural communities emerged.
Such a way of life was opposed to the cellular existence of people in the surrounding world, which hippies called “Babylon ”.
Young people believed that by their own example they would be able to inspire the whole of humanity to purification. ”
And today on earth quite a lot of people of different ages, living by the laws of hippies.
One of their largest communes is located in one of the districts of Copenhagen.
The “Free City of Christiania ” consists of several dozen buildings of varying degrees of slum.
Its inhabitants, numbering less than a thousand people, tried to live by their own rules, not obeying the laws of the Kingdom of Denmark.
In Christiania, the drug trade was so flourishing that the Copenhagen police were fed up with it.
After the 2005 redistribution of the local drug market led to shootings and murders, police took Christiania under control.
The local hippies sighed.
Today, Christiania is a popular tourist destination.
People from different countries come there as if to a zoo, to see how hairy weirdos walk barefoot, sing strange songs and meditate.
In the souvenir shops of Christiania, tourists leave a lot of money, which allows the local plant-like population to exist comfortably.
California Haight-Ashbury over the years has become one of the most elite and expensive areas of San Francisco.
Metamorphosis is quite symbolic...
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- **Globalization and Anxiety:** Ongoing world changes (such as China's rise, corporate power, and global institutions) stir anxiety and suspicion, contributing to distrustful narratives like flat Earth theory.

- **Generational Shifts and Anxiety:** Millennials and younger people “first felt” the new instability, which can make them vulnerable to communities or ideologies that offer a sense of certainty, identity, and alternative “truth.”

**Conclusion:** The extract paints a picture of a society in flux, where traditional guiding structures have weakened, and uncertainty breeds anxiety.

This environment can create fertile ground for the resurgence of beliefs like flat Earth theory: they offer clear, simple, and rebellious answers against a backdrop of mistrust toward authority and experts.

Such beliefs may not inherently be “dangerous” but can be symptomatic of deeper needs for belonging, certainty, and meaning in turbulent times.

**Implications for Parents:** Flat Earth belief, in this context, often arises not from sinister or dangerous intent, but from broader societal anxieties, identity-seeking, and a desire to reject perceived elite control.

Title:

Content: economysocialpoliticalcompany newsaccidentsport
The dream of victory over time is the most forgivable of human delusions - Republic
CentralAsia (CA) - In the publishing house "Alpina Publisher" saw the light of the book by British journalist Oliver Berkman "Four thousand weeks.
Time Management for Mortals ” (New York Times bestseller, Sunday Times bestseller, Amazon Editor ’ s Choice: “Best non-fiction book ”).
By its very name, the author refers to the well-known fact that our life expectancy is about 4000 weeks, but we will not be able to do everything in time, no matter how hard we try.
As Republic writes, the truth is that the day you rake up work mail will never come, and your to-do list is actually an endless pipeline.
The author suggests putting it aside and asking yourself the question: do you really want to spend the 4,000 weeks of your life in a joyless struggle for productivity?
The book, as the abstract promises, changes our understanding of the time of our lives and how to spend it in the best way.
After reading it, you will be able to accept reality as it is, understand what you want to spend time on, and at the same time get rid of the obsession with constant employment and fear of lost profits.
The dream of winning over time is the most forgivable of human delusions, because the alternative is too frightening.
But, unfortunately, such a struggle is doomed to failure.
Since the time allotted to us is limited, we will never attain the power over him that would enable us to fulfill all the demands placed upon us, or to successfully achieve all the goals that seem important.
Instead, you will have to make difficult choices.
And since we cannot not only order, but even predict much of what is going on in the given period, we will never feel that we are securely in control of events, protected from suffering, and ready for anything that can happen.
Life as a draftsman
And here again it is worth recalling Heidegger ’ s mysterious assumption that we do not have time at all, that, on the contrary, we are time.
We never get the upper hand over the moments of our lives, because those moments are nothing but ourselves.
To master them, you must first go beyond them, separate from them.
But what would have happened to us then?
“Time is a river that carries me away, but this river is myself; a tiger that devours me, but this tiger is myself; a fire that ashes me, but this fire is me again. ”
You can't get to a safe bank when you're a river.
Therefore, insecurity and insecurity are our default states, because in every moment from which you can not escape, anything can happen – from an urgent email that will disrupt your daily plans, to a loss that will shake your world to the very basics.
If you live in order to gain reliability with respect to time, when in fact such reliability is unattainable, life will eventually begin to be perceived as something preliminary, as if the goal for which you were born, still lies in the future, beyond the horizon.
And real life can begin only when you, in the words of Arnold Bennett, “bring it into its proper working form. ”
That is, when you put things in order, or introduce a better system of labor organization for yourself, or get an education, or spend a sufficient number of years honing your skills.
Or maybe when you find a soul mate or have children, when the children grow up and leave the house, when the revolution takes place and social justice is restored.
That ’ s when you finally feel that everything is under control, calm down and find the real meaning of life.
Until then, life is perceived as a struggle.
Sometimes it pleases, sometimes it tiresome, but it is always directed to a certain moment of truth that still lies in the future.
In 1970, Swiss-born Marie-Louise von Franz, a psychologist and fairy tale researcher, wrote about the otherworldly in her work:
“[Man] develops a strange attitude to reality, namely the feeling that in real life he does not yet exist.
For the time being, he takes some action, however, whatever search he leads - whether women or work - he always has the feeling that this is not what he needs...
Such [a person] experiences mortal fear in those situations that require taking responsibility for something.
He feels terrified at the thought of the need to bind himself with promises, forever remain in the earthly boundaries of space and time, and eventually turn out to be an ordinary real person - who he really is. "
“To remain forever within the earthly boundaries of space and time, ” even if not forever, but to the best of our abilities, is to admit our defeat.
It means letting the illusions die.
You have to accept that there will always be too much to do.
That you will not be able to avoid the hard choices or make the world move at the speed you prefer.
And there is no guarantee that any experience, especially the experience of close relationships with other people, will pass painlessly and smoothly.
And from the point of view of the universe, when all this is over, it still won't matter so much.
But with that, you can really be here.
And then you will be able to get something really worthwhile from life.
You will be able to spend your final time focusing on a few things that are important to you – those that are important in themselves, now, in the moment.
Perhaps it is worth emphasizing that all this does not serve as an argument against long-term undertakings such as marriage, raising children, creating organizations or reforming political systems.
And of course, this is not an argument against combating climate change — all of these things are among the most important.
But this is an argument in favor of the fact that even they can only matter now, at a particular moment of working on them, regardless of whether the work was crowned with success in the conventional sense.
Because all you ’ ll ever have is “now. ”
It is tempting to think that by solving or at least reducing problems over time, you will become happy, for a long time or forever.
But I have no reason to assume that this is true.
Our final life is full of agonizing problems created by its limb, from overcrowded mailboxes to death.
Even if you put up with them, they are still perceived as problems, albeit not so acutely.
It is the peace of mind of a higher order, the peace that brings us recognition of the fact that the inability to avoid problems caused by the limb is not in itself a problem.
Human disease is often painful, but as Zen teacher Charlotte Yoko Beck notes, it is unbearable only as long as you believe it is curable.
Accept the inevitability of suffering, and freedom will follow: you can finally start life again.
The same epiphany that came to me on a bench in Brooklyn was visited by the French poet Christian Bobin, as he recalls, at an equally mundane moment:
“I was peeling a red apple from the garden and suddenly realized that all life has to offer me is just a series of remarkably intractable problems.
And with that thought, my heart was filled with an ocean of deepest peace. ”
Five questions
To make all this more specific, it is worth asking yourself a few questions about your own life.
If the answers don ’ t come right away, that ’ s okay.
The point is, as Rainer Maria Rilke famously put it, to live with these questions.
If you ask them to yourself with any degree of sincerity, consider that you have already begun to realize your real situation and are ready to start using the final time to the maximum advantage.
1.
In what areas of work and life do you strive for comfort when a little discomfort is required?
Working on the most important life projects will almost inevitably entail a loss of a sense of complete control over your time, increased susceptibility to the painful blows of reality and uncertainty about the future.
Your projects may fail, perhaps because you lack talent.
You will have to get into awkward situations, have difficult conversations, disappoint others and dive so deeply into the relationship that additional suffering due to the fact that misfortunes happen to your loved ones is almost guaranteed.
And so it is quite natural that when planning the time of our daily lives, we focus on avoiding anxiety and fears.
Procrastination, distractions, fear of long-term solutions, getting things in order, working on too many projects at once are all ways to maintain the illusion that you are in control of your life.
The same, though not so straightforward, is said by constant anxiety, giving the disheartening but soothing feeling that you are doing something constructive while trying to maintain control of the situation.
James Hollis recommends that before making important decisions, ask yourself the question: “Does this choice detract from me or does it allow me to grow? ”
This question will take you away from the need to choose something that causes less anxiety and help you look into the eyes of your true intentions regarding time.
If you are trying to decide, say, to leave the job or relationship or, conversely, to immerse yourself in them with the head, the question of what will make you happier, most likely, will force you to choose the most convenient option or put to a dead end.
But usually you intuitively understand whether continuing a relationship or work will put you in trouble to help you grow as a person, or make your soul cringe with each week.
If possible, prefer the discomfort of growth to the comfort of rest.
2.
Do you adhere to standards of performance or efficiency that cannot be met and evaluate yourself against them?
One of the common signs of the illusion that we will ever be masters of time is our unrealistic plans to use it.
We are always forced to postpone these plans for the future, because they cannot be fulfilled in the present.
The truth is that one cannot become so efficient and organized as to respond to an infinite number of incoming demands.
Usually, we are not able to devote “enough time ” to work and children, and at the same time communicate, travel and participate in social activities.
But the belief that you are building just such a life and it is about to begin gives a deceptive sense of comfort.
How would you change your approach to time today if you knew deep down that salvation would never come, that your standards were always unattainable, and therefore you would never find time for what you hoped to find it for?
You may be tempted to argue that your case is special, that in your particular situation, achieving the impossible in terms of using time is simply necessary, otherwise disaster will come.
Let ’ s say you are afraid that you will be fired and you will be left without income if you do not cope with your impossible amount of work.
But it's a misconception.
If the level of productivity that you demand from yourself is unattainable, then you will not achieve it, even if disaster looms on the horizon.
Acceptance of this reality will only help you.
According to Iddo Landau, there is some cruelty in setting ourselves a bar that no one can achieve (and which many of us would not even think to offer to others).
A more humane approach is to abandon such efforts if possible.
Allow your impossible standards to break ground.
And then pick out a few meaningful tasks from the wreckage and start working on them today.
3.
What else prevents you from agreeing that you are who you are and not who you think you should be?
Another way to delay the recognition of a limb — along with the disturbing truth that we live here and now — is to believe that our present life serves only as a step towards becoming the person you think society, religion or parents, whether they are alive or not, should become.
Once you have earned the real right to exist, you tell yourself, life will no longer seem so uncertain and unmanageable.
In the era of political and environmental crisis, this attitude often translates into the conviction that it is necessary to devote time only to emergency situations, day and night solving world problems.
And if you spend time on something else, you should feel guilty for your selfishness.
This attempt to justify its existence in the eyes of some external authority can continue for a long time in adults.
But according to psychotherapist Stephen Cope,
“When we reach a certain age, we are surprised to finally realize that nobody really cares about how we live.
This is the most disturbing discovery for those who have lived someone else ’ s life and avoided their own: no one cares but us. ”
It turns out that the attempt to gain reliability, justifying its existence, was all this time and unnecessary, and futile.
It is futile because life will always seem unreliable and unmanageable.
And optional because, as it turns out, it makes no sense to postpone real life until someone confirms that you can live it.
Peace of mind and a heady sense of freedom do not come from someone approving you, but only when you realize that no approval will bring the expected reliability.
In any case, I am convinced that you can do this only by getting rid of the feeling that your weeks of existence on the planet must be earned.
When you are no longer pressed to become what you are not, you will see yourself here and now, with your strengths and weaknesses, with your talents and aspirations, and be able to follow where they lead you.
Maybe your mission in a world that is struggling with multiple crises is not in the realm of politics and public action.
Maybe your vocation is to care for an elderly relative or write music.
Or work as a pastry chef, like my brother-in-law, a strong South African: he can be mistaken for a rugby player, but he is engaged in the fact that he creates masterpieces from sugar and oil glaze to the great joy of those who get them.
Buddhist teacher Susan Piver notes that the question of how we like to spend our time seems to many people unpleasant and too straightforward.
But perhaps it is the answer to it that will show you the best ways to use your time.
4.
In what areas of life do you not act if you are not sure that you know what to do?
Sometimes we look at our lives as a dress rehearsal for years, believing that we are gaining the skills and experience necessary to take control of things in the future.
But it sometimes seems to me that my entire adult life up to now has been a gradual realization of the truth that there are no people or institutions in the world that do not act on their own.
As a child, I thought that the newspaper lying on the table at breakfast must have been written by people who really know what they are doing; later I started working for the newspaper myself.
Unbeknownst to me, I transferred my notions of competence to other areas, including politics.
But then I met a few politicians.
And those, after a couple of drinks, admitted that the essence of their work was to somehow wander from crisis to crisis, inventing plausible sounding political strategies right in the car, on the way to the press conferences at which these strategies were to be announced.
Even then, I found myself seeing it as a manifestation of the perverse pride with which the British sometimes hide their creeping mediocrity.
Then I moved to America, where, as it turned out, everyone improvises too.
The political events of recent years have only made it clear that the people “in power ” control world events no more than all of us.
You may never truly feel like you know what you are doing, whether in work, marriage, parenting or anything else.
It ’ s disturbing, but it ’ s also liberating, because you now have no reason to feel awkward or depressed because you ’ re doing something poorly at the moment.
If you still never bring your skills to perfection, why put off important things?
You can already immerse yourself in them and implement bold plans in life, ceasing to exercise excessive caution.
Even more freedom comes from the realization that everyone else is in the same position, whether they realize it or not.
5.
How would you spend your time if you cared less about success?
Finally, there is another common manifestation of the longing for domination over time.
It is caused by a cause and effect catastrophe: we imagine that the true value of how we spend our time is always determined by the results.
It follows quite clearly that it makes sense to devote time only to those activities, the results of which you expect to catch and see with your own eyes.
In the documentary A Life ’ s Work, director David Likata talks about people who have gone the other way: dedicated themselves to projects that will almost certainly not be completed in their lifetime.
Among the heroes of the film are a father and son who try to catalog every tree in the remaining ancient forests of the world, as well as a girl-astronomer who, sitting at a table at the SETI Institute in California, tracks radio waves in search of signs of extraterrestrial life.
Their eyes shine, and they know they are doing something important, and they enjoy their work precisely because they do not need to try to convince themselves of the universal importance of their contribution or that they will see its fruits in life.
But, probably, any activity, including raising children, strengthening communities, etc., can not be completed in one lifetime.
All such actions come in a much larger time context, and their ultimate value will only be measurable long after we die (or perhaps never, as time goes on indefinitely).
And so it is worth asking: what actions — acts of generosity or concern for peace, ambitious plans or investments in the distant future — would it be appropriate to take today, knowing precisely that we will never see their results?
We are all in the position of medieval masons, adding a few more bricks to the cathedral, which, as they well know, will not be completed in their lifetime.
The cathedral is still worth building.
The Next Most Necessary Case
On December 15, 1933, Carl Jung wrote a letter to one of his correspondents, Frau V., in which he answered her questions about how to live properly.
His answer is good enough to complete this book.
Dear Frau V., there are no answers to your questions because you want to know how to live.
A man lives as he can.
There is no single, definite way...
If that ’ s what you want, you ’ d better join the Catholic Church, where they ’ ll explain what ’ s what.
It is a path that you create for yourself, which is not prescribed by anyone, is not known to you in advance, and arises by itself, simply when you put one foot in front of the other.
Jung gives only one piece of advice: to go along this path, you need to “calmly do the next most necessary thing.
As long as you think you don ’ t know what it is, you still have too much money to spend on useless guesses.
But if you do the next most necessary thing with confidence, it means that you are always doing something important and destined for destiny. ”
In a slightly modified form, “do the next right thing, ” the same idea became popular with Alcoholics Anonymous as a way to survive moments of acute crisis without going crazy.
But in fact, the “next necessary thing ” is all that each of us can strive for at any moment.
And we have to do that, even though we have no objective way to determine which course of action is right.
Fortunately, just because there ’ s nothing else you can do, it ’ s the only thing you need to do.
If you thus understand the truth about time and fully immerse yourself in the inherent state of a person with limited time, you will achieve the greatest heights of productivity, perfection, service and self-realization that are available to you.
And life, which, as you see in the rearview mirror, will gradually take shape, will begin to meet the only criterion by which you can determine whether you are using the weeks given to you correctly.
And that ’ s not the number of people you ’ ve helped or the amount of work you ’ ve done.
It is that within your moment of history, your limited time and your talents, you have done what you have done — and brought more light into our common life by accomplishing what you were born for, whether it be a grand task or a little weirdness.
Follow the events in Telegram channel @ centralasiamedia.

Open conversations about critical thinking, the sources of information, and how to handle unconventional beliefs are less likely to isolate your child and more likely to foster resilience against adopting less healthy worldviews.

Here is a summarized report, drawing from the key ideas in your provided extracts, focusing on contemporary flat Earth belief in the internet era:

---

**Contemporary Flat Earth Beliefs: Overview and Social Context**

**Resurgence and Spread:**
- The spread of flat Earth beliefs today is not simply due to ignorance, but is deeply tied to modern technology and the internet.

Title:

Content: 21 years after the September attacks.
US experts dismantle Al Jazeera Net reality of "counter-terrorism"
Some experts believe that the US dedication of all its resources to fighting "terrorism" has made Russia and China able to surprise it repeatedly in recent years, especially because of the scarcity of strategic intelligence officers.
Although the threat posed by what the United States calls “international terrorism ” has declined over the past two decades, it remains a major concern in the minds of 58 percent of Americans, compared to other international threats.
By the 21st anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, a Chicago Council on Foreign Relations poll of 3,106 Americans in the second half of July found that their level of anxiety about so-called “foreign terrorism ” was the lowest in the last two decades, after 2002 reached its highest level when 90 percent expressed fear of the“ threat. ”
Al-Jazeera spoke to a number of senior security experts and former intelligence officials about the measures and policies that the United States has taken over the past 21 years, leading Americans to believe that they are safer in the face of what it calls the dangers of "international terrorism."
The discussions touched on the consequences of the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the battle of ideas with groups classified by the United States as "terrorist", in addition to the repercussions of successive Washington administrations' support for "authoritarian" regimes in the Arab world on their efforts in what they call "combating global terrorism."
Bruce Rydell is director of the Intelligence Project at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Rydell was in the White House Situation Room on September 11, 2001, when he was President George W. Bush ’ s special assistant on the Near East and North Africa on the National Security Council.
Riedel worked for 30 years at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) until he retired in 2006.
During those years, he served in several Arab countries and Pakistan, as an adviser on South Asia and the Middle East to four US presidents (George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama), and as an adviser on “international terrorism ” at NATO in Brussels.
Riedel told Al Jazeera Net that his country is much safer than it was before the September 11, 2011 attacks, and that America ’ s “counterterrorism ” infrastructure is much stronger and more integrated than it was 21 years ago.
The same goes for the capabilities of its allies in this regard, “all of us have evolved tremendously. ”
Riedel noted that what he described as the "catastrophic withdrawal" from Afghanistan left this country with an opportunity to renew the Taliban alliance with al-Qaeda, and this was evident in the case of the presence of the leader of the organization, Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul before his liquidation at the hands of US intelligence, and added: "Fortunately, the strength and capabilities of al-Qaeda have diminished significantly, but the danger is real."
On the war of ideas with these organizations, Riedel said that the intellectual and ideological battle has not been resolved until today, and will continue "because many Muslims believe they are under attack from Israel and America.
The failure to deliver justice to the Palestinians is a major rallying cry for extremism. ”
This, he believes, essentially led to the “radicalization ” of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
"There is a direct and substantial American connection with dictatorial regimes, and that is driving many Muslims to join the struggle against America," he said.
Eric Dahl, former intelligence officer and faculty member at the Pentagon Naval Graduate School
Dahl joined the faculty of the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in 2008, and his research focused on the field of “counterterrorism and homeland security. ”
Dal retired from the Navy in 2002 after serving 21 years as an intelligence officer.
The United States is safer today than it was two decades ago.
But he said groups such as al Qaeda, ISIS and others remain a threat, and it is important that we do not feel too good about ourselves.
Dall noted that ending U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan opened the door to "some increased risks from Afghanistan in particular, as it could once again become a safe haven for what he called 'terrorist groups'."
The killing of al-Qaida leader Zawahiri by a drone in Kabul last July can be seen in two ways: first, it is an indication that the threat from al-Qaida remains, but it is also a sign that the U.S. national security establishment still retains the ability to fight terrorism despite the lack of troops on the ground.
On the failure of the United States to win the battle of ideas 21 years after the September 11 attacks, Dahl said, “Unfortunately, terrorism is a chronic problem that can only be managed and dealt with, and never eradicated. ”
The battle of ideas has been going on since the beginning of creation, but what is different today are “extremist ideas ” that can spread across the world instantly because of technology, meaning that conflict with them“ can happen in our homes and communities, not in a foreign country. ”
Professor Jonathan Akov of the Department of Intelligence and National Security Studies at the University of Carolina Coastal
Akov previously worked as a military analyst at the National Bureau of Asian Research and served as a reserve officer in the U.S. Army for several years.
His research interests include the analysis of intelligence and strategy, the study of military doctrines, revolutions, and the failure of states.
“Yes, the United States is safer than attacks by organizations outside the United States, and we have a better mechanism today to warn against these kinds of attacks.
It is essentially impossible to eliminate all this threat, because if I may repeat the words of Professor Richard Bates of Columbia University, surprise attacks are inevitable.
Akov said the end of US "military intervention" in Iraq and Afghanistan had affected Washington's "global counter-terrorism" policy.
"The U.S. intelligence community has been working to slow down the drawdown of its counterterrorism capabilities for several years now.
"But the departure of the United States from Afghanistan has made this shift seem surprising."
“For years, hundreds of contractors with top-secret permits have been laid off, their services deemed unnecessary as attacks on U.S. troops, diplomats and aid workers in Afghanistan have declined, ” Akov said.
Because “Washington has devoted so many resources to counterterrorism, ” Akov believes that one reason Russia and China have been able to repeatedly surprise the United States in recent years is due to the scarcity of strategic intelligence officers, and the“ transformation of the CIA into a drone organization. ”
On the battle of ideas that the United States did not win with the renewal and spread of organizations in innovative ways, Akov said, “If the United States and its allies had fought a battle of ideas with greater sincerity, perhaps more progress could have been made in this regard. ”
Many of the grievances of people exposed to terrorist belief systems have not been addressed and, unfortunately, will not be, ranging from ongoing U.S. support for authoritarian regimes in the Middle East to efforts by U.S. oil companies to try to control energy sources and foreign markets.
In the battle of ideas as well, Akov says that to a lesser extent “there are some basic, incompatible claims made by extremists regarding modern life that cannot be addressed under any circumstances, including the treatment of women and the role of religion in modern societies.
Although such differences have been greatly exaggerated by many American academics and commentators, they are rather significant.
Source: The Island

Social media enables fringe ideas—including flat Earth theory—to reach and connect global audiences quickly.

Individuals who feel disconnected from mainstream narratives or authority (such as governments, scientists, or the media) find alternative communities online where their doubts are validated.

Title:

Content: A new world is not real.
How did politics become a theater of falsehood?
After the bloody military coup in Egypt, and within the framework of the media war raging to smear all the political groups that participated in the uprising of January 25, 2011, an Egyptian satellite television hosted in 2014 an exceptional guest, the channel said that he is a member of the "American Federation of Astronomers", and claimed that he had a dialogue with an "alien" who fills galaxies ", warned him" alien "includes" evil forces "According to the program, the Muslim Brotherhood is helping aliens invade the planet.
It seems farcical and can not be taken seriously, but the program itself broadcast the statements of the "guest who had a dialogue with the aliens" as a fact, and what one thinks is implausible seems that there are large sectors of people willing to accept it as long as it is broadcast by the "media", no matter how ridiculous and fake it may seem. Not only did people in the streets of Cairo speak positively of the existence of “aliens, ” but Egyptians warned that aliens could conspire against Egypt and entice its youth with money to destabilize it.
Today, we live in an exceptional situation in human history of the spread of falsehood, and we are exposed daily to successive waves of falsification of facts, which is not only happening in our country, but spread throughout the world under the influence of huge falsification machines, not limited to the media that control and manipulate human minds, but include more complex means produced by technological development and artificial intelligence techniques. Personal interests are in constant cycles of falsification, which includes and prevents any potential opportunities for political change.
(1)
Egyptians are not the only ones who believe that aliens appear to be plotting against their country. During the 1980s, many Americans in the United States recorded footage of airplanes and luminous and strange objects flying overhead. Soon, the American media began to talk about what became known as UFOs. They helped with flying saucers and space secrets, and told the American public that they had seen a top-secret government document confirming that a number of spacecraft had visited Earth and that some of the aliens were being held at special military bases.
(2)
By the end of the 1980s, the whole story had turned out to be faked, and the unidentified flying objects seen and photographed by thousands of people were just new weapons tests that the U.S. military was testing and developing, as U.S. intelligence still believed the Soviet Union was planning to attack America and take over the world.
Since it was impossible to hide these experiments, the US government chose some residents of areas near military bases to spread rumors about the satellite dishes, planted the idea in their minds, and convinced them that the US government hosted some aliens in its secret military bases in order to communicate and cooperate with them, and that they should keep secret for the benefit of the United States.
This massive process of faking and creating illusions about UFOs was overseen by President Ronald Reagan ’ s advisers during the 1980s, calling it Operation Consciousness Management.
That process has already managed the consciousness of a sizable segment of Americans and many others around the world, not only by convincing them of the existence of satellite dishes and alien invasion of Earth, but also by creating a false image of the Middle East, the Soviet Union and Central America.
The goal of the program was not only to cover up the defeat of American forces and their withdrawal from Lebanon in 1984, and then to convince the Americans of the raid on Libya in 1986, but also to completely cover the complex world of politics and turn it into a simple image of good and bad in the imagination of the general public by manipulating the facts and distorting any group of people and turning them into enemies in a way that serves the policy of the US government.
(2)
The Soviet Union collapsed at the beginning of the 1990s, something that none of the politicians, journalists, economists, academics, or even the CIA, whose preoccupation was the Soviets, expected.
The counterfeit trade of this period was not limited to the United States.
In the Soviet Union, a political entity that was seen by many politicians and academics around the world as the fulfillment of one of humanity ’ s great dreams of creating a virtuous new world, everything was falling apart under the weight of economic and social problems. The fall of enemies.
By the end of the 1980s, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian society had become a society in which no one believed in any future, no one could see beyond the existing order, no one could imagine or think of change. ".
This normalization of falsehood coincided with a moment when the world as people had known it for a century was dying and disappearing, while the new world had not yet been born.
This gloomy mood in Russia in the 1990s soon shifted to fiction, with the brothers Arkady and Boris Strogatsky expressing the Soviet phenomenon of "falsification" in the widely acclaimed science fiction story Roadside Picnic, which director Andrei Tarkovsky turned into a movie called "The Stalker". "The Stalker."
The story takes place in a time similar to the present Soviet Union, but one of the snoopers finds a strange region outside the country that seems to have been created by foreign powers, and nothing resembles the present, as time passes in that region in reverse, and there are strange forces that force those inside to think differently.
Strugatsky ’ s story was nothing more than an expression of the collapse of the world as it knew it, and its gradual transformation into a changing and unstable world, where there is no way to change reality, the only thing available is to learn how to manipulate it.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the new political doctrine of the world has become not “revolution, ”“ change, ” or “building a better world, ” but“ managing the world as it is to avoid any impending disasters. ”
One of the first political thinkers to note this and describe this dramatic change in the world of politics was the German thinker and sociologist Ulrich Beck, who said that "any politician who believes that he can control society and push it forward to build a better future will be seen by all political systems as dangerous and should be excluded."
This new vision, described by Ulrich Beck, has flourished among the political and academic strata of the West since at least the 1970s, a vision that attempts to preserve the world as it is in the face of the dangers of violent changes and their unknown effects on societies, and the ambitions of politicians who thought they could change the world.
This vision was adopted by the political current that will dominate the world until recently and will invade various countries under the name of “neoliberalism ”, but this neoliberalism is not in essence a liberal vision, but a repositioning and rise of the“ conservative ” trend that has been defeated since the European Renaissance.
(3)
Soon emerged the first achievement carrying the philosophy of that new vision, the supercomputer "Aladdin" designed by the banker "Larry Fink" after he lost his job as a banker because of the loss of a deal of $100 million, he founded a company called "Blackrock" designed a computer whose job is to calculate risk by analyzing world events and data during the previous 50 years to design, and then by comparison and simulation. The computer begins to anticipate potential hazards and disasters.
(4)
During this period, the task of making people feel safe and happy moved from politicians and community leaders to computers and artificial intelligence algorithms, coinciding with the emergence of the first program that works as a psychotherapist called ELIZA, named after the secretary of Joseph Weisenbaum, the program's designer.
Eliza is a program designed with algorithms that can arrange a number of general, understandable, and supportive answers suitable for each person using the program by writing down their problem, similar to the Siri program that is prevalent today on iPhone systems.
After Eliza ’ s success, it became clear that happiness and tranquillity in the new age of individualism is not so much about human tranquility and inner peace as it is related to external matters of consumption, not only consumption of goods, but also consumption of relationships – even with inanimate objects – and the consumption of computer programs such as social media, to achieve a degree of distraction that blinds man to reality and its complexities.
In the 1960s, French philosopher Guy Deborah wrote a book called The Scenic Society, which he described as the most important book of the 20th century, and in his book, Deborah claimed that reality no longer shapes the lives and social realities of individuals.
In other words, everything that affects human life in this society is presented as a picture of a scene; elections are a scene, a painful incident, war, demonstrations, love, friendship, family, smiling, even the seas, oceans, sky and space are just “scenes ” that you don ’ t need to move to participate.
Man, in turn, within this society is merely a "viewer" or a "consumer", where the "spectacle" takes away meaning from his human existence, and places in its place the visual image that has become more important than the living reality itself.
However, the making of this scene is inseparable from the power of the “modern state ”:“ The scene is the continuous talk of the existing order about itself, its praiseworthy monologue, it is the self-image of power in the age of its totalitarian management of the conditions of existence. ”
(5)
The “scene ” no longer only replaces reality, but it is the scene that makes reality, as the thinker Jean Baudrillard put it in his book“ The Manufactured and the Manufactured ”, in which he explained that the world is living in a stage “above reality. ”
According to Baudrillard, the state of "superreality" is not a "reproduction or distortion of reality", but is the reference and the origin itself, separate from a reality that has disappeared and become unknown.
In this context, Baudrillard classifies “reality ” into two types: the first is a social reality that all people see, even if with some distortion, and the second is a controversial reality and a conflict zone, which concerns all major issues concerning society and man.
The first type remains the reality of the people, while the second becomes a reality "superreal" with the ability of the media, where those who own the media seek to present a revised version of reality and truth, a comprehensive version of false facts surrounding one everywhere. People are able to get to the truth.
"The fundamental event of the modern age is the opening up of the world as an image."
Martin Heidegger.
In the summer of 1889, when the Egyptian delegation traveled to the Eighth International Conference of Orientalists held in Stockholm, the Egyptians passed through Paris to visit the World ’ s Fair in the “Capital of Lights, ” and were only disturbed by the Egyptian Pavilion, where the French built a winding street full of shops and houses with falling upper floors, unlike the rest of the meticulously planned exhibition.
The Egyptian pavilion looked so ugly and chaotic that the organizers of the exhibition added fifty donkeys to create the same fuss and fuss as any Egyptian street in Cairo.
(6)
When Egyptian visitors were disgusted and embarrassed by everything they had seen, they turned to the mosque, and as soon as they passed through its door, they discovered that it was just an exterior facade, where they found an Arab café full of Egyptian dancers, slaves and dervishes.
This was not the first occasion of its kind, when the Egyptian Khedive visited Paris to visit a previous international exhibition in 1867, he found that the Egyptian pavilion was built to mimic ancient Cairo in the form of a royal palace.
(6)
Timothy Mitchell, author of The Colonization of Egypt, argues that Europe ’ s system of cultural exhibitions and representations in the 19th century expressed the political vision that the “colonial powers ” sought to impose on their colonies all over the world. Instead of imagining a particular country ’ s culture or civilization as a foreign culture, exhibitions and conferences can touch that culture closely and emulate it.
But this simulation does not replace the original reality that it expresses, but what has happened is that the representation has disconnected from the political and social reality that it purports to depict.
It is no longer known where the exhibition ends and where the world itself begins. Although the boundaries of the exhibition were clearly defined by high walls and huge gates, Paris itself was filled, as the Egyptian delegation discovered, with places similar to the exhibition. Dada for the exhibition, not the exhibition is the simulator of reality.
Timothy Mitchell describes this as the essence of the Western system of colonization of the world, and this system has three features: first, his remarkable claim to have certainty or truth, in which the world seems ordered, ordered and calculated, second: the paradoxical nature of the system of clarity and truth imposed by this system, the institutions of the system are additional representations of reality, and third: that this system is necessarily colonial. He replaces reality, then claims possession of it, reformulates it, and presents it.
This is what Jacques Derrida put it: “This system of appearance is the system of all appearance, the process of appearance itself in general.
It is the system of truth. ”
Through this "colonial" system of representations emerged the modern administrative and political method by which Britain ruled its vast empire, including the Kingdom of Egypt.
This modern political approach consists of practices such as the formation of a new army and changing its combat doctrine, the introduction of organized and strict school education following the secular European culture, the reconstruction of new villages and cities, the construction of canals and land grabs, all of which have established the appearance of a well-defined structure that has become a “system ” with a compelling power to regulate everything that is not organized. to an essential and suddenly necessary element that the State or humanitarian practice can only be conceived of in its existence.
(6)
This system had another very important function: to rearrange the world economically and to regulate its orientation towards Europe.
To this end, the authorities imposed a strict system of control and punishment on peasants and workers, preventing them from fomenting any rebellion or riot that disrupted production.
To achieve this, colonialism worked to change people ’ s perception of themselves and rebuild their human identity in a way that Marx described as “subjecting the muscles of the body to the will of the self. ”
Simultaneously, a way had to be found to organize and direct the working crowds for fear that they would turn into political demonstrations, and exhibitions and concerts were the best way to play this role.
A report issued after an exhibition in Europe in 1851, which encouraged workers to leave their workshops and factories to attend, stated that "popular movements that a few years ago could have been seen as a threat to state security occurred without chaos and with almost no crime".
(6) Since then, concerts and performances have been a constant ritual in all modern political systems, and in turn have created a kind of social interaction for the audience, which the Chicago School has tried to understand by studying the spatial location of high-attendance concerts, drawing on what Irving Goffman wrote about behaviors in public spaces and how social interactions are organized within them.
Studies have identified three areas that frequently appear during concerts and performances.
The first area is the front: the area adjacent to the theater with a large density, where jumping, noise and dancing occur, and in this area no one can distinguish who is standing next to him, all his focus and attention is focused on the stage of the theater.
(7) Then comes the second zone, which is more stable and quieter than the introduction, in which the audience can distinguish the type of sound and music.
The third area at the back of the concert is not only where the audience moves if the band doesn ’ t like it, but also where professionals (agents, managers, journalists, musicians, record company employees) gather.
The audience of each region forms a particular view of the party and defends it with contempt for the views of other regions, but everyone, no matter how heterogeneous, remains within the framework of the party.
Along with its focus on analyzing the social behavior of the audience during parties, this study can give us a framework for understanding the theater of politics in the modern era.
Just as “exhibition ” representations have extended to the outside world, so too can“ party ” representations extend to the political realm, as intelligence strongman Vladimir Putin has understood and applied to his advantage since the turn of the 21st century, as Putin has exploited the uncertainty and lack of faith in politics that Russia has experienced since the collapse of the Soviet Union and has remained in power unchallenged for more than 20 years.
His rise to power and stability depended on a group of followers who turned politics in Russia into a series of techniques that enabled them to subdue and manipulate reality.
These men were heavily influenced by the Strugatsky school of fiction in the 1970s, and succeeded in penetrating and controlling the media after the collapse of the Soviet Union, using it to manipulate voters; for them, the political reality was a world like a "road trip" that could be manipulated and reshaped all the time.
(8)
The most prominent figure in the group, who through these techniques allowed Putin to wield power, is Vladislav Surkov, a director who has come from the theater world to turn politics into a big theater where the audience cannot be sure of what is happening or look outside, while the audience and political groups engage in dancing and jumping, strongly drawn to political performances from the Kremlin.
Surkov ’ s strategy was to turn the political scene into a gigantic dance where no one knew what the purpose or direction of the dance was by pouring Kremlin money on all kinds of political groups, from fascist and neo-Nazi organizations to liberal human rights groups, to anti-government parties.
Therefore, all groups and parties have become equal, similar and involved in such a way that no observer can understand the true direction of government policy in Russia.
But the truth is that all political forces were just actors on a big stage, while policymakers and real power players stood behind the stage organizing roles from engagement to exclusion.
This strategy quickly spread around the world, we saw these same techniques used by the military council in Egypt after the January 25 uprising, working to atone people with politics and change, and convince them that change threatens the stability of their lives, and then the head of military intelligence appeared during concerts and conferences with artists in preparation for the military coup that toppled the first elected civilian president in Egypt, using the same mobilization methods used by activists in the January uprising. Also directed by Khaled Youssef.
As the new regime stabilized, Egypt experienced a state of “excessive normalization with falsehood ” similar to that seen in Russia during the 1990s.
Despite widespread poverty in Egypt, pro-regime ministers and politicians continue to insist that everything is going according to plan, and the more political and economic crisis and the more complicated the Renaissance Dam crisis, the more fake it is being spread to distract people.
(9)
On the other hand, the practices of the Egyptian authorities, which aim to reorganize Egypt with its villages, cities and streets, monopolize its entire economy, seize the money of its citizens by collecting, and redesign it in a way that facilitates the control of cities, are similar to the old English colonial system, where, as Timothy Mitchell said, rearranging and falsifying reality is the essence of the colonial process.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
SOURCES
Egyptian TV and satellite TV, a real disaster
An Egyptian scientist has met aliens who warn them of the Brotherhood.
Are there aliens?
Here are the responses of the Egyptians.
Film Review: Hyper Normalization
Emanuel Wallerstein: The End of the World as We Know It
4. Meet Aladdin, the computer "more powerful than traditional politics"
Mohammed Ali Farah, Making Reality: Media and Controlling Society, p. 177
Timothy Mitchell, Colonization of Egypt, translated by Bashir Sebai
Tim Edwards, Cultural Theory: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives
Film Review: Hyper Normalization
Despite widespread poverty, the government...
Why are there so many rich people in Egypt?
Source: The Island
About this story
The moral dilemma is not the existence of enemies, but the dissemination of a demonic image of the enemy and dehumanization of it, where any form of trying to understand the logic of the enemy and dealing with it becomes a matter of betrayal and hostility.
7 / 2 / 2017
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- Distrust of "elite" or mainstream information sources is common.

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Defendant TikTok!
Mamdouh Al-Muhaini
Posted in: Last Updated:
The scenes on TikTok are funny, entertaining and ridiculous at the same time, and despite the large amount of sermons of counselors and disgruntled, the number of downloads of this application is increasing.
One billion monthly active subscribers, the company recently announced.
That is, one in seven people on Earth regularly watch videos of the famous app.
The rapid growth of subscriber numbers means one thing: all these tips are ignored and thrown into the trash.
The accusations faced by TikTok and similar platforms are usually coming from the masses of writers and intellectuals who turn into timid preachers who are not tired of demanding the closure of what they do not like.
The mistake they make, in addition to opposing the movement of time and wanting to eliminate the natural and joyful diversity of contemporary life, is that they see these platforms for the elite and judge their content on this basis, but they are platforms for the broad masses and not for the few.
The stars of these platforms from influencers, artists, and players are natural because these areas are related to the entertainment that matters to the wider segments of people.
Historically and globally, the widest fame is not for scientists and inventors but for sports and entertainment stars.
These critical campaigns are based on a domineering way of thinking and hatreds to express superiority over others, but only complain.
In my opinion, the danger in these platforms is not in them or their light and entertaining (or even naive) content but in the methods of division and militarization that can be used.
It is also an effective way to recycle harmful thoughts such as conspiracy thoughts and victim sensation.
I recently watched a video on TikTok of a psychopath insulting religious symbols and describing them in the most gruesome terms.
This person ’ s goal is clear: to use these platforms to create a state of religious and sectarian rivalry and create an atmosphere of hatred within one society.
The crisis here is not in these platforms but in this content that ultimately cannot be prevented, it will spread no matter what the consequences.
The problem is that we fail to create intellectually mature societies with strong values of coexistence and participation without these harmful contents affecting them.
In these platforms, it is continuously recycled that Muslims are victims of the West and their religion is subjected to ferocious war and their states are invaded and exterminated.
This content is intensely active in instilling a sense of oppression within the younger generations who receive such ideas easily, and are then difficult to extract from their consciousness and thinking.
Although the facts on the ground are irrefutable (think only how many Muslims are in charge of the British government) to refute these subversive claims, these arguments are widely popular because minds are shaped in a way that accepts them without intellectual resistance.
The reason is clear: for decades, there has been an absence of humanities education curricula in Arab schools and universities that raise the critical level of understanding of reality and history.
Just reading the previous sentence seems like a sick joke because these schools and universities have been dominated for decades by intellectually and psychologically troubled personalities and have charged generations with sick ideas that increase their isolation from the world and throw them into a modified and dark phase of the past.
Because of the absence of humanities, it is possible to see personalities who have all the modern technologies but whose ideas are closed and bloody.
We have seen technologists, doctors and engineers join extremist organizations and use their skills to commit atrocities.
As we know, the rhetoric in the media has been one of the most important reasons why young people join or sympathize with extremist groups.
The solution, in my opinion, is not to close these platforms or tarnish their reputation and describe those who visit them as fools and fools, but to work on a way of thinking that promotes the values of participation, coexistence, human openness to different religions and peoples and integration into contemporary life without a sense of persecution, hatred and isolation from the world.
This is perhaps the best we can offer to new generations in the new year, rather than sermons that make us feel good about ourselves but will evaporate in hours or days.
According to the Middle East Newspaper
Disclaimer: All published articles represent the opinion of their authors only.

Many young people, in particular, turn to online communities for guidance in the absence of strong, positive real-world role models or supervision, as traditional forms of cultural transmission and authority have weakened.

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Content: General Supervision
Elham Aboul Fath
Editor-in-Chief
Thank you for your patience.
General Supervision
Elham Aboul Fath
Editor-in-Chief
Thank you for your patience.
Mahmoud Bakri writes: The battle of consciousness (14)
I do not think that I am far from the truth if I say that the indicator of the absence of good and good role models among young people in our society is beginning to sound the alarm and threaten the future of our generations...
Anyone who watches the cases and acts of violence, bullying, indifference and blind imitation of all that is Western is well aware that we are living in a state of lack of awareness among young people of the importance and value of the symbol or ideal that opens the way for them and works to advise, guide and guide them.
Despite the many symbols and models that have contributed to the enrichment of human life, which represent a good example for everyone who seeks success, these models have been absent from some new generations, and the result has been the emergence of a generation whose history is little known.
There is no doubt that the absence of a supervisory role, whether it be at home, at school, in social circles or even in drama and works of art, has created a vacuum in the minds of the majority of young people and adolescents, which has given us an unconscious generation, often dependent on violence to get what we want, and has also given us behaviors that are abnormal to our customs, values and traditions.
The acceleration and complexity of life plays an important role in this, no one can deny it, the gap is large between the past and present generations, the current generation is completely different in its powers, who have turned from scientists, politicians, religion and literature to festival singers and YouTubers who built their fame quickly without fatigue, and at the expense of the values and ethics of society, which has formed a huge vacuum for some young people...
This is in addition to the weakness of the religious impulse of some young people and the distancing from the original values and customs that we grew up with.
A nation that does not have a creative and influential leadership and creates achievements of a tangible nature that contributes to its emergence in society through its influence in most areas of life, whether religious, social, urban or political without borders, there is no doubt that this nation quickly fades and loses its values and decays its civilization and its prestige among nations.
This generation is the least fortunate in spite of all the progress in which they sink, and the poorest in spirit, despite all the manifestations of wealth that shackle their energies and which the kings of past times did not possess.
Yes, they suffer from the destructive effects of civilization and progress that we are all happy with. We are in a time of intellectual and cultural openness, educational and moral closure. Children and adolescents absorb and deal with the most important modern technologies and have enormous abilities to keep up with them. At the same time, they lack the ability to think deeply and positively about the simplest things such as developing themselves socially or trying to think from a different point of view. The ultimate blow is the complete absence of role models, and the media is most responsible for this.
We cannot deny the role of the media in our lives and its overwhelming influence on us and our ideas, and it knows this very well.
Empty models from the inside.. dazzling from the outside, have a glamour that deflects the eyes and plunges the minds into a deep hole of emptiness and waste the mind in dark paths hardly distinguishing between light and fire, and put them in the forefront to be stars shining in the imagination of our children and become the role model and goal they dream to be like and in return the absence of blind media our powers.
Where are our greats?
Why not see them on screens in programs that address the minds of children and young people and simulate their dazzling reality?!
Even if such programs are produced, they are intended for adults and lack attractiveness or creative ideas, so I think we are in dire need of programs that instill confidence and ethics in our children and youth and reject anything that is abnormal and alien to our culture.
Why, if we talk about courage, does the image of an imaginary hero jump into our children ’ s minds that doesn ’ t even exist?
The hero of the West weave around him tales of heroism, to fill the vacuum of their reality.
As we fight the battle of awareness, deepening national belonging, and building the Egyptian man, we must not lose sight of this matter, we cannot succeed in this battle without providing honorable models of scientists, writers, officers, intellectuals, doctors and all spectrums of society that serve and work for it.
We must all, as governmental, civil and individual institutions, join hands in order to show good example and role models in all fields. The role of the media comes in highlighting the personalities that serve the community...
This is in addition to the need to develop religious curricula, expand the community participation of young people and develop human building institutions, most importantly education, culture, media and religious institutions.

- Media, including sensational or alternative news outlets, play a pivotal role in popularizing implausible beliefs.

Exposure to eccentric guest speakers or outlandish claims, when given serious airtime, can make these ideas seem more valid, especially to youth.

- The ease with which unconventional ideas travel online means that extremist or fringe beliefs once limited by geography can now emerge in any home or community.

**Key Organizations & Public Figures:**
- Organizations: Notable groups include the *Flat Earth Society* (UK/US), *International Flat Earth Research Society*, and regional Facebook or YouTube communities in Brazil, Italy, and elsewhere.

Many of these are loosely organized but share material, organize conferences, and promote online content globally.

- Public figures: While mainstream celebrities avoid association, a few known personalities (such as US athlete Kyrie Irving and, briefly, rapper B.o.B) have publicly pondered or supported flat Earth arguments, spurring media attention.

What NBA star claimed that the earth is flat?

Most, however, either retract or clarify such statements facing backlash.

- The presence of flat Earth arguments in Arabic-speaking countries, as in your extract, reflects a broader global presence, often linked with distrust in Western science or authority.

Title:

Content: Identity crisis?
Blessing the Sword
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Dr. Mohammed Al-Rumaihi devoted his article published in this newspaper, last Saturday, to comment on a violent controversy, which resulted from his position on the call of some parliamentarians to abolish mixed classes in university education.
This controversy was marked by clear verbal violence on the part of those who claimed to defend virtue.
It does not stop when the dissenting opinion is ridiculed; rather, it goes beyond cursing the owner of the opinion, accusing him of treason, ignorance, amulet of religion, and so on.
Al-Rumaihi and other scholars have already been subjected to such accusations.
But the article has made a fundamental point that deserves further treatment: its reference to the fact that this debate and its ilk express an “identity crisis ”, which manifests itself whenever the challenges of moving from the age of tradition to the age of modernity arise on the surface of everyday life.
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According to Eric Erickson, an American psychologist, the identity crisis is the failure of young people to balance their personal aspirations with the demands of social life, especially in societies undergoing rapid cultural and economic transformations that necessarily change people ’ s positions, circles, and norms.
I have observed that the most important shifts of individual identity in our society have resulted from its openness to sources of cultural influence and new lifestyles, which are at odds with what we have inherited from our ancestors.
I am inclined to believe that the beginning of the deep transformation dates back to the last two decades of the twentieth century, to which programs of modernization of the economy, change of education policies, and expansion of the enrollment of students in foreign universities contributed harmoniously.
The peak of the transformation, I estimate, has occurred in the last five years, as a result of fast internet access to every village and town across the kingdom.
The Internet has provided an opportunity for young people to directly open up to new worlds.
The family, the school, and the social system as a whole have little influence on the mentality of the individual, but the greatest contributor has become the individual himself who consciously and unconsciously chooses, from tables that have no beginning and no other, tables that are far removed from the historical experience of our society.
Each of these changes confronts the traditional mindset with a new challenge, supported by a more advanced, accessible and attractive lifestyle, which puts the individual at risk: either abandoning his old world, or depriving him of the fruits of new life.
According to Ericsson, this shift leads to a lack of understanding between the younger generation and their parents, not because they refuse to understand, but because different cultural backgrounds cause parents and children to start from a different background, but a different conceptual and moral world.
The need of the father and the son to maintain the existing relationship necessarily leads to a certain amount of cost and suffering that is reflected in the form of a psychological crisis, which is what we call the crisis of identity.
Ericsson ’ s vision applies to young people, but I ’ ve found a crisis of identity in a wide cross-section of parents as well.
It manifests itself in the form of an internal rejection of the old with his apparent acceptance, or an internal refusal to speak with a strong desire to enjoy his goods.
This dissonance produces a duality of values, another manifestation of the identity crisis.
I think that the source of the crisis on both sides: the youth and parents, is the slow interaction between our cultural heritage, religious and non-religious, and the cultural changes of the era, especially the new value systems, and the consequent relations between people, and social positions different from those of the past.
I believe that a large segment of our society, parents in particular, have a hard time reconciling their old convictions with their new lives.
If we look at the root cause of all this, we see it in the fact that our cultural heritage wants the individual to be a obedient follower, not a participant or a creator of the values that guide his life.
Thus, he must remain agitated and influenced, if he wants to enjoy the virtues of the old regime.
Quote from "The Middle East"
Disclaimer: All published articles represent the opinion of their authors only.
Most Read Common Topics

**Arguments Flat Earthers Use:**
- Misinterpretation of visual evidence (e.g., the horizon always looking flat).

- Claims that NASA and other institutions doctor photos and data to support a globe Earth “hoax.”
- Reliance on perceived inconsistencies in scientific explanations (e.g., why do we not feel Earth’s motion?).

What does Tunisian journalist believe in?

- People attracted to such beliefs often have a sense of alienation or skepticism toward authority and may feel their identities affirmed within these communities.