John Shirley Blog

People who basically live on their phones get most of their input about the world as memes, and misinformation. If you live on your phone a bit, you’re a bit stupider; if you live on your phone somewhat, you’re somewhat stupider; if you live on your phone a lot, you’re a lot stupider.

(one verse of it anyhow)

America the Dismantled

O beautiful for racist lies,
(For MAGA craves a brain),
For pointless emigrant enmities
Above the fruit-picked plain!
America! America!
Putin plans a grave for thee,
And shoot the guns of incel hoods
From sea to plastic sea!

The daily dismantling of America; the laboratory of the American experiment sold, its apparatus in landfills, to make room for vast AI data centers; armed drones fly over the streets, using behavior assessment programs, shooting outliers alongside the violent sufferers of microplastic dementia.

…This prominent hominid ancestral species, self-styled ‘humanity’ or ‘homo sapiens’, was somewhat successful in terms of mechanical construction of civilizations, and notable for occasional bursts of artistic creativity. Nonetheless, its tragic flaws brought about the destructive Anthropocene and a collapse of its fragile social systems and infrastructure. Essentially ‘homo sapiens’ was neurologically boxed-in by a crude cerebral system alternating reward and negative input, inevitably producing addictive and desperate behavior, complicated by wired-in xenophobic pathways cascading to the collapse of its feeble capability for empathy and self awareness. This self-numbing, self-destructive complex was egregiously magnified by the dominant media systems of the time…Our currently dominant mutation, humanitas quartus dimensio, optimized 3rd and 4th dimensions of cognitive self-awareness, enabling objectivity interlaced by empathy…And so HQD emerged from the ruins of the anthropocene and cultivated a new, diverse planetary biome and, thus far, a sustainable civilization…

–from, The Child’s Book of Human Developmental History, circa 3010 CE [translated from the period’s dominant philological form]

Jesus, most scholars agree, existed–in the sense that Yeshua the Nazarene wandered around, said some of the things attributed to him; Jesus made an impression, locally; drew some followers, was crucified. (As for what he really said, see, the “Book of Q” for some sayings they feel certain of, and see also, in my opinion, the Gospel of Thomas.) He may not have died during crucifixion, according to one story, which is more believable than resurrection–he simply looked dead. The Bible, as I recall, does say they got permission to take “his body down early”. But dead on the cross or not, he was likely just a “wisdom teacher” of the time, perhaps a bit mad, in some ways, but brilliant, quite possibly a genius. And well meaning. He was likely not nearly so apocalyptic in his oracular sayings as later evangelists, pissed off at their persecutors, liked to make him out. And it is those later evangelists we can likely blame for the fabrication of most of the fantastic elements of the Jesus mythology.

I believe Jesus was likely more of an Essene-flavored gnostic than a teacher of what people now think of as Christianity, and likely never claimed he was the son of God. He called himself the son of man. He seems to have had deep insights into man’s nature, a philosophy of life that was rather like Lao Tzu, and not far from Buddha, and may have had enlightenment experiences.

He did believe, apparently, that he had a divinely ordained mission. He may well have been the bastard son of a Roman soldier, whom Mary explained as a miraculous birth. Joseph had to tolerate him but probably never accepted him as his own child, leading to Jesus having a neurotic attachment to his “divine father”, a projection on the supposed father of the universe, the only one he could psychologically accept.

Jesus seemed to like children, the poor and oppressed–and Mary Magdalen. A gnostic text mentions him kissing her on the mouth and in another he defends her worthiness to his male followers.

Jesus was called “the annointed” by his followers–that is, Cristos–and the Romans (Tacitus) record him as having been executed for insurrection. “…Christus, from whom the name [Christian] had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus…”

Sometime after the execution of Jesus, elderly Jewish writers rolled their eyes at the recollections of him, saying they remembered him well, as a “sorceror”, a trickster, and the bastard son of a Roman soldier named Pantera. Essentially saying: “Him? We remember, already–he was a schmuck!” (Okay, so I’m paraphrasing).

There are two references to him found in some versions of “Antiquities”, attributed to the Jewish historian Josephus, but the more enthusiastic one was clearly interpolated–-an out and out fraud, simply inserted in the text–-by a later Christian copyist.

However there was one text, likely authentic, attributed to Josephus, that has the ring of authenticity:

“At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous.”

“If you think this universe is bad, you should see some of the others.” — Philip K. Dick

Took a nap, what a bad dream! Trump got elected, and the Senate was taken over by GOP! Like an alternate world! I mean, a rapist felon in the WH, a Senate that would work with Trump to make sure they can’t be voted out–that could never happen.

What? No. Come on. No don’t tell me that. I said no.

But yes. Remember 2016, when Trump was elected and we all looked dazedly at one another and said, “What alternate universe have we slipped into?”

We clawed our way back to our native universe, and stayed for four years. Now we’ve slipped into a worse universe. It’s worse because disinformation and voter shallowness has led to the GOP taking over the Senate too. And from here it looks like they’ll also get control of the House. With those tools–and yes they’re tools, aren’t they–Trump can remake America from the ground up, for Project 2025 and for the benefit of Big Oil and Big Chemical and for the evangelical-theocratic far-right.

Let’s get real. Not only will women’s rights continued to be suppressed…not only will our aid to Ukraine be halted, leading to Trump’s sugar-daddy Putin taking Ukraine and becoming emboldened to take more of Europe…not only will they repeal the Affordable Care Act–Obamacare–and whittle away at Social Security, and Medicare, and quite possibly entirely end Medicaid…not only will they end federal projects and treaties to deal with climate change, accelerating its damage to the world as we know it…Not only will Trump install RFKjr in a post that will enable the crippling or ending of federal support for vaccines, inevitably leading to a wave of pandemics…Not only will protections for gays and trans be erased…Not only will immigrants be targeted–some legal as well as illegal, especially the brown skinned ones; they’ll be rounded up, put into camps where misery and sickness will proliferate, then dumped across the border willy-nilly if they live that long…

But also–the erosion of civilized standards will extend into every federal bureau:

We can expect the privatization of the US Post Office, IRS, the FAA, and FEMA. As extreme weather will only get more extreme (especially as the new Senate and White House will end efforts to ease climate change), FEMA will be constantly challenged. You’ll have to subscribe to the new FEMA corporation: Gold memberships, silver memberships, basic memberships in FEMA. Basic memberships mean they’ll toss you some paper towels as they drive past your house. (Only slightly joking about that last.)

The new regime will radically weaken the FDA and HHS, and eliminate the EPA. Toxins in your food will proliferate and so will bacteria. Many chemicals, found to be extra dangerous, were banned. None will be banned hereafter. Ingredient listings on foods will go away. Protect yourself accordingly.

The act creating the EPA will be repealed. So will the Clean Air and Clean Water acts–inconvenient to the billionaire oligarchy. Air pollution will visibly increase; you’ll smell it more often, and it’ll burn in your lungs. Banned pesticides will be allowed, new pesticides and herbicides and other materials, normally checked for toxicity, will be no longer vetted. Expect a consequent generational increase in cancer and neurological disorders in the general population, but especially in areas already known for exposing minorities to industrial waste.

In a year or two, the Senate/House GOP and WH will create a bureau to monitor media, and eliminate “antiChristian” and “unpatriotic” media, “False characterizations of US history” (which means actual history), and media that “promotes homosexuality and trans lifestyles”. Real censorship. Maoist levels. Stalinist levels. Orwellian in scope. Hard-right “Christian” in its fixations.

With the Senate and House working with Trump, federal oversight of public schools will end, and evangelical Christianity will be imposed on public schools. Many public schools will shutter, to be replaced by private schools run by corporations and megachurches. The sciences, of course, will be largely cast aside–except for the ones useful to the corporations: chemistry, engineering, physics…But evolution? Gone. Astronomy? How does that make the multinationals any money? Gone. Zoology? Ditto–makes them no money, so…gone. NASA will be cut back to military usages and whatever profits Elon Musk. He may well be put entirely in control of it–it’d just be a sort of subdivision of his holdings.

And speaking of zoology, endangered animals won’t be endangered anymore–all protections will be removed. They won’t be endangered, they’ll be doomed.

States rights? The west coast being a refuge for progressive life? No. The new federalization–completely ignoring the previous postulates of conservatives–will be imposed over California, Oregon, Washington.

Unions? The GOP Senate and House and Trump will extend so-called “right to work” conditions to the entire nation. From there, unions will be weakened–and it’s possible they’ll be banned entirely, after the “right to work” stage. Unions being famously combative, Trump’s regime may have a military round-up of union leaders on the same day the ban is implemented.

What about the military? It’ll take some time for Trump to remove all the disloyal top brass. But he’ll install his own people. Then the purges can begin. Then come the special new federal prisons–privatized, profitable for some, of course–you can expect around 2028. It’s likely Trump will set up a special militia or branch of the Secret Service that is hardcore loyal to him alone.

You’re thinking, perhaps, that we’ll all see what’s happening and we’ll vote these people out. Why suppose that will be allowed? Consider the steady drumbeat, for years now, of Republican gerrymandering and other schemes for suppressing inconvenient voters. If they’ll do that, why wouldn’t they take this opportunity to change the Constitution? Trump has said he would like a third term. Why stop there? Voting will likely come to resemble what it’s become in Putin’s Russia. And Trump will have his third term–or President Vance will have his first and second, and third and fourth. All this in a world now diving deeper into the existential threat of climate change repercussions…

All that and more–I’ve only described the fetid scum at the top of the bubbling cauldron of societal toxins 52% of American voters have given us…

[I wrote this article in 2012. Just rediscovered it. I wish to share it.]

When I was much younger I was at a reception, speaking to an Orthodox priest: a bearded man who was quite evidently very self-contained and aware; it seemed to me he was constantly making small conscious choices, inwardly, as to how he responded to people. Anytime the choice was between his own vanity, some self indulgence, or listening to someone else, he always turned toward concern for the other. He did this without being a show-off, without being demonstrative about it, out of a kind of sincerity that seemed intrinsic to him. I was impressed by this sincerity, which was almost a palpable thing, and found I wanted to impress him in turn. So I said something flattering to him about how he demonstrated goodness rooted in self honesty—and he immediately changed the subject, turning it away from himself. Though he was never unfriendly, I not only noticed his rejection of the flattery, somehow I could feel it, within myself, as though he’d literally expelled my flattery from him. It was as if my attempt to flatter him—something I did, really, so that he would like me better—simply bounced off him. There was a quality about his awareness of himself that made me more aware of myself. And when that came about, I saw myself, for a moment—I saw my flattery, my shallowness, for what it was.

All in a flash, I saw something about myself I’d never seen before. I saw that I was in the habit of using flattery to “get around” people, that I’d been doing it for years, that it was protective—that it was a function of my fear of other people. I saw that I would smile at them, chat wittily with them, but all the time I was afraid of them.

Somehow I knew that little lightning stroke of self-knowledge was valuable; that it was a flash of light illuminating a moonless, nighttime landscape normally invisible to me.

I kept watch in myself for this tendency, and learned to be aware of the impulse, the desire to do it. Gradually I weeded out this tendency to flattering others —though occasionally it crops up when I’m in an unusually insecure mood.

But eliminating a bad habit isn’t the point; the real value of seeing the bad habit, and the shallowness it was a part of, was in the realization that there must be much more about myself– about my behavior, my habitual responses–that I wasn’t seeing. Since I frequently struggled with self destructive impulses, I was very interested in seeing myself as I really was. After that insight, I was roused to work harder at that basic building block of consciousness, self-observation.

“If we remember that there are many people who understand nothing at all about themselves, we shall be less surprised at the realization that there are also people who are utterly unaware of their actual conflicts.” That’s Carl Jung telling us, once again, about the part of ourselves we choose not to see, usually without knowing we made the choice.

But there’s a particular hurdle to real self-observation. We have to be willing to leap into the unknown—to leap into areas we’re afraid to explore. Self-observation takes courage. It takes bravery to see oneself as one really is.

I was lucky to encounter that priest, a man of that depth of character, in just that circumstance—he held up a mirror between himself and me, which reflected my falseness back at me. I was in a fairly receptive mood—and I saw what was in the mirror. But normally, I don’t have access to someone who can compel me to see myself. Most of the time, if I hope to become more conscious, I have to have the courage, all on my own, to look where I would normally fear to look.

In Ouspensky’s classic, In Search of the Miraculous, he provides a simple drawing of “divided attention”, which is part of the process of self-remembering. The drawing is simply a line with two arrowheads, one on each end; one end represents attention directed outward, the other arrowhead represents attention pointing inward; the two arrowheads are linked by the line. It’s a simple drawing of a simple process—but keeping this inner spotlight on, keeping this attention shining inward while maintaining a solid connection with what is extrinsic, is hard to do. Our habitual state resists it. The process requires persistence, and courage.

In a spiritual group, I heard a teacher remark, “…but don’t you find self- remembering to be exquisitely uncomfortable, at times? I do.”

Why should being more fully aware of oneself ever be “exquisitely uncomfortable”? Of course, we’re talking about taking in feelings, emotions, impulses, sensations of the body, all experienced actively, in the present moment. Perhaps it’s like stepping out of a dark room into the glare of noon—naturally I blink, and recoil a bit, at first, with all that light coming at me. Facing that plain discomfort can require courage. But for my money, there’s another aspect of advancing consciousness that takes even more courage: psychological self-knowledge.

Seeing myself as a shallow flatterer—well, it’s not flattering. It’s painful for me to think of, even now. Like everyone else, I am still prone to mindless reaction, to a kneejerk impatience with those around me—if I look at myself actively while interacting with people, even people I love, I see that negative reactivity in myself. And just seeing it is painful. It takes courage to really see it, and to bear it.

Self-flagellation over perceived faults is itself cowardly, an avenue of escape from the reality of the perception. It’s a way out. It’s playing a sort of game with oneself, using a projected inner parent to go through a little drama, a passion play of histrionic penance. “I was bad, I punish myself, and I can forget about it now”. And then I leave that particular drama, free to go back to sleep—to slip back into an unconsciousness of the Shadow side of myself, because I’ve dutifully played out the psychological drama.

Buffering the dark side away, being asleep to it, is more than easy—it’s reflexive, automatic. It’s much harder to simply remain “in front of” an insight, some grim little epiphany, and integrate it into the overall knowledge I have of myself. Eventually, if I have the courage to remain with it, it finds a place in me, it is just another jigsaw part, and the feeling of putting a jigsaw piece in its right slot is pleasing. There, that’s where it belongs…and I see how it’s part of the larger picture.

When I consider the process of trying to become more conscious, it all pivots on attention, and where I direct attention, in myself. It seems to me that when I sit, and occasionally reach a degree of real mindfulness—when I sense and feel without surrendering to some narcoticizing fantasy—that the movement of attention really is like a spotlight, a directed arrow. Only after awhile, it’s as if there are many arrows pointing in many directions, a cluster of arrows all pointing outward from one center, from a unity. Esoteric writers sometimes use the analogy of going from the duality of two parallel lines, to a triangle, to a square, to a pentagram, to the six pointed star–the Seal of Solomon.

But it’s a long road from the parallel lines to the Seal of Solomon. Anyone who pretends that consciousness expands without effort, without discomfort, without courage, is misleading those of us who wish to achieve more consciousness. When I sit and turn my attention inward and outward, both, completing that circuit, there is always a resistance. Something in me knows that while this effort is going to be rewarding, while it can be relaxing and liberating, it can also be “exquisitely uncomfortable” at first; it can turn my attention to aspects of myself I’ve spent years turned away from. And that is going against the grain that I’ve grown into. I have to create a new “grain”—and that means looking at myself with a bracing sincerity, without self-judging but also without looking away. The animal part of me naturally turns away. It resists. The horse bucks when you put the saddle on it—and who can blame the horse? Prepare to be bucked off, and to get back on, somewhat bruised…

It takes courage to get back in that saddle; it takes courage to face inner resistance. It takes courage on a second-by-second basis, because the resistance will be a sharp feeling, like an inner prod, that will keep trying to tilt me, push me off balance, back into my daily habitual state of self-hypnosis. When I have the courage to include that resistance in my sphere of attention—including it, reconciling with it, a little more consciousness becomes possible.

The tranced state, our sleep as we move through life, seems so much safer, so much more comforting, to the part of me that is afraid of my real inner reality…

All humanity lives at the bottom of a seven-story building shaped like a seven-stroked lightning bolt. This crooked building is made of unbreakable walls, and is without egress except at the top. Most of humanity occupies the bottom floor. Here the light is dim, because the only light at this lowest level is reflected, diminishing with each level, from eight mirrors. The top mirror on the roof catches the light from a sun that never sets. This light is strongly reflected through a blurred pane of glass, to the seventh floor. Another mirror on the seventh floor catches this light, and reflects it downward through another glass pane into the sixth floor, but this light is dimmer than the light hitting the roof. A similar mirror on the sixth floor reflects the light downward to the fifth floor, but this light, on reaching the fifth floor, is dimmer than the light on the sixth floor. And so it goes, level by level, to the bottom floor, where the light is very dim indeed.

Most people on this first, lowest floor deny there is any better light. They shuffle about and make do, and contrive comforting mythologies. They live and die on the lowest level and their bodies sink into the floor, vanishing into it, becoming part of it A few people on the first floor actively look for a way upward, and then find one. They cannot interest most of the others, who have fallen into a kind of trance, in that way upward. It’s rather hard to get through it and they deny it goes anywhere.

This small group on the bottom floor, who have found the entrance, climb with difficulty to the second floor. Here there is a little more light, and it helps them to look actively about, and after a long time, working together, they find the way up to the third floor. But the way upward from here is difficult, so some remain behind.

And so it goes, with fewer and fewer making their way upward, until at last two climbers reach the seventh floor. Here there seems no way to the top. But the light here is brighter than any they’ve known before, and this light encourages them, and nourishes them, and they wait.

When they die, they find they’ve risen to the roof, where they are bathed in the light of the sun that never sets, and are able to ascend from there, effortlessly levitating, in awe at what they see on this final journey to the solar level.

“Despite fake news about my having been removed, Bobby and I remain intimate. We have a symbiotic relationship. He feeds me and I inspire him. The decision to endorse Trump for President came from both of us. I don’t want to say I’m as influential as my great ancestor Wormtongue, but when I squirm and whisper–RFK listens.”