You can't master reading and writing without study; this applies even more to mastering the art of living. —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (AD 171)
We live in the age of the non-sequitur—the era of irrational ideas. To splinter and confound us, the globalists are ruining our information sources. Our minds have difficulty ignoring the debased, heavily promoted ideas and images passing before us.
TV and Hollywood movies, for example, are toxic and vacuous. Their violence and other evils taint our thoughts and persist in our subconscious. Delete their apps. Passively allowing this filth into our thinking conjures false emotions directed by deviants.
If you are tired, watch relaxing YouTube videos instead. Search for "Farm Life" or go on your dream vacation. This gives the middle finger to the degenerates. Unfortunately, if you do not pay for—or better yet steal—a subscription, you are still letting warped advertisements into your mind.
Liar's World substack describes how it all works.
Written and spoken words are put through a decoding process wherein the brain deciphers the words and the sentence structure to properly interpret what it is reading/hearing. In this process, both the conscious and unconscious mind go through an internal debate comparing what it's interpreting with what it already knows to be true. With the image, however, the brain instantly processes it as truth, which means information presented in a visual format has a much greater impact on the unconscious. Over long periods of time, recurring imagery has a built-up effect on the viewer which allows for unconsciously conceived notions of truth to manifest as though from nowhere. Naturally, then, whoever has control over the mediums of communication has a tremendous amount of power over the populations who consume it. —David B. Deserano
So much today is purposefully constructed to destroy our peace of mind. None of us has the time or energy to ponder WTF is going on with each bit of chaos we encounter, so the best practice is to turn off as many inputs as possible. You must make each decision yourself, and you are usually better off reading books. For a start, here are examples of things I ignore.
The gender-bending garbage is purpose-built to disgust and overwhelm us. THIS article explains the entire thing in detail, but it is TMI unless you are caught up in these trends and have a particular interest. I could not tolerate reading it all.
I read a lot of Substacks. I never waste more than a few minutes on an author with weak content or confusing motives. You cannot tell the difference between those who are fooled, stupid, or have agendas, so if you smell something, cut them off and give it no more thought. Likewise, if my blog commenters seem flip, insincere, or contradictory, I block them.
I also quickly unsubscribe to posts with poor editing. Authors must master writing to be taken seriously; if you are too undisciplined to improve yours, you are writing a diary. Never delude yourself that your awkward prose is innovative. Readers who find your work jerky, unpleasant, or baffling leave.
I paid for Steve Kirsch’s substack for a while but ultimately found him repetitive, so I quit. I recently stumbled across a post of his that whined, “Why is Bill Gates ignoring all the adverse data on the COVID vaccines?
Bill Gates is super impressive. I’ve known him for over 40 years.
Like Elon Musk, he’s a voracious reader and knowledgeable in any field he chooses to learn about.
But in the case of COVID vaccines, Bill is willfully blind to all the adverse safety and efficacy data.
Steve implies that his insider knowledge about Gates proves he is not a genocidal psychopath. My confusion as I scanned this reinforced my earlier decision to ignore Kirsch. (Thanks to my friend Dog for the link.) Another example: Steve speaks with Sasha Latypova HERE. He says that the mass murders were not premeditated.
And then there is Malone. People I respect think he has done far more good than harm. Many such as Meryl Nass claim knowledge of his integrity based on personal relationships and sometimes even brief conversations with him. But I know how easily I am fooled—anyone can be fooled—and the Breggin lawsuit is a hard data point. Paul Alexander’s first-hand accounts of Malone’s attacks on our leaders are others (The update is HERE). I now regard Meryl as an unreliable source and unsubscribed.
Malone’s recent video implies that we should all join his army of "5th generation” warriors pushing lies. But he claims no one knows who the enemy is, which fits with the globalist strategy to demoralize us. Katherine Watts clears up this supposed mystery:
From late January 2022 to now, I spent most of my time researching and writing about the secular legal components of the worldwide industrialized sterilization, maiming and murder program pursued with such great enthusiasm by private central banking families and a few thousand people who serve them from positions within national governments and supranational government-like entities, primarily the United Nations World Health Organization, and the American military-industrial-pharmaceutical-media-Congressional complex.
Ginger Breggin writes HERE that if we behave like the jackals we face and start lying, we are lost:
Malone is literally inviting the people to become his personal psyops army. Notice the patronizing tone as he says, "And I am glad to continue to try to help you as we walk along this path," and how his last word is "me," a focus one can find throughout his substack.
We now know that Malone's emphasis on Fifth Generation Warfare aims at establishing new credentials for himself and is paving the way for the release of his next book titled PsyWar. Earlier, Malone tried to establish himself with the concept of "mass formation psychosis," labeling and diminishing people with a diagnosis of extreme mental illness. That has now morphed into the people becoming a mass of children bewitched by magical Fifth Generation Warfare, from which he will rescue them while training them to use the techniques against his critics, including us.
We Must Embrace and Live by Our Moral Values
Instead of using deception and manipulation, we must define ourselves as free men and women. We must defend liberty and freedom and reclaim it where it has been stolen. Every slight theft must be rejected. Losses of freedom and liberty must be identified and rebuffed.
Americans, and free citizens everywhere, need to remind ourselves of the fundamentals that have provided us with freedoms and contrast our former freedoms with the last three years of totalitarianism.
We need to return to the Founding documents of our formerly free countries that provide protection and liberty to all individuals. In the United States, we need to remember our Constitution and Bill of Rights and our long and storied shared history of brave Founders, citizens, and leaders who embraced liberty for every individual and embraced the citizen responsibilities that come with our liberty.
We need to re-embrace our traditional values of honesty, courage, and responsibility, and we must not demoralize or demean ourselves by using manipulations and lies to obtain our ends at the expense of others. Our nation was founded by heroes who embraced truth, honesty, forthrightness, and the principles of the Ten Commandments, as well as fear and love of God. We must reclaim their spirit for ourselves and make America once again a beacon of truth.
We Do Not Need A Shepherd
We do not need to be frightened, nor do we need to be led like sheep by someone who wants to be our shepherd. We need strong and honest leaders answerable to us. We need leaders who love America, love freedom, and love and respect our fellow citizens. We need leaders who would never frighten or demean us but instead inspire us to stand up for liberty. Those who would demean and degrade us, citizens of free countries, must be openly identified and opposed.
Though I was guilty of an initial infatuation with Malone, nine months ago I killed all his inputs. Thinking about him is a distraction I will not tolerate.
Other authors are too inflammatory, even if their hearts are in the right place, so I eliminate them, too. Stew Peters comes to mind. My motto is the same as Joe Friday's, "Just the facts, Ma'am."
For more about Kirsch, Malone, Peters, and other open questions, see Matthew Crawford’s post “Chaos Agents” HERE.
I am neither comforted nor enlightened by apocalyptic religious themes such as "The Impending Judgment" video by John MacArthur HERE. Wasting emotional energy on material like this subtracts from my ability to cope today.
THIS post suggests we dismiss the entire NASA program based on suspicious video artifacts. I respect the Substacker who posted it, and I do not know the truth, but I do not have the appetite to worry about it. Look at other sources before you eat this meal. My brother-in-law worked for NASA and knows more about them than he does about EMF, so I may ask him. Or maybe I will not bother.
According to insiders, China's leaders overstate their GDP by more than a factor of four. Outsiders confirm this; established methods correlate a country's economic output with its nighttime light visible from space. By this metric, the Chinese GDP is four trillion dollars rather than twenty.
We also see claims that their children are smarter and I am sure they also say they are better looking. The original data has to come from China, and we know the Chinese are lying if their lips are moving. So never waste a second listening to their lies—or the rumors about their lies—or reading what people say about their lies.
Trust no source without question, even one from your respected doctor’s office at Stanford:
If you do not immediately see through this, your health may depend on having another look at "Mercola may have discovered the Rosetta Stone of diet and health" HERE. Big Food has fed us cheap but injurious "unsaturated" synthetic fats like Crisco since the early 20th century. Vegetable oils are in this category, and most are unhealthy. One that is widely consumed, linoleic acid, has been credibly blamed for our obesity and diabetes pandemic. In contrast, "saturated" animal fats are less reactive, so they cause fewer inflammatory diseases like cancer and heart conditions.
Cutting loose personal relationships that have no utility or are purposelessly exhausting is an art I have yet to master. In his Looking Out for Number One (1977), Robert Ringer says to eliminate "drain people" who waste your time and emotional energy. Ghost them. Friends who are meddlesome or intrusive may improve their behavior after a few days or weeks of ghosting. And if they leave, it may be your gain.
My secret weapons to keep me thinking straight are my friends Arnie (Liar's World Substack) and Polymath Paul. They cry bulls*** on nearly everything I ask them. They remind me to never overestimate science, underestimate the human body's regenerative capacity, or allow myself to be psyched out by psychopaths. You need people like them in your life.
I also journal, which is a superpower. Writing—far more than typing—drives your thoughts through a part of your mind that helps you remember and focus. Simply jot down random ideas for fifteen minutes at the start of the day. The process is the benefit, and you rarely return to what you have written.
Keeping your phone in airplane mode gives you peace. It also cuts exposure to electric and magnetic fields (EMFs). If you need to check in and use an iPhone, rapidly turn it on or off by swiping directly down from the upper right corner. EMF health hazards are consequential, and I will post about them soon.
A sport, another exercise, sun exposure, and regimented time off also help. I wrote about these HERE: "What Max the Iditarod Sled Dog Taught Me About Living to Fight Another Day.
Many in the Freedom Movement, including people like RFK, the Breggins, and McCullough, are willing to work themselves to death. We know we are fighting a forever war and doubt we will live to the end. Many hustle more than 70 hours a week with no time off. This was my pattern until recently. I would crash and burn every month or so for a day or two.
The Iditarod is an 838-mile Alaskan dogsled race. Until recently, half of Max's teammates died during each race, and the teams sometimes finished with only five dogs out of the original fifteen.
A new Iditarod strategy evolved in the past few years—running for four hours and resting for four hours. Most doggies now live until the end, yet the winning times have been repeatedly smashed.
Running ourselves nearly to death makes us slower and less productive. But if we schedule time off each day, each week, and each year, we get more done overall and feel better. We need to listen to Max.
Another key concept is that being skeptical because you are ignorant is as stupid as believing propaganda. Some people never read (DFR) and never listen (DFL). I wrote about this when I was at the funeral of a friend who drank himself to death:
A life of purposeful empty-headedness misses the ultimate game—aggressive learning. To play it well, we must choose inputs that allow us to stay cool yet firmly grip reality. This preserves our core survival skills: having the strength and flexibility to change our minds as the paradigm evolves. Learning is painful, but it is salve for all other wounds.
Finally, I have a review system that I have used for decades to recycle many hundreds of vital ideas past my eyes. This anchors selected philosophies into my brain. Some are Christian.
I use the app Cultured Code Things to do this, but others, such as OmniFocus, work well, also. Some people prefer physical "tickler" folders, but I like having my ideas close to me on my phone. David Allen's Getting Things Done (2001) was my original inspiration.
The following are examples of thoughts I recycle. The ones below are mainly from Aurelius's Meditations (AD 171).
How shameful and absurd for the spirit to surrender when the body is able to fight on.
You always have the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to trouble yourself about things beyond your control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.
Don’t fear the future. You will face it, if that is your fate, armed with the same reason that guides you in the present.
Let come what may to those who are affected by outward circumstance. They will always find something to complain about. For myself, if I choose not to view whatever happens as evil, no harm will come to me. And I can so choose.
My student days are over… nevertheless you can still learn to check your arrogance, learn to rise above pleasure and pain, learn to ignore flattery, and learn not to be upset with the gauche and ungrateful….
Feeling the god’s headwind beating on our backs, we pull harder on the oars and make no complaint.
Are my guiding principles healthy and robust? On this hangs everything. The rest whether I can control it or not is but smoke and the grey ashes of the dead.
Don’t become disgusted with yourself, lose patience, or give up if you sometimes fail to act as your philosophy dictates, but after each setback, return to reason and be content if most of your acts are worthy of a good man.
Only a fool or a stranger on this planet will be surprised by anything in this life.
How at this moment am I using my mind? This is a question worth asking all the time. How do my words and deeds measure up to the ruling reason within me?
This is not a debate over trifles, but over whether we will be sane or not. (Epictetus)
On occasion of every accident that befalls you, remember to turn to yourself and inquire what power you have for turning it to use. (Epictetus)
It all depends on your opinion of it and that depends on you. Jettison your opinion and you will find yourself like a sailor rounding the headland on a calm sea in a bay without waves.
Bad luck borne nobly is good luck.
How easy it is to push away and block out every rude and unwelcome idea and suddenly recover ones peace of mind.
Jettison your cargo of opinion and you are saved. Who prevents you from doing this?
Just because you find the work too hard to do, don’t leap to the conclusion that it is humanly impossible: but if the work can and should be done by a man, then consider yourself capable of doing it.
And last, Have before you at all times the icon of an ancient who practiced virtue. I use my review system for this.
The Cassandra's Memo ebook is free HERE if you promise to send this download link to five or more others. With your help, we will educate some people sitting on the fence. If you have time to write a review at Barnes and Noble, click HERE and scroll down the page until you see the blue "review" button on the right.
BONUS: I am also giving away the Hormone Secrets and Butchered by "Healthcare" ebooks using the same arrangement; you can download them free HERE and HERE if you promise to send the links to your friends.
I have no copyright; you may (accurately) quote any of my essays or books in part or whole without restriction. Also, this is not medical advice; I'm retired. Use the information here at your own risk.
Parting shot
234. STAY CALM AND PRODUCTIVE BY TURNING OFF INPUTS THAT ARE PROFANE, USELESS, OR INFORMATION OVERLOAD