Showing posts with label Dumbo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dumbo. Show all posts

Saturday, May 9, 2020

5/9/20 - Stories, Hope, and The Propaganda Paradox

Todd's adventures in leaving the house after 5-weeks, a quick review of the crappy Vaporesso Target PM-80, the supposed "wisdom" of the bewildered herd, belief and truth are mutually exclusive, atheists: leave the non-phallus swinging faithful alone, the crucial crusading distinction between religious & ideological zealots, and why the simple human need for hope probably makes us powerless against tasty propaganda.




--Be sure you're subscribed to an genuine and authentic Escaping The Cave feed!

Saturday, February 29, 2020

2/29/20 - Authentic Courage vs. Crying With The Pack

"God will not have his work made manifest by cowards." Genuine courage is required to stand apart against the deafening conformity of the cowardly mob. Ask Andrew Sullivan! People are inherently tyrannical. Shared secular delusions: our 21st century religions. God needs the devil; Sapiens need an enemy. Lippmann, the fragility of free speech, and democracy's Achilles Heel: an ignorant "public."



--Don't settle for imitations! Be sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!

Thursday, February 27, 2020

2/27/20 - Conform Or Be Cast Out

Social validation & conformity: the evolutionary default setting. Why choosing intellectual autonomy over the herd is nearly impossible. Also, standing apart in self-reliance, the drifter, and mending holes in the firewall.



--Don't settle for imitations! Be sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!

Wednesday, February 26, 2020

2/26/20 - Social Media Disease: The Dopamine Drip

"Whoever owns social validation..." Performance addiction and how the masses have become junkies gorging on validation's dopamine stream. How various influencers, including podcasters, have monetized validation mainlining in the name of "brand building". Propaganda, validation, dopamine, and Ellul's "conditioned response." How social momentum works: Tony McAleer on Your Undivided Attention. Also, how ideological boldness is a surefire sign of a propagandee.

Listen to "Your Undivided Attention" here: https://humanetech.com/podcast/




--Don't settle for imitations! Be sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!

Friday, February 21, 2020

2/21/20 - Authenticity, The Mask, and The Beast Unleashed

On independent thought, authenticity, social momentum, and permitting redemption. Also, You're not the Elephant Whisperer, let Dumbo feed! Detecting doctrinaires, the Warm Glow of the Herd's Fellowship, manipulative monkeys dancing for their lunch, and a mask, the core, and the id walk into a bar.



A format change is underway. Make sure you're subscribed to an Escaping The Cave feed!

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

1/28/20 - The Boldness of the Herd, Political Atheism, Our Glowing Christ

The next great war: intellectual autonomy. The bold certainty of the herd, the challenges of independent thought and why seeing someone who is genuinely their own Man is so rare, the media has supplanted the church, disengaging from the ideological Holy War in favor of political atheism, and Toddzilla's Paradox: the conflict between intellectual independence and the desperate human need to belong. Still available for children's parties! Now doing bat mitzvahs!



ALSO:
  • A quick impeachment fart
  • You want an authoritarian
  • Political Vampires
  • Algorithms, Lippmann, Bernays, and You
  • Silver Spoons: A Hate Crime
  • The filthy Centrus Americanus
  • Friendship: Loyalty & Support vs. Honesty
  • Nothing can be done about climate change
  • Data Overload revisited 
* Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck.
* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com and www.christophermedia.net

Tuesday, January 21, 2020

1/21/20 - Mobsters (2013)




This isn't being presented as an elegantly polished piece of Pulitzer-worthy prose. (Gaudy alliteration intended for sarcastic effect!) Instead, this theme--intellectual conformity and our tendency toward tribalism and the groupmind--is part of a near-future podcast and an example of some old writing that has not only stood the test of time (2013), but enhanced itself over 7-years. What's changed: gaining a better understanding of the evolutionary and social psychology leading to it. And its exploitation.

Still wondering why my comments are off? This might help. The pickup LeBon!

Sunday, January 12, 2020

1/12/20: The Great Hack & The Great War of The 21st Century


After rotting in my queue for a couple of months, and one too many recommendations, I finally watched The Great Hack on Netflix. This feature-length documentary is worthwhile as a means to understand how our stolen data is not only being sold, but used to exploit the hole in our psychological firewall to manipulate and "trigger" what they call "persuadables" into a desired response or action. Or, non-action. It's essential if you're more than slightly interested in the subject. But...

Friday, September 27, 2019

9/27/19: Propaganda Blindspots & The Constituent Mob

Institutions fail and democracy descends into mob rule when representative are paralyzed and terrorized by fear of their voters. Trump, Ukraine, and 2020's year-long electoral reality show disguised as an idealistic impeachment. Informational sectarianism and how it's easy to see "their" propaganda. Yours? Never! Their demagogue is your savior. There may be a way for a detaching informational unicorn treat that. MSNBC, CNN, and FOX are Pepsi, Coke, and Dr. Pepper; when everything is spin and propaganda, who's a political infidel supposed to believe?



Also:
  • Alternate Informational Universes 
  • Half-assed media sophistication: not enough
  • Why can't we watch the opposition's media without going nuts?
  • Our dueling scandals aren't automatically mutually exclusive
  • More on the the Current Events Man 
  • Media isn't free. You are the product being sold. 
 
*Like it? Share it. You are the "marketing" team.

*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and and podcatcher that doesn't suck.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com
 

Thursday, September 26, 2019

9/26/19: The Internal Narrative Trojan Horse

"The fiction is taken as truth because the fiction is badly needed." A quick introduction to Walter Lippmann and the commonality between him, Ellul, Bernays, Haidt, and Harari. People can't personally perceive the world beyond their own sliver of firsthand experience. Therefore, the Current Events Man is beholden, dependent upon, and therefore exploited by the propagandist and his digital distortions. Tech and data overload confusion has made this exponentially worse. If democracy is demands an "enlightened citizenry", it's maybe doomed from the start. Paradoxically, there's a stab at some hope in here too. Weird.



ALSO:
  • Te Nosce, bitches 
  • Competing Scandals; Competing Networks; Competing Narratives 
  • Smoking, Facebook, and associative dopamine addiction.    
  • The Matrix and the Internet
  • The responsibility and danger of exposing "their" delusion
  • All Cats Meow
  • Why we believe the ridiculous
  • Finding hope in human imperfection
  • More on likability and art
  • The Hobgoblin  
  • Where the hell is Jill Stein? #NeverForget

*Like it? Share it. You are the "marketing" team.

*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and and podcatcher that doesn't suck.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

9/10/19: Iceberg Ahoy! Validation Junkies & The Chosen Ones

Social validation, dopamine, and social media's Walter White; the predictably ridiculous reaction to Dave Chappelle's latest Netflix special and how comedy has evolved from truth telling to Wokeflake proselytizing; more on how people are more willing and eager than deceived when it comes to swallowing fiction and disinformation; choking on data leading to confused gullibility; honesty in a crisis; Sausage Party Hope: children demanding their happy ending. Where's the spring of genuine hope?



ALSO:  
  • The Battle of the 21st Century
  • The iceberg bobbing off our bow
  • Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube: Walter White cutting his meth supply? 
  • Pinker's Utopian and Tragic Visions
  • Evolution and self-awareness
  • The apocalypse and its "chosen ones"
  • Progress's Myth and becoming organic

*Like the pod? SPREAD IT! You are the "marketing" team.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net

Thursday, August 29, 2019

8/29/19: Propaganda: Agitating The Inner Ape

Agitation and Integration: two often closely related but very different types of propagandas: one used to provoke internal conflict the other to shape members of a population into a mold. Agitation: The propaganda of insurgency and revolution. Includes how internal enemies are used as scapegoats to manufacture then exploit hatreds as means to an insurgent's end, Mao's view on "the enemy residing in every man" and fitting him into the "Socialist Mold", Hitler's internal agitation, spontaneous volunteer propagandists, and how facts and "truth" are irrelevant to the person burning with primal hatred.



ALSO: 
  • Agitation propaganda during the American Revolution 
  • Triggering revolution by provoking hate? It's easy!
  • Exploiting hatred and the path to genocide
  • Hatred: small investment, high return
  • Agitation and Integration can be used simultaneously
  • Utopia is totalitarian
  • Intellectuals: More susceptible to integration propaganda than dolts
  • Intellectuals and self-bigotry
  • "Can I hate you?"
  • Justification, rationalization and stampeding enraged elephants
  • Agitation to Integration: extremely difficult
  • Successful Agitation + Failed Integration = Mob Rule
  • Winter Is Here
  • Yep. It's a doozy. 
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747

*Like the pod? SPREAD IT! You are the "marketing" team.
*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

Thursday, August 22, 2019

8/22/19: Propaganda: Contradictions, Agitation Media, Typhoid Zuck

Propaganda's ambiguity and contradictions including: creating tensions while relieving others, an introduction to the companion propagandas: agitation and integration and how they overlap; self-justification and imposed guilt; attachment and ostracizing oneself to join the "enemy; politicization and privatization; "Why die for Danzig?' and how political orphans benefit extremists and authoritarians.



ALSO:
  • Andrew Sullivan on the boomerang
  • Post-Truth hatred and division: a bigger threat than climate change
  • Don't blame the bartender for getting you drunk
  • Twitter, Facebook, and Typhoid Mary
  • Atomic Ping Pong
  • Our personal broadcast stations
  • The Russia investigation saved the Democrats
  • Setting up your triage tent
  • Forget the mob; save yourself
  • Information or Propaganda? Can you tell? Does it even matter?
  • The Matrix & Propaganda
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747

*Like the pod? SPREAD IT! You are the "marketing" team.

*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net

Saturday, August 17, 2019

8/17/19: Propaganda: Dependent Drunks In Denial

On Ellul's "The Need For Propaganda." We've both developed a tolerance for and a psychological dependency on propaganda's certainty-stoking, justifying, and and self-worth generating narratives, social media is a propagandist's dream, desensitization and an increasing desire for the excitement felt from being immersed in the constant, and necessary stream of propaganda, how our addiction has allowed both traditional media and social media "influencers" to monetize the Outrage Industrial Complex, our role as retained ideological attorneys, and wishful thinking (and possibly disastrous effects) of suddenly eliminating 320-million people's propaganda narratives. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Grab a sammich for this one. And maybe a stiff drink. Hey! I never said this would be easy!



ALSO: 
  • This is a triage situation; not a search for the "cure"
  • Disinformation bit me again!
  • Why we won't quit the informational drug
  • A possible path to empathy
  • The culture war is a War of National Narratives
  • Chosen perspective becomes "personal truth"
  • Provoking shame as a "debate" tool: a boomerang
  • Social media "influencers": personal brands hocking a product while posing as "journalists"
  • The IDW: agitation propaganda
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747

*Like the pod? SPREAD IT! You are the "marketing" team.

*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

Thursday, August 15, 2019

8/15/19: Propaganda: Righteousness And Simplicity

The Propaganda opus resumes with Ellul's take on psychic "dissociation". Includes more on wordknapping, how righteous and simplistic propaganda narratives silence the self and numb natural cognitive dissonance, replacing reality with the electronic eyes of the "verbal universe", the effects of disconnecting a person's personal opinion in favor of an acceptable "public" opinion, and how opposing propagandas affect the target.



ALSO:
  • Democratic Socialists: as ridiculous during Occupy as at their "convention"
  • Aligned, Premeditated, and Secret Consciences: Individuality and Haidt's Elephant
  • Disconnecting thought & action  
  • Opposing propagandas: political abstention or fanaticism?
  • The IDW: Agitation Propaganda
  • Data Overload and the Defective Human Mind
  • Your congenial host and the Ideological Riptide
  • No one's immune. Not even you.
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747

*Like the pod? SPREAD IT! You are the marketing team.
*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net

Thursday, August 8, 2019

8/8/19: The Internet's Ethic: Informational Anarchy & Deadly Insignificance

After more shooting's, Chris & Rich rejoin the show to discuss our "news" (propaganda) consumption, and the predictably tribal response. We're malleable psychological adolescents and clearly unprepared for this informational responsibility. Also, the same recycled arguments with a few new propaganda twists, did you know the Dayton killer was a self-proclaimed Leftist? Is it coincidence that most "news" coverage is in El Paso? Remote rhetorical assaults and the historical usefulness of "physical accountability": smacking bullies in the snout.



ALSO: 
  • "Can I believe this" vs "Must I believe this"
  • Snorting pacifists: lambs to the wolves
  • Arya Stark: she was fiction. 
  • "Educated Intellectuals" aren't immune to propaganda; maybe more vulnerable  
*Like the pod? SPREAD IT! You are the marketing team.
*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

Tuesday, August 6, 2019

8/6/19: Propaganda: Autonomy Lost, Fake Tensions, Exiling Sectarians

How propaganda acts as an informational virus to destroy critical thought and alienate the person from himself. More on data overload, the uninformed Current Events Man knowing a little about everything and a lot about nothing, mistaking feelings for thought, having to accept or reject an entire doctrine in total, losing intellectual autonomy, and how artificial tensions are often accompanied by dubious solutions.



ALSO:
  • Artificial solutions to real needs
  • Real solutions to artificial needs
  • "Influencers", their product, and their Patreon
  • The Tribal Dance of Rhetorical Fuckery
  • We're a species of sleazy lawyers and pathological liars
  • Self-stereotyping caricatures
  • It's fine to generalize then exile sectarian fabricants
Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747


*Like the pod? SPREAD IT! You are the marketing team.
*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

Friday, August 2, 2019

8/2/19: Propaganda: Slogans, Rationalizations, The Religious Mind

The conclusion of Ellul's psychological crystallization segment featuring the makeup of its slogans & how they're used to replace thought, collective belief and obsessions, self-justification/rationalizations and how they spawn the self-righteous Puritan, the closing of the crystallized mind, propaganda's religious personality, and a bizarre 21st century media phenomenon: monetizing mind rape.




ALSO:

- Marianne Williamson: The New Trump?
- Introducing the father of American propaganda: Edward Bernays
- They know you better than you know yourself
- Propaganda's side-effects and how they mirror the '60's definition of "neurosis"

Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747


*Like the pod? SPREAD IT! You are the marketing team.
*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

Thursday, August 1, 2019

8/1/19: Propaganda: Inseminating Zealots & Vicarious Atonement

Begins with a takedown of "white privilege", self-flagellation vs. self-interest, and the asinine/futile demands of our Social Vengeance Warriors; beware the boomerang, Moonbeam. From there, I move on to Ellul's dissection of how propaganda hijacks the political cultist's mind. The first of two parts, this episode focusses on the distinction between doctrine and critical thought, unnaturally homogenous thought, codifying social, political, and moral standards, exploiting latent pre-existing prejudices, and the power of implanted stereotypes & symbols used as triggering mechanisms. The elephant is strong in this one!



Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747


*Like the pod? SPREAD IT!  F**k The Zuckerbeast & Twitter. You are my marketing team.

*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

7/30/19: Propaganda: Manufacturing Proselytes & Militants


Propaganda isn't what you may think. Ellul's ideas on pre-propaganda, propaganda's conditioned reflexes, myths, and "orthopraxy". Including the triggering of active and passive action (activists, influencers, collaborators), widespread participation by "committed" zealots, the separation between thought and action, exploiting the abyss between what we say and what we do, mobilizing men for action counter to their own values, and being unable to reverse ourselves once "action" has begun.



ALSO:
  • Exiling naked sectarians
  • Agitation and organization
  • How the Internet rejuvenates and revives conditioned reflexes
  • Technology indoctrinates us much faster than before
  • Presuppositions, stereotypes, and political education disguised as universities
  • Mind-hacking thru a broken firewall
  • Seizing your intellectual autonomy
  • Excommunication is painful. But Necessary.

Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747


*Like the pod? SPREAD IT!  F**k The Zuckerbeast & Twitter. You are my marketing team.

*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net