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Sky's avatar

thanks, lex...

i'm looking forward to reading the ideas you and the readers have for helping the "lost" to see reality.

i've had some success with people by pointing out just one-even small- glitch in their "matrix." just enough to make them see that something, however "minor" is a lie they hadn't noticed before. then i quickly return to safer topics before they get too defensive. then, i do it again... it's a really delicate balance. i try to avoid going into detailed explanations, because (like you said), you just can't explain the whole truth without getting into the stuff that the "lost" will just reject as crazy talk.

today, your post has found me in a discouraged mood. a couple days ago i was with an acquaintance and one of her friends - both "covidians." i said absolutely nothing, because i knew that they just wouldn't listen. they'd have been angry with me, and nothing good would have come from it.

i'd like some feedback from you and others on what they were talking about. first, a lady we all knew died suddenly on tuesday- dropped dead. i silently suspected it was from a covid shot. the two women i was with attributed it to just a freak event. then, in keeping with the topic of medical tragedies, they talked about another woman they know who, about a year ago, ended up in the hospital with covid. she had refused to get the shot, and refused to go on the ventilator, and this was accompanied by a lot of sad shaking of the heads - "oh dear, what a shame, the strange choices people make..." well, the woman did recover from "covid" but, strangely, her hair started falling out and it's only starting to grow back. the hair loss was, of course, attributed to "covid." but i doubt that- i'm wondering if the woman was given remdesivir in the hospital when she refused the ventilator. is that possible? any ideas? has anyone heard of this?

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Lex Weiser's avatar

I can relate to feeling discouraged. The conversation with my friends was good, in that it felt good to tell them the truth as I see it, but I could tell that it just wasn't registering with them. Your tactic of applying gentle pressure here and there is undoubtedly a better one.

As for the hair loss, certainly anything is possible, but any illness that causes a prolonged high fever can damage hair. An (unvaxxed) woman in my family experienced pretty significant hair loss starting a few weeks after recovering from several days of high covid fever, and the nurse she spoke to said she'd had the same problem.

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Sheila Preston-Ford's avatar

My grandma, who lived through the Spanish Flu said that it was very common for those that got sick to lose their hair. Maybe that's what sparked the flapper hairstyle.

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Sky's avatar

that's fascinating!! my grandmother was a kid during that time too- her younger brother died of that flu (an ear infection from it). i don't recall her ever talking about the hair loss, but the subject probably just never came up. your idea that it was an influence on style is very interesting- makes for some deep thought about social style trends and underlying physical conditions.

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Sky's avatar

thanks, lex ! high fever can do some damage i guess. i'd never heard of that, but it makes sense. the way they were talking, they made it sound like it was something peculiar to covid.

i'm glad i asked - you answered that question for me.

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Jon Grah's avatar

For you, this part of the clip may help you relate to the world: https://youtu.be/6i_msSDvzbg?t=520

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Sky's avatar

thanks! if only showing others was as easy as putting on sunglasses, and if only the evil was obvious space aliens...

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Jon Grah's avatar

It was all allegorical, as explained in the video. Look at how difficult putting on the sunglasses were!!

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Lex Weiser's avatar

Yes! I love that.

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Oct 30, 2022
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Sky's avatar

it's like a religion, but with no spirituality at all.

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Lex Weiser's avatar

It turns my stomach. Modern-day blasphemy.

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Sky's avatar

thanks for posting that. i hadn't seen proof of it before but, sadly, it doesn't surprise me. institutional religion is corrupted, and the true path lies in finding our own way. same as it ever was, but these days it's more imperative than ever.

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Grape Soda's avatar

Perhaps safety is their god

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Sky's avatar

it's certainly what they're obsessed with, but their "safety" god is a treacherous deceitful god. true spiritual faith imparts strength and courage, not helplessness and fear.

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Lex Weiser's avatar

There's a reason false gods have a bad reputation. For me, one of the most upsetting things about the covid era was seeing houses of worship - of all faiths - being turned into temples of fear, in which observance of covid rituals utterly supplanted any spiritual observance.

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Sky's avatar

how very true.. "temples of fear" indeed.

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Boris's avatar

It’s just too overwhelming for them , they just recently have started to suspect something wrong with vaccines and the way our government reacted , and here you come with Great Reset 😎

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Grape Soda's avatar

I think that’s true. Covid upset the default trust they had in public institutions. And then they find out it’s even worse than that ...

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Lex Weiser's avatar

It's tough, because people don't want to believe that it's really that bad.

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Owl-Eyed Apprentice's avatar

great post! critical to be thinking about this topic.

in regards to finding one's nature, I just read an excellent post that approaches this quite well:

https://dendroica.substack.com/p/stories-of-being

the lens he describes here also happens to be a terrific smackdown of critical race theory on principle alone, which i think is how these psychological machinations such as CRT need to be addressed.

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Lex Weiser's avatar

I have not seen anything by this writer before. Thank you for sharing it! That is a really nice piece. He seems to be approaching the same topic from a different angle, which I love.

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Pat Wetzel's avatar

Thank you. Interesting read.

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Loyal Opposition on YouTube's avatar

With art.. Especially movies and stand-up comedy (see: MORT SAHL).

"They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" is on YouTube for free.

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Jon Grah's avatar

What's even worse than Cypher of the Matrix is Holly of the movie "They Live". She was a dis-info agent. Someone who looks like you and pretends to relate to your struggle, but actively underminds it at strategic points. Here, starting at a relevant point: https://youtu.be/6i_msSDvzbg?t=724 But i recommend you start from beginning. This was the precursor movie to the Matrix; nearly 100% documentary of the current beast system.

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Lex Weiser's avatar

Oh, I love They Live. One of my all-time favorites. I wrote a thing about it a while ago.

https://dystopianliving.substack.com/p/john-carpenters-they-live-asks-important

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Oct 30, 2022
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Lex Weiser's avatar

That's an awesome story. In terms of tactics of persuasion, it's an example of social validation, liking, and authority.

If there were an easy way to awaken people, I think we'd know about it by now. Steve Kirsch has been asking his readers how they've successfully "red-pilled" other people, and there's no consensus. It's a lot of stories like yours, where it was just the right comment, by the right person, at the right time.

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Grape Soda's avatar

It is difficult to admit to being wrong. IMO that drives some cog dis, along with the fact that taking on new ideas requires getting rid of familiar mental architecture. It’s like we already have the picture filled in, so in order to change it needs painting over. Change is difficult and requires losing familiar concepts and beliefs.

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Lex Weiser's avatar

I agree completely. I think it was Mark Twain who observed that it's much easier to fool someone than to convince someone that they've been fooled.

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Oct 30, 2022
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Lex Weiser's avatar

Thanks, Kevin, that's a great idea. The Allegory of the Cave is a perfect representation of life mediated by screens. Instead of flickering firelight on a cave wall, we have flickering images on flat boxes, just as devoid of meaning and experience.

I do love referring to The Matrix, since it's a modern myth that most people are familiar with. I'm sure there are people, like Cypher, who wish they had never realized what was happening, but I think the vast majority are just the Lost, still plugged into the Matrix and unaware that they are surrounded by lies and fantasy.

Thanks for reading!

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Owl-Eyed Apprentice's avatar

I kind of worry there are far more Cyphers out there than we might hope, and much like Cypher in the movie, are likely to run sabotage over genuine efforts to unplug.

And to that end, I see it as a bit of a race between development of a seductive VR/AG life against the degrading quality of our actual reality, and there's a scary risk of many of the Lost planting themselves into that VR space very intentionally. It's not within our control for change and it's really not worth spending energy worrying about, but maybe important to keep in mind.

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Lex Weiser's avatar

That is a great point. The masses seem to have rejected Zuckerberg's "Meta" (probably because it quickly became a walled garden in which predators could interact with children), but the "Ready Player One" fantasy of an online playground that is infinitely more enjoyable than real life is definitely a threat. If I had to guess, I'd say VR pornography is probably going to be the gateway.

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JohnSmith's avatar

Aldous Huxley predicted the VR feelies in "Brave New World" nearly a century ago:

"Suddenly, dazzling and incomparably more solid-looking than they would have seemed in actual flesh and blood, far more real than reality, there stood the stereoscopic images, locked in one another's arms... Aa-aah! Ooh-ah! The stereoscopic lips came together again, and once more the facial erogenous zones of the six thousand spectators in the Alhambra tingled with almost intolerable galvanic pleasure..."

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Lex Weiser's avatar

Oh yes. Have you ever read Neil Postman's book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death"? He argues persuasively that "Brave New World" is a much better forecast for modern dystopia than Orwell's "1984." I agreed with him when I read the book 15 years ago, and all the more so now.

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Jon Grah's avatar

There will always be traitors, cut-throats, and sell-outs. I think an article discussing this along with the Morpheus' use of 6 persuasive techniques in the movie would be of use.

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