Being clear-eyed and full-hearted doesn’t mean being passive, weak, or silent.
It means resisting every effort to supplant our autonomy of mind with symbols of identity, no matter the source.
Extreme language during election season isn’t anything new.
But this time it really is different. Our response must be different, too.
The question is not whether Trump will accept the election result if he loses. He won’t.
The question is whether a Missionary with actual power will join him.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m thoroughly despondent about the calcification, mendacity, and venal corruption that I think four years of Clinton™ will impose. Trump, on the other hand … I think he breaks us. Maybe he already has. He breaks us because he transforms every game we play as a country — from our domestic social games to our international security games — from a Coordination Game to a Competition Game.
The outcomes of NFL games are inordinately influenced by officials relative to other sports. This is not new. The Narrative environment faced by the NFL in 2021, however, IS new.
I’m not sure they’re ready for it.
When a famous person shakes his or her finger at you, they’re not telling you a fact.
They’re telling you how to think about a fact.
Called It - Election Edition
Men of God in the City of Man is a nine part series about a narrative virus that infected the charismatic and Pentecostal churches in the United States. It isn't a story about Christian Nationalism. It isn't a story about January 6th. It isn't a story about why people voted for Trump. It is a story about a story. It is a story about the language that created a self-sustaining movement defined by its unwavering belief in a fundamentally corrupt electoral system.
Recent Notes
Monetary Policy is Non-Linear
The relationship between interest rates and inflation is non-linear and non-monotonic, and in exactly the same way that the Fed was unable to spur inflation by cutting rates to exceptionally low levels, so will they be unable to contain inflation by hiking rates off these exceptionally low levels.
The Fed first has to get interest rates to this monotonic tipping point before further interest rate hikes will have any appreciable effect in the real economy.
The Widening Gyre
The widening gyre is political polarization, presided over by the Beast of Big Politics, Big Tech and Big Media.
Why can’t we see the Beast? Because common knowledge.
Because everyone knows that everyone knows that the enemy of America is not the Beast of the widening gyre, but the Other Party.
Sauron Remains Undefeated
The US Treasury is the Eye of Sauron — a gigantic panopticon tower that sweeps the world with its unblinking gaze, seeking out the owners of power, i.e. money.
What Treasury did to Tornado Cash and its developers is just the beginning.
Narrative and Metaverse, Pt. 4 – Carrying the Fire
This is how we resist the Long Now, how we find an alternative world to the endless present where the Party is always right. By connecting the human past to the human present to the human future. By carrying the fire of our own stories in our own words across the weave of time and space. By building an ark and an arc.
This is my faith.
The Fifteen Faces of Fiat News
We’re building a Narrative Early Warning System (NEWS) as our first major research project in a larger effort to inoculate ourselves against the weaponized narratives of Big Tech, Big Media and Big Politics.
Mailbag! Hollow Men Edition
The Epsilon Theory commentariat is the best thing on the Internet today. Watch from a distance if you like, but when you’re ready … join us!
Hollow Men, Hollow Markets, Hollow World
Over the past 25 years, our leaders have intentionally constructed an Apocalypse Now world of proclamation and fiat, where our wealth has grown much faster than our economy.
The bill is due for their hubris, and inflation is here to collect it.
Being Human in a LARPing World
The cure for the cancer of gun culture and police culture is not to be found in reform laws around guns and police, but in reform ideas around culture, ideas that create a new dimension of American society that rejects LARPing and LARPers alike.
The MacGuffin, Part 1: The Corrupt Crypto ‘Revolution’
If you don’t see that the crypto “industry” has become just as blindingly corrupt, just as oozingly fatuous, just as profoundly captured by the Nudging Oligarchy as the traditional financial services industry it was supposed to replace … well, you’re just not paying attention.
NGMI
The Fed’s rate hikes to curb inflation?
Not gonna make it.
Narrative and Metaverse, Pt. 3: The Luther Protocol
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” – MLK
Does it? Does it really?
Today we take a stand to defend the arc of the moral universe in its long path towards liberty and justice for all. Today we begin the Luther Protocol.
They’re Not Sending Their Best
The Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act is an abomination. It won’t lower gas prices, it will raise them. And the sponsors of the bill know it.
This bill was not written to become a good law. It was written to tell a good story.
Tough Guys
Using NATO to escalate a shooting war with Russia – either directly through a no-fly zone or indirectly through a Polish cut-out and NATO “backfill” – is exactly what Putin wants. It’s the only thing that can save him. It’s how we ALL lose.
ChaChaCha!
Tired: Pump and Dump
Wired: ChaChaCha!
Narrative and Metaverse, Pt. 2: Gain of Function
Big Tech, Big Media and Big Politics are engaged in a widespread program of gain-of-function research on the linguistic entities of the metaverse.
It’s more dangerous than any virus.
Getting to War
The international “negotiations” over Ukraine are 100% designed for domestic Russian consumption. They are as necessary a part of successfully invading Ukraine as mobilizing troops and tanks.
Narrative and Metaverse, Pt. 1: The Living Word
The past, present and future of human freedom is not determined in the macroverse but in the metaverse, and it is here where we must make our stand. First we will write the words to see the metaverse. Then we will write the songs to change it.
Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Can’t lose.
An Inconvenient Truce Revisited
Polarization often isn’t an accident. It is the result of intentional narrative construction – constructions designed to make us believe that we are sane and unfairly judged, and that our opponents are insane and hypocritical.
Understanding how to recognize and respond to these constructions in the wild is now an indispensable skill of the citizen.
An Inconvenient Truce
Polarization often isn’t an accident. It is the result of intentional narrative construction – constructions designed to make us believe that we are sane and unfairly judged, and that our opponents are insane and hypocritical.
Understanding how to recognize and respond to these constructions in the wild is now an indispensable skill of the citizen.
RIP, Expertise
This is an unedited thread from the ET Forum that I’ve republished in close to its entirety and put outside the paywall. It’s just one example of why the ET Forum is the best thing on the Internet today … thousands of posts across hundreds of threads, written by truth-seekers from all over the world and all walks of life, speaking to each other with respect and curiosity. If this is your Pack, join us!