The Overworld
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I hope you are doing well. :)
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Stoic Breath w/ Steve Beattie.Every Sunday @ 10:00 AM ET. RSVP here.
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May 23, 2020
The most dangerous man on the internet, Pat Ryan, did another talk at the Stoa last night during his Dark Stoa series. He discussed Blackmail Inflation. The basic argument is that the social control mechanism for the sociopathic elite is blackmail. Think Jeffrey Epstein. If you do not know about the Epstein situation beyond the meme or the neutered mainstream reporting, check out Whitney Webb's reporting.
These sociopaths cannot trust each other, of course, so the idea is they create a system of trust through distrust. I like Peter Dale Scott’s term of the overworld. Just like the criminal underworld, there is a criminal overworld, filled with the mega rich and powerful. The underworld has mechanisms—blood in, blood out type rites of passages—in order to maintain member loyalty to their criminal enterprises.
What type of blood is needed in order to join the overworld? The argument is that blackmail has something to do with it. The more socially taboo the blackmail the more sticky it will be. If you decide to explore this topic, things can get pretty dark, and evil. Pat included in his talk that with the advent of deepfakes, and the possible upcoming deepfake war, the currency of existing blackmail will experience inflation, removing its utility. This will free the sociopaths to pursue power without constraint.
Now, do I believe in this? Well, I can separate what I believe to be true with what I think to be true, and my safe answer would be one that gestures towards agnosticism. My credence level is above 50% given the coherence of the argument, and existing cases like Epstein, or darker, Dutroux, and more.
The challenge of discussing this publically is memetic blowback. There are certain “conspiratorial” memetic tribes in the noosphere right now, and like what David Fuller and I talked about during our recent Rebel Wisdom conversation, it is next to impossible to discuss this stuff publically with nuance. There is a religious fervor to some of these tribes, with lots and lots of noise. From the mainstream media, there is topical demonization, with a policy of zero-tolerance on discussing this. It is a topic that is way too hot to touch.
If it is true though, or there is a chance of it being true, then awareness is required if one insists on philosophy as a way of life. You need to attempt to have an accurate model of reality in order to successfully navigate reality. I am tempted not to release the talk. There is a chance this video could go viral in certain spaces, and I am concerned this will bring negative attention to the Stoa from multiple directions.
There are beautiful and loving people who are gravitating to the Stoa, and this steward has a responsibility to ensure that this beauty and love continues to flourish. I have a contingency plan in case negative attention comes the Stoa’s way, from this talk or future ones. A good Stoic does his negative visualizations.
Regardless if such a blackmail operation is true or not, I do think pathocracy is a thing. This is the term to describe the state where individuals with personality disorders, such as psychopathy, gain power. As much as I want these people out of the picture, and as quick as possible, they are not going to leave willingly.
We cannot be naive to the reality or potentiality of darkness and evil in this world, but we also have to be prudent in how we look at the darkness, and respond to evil. I do not have any easy answers, because no easy answers exist.
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