Episode 10 : Unravelling the Twin Serpents

I’m trying to imagine the moment, five thousand years ago, in the land of the Tlingit Tribe, when a seven year old boy and his father are fishing on the river and the boy sees a Raven. 

Since his birth he’s heard stories of the Raven, the trickster, the thief of light, the creator of man and earth, a creature of both myth and great cunning. Yet here he is, the great creator, sitting on a branch sqwaking away waiting for potential fish guts left by the father and his boy.

Is there moment where he turns to his father and says, “Dad… c’mon. You’re telling me that little five pound bird stole the sun and carried it into the sky for all of us. How did it convince the great king to open his treasure chest when it can’t even speak?”

It’s kind of like that moment when your kid asks you if Santa’s real.

What I’m trying to imagine though, is if that kind of question ever even entered the mind of the boy… or any human back then. My feeling is no. But at some point, humans birthed a desire to unravel the ancient myths into some rational problem that could be solved. At some point the deep and felt understanding, beyond all words, of what “Raven” represented and why he was chosen to be the creator being of the tribes myths, was not enough.

What did ancient humans understand that we don’t, if anything? What was like like before rationalism, before science, before explanation, before narrative warfare?

I’m pretty certain the “proof” we’re looking for to validate these massive social ideologies we’ve created   is about as real as the “holy grail;” its a myth that drives us to unravel the nature of our being, but completely unattainable.

Today we’re going to look at the nature of information, and the human filter that loves to categorize, synthesize, explain and eventually develop an opinion… and herald it as fact. Science has done a wonder for transportation, energy, communication and entertainment, but when it comes to developing social, political and spiritual viewpoints, it’s only hindered the process. We clearly can’t use the scientific method to determine how humans are supposed to behave… and yet we are desparately trying to create a binary moral and societal language that results in function, but only leads to chaos. 

Now more than ever, the world hardly makes sense. Even if you have a undebatable world view, such as a mono-theistic religion, and your point of view makes perfect sense to you, the rest of the world certainly doesn’t make sense.

For the Church of Infinite Harmony, which seeks the harmonization of all world views with the end result being peace and understanding, as well as the preservation of our biological home we call Gaia, all this war seems senseless. I don’t… understand it.

Simutaneously, I can’t make sense of politics, science, or philosophy because it is filled with paradox and contradiction. In all honesty, sometimes I think trying to “prove” anything is a complete waste of time, and yet we cannot exist together on a planet and all just do whatever we want. We have to find “consensus reality,” on some basic level or we will likely destroy ourselves.

So today we’re going to dive into sense-making, truth seeking, narrative warfare and the nature of information in effort to understand the social environment that is taking over global politics and governing our lives and hopefully by the end, realize how “truth” is not always necessary for understanding, and the fact that for thousands of years, society operated under the confines of myth, and not science. More importantly, that there is something we much touch upon as a species that is far greater than our own individual truths, that’s beyond the mind’s endless spinning of narrative.

We all desire peace and we also desire effective societies, and clearly our current narrative warfares are not promoting either. So what is missing? How do we make sense of the world?

Thankfully our favorite polymath Daniel Schmactenberger has already done a five part video series easily accessed on the interwebs called “The War on Sensemaking” and if you want the full eight plus hour experience, you can watch them. I highly recommend it.

In the meantime I’m going to provide some talking points from the first two videos to give us a starting point to making sense of the world, understanding the incentives of narrative warfare, and contemplating the nature of our minds and just how wild all this talk of ideas truly is. But first let’s do a little self assessment. 

To think our thoughts are our own, that our ideas belong to us, is a fallacy.   In the same way that to think of ourselves as individuals is a fallacy. In an animated world where the spirit of life dwells in all things, our thoughts are not exempt.

We’ve been talking on this podcast about just how dependent our individual biological machines are on the ecosystem that is Gaia. We’ve talked about our social dependence on each other. How we can’t exist without all of this. 

Without the air you breathe.

The water that falls from the sky.

The plants beneath your feat.

You can’t exist the way you do without the garbage persons or gas attendants or bankers. Our modern lives are incredibly reliant on others. Our biological apparatuses are deeply reliant on a host of other biological processes and beings. We are all interconnected.

So what about our thoughts?

Well. Ask yourself. 

Where did your language come from? 

Where did your knowledge come from? Your world views? Your opinions. How much of what we actually think originates from our own minds, as opposed to being a synthesis of other information and ideas we’ve already heard.

I can tell you with certainty, this podcast is hardly original. 95% percent of it is likely an idea that has been already shaped in the world, has found its way into my information ecology, adapted itself and synthesized itself into my worldview. Some of it looks like my own ideas, but in reality its all been said before. I’m not talking palgiarism. I’m saying any of this happens on the conscious level. I’m saying that my brain is not this raw idea generating machine upon which thoughs are generated out of the ethers. I’m saying that my brain, every brain that uses syntax and symbolism, draws reference from every bit of information flowing in and synthesizes it. Again and again and again. It’s all been thought before. 

As have most of your thoughts.

To think our thoughts are our own, that our ideas belong to us, is a fallacy.

Turns out, thinking is hard, and complex, and most of the time our brains are taking the most efficient road to the formation of self and ideas, which means filtering out anything that doesn’t already corrobrate our worldview and assimilating anything that validates the way we already think. It’s called the Confirmation Bias, and we do it all the time.

It blows my mind is how quickly humans hear an idea and assume its true. Or worse, make it part of their world view without every questioning its validity, because someone they trust, whom they’ve never met, never shared a word or a glance with, says its true.

What really blows my mind, is how rediciulous that sounds when you really think about it. Some guy on a podcast or social media feed that you’ve never met or even heard of, but subscribes to your way of thinking, puts a new “fact” into the world and without question, you assume its true.

You are one biased motherf**ker.

We all are.

And it has to stop. 

Now.

We’ve been doing this for too long

Athenians and the Spartans

The Prodestants and the Catholics

The Sunnis and the Shities

Confucius and Laozi

Cain and Abel

It’s time to unbind the twin serpents. To face the duality holds us in its grip and acknowledge our entanglement in the constant war of idealogies that grips us. It is time to find our equilibrium, to release being right, to find every possible way of cooperation. It is time to remember human dignity.

Today on the Infinite Harmony Podcast.

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Sense-making is an absolutely essential skill for our survival. Making sense of our environment, identifying deadly predator tracks, poisonous plants, a good neighborhood from a dangerous one, making sense of someone’s emotions to understand whether or not they’re about to snap and go postal, our sensory system is wired to make our survival paramount. 

So step one is to realize that your sense-making faculties are tied to your survival instinct. Yes. When you are watching Fox News or CNN, your brain is scanning that information and looking for threats, even though your body is and likely won’t be in any immediate threat for most of your day.

Unless you live in Palastine of course, or the Amazon Jungle, or Ukraine, or the Garfield Park on the West Side of Chicago.

In fact, our bodies are designed to solve problems, says Chis Kolden, a friend and Chicago native somatic therapist. 

(Audio here)

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When most of our information is taken in through digital information, through written language and filtered by other humans, which almost all of our information is now, we are developing entirely new neural pathways and epigenetics. In the 300,000 year plus history of homosapiens, we’ve only had to contend with this much written information in the last 200 years at most, or less than .001% of our existence. 

This kind of information, specifically the second hand cultural information of today, is turning out to be rather difficult to make sense of. We are contending with the fact that much of the information we receive is not just biased, but often engineered to advance specific agendas. 

Yes. 

Most of what we see or hear today has a human designed outcome embedded into it. An advertisement is the most basic form we are familiar with. You see the advertisement, you buy the product. That’s the desired outcome for those who designed and carried the signal of this information to you, the consumer. 

For those of you in the US who just had to endure the 2024 election. Political candidates of the Democrin and Republicrat parties spent 11 Billion dollars to convince you to vote for them.

That they alone would save America from the other.

That their party would end the threat to Democracy.

Good guys and bad guys… if you want to know how we relate to that, revisit episode three.

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If we think of information like an ecosystem, with each piece of information acting like an individual organism and the internet being it’s physical environment, than its safe to say that the very fabric of our information ecology is as poisoned as our biological ecosystem. It’s riddled with distortions from media sources that prioritize influence and monetization over truth. This isn’t confined to the news, either. It extends into science, academia, and nearly every other domain where knowledge is generated or shared. This crisis in sense-making, one might say, is at the heart of our collective confusion and, by extension, our inability to navigate our lives and societies effectively. You could say, that our sense-making systems have been comprimised. And nothing is more convenient for authority than having a population that doesn’t know what’s true, so it has to trust the authority.

We’ve talked at length about sensory gating, and the actual blocking of sensory information in our environment so that we can navigate a highly stimulating world with millions of little bytes of information coming from our environment. How, in a cafe, for instance, in effort to concentrate, we have to gate out a few dozen conversations, the espresso machine, the background music, the crying baby, barking dog, all because the information is not necessary. You could say that most of what I just listed is effectively “noise” to our perception systems, information that is not useful. We do the same with narrative, the stories we are told about our world, which now mostly come from digital sources. We block out the noise, and we search for signal, or, infomation that we deem important. And we miss a great deal of information. But when Narratives all around us are at war, as they are today, it becomes remarkably difficult to discern ratio of signal to noise. 

As you well know, we are caught in the crossfire of narrative warfare almost every day. News outlets, social media, and corporations are not simply offering data; they are crafting narratives that serve their interests rather than ours. Every article, advertisement, and broadcast comes with an implicit goal: to capture attention, to influence beliefs, and ultimately, to shape behavior. These motives are rarely aligned with a quest for signal, also sometime referred to as “Truth” with a capital T. They are part of a sprawling informational battlefield where countless competing agendas—be they commercial, political, or ideological—vie for dominance. This is why the media, even when it provides facts, often leaves out context or offers a slanted perspective.

Look a little closer at scientific journals and academia, and you will also find unspoken agendas, often unconscious to the researcher at the time of publication. To trust science without question is to ignore the countless ways in which it can be skewed by funding, institutional bias, and the very structure of the scientific method itself. Just google “how often are peer reviewed studies proven false after publication” and you will find research papers by the national institute of health and the American medical association citing false positives, bias, underpowered studies, and funding sources as noise in the data which eventually leads to a proof of falsehood in as much as fifty percent of scientific studies five years or older. 

Fifty Percent. 

And this is science we’re talking about.

So first and foremost, our environment is overloaded with information, much of it filled with mostly noise. Second, even when information is truthful, it is often incomplete or manipulated.

The mechanisms that create these issues are deeply entrenched in our social system and driven largely by capitalism’s emphasis on profit maximization. In the marketplace of ideas, much like in the marketplace of goods, the aim is not always to provide the best product (or the most accurate information) but to secure the most influence and the highest return on investment. This dynamic naturally leads to distortions. For instance, pharmaceutical companies invest billions in research aimed at patentable synthetic drugs, often sidelining studies on natural remedies that cannot be patented or monetized as easily. This creates a skewed picture of medical truth, one where the information we receive reflects not what is true but what is profitable, and the world of natropathic medicine is left to the hippies.

It’s that feeling of, well, if it were true, everyone would know about it.

For those of us attempting to make sense of the world authentically, this is incredibly challenging. Any attempt at simplifying information with short soundbites or summarizing content only exacerbates the problem. If making sense of the world requires a deep and nuanced understanding, then any approach that sacrifices complexity for accessibility is likely to miss critical information. Moreover, the move towards brevity and oversimplification is often a tactic to manipulate rather than to inform. It is a form of intellectual fast food, providing immediate satisfaction but little in the way of nutritional value.

Not to mention it does nothing to help our IQ. In fact, the speed at which we are given information, solely intent on capturing our attention, is actually diminishing our ability to synthesize information and have original thoughts.

And it might have something to do with ADHD.

I mean, tik-tok, instagram, any app you can doom scroll.

These tiny bites of information that require no cognitive power to consume…

Yeah. Not good for our brains.

TRUE sense-making, requires a commitment to intellectual rigor and an acceptance that understanding is often messy ,non-linear and requires prolonged attention. Just as a body grows stronger through physical stress and training, so too does the mind grow stronger through intellectual challenge. In seeking to understand, we must actively cultivate our ability to process and integrate complex information. This is not a task that can be outsourced. While we may seek insights from experts, we must recognize that their perspectives are shaped by their own biases, limitations, and the incentives that drive them. In a sense, we are all responsible for our own cognitive conditioning, for exercising our faculties of attention, reflection, and discernment in a way that strengthens our ability to navigate a world of uncertainty.

For the average citizen, this poses a substantial problem. 

Our lives are surrounded by EXTREMELY complex systems… and I’m not just talking about information systems, I’m talking about your car, and the roads you drive on, your electronics at home… Go ahead, try and build your own refrigerator. I dare you.

But really. Take something as mundane as stop lights.

Have you ever thought about how a city coordinates stop-lights? I mean, I’m sure you have when you get a green light only to find a red light five hundred feet in front of that and enough traffic that your light turns red again before anyone even moves. You know, that whole thing? I’m sure like me in those moment’s you’re like, “what moron designed this?”

Now, of course if you or I were the moron that designed that, we might have found ourselves in the same boat. Civic engineering is complex. Like, really complex. Sewers, electricity, traffic flows, street lights…

My point is, we need experts and specialists, and even THEY are going to make mistakes, but we at least need to trust that they have our best interests at heart and that they’re smart enough to consider all the other influential systems that inform their specialist understanding. We need to continually reference collective sense-making and collective intelligence. No single mind can encompass the full complexity of our world’s challenges. This collective intelligence is something you’ve no doubt heard referenced before. By engaging in conversations with others who are also committed to deep sense-making, we can collectively avoid being stuck in our individual limitations. Yet, even here, trust remains an issue. It is not enough to find others who are knowledgeable; we must seek those who are committed to integrity, who recognize the biases that distort their own thinking, who are willing to question their assumptions, and most importantly, are disinterested in their own benefit and most interested in the well being of everyone. These are the people with whom we can build relationships that foster true understanding, rather than reinforcing the distortions that plague our information ecology.

And of course, we have to be one of those people.

We have to be smart enough to notice our own biases and instinct for not only self preservation, but our own economic and social self advancement. 

To heal this information ecology, we need to address the underlying structures that incentivize distortion and self interest. This means imagining systems beyond our current capitalist framework—systems that do not treat information as a commodity but as a common good.

Heh… stop me if you’ve heard this one before…

Eliminating indvidual gain for a greater common good?

Sure buddy.

In this environment, the information ecology, we have to take a crack at eliminating the rivalrous dynamics that drive people and institutions to lie, omit, or obscure; i.e.: moloch and the multipolar trap, which would require nothing less than a reconfiguration of our societal values, placing discernment and understanding at the forefront of our collective priorities.

(Laugh Track or something similar).

It’s kind of hard to imagine it at this point. Mostly because we are so remarkably polarized that “truth” with a Capital “T” is about as elusive as free energy or flying cars. (Goddamnit we were supposed to have flying cars by now).

In the absence of a perfect information ecology, what we can do is cultivate our own resilience against distortion. We must become Noise Evading Kung Fu Masters.

 This is about more than just fake news; it is about developing a a sensitized feeling for the forces that shape the information we receive and training ourselves to see beyond them. 

We have to ask ourselves why institutions, political parties and corporations want us to believe what they are telling us.

What do they get out of it?

Because they’re getting something out of it.

We have to each become cartographers of the mind, drawing maps that represent reality as accurately as possible while remaining aware of the limitations and biases inherent in all maps, especially the ones drawn for us.

We have to learn to notice bias, to notice perverse incentive, to notice manipulation in its raw form. And of course, we have to begin with ourselves.

You know, we have to notice our tendency to omit facts to strengthen an arguement, or outright lie, or repeat something we heard as fact, when in truth we have no idea if it is valid or not.

Do you actually know if the Earth is round? Have you circumvented it in an airplane you control? Have you seen it from space? Do you understand the mathmatical principles that Eratosthenes understood to calculate it’s circumference in the 300 BC? Or the Astronomical calculations of Al-Biruni used in the middle ages?

I don’t. I do, in this case, trust the collective sense-making of a few thousand years of humanity, but could I prove it in real time to a flat-earther? No. Could a competent mathmatician or Astronomer? Probably.

I have to know the limitations of my sense making systems.

This effort requires that we develop both logic and our intuitive capacities. It demands that we challenge our own beliefs and to examine our own biases. This is a task of personal growth, and it is argulably one of the most important tasks of our time. Our decisions carry ever greater consequences and the ability to see clearly and think deeply is not just a personal asset—it is a societal necessity. After all, we have nuclear bombs now.

Let’s think clearly, shall we?

The quest for truth in a broken information ecology is not going to come from some objective source via a pure signal. It’s going to come from our capacity to filter noise and map correlations and consistency. It arises from cultivating a capacity for, but not reliance on, intellectual sovereignty; a state where we can navigate the world with a clear understanding of its complexities and an awareness of our own limitations.

As a culture, we must foster relationships where informational transparency is valued above all else, and where individuals can dismantle the usual barriers of withholding or distorting information. It’s not only avoiding lies; but being willing to be deeply vulnerable, an intimacy with truth that demands not only personal honesty but a willingness to be transparent about one’s own biases, uncertainties, and limited knowledge.

So how do we establish truthfulness or what Stephen Jenkinson affectionately calls the process of “truing?” On truth and the way our ancestors went through the process of truing, Jenkison says this:

“The truth of a thing is , and not a cause. It fans out from lives lived in existential and syntactical proximity to each other. The truth of a thing is the child of a way of life that bears the village mind in mind. Truth is a medium by which village-mindedness dreams, dares, declares, affirms what has granted it its life. It is village-mindedness murmuring to itself, which its members overhear. These pre-conquest peoples knew qualities of reliability, honour-boundness, honesty, the endurance and the power of the oath, qualities that were established over time by the consistent behavior of those trusted and entrusted. Being made by vows, truth was a quality that—something like beauty—required the passing of time for it to be achieved and recognized, to take its place in the life of their communities. By this understanding you could say that they had no truth. They did, however, have the means of truing. True was not a particular quality of anything or anyone. It was a way of going about being alive. We have very few manuscripts by which to understand how they might have understood these things, how they understood themselves. They perhaps had not much literature. They may have not had the sense of authority that unerringly comes from what is written. They may not have needed it, likely having a substantial oral tradition instead, being practitioners of the oath, minders of truing, relying upon what is said.”

In this practice, think of honesty as a way to detoxify our shared information ecology. Just as one refrains from littering to protect the natural environment, so too should we refrain from contributing to the pollution of the information ecology. Little lies, rationalizations, and half-truths, no matter how seemingly innocuous, collectively contribute to the miasma of misinformation that clouds our collective sense-making. Every small deception, every untruth, contributes to a world where discerning reality becomes increasingly difficult. By becoming aware of how even small distortions add to this problem, we can start to take personal responsibility for the integrity of the information we share.

 But if we don’t know we’re lying, if we think we’re telling the truth, well, then what? 

Philosopher Jean Baudrillard famously wrote an essay called "the Gulf War did not take place," arguing that the war was primarily a media spectacle and not a real conflict as viewers experienced it through heavily manipulated television images, essentially creating a "hyperreality" that obscured the true nature of the war and the suffering it caused. Most Americans experienced a simulated reality of the war through the media, just like we are now.

This brings us to the heart of the matter: epistemology, or the study of how we know what we know.

This is a word we’ve discussed before. If we are to commit to truing, it’s not enough to simply avoid lying or to share everything we know. We must also ensure that what we believe to be true actually corresponds to reality. If we can’t trust our sense-making to experts, then we must be willing to examine the original data ourselves, which is no small feat. True knowledge demands that we question not only the information presented to us but also the very frameworks through which we interpret that information. It’s not enough to believe the Earth is round, know why we all think this.

Consider, for example, the contentious debates around climate change, vaccine safety, or artificial intelligence. Each of these issues carries existential weight, yet our understanding of them is often fragmented and filtered through layers of interpretation, each layer potentially introducing its own biases. Many of us form fervent beliefs based not on personal examination of the data but on second-hand information from sources we deem credible. This practice is extremely risky, as it leaves us vulnerable to the biases and agendas of those we trust.

Take climate change… yes, lots of evidence points toward atmospheric change, sea temperature changes, species die off. But how much of this infomration can we corroborate first hand? If you’re not a biologist or climatologist, if you don’t have the capacity to read the data, then you’re making assumptions based on other people’s explanations of the data. Is that enough to decide that you’re willing to lose friendships and family over the debate? Should you be skeptical that most political figures who do not support climate change are also heavy oil and coal proponents? Certainly. But everytime you get in your car, buy a plastic bottle, or run your air-conditioner, you’re a primary contributor to the problem. Are you holding yourself accountable first and foremost… I mean, on the real. 

Real sense-making, then, is not about accumulating beliefs from authority figures but about cultivating an awareness of the limitations inherent in all sources of information. It is about questioning not only whether a piece of information is true but also whether it is representative and complete. This is especially challenging in an environment flooded with information of varying quality.

It means we need to be willing to do the work, or we need to acknowledge that we don’t know. It means we need to be willing to not repost that YouTube video or tweet without having done the epistemological rigor required to back it as a strong signal, and instead focusing on understanding the problem, not just being a replicator bot for your political party. It means scrutinizing not just the conclusions of experts but also the methods, funding sources, and institutional biases that shape their research. 

Remember this is Moloch we’re dealing with here. 

There is a capitalist incentive and human tendency in the modern era to race to the bottom, to prioritize the individual over the collective. We live in a world where the priority is often not truth but profitability, the very structure of scientific inquiry can be compromised… not only do Pharmaceutical companies  sideline naturopathic rememdies, they also prioritize short term studies on profitable drugs over more comprehensive or long-term studies that might reveal unfavorable results. The resulting distortion is not necessarily a matter of outright lying; often, it is a matter of omission, of focusing on information that aligns with profitable outcomes while ignoring or downplaying risks.

This, of course, leads to a greater systemic issue. Even if no one were intentionally lying or withholding information, the world’s complexity would still make accurate sense-making difficult. The interconnectedness of issues—from environmental sustainability to public health—means that we are often dealing with systems too intricate to fully comprehend. We can predict some outcomes, but the ripples of our actions often extend beyond our immediate field of view, causing unintended consequences that are difficult to foresee… and beyond that, even if we make good decision rooted in good epistemology, we may be unaware of the second and third order effects of those decisions. Like refining and burning oil. Genius idea! But I guarantee you not a soul in 1901 was thinking of greenhouse gases ever being an issue.

 Thus, sense-making requires not only honesty but humility: an acknowledgment of the limits of our own understanding and a commitment to continual learning. Most importantly it requires a willingness to admit you don’t know everything, you can’t know everything, and that the opposite side likely always has some signal in their transmission.

Be sensible. Be civil. Be curious. Be loving. 

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So let’s talk about “memes”

If you’re anything like me, I went a dozen years thinking a meme was just a funny, often satyrical or ironic image or text on the internet that was meant to make me laugh. You know, like getting “rick rolled,” or trollface, or that little kid making a fist and looking all determined saying “You Got This”

But what is a meme? 

Well, it’s similar to a gene, only not biological in its reproduction. It’s a term coined by Richard Dawkins. A meme replicates like something living, only instead of carrying biological information, it carries cultural information. The crucifix is a meme. The American Flag is a meme. It carries cultural information. It is also symbolic. 

But most of what we believe in culture is memetic. People often receive information from sources that they inherintly either trust or distrust, based on deeply ingrained beliefs. These ingrained beliefs are “meme complexes” which are exactly what they sound like; a set of complex memes we subscribe to, which in turn act as a memetic immune system filtering what gets through and what doesn’t. Meme complexes reinforce the confirmation bias.

For instance, if an idea comes from Fox News, or CNN, for example, many will automatically accept or reject it without further thought. This isn’t thinking; it’s automatic acceptance or dismissal based on pre-existing biases. This is a big Logical no-no. Sovereignty of thought is lost in this process as people are not actually engaging in sense-making but merely echoing the sentiments they’ve absorbed from trusted sources.

We hvae to realize how often we’re not actually thinking, but rather being a sounding board for someone else’s agenda, masked as one of our biases.

Meme complexes evolve as ideas evolve, adapting over time. Like genes, memes compete, mutate, and survive, creating interconnected networks of beliefs and worldviews that persist by forming protective and propagative “support structures.” For example, in religious meme complexes, central tenets, like doctrines, are often surrounded by protective memes that shield these beliefs from critical thinking. Such protective memes may include ideas like “doubt comes from the devil,” which discourages critical examination, framing doubt as morally or spiritually dangerous. In this way, the meme complex becomes resilient to outside challenges, propagating itself across generations.

These meme complexes are resilient not just in their content but in their ability to coalesce into a kind of intellectual immune system. Memes that survive aren’t just those that are catchy but those that build protective and reinforcing structures around themselves. As such, meme complexes are often formed of intertwined ideas, creating a robust narrative ecosystem. The political left and right, for instance, have fundamental beliefs that adapt and change over time, specifically around liberalism and conservatism, with layers upon layers of reinforcing structures to support them.

If all this sounds like I’m saying these memes are alive, it’s because I am. 

Yes. The animate forces of the universe animate ideas. We may be the medium through which these cultural memes are born, but like myth of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, they can grow far beyond our ability to control them, and may haunt us to the end of our days.

Political meme complexes are quite resilient and influential. They shape worldviews by intertwining with other memes to create a larger narrative. These systems create not just beliefs but entire networks of ideas that dictate how we should interpret information, respond to events, and even define our sense of identity. These meme complexes are rarely about specific ideas. They vie for worldview propagation and dominance. Thus, when ideas are taken at face value based on their source, critical thinking is bypassed, and memes are simply reinforced. In other words, the more we just believe what we see, the stronger memes get.

Then we develop the internet, a turning a flickering flame into a raging inferno, which turbocharges meme propagation by targeting and testing messages for maximum adoption.

Techology is a steroid to meme propogation, as the nature of the meme is to mesh itself with cultural information, which thanks to Social Media, can now propogate at the speed of light. Literally.

Social media platforms like Facebook utilize AI that continuously learns and adapts, split-testing messages on users, tracking responses to mouse hovers, clicks, and more. It’s like a meme ekg. Better yet a meme crispr.

This kind of advanced, strategic manipulation shapes not just individual beliefs but whole populations' mindsets. Algorithms powered by AI can take an unprecedented level of control over the flow of information, using techniques that are as refined as the best chess moves. Most users are unaware they’re involved in this high-stakes game, being targeted for their attention through customized messages that exploit fundamental psychological biases.

Platforms unintentionally drive people towards fundamentalism as a byproduct of these systems, aiming to maximize time-on-site as opposed to intentionally radicalizing users. Their goal is to capture attention, which naturally biases them toward content that is short, sensational, and tailored to individual biases, reinforcing shallow understandings and reducing attention spans. 

Yes, the more outrageous it is, the more we pay attention. 

The sheer volume of information, combined with the need for rapid consumption, discourages depth, turning complex ideas into soundbites and often hijacking emotional responses rather than fostering thoughtful engagement.

Moloch at his best. 

And let me tell you… this is just the beginning. What we’re seeing now is the gathering of clouds over the ocean, the darkening of the skies. The storm has not even formed, but we can feel the inevitable hurricane gathering its strength. May our levys hold fast.

(Well damn. Now what?)

Thinking of meme complexes as clusters of connected beliefs can help us understand how they clash and adapt. When these belief systems come into contact—whether in religion, politics, or science—they don’t just exchange ideas; they also develop ways to protect and spread themselves. Competing belief systems evolve defenses and strategies, much like living organisms in a shared environment. For instance, when a far-right Republican set of beliefs meets a more centrist one, it might focus on ideas that shield it from centrist criticism. Similarly, centrists might adopt new arguments or techniques to push back against far-right ideas.

Now if you’re trying to combat meme-driven polarization and cultivate sovereign thinking, you can start by becoming aware of the protective memes at play. Often, these protective memes discourage us from questioning our own beliefs, labeling critical thinking as disloyal or even dangerous. This is true not just in religious contexts but also in political and cultural debates, where in-group and out-group dynamics discourage dissent and uphold established narratives. Recognizing and examining these protective mechanisms can be the first step towards independent thought.

For instance. Take the meme going around during Covid that said “Remember that time you got Polio? No, you don’t, because your parents got you *$&% vaccinated.”

But polio virus and SARS-CoV-2 are very different viruses that cause disease in very different organs in the system. The vaccines themselves are of different origin in how they fight their respective disease. Both diseases affected people much differently. With Polio, aralytic poliomyelitis occurs in less than 1% of all infections, so that which we fear the most is the least common aspect of the disease. Not to mention in most studies, over seventy percent of those infected with Polio are asymptomatic. Covid on the other hand, had just over 50% test asymptomatic, but had a much higher rate of up to 14% of serious infections according to some studies.

The point is, A does not equal B. More importantly, depending on what year you were born, it’s possible that the reason 70% of people won’t remember getting Polio is because they didn’t feel it. Not because they didn’t get it.

And so on…

For those you who aspire to think more critically, the first step is to cultivate skepticism toward one’s own beliefs. Realize that memetic immunity can work against open-mindedness. If you can identify the influence of your own meme complexes and the protective memes that sustain them, you can begin to engage in a process of dialectic rather than debate. Rather than defending one’s beliefs or attacking another’s, dialectic involves striving to understand and integrate opposing views to create a more nuanced perspective. The old technique of strong manning the opposing arguement.

In this process, we move beyond binary thinking to explore the synthesis of different ideas and challenging the limitations of our meme complexes. By engaging in dialectic, we can take two seemingly incompatible ideas, explore their partial truths, and work toward a higher-order understanding that reconciles them. This approach fosters a deeper engagement with ideas and encourages intellectual flexibility, which can weaken the hold of fixed meme complexes and lead to a more dynamic relationship with knowledge.

True sovereignty in thinking means recognizing the influence of these memes and choosing to engage with them at a deeper level, rather than passively absorbing them. It means examining the origins, implications, and limitations of one's beliefs. This process may not eliminate the influence of memes entirely, but it can foster a more conscious relationship with them. In an age of engineered information designed to manipulate you, this kind of sovereign thinking is not just a cognitive task, but an ethical one.

We have talked at length about the number and scope of global issues are multiplying, but our approaches to solving them remain limited by the same old patterns—chief among them, groupthink and polarization. This is especially dangerous now, given the interconnected and fragile nature of our world. Our centralized infrastructures, from food supply chains to power grids, are highly vulnerable to disruption. Most people in cities don’t grow their own food, and any major infrastructural breakdown could lead to catastrophic outcomes. Layered on top of this fragility is the unprecedented power of modern weapons technology, which makes conflict, particularly at a global scale, more dangerous than ever before. Historically, when societies become this polarized, it leads to war or resets. But the cost of such a reset in the present age would be unimaginably high.

One of the central problems driving us toward this destructive path is the growing pressure to conform to in-group thinking. Our current world demands that people think more critically and engage with a wide variety of perspectives. But instead of doing this, most people fall into the trap of groupthink, largely driven by social shaming, ostracism, and the threat of being labeled as disloyal or wrong by their own communities. This polarized environment creates a fertile ground for adversarial solutions, where people believe that simply defeating their perceived enemies is the answer.

To move forward, we need to radically shift how we engage with one another. This means being willing to do something uncomfortable: disagree with the narratives of the in-groups we belong to. In-groups, whether on the left, the right, or any other ideological spectrum, often discourage dissent by using social punishment—ostracism, shaming, and even outright dismissal of those who question the prevailing narrative. In these cases, individuals often defer to the consensus of their group, avoiding the discomfort of thinking deeply and critically. This kind of lazy sense-making is dangerous because it prevents people from engaging earnestly with the complex reality of the world.

The problem is that real solutions to our global issues require something far. Solutions that prevent war, avoid ecological collapse, or solve societal inequalities must benefit everyone. But when people fall into groupthink, they reduce their focus to advancing their own agenda, which often comes at the expense of the broader community. Real progress, by contrast, requires a deep engagement with the perspectives of others, even—and perhaps especially—when those perspectives feel threatening or foreign.

To break out of this cycle, we need to cultivate both courage and humility. It takes courage to stand up to the group and say, “I don’t know if I agree with this.” Even more so, it takes courage to admit that the perspective we’re hearing—whether from our own group or from an opposing one—might be incomplete or inadequate. But this kind of courage must be balanced with a deep humility. Humility allows us to say, “I don’t know the full truth yet,” and it helps prevent the kind of hubris that leads to new forms of narrative warfare. This balance of courage and humility is crucial for anyone seeking to engage in genuine sense-making. It is only through this approach that we can resist the gravitational pull of groupthink and tribalism.

In other words, we create a culture of truth seekers. Now, I know, everyone thinks they’re a truth seeker. That’s part of the problem, isn’t it? Everyone thinks their version of ther truth is, well… true.

So how can we be different, how is our sense-making, meme debunking information detective skills create a better sense of “truth” than anyone elses. We have to start by dissecting our own “in-group,” and we have to acknolwedge uncertainty.

For instance, if I were to do such a thing, I would have to acknowledge that “global warming” could be more than just a human phenomenon, and that it is possible that the influence we have over ecology is nominal. For instance, there were 30 hurricanes between 2010-2019 and 39 hurricanes between 1950-1959 and 22 between 1930-1939. 

Which tells me nothing. But it certainly doesn’t point toward increased hurricane activity due to global warming.

Now, what I would consider an irrifutable truth in my world is species extintion caused by humans. Best estimates are around 100 times faster now than in pre-human times. I think animals and plant diversity makes a more beautiful world. That’s not a fact. Its a feeling. Sometimes we have to consider our feelings as well.

Earnestness and sincerity in exploring multiple perspectives are essential to developing a nuanced understanding. This approach is often uncomfortable, demanding a step into the unknown, where one's very identity and affiliation may be questioned. But this humility must not lapse into indecision; it is about recognizing that while you may not have all the answers, the quest for truth requires moving beyond current limitations and biases.

Now let’s Talk about Virtue Signaling

Virtue is the actions of the hands and feet; it is a willingness to make sacrifices that may even reduce one's social capital or personal gain. It is embodied, not broadcast. Virtue signaling, however, happens when individuals project a socially accepted image that benefits them, often without embodying the values they profess. The virtues most susceptible to signaling often reflect the values of your in-group, be it political, social or spiritual. In some cases, virtue signaling leads to weaponizing the very concepts that are supposed to help us grow, such as mindfulness, authenticity, or empathy.

You know, a photo of some dude meditating in a field promoting his men’s work course. Virtue signaling. First, if the dude was taking a photo, he wasn’t meditating, he was using the image of meditation to sell his course, or defend his cultural meme that he wrote in the box about acceptance and forgiveness or whatever.

This concept extends to the weaponization of compassion and courage in warfare. Throughout history, leaders have manipulated people’s deepest virtues for horrific ends. When soldiers throw themselves on grenades for their fellow soldiers or suicide bombers sacrifice themselves for what they believe is a noble cause, we see our most admirable traits harnessed for the most destructive purposes. Our current political and media landscapes similarly manipulate people’s altruistic impulses through propaganda and other forms of narrative warfare, mobilizing them for battles that are ultimately self-serving.

Consider the weaponization of something like vulerability or apology. When vulnerability gained popularity through figures like Brené Brown, some people began performing vulnerability publicly, not to reveal anything deeply personal, but to gain approval. This "performative vulnerability" isn’t true openness; authentic vulnerability would mean admitting something uncomfortable, like needing financial help, rather than sharing a resolved issue. Similarly, apologies can become tools for manipulation. Some might offer a dramatic apology when called out, only to return to the same behavior. Genuine remorse, however, leads to real change, not just temporary resolution.

Communication tools like vulnerability and apology can thus be twisted for self-serving purposes. We need discernment to tell the difference between sincere remorse and an apology meant to manipulate. This is essential, especially in harmful dynamics, where apologies can reset a power imbalance without leading to meaningful change. The motives behind our words often shape whether we genuinely engage or use language for personal gain. Originally, language helped us survive and coordinate as groups, but today, it’s often used in ways that erode trust and weaken collective understanding.

For real, constructive dialogue, communication should empower others, encouraging critical thinking rather than seeking to control. Without this kind of honest engagement, society risks drifting into authoritarian structures, where power imbalances grow and genuine discussion deteriorates. Achieving this kind of meaningful dialogue requires courage to question beliefs and challenge group narratives, paired with humility to embrace uncertainty and accept that we don’t have all the answers. Without these, communication can easily become just a tool for upholding the status quo or advancing personal interests, rather than fostering true understanding and progress.

This tendency to weaponize ideas points to a deeper issue: the fine line between tools and weapons. A weapon is simply a tool used in an adversarial context. Just as any physical tool—such as a kitchen knife, a hammer, or a laptop—can be weaponized, so too can metaphysical tools like psychological techniques, communication strategies, or even virtues like honesty or transparency. For example, in some progressive circles, the virtue of transparency has been misapplied as a justification for cruelty. People may claim to be “radically honest” while using this concept as an excuse to be hurtful or dismissive of others’ feelings.

On the flip side, kindness can also be weaponized. People may avoid telling difficult truths under the guise of being kind, but in doing so, they may actually withhold important information, which can be just as harmful. The challenge, then, is not to reduce our behavior to rigid rules but to navigate the balance between competing virtues. Honesty and kindness, transparency and discretion, all have their place, and the wisdom lies in knowing when to apply each.

Unfortunately, those in power are often adept at weaponizing even the most sacred qualities, such as courage or patriotism. History is full of examples where governments and political movements have exploited people’s most noble impulses for manipulative ends. False-flag wars, where soldiers are told they are fighting for a righteous cause only to discover that the true motivations are far more cynical, are a tragic testament to this dynamic. This kind of weaponization not only betrays those who are manipulated but also corrodes the trust that holds societies together.

When we aim to create something as radically different as a world without warfare or a more resilient information ecology, we need to ensure we don’t reduce these ideas to slogans or memes. If they become flags for self-promotion, they risk becoming empty signifiers rather than catalysts for true change. True collective intelligence depends on an ability to see through these pitfalls and pursue the higher purpose in earnest. If your moral insights are also what pad your bank account, you are at high risk for compromising your ability to make sense of the world, as these are generally conflicting interests and prone to confirmation bias. 

There are no absolutes. 

We need to recognize that the principles guiding us—whether they are empathy, transparency, collective well-being… are principles, not absolute rules. Life is complex, and there will be times when empathy means setting boundaries, when transparency means holding back in a conversation to preserve another's dignity, or when honesty involves being tactful. Rather than rely on rigid moral algorithms, we must hold principles as flexible guidelines. We have to understand that cultural differences may inhibit our ability to find common cognitive ground. That asserting our beliefs, regardless of how vetted they are, is not always appropriate. That religious beliefs, for instance, can be quite beneficial to an individual insofar as that individual is not harming others, and that our beliefs are ours.

There are plenty of religious humans who have no interested in proselytizing others or conquering the religious battleground. Their spiritual beliefs are entirely focused on their own personal growth, evolution or salvation. 

Whether that person has the same social values as you may rarely become relevent… and when they do, only then do we engage in dialectic.

The challenge we face is to navigate a world where information can be weaponized, where our most earnest efforts can be co-opted, and where the simple act of thinking independently can become a subversive act. If we can foster relationships where there is space for honest disagreement and mutual growth, we might begin to restore a sense-making process that can help us avoid the tragic cycles of history. 

It’s not a quick fix or a comforting one, but it’s a path that requires, above all, a willingness to walk away from the familiar tribes and embrace the discomfort of finding one's own way through the maze of human beliefs, narratives, and power struggles.

_____________

Now, I’ve been talking alot about disengaging from tribal think and focusing on sovereign intelligence.

Hmm.

If you’re a regular listener, that seems counter intuitive to what we’ve been talking about. What happened to collective intelligence, prioritizing community over individuality and all that jazz?

Again. The paradox of the Infinite Mystery makes itself know.

Again, the need for Synergy and synthesis are required.

The idea here is not to develop some individualist political outlook and reject your peers. Simultaneously the idea is not to develop a community with an unbendable ethical code that exludes most.

When we talk about rejecting memetic influences and questioning your in-group, we are talking about questioning everything you take for granted, in effort to understand opposing points of view and thus further harmonize your own perspectives with the perspectives of those that are different from you.

This requires a sincere pursuit of truth that resists bias, especially the bias toward conformity. Your personal interests and survival instincts, whether they manifest as economic incentives, social affiliations, or personal beliefs, create real barriers to clear thinking. The tendency to align with our in-groups, fearing the consequences of dissent, stifles critical inquiry and reduces us to mere carriers of narratives we haven’t really examined, and may not even be ours. When in-groups use ostracism or shaming to silence disagreement, it reveals a deeper motive to win a perceived war rather than engage in open, good-faith exploration.

This means getting out of left-right thinking. 

It’s lazy. It’s flawed, and its clearly not working. 

Real solutions to our global issues require something far beyond the scope of what any The left began by developing powerful social shaming tools, such as labeling dissenters as racists, misogynists, or xenophobes. For a long time, this strategy was effective in silencing opposition. It enabled the left to dominate certain cultural and institutional spaces—academia, government, and media—by holding the moral high ground. However, just like in warfare, when one side develops a new weapon, the other side works quickly to develop countermeasures. The alt-right, for instance, coalesced partly as a response to these social shaming tools, embracing previously shamed identities, such as overt nationalism, as a means of neutralizing the power of leftist shaming.

Similarly, the right has developed its own set of tools for enforcing in-group cohesion, such as deep state conspiracy, family and religous values as virtue signals and populist rhetoric. Both sides engage in a kind of narrative warfare where winning, rather than understanding, becomes the primary goal. In these cases, the people involved believe they are advancing what is right and true, and they view their opponents as irredeemably wrong or harmful. This makes it nearly impossible for either side to engage in good faith with the other. The result is a self-perpetuating cycle of conflict where each side feels morally justified in its actions, even as the broader societal fabric frays.

And the war goes on.

The war goes on.

Blood. Pain. Suffering.

All so that we may be justified in our righteousness.

This is the modern day War for Truth. Which only perpetuates disinformation, polarized media, and the weaponization of narratives. Our battle to maintain clarity and objectivity in the collective conversation often feels like an existential struggle. From this perspective, many argue that society must double down on good sensemaking—better logic, more comprehensive fact-checking, and an earnest search for truth.

Yet, as much as truth-seeking is vital in many aspects of public life, it cannot be our sole aim. There's a parallel realm, one that's been practiced by cultures for millennia, that doesn't depend solely on the rigid pursuit of fact. From the animist perspective, this realm is not about "truth" in the modern empirical sense but about a deeper understanding—an understanding of the unseen, the cosmic forces at work, the relationships between humans, nature, and the divine. This is the realm of myth.

For animist cultures, myth is not a primitive or outdated mode of storytelling but a vital means of navigating the complexity of existence. It offers a symbolic lens through which to understand the world, one that transcends the boundaries of logical categorization. Myths are alive, not in the sense of being historically accurate, but in the sense that they embody truths deeper than facts. They act as containers of wisdom that reach into the collective unconscious, binding us not just to our immediate community but to the earth, the spirits, and the universe.

In the animist view, mythic narratives are integral to how we make sense of ourselves and the world. Rather than demanding precision or empirical verification, myths allow for fluidity. They provide space for metaphor, for contradiction, and for paradox. For example, in many indigenous traditions, creation myths offer not a factual recounting of the world’s formation, but a symbolic map that places human beings within a living, breathing cosmos, in which the seen and unseen are equally significant. The emphasis here is not on historical accuracy but on relational understanding—how we relate to the world, how the world relates to us, and how all things are interconnected.

This relational understanding is something sorely lacking in today's polarized world. In our War on Sensemaking, where narratives are weaponized for political or ideological ends, there's a tendency to assume that winning the war of facts will somehow heal our fractured societies. But this can become a self-defeating project. When everyone clings to their "truth" as the ultimate banner, they risk losing the larger narrative that myths often provide—a narrative that can hold contradiction, ambiguity, and many shades of meaning.

The relentless pursuit of empirical truth in the modern context often leads to more division, as different factions weaponize their facts to confirm their biases. In contrast, the mythic mode invites a form of sensemaking that can embrace paradox and find higher understanding through narrative. Myths allow for multiple truths to coexist without the need for a clear victor. They do not ask whether a story is true or false but whether it is meaningful.

Let’s take the myth of Prometheus from ancient Greece. It tells of a titan who defies the gods to bring fire (and thus, knowledge and technology) to humanity. It speaks to the tension between human innovation and divine order, between hubris and survival. Prometheus’s story doesn’t offer a clear lesson of right or wrong but holds space for these oppositional forces to exist within the human psyche. In the same way, myths from animist cultures—such as stories of Raven creating the world or trickster figures disrupting cosmic balance—don’t provide a neat moral. They speak to the messiness of existence, the need for balance, and the understanding that order and chaos, creation and destruction, are necessary parts of the same whole.

In the context of today’s fractured sensemaking, myths remind us that not everything can or should be resolved by factual accuracy or debate. Sometimes, the most profound understanding comes from recognizing the deeper symbolic currents beneath our competing narratives. Myths invite us to ask not just, "What is true?" but "What is this story trying to tell me about the world and my place in it?"

To insist that only truth matters, in the rigid empirical sense, is to limit ourselves to a narrow form of sensemaking. This is not to say that truth is unimportant—far from it. But there are dimensions of human experience, especially those related to meaning, connection, and purpose, that truth cannot adequately serve. The deeper human need is often for narratives that help us make sense of suffering, death, conflict, and mystery—all of which defy neat categorization or solutions.

Take death. In the hyper-rational world, death is often treated as an endpoint, a problem to be solved with medicine or delayed indefinitely. But from a mythic perspective, death is not just an ending but a transformation, a necessary step in the cycle of life. Many animist myths involve the death of gods or heroes who return in some new form, reminding us of the cyclical nature of existence and the interconnectedness of all things. This perspective can offer solace in ways that no amount of factual knowledge about death ever could.

In our current moment, where competing truths clash with increasing hostility, perhaps the animist respect for myth offers a crucial counterbalance. Myths are not concerned with defeating the other side or establishing ultimate correctness. They are concerned with helping us live—live within the mystery, live within the tension of opposing forces, and live with our uncertainty about what comes next. This form of understanding may be more necessary now than ever, as the rigid pursuit of factual certainty only deepens the divides between us.

These mythical narratives have the power to heal. They can bridge divides not by providing one correct answer but by holding space for many answers, many stories. The task is not to always seek the truth but to seek understanding, to recognize that the world is woven from both what we can see and what remains hidden. They offer a form of collective sensemaking that transcends polarization and invites us back into communion with each other, with the world, and with the deeper mysteries of existence.

If there were a moral to this episode, it is that we must walk the old road sometimes, remember the old stories—those that teach us how to live within the paradoxes, to find meaning in mystery, and to respect the sacredness of the world we share, less we be consumed by the fire of a humanity racing toward some idealogical domination.

The greatest irony of them all, is that any war is always for the good, that most evils are conducted because of the attempt to destroy what is perceived as evil. Jesus did not stop the crucifixion. Neo realized that in order to defeat Agent Smith he must cease his endless war and merge with his enemy. Siddhartha Gautama did not succumb to the illusions of power, greed and opposition, but instead touched the Earth, making a Mudra spoke to the Earth, the Gaia, asking her to bear witness to his confrontation. With one hand touching the ground, and one hand up to the heavens, the Buddha disengaged from the desires and sufferings of the world and allowed the tempest of existene to swell around him and gave himself to both Heaven and Earth, both the Eternal and the Real, form and formlessness.

So let’s take a moment to talk about the body. What is all this narrative warfare and information ecology doing to the body? We’ve talked epistemology and cognitive bias and sensemaking primarily through the lens of the mind. What we’re really talking about is our constructed reality. But we experience it through a body, and this shit stresses - our -  body - out. 

All this news of civil unrest and war. Your body doesn’t really know its not in immediate danger, because your mind is thinking about these things, and your body is responding. Again, here’s Phos…

Man that’s sounds familiar. Discomfort as a necessary means of tempering our nervous systems while simultaneously bringning meaning into our lives. Weren’t we just talking about that on the last episode? Anyway. Get off your computer and go for a walk. Stop finding something to fight for as a substitution that you don’t have to worry about mountain lions and hunger anymore.

Now hold up, of course I know that there are millions of people with real problems, including hunger and disease and war, but they’re probably not listening to this podcast culture warrior. You are. But anyway. The point is, you have to ask yourself what’s real. 

What’s important.

What do you really get up in the morning for.

What is the lived experience all about.

You have to answer these questions yourself.      

I wonder sometimes if those of you listening can glean the beliefs of the Church through this podcast. By now you realize that The Church of Infinite Harmony will rarely tell you what to believe. That to tell you what to believe is antithetical to our beliefs, if you know what I mean.

You must learn to become a sovereign thinker while simultaneously striving for consensus reality. Don’t believe what you are told, and listen to the vibration of truth that is present in all things. It’s a paradox. In the same way that: 

“The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the Eternal Name. Nameless, is the origin of Heaven and Earth; The named is the Mother of all things.”

Perhaps what we are experiencing right now is the paradox of the dualities  coming crashing toward each other, and at the very last moment, before the imminent destruction of humankind, both sides will come so close that they will thread a needle, a golden thread to be sure, and come out the otherside a single unifed idea, born of the synergy of the two. A co-emergent birth of a new way of being that looks nothing like the past, but burns gloriously into the future. Like the Ardhanarishvara, the one being who is both Shiva and Parvati, the merging of the masculine and feminine, the space and that which resides in the space, the spiritual and the material. Like the life and death dance of Isis and Osiris Like the yin and yang that spin eternal within each other.

Like love and marraige, the horse and carraige, you can’t have one without the other…

Despite the fact that the opposing forces are always trying to win, they cannot exist without each other. Fascism needs Democracy. Democrats need Republicans. Believers need the non-believers. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest known myths, the hero Gilgamesh meets his rival in Enkidu. Enkidu, a wild man created by the gods to challenge Gilgamesh’s arrogance, initially serves as his adversary. They clash, but through their battle, Gilgamesh realizes his need for Enkidu's friendship and moral grounding. Enkidu’s death later reveals to Gilgamesh the limits of his own strength and the reality of mortality. Enkidu, once a challenger, becomes a profound influence on Gilgamesh’s journey, teaching him humility, empathy, and the transient nature of life—qualities Gilgamesh needs to become a true hero.

In Egyptian mythology, the sun god Ra confronts Apep, the serpent of chaos, every night. Ra is victorious each dawn, bringing light back to the world, yet Apep’s presence is essential for the cycle of day and night. Apep embodies the darkness and chaos that balance Ra's light and order. Ra’s victories do not annihilate Apep; instead, they reinforce the cosmic cycle. Without Apep, Ra would have no contrast, no purpose in his daily battle. The hero’s opponent holds a necessary place in the cosmic order, challenging the hero and sustaining the balance of creation.

In many mythologies, the trickster is the cause of endless trouble, and yet the trickster is never killed. For the Yoruba, Eshu constantly challenges the other gods and humans. Though often an obstacle to order, Eshu’s trickery is essential to the balance of the world. He serves as a teacher, though his lessons are often harsh. Those who try to outwit or vanquish Eshu usually find themselves in greater turmoil, forced to accept the deeper meaning of his lessons. The adversary, those who confront us with uncomfortable truths, can force us into self-discovery and deeper wisdom. This is the necessity of our perceived enemies.

Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoyed today’s contemplations and I look forward to hearing from you. Again, this episode was mostly a capitulation of Daniel Schmactemberger’s ‘War on Sensemaking” series that was published for rebel wisdom and can be found on YouTube. I’ll put a link in the shownotes. Special thanks to Armando Perez a.k.a. The Single Helix for some b-side hip hop. Thanks to Kaiyote for our opening track and Azhia for our resident intro/outros.  This episode also featured the track “Firefly” by Ambient Boy and the track “Turn Away” by Yeti Music, as well tracks from Nine Inch Nails “Ghosts” album, and samples from The Scratch Action Heros and DJ Rocky Styles. 

As always, feel free to ask questions or offer feedback in our forum at infiniteharmony.org , which will include the transcripts of each episode for quotes and references.

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