It's all so tedious.

There is a certain type of mind that defaults to manic dot-connecting in a frantic effort to prove monstrously far-reaching claims about our reality. But as philosophers of science have put it in their usual convoluted way, the larger the scope of a theory, the less likely it will hold true. If you have the operator "all" in your sentence, you better make damn sure you are at least a half-god with X-Ray vision, because otherwise chances are you're going to miss something. The antidote to such fallacies is the art of balancing abstract ideas with a deep sense — an embodied feeling — for the particular: situations and circumstances that are unique, non-replicable, derived not from laws but from beyond the realm of categories.

Following Trump's victory, the small but vocal group of schizognostics has reared its left-brained head again, proclaiming from their text-walled gardens the gospel of Trump: the Deep State Psyop. Because, it just has to be a psyop. Why? Simple: their first principle says that all leaders are psyops, and if your theory's scope is nothing short of everything, then Trump and his coterie of disgruntled smarties has been the Trojan horse of the earthly demiurge all along.

I'm part of a supper club that meets monthly. It was founded at the height of the lockdowns when everyone was being forced into masks and being muscled into getting the shot. This group resisted both, despite the imposing certainty of the mandates.

ll these years later, the community is still bonded. Friendships formed and lasted. The culture is one of deep questioning. Each meeting is replete with incredulity toward official pronouncement, a shared perception that elite opinion and elite institutions were simply wrong. And not just about COVID but about everything.

It's not a political group at all. Its central theme concerns the failure of conventional wisdom and all the ways in which legacy institutions preached error over several years. These days, as all polls have revealed, this view is widely held. Many of the most pressing trends of our time are about dislodging an old elite (in media, corporate life, government) and replacing them with people interested in new ways.

"As a neurosurgeon, I was taught that the brain creates consciousness," said Dr. Eben Alexander, who wrote in detail about his experiences with consciousness while in a deep coma.

Many doctors and biomedical students may have been taught the same about consciousness. However, scientists are still debating whether that theory holds true.

Imagine a child observing an elephant for the first time. Light reflects off the animal and enters the child's eyes. Retinal photoreceptors in the back of the eyes convert this light into electrical signals, which travel through the optic nerve to the brain's cortex. This forms vision or visual consciousness.

How do these electrical signals miraculously transform into a vivid mental image? How do they turn into the child's thoughts, followed by an emotional reaction — "Wow, the elephant is so big!"

The question of how the brain generates subjective perceptions, including images, feelings, and experiences, was coined by Australian cognitive scientist David Chalmers in 1995 as the "hard problem."

As it turns out, having a brain may not be a prerequisite for consciousness.

Read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here and Part 5 here.

So far I have summarized the first two groupings of attributes in the persistent predatory personality model. Group 1 ("Drive the agenda") covers the PPP's need for control in all situations, and their response to having that control challenged. Group 2 ("Motivated and operate differently and darkly") highlights the exceptional differences from normal people — in terms of their sexual boundarylessness, low regard for laws and morals, and predatory and sadistic nature.

The next group of five attributes are grouped under the heading "The truth is not easy to distinguish and believe" and collect those features having to do with manipulation and lying — concealing the truth.

Attribute 11: Actively Cultivates Façade of Normal

This attribute emerged very strongly, which isn't a surprise. Hervey Cleckley called his groundbreaking book on psychopathy The Mask of Sanity, after all. Dr. Mitchell breaks this attribute down into three subsections. PPP's are like spies without a country. They try their best to blend in, tailoring their personae to their targets in order to get what they want.

The predatory and exploitative attributes of the PPP

Read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here and Part 4 here

Chapter 4 of Karen Mitchell's thesis - the core attributes of the dark personality

Read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here

"It is truly terrifying being up against them. It is also isolating. It is also very difficult to describe. Once you know the type you can recognise it, even when others can't see it. They are highly dangerous people." (Category 2 participant)

Now for the stuff we've all been waiting for. Chapter 4 of Karen Mitchell's thesis summarizes the results of her study, listing each of the core attributes of the persistent predatory personality, with quotations from her various participants. But first, an important point: "the data indicate that all adults of DP are equally as exploitative, dangerous, manipulative, and self-focused."

In other words, it's not as if non-incarcerated predators are just "a little bit" psychopathic. No, they're the full deal. They just differ in other ways.

Insights from chapter 3 of Karen Mitchell's thesis

Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

How can we effectively study "successful" psychopaths? It's easy enough to study the unsuccessful ones: prisons provide a captive audience for researchers. But what about the elusive corporate psychopath? The corrupt but charismatic governor? The well-respected bank exec who is also a pedophile? Maybe we can gain access to one or a few for close study, but they're hidden by their very nature. Try to imagine conducting a study on congressional or executive branch psychopathy. How would you gain access to such a sample, let alone get them to agree to be studied?

Lobaczewski found one such method purely by happenstance: in a pathocracy, all such types migrate to leadership positions. He didn't have to go looking for them; they were all right there on the local committees of the communist party. But what about non-pathocratic countries or "mixed pathocracies" (i.e. pathocratically captured democracies)? The best way to get data on such people is relatively simple: talk to the individuals who have had to deal with them due to the nature of their work. This may not provide direct access, but has the advantage of utilizing the normal person's insight gained from close proximity and years of experience. At the very least, it's the place to start before better methods of detection become available.

Read Part 1 here.

Chapter 2 of Dr. Karen Mitchell's thesis covers the "areas of contention regarding attributes of people of dark personality," highlighting a handful of disagreements between the various models on the market and the academics who have developed them. Her own research, covered later in the thesis, is designed to resolve as many of these inconsistencies as possible. For instance, are all PPP's (persistent predatory personalities) sadistic, or only a subset? Are they all impulsive and poor at planning, or controlled and premeditated in their actions? How does sexuality fit into the picture?

But the disagreements go deeper than that. For instance, some researchers believe that the three "dark triad" conceptualizations (psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism) are really three ways of describing the same thing. Others think they are distinct from each other, perhaps with some overlap. Still others add several varieties of narcissism, for instance. Researchers like Robert Hare include criminality as feature of psychopathy; others like David Cooke see it not as a core attribute but as a behavioral manifestation. There is also disagreement over whether these types should be conceptualized as discrete disorders or just as extremes on the continuum of "normal personality."

Some see God in the Machine. I can't help but see a Devil leering back at me. You might say that's a personal quirk, but it's every writer's duty to transfer neuroses to a captive audience. So stay with me here.

For the past three years, my tech coverage has been an elaboration on David Noble's incisive 1997 book The Religion of Technology. Anything I've contributed was a mere update to his core insight — that technology is religious — which Noble himself owed to centuries of previous thinkers. With careful attention to detail, though, he documented the historical evidence, weaving together an incredible story. My job is to add gloomy adjectives and smartass remarks.

This innate spiritual principle is so apparent, you'd think there's no reason to mention it at all, but it bears repeating. Technology emerged from religious culture, and so naturally, our ideas about technology are essentially religious. In the end, technology itself has become a source of religious authority and an object of religious devotion.

For a recent example, see the AI-generated image of Jesus superimposed on the Shroud of Turin. For many centuries, Catholics revered this sacred object according to their faith. Today, they look upon it through an inverted tech-gnostic lens.

Even atheists can't help but see the world with a religious aura. Left to their own devices, they desperately grasp for the divine. I believe it's due to an eternal longing within our souls. They'd probably say that's just how humans are wired.

Whatever. You say "toe-MAY-toe." I say "angels and demons."

At the risk of oversimplification, allow me to lay out four ways the human spirit responds to high technology: 1) the devout believer who clings to techno-optimism; 2) the atheist techno-optimist counterpart; 3) the pessimistic atheist who rejects technology; and lastly, 4) the devout believer who sees the Devil in the Machine.

I touched on these viewpoints in a previous article, albeit from a different angle. This religious landscape is also covered in my book, often within rhymes and riddles. Since one or two of you have not yet read Dark Aeon, though, I should lay down a solid foundation here. It'll be useful going forward.

Devout techno-optimists see the Mind of God creating technology by way of human hands. Cities, steamships, guns, televisions, antibiotics, atom bombs, planetary surveillance grids — all of these are built according to divine will. Therefore, our tools are essentially good, even if some people might turn them toward evil ends. "Technology is neutral," we hear again and again. It's unclear if that includes torture devices.

The intel contractor and politically incorrect billionaire Peter Thiel expressed this view in his essay "Against Edenism." He argued that humankind, bound to history, cannot return to the pristine Garden. Rather, our task is to build an approximation of the City of Heaven. "Judeo-Western optimism differs from the atheist optimism of the Enlightenment in the extreme degree to which it believes that the forces of chaos and nature can and will be mastered," Thiel wrote. "The tyranny of Chance will give way to the providence of God."

Noticing is different from simply seeing or hearing. If I say that I see a bowl of fruit on the table or I hear a dog barking down the street, it's possible that the fruit bowl has just been placed there, or the dog has woken up and is barking for the first time. But if I say that I notice the fruit bowl or the dog barking, the implication is that it was there already, but I have only just now taken note of it.

The environment in which we find ourselves enters our field of perception, whether visual, auditory or via any of the other senses, in the form of information, the vast majority of which never reaches our conscious awareness. And that's a good thing.

'We are actually incapable of appreciating more than just a very little of our surroundings. In every sensory moment, we are absolutely flooded with input, much of which is irrelevant.'
- Joyce Schenkein (PhD)