vol. 4 issue 4
Greetings,
What is a mutation?
It is a change at a fundamental level. A departure from the expected. The point of inflection where everything that follows after can be seen as the moment of divergence. Also, a point of no return.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is not a mutation. It’s not a departure from the expected, and it sure wasn’t a moment of divergence. Only those not paying attention didn’t see this coming.
That the invasion has happened has the potential, however, to become a point of no return, and thus the mutation of democracy, both as an ideal and as a reality, if we don’t respond appropriately. Whatever that means exactly, will depend upon enough of us understanding and accepting what is the true plotline.
To that end, I came across this impassioned yet reasonable recollection of what lead us to this moment in Eastern Europe, one that has zero fluff. I hope you have 6 minutes to read it. Please, Don’t Lose the Plot, by Isaac Saul.
Aside from agreeing with Isaac’s assessment of the real story unfolding, I include it here because over at our sister publication, Ensouled: The Journal of Cultural Astronomy, my co-host Elisabeth Grace and I just released Episode 2 of our podcast, Off the Charts in which we give some detail about the Great Mutation and how to recognize its reverberations through today’s headlines.
A celestial event, it occurred on the Winter Solstice of 2020 when Saturn and Jupiter conjoined in the sky. That night, I looked up and was thrilled to see what many astronomers said could have been, along with Venus, the same conjunction that appeared to the three magi of the New Testament. But that’s not what thrilled me.
Aside from being beautiful and awesome in its brilliance, it marked an important paradigm shift, and thus a mutation: Where we derive value, commerce, justice, reason, and governance will no longer be predicated on material resources, but on those to do with air waves. This includes the brain waves of your mind and imagination.
It’s what I said from the outset when I started docu-mental that our minds were the only remaining renewable resource, which was why “they” would be coming for it. Mapping the American states of mind is both a retrospective and a prospective project: where have we taken leave of our senses, where did we lose our minds? Where will we go after we have restored them?
Elisabeth and I still have more to say in future episodes about why and how this Great Mutation is so, why we are confident it can be used as a marker of time, but as relates to current events, it’s worth noting that while capturing people’s hearts and minds with propaganda is nothing new, weaponizing information at lightning speed to turn people into zombies of war, is relatively so, and is now the new normal.
There has been a mutation. A point of no return. In time, we are likely to not need costly tanks and fighter jets.
It is the dawning of a new kind of warfare, the kind that will eventually extend into space to whatever material extent will be necessary to support the battle for our minds and imaginations. It’s why and how so many Americans can’t agree on why Russia invaded Ukraine: too many versions of “the truth” fill too many of our heads.
The possibilities for survival and prosperity both for us as individuals and as a nation depend on how clearly we think our own thoughts, and guard against the occupation of our minds by those who would like to steal our only source of renewable power.
There is now more value in how and what we think than there is to oil. That is a fact. Data derived from the aggregation of our attention — where we place our thoughts and how often — trades higher than does crude oil. That is a trend that will only continue to increase, as this article from 2017 indicates. Nothing has since thrown off this trajectory and I predict with confidence nothing will, not for hundreds of years.
So, what are our new choices in this post-mutation era?
I suggest there are at least two viable ones: We can throw up our hands and say that everything is relative depending upon who you want to believe, depending upon who makes you feel most special, so it’s now every man for himself; or we can become more astute at understanding how the battle for our minds is taking place against the backdrop of larger trends.
In other words, learn the trends. That is precisely why Elisabeth and I have created the podcast series.
There has been a mutation in top-down thinking. Hierarchy is not dead, it’s just increasingly losing its utility. How do you stand on air and look down your nose at the schlubs below you? You can’t. But you sure can do a lot of harm — or good — by filling up the space people occupy with their thoughts.
Are you prepared to live in a world where many things can be true at once, or even if they aren’t true, sure seem as though they could be? What skills do you need to survive and thrive in such a world?
Think about it.
Thank you so much for letting docu-mental, now one of Substack’s most-read mental health publications, and also Ensouled help you challenge your critical thinking skills. A clear mind is certainly tantamount to sound mental health, and to feeling connected with the Cosmos.
Okay, now for something sweet.
That’s courtesy of our archives, from an interview with Francis Collins, MD, the former director of the National Institutes of Health.
Have a great weekend.
Peace,
Whitney