It took a lot of thinking to figure out how to write this blog post. If you have ended up on this website, there is a very good chance that you are dissatisfied with the modern paradigm. In other words, there is a very good chance that you want to either change the world, or step away from it in some fashion. You may want a cabin in the woods. You may want to escape the rat race. You may want to deprogram yourself from the assumptions of modern society. Or you may want something else vaguely in this vein. But the broad point here, is that people who find this website- and don’t run away screaming- are typically opposed to the status quo. And there is a challenge to this. If you have read The Rebel Sell by Andrew Porter and Joseph Heath, you will know that rebels typically appear in adolescence and burn out by the time they turn thirty years old. And further, most rebels find their outrage and rebellion co-opted and sold back to them in a commercialized toothless fashion. Shoes with Anarchy logos, Che Guevara T-shirts, the Satanic Bible, and the like. This is no accident. This is an ideological war. And we must gird our loins for the psychological toll. 

If you have found yourself thinking that something is wrong with the world, you probably found yourself struggling to nail down precisely what is wrong. Morpheus in The Matrix described the effect as being like a splinter in the mind. And The Matrix is a perfect reference here. Because the Wachowskis wrote the Matrix as a metaphor for their struggle as trans women, but the very language and symbols of the Matrix have been co-opted by far right groups who are deeply opposed to trans rights and LGBTQ+ rights in general. It doesn’t matter where you go in the modern world, you find conspiracy theories, civil unrest, and restless people who feel as though something essential is missing from their lives and their soul. But a feeling does not give direction. And a splinter in the mind can only motivate for so long. If a solution does not eventually present itself, or at least a trail to follow, one eventually gives up. And that is the plan: defang the rebellion and make it chase its own tail. Eventually the rebel spaniels will exhaust themselves and step in line like the trainer wants. So, the would be rebel needs a strategy, a direction in which to march, a goal for which to strive. And the goal must be concrete, the direction must be clear, the strategy must be something that can reasonably carried out. If not, then the rebel will fall to despair and give up. And the rebel may do so anyway, because opposing the status quo is hard exhausting business. 

Milk before Mead

The Mormons have a saying: “Milk before Meat.” The Mormons mean by this expression that new converts and children learning Mormon beliefs should be taught the easy parts, and parts which will help explain the complicate bits, first. Critics of the Church of Mormon argue that what the Mormons are actually doing is deceiving people as to the actual beliefs they are signing on to unawares. The catch of course, is that this technique is exactly how teaching works. If you, like me, play video games; you will be familiar with tutorial levels. These levels teach the player how to perform the basic actions involved in playing the game, as well as mechanics and rules that they will need to know. This is the essence of milk before meat. So how then does one tell the difference between responsible and deceptive use of the technique? And why is this suddenly important? 

Let’s answer the second question first. The reason the young rebel gets lost and gives up, is because the rebel is searching for answers within the maze. So we need to give you tools and basic concepts that will help you define the problem. But we do not wish to deceive you or lead you astray. And given that what we are teaching is not entirely uncontroversial*, people who know you will likely be convinced that you have stumbled into a cult. You may begin to suspect this yourself. Hell, we even call ourselves a cult at numerous points on this page. So how do we thread this needle? We deal with this challenge in two way: we explain our broad process ahead of time, and we teach techniques to prepare and protect new arrivals from deception and cult programming. 

• Preparing your mind for the change without deluding yourself.
• Common Cult Techniques, and inoculating yourself against them. 

If you haven’t run away in fear yet, let’s make the plan clear. What we are offering on this bizarre website is a plan and self study course to turn you into a cultural heretic, and maybe also free your mind (to crib from Morpheus again). What we are offering is a community to support you in your quest to regain control of your life, and maybe scare your good conventional relatives at the same time. If you are looking for safe and normal, and you somehow got this far thinking we offer that, no is the time to seek the safety of Tony Robbins or a twelve step program. Because this is not going to become more normal past this point. 

Here Be Dragons.

* Potentially the Understatement of the Year.