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Maybe just a few of us feel things are getting strange today. I’m not taking a progressive or conservative view. Or a Democrat or Republican one. Left or right wing. It’s something that crosses party lines. Something a discipline – in academic terms – hates. Something beyond the world of the discipline. Something interdisciplinary. A fear of disciplines not from colleagues in the department as much as those who combine various disciplines in their research, search, in the world. 

I imagine there’s a lone breed of academics that don’t fit into the boundaries defined by the various departments of a university. One university. All universities. I’m sure there are government patterns to the structure of current education and laying out the structures of universities that receive government support. He is an academic interdisciplinarian. Or someone who combines knowledge outside the boundaries of the academic department into new configurations and juxtapositions. Somewhat like Lego blocks. 

A true creator in the world. The character Howard Roark (played by Gary Cooper) in Ayn Rand’s first great novelFountainhead. Years before Atlas Shrugged came out. I didn’t read the books but saw the films about them. The books were simply too much to get into for me at the time. 

But she was writing about the things I didn’t know about at the time. The struggle between the forces of creator and non-creator in the world. Democracies encourage a greater percentage of creators in their society while totalitarian. At the same time, the opposite end of the spectrum is dictatorship, tyranny and globalism. 

There truly is a grand battle going on today between the idea of nations and the idea of globalism. In many ways it is symbolized by a clash between individualism and collectivism. As I’ve noted, individualism is represented by the masculine archetype and symbol of freedom while collectivism is represented by the feminine archetype and symbol of equality. No matter how strange the world seems to be getting today, it is always symbolically, a clash between masculine and feminine symbols. Like all great clashes in the world are. 

Perhaps the greatest difference between the two sides of the spectrum is the ability to control the election systems of nations. When all is said and done, this might be the most important thing going today and moving our nation towards globalism while entire populations might have voted against it. Control of the voting system might be this important thing that defines which side of the spectrum out nation falls into. Against the vote of the people and the appointments of the elite few. This all seems coming up soon in the midterms. Owning a voting system by controlling the party of the counter of votes. Have the Republicans gotten any smarter about things after the brilliant documentary film by Dinesh D’Souza and his 2022 film 2,000 Mules? 

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The constant solicitations from the Republicans that flood my daily email box say to me they haven’t gotten any smarter. At least on their email technology. One email threatens to boost me from the party if I don’t donate. That this is like my fifth warning or something like that. Then, perhaps just minutes or an hour or so later, I will get a message from them that I’ve earned special recognition and award for being a top donor. 

I pretty much go my own way these days. Like I’ve always done. I imagine that I’ve always been the interdisciplinarian of life. Combining the muses of a few arts and artists into a perspective about life and the world. Working outside defined boundaries of current things. Like all “artists” or “creators” or “producers” in life.

Many questions about today that are impossible to answer. In a world created mostly by media, it become difficult, if not impossible, to verify the truthfulness presented to us daily in media sounds and images. It is impossible to verify the reality we see in a media created world. We are never given enough clues to find answers. Clues given are meant to lead astray.

Are we about to witness even stranger things? Perhaps even the type of stranger things in the top Netflix streamer Stranger Things. (I’m fan of the program and have watched and written about its episodes and themes from the perspective of symbolism and media. On our Midnight Oil site. Are we entering even stranger times?

A few days ago, my good friend Larry in Sonoma County emailed me a question as to why things were getting “hallucinatory” today. Not just in America, he said. But the entire world. 

As I read it, I couldn’t dismiss this new word of “hallucinatory” for the actions of the current world. A new state of mind he was feeling about things these days. I hadn’t heard it used before in describing this current general state of things in culture. It was a popular word in the 60s and 70s in the LSD psychedelic culture but then slipped out of favor in the 80s more than a decade into the new century. 

In 2018, Michael Pollan released his groundbreaking How to Change Your Mind. While the book is written in the usual Pollan journalistic, exciting, passionate style, I think it will become best known as restarting the psychedelic trend in the 60s association with the word hallucinatory. The drug LSD in particular. The book with the help of many in popular culture like Tim Ferris have funded new research at Johns Hopkins on psychedelics. There is a new market is the stock of psychedelic companies. 

Perhaps my friend Larry captured the best word for defining our current situation in just one word in the word hallucinatory. 

Maybe this was that “strange thing” in the world we have just entered?

Psychology has “left the building” in terms of providing insight about what’s going on today. But being one of the owned disciplines today, it was owned and directed much by the government in definition of academic boundaries.

The current story from a website is about a Lesbian bar that was forced to shut down because it wasn’t woke enough. If we haven’t moved into hallucinatory times, I don’t know a better word to call these times. 

Psychology has “left the building” in terms of providing insight about what’s going on today. But being one of the owned disciplines today, it was owned and directed much by the government in definition of academic boundaries.

The current story from a website is about a Lesbian bar that was forced to shut down because it wasn’t woke enough. If we haven’t moved into hallucinatory times, I don’t know a better word to call these times. 

Doc Marie bar on Instagram at …

https://www.instagram.com/docmaries/

Doc Marie story on Libs of Tik Tok at …

https://www.libsoftiktok.com/p/lesbian-bar-shuts-down-one-week-after?utm_source=email