By Tessa Lena – Article originally published Tessa Fights Robots.
A deep dive into the belly of the beast, and out.
This story is about four things: marketing, the Great Reset, the way of cutting through crap with a pure heart, and my take on what Mathew Crawford calls chaos agents, etc. I’ve been writing this story in my head for months, and I am very happy to let it out.
Marketing tricks
Which is to say, I do understand very intimately how to structure “content” like a “hook,” and … I consciously don’t do it on my Substack because we are at a critical junction, and all of our branding and statuses will go straight to the toilet (and our bodies, possibly, to the camps) if fascism wins. Now is the worst time to practice self-elevation at the expense of love.
I believe this very strongly, and yes, I want to be “popular” as much as anyone else, and I am grateful to all of you from my heart, big time. At the same time, it is true that I have lived long enough to know that “popularity indicators” are only good when they are not in the way of following your heart. When the two meet, then it’s bliss because then, popularity represents love. Otherwise, it represents a stone on your neck. And the most important thing to me is to be true to my life’s mission of beauty, and to do things right. Which is why I don’t write stories titled, “8 Ways Transhumanists Are Bad,” but instead, write (I hope) deeper philosophical takes.
But I do want to tell you a few things about marketing that I know through studies and observation—so that you, too, can observe. Some of them may be obvious things but I want to really point them out.
In marketing, certain types of ‘content” and emotional hooks are known to work like a charm, almost every time. Work well for what? Work well for collecting “likes,” followers, email addresses, and so on. Not so much for healing the world—but the goal of marketing is not to heal the world, only to create and grow attachment to the brand.
The trick is to create an emotional bond that targets the person’s existing “pain point” and validates his feeling of being mistreated by the villain guys, or being disgusted and terrified by them. Ideally, the target audience would be kept perpetually stuck in that trauma, feeling more and more validated, to the point where trying to heal and move on would be considered a traitor act. The “pain point” becomes the Holy Grail, an object of worship, and central focus of the Sacred Narrative that gets maintained and monetized. (Politicians do that, too.)
It is really quite treacherous philosophically but most marketers don’t think about it that deeply at all, they just do what works. When they do it knowingly, though, it rubs off on their soul, and you can see it in their eyes, like the Picture of Dorian Gray.
A caveat: all of us occasionally scream from pain. If the pain lasts long, we scream for a while. In order to distinguish sincere screaming from marketing tricks, you need to look into the eyes of the person and generally, use your senses to see if the person is screaming sincerely or just cold-heartedly pushing your buttons to hook you onto their thing. Sometimes, it requires great focus to tell the two apart. But if you focus on spiritual clarity, love, and healing, you can usually tell. And then the whole world changes before your eyes. You just don’t see the things the same way.
And of course, it is in our shared nature to desire being loved, popular, financially dignified, protected, and not abused. Being a talented merchant and a charismatic person with a good heart is a gift, and it’s a very good gift. One can do a lot of good from a place of loving success. However, when in a world that is upside down, it is critical to keep one’s eyes on healing and service, and have trust that your good actions will be rewarded by the universe, while keeping your bases secure. When the focus shifts to personal branding at the expense of healing yourself and the world, everything tilts, the balance goes away, and the words that at one point meant good things turn into a sticky mouse trap for hurting souls. I think it’s better to just do what feels right and pray for good outcomes of what you do.
A personal example of things working out when I chose to do what’s right: It so happens that I’ve been writing about Big Tech and transhumanism for some years prior to 2020. (Here’s a story from 2015.) However, until 2020, no one cared. I mean, really, maybe three of my friends cared but that’s it. And of course, there were other people who wrote and spoke about those things for much longer than I did (for example, James Corbett, and a few other brilliant souls whom I love and respect). But I didn’t even know about them at the time (!!!), I was just doing my thing, writing for seemingly my three friends, which I enjoyed because I wrote what I thought. But a part of me was very annoyed that no one cared. Then in April 2020, I opened my mouth (while feeling moderately terrified of a backlash). I think my first Substack was sent to twelve good people or so. Later that year, I wrote my Great Reset for Dummies, which I did purely out of frustration over the fact that so few people saw the trends, I felt like I understood what was going on and wanted to explain… and then suddenly, I really don’t know how, it was published by everyone, new friendships came, and people starting reading what I write, etc. But I was literally doing the same thing I did for years. It’s just that the time was ripe, I guess. And I am so glad I didn’t bend over, and I am not going to bend over now. I have a job to do on this Earth, and I want to do it right.
Going back to marketing, the principle of “hooking” people with “pain points” works for the “mainstream” and the “freedom people” alike. And yes, there are also cold-eyed agents pretending to be caring prophets of freedom, but that’s expected, and that’s a whole other can of worms that I think each needs to figure out on their own.
What stories make a good “hook”?
In my marketing circles, those genres (petitions, open letters, etc.) were also solidly known to be utterly useless (with the capital “U” or even in all caps) for creating “change.” They are typically not done to create change, they just hook and create brand attachment, and they do that very well. (Petitions specifically, with some noble exceptions, are used to primarily collect the email addresses of the people who are aligned with whatever the petition is about, in order to ask them for stuff at a later time).
See, creating “change,” real change, is far more complex than just stirring pain. It’s rewarding in the long-term but in the short-term, it’s mostly tedious work. It requires spiritual and physical efforts, 24/7. It requires being humble. It requires work in the direction of love and free will and against the very principle of domination. It requires wisdom, patience, resilience, happy humility, keeping the eyes on the real joy, real freedom, real love, and real, all-through healing for all sincere hearts, no matter how long the real, total healing may take, and no matter how confused or broken some sincere hearts may be right now. Creating change requires overcoming a whole trainload of centuries-old, accumulated crap and bad habits galore. In fact, as bad as the villains and the tyrants are—and they are bad and responsible for what they do—their dominion would be very short-lived and ineffective if we just refused to be like them in our own lives. If we refused to compromise our soul. If we refused to betray. I am sure of that.
Back to marketing. The hooking technique is all about making the person feel “understood” without making the person do any internal work at all, except relate, feel “validated”, and allow the metaphorical hypnosis in. This works really well. Too well, in fact—and it works in different “markets” and different ideological camps. You just scream about the latest thing the agreed-upon villain did, you accuse, you rage, and the loyalty of traumatized people just pours in. It works, and every not so well-intended individual knows that.
But again, sometimes, the screams are sincere. Sometimes they are from the heart.
And how do we tell? There is no formula. There is a reason why our noses need to be sincere and trained. It is not easy being in the jungle, and jungle is what it is.
The best way I know is to focus on total spiritual clarity, do everything from love, forget about all talking points, make sure not to be arrogant, and rely on help from the higher powers, in a way that makes sense to us from the inside, to guide us through the jungle safely, and with joy.
The genre of the “court house”
Yes, in the freedom community, there are not only egos but also, predictably, spies, and the irony of the situation is that, I think, the spies are not who everyone thinks they are, but that’s an aside. The spies are subject to the same spiritual laws we all are. And there is nothing new under new about the ability of pretenders to (temporarily) mislead. It happens all the time. But this is why we have our senses, and this is why it’s important to look into people’s eyes, and be able to tell light and darkness apart, regardless of the words that come out of their mouth.
An important question
Let us cut right thought the noise and look at our actions and choices from the standpoint of our existential and practical purpose, bypassing the genre of the court house.
What is the Great Reset about, and how do we resist it?
If you have not read my 2020 essay about the Great Reset, you can read it here. It still stands but a lot has happened since., so here are some additional thoughts:
The Great Reset, to my senses, is a majorly unpleasant “pressure point” with an existential purpose of awakening us to our original child-like senses and our relationship with our soul, and also with nature who is not our enemy at all. You can see how Klaus Schwab and his masters are out to control all things nature, including our bodies, that are not his to control. Klaus Schwab and his masters are dark human beings, but they didn’t come up with this crap, this is very old crap.
Nature has never been in conflict with the stunning spiritual beauty that gives us life, that conflict is a fabrication of ancient political minds. By proclaiming that the spiritual task of the man was to “dominate,” the ancient politicians introduced and validated the principle of domination as such, and made it look “divine.” All political states were then built on that. See how neat?!! But divinity is all about love, and the politicians in question just lied and triggered a whole cascade of suffering and havoc for centuries to come. And we are still dealing with what they birthed today, via the Great Reset and many other things. (Hint: Our choices matter, and can be felt for generations to come.)
(To address the popular argument that goes, “But Tessa, what are you talking about, it’s just human nature, and there were wars among indigenous nations, too,” etc. Of course, there were wars among the indigenous nations, too. And of course, competition is a part of life as much as is collaboration is. However, the sensory perception was trained very differently in the olden days. People’s senses were sharper, they were less afraid of going back home to the spirit world, and their wars were more like boys fighting, bleeding noses and all, and less like a total war on all life. And I am sure there were rule breakers, and perhaps as some point the rule breakers took over, which gave birth to corruption, unnecessary cruelty, and the modern civilization as we know it today, but all in all, fighting wars in the spirit of almost playful competition, with respect for the spirit of those you fight, is a very different thing than, I don’t know, nuking Hiroshima or poisoning the entire planet with glyphosate or, let’s say, some novel gene therapy pretending to be vaccines.)
Anyway. The past, we can’t change. It’s 2022, we are here. The principle of domination is now branded as the wretched Great Reset. And I think that this ridiculous Great Reset is here to remind us of how powerful we are when we let go of our talking points and pray from the heart to heal and to win. I think it’s about that.
Unslandering our ancestors
It breaks my heart when people whom I love and respect ascribe all things they don’t like to this made-up concept they sincerely call “darkness of paganism,” something that some lying politicians made up out of thin air centuries ago in order to rob innocent people of their stuff. Today, the lying politicians are similarly demonizing “antivaxxers,” saying that they are a dark, murdering force. It’s the same thing, just from a different time! I am sure of that!! I am really sure of that!! I spent most of my life trying to understand those things, and I am sure of that!!
That lie is what started our entire multi-century journey that has most recently gave us the Great Reset. Klaus Schwab is just another messenger of the urge to control and dominate what was born to roam free and to be loved. He is an evil clown without a doubt, and his masters are so far removed from humanity and so dark that I don’t even want to look into their eyes—but Klaus Schwab is merely tapping into same long-standing tradition of separating people from their life-force and telling them how to do things from the brain and from the written instruction out of his mouth, as opposed to directly from the heart.
See, the nature of the written language itself is wobbly when it comes to mysterious things. When the written language first appeared, people knew very well that outside of simple mechanical things like transaction receipts etc., written words could merely point at knowledge contained outside of the written words. People knew that the depth and the real meaning of things of spiritual nature was always uncaged by any letters, free, residing in other dimensions, only gracing us with friendship, maybe a life-long friendship but a friendship still, that it couldn’t exist in a cage. We can’t own spiritual matters. It can’t be done. And the meaning cannot be directly derived from the written language, language used right merely sends our minds and our hearts on a journey to a place of mystery that our heart already knows, and we need to do the work to connect to again.
And so, what are we doing here?
Our souls, our actual life mystery on this planet, NOT the talking points of any particular set of “correct,” “expert” ways to think or pray.
We are here to reconnect to our child-like senses, to exercise our free will with love and self-respect, to be brave, to do everything from love, and to heal ourselves at last, and then the world. Yes, to heal the world, we need to heal ourselves, no matter how strange it feels under the circumstance. All these words may sound very idealistic to a person who has not yet gone through that. I mean look around, things are kind of dark! But I reassure you, healing and co-creating good things is the entire point of us being here. It really is all about love and joy.
(Which is why, sincere screams are fine and natural under pressure but without eyes on the healing, they can trap us, too. The trick is to scream when we have to, and do it from the heart, let it out, but then ask for help to heal, and keep asking for help to heal until we are fully healed.)
The ‘artificial spirits”
Let us start with a bit of “quantum” stuff. Let us say, there are many dimensions. Some of them we know and can see them with our eyes. Most of them we can’t see. Scientists concur (phew). When we say something is physical, it means that it has originated in the dimensions that we can see, etc. When we say something is spiritual, it means that it has originated from the dimensions we can’t see, the dimensions that are mysterious to us.
An important note: I am not particularly keen on the mechanical language when discussing this, the intellectual way to think about “quantum” things is a giant trap. Approaching it like a child is much more helpful if we want to understand. We, human beings, by nature, are not smart when it comes to those things. It’s impossible to be smart when it comes to those things. We can only understand it a little bit from love. Our ancestors in older cultures knew very well, and the scientists forgot.
And so, when human beings invent ideas that aren’t based on how the world really is, it creates “electrical noise” of sort. The noise it material. It may reside where we can’t see but that noise has some “weight.” When a lot of people become attached to a fantastical thing and put their emotions into it, it creates an “artificial spirit” of sorts. It is kind of like an electrical field (an approximate term), not really alive but kind of, like “synthetic biology” but in a different place. Those artificial spirits then become a force of their own, and because they have no legs in the real world, they become a hungry force that constantly wants to be fed in order to stay “alive.” Their existence explains addiction to dogma, the aggressive feeling with which people react when their “idol” is not properly fed, etc. That aggression is not theirs, although they are responsible for channeling the “ghost.”
Those of us in our natural, relatively healthy state don’t get triggered so much. I can only speak for myself but I don’t get triggered when someone disagrees. You disagree? Fine!! As long as you disagree with love and don’t try to convert me, we are good! it’s a journey! I don’t know your journey, you don’t know mine, and so I respect your right to journey on your terms (as long as you don’t try to steal from me). Cool? Cool.
But when people are hooked onto an “artificial spirit” of any sort—when people make a bond with a foe, they feel very bothered when their “identity” (that is not actually their identity but they think it is) is not fed. The “artificial spirits” needs a lot of energy to stay ‘alive” because all lies energy-consuming to maintain.
Which is why, I believe, spiritual clarity, happy humility, a sense of humor about ourselves, and being grounded in love of the real kind are the best weapons against all tricks.
Agents of chaos, etc.
To conclude, I think that we can’t defeat the Great Reset unless we really focus on doing what’s spiritually right, whether it’s good or bad for our “brand” at any given time. It really is not about brands when fascism is at the gate (and I am being very generous here about the location of fascism in relation to the gate; it is actually waaaay past the gate at this point).
While we are at it, I feel the urge to state my take on Mathew Crawford’s quest for truth. I saw that a few readers took a critical view, and I want to say, “Hold on, hold on, hold on.” I was one of the first people to interview Mathew on DMED. His work comes from a good place.
And even though I have never met Mathew outside of Zoom calls, I consider him a friend, and I believe him to be a good-hearted, sincere man. His quest is not about his brand. True, Mathew has a much rougher battling style than I do, I would probably be a bit (a lot, lol) softer around the edges in my public speech—but I suppose, Mathew fights like a man—which is a genre I don’t internally understand (I am not a biologist, either, so…) All I know is that he comes from a good place, pursues the truth, and offers opportunity for dialogue to the people he is frustrated with.
As far as other people involved, I never talked to them or closely followed their work beyond the main talking points that everyone knows—but I can totally understand why Mathew would be frustrated over the fact that he had cordially offered data-based, solid numbers on DMED, and he had been trying to months to talk to the people “on our side” who are publicly promoting the numbers that are likely incorrect (I trust Mathew’s take on that, and I’ve looked at the original reports… I could be wrong but, based on what I know at this moment, I think Mathew is right)—to no avail. In the end, touting wrong numbers, if that’s what’s going on, undermines our cause. We don’t win this way. So, I support Mathew’s plight, and I hope this is straightened out in a fair way.
Furthermore, just like Mathew, I believe that no matter how tough the times may be, intellectual integrity is a must, and we cannot lower our standards for what “factual truth” means. We all have opinions and ideas. I, for one, have a lot of strong ones. But I believe that we must be very clear about what we “know” and what we “think”— both in our own heads and when we broadcast to the world. In the end, clarity of this kind will pay off much better for us than collecting personal branding prizes from not-yet-fact-based dramatic hooks—unless, of course, one is here confuse, in which case I pray that their nature is exposed, in a safe way for us.
And if sincere mistakes have been made in the course of these messy times by anyone at all, if the intention to right the wrongs is there with the eyes on spiritual truth, love heals all. I don’t know of any person on the actual good side of things whose heart won’t melt and heal, with tremendous love, forgiving sincere mistakes, if the apology is from the heart. It just has to be done right, from the heart of a child who is willing to do the work required to mend what’s been broken, and to heal the wounds.
Tricks against healing, on the other hand, are not allowed in the house of love. Only love and truth.
May it be so.
