Discourse 20.3: Parenting the Hyperreality

Thoughts on Parenting III

“We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.”

-Jean Baudrillard

We are at war.

The battlespace is not some distant land where lack of awareness and apathy can seemingly shield one from its psychological effects, rather this space is within the confines of our own mind. Yet, we not merely fighting against ourselves to overcome our lower nature, we must contend with arrows of light and sound and an unrelenting assault from ordnance of narratives and ballistic conditioning all along the while being immersed in a completely artificial social reality. It is a fight to the death.

Most have already lost, like prisoners who seek no escape because they have failed to realize they are in captivity. Our wardens have unfolded our prison yard in the shape of a hive of glass, visible to all from the outside, but self-reinforcing from the inside. The inmates serve as their own guard, confined more so by the walls in their own minds than any material barrier. Walls that are reinforced by the collective belief structures that spread within the prison population like a self-replicating virus. Mass engineering has expanded colonialization to the last frontier – that of the mind. This is the colony of mass society that we are all born in as citizens - who must find a way to expatriate ourselves.

By luck, by grace… some of us have manage to lift the veil and see the shell games of power and the movements of the beekeeper… the chains attached to our minds have become visible in this new light. Strings on public figures become illuminated. Ostensible motives fall away revealing the naked tyrant, the lover that remains whispering sweet nothings in our ear, the ever-present seduction of returning to the flock led by the bad shepherd Pan.

It is hard standing on the outside victorious, even though our ersatz hope of the false world has been replaced by a higher one. The difficulty for us lies with the resistance against new seductions and false promises from the merchants of this pseudo-environment. However, having tasted the contrast of truth and lies as well as experiencing the movement out of the miasma of mass society into the open seas of individualization – our resistance becomes easier in time as we set our sights upon better, more natural and real horizons.

But what about our children?

Elsewhere I have stated clearly that children are the front line of this war, yet we send them into this battle unprepared. Naturally, when the parents are captured by the unreal- a powerful social contagion- it will be transmitted to the children with ease. When Mom and Dad have bought the hyperreality and its images as their own, using them to form the foundational basis of their social presuppositions- this “wisdom” is given to their children in a self-perpetuating deception. From there, kids will predicate their entire worldview, beliefs, desires, and even their identity… on these manufactured reality tunnels.

Once imprinted in their psyche- often times binding to core memories- the child most often becomes captured for life. For those who have escaped- as of yet there is not a one size fits all blueprint for success. From those I have encountered every story is different. For some it was Vietnam or the Persian Gulf War. For others such as myself it was 9/11, and most recently it was Covid19 that produced a few more unchained minds. While these events serve as massive synchronization rituals for mass society, each inflection point loses a few minds that were previously captured. Although the equation is not balanced, and these “events” tend to galvanize the hive more than weaken it. Meaning, dissenting minds will lose if they only play the game of attrition thinking that a critical mass of prisoners will emerge from Plato’s cave. Unless the apparatus has collapsed, any mass exodus must be understood as engineered… like a migration to a new hive. It seems the most effective strategy is for our young minds to never be oriented with the false paradigm in the first place.

Note: To counter an argument forming in the readers mind- even our most holy scriptures have not escaped the hyperreality- but there is indeed a master blueprint for a victorious life buried in the mystery of faith waiting to be resurrected by those who humbly seek it. But that mystery takes time to actualize once a person is initiated into its existence and is not the initial step on the ladder. If a mind is captured by the unreal- they will view the world through that lens and such mysteries are more than obscured.

While there is an unending supply of parenting books in which a wide spectrum of philosophies are rendered, none will show you the exact path to give your child so they do not become snared in the trappings of this world. Most are written from the perspective of one who is still embedded within the hive anyways, so the overall effectiveness of them will be minimal. This includes the majority of “self- help” books. Even if an exact formula was known, as it is said… one can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. No matter what you do, our children will make mistakes, as they should, but hopefully they learn from them. The experience of optimal stress is necessary, as I have mentioned in previous discourse. However, it is up to us as parents in this modern world to set them on a path where success is possible, for if we start them on a road paved with falsehoods we place victory in the jaws of defeat.

What is the proper way for a parent to raise their child into adulthood in our environment? How do we parent in the hyperreality?

To begin with, I do not claim to be the arbiter of truth on this subject, but I can be a voice in the wilderness for those who wish to know what someone else is doing… for better or worse.

Primarily, our path has been lamplighted by faith as well as intuition- which has become increasingly potent…not to mention very socially predictive as I grow towards what I can best describe as the life of an anarch. Likewise, my wife is my copilot on this path.

As mentioned in previous discourse, the starting block for us was to homeschool our children. While I understand this is not necessarily feasible for everyone, it is hard to expect success for your children when you send them off to the enemy for “education.” (And no... Trump is not “fixing this” even if the Dept. of Education is abolished) Of course sending them to government schooling does not guarantee failure, it does make the job harder. This is a nuanced subject, and my thoughts can be read in Discourse 15. (For my girls- an expanded view with receipts can be found in the unpublished MPS.)

Homeschooling is part of our overall parenting strategy of managing the environment, which means everything they are exposed to from the media to music, as well as peer groups. To be clear, I am not advocating to be helicopter parents or to censor everything that could be damaging. I am suggesting full exposure through a filtered process. I will expand upon this as I move forward.

To begin with, the process of seeing through the hyperreality is so much more than teaching “critical thinking” coupled with the ability to think abstractly. Even public schools do a decent job of this, the criticism of that is a bit misguided. The problem is less with how to think than it is with what to think. Presuppositions of thought architecture build the “how to think” on top of the “what”… so if the “what” involves inherent trust in institutions and existing structures (including manufactured social realities and transvaluated meanings) it makes little difference how “critical” or “abstract” a mind may be. This is because their thought cascades are predicated on falsehoods. These falsehoods eventually can be neurologically hardwired, defended by the subconscious and other psychological protective mechanisms. Such is the case with operant conditioning. This is one of the many ways that our own mind has been weaponized against us.

(I introduced this concept to my children at an early age with the book “A Children’s Story” by James Clavell. This small book establishes why it is important to understand what we believe- which on the surface sounds simple enough)

The overarching challenge is to mold a skeptical individual without making them pessimistic to the point it poisons their soul. Teach them to be optimistic, yet to be realistic and not an idealist. Show them they can be a dreamer with their own goals, but do not project that daydream into their perception of external reality… where the world fits into their ideal of how it should be… even though it objectively is not. (If all you want to see is X… then all you will see is X. This is a cherry picking self-reinforcing phenomenon) While it is ok to have an ideal, I certainly do, we do not need to set ourselves up to where we need to see it manifest in the world prior for us to find validation, inner peace and fulfillment. Too many people will lie to themselves and overlook major issues with their environment so they may achieve that peace (or disconnect) that produces apathy, comfort or blissful intentional ignorance. It is like the meme with the dog sitting at a table in a burning room with the caption “its fine”. On the flip side, others will feel guilty for pursuing such internal peace experienced by a monarchy of one because the world is in such disorder, often thinking they must be one in the same. This also must be avoided by exercising the dichotomy of control.

Teach them that they do not have to feel “fine” with the external world for them to have peace in their heart – nor should they replace the building of the inner peace with that of the poison of apathy- the elixir sold by the demon Acedia. Teach them to see beauty in the world (it is everywhere), including finding it in negative spaces. Sometimes we must look hard for it, or choose to see it, as it is not always as passively observable as watching a sunset or feeling the alchemy produced by a human musician. Teach them to have the eyes to see and the ears to hear the good this world has to offer while also giving them the ability to discern the difference between these things and evil, hate and poor culture. Especially give them the ability to discern the real from the unreal, and this begins by discussing what things mean and not just showing them their sign.

The aforementioned… those are all very fine words, but words do not make a thing so. How is it as parent do I make these things… or try to make these things come to pass?

What my wife and I have done so far appears to be working for our teenage daughters. They are both well adjusted, intelligent, highly skeptical, yet not of a negative disposition. Admittedly, they are both more advanced than I at that age and only time will tell how effective our strategy has been.

General note on the evolution of parenting:

Previous essays in this Discourse 20 series offers more depth. However, it is important to understand how the dynamics of parenting have evolved over the past century and a half. As the speed of technology has increased, each generation of parents has become fundamentally less familiar with the environment of their children, unlike prior to the 20^th century when things were more or less the same. One small example just in my lifetime is the rise of the internet and the ecosystems born from it. This territory, this new medium, is as foreign to members of two generations before me as the new world was allegedly to Europeans. While this virtual medium is indeed not the real world, it has a major impact on our material social reality and a good portion of our society cannot fathom the full extent of that. That alone essentially produces a divergent reality where a large segment of the population exists within a separate tunnel, one that feels, and is, very real to them. While a small example, the point here is that if the parenting generation does not understand something about the offsprings psychosphere (like the internet, social media, et cetera) it becomes impossible for them to teach them how to navigate it. Naturally, this “training” has been progressively delegated to the collective, kids being exposed to the plethora of technological as well as sociocultural novelties outside of the home instead of being shown or explained by the parents.

Between this phenomenon and the Rockefeller public schooling apparatus, which reinforces and normalizes the entire thing – the biggest influence on an individual’s mind (first impressions are huge) is now external to the family. This must be overcome. This means the “what” they think is framed by the external social environment. Of course, it is important to understand not only is that desired by social engineers, but it has also helped diminish the social importance of families in some circles.

If they are not being taught anything at home…are families really that important or even necessary?

Note to my daughters:

Your mother and I were aware that we were going to have that problem when we first decided to have children, and we devised a strategy to combat it. While we did not initially plan on homeschooling, not much of our initial strategy changed, just expanded. However, while we were still dissidents of the leviathan at the time, we were still both mired in the pseudo-environment and could not see the hive. This matters on a fundamental level. If one does not recognize the simulacra, they are part of it. Once we were illuminated on the schemes of power we had to modify our strategy. Society does not just have a few divergent reality tunnels as mentioned in the previous example with the internet, but it has been atomized with many augmented reality games which have created an almost unlimited cascade of manufactured tunnels even below the subgroup level. When we came to understand how meanings can undergo transvaluation, modified or even erased... while the power of the initial image remained, we knew we had to be more aggressive with managing your exposure to the hyperreality. The society of the spectacle is very real, and we did not want you wasting your time believing in a world that never existed. It took us both a long time to crawl out of it. We wanted to give you a head start, the best chance we could give you at real freedom… that of the mind and perhaps your very soul. This can only be found by embracing the real.

Now we understand that we have to raise adults in a world where there aren’t many. In a world where the real has been replaced by the unreal, where we have become a drone culture of performative beasts with hollow chests. In a world where god is dead and we have subverted all of His images. In a way, humans are no longer even real, we have become a demonic parody of ourselves.

This is uncharted territory, and we are explorers. When the time comes for you to raise your own children into adulthood, correct our mistakes but keep pursing the real.

Our base strategy begins with helping them at the skill of faith and pointing the way towards Christ. Through God all things are indeed possible. From there we do our best to help them develop a solid moral and ethical sense. To achieve that, we reveal the world to them as it is, scaled appropriately of course, sans vulgarity. (Not that we avoid the vulgar all together- it is just distilled to a level where their maturity level can handle- a line that we constantly test) We introduce them to the proper lens of discernment by building the scaffolding of concepts as to what the world is, how it operates and who it is that has agency and who does not. As they age, we build from those concepts to complete the picture, but the scaffolding acts as a dragnet for all eventualities where they are exposed to something we have not directly covered. Most importantly, we fight for the development of how they assign value judgments… not with brute force but with honest dialog with the appropriate amount of proper shame or the acknowledgement of respect, honor and virtue. We do not present any image absent its proper meaning so it is established before they encounter it in the wild. This gives them the eyes to see a subverted image because they grok its meaning.

While we certainly want them to form their own passions and preferences, some value judgements are deontological and must be trained by the parents. On the one hand it is important to verbalize these things almost annoyingly often. (A nod to the amusing protests from our oldest) On the other hand, it is more important to hold these things as true in your own life by action and deed.

As C.S. Lewis said; “ In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function.”

We cannot expect our children to believe or adopt our standards if we aren’t willing to hold them ourselves. Our example should not be performative like what is witnessed in the simulacra, but authentic and true. While it is accurate that they can overcome our failures, there is no sense for us to make it harder for them by providing a poor example. They deserve our best, and for a short but pivotal time in their lives we are a reflection of the entire world to them. As the world seeks to condition them into fear, narcissism, materialism and servitude, we can condition them into kindness, humility, strength and fearlessness… the path to individualization. Show them how to assimilate the world by introducing them to it so they are not shaped by the dark grimoire of another. Give them the imagination to see the monster so it does not sneak up on them. Give them the imagination to manifest a victorious life.

Too many parents react to this awful psychosphere by sheltering their children. This leads them to being vulnerable and ill-prepared. While done with good intentions, this is how you serve your children up to the world to feast upon. To us, the pseudo-environment is an obstacle to overcome, for others it is a buffet filled with the blind and exploitable. We must prepare them for battle, both internally and externally. This cannot be achieved by keeping them under your wing, the slings and arrows will eventually find them. Show them how to meet the world head on, so they can respond to it instead of reacting.

Despite how hard we may resist the inevitable change as our children grow to need us less and less, we are in fact raising adults not children. At some point in time, childhood must end. The hyperreality has captured many adults and has deposited them in a perpetual childhood…we must work hard to make sure that our children make it out of theirs. This is how you parent the hyperreality, by arming them with their greatest weapon. Their own Mind.

Afterwards… their path is up to them. Prepare them well for the fight ahead and introduce them to the full armor of God.