Turkey and Albania: Gladio 2.0 — Mcjihad Edition

Now let’s talk about the real world, which almost nobody knows about—a world hidden behind “the reality of the naive.” I have written many posts about Mcjihad and the whole “Clash of Civilizations” bullshit, including these:

Radical Islam is our self-made, imaginary enemy — the myth of the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ and the War on Terror is really a war on you!

The Myth of the “Clash of Civilizations”. Edward Said (Islam, Gramsci and ideology – so how our world is created)

 

I was attacked for defending Muslims by people who live deep in the “reality of the naive,” based on the “Clash of Civilizations” narrative. These people told me how Muslims supposedly teach their children to behead Christians. This imaginary reality is how they control us: they create this “reality of the naive,” under which we make the decisions they want us to make.

"Now that we know how positive reinforcement works, and why negative doesn’t, we can be more deliberate and hence more successful, in our cultural design. We can achieve a sort of control under which the controlled, though they are following a code much more scrupulously than was ever the case under the old system, nevertheless feel free. They are doing what they want to do, not what they are forced to do. That’s the source of the tremendous power of positive reinforcement—there’s no restraint and no revolt. By a careful design, we control not the final behavior, but the inclination to behave—the motives, the desires, the wishes. The curious thing is that in that case the question of freedom never arises."

– B.F. Skinner, Walden Two

“The question of freedom never arises.” To achieve that state, they can’t simply make you do something. No, they need to create conditions — which don’t even have to be real, like this “reality of the naive” — that convinces you to do what they want you to do from the beginning, while you think it is your own choice. If you want to start wars in the Middle East but don’t want major opposition from the population over sending their children to die there for the benefit of our Empire, you simply convince people that those people in the Middle East teach their children to behead Christians, and that it’s either us or them. This way, you can manipulate people without their realizing it, and “the question of freedom never arises,” since they believe they made their own choice based on false information provided to them. I wrote about the same mechanism being used to turn people in Europe against socialism and the state’s social protections in one of my recent posts.

The US Institute Of Peace: Drugs, Riots and the Revolution Machine.

It’s simple conditioning through the environment: I can’t make you do something, but I can create conditions that make you decide to do something I want. "I don’t want you to have a social system. I will create a social system that will benefit outsiders more than your own people. This way*, I create in you a hate toward a system that I (ruling class) don’t like because it cuts into my profits, and this way I am able to make you decide to abolish the system I wanted you to abolish so that I can increase my profits. I didn’t force you to do anything; I simply created a condition in which you did what I wanted you to do all along." All those stupid laws regarding immigrants that benefit them so much — it’s not stupidity, it’s malice, and it serves a purpose.

If I were a capitalist oligarch and I wanted to increase profits by reducing social protections and labor laws that cut into profits, then I would make sure that social protections and laws protect outsiders more than the main part of the population. Not only would I create resentment toward the outsider part of the population, but I would also create resentment toward the system. The population will see that those systems benefit outsiders more than them, so I would make the population think they would be better off without those programs. Instead of eliminating those programs myself to increase my profits, I would create conditions in which the people would ask me to do it.

When you understand this mechanism and the reverse of Hanlon’s razor, which I write about all the time - the idea that it is not stupidity but malice — you can finally begin to understand the real world hidden behind the “reality of the naive” they have created to control us. They do this by creating conditions under which we make the decisions they wanted us to make all along. Now, people will ask why those in power would deliberately take malicious actions that hurt their own populations. The answer is that, in a so-called “democracy,” the population makes the decisions, so you cannot simply tell people what to do or force them to do it. In such a situation, you need to take action — even if those actions are malicious — to create a false “reality of the naive” that makes people choose what you wanted them to choose all along. You need to understand this reality and use it as a lens through which to analyze the world. Through that lens, look at the immigration crises in Europe and the fact that social systems in Europe benefit immigrants more than the native population. You know it is not stupidity but malice, and that they did it to create conditions under which we would make the decisions they wanted us to make. You know they are not stupid, so their decisions are not simply stupid; they have a purpose. If we want to understand what is really happening, our goal should be to determine what decision they wanted us to make under the conditions they created. 

Turkey and Mcjihad

Now let’s turn to the main video attached to this post.

14:02

Aaron Good: What can you say about the role of Turkey now? We've had all these strange intrigues. There was a coup against Erdoğan, it seemed, and Russia sort of intervened — perhaps on the side of Turkey — while the coup seems to have come from CIA neocon, Fethullah Gülen-aligned forces. Where is Turkey today in this big geopolitical cataclysm that we're living through? It seems that the US and the West are in trouble in both Ukraine and Iran, and they can't really win either of these wars in a way that will be advantageous for them. And yet, Turkey is kind of stuck in the middle. They should want to side with the future, which seems to be Eurasia, so how is this deep-seated corruption still a factor in where Turkey places itself?

Sibel Edmonds: Currently, Turkey is going through what I believe is the darkest period in its history. As you know, I exposed Fethullah Gülen around 2004–2005 during my testimonies, and later during my deposition under oath in the Kurician case, involving Fethullah Gülen, Marc Grossman, Turkish and international companies like İhlas Holding, the CIA, and Iran. At the time, people were like, "What the heck is she talking about? Some weird name, Fethullah Gülen — who cares?" And I said, "Listen to me, this is all about Operation Gladio—the shift to Operation Gladio B." They brought in Fethullah Gülen when they officially switched from the original Gladio, in which Turkey played a major role, to Turkey becoming the headquarters of Operation Gladio for the CIA via Fethullah Gülen and al-Qaeda, which later rebranded into ISIS.

In 1997 — actually, it was after 1997 — the CIA brought Fethullah Gülen into the United States. When he first arrived, he was in McLean; he lived less than half a mile from CIA headquarters in Langley. And in the year 2000, as part of Operation Gladio, Fethullah Gülen was at the State Department together with the Xinjiang figure, Yusuf Turani — you know Yusuf Turani, right? This guy who had escaped the region and was in Turkey for these Operation Gladio meetings. Then he was brought into the United States, and at the State Department, Fethullah Gülen, Marc Grossman, and Yusuf Turani held a ceremony. They declared Xinjiang and Uyghurstan to be "East Turkestan," and the ceremony was to recognize Yusuf Turani of the Xinjiang area as the President of East Turkestan. I mean, they were declaring a presidency for a country that doesn't exist—one of China's regions, Xinjiang — in the year 2000, less than six or seven months before 9/11.

And how were all these things connected? Well, I exposed this man because he and Erdoğan were best buddies. Without Fethullah Gülen, Erdoğan wouldn't have become president, and before the presidency, prime minister, nor would his party have succeeded. It was Gülen—Erdoğan was Gülen's protégé.

I have used this video in previous posts, and I have also seen Brian Beletic use it.

You can see all those Mcjihads whose goal is to attack China in the name of Islam and Muhammad.

We will chase the Chinese infidels off [our lands].

You see all those Mcjihads, equipped with modern Western weaponry, coming from Turkey into Syria and saying that their next goal is China. Who the fuck do you think they are working for? It’s our Mcjihad, we create this nonsense and use it. Again it works similar to how they manipulate our population in the West, our Empire didn’t tell those Arabs to do it, instead they created conditions so a “world of the naive” for them which made them decide to do what our Empire wanted. Funny how those so-called Jihads want to attack China instead of Israel and America right? Who are allies of our Empire? Mcjihads who see infidels as animals/Untermensch and Israelis who see Arabs as animals/Untermensch and Ukrainian Nazis who see Russia/Slavs as animals/Untermensch. Why are our allies extremists who see other human beings as animals/Untermensch? Because they are the ones who are willing to kill other human beings which we can use if we created conditions through specially crafted “reality of naive” which will make them make decisions we want them to take. Now if our allies are extremists who see other human beings as animals/Untermensch what makes you think we would not push those values and ideas? If people like these can be used by our Empire and can benefit our Empire then it would be in the interests of our Empire to make sure there are as many of them as possible. All those extremists who see other human beings as animals/Untermensch were made by us by our “Western Capitalist Empire of Evil” about which I am talking about.

Now let’s return to the main video.

24:53

And with all the additional sanctions in 2016 that were placed on Erdoğan, instead of going and finishing this trial, they let it float with these guys. Some of them are in jail; some of them they released and made them informants.

So they showed Erdoğan all the blackmail files because Erdoğan's family had stolen close to $1.5 billion with these illegal weapons transports — not only to one of the countries, which was Ghana, believe it or not, and from Ghana somewhere else. More than that, there is the deal that Erdoğan made with Maduro in Venezuela, because, as you know, we left Afghanistan and heroin dried up again, Aaron.

So what happens with the cocaine stuff and Maduro is that 80% of Latin America's — South America's — cocaine shipment, transport, and dealing is done by the Albanian mafia. Eighty percent of the world's cocaine dealing is controlled by the Albanian mafia. The only country in the region that did not work with the Albanian mafia for cocaine was Maduro's Venezuela. Maduro declared war on the Albanian mafia. I'm going to bring it back; I'm not getting sidetracked — you are going to be like, "What?"

So what happened was, because he declared war on the Albanian mafia, he had some major fallout with Brazil and all those networks that the Albanian mafia used for global, European, and Middle Eastern cocaine consumption. So in 2020, Maduro made a deal with Erdoğan and said, "I will let your mafia — some of whom are also Gladio operatives — take care of the portion of the cocaine trade that is outside the Albanian mafia's control." That was 20% of global cocaine consumption, going through Turkish ships. I don't know if you saw in the news the last three ships they seized. One of them had history's largest bust — 10,000 kilograms, 10 tons of cocaine. The ship was from Turkey, the owner was Turkish, and the crew was Turkish, coming from that area. It got busted off the coast of Spain near the Canary Islands — the largest seizure ever. Who were the operatives? What was the ship? They were all Turkish.

So this is a major deal. And Trump has all this information because Trump just went and grabbed Maduro, and he has all the material on Erdoğan, too. By the way, Jared Kushner is working with the Albanian mafia and Edi Rama —t hus the Sazan Island deal, part of which has to do with the cocaine hub. And they wanted to see Maduro gone because now 100% of the control of cocaine is under the US, Jared Kushner, and the Albanian mafia under Edi Rama. Venezuela was holding 20% of that control, and now it's gone. Nobody is talking about that angle or Turkey's involvement.

So Trump showed Erdoğan this and gave Erdoğan a list of things that he wanted Turkey and Erdoğan to do. Do you know what was number one among the six orders that Erdoğan got from Trump? Number one was reviving and amping up Operation Gladio with Turkey as the headquarters, because during Biden's administration, Operation Gladio went through a semi-dormant period. If you remember, we didn't even have much ISIS activity in Europe or anything. The other order was on Iran.

So I exposed this with my video. It's in English, it's on YouTube, and you can go and see the dates. It got picked up by some international journalists, and then nothing—completely shadowbanned in the US. Well, this is one of the reasons Erdoğan has started going after me, claiming, "This woman is a Fethullah Gülen agent," because one by one, I started exposing Operation Gladio and Trump's orders.

Yes, and further: just a month and a half or two months ago, they busted 50 to 60 Glock automatic guns, in addition to an explosive device, inside a Turkish truck passing through Bulgaria destined for France and Germany. They just set aside the truck, searched it, and found these guns. So I'm keeping an eye on this because Bulgarian newspapers are reporting that the truck is Turkish, the driver is Turkish, and the guns and the explosive were all produced in Turkey. Well, you know, that's my area, so I know the weapons have been going southward from Turkey in the illegal weapons distribution network — going to Syria, going to Iraq, going to Central Asia, going to the east. You put two and two together with Trump's order, and suddenly all these weapons started going northward into Europe — into Serbia, Albania, Poland, Romania, with Germany and France as the final destinations.

A week later, another cache was busted in France: close to 100 guns. They were all Turkish, and the operatives were Turkish. And when they compared the serial numbers of the ones busted in Bulgaria, they were all manufactured by the same company, and the serial numbers were consecutive because they didn't even bother filing away the serial numbers on these automatic and semi-automatic weapons — all going in order, like 24, 25, 26.

Then there was another bust destined for Albania. This was during the protests — Operation Gladio. So the weapons are flowing northward into Europe. The operatives — Gladio operatives — are all Turkish, all operating under Erdoğan's Turkish government per Trump's order on September 25, 2025. And I'm reporting on these things as they happen. These are not made-up things, because a French publication, an online newspaper — Nordic Monitor in Sweden — and then the Bulgarian publications reported on them.

Then came this Poland incident just a few weeks ago. Poland had this building that exploded and caught fire. The very next day, they caught the operatives who set it on fire — two Turkish people — and two days ago, they arrested the third person. They asked German intelligence to interrogate them. They had come from Turkey into Poland — and you know there is dissent in Poland over the Ukraine war — and these Turkish people supposedly told the agents, according to a press conference held a week ago, that Russia had hired them. Even though they are Turkish and came from Turkey, they claimed Russian agents recruited them in Turkey and asked them to engage in blowing up buildings in Europe, starting with Poland. It's nonsense. That would seem to be Operation Gladio.

You can go check the Polish incidents, the Turkish suspects arrested, and the German intelligence press release. There is nothing in the US media, nothing in the US alternative media, and nothing within these influencer spheres. This isn't top-secret stuff  — you can find it in English published by a Swedish outlet. I am completely shadowbanned; I'm not even able to get in touch with people I knew from before who followed me because they have rendered me completely invisible. All these things are happening, and nobody has heard of any of them in the United States other than my handful of followers on Patreon, because I'm reporting on these developments as he delivers on them. We are going to see more operations in Europe — in France, Serbia, Albania, Poland, Romania, and Germany—and the weapons and these incidents are going to be blamed on the protesters. These are all setups, Aaron, and it's Operation Gladio. And Trump gave the order for this in September 2025, Aaron.

If you have followed my posts, you know very well what Operation Gladio was. The most sickening thing for me was discovering that:

CIA received about 5% of the total Marshall Plan funds (roughly $685 million over several years)

So, basically, our American friends lent us Europeans money that they later used through Operation Gladio to literally kill European citizens. We Europeans paid for the bombs that our American allies and friends used to kill our fellow Europeans. I already posted this video and many more videos from this YouTube channel named “Eyes Wide Open” which I cannot recommend highly enough.

Although the Second World War was over in 1945, the American, British, and European elites continued to fight a covert war to keep Western Europe under capitalist control and to secure allies in the growing Cold War. This effort was consolidated under the joint NATO and CIA operation titled Gladio. Originally established as a stay-behind network of ardent right-wing fighters to repel a Soviet invasion, Gladio quickly morphed into an underground army of vanguard warriors intent on crushing any left-wing activity in the Western sphere. This ominous operation — named after the Roman short sword of the same name — has continued to baffle researchers and skeptics for the past three decades since its declassification in the early nineties. Although we still remain in the dark about many aspects of Gladio, we do know that the story largely begins in postwar Italy in 1948, with the rigging of Italy's first democratic elections since its fall to fascism in the twenties.

Folks, today we begin in earnest to untangle the decades-long Operation Gladio by looking at its origins in Italy, its ties to the Vatican, and the establishment of confidential pan-European forums to administer this shadowy and dangerous web. Most importantly, we will be tracking the fingerprints of the U.S. intelligence apparatus — the CIA — which is all over this tangled and intricate web.

Today, I plan on breaking from my usual format slightly. This will be Part 1 of a new three-part miniseries within The History of the CIA, exploring the origins of Gladio, the transatlantic organized crime networks that permeated this operation, the spooks and deep-state weirdos who helped organize the whole gambit, and the significance of these postwar operations to our larger narrative.

For those so-called “intellectuals” who don’t believe in so-called “conspiracy theories” and don’t consider YouTube videos serious sources of information, here is a BBC documentary from 1992. 

This is for people who need to read something in so-called “respectable” sources like the WSJ, the NYT, or the Guardian before they believe it. If an unfamiliar YouTube channel is not a so-called “respectable” source of information, perhaps they will take it seriously when they hear the BBC talking about it.

Now, with Operation Gladio, let’s return to the Skinner quote with which I started

By a careful design, we control not the final behavior, but the inclination to behave — the motives, the desires, the wishes. The curious thing is that in that case the question of freedom never arises.

We cannot simply tell Europeans to hate and fear socialism and communism. We need to create conditions, real or otherwise, under which Europeans will decide for themselves that they hate and fear socialism and communism. In other words, we need to create a “reality of the naive” that conditions people to think the way we want them to. To achieve that, we used organized crime and Nazis in Europe because both are willing to kill other people. So America used criminals and Nazis to kill European citizens, using money that it had made us Europeans borrow from it. That’s the most disgusting factor for me, the fact we Europeans were made to pay for bombs which killed our own European citizens.

Now Sibel Edmonds talks about Operation Gladio B being used against Europeans through Turkey. She talks about an explosion in my country with some Turkish people being caught and investigated by German intelligence concluding that Russia was behind it. They are using Turkey to attack Europe just like they use criminals and Nazis to attack Europeans and just like they blamed attacks on Socialists and Communist during original Operation Gladio now they blame it on Russia and Iran. They carefully craft conditions under which we make the decisions they want us to make. They are simply conditioning us, as always. They didn’t tell us to hate and fear Socialist and communism or Muslims and Islam instead they conditioned us to do so by creating “reality of the naive”. So today they will not tell us to hate and fear Russia, Iran and China and instead they will try to condition us by carefully crafting fake “reality of naive” which makes us do what they want us to do.

How is all this possible? As I wrote in my recent post, it is all thanks to Hanlon’s razor, which works like a cancer on human minds when combined with human hubris. After all those things I am writing are not possible right? Because Hanlon’s razor says it’s stupidity and no malice and such conspiracy cannot be possible. Because you are so much smarter than those people who own and rule our world, right? They are simply stupid and make stupid decisions which someone so smart as you would never take right? Because you simple “Prole” are so much better informed than those people who own and control our world, right?

Now I want to share one of the most important excerpts from Michael Parenti.

12:33

Now, if people cannot challenge the validity of the evidence you present, they have fallback positions. I remember the Moscow intellectuals back when there was a Soviet Union. Back in the 1980s, there was a very interesting article written, of all places, in the National Review, a conservative right-wing magazine, where the author described the Moscow intellectuals as loving Ronald Reagan, Marlboro cigarettes, and the Confederacy during the Civil War. And that, I thought, was a very accurate description given the ones I met when I was there. They hated socialism.

A friend of mine had the same experience. This happened to be when she was in Leningrad with the Soviet intellectuals there, and one guy said to her, "The poorest people in your country live better than I do." Now, here's a guy who had gone to Moscow University, he spoke fluent English, he had a small but comfortable apartment, he had a wall full of books, he never missed a meal in his life, but he was convinced that the poorest in your country, in America... "America," and when I used to hear them talk, their eyes would begin to sparkle: "America, America."

And she said, "Well, that's not true. We have people in our country who sleep in doorways and pick through garbage cans and such." And you know what they said to her? They said, "That's all right, you don't have to lie to us anymore." And she said, "No, really," and she cited some statistics and was talking about this.

What's the fallback? The first fallback position: "Where did you get those figures from?" She said, "From the federal government, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau. It's public knowledge." So, their second fallback position was to say, "Oh, those are just the Blacks. The Blacks, they're lazy and stupid, and so yeah, they're poor." Yeah, that's a rhetorical fallback position. I've given that a technical term, a descriptive term, I forgot what it was... oh yes, racism. I call that racism.

So it so happened that she had a copy of Mother Jones with her, and there was a special photo feature in that issue of the poor of Appalachia. Thirty years after Kennedy's War on Poverty in Appalachia, these people were as poor as ever, and there were pictures of their destitution. So she brought this out. She said, "Look, Appalachia, they're all white, you know, 97, 99%, sort of like Seattle." And she said, "Look at this." And they looked at the pictures, and they had another fallback position, which was what? "Oh, so there are a few white people who are poor out in the country, and that's so unusual they made a whole article with photographs about them."

You see, beliefs are not surrendered; beliefs are rather frighteningly impervious to evidence sometimes. The Soviet intellectuals believed America was a capitalist paradise. They knew—by the way, when I spoke to the ones in Moscow, they knew so much more about America than I did. I was handicapped by experience and reality, which, as you know, is a messy, multi-dimensional thing. They had all the certainty of inexperience.

The believers in the capitalist paradise were a mirror image of the believers of this, those who believed that the Soviet Union was a workers' paradise. There were many people whom I knew, people in the party and fellow travelers and such, who had heard so much negative, I mean, everything about these communist countries was bad, there wasn't ever a single positive thing ever said, so their reaction was to reject every single criticism.

The girlfriend I had back then, too, in the '80s, she was a party member. I remember I would raise questions, you see, not from a position of hostility, but from a position of, "I'd like this system to work a lot better and be more viable," and say, "Look, there are real problems here." And we would end up really banging heads together; it was just impossible to have a rational discussion and introduce things.

I can think of another lady I know, now, that was in New York where my girlfriend and I lived, it doesn't matter, this was another friend of mine, a "red diaper" baby, third-generation Communist Party. She says to me, now this was a woman in her late 40s, an experienced woman, she says, "There is no prostitution in the Soviet Union." I said, "Esther, what are you talking about? This is a country of, what at that time, 340 million people, wars, scarcities, all the imperfections of human beings and self-serving exploitations and motives. Are you telling me in this whole country there's no prostitution?" She says, "There's no prostitution."

A year later, I headed a delegation to the Soviet Union made up of economists and political scientists, and I remember our guide in Moscow. She said, again, she was a woman about late 40s, early 50s, she said, "There is no prostitution in my country." You see, now we're trying to explore the nature of belief here, how people believe. And I said to her, "You know, there may not be any prostitution in your country, but there sure is a hell of a lot of it in our hotel right here downstairs." And you know what she said without missing a beat? God damn it—no, she didn't say that, I just said it. That's okay, it's okay, sit down. Without missing a beat, she said, "Yes, well, I want you to know all those girls have full-time jobs during the day." Talk about a fallback position.

So, people, if you're engaged in political discourse and political struggle, as I am all the time, and political communication, you realize that you're not doing politics — you're doing religion. It's religion you're dealing with, because you're dealing with belief, and it's a rough deal. I mean, it's with good reason that we use words like "political dogma" and "sectarian." These are religious terms, you...

Now you can see the same religiosity in political views. Just like back then you had red diapers for American women and people supporting Russia. People hear so much nonsense about Russia starting to overexaggerate on the other side. People say Russia could beat the whole NATO or even only the European part of NATO without any trouble or talking about casualties are like that woman saying there is no prostitution in the Soviet Union. Recently I saw Brian Beletic unnecessarily getting angry and responding to people like that. I always say my views are very similar to his and then you will be criticized for saying you should not underestimate the West or what I call “Our Western Capitalist Empire of Evil”. For example, when I wrote a post about casualties in the Ukraine war saying it’s 1 Russian to 1 Ukrainian or 1.2 Russian to 1 Ukrainian then I got criticized. While at the same time I was pointing out Russia is in the offensive and attackers take casualties 3 attackers to 1 defender normally and since advance of drones this ratio in my opinion should be higher so let’s say 5 attackers to 1 defender. So if casualties are close to 1:1 with Russia constantly attacking it means Russia is performing around 5 times better than Ukraine. Meanwhile when Ukraine attacks, casualties are from 5 Ukrainian to 1 Russian up to over 10 Ukrainian to 1 Russian. Those attacks are a waste of people but they need to keep doing it to make people think they still won. Now when I say it people believe Western “reality is naive” so our authorities sources like NYT, WSJ or Guardian will criticize me and people supporting BRICS and Russia will criticize me. Just like that Russian intellectual and American Communist woman in Michael Parenti's story. Both sides want to hear how their side is winning and are perfect and how everything is going good.

That’s why I don’t expect many people to read what I write. If I cared about how widely my work was received, I would have to pick a side and push a nonsense “reality of the naive” onto people. Like I said before, a good way to start understanding it is through history. This lecture by Michael Parenti shows us that what is happening now is nothing new; it has happened before. My goal was to identify patterns throughout history to understand how this works. How can we live in a world with the most population believing in a fake world, a “world of the naive”.

There is a good short lecture that touches on this subject.

While there are numerous forces behind the tendency to conform, some have suggested that the fear of death is one of the most influential factors in this respect. In his Pulitzer prize-winning book The Denial of Death Ernest Becker describes this existential fear as follows:

“This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, and excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression – and with all this yet to die. It seems like a hoax. . . What kind of deity would create such complex and fancy worm food?” (Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death)

According to Becker we cannot face up to the reality of our death without experiencing debilitating anxiety and so we attempt to quell this anxiety by “denying death”. Denial of death is achieved by what Becker called striving for the heroic, or in other words attaching ourselves to a purpose, cause, or creation which we believe will outlive our physical existence, thus granting us a form of immortality. There are two main paths to heroism, the path of the nonconformist, or what Becker calls cosmic or personal heroism, and the path of the conformist, which he calls cultural heroism.

The path of the nonconformist consists of cultivating one’s unique potential and using one’s talents and skills in the creation of something novel and meaningful.

“What is one’s true talent, his secret gift, his authentic vocation?” writes Becker “In what way is one truly unique, and how can he express this uniqueness, give it form, dedicate it to something beyond himself?” (Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death)

In creating something which will in a sense live on past one’s physical existence and which is the expression of one’s uniqueness, be it a work of art, a scientific discovery, or an entrepreneurial endeavor, one’s life, according to Becker, will be characterized by a form of personal heroism. This personal heroism helps one deny death in a manner conducive to psychological health and vitality.

However, by the time most of us reach adulthood we have been inculcated to view our uniqueness not as something to be cultivated, but as something to be shunned. Very few people view themselves as capable of bringing forth anything of significance into the world and so are incapable of engaging in personal heroism. For such people, an alternative route to the denial of death is required, or else they run the risk of being overwhelmed by anxiety and nihilistic despair. This alternative is found through conformity and the adoption of pre-determined social roles, or what Becker calls cultural heroism. While this path limits the expression of one’s uniqueness and leads to a life dominated by repetition and routine, it provides people with security and comfort, and makes them feel as if they are participating in something significant. Or as Becker explains:

“Like many prisoners they are comfortable in their limited and protected routines, and the idea of a parole into the wide world of chance, accident, and choice terrifies them. In the prison of one’s character one can pretend and feel that he is somebody, that the world is manageable, that there is a reason for one’s life, a ready justification for one’s action. To live automatically and uncritically is to be assured of at least a minimum share of the programmed cultural heroics . . .”(Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death)

Becker makes the interesting claim that cultural heroism is effective due to the religious function that modern secular societies play in the conformist’s life. In other words, just as Christianity in the Middle Ages provided those in the West with a meaning to their existence and a set of values by which to shape their lives, in our more secular world one’s society now plays such a role. As Becker explains:

“Society itself is a codified hero system, which means that society everywhere is a living myth of the significance of human life, a defiant creation of meaning. Every society thus is a “religion” whether it thinks so or not: Soviet “religion” and Maoist “religion” are as truly religious as are scientific and consumer “religion,” no matter how much they may try to disguise themselves by omitting religious and spiritual ideas from their lives.” (Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death)

Just like any religion, the religion of one’s society becomes easier to believe in, the greater the number of people to whom worship it. And this is why the nonconformists are so feared by the masses, the unique individuals plant seeds of doubt into the minds of the conformists regarding the significance of their social roles, and thus the significance of their very existence. Therefore, the masses actively discourage the cultivation of one’s uniqueness, ridicule and ostracize nonconformists, and try and pressure them back to conformity – something they must do given that their existential significance is on the line.

From my research, it really does seem to be connected to death and meaning. In today's society you either have people not thinking about death or religious people which is problematic in my opinion. I am against religion because it can also be used to control us. We should have faith not religion, religion is a form of cultural heroism and just like religion of society it can be used to manipulate us. I already used that clip before with regards to my position on religion.

Is that what God does? He helps? Tell me, why didn't God help my innocent friend who died for no reason while the guilty ran free? Okay. Fine. Forget the one offs. How about the countless wars declared in his name? Okay. Fine. Let's skip the random, meaningless murder for a second, shall we? How about the racist, sexist, phobia soup we've all been drowning in because of him? And I'm not just talking about Jesus. I'm talking about all organized religion. Exclusive groups created to manage control. A dealer getting people hooked on the drug of hope. His followers, nothing but addicts who want their hit of bullshit to keep their dopamine of ignorance. Addicts. Afraid to believe the truth. That there's no order. There's no power. That all religions are just metastasizing mind worms, meant to divide us so it's easier to rule us by the charlatans that wanna run us. All we are to them are paying fanboys of their poorly-written sci-fi franchise. If I don't listen to my imaginary friend, why the fuck should I listen to yours? People think their worship's some key to happiness. That's just how he owns you. Even I'm not crazy enough to believe that distortion of reality. So fuck God. He's not a good enough scapegoat for me.

This “drug of hope”, this “key to happiness” is Ernest Becker’s denial of death through cultural heroism. This “metastasizing mind worms” is “cultural heroism” which stops you from reaching personal heroism by growing up as a person. You can reach personal heroism through faith and understand God but not by religion. If you believe in the Bible you are fanboy of their poorly-written sci-fi franchise but if you ponder and try to understand God and don’t take the Bible as word of God you are growing up you are pursuing personal heroism instead of accepting Bible as word of God because then you simply conform and you are taking part in cultural heroism. 

I highly recommend the work of Arthur Schopenhauer and his concept of the “will to live.” You can then build on it with Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the “will to power.” Although I disagree with Nietzsche and believe he chose the wrong path, there are still important lessons in his work. I would then recommend Viktor Frankl and his concept of the “will to meaning.” All those things are connected to Freud’s ego concept and Carl Jung shadow concept.

I hate that there is no comment section, because I would like to discuss these concepts with people. I can guide people toward finding themselves and growing, but I cannot give you the answers or provide you with meaning or an answer to the meaning of life. That is something you need to discover for yourself in order to grow. I quote Friedrich Nietzsche:

No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don’t ask, walk!”

― Friedrich Nietzsche, Schopenhauer as Educator

So don’t ask, just walk!

Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow

Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead

Walk beside me… just be my friend

― Albert Camus

Thank you to everyone who stayed with me until the end of this post. And, as always…

 

“Knowledge will make you free.”

— Socrates

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“Knowledge isn’t free. You have to pay attention.”

— Richard P. Feynman

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“Freedom is not free; you need to pay attention.”

— Grzegorz Ochman

 

Please pay attention, or we will all be screwed. God bless you all.

 

“For if anything in the world is desirable, so desirable that even the dull and uneducated herd in its more reflective moments would value it more than silver and gold, it is that a ray of light should fall on the obscurity of our existence, and that we should obtain some information about this enigmatical life of ours, in which nothing is clear except its misery and vanity.”

– Arthur Schopenhauer The World as Will and Representation

 

“Whatever happened? A breach in the very unity of life, a biological paradox, an abomination, an absurdity, an exaggeration of disastrous nature. Life had overshot its target, blowing itself apart. A species had been armed too heavily – by spirit made almighty without, but equally a menace to its own well-being…

 

So there he stands with his visions, betrayed by the universe, in wonder and fear. The beast knew fear as well, in thunderstorms and on the lion’s claw. But man became fearful of life itself – indeed, of his very being” 

– Zapffe

 

“Cultural history, as well as observation of ourselves and others, allow the following answer: Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness.”

–Zapffe

 

“The intensities of my feeling make me shudder and laugh; several times I could not leave the room for the ridiculous reason that my eyes were inflamed – from what? Each time, I had wept too much on my previous day’s walk, not sentimental tears but tears of joy; I sang and talked nonsense, filled with a glimpse of things which put me in advance of all other men.” 

– Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche