Mary Tracy - Widdershins

06/09/2022

31/01/2022

New Essay! Today I'm writing about this pernicious assumption amongst people in rich countries that "things won't change that much".

They don't change much, until they do, but by then it's conveniently too late for governments to do anything.

We need to start demanding more from our governments. But that won't happen so long as we continue to believe, consciously or subconsciously, that any and all government intervention is suspect.

This ties in with what I've been arguing about Covid denialists. They don't oppose "masks" or "vaccines"; they oppose government action, because they hold the belief that all governments are suspect, and cannot be trusted. A belief rooted in the anti-Communist propaganda of the Cold War. This is why Americans seem frozen, half of them saying "something needs to be done" while the other half whines that "governments should not do anything". Only one side is winning.

13/09/2021

I don't think this is my best writing, but here's an essay on the nature of projection, why this is what may be behind Covid denialism, and the World of Woo at large.

(link in comments)

"Basically what happens is:

* People are bugged by something

* They can’t deal with it

* They make up something weird to help them deal

We all project regularly because our culture doesn’t do a good job at teaching us how to “deal”.

The world of spirituality and “woo” should be aware of this… but it isn’t. The Buddha did not talk about anything else (pretty much) but learning to “deal” so you would think we would be experts at it. You would think we would have mastered “projection”.

Yeah… We haven’t. Why? There could be many explanations.

* The healing practices are not as effective on a Western population as they are on the very people who came up with them

* We got a lot more to deal with than other humans at other times

But let’s look at one big reason why the world of woo lends itself to projection.

There's one key problem with any alternative healing modality and no, it's not that "it doesn't work": it's that they are "alternative”.

It only takes a small leap for people to start projecting all kinds of fantasies onto this mysterious, esoteric thing that is "not mainstream". It’s almost inevitable: we inadvertently begin to assume that what isn’t possible in the “mainstream” is possible in the “non mainstream”.

The belief that not doing what the rest of the people do, not believing what they believe, will make one "special", "better" and "superior" is embedded in our culture, because this is how elites operate. The wealthy do believe that they are superior to the rest of us because otherwise they wouldn’t be wealthy.

And the human ego, left unchecked, begins to follow this precise path.

When people cannot talk about their struggles and suffering, they project. They will fixate on some other thing that they *CAN* talk about, and this thing will become a stand-in for the other thing they are can’t talk about."

02/09/2021

I started a new Substack. This is my first essay:

"I’ve been exploring and writing about the world’s “narrative breakdown” for years.

And yet if you had told me 2 years ago that the very institution of medicine would come under fire, I would not have believed you.

One by one the institutions of liberal democracy see their authority collapse in the eyes of the population.

(...)

When the number of mainstream narratives that don’t apply to you personally grows, you will fall off the mainstream story.

When the gap between “what life is supposed to be” and “what life turns out to be” widens, we collapse into a space where nothing makes sense.

And when too many people are inside that space you end up with big trouble for society."

https://marytracy.substack.com/p/meditations-on-covid-denialism-part

18/08/2021

Matthew Remski on Conspiritualists and Anti-vaxxers:

"they did not create their followers’ disillusionment with science or the state, with modernity, or the poisoned chalice of techno-capitalism. They exploited a reasonable disenchantment.

In Virtue Hoarders: the Case Against the Professional Managerial Class, media studies professor Catherine Liu offers a withering takedown of the “PMC”, which John and Barbara Ehrenreich first defined in 1977 as “salaried mental workers who do not own the means of production and whose major function in the social division of labor may be described broadly as the reproduction of capitalist culture and capitalist class relations."

The daily work of institutions, whether corporate or of the state, is performed by well-educated, privileged managers. Their main task is to keep the culture running smoothly, regardless of the direction it’s going in. They administrate and bless this ultimate phase of the American dream. They apply their education and gentility to the management of state functions without ever challenging the premises of the system: how it distributes wealth, how it works to enhance equality, how it treats children, the elderly, the sick, and the incarcerated, and how it might apply brakes to the excesses of imperialism or consumption while the world burns.

Liu proposes that MAGA-type movements are in part reactions to neoliberal management:

'Across the world, ordinary people without college degrees have rejected PMC technocracy in favor of populist authoritarianism because they no longer believe in the dominant neoliberal narrative about austerity and competition. To the majority of non-college-educated people, the PMC increasingly appear as pedantic, hypocritical, and punishing: in authoritarian, science denying conservative leaders, they recognize their own helpless rage and ignorance. In angry demagogues, they find the embodiment of a sovereignty they have been denied.'

If you’ve been half awake for the past decades, it’s obvious that we have efficiently and comfortably managed ourselves and the planet to the brink of collapse. The pandemic drags on. Public health messaging becomes more garbled. We see images on the margins of our feeds: Siberia is on fire.

What does the conspiritualist offer in a landscape of total existential dread? They offer total solutions. Not another COVID update, masking ordinance, or policy tweak. No rearrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic."

When grifters are not entirely wrong, we have work to do.

02/08/2021

Hi!

From TODAY I'm starting "Daily Meditation August". The idea is to meditate every day for a month. Everyone's invited and everything we do counts.

We'll be hanging out in our Facebook group, and if you want to join us, see the link in the comments.

I'll be sharing a few videos / audios so you can begin your own meditation practice, as well as writing tips to make the practice of meditation easier and more enjoyable. And of course, if you have questions, you can ask me there and then.

If you're ready for the challenge, sign up by following the link in the comments.

Sending

01/07/2021

Whoooo would like to join me for this?

750 words a day for the whole month of July.

I need the motivation!

My plan is:

* Write 750 words, no matter what they're about. Rambling is OK, and whining is OK and complaining is OK.

* Absolutely no guilt if I can't reach 750. 500 is also ok, and so is 200.

* Notice what happens when I can't do it, whether that is not being able to start or not being able to keep going. What feelings show up? What subject was I trying to write about?

Let me know if you want to join in! I'll be hanging out in the Wisdom Wonder Workers group :D

29/06/2021

Today I want to share this discipline I learned about: ecopsychology.

It turns out more and more people are awakening to the idea that we cannot be "sane" on a burning planet. Our psyche is wired for health on a healthy ecosystem; when one goes haywire, so does the other.

It's not just that we destroy the natural world because we are mentally unwell, though yeah, this much is obvious. It's that the two are literally intertwined. We cannot separate our psyche from the natural world, not without causing enormous damage to our mental health.

I highly recommend this interview with Vaughan Wilkins (link in comments to fool the Al Gore Rhythm).

"From the psychological trauma of animals held in captivity to the collective trauma of modern techno-industrial society, Wilkins suggests that coming home to our senses may hold the key to unlocking the cage of our shared captivity."

20/05/2021

After what seems like decades of hard work, I can finally share my new web design website! 🥳

Here’s my first business post, on the most important mindset you need, in business and in life (it’s not what you think; in fact, if you guess what it is before reading, I'll give you your money back :P).

http://marytracy.co.uk/blog/mindset/the-most-important-mindset-you-need-to-survive-in-business/

20/05/2021

I’m spontaneously cosplaying as Frida Kahlo! I just discovered these apps that allow you to add make up and remove blemishes and now I’m not so afraid of showing my face on the internet 😁

I was thinking today about how I used to believe that the reason I didn’t have any money but everyone else did was because I had issues and they didn’t. I then tried as many coaching techniques I could get my hands of, all in an attempt to fix myself and stop being so poor. And since none of them worked, the conclusion I arrived at was “I must be broken”. Of course. What else?

Something else was going under the surface, though. The techniques were working, and I was resolving my issues with money, status, wealth, class, etc. How did I know? Because I could *see* other people’s “stuff” around money and status, and how they hadn’t even began to resolve them, and weren’t even aware they had them.

This created horrible cognitive dissonance. All these people have money issues and yet they are making money, gainfully employed, and I’m not??? What gives?!?!?!

To this day I still don’t know what gives.
The more I practice, the less “stuff” I have, and the more I realise everyone else is enslaved to class, money, and its associations with our basic worth as human beings. And yet they hold down jobs, make money, pay the mortgage...
it’s almost as if the 2 aren’t related.

You can have tons of “stuff” around money and still make money. You can resolve lots of “stuff” around money and still remain poor.
There’s a correlation here, but I don’t understand it, and to this day I have not found anyone who can explain it to me.

Know that if you are struggling with money, it may not be because you are unenlightened or have “issues” or whatever. It just might be what your soul has to go through right now, for whatever reason.

If you want to find out more about the coming “I tried mindfulness, but...” workshop, check the comments below.

29/04/2021

~*Playing with Possibility*~

What does it mean? It means working with wanting things, consciously asking for things, planning for things. What is possible for me? And how can I work with what seems impossible right now?

Why do we want to "Play with Possibility", or "wanting things in our lives".

- Courting receptivity. In other words: preparing yourself to receive that thing you want. Making yourself "receptive".

- Learn about my relationship to this thing I want. Why do I want it? Why does it have so much power over me? Is it related to my past? My identity? My future self?

- Investigating my assumptions. Who says it's not possible for me to have it? Am I making assumptions based on old outdated ideas I used to have about how the world works? And do I want to keep these ideas or revise them?

- Shifting into creative thinking. Coming up with ways that this thing could come into my life. Expanding my idea of ways things can happen.

- Coming up with ways to make the "wanting" feel safe. If it doesn't feel safe to want this thing right now (because it's too scary, feels too impossible, feels "conflicted") then how can I make it safe? Could I change my want and want something smaller instead, something symbolic of the bigger thing?

Playing with possibility is hard. Coming to terms with what we want and looking at it, without flinching, is hard.

This is just a sample of the practices we play with on our Facebook Group.

If you want to join, I'll share the link in the comments.

Sending love for now, and gratitude for reading and daring to do this work with me.