In your haste to paint this picture, you gloss over the most interesting part: Alexander is not at war with Diogenes; he does not oppress Diogenes in fear; no, he kowtows before Diogenes, in recognition of a superior aura! He is inspired, not threatened, by Diogenes's indifference to worldly success.
Thus, I raise you a new narrative: the schizos and psychos have always been allies. Kings fund monasteries, and employ court jesters. In tribes, the shaman's dot-connecting ability is revered. It was once known to all that the psychos need the schizos to keep them in tune with reality. Only recently has this relationship broken down, and the psychos declared war on the schizos. And a new question: why? What has changed?
Essentially I think you're totally wrong that the war has been going on since the dawn of time. Since the dawn of time, it's been a symbiotic relationship. The natural thing is for the psychos to be grateful to the schizos for seeing them, and putting them in their place.
There's a paradox at play here. Let's suss it out. It's something like: the psycho is able to be a power-seeking freak - his nature is liberated - when he recognizes a greater power than himself, which the schizo represents. I suppose this is an incarnate manifestation of the core paradox of worship: in surrender, we are free. Even the psycho needs to swear fealty to spiritual reality if he is going to be a good psycho. All psychos know this intuitively; today's psychos hate and persecute the schizos because they don't want to face it.
Pontius Pilate was a highly evolved psycho, and he didn't want to kill Jesus. The religious bureaucrats wanted to kill Jesus.
Ditto in the time of Alexander, the Athenian busybodies didn't care for Diogenes, while Alexander revered him.
I'm repeating myself, but I want to be convincing, because your piece is very good and compelling, and I can only imagine how compelling this idea must be for you, and I am motivated to convince you that it is actually the opposite of the truth.
bro read ahead to like part 5 of this series, parts I haven't been able to See yet, phenomenal comment from a Schizo Warrior <3 thank you sage! This helps a lot, gotta slow roll it to reach the Normies but I am 100% with you
Even today it's probably the normies enacting the bulk of the anti-schizo policies, building the hostile architecture, etc. Plenty of the psychos are waking up, to a certain extent. Your average bureaucrat is more in fear of schizo homeless people than, say, trump, zuck, elon. I'm less sure about this part—but I can imagine us growing towards a return to the natural order within our lifetimes.
There must be at least a third category as well: neither Schizo nor Psycho, but herd, prey. Psychos would not be able to amass the power they have without this third category. (Sorry to state the obvious, but it is something at the forefront of my mind right now, for reasons.)
In the next part of the Schizo/Psycho War we'll look at "Normies", and the ways in which both the Psychos and the Schizos try to pull Normies to their cause.
Much of the War these days revolves around this. Very astute to notice!!
Or it's more like a gradient between these two with pure normie in the middle. The closer to the middle, the more predictable one is. Most of us are in between, and believing that only some other people are manipulable (cause they can't see their own strings, and I can) is to me a sign that I should double-check my own strings instead. It's not vertical: they don't see the strings not because they've stupid, but because the strings are tailored to their consumer persona. What's my consumer persona, then?
Homeless schizo here. Hostile architecture doesn't exist because the we're a direct threat to the psychos. The sad fact is most homeless people turn everything they touch to shit.
I was sleeping on a nice concrete slab under a bridge once--no water, no bugs, a level surface... And covered it nicely with a relatively clean hospital blanket that someone else had stolen. It was the nicest bed I had all summer. It didn't last a day.
When I came back from buying a pack of smokes, someone had thrown the blanket into the mud right next to the slab. Not to sleep there, not to steal the blanket--they ruined my "bed" and threw the clean blanket in the mud.
That's the problem, my friend. I can also tell you from renting rooms at Airbnbs that it's absolutely staggering how many people don't know how to use a toilet. And the amount of destruction one person can cause with a single errant bowel movement is in the thousands of dollars for the owner, and a serious illness risk for everyone else in the house.
So yes, the homeless are a threat, albeit an indirect one. Many homeless people are not minding their own business, they're actively ruining everything in their vicinity. Even a blanket on a concrete slab isn't safe.
So yeah. There's demons. If homeless people acted better on the whole, we'd get a lot more good will from everyone.
Reach out if you want, I've got plenty of stories.
I can kinda relate to this given that, at least for what I can understand, the schizo is not necessarily a homeless dude and the psycho is not always the golden Lamborghini douche, but also the people in-between, more as if both titles are yes related to (or the lack of) economic wealth, but also bonded to a state of mind and self-perception. There is a phrase kinda common in LATAM that has almost reached meme-like state and says "El pobre es pobre porque quiere" (the poor is poor cause they want to) but it's not always stated by the white, completely-unaware-of-the-cost-of-a-kg-of-tortilla dude, but also by the dude that was absolutely ghetto until a few months since he started getting some money on his own that puts him, economically speaking, slightly over the dude that has two part-time jobs and sells food out of the single bedroom/bathroom he calls home but still cannot afford to give more than a few pesos to his son so he can buy something to eat at school. The first one isn't Bateman but an "in-betweener", just like the second it's not homeless but an "in-betweer" , but still.. The first one is Bateman, just like the other is indeed a homeless dude.
well said sage, this War definitely wages on inside every human and not just externally with buildings, as we'll soon discover. Everybody has "two wolves" within them as you said. The recently-out-of-the ghetto dude is what I'd call a "Psycho-adjacent Normie", and is a very real thing. Broke boys who look up to Iman Ghadzi, "temporarily embarassed millionaires", their inner worlds have been hijacked by the Psycho agenda...
This isn’t sound. The schizo/psycho relationship of Deo/Alex has practically nothing to do with the CEO/homeless relationship. And your device for bolstering the argument — the “hostile architecture” case — is crap. What about the spikes that keep birds off ledges? Do psycho CEOs believe pigeons are schizo animals who can see them for who they really are? Do they fear schizo skateboarders but then sleep better at night knowing the ones who can really see them for who they are are no longer doing frontside crooked grinds on the planters in front of their new hedge fund office? And meanwhile, we’re not going to blame Karen for most of this? Lucky for Karen.
Of course you also swap your index for “schizo”. At first it means “people who connect dots at the fringes” and then it’s “literally just homeless people” as if most dot-connectors are homeless or most homeless are dot-connector. This is obviously not the case and you’re (presumably) hoping ppl buy your premise based on the association between some homeless people and the DSM definition of schizophrenia. This allows you to drum up class-warfare affectation which is a popular narrative.
The end result is that this article teaches people to connect dots with affect vibes without any critical consideration of whether those vibes are speaking to something real or not. In other words, it teaches people to BS themselves. This is the current state of the cultural normie psychology.
So why do that? To get views? To play with people’s minds? Basic “psycho” motivations?
Or because you drink your own koolaid and enjoy the feeling of connect dots? Because you like feeling like your “insights” give you a sense of superiority? Basic “schizo” motivations?
You've made some great points! Agreed on the Deo/Alex and CEO/homeless being a bit of a blurry bridge. And certainly not all homeless are mentally ill or schizophrenic. The Psycho/Schizo categories (as i'm using them and I hope will become clearer) definitely don't map *directly* onto these things. Class-warfare affect is definitely a byproduct of the Schizo/Psycho War, but the dichotomy goes beyond class. I'm writing this because it came to me and made me feel hype lol
Oh and we absolutely gonna blame Karen for this. Perhaps the next part about Psycho-adjacent Normies will clear things up on this front! Would love to hear how your thoughts transform as the series develops.
On the human-repellant spikes shit: to me the obvious explanation was that they need to make the *gap* between classes obvious symbolically - and even effectively increase it.
I mean "symbolic" in the full sense, let's call it *design* as you said: in one and the same movement it *attacks* the homeless (if they approach) and it *displays* very visibly *to the ones in-between* on the economic treadmill.
The function is aimed at the homeless, the form is aimed at the homed poors, even the lower-middle class let's say.
Among which there are a lot of schizos without the nothing-to-lose energy of the homeless, who are easier to control by fear. Fear of what? Fear that the rock-bottom image of the homeless sleeping in the streets isn't even a possibility anymore: *now there is nowhere to sleep* for those who fall off the mechanism.
Of course that's not true, but it's a feeling, a vibe. The streets are not a friendly place, they are a place of transit for those whose "friendly"-feeling places are secured by their employers, with spikes.
At the same time, not all homeless are schizos like that, most are probably not.
And we already know that the psychos *need the homeless* (ideally not schizos) because someone has to do the shit jobs for shit pay. I think it was Kropotkin who formulated it: that the system needs extreme poverty as blackmail and could not function without it. Wealthy blackmailers got a lot colder and a lot clearer - that's one message of that architecture.
But what you wrote is another layer of truth, and it's huge. Cultural paradigm shift type huge.
This is really thought-provoking, especially the point about the Psychos needing the homeless. I'm thinking now about the most dirt poor people that are still wrapped up in the Psycho worldview ("one day I'm gonna 'make it!'" bootstraps stuff). Some sections of prisoners would fit in here. Not to mention a discussion of prison labor as the Psychos' reformulation of slavery (though this has been done by more capable folks!). Thank you for this thoughtful comment, lots to mull on :)
@Cuckfucius Here are some quotes from The Conquest of Bread, where I got that idea from:
"Poverty, we have said elsewhere, was the primary cause of wealth. It was poverty that created the first capitalist; because, before accumulating "surplus value," of which we hear so much, men had to be sufficiently destitute to consent to sell their labour, so as not to die of hunger. It was poverty that made capitalists."
"The landlord owes his riches to the poverty of the peasants, and the wealth of the capitalist comes from the same source."
"Take the case of a citizen of the middle class, who somehow or other finds himself in possession of 20,000 pounds. He could, of course, spend his money at the rate of 2,000 pounds a year, a mere bagatelle in these days of fantastic, senseless luxury. But then he would have nothing left at the end of ten years. So, being a "practical person," he prefers to keep his fortune intact, and win for himself a snug little annual income as well."
"This is very easy in our society, for the good reason that the towns and villages swarm with workers who have not the wherewithal to live for a month, or even a fortnight. So our worthy citizen starts a factory. The banks hasten to lend him another 20,000 pounds, especially if he has a reputation for "business ability"; and with this round sum he can command the labour of five hundred hands."
"If all the men and women in the countryside had their daily bread assured, and their daily needs already satisfied, who would work for our capitalist at a wage of half a crown a day, while the commodities one produces in a day sell in the market for a crown or more?"
"Unhappily – we know it all too well – the poor quarters of our towns and the neighbouring villages are full of needy wretches, whose children clamour for bread. So, before the factory is well finished, the workers hasten to offer themselves. Where a hundred are required three hundred besiege the doors, and from the time his mill is started, the owner, if he only has average business capacities, will clear 40 pounds a year out of each mill-hand he employs."
"It is because, having reduced the masses to a point at which they have not the means of subsistence for a month, or even for a week in advance, the few can allow the many to work, only on the condition of themselves receiving the lion's share. It is because these few prevent the remainder of men from producing the things they need, and force them to produce, not the necessaries of life for all, but whatever offers the greatest profits to the monopolists. In this is the substance of all socialism."
"But capital goes wherever there are men, poor enough to be exploited."
Nietzsche was barely known in his time and some of his most famous books today barely sold twelve copies in his lifetime. Those of us who know what the stakes are, are not in it for recognition in our lifetimes. A life of struggle is the rite of passage to impact generations to come.
“It is no mark of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”-J.K.
‘Profoundly sick’ is an understatement. That shit is terminal.
Sage, thank you for this delightful comment!! I'm headed exactly there in part 2 just with van Gogh instead. Will have to include this about Nietzsche as I had no idea. Appreciate you~
I'm only part of the way through this essay but I want to let you know that this is phenomenal work. You could easily turn this into some kind of book series or graphic novel. I'd read it.
Sorry about the effortpost but I really like this schizo/ psycho dichotomy. It seems to me there are two mutually reinforcing parts to the schizo psychology 'the inability to conform' and 'the knowledge that the system is unjust'. The 'inability to conform' is sometimes expressed as what is commonly understood as mental illness (although not all mental illnesses are the inability to conform and the inability to conform does not necessarily express itself as mental illness) it is the inability to find a role in society and to climb the social structure. The suffering of someone who is unable to conform is what often awakens them to 'the knowledge that the system is unjust' which is knowing that in order to climb existing social structures (i.e. those which are psycho controlled) you need to do things which go against what you consider to be moral or at the very least your success cannot conflict with the success of the psychos. This then leads to the inability to conform for the same reason that most of us would find it difficult to kill a child, it is difficult to do things which you know are wrong. Most of us don't want to fuck over our friends and coworkers in order to become a ceo but even working at McDonald's with the knowledge that you are harming the health of both the customer and the natural world is difficult, especially when you consider the purely individual pains of the job: feet hurt, grease burns, humiliation, low pay e.t.c
I also question if Jesus, Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr are the greatest schizo warriors. They might just be the schizos most easily assimilated to the psycho agenda. They all adhere to some extent to the maxim "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's", this is to say they teach to deny the psycho(material) within the schizo(spiritual) and retreat into the internal. But the mental depends on the physical just as the physical depends on the mental. This makes the schizo vulnerable to material threats. If we consider the fact that most homeless people are not sages but drug addicts it makes this clear. If you are a drug addict you are (almost) entirely controlled by the (material) desires of the body (pleasure/pain) to such an extent that you are also spiritually powerless. It is incredibly difficult to write poetry when you are strung out on heroin. If you are spiritually strong enough you can resist these temptations of the body but for most of us this is not realistic. After enough nights sleeping in the cold most of us would be tempted to have a drink to feel a little warmer and the rest follows from there. For this reason I wouldn't see Jesus, Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr as the greatest schizo warriors only the purest. Instead I would see figures like Chuang Tzu, Marx and Tesla as the greatest schizo warriors as they saw the necessary connection between the material and the spiritual. However all these figures have been coopted by various psycho agendas (but to a lesser extent than cuck's three). So perhaps we need to look further for the real greatest schizo warriors as the psychos have hidden them from us. Nevertheless in order to win the war we must acknowledge this duality between the material and spiritual as Cuck has suggested he will do in the next part.
absolutely fascinating effortpost sage, thank you for taking the time! I really like the nuance of J,G,K being perhaps not the most powerful, but simply those who were "allowed" to rise the highest in Psycho society && in a way "pardoned" by the Psychos. That is really interesting. Of course, I believe the war is balanced so a Schizo-optimist might say the Psychos had/have no choice but to "let" some voices rise up like a game of whack-a-mole with too many moles.
Chuang Tzu is a beautiful example! I've been mulling on Marx, as (in my shallow understanding) he was definitely oriented toward material gains for the working class, but also his philosophy (though materially oriented) has strong resonance power.
This leads into the "end goals" for the Psycho and the Schizo, which gets into interesting territory. Psychos are more "convergent" in their end goals, and Schizos are more "divergent". Easy to pin down the former and harder for the latter. But I got some ideas cooking on that matter.
And indeed, in order for a Schizo Warrior to fully blossom, a degree of material security is definitely necessary. The way that some branches of yoga view the yogic path is relevant here and may be discussed. Also the world as a whole tending toward broadly materially secure may become quite the Schizo breeding ground in time..
The Schizo Warriors are among us, and definitely the Schizo-adjacent Normies. Thank you for this comment and much to think about~!
I was pleased to see your article in the newspaper last week. Although I wholeheartedly agree with the general thrust of your argument and await your next installment with great anticipation, nevertheless I would like to complain and share my unsolicited thoughts about some of the finer points in your argument.
First of all, you assume that your reader will have a more favourable impression of Diogenes. This may be true, however that is not evidence of the retrospective superiority of the schizo, but rather evidence that your contemporary reader is more schizo-aligned than psycho-aligned, and thus more likely to favour the schizo. I wonder how you will reconcile this in future installments, if at all.
Secondly, a more theoretical than logical qualm I would like to share is that I disagree with your rather weak characterisation of the internal/immaterial world as the world of "spiritual stuff". I would like to contend that what you mean instead is the world of 'subjective stuff', as opposed to the 'objective stuff' that the pyschos largely control (as you say, schizo's have the ability to make people feel things.) Spirit is rather the point/line/manifold of integration between the external/material and internal/immaterial dyad.
This is an important distinction because otherwise, we would have to presume that the schizo has some dominance in the spiritual realm, which I don't think is true. Rather, the spiritual 'realm' is the battleground or interface wherein psychos and schizos can engage in their war.
At this time I would not like to explain my position any further.
I read your letter with bated breath, and appreciate you taking the time to write. How are the children holding up?
I'd like to address the points you brought up in order:
I do assume the reader will have a more favourable impression of Diogenes. You're correct on a technical level that this speaks more to the quality of my audience than to the fact of the Greeks' "objective" standings. Here I am making a sort of Pascal's Wager, in the sense that *if* my audience is more Schizo-aligned, which I believe they are, then portraying Diogenes as the greater (which we cannot know in reality) will induce a greater level of resonance. However, most importantly, this is just because I personally believe Diogenes has won, and mogs Alexander to this day.
Secondly, a better term might have been "spiritual experience" to denote the nature of this. The experience of Samadhi for Buddhists and Hindus in The Orient, for instance, falls into this category. I also am not yet convinced of any "objective stuff"; not saying it is impossible, it just hasn't stroked me as clear that there's anything truly objective out there.
I will posit that the Schizo has strong dominance in the spiritual realm, and that the Psycho is far from it // out of touch with it due to their obsession with material things. Because one cannot experience the totality of God with their eyes, ears, nose, mouth, or fingers alone.
I am eagerly awaiting correspondence upon the next installment of this publication in the newspaper!
Turning a twitter circlejerk wojack post into an essay is pretty inspiring, good work, even though not all homeless people choose to live this life hahahah it is a bit more complex than that, but I see the vision :p
i am the exact schizo you refer to here. i type to you from the bed of the van that i live in for 7 months as i travel the country fucking bitches and telling the truth online. institutions fear me. i fear nothing. #teamschizo
Now, the psychos have found a way to force us to play their game. Good luck getting anyone to resonate with what you say when you can't promote it without making a load of extra spending money for subscriptions. And if you can't, the other artists--most of whom, these days, are psycho, only wanting popularity and gold, worried for their little footprints, doing their level best to kill the competition at every turn, letting machines create for them. It's not just indies. These cut and dried Archie Bunker Schizoid twats have taken over music--punk bands calling those who aren't members of the status quo pieces of trash. 30 years of screaming at us "Fuck the Man!" has become "Get a job, parasite!" So much for depth. So much for heart. It's all gold. You're shit if you don't believe it...no. I wish there really was a war. I'd be happy to die fighting these assholes.
You've touched on a deep and tragic aspect of the Schizo/Psycho War sage--the rise of "creator culture" and getting paid buckets (but importantly: only a tiny % of the very top) for creative expression has been one of the most effective Psycho operations recently. We have hordes of gen alpha being raised to thing that their internal fruits already belong to the Psychos. In fact, the Psychos have never had such direct access to our Internal Worlds before. It is very unprecedented.
One of the most fascinating dynamics of the war that we'll get into soon is the lopsided way each side fights. Psychos fight with direct aggression (i.e. Slavery), and the biggest Schizo mistake is to try and fight Psychos on Psycho terms. Schizos MUST fight indirectly. Or at least, that is the most effective way. There are notable exceptions which I'm excited to discuss next time.
In your haste to paint this picture, you gloss over the most interesting part: Alexander is not at war with Diogenes; he does not oppress Diogenes in fear; no, he kowtows before Diogenes, in recognition of a superior aura! He is inspired, not threatened, by Diogenes's indifference to worldly success.
Thus, I raise you a new narrative: the schizos and psychos have always been allies. Kings fund monasteries, and employ court jesters. In tribes, the shaman's dot-connecting ability is revered. It was once known to all that the psychos need the schizos to keep them in tune with reality. Only recently has this relationship broken down, and the psychos declared war on the schizos. And a new question: why? What has changed?
Essentially I think you're totally wrong that the war has been going on since the dawn of time. Since the dawn of time, it's been a symbiotic relationship. The natural thing is for the psychos to be grateful to the schizos for seeing them, and putting them in their place.
There's a paradox at play here. Let's suss it out. It's something like: the psycho is able to be a power-seeking freak - his nature is liberated - when he recognizes a greater power than himself, which the schizo represents. I suppose this is an incarnate manifestation of the core paradox of worship: in surrender, we are free. Even the psycho needs to swear fealty to spiritual reality if he is going to be a good psycho. All psychos know this intuitively; today's psychos hate and persecute the schizos because they don't want to face it.
Pontius Pilate was a highly evolved psycho, and he didn't want to kill Jesus. The religious bureaucrats wanted to kill Jesus.
Ditto in the time of Alexander, the Athenian busybodies didn't care for Diogenes, while Alexander revered him.
I'm repeating myself, but I want to be convincing, because your piece is very good and compelling, and I can only imagine how compelling this idea must be for you, and I am motivated to convince you that it is actually the opposite of the truth.
bro read ahead to like part 5 of this series, parts I haven't been able to See yet, phenomenal comment from a Schizo Warrior <3 thank you sage! This helps a lot, gotta slow roll it to reach the Normies but I am 100% with you
Even today it's probably the normies enacting the bulk of the anti-schizo policies, building the hostile architecture, etc. Plenty of the psychos are waking up, to a certain extent. Your average bureaucrat is more in fear of schizo homeless people than, say, trump, zuck, elon. I'm less sure about this part—but I can imagine us growing towards a return to the natural order within our lifetimes.
These are the two character archetypes in Philip k dicks books
There must be at least a third category as well: neither Schizo nor Psycho, but herd, prey. Psychos would not be able to amass the power they have without this third category. (Sorry to state the obvious, but it is something at the forefront of my mind right now, for reasons.)
In the next part of the Schizo/Psycho War we'll look at "Normies", and the ways in which both the Psychos and the Schizos try to pull Normies to their cause.
Much of the War these days revolves around this. Very astute to notice!!
I am a Schizo married to a Normie. Pray for me.
this will be addressed in the next part, but in a nutshell: “Schizo-adjacent Normie” :)
Or it's more like a gradient between these two with pure normie in the middle. The closer to the middle, the more predictable one is. Most of us are in between, and believing that only some other people are manipulable (cause they can't see their own strings, and I can) is to me a sign that I should double-check my own strings instead. It's not vertical: they don't see the strings not because they've stupid, but because the strings are tailored to their consumer persona. What's my consumer persona, then?
Homeless schizo here. Hostile architecture doesn't exist because the we're a direct threat to the psychos. The sad fact is most homeless people turn everything they touch to shit.
I was sleeping on a nice concrete slab under a bridge once--no water, no bugs, a level surface... And covered it nicely with a relatively clean hospital blanket that someone else had stolen. It was the nicest bed I had all summer. It didn't last a day.
When I came back from buying a pack of smokes, someone had thrown the blanket into the mud right next to the slab. Not to sleep there, not to steal the blanket--they ruined my "bed" and threw the clean blanket in the mud.
That's the problem, my friend. I can also tell you from renting rooms at Airbnbs that it's absolutely staggering how many people don't know how to use a toilet. And the amount of destruction one person can cause with a single errant bowel movement is in the thousands of dollars for the owner, and a serious illness risk for everyone else in the house.
So yes, the homeless are a threat, albeit an indirect one. Many homeless people are not minding their own business, they're actively ruining everything in their vicinity. Even a blanket on a concrete slab isn't safe.
So yeah. There's demons. If homeless people acted better on the whole, we'd get a lot more good will from everyone.
Reach out if you want, I've got plenty of stories.
I can kinda relate to this given that, at least for what I can understand, the schizo is not necessarily a homeless dude and the psycho is not always the golden Lamborghini douche, but also the people in-between, more as if both titles are yes related to (or the lack of) economic wealth, but also bonded to a state of mind and self-perception. There is a phrase kinda common in LATAM that has almost reached meme-like state and says "El pobre es pobre porque quiere" (the poor is poor cause they want to) but it's not always stated by the white, completely-unaware-of-the-cost-of-a-kg-of-tortilla dude, but also by the dude that was absolutely ghetto until a few months since he started getting some money on his own that puts him, economically speaking, slightly over the dude that has two part-time jobs and sells food out of the single bedroom/bathroom he calls home but still cannot afford to give more than a few pesos to his son so he can buy something to eat at school. The first one isn't Bateman but an "in-betweener", just like the second it's not homeless but an "in-betweer" , but still.. The first one is Bateman, just like the other is indeed a homeless dude.
well said sage, this War definitely wages on inside every human and not just externally with buildings, as we'll soon discover. Everybody has "two wolves" within them as you said. The recently-out-of-the ghetto dude is what I'd call a "Psycho-adjacent Normie", and is a very real thing. Broke boys who look up to Iman Ghadzi, "temporarily embarassed millionaires", their inner worlds have been hijacked by the Psycho agenda...
This isn’t sound. The schizo/psycho relationship of Deo/Alex has practically nothing to do with the CEO/homeless relationship. And your device for bolstering the argument — the “hostile architecture” case — is crap. What about the spikes that keep birds off ledges? Do psycho CEOs believe pigeons are schizo animals who can see them for who they really are? Do they fear schizo skateboarders but then sleep better at night knowing the ones who can really see them for who they are are no longer doing frontside crooked grinds on the planters in front of their new hedge fund office? And meanwhile, we’re not going to blame Karen for most of this? Lucky for Karen.
Of course you also swap your index for “schizo”. At first it means “people who connect dots at the fringes” and then it’s “literally just homeless people” as if most dot-connectors are homeless or most homeless are dot-connector. This is obviously not the case and you’re (presumably) hoping ppl buy your premise based on the association between some homeless people and the DSM definition of schizophrenia. This allows you to drum up class-warfare affectation which is a popular narrative.
The end result is that this article teaches people to connect dots with affect vibes without any critical consideration of whether those vibes are speaking to something real or not. In other words, it teaches people to BS themselves. This is the current state of the cultural normie psychology.
So why do that? To get views? To play with people’s minds? Basic “psycho” motivations?
Or because you drink your own koolaid and enjoy the feeling of connect dots? Because you like feeling like your “insights” give you a sense of superiority? Basic “schizo” motivations?
Or perhaps a psycho-schizo hybrid?
Or…?
You've made some great points! Agreed on the Deo/Alex and CEO/homeless being a bit of a blurry bridge. And certainly not all homeless are mentally ill or schizophrenic. The Psycho/Schizo categories (as i'm using them and I hope will become clearer) definitely don't map *directly* onto these things. Class-warfare affect is definitely a byproduct of the Schizo/Psycho War, but the dichotomy goes beyond class. I'm writing this because it came to me and made me feel hype lol
Oh and we absolutely gonna blame Karen for this. Perhaps the next part about Psycho-adjacent Normies will clear things up on this front! Would love to hear how your thoughts transform as the series develops.
On the human-repellant spikes shit: to me the obvious explanation was that they need to make the *gap* between classes obvious symbolically - and even effectively increase it.
I mean "symbolic" in the full sense, let's call it *design* as you said: in one and the same movement it *attacks* the homeless (if they approach) and it *displays* very visibly *to the ones in-between* on the economic treadmill.
The function is aimed at the homeless, the form is aimed at the homed poors, even the lower-middle class let's say.
Among which there are a lot of schizos without the nothing-to-lose energy of the homeless, who are easier to control by fear. Fear of what? Fear that the rock-bottom image of the homeless sleeping in the streets isn't even a possibility anymore: *now there is nowhere to sleep* for those who fall off the mechanism.
Of course that's not true, but it's a feeling, a vibe. The streets are not a friendly place, they are a place of transit for those whose "friendly"-feeling places are secured by their employers, with spikes.
At the same time, not all homeless are schizos like that, most are probably not.
And we already know that the psychos *need the homeless* (ideally not schizos) because someone has to do the shit jobs for shit pay. I think it was Kropotkin who formulated it: that the system needs extreme poverty as blackmail and could not function without it. Wealthy blackmailers got a lot colder and a lot clearer - that's one message of that architecture.
But what you wrote is another layer of truth, and it's huge. Cultural paradigm shift type huge.
This is really thought-provoking, especially the point about the Psychos needing the homeless. I'm thinking now about the most dirt poor people that are still wrapped up in the Psycho worldview ("one day I'm gonna 'make it!'" bootstraps stuff). Some sections of prisoners would fit in here. Not to mention a discussion of prison labor as the Psychos' reformulation of slavery (though this has been done by more capable folks!). Thank you for this thoughtful comment, lots to mull on :)
@Cuckfucius Here are some quotes from The Conquest of Bread, where I got that idea from:
"Poverty, we have said elsewhere, was the primary cause of wealth. It was poverty that created the first capitalist; because, before accumulating "surplus value," of which we hear so much, men had to be sufficiently destitute to consent to sell their labour, so as not to die of hunger. It was poverty that made capitalists."
"The landlord owes his riches to the poverty of the peasants, and the wealth of the capitalist comes from the same source."
"Take the case of a citizen of the middle class, who somehow or other finds himself in possession of 20,000 pounds. He could, of course, spend his money at the rate of 2,000 pounds a year, a mere bagatelle in these days of fantastic, senseless luxury. But then he would have nothing left at the end of ten years. So, being a "practical person," he prefers to keep his fortune intact, and win for himself a snug little annual income as well."
"This is very easy in our society, for the good reason that the towns and villages swarm with workers who have not the wherewithal to live for a month, or even a fortnight. So our worthy citizen starts a factory. The banks hasten to lend him another 20,000 pounds, especially if he has a reputation for "business ability"; and with this round sum he can command the labour of five hundred hands."
"If all the men and women in the countryside had their daily bread assured, and their daily needs already satisfied, who would work for our capitalist at a wage of half a crown a day, while the commodities one produces in a day sell in the market for a crown or more?"
"Unhappily – we know it all too well – the poor quarters of our towns and the neighbouring villages are full of needy wretches, whose children clamour for bread. So, before the factory is well finished, the workers hasten to offer themselves. Where a hundred are required three hundred besiege the doors, and from the time his mill is started, the owner, if he only has average business capacities, will clear 40 pounds a year out of each mill-hand he employs."
"It is because, having reduced the masses to a point at which they have not the means of subsistence for a month, or even for a week in advance, the few can allow the many to work, only on the condition of themselves receiving the lion's share. It is because these few prevent the remainder of men from producing the things they need, and force them to produce, not the necessaries of life for all, but whatever offers the greatest profits to the monopolists. In this is the substance of all socialism."
"But capital goes wherever there are men, poor enough to be exploited."
Nietzsche was barely known in his time and some of his most famous books today barely sold twelve copies in his lifetime. Those of us who know what the stakes are, are not in it for recognition in our lifetimes. A life of struggle is the rite of passage to impact generations to come.
“It is no mark of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”-J.K.
‘Profoundly sick’ is an understatement. That shit is terminal.
A+ on the resonance factor my friend.
Sage, thank you for this delightful comment!! I'm headed exactly there in part 2 just with van Gogh instead. Will have to include this about Nietzsche as I had no idea. Appreciate you~
I'm only part of the way through this essay but I want to let you know that this is phenomenal work. You could easily turn this into some kind of book series or graphic novel. I'd read it.
Thank you so much sage <3 I deeply appreciate that!
Sorry about the effortpost but I really like this schizo/ psycho dichotomy. It seems to me there are two mutually reinforcing parts to the schizo psychology 'the inability to conform' and 'the knowledge that the system is unjust'. The 'inability to conform' is sometimes expressed as what is commonly understood as mental illness (although not all mental illnesses are the inability to conform and the inability to conform does not necessarily express itself as mental illness) it is the inability to find a role in society and to climb the social structure. The suffering of someone who is unable to conform is what often awakens them to 'the knowledge that the system is unjust' which is knowing that in order to climb existing social structures (i.e. those which are psycho controlled) you need to do things which go against what you consider to be moral or at the very least your success cannot conflict with the success of the psychos. This then leads to the inability to conform for the same reason that most of us would find it difficult to kill a child, it is difficult to do things which you know are wrong. Most of us don't want to fuck over our friends and coworkers in order to become a ceo but even working at McDonald's with the knowledge that you are harming the health of both the customer and the natural world is difficult, especially when you consider the purely individual pains of the job: feet hurt, grease burns, humiliation, low pay e.t.c
I also question if Jesus, Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr are the greatest schizo warriors. They might just be the schizos most easily assimilated to the psycho agenda. They all adhere to some extent to the maxim "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's", this is to say they teach to deny the psycho(material) within the schizo(spiritual) and retreat into the internal. But the mental depends on the physical just as the physical depends on the mental. This makes the schizo vulnerable to material threats. If we consider the fact that most homeless people are not sages but drug addicts it makes this clear. If you are a drug addict you are (almost) entirely controlled by the (material) desires of the body (pleasure/pain) to such an extent that you are also spiritually powerless. It is incredibly difficult to write poetry when you are strung out on heroin. If you are spiritually strong enough you can resist these temptations of the body but for most of us this is not realistic. After enough nights sleeping in the cold most of us would be tempted to have a drink to feel a little warmer and the rest follows from there. For this reason I wouldn't see Jesus, Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr as the greatest schizo warriors only the purest. Instead I would see figures like Chuang Tzu, Marx and Tesla as the greatest schizo warriors as they saw the necessary connection between the material and the spiritual. However all these figures have been coopted by various psycho agendas (but to a lesser extent than cuck's three). So perhaps we need to look further for the real greatest schizo warriors as the psychos have hidden them from us. Nevertheless in order to win the war we must acknowledge this duality between the material and spiritual as Cuck has suggested he will do in the next part.
absolutely fascinating effortpost sage, thank you for taking the time! I really like the nuance of J,G,K being perhaps not the most powerful, but simply those who were "allowed" to rise the highest in Psycho society && in a way "pardoned" by the Psychos. That is really interesting. Of course, I believe the war is balanced so a Schizo-optimist might say the Psychos had/have no choice but to "let" some voices rise up like a game of whack-a-mole with too many moles.
Chuang Tzu is a beautiful example! I've been mulling on Marx, as (in my shallow understanding) he was definitely oriented toward material gains for the working class, but also his philosophy (though materially oriented) has strong resonance power.
This leads into the "end goals" for the Psycho and the Schizo, which gets into interesting territory. Psychos are more "convergent" in their end goals, and Schizos are more "divergent". Easy to pin down the former and harder for the latter. But I got some ideas cooking on that matter.
And indeed, in order for a Schizo Warrior to fully blossom, a degree of material security is definitely necessary. The way that some branches of yoga view the yogic path is relevant here and may be discussed. Also the world as a whole tending toward broadly materially secure may become quite the Schizo breeding ground in time..
The Schizo Warriors are among us, and definitely the Schizo-adjacent Normies. Thank you for this comment and much to think about~!
“you, the girl reading this, know at least a little about each of these two historical figures.”
Me, a (50-year-old) girl: YES!
Great essay so far. Imma keep reading.
Dear Mr Cuckfucius,
I was pleased to see your article in the newspaper last week. Although I wholeheartedly agree with the general thrust of your argument and await your next installment with great anticipation, nevertheless I would like to complain and share my unsolicited thoughts about some of the finer points in your argument.
First of all, you assume that your reader will have a more favourable impression of Diogenes. This may be true, however that is not evidence of the retrospective superiority of the schizo, but rather evidence that your contemporary reader is more schizo-aligned than psycho-aligned, and thus more likely to favour the schizo. I wonder how you will reconcile this in future installments, if at all.
Secondly, a more theoretical than logical qualm I would like to share is that I disagree with your rather weak characterisation of the internal/immaterial world as the world of "spiritual stuff". I would like to contend that what you mean instead is the world of 'subjective stuff', as opposed to the 'objective stuff' that the pyschos largely control (as you say, schizo's have the ability to make people feel things.) Spirit is rather the point/line/manifold of integration between the external/material and internal/immaterial dyad.
This is an important distinction because otherwise, we would have to presume that the schizo has some dominance in the spiritual realm, which I don't think is true. Rather, the spiritual 'realm' is the battleground or interface wherein psychos and schizos can engage in their war.
At this time I would not like to explain my position any further.
Best regards,
Charlie Westfall
Dear Mr. Westfall,
I read your letter with bated breath, and appreciate you taking the time to write. How are the children holding up?
I'd like to address the points you brought up in order:
I do assume the reader will have a more favourable impression of Diogenes. You're correct on a technical level that this speaks more to the quality of my audience than to the fact of the Greeks' "objective" standings. Here I am making a sort of Pascal's Wager, in the sense that *if* my audience is more Schizo-aligned, which I believe they are, then portraying Diogenes as the greater (which we cannot know in reality) will induce a greater level of resonance. However, most importantly, this is just because I personally believe Diogenes has won, and mogs Alexander to this day.
Secondly, a better term might have been "spiritual experience" to denote the nature of this. The experience of Samadhi for Buddhists and Hindus in The Orient, for instance, falls into this category. I also am not yet convinced of any "objective stuff"; not saying it is impossible, it just hasn't stroked me as clear that there's anything truly objective out there.
I will posit that the Schizo has strong dominance in the spiritual realm, and that the Psycho is far from it // out of touch with it due to their obsession with material things. Because one cannot experience the totality of God with their eyes, ears, nose, mouth, or fingers alone.
I am eagerly awaiting correspondence upon the next installment of this publication in the newspaper!
Finest regards,
Cuckfucius
Turning a twitter circlejerk wojack post into an essay is pretty inspiring, good work, even though not all homeless people choose to live this life hahahah it is a bit more complex than that, but I see the vision :p
Nice read. Reminds me of / similar sociopolitical structure as the gervais principle: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/
i am the exact schizo you refer to here. i type to you from the bed of the van that i live in for 7 months as i travel the country fucking bitches and telling the truth online. institutions fear me. i fear nothing. #teamschizo
Now, the psychos have found a way to force us to play their game. Good luck getting anyone to resonate with what you say when you can't promote it without making a load of extra spending money for subscriptions. And if you can't, the other artists--most of whom, these days, are psycho, only wanting popularity and gold, worried for their little footprints, doing their level best to kill the competition at every turn, letting machines create for them. It's not just indies. These cut and dried Archie Bunker Schizoid twats have taken over music--punk bands calling those who aren't members of the status quo pieces of trash. 30 years of screaming at us "Fuck the Man!" has become "Get a job, parasite!" So much for depth. So much for heart. It's all gold. You're shit if you don't believe it...no. I wish there really was a war. I'd be happy to die fighting these assholes.
You've touched on a deep and tragic aspect of the Schizo/Psycho War sage--the rise of "creator culture" and getting paid buckets (but importantly: only a tiny % of the very top) for creative expression has been one of the most effective Psycho operations recently. We have hordes of gen alpha being raised to thing that their internal fruits already belong to the Psychos. In fact, the Psychos have never had such direct access to our Internal Worlds before. It is very unprecedented.
One of the most fascinating dynamics of the war that we'll get into soon is the lopsided way each side fights. Psychos fight with direct aggression (i.e. Slavery), and the biggest Schizo mistake is to try and fight Psychos on Psycho terms. Schizos MUST fight indirectly. Or at least, that is the most effective way. There are notable exceptions which I'm excited to discuss next time.
With the advent of AI we might see a total psycho victory