The Path From Desensitization To Apathy To Destruction

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“Evil thrives on apathy and cannot survive without it.”― Hannah Arendt

If you’re a regular listener to this show I’m about to sound like a broken record.  

However, I need to make sure the new visitors here are aware of the prevailing message on this podcast and blog and that message involves the importance of being able to understand the environment as I’ve already mentioned here in the opening. 

Being able to understand the environment means you and I must always be working to hone our skills of pattern recognition, understanding the motivations of others (particularly with the enemy), and arming ourselves with as much knowledge as possible so that we are capable of achieving a deeper understanding of our environment especially when things get dangerous and intense. 

As you’re well aware the situation in Israel was a complete tragedy and my guess is that it was completely unnecessary as these things usually are when people in positions of power are doing what they are supposed to be doing to prevent such things. However, since the current Biden regime has been in office here in the states that is obviously not the case. 

Regardless, I’m not going to address the Israel situation directly today, but I wanted to use it here in the opening as an example of the consequence of our society as a whole failing to recognize our political and cultural environment. You see over the years we’ve had a drop off and failure in our job description as United States citizens and that job description is what is known as Civic Duty. 

You see it’s my observation that with the unrelenting advancement of technology that every generation of young adults has become less and less capable of recognizing and understanding their environment. 

Look, I enjoy some aspects of technology and obviously use it to create this podcast and blog. However it’s virtually the only way to get a message out to the masses quickly, affordably, and with the ease of others using their agency to share the message among their networks in this day and age. 

Yes, this is obviously a positive, but as I’ve always pointed out we live in an era of information warfare. Due to the reality of the big tech oligarchs controlling the type, flow, and dissemination of information it also impedes generations as people will dangerously succumb to false information throughout a society very quickly if the tech oligarchs and the Administrative State Media (ASM) aggressively push a false, or misleading narrative that catches fire and spreads throughout society. 

This makes combating false narratives much more of an uphill climb which is why I’m constantly working to compel this audience to spread the show links and to share this show with family, friends, and acquaintances because your actions do matter. 

With that being said I want to take a moment here to offer some prayers of strength, comfort, and the hopes that the Israeli people get the situation under control and out of the way of danger looking ahead. I also want to offer the same for all other innocent parties and that they will find their path out of harm's way as fast as possible.

I’ve always found myself being perplexed as to why people do not engage and become more active in the information arena. I don’t know if it has more to do with fear or apathy, but neither one is a good excuse especially if you just take a moment to look at the world around you to see what’s happening. 

Using Israel as an example their citizens were completely caught off guard by that attack and Hamas had stormed into the country allegedly catching Israeli Intelligence off guard. I find that hard to believe as Israeli Intelligence has always been the best in the world when it comes to thwarting the plans of terrorists. 

Regardless, even though I’m extremely skeptical that Israeli Intelligence was caught off guard, let's run with the assumption that they were, just as their citizens were caught off guard to examine our own situation here in the U.S.. 

So concerning our own situation here in the states we have literally had the greatest invasion of illegals flowing into our southern borders as we’ve ever had in our nation’s history. The numbers that have come into our country since Biden has been in office are nearly 4 million and that’s a conservative estimate given that the date of the New York Post article I’m sharing this from was published back in September.  Plus it doesn’t factor in the statistical element that U.S border patrol refers to as gotaways which estimates an additional 1.5 million possible illegals. (Source: New York Post)

Given these overwhelming numbers of people spilling into the country there are currently an estimated 10,000 young male Chinese nationals with ties to the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) that have crossed the border at the point of this report that was released by the Homeland Security Republicans. (Source: Homeland Security Republicans)  Keep in mind that this report was published back in June 2023 and I’ve heard that number has now increased to about 30,000. 

Additionally this doesn’t take into account the numbers that are flowing in from the Middle East. Given what is happening in Israel at the moment that should be very concerning to all of us. 

Desensitization

I just recently read a short story that happens to be a true story and it completely sums up the importance of being able to observe and understand the environment. 

If you’re not quite grasping what I’m talking about when I mention the word environment I don’t mean the environment in terms of the climate, but rather YOUR environment including the surrounding ecosystem that you and your family have to live and operate under every single day of your life. 

This environment is essentially the world you must live in and that environment has steadily become more and more controlled by your government, by technocrats, and oligarchs that want to dictate to you how you and your family should live literally every aspect of your life. In short, this in my view is completely evil. 

Anyways, the story I want to tell you about apparently took place back in 2018 inside a bar in Copenhagen. 

In this bar sat a unique bottle of vodka on a shelf on display among 1200 other bottles of vodka at the bar. However, one day a thief stole this unique bottle of vodka from the bar, but the bottle was found at a nearby construction site unbroken and empty a few days later. 

The amazing thing that the thief apparently failed to notice, or cared too little to notice, was that the bottle was literally made of 6.6 lbs. of gold and silver and it came with a diamond encrusted cap. 

Being the Russo-Baltique vodka this bottle of vodka is considered to be the world’s most expensive vodka bottle with an estimated value hitting around $1.3 million. 

Apparently the bottle was uninsured and was loaned to the bar by a Russian businessman. After recovering the bottle the bar owner vowed to fill the bottle up again with the same vodka that had previously been in the expensive gold and silver bottle and to put it back up in the bar for display. 

After going to the trouble to steal the only bottle out of 1200 other bottles on display, this thief literally took the most expensive and rare collector’s bottle on the planet only to drink the vodka.( Source: Unbelievable Facts)

Now look I’m by no means advocating for being a thief because I believe that is a horribly wrong thing to do, but if someone is going to commit the crime with the risk of facing such consequences you’d think that even a thief would understand their environment enough to recognize a gold and silver plated bottle with a diamond for a cap as more of a steal than a quick buzz for the evening. 

So why did I choose to tell you this story? 

Well aside from it being a bit humorous and true it is also emblematic of the times we’re living in with so many people in society being completely incapable of recognizing certain things that are going on in the world that are completely obvious to me, and probably to you as well if you’re a regular listener to this show. 

However, I’m still amazed at how so many people just don’t get what’s going on in the world. I know that the devil is a great deceiver, but even I’m often left scratching my head with some people wondering how it is that they get through their daily lives without having what seems to me should be a basic skill set of obvious good judgment. 

So what exactly am I talking about? 

Well if you look at the news cycle you’d probably agree that aside from including a raging infection of propaganda that it’s also pumped full of activity on a daily basis. 

I mean in my 46 years of living I’ve never seen the daily news cycle like our current news cycle. It’s a relentless barrage of activity that is full of distraction and noise along with being mixed with what is actually the real storyline that they work to distract you from as they also attempt to direct the preferred narrative of the day. 

I was having a conversation with a friend just the other day about this very thing. We were discussing the situation in Israel and how many of these terrorists are already here in the states due to the fact that we no longer have a southern border. 

By the way, that failure to recognize that we no longer have a southern border along with the failure to recognize that it’s a major problem is one of the big examples I’m referring to when I mentioned I’m left scratching my head with people that don’t recognize this as a major problem. 

Well getting back to the conversation even though this friend is a young man he’s very intelligent and is what I would consider to be a true outlier when looking at the young generation he happens to be a part of today. 

However, he pointed out something that was very interesting in our conversation. He was referencing the overwhelming news cycle and made the point that over time he has become desensitized to it. 

This really got my attention because I completely understood where he was coming from, but then I realized that even though he has a solid understanding of the environment he was also admitting to the fact that he had recently, in a way, become somewhat numb to the events of the day. 

Thankfully he does have enough intellectual curiosity in order to grasp the severity and reality of the situation that we’re all facing here in the states with the many threats that are looming out on the horizon. However, his comment really raised a red flag with me and is the reason and motivation for today’s episode. 

Keeping that in mind in case you weren’t aware, desensitization therapy is a method of exposure therapy that is employed to help people overcome certain severe phobias, anxiety disorders, and fears. 

Essentially there are two ways that this therapy is applied in practice. 

There is In-vitro where the client imagines exposure to the thing that stimulates the phobia. 

The second is In-vivo where the client is actually exposed to the thing that stimulates the phobia. 

The In-vivo method has been proven to be much more effective in terms of the treatment goals of individuals. (Source: Simply Psychology)

The way this is applied is that there is first a hierarchy of anxiety that is established with an individual by rating a series of fear induced scenarios. These scenarios are then rated from what may be seen as causing the lowest level of anxiety to the highest level of anxiety. 

For instance, if one has a fear of spiders the lowest level of anxiety may simply involve the patient merely thinking about a spider. Next, a higher rated fear inducing scenario might involve the patient looking at an actual photo of the spider. The following scenario may involve the patient looking at a real life spider inside a closed box. From here the scenarios continue to increase in intensity and progress until the final stage is reached where the patient allows a live spider to crawl on their arm. 

Now given how this works let’s jump back to the discussion that I had with my friend that talked about being desensitized with the current news cycle. 

With this in mind imagine you had a time machine in 2019 and you could have simply made the leap into the future to right now in 2023. If you did so and you caught a glimpse of the current insanity of the widespread violence, the Communists on the news networks, the Communists on your social media feeds, the destabilizing governments across the world, the collapse of the financial markets, UFOs, etc. you would probably be scared out of your mind and I wouldn’t blame you a bit for feeling that way if you did. 

However, the reality is that you don’t have a time machine, but you’ve already experienced and are currently experiencing all of these anxiety-inducing events on a daily basis right now and then some. Now understanding that reality you might be scared or concerned, or you may be someone who has become numb to the constant barrage of bad news that hits your smartphone and TV every single moment of every single day. 

It’s because of the latter that you aren’t as sensitive to the storylines and events that are taking place right here and now. Granted I’m not minimizing the impact you personally may or may not experience with the overwhelming news cycle of the day. 

However, I am saying that because you didn’t just step out of that time machine from 2019 that you aren’t as impacted by the highest rated fear inducing scenario for that very reason. 

Because neither you, my friend, or myself have had to face the instantaneous shock of our current harsh reality by stepping out of that time machine from 2019, as crazy as this may sound, we were spared the grueling experience of the highest ranking fear induced scenarios hitting us all at once with the barrage of the news cycle. Instead we have been more gradually fed and had to endure a slower steadier escalating dose of harsh reality over the past four years. 

As a result, for many this constant barrage of the news cycle has served to be the equivalent of many individuals developing a response similar to an individual receiving a version of the In-vivo desensitization therapy. 

The 10 Minute Squat, Apathy, and Destruction 

Tom Platz is an iconic American bodybuilder that placed third in the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition back in 1981. He went toe to toe with some of the greatest in that sport with the likes of Lee Haney and Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

I remember when I was in my early 20’s starting out in the fitness industry I was at that time into bodybuilding and powerlifting. 

I remember stumbling across an article with Tom Platz that talked about his infamous 10 minute squat workout. Now this feat is out there, but from what I remember the workout had a certain protocol to follow and it intrigued me to the point that I was crazy enough along with a good friend of mine to attempt it. 

If I can remember correctly the workout involved taking your bodyweight equivalent and loading it up onto a barbell to do back squats. The protocol also said that once the bar was lifted off the rack that the lifter wasn’t supposed to unload the bar from the shoulders until the ten minutes was completed. 

In the process of squatting the lifter could stop, but just couldn’t unload the bar. In other words, the weighted bar would remain on the shoulders even if the lifter had to pause from doing repetitions of squats during the 10 minute duration. In my industry this is what is known as time under tension (TUT).  So in my case at the time I weighed about 195 lbs. so I  loaded the bar with that weight. 

My friend would keep an eye on me as a spotter and there was a third member of this group that held a stopwatch to time the workout for the attempted 10 minutes. 

Neither my friend or myself  had ever attempted anything close to this type of volume at that time and as a young bodybuilder my mind was more focused on the attempt of this insane feat than it was with worrying about the outcome. I blame that on being young and ignorant, but I digress. 

So as I came out of the rack with the weight on my shoulders I began squatting. I did repetition after repetition. I got to 8 reps, then 12 reps, then 15 reps, and I continued to do a few more and I noticed that I was experiencing the most uncomfortable form of physical stress that I had ever encountered in a workout up to that point in my life.  

I was sweating like crazy, my heart was about to pound literally out of my neck, and my legs were trembling so bad that I felt that even if I had stopped right then that they may not ever stop trembling for the rest of my life. 

The load became unbearable as the time under tension lingered on. I realized that I had lost count of my reps and that I didn’t even care because the physical exertion and discomfort were so great my mind couldn’t focus on anything else. 

Finally, I took a couple of struggling steps to place the bar back onto the rack with my friend’s help. As I did my legs gave way and I collapsed to the floor lying flat on my back. I think I might have even briefly blacked out. 

As I eventually got back to my feet and found out my time I was shocked to learn that I had only made it somewhere above the three minute mark, nearly a full seven minutes shy of the ten minutes that the workout had called for. My friend would succumb to a similar fate on his attempt as well. 

You see, being young and inexperienced enough with the likes of a workout of this caliber we didn’t consider building a program to gradually work up to being able to achieve that 10 minute squat workout. We completely ignored the concept of progressive overload and went straight for the mountain top. 

Instead we were anxious and wanted to hurry in order to make the attempt to do the workout so that we could join the ranks of Tom Platz in his famous squat workout. You see we believed we had the knowledge to do so because we had the workout’s protocol. 

However, what we DID NOT have was what squat progression and series of workouts that were involved that Tom used to eventually be able to work his way up to being able to achieve the famous 10 minute squat workout. 

You see, we were anxious to jump at the chance to make history ourselves with Tom’s workout, but we didn’t stop to think about what we should have done which was to temper our excitement and adopt a realistic and intelligent approach to steadily progress our strength and endurance so that we could achieve that 10 minute squat threshold. 

You see that part of planning and action is something that we never even cared to consider. We were totally apathetic in looking at any longer term plan that would have allowed us to build ourselves up in order to conquer that 10 minute threshold. As a result we completely destroyed our legs and we walked around sore for a week unable to do much of anything else. 

By being apathetic to the sacrifice it would take to acquire the necessary understanding and true adaptation for success we instead crumbled and faced the destruction of immense soreness and all out body fatigue. 

The Wrap Up

The reason I shared that story of the 10 minute squat workout experience was to illustrate the importance and danger of being apathetic about the necessary process that is required to achieve success when trying to tackle a problem, or to overcome a challenging obstacle. 

We’re all human and it’s perfectly normal to become more desensitized over time to the necessary processes of actions that are needed in order to overcome difficult challenges. Ah there’s that word desensitized again. 

Because we were numb to the process and overly excited about the destination we were apathetic about doing what needed to be done and as a result we destroyed our legs and failed to complete the workout as it was intended. 

That overwhelming experience of the time under tension proved to be too much for us as we fell short of being prepared prior to what was to come at us with the grueling 10 minute squat. 

You see much like my failed experience with my approach towards the daunting 10 minute squat workout this is no different in my view in how our society has failed its attempt at maintaining a handle on the environment with our responsibilities that are associated with our Civic Duty. 

Because many of us have steadily been desensitized from the consistent trickle of the Crime Syndicate of Narrative our population has developed both an In-vivo like response of desensitization, as well as a segment of the population that has also succumbed to demoralization. 

The reason for today’s article/podcast is to warn those that have become more desensitized of the dangers in allowing that to regress downward to the next step of apathy which will ultimately lead to total destruction. 

Understanding history wasn’t the only thing that taught me this because my legs let me know that with a loud and clear message with the 10 minute squat.

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