The Eternal Sunshine of the Dots-Connected Mind

On the unbelievable and surprising power of so-called "Negative" thinking...

Let’s suppose you’ve been following some of the false narratives foisted on us by government officials and corporate legacy media and suppose, further, that you’ve become convinced that— omigosh— they’re LYING to us. What happens next?

Unless your superpowers include the neurodiversity to not care what other people think, you will naturally reach out to friends or family members for validation— “Hey, I’ve been watching the news coverage change over the past several months and, maybe it’s just me, but I’m really starting to suspect they’ve been lying to us about X. What do you think?”

If you’re very lucky, they might say something like “What took you so long? Welcome to the club.” If you’re slightly less lucky, you might get “I don’t know, but let’s dig into that deeper and research it together”. But, more often than we might wish, it seems the response we hear instead is more along the lines of “Well, you can’t believe everything you read on the internet. Why are you getting into such dark, negative thinking? Is something wrong at home or work? Are you feeling unwell or depressed? Maybe you should make an appointment and get evaluated.”

And there it is. The brick wall of the “spotless mind”.

Such responses should not be taken at face value. It’s important to notice what isn’t said. This type of response is not curiosity as in “Wow, I hadn’t thought of that, tell me more about what convinced you”, it’s an implicit claim to know that you’re either wrong outright or you’re struggling with a question the answer to which they believe is unknowable. It’s an implicit admission that they’ve already thought about X and they’re committed to deflecting the conversation away from X and gaslighting you with Norman Vincent Peale tripe about positive thinking¹.

I’ve written at greater length about a variety of psychological dynamics that seem like brick walls before, but today I’m going to focus simply on how backwards it is to believe our suspicions about corruption in high places are inherently “dark” or “negative”.

To be sure, no one wants to live in a society where a significant number of people in positions of power are corrupt, but, if that’s the reality, it’s much better to know it and deal with it than to continue on in the delusion that everyone is honest and fair-dealing (inviting countless painful disappointments).

Our experience of life is colored by our thoughts so it is natural to want to dwell on ideas that feed our happiness and avoid ideas that bring us down— “bummers” and “buzzkills”. But there’s a big difference between simply emphasizing the positive thoughts in the garden of our mind while still acknowledging negative aspects of reality and the more extreme approach of denying the truth of unpleasant aspects of reality altogether. To effectively weed the garden of our mind, we have to see the weeds and deal with them. When we refuse to even see the weeds, they take over.

Let’s consider some examples. Imagine, if you will…

Cannabis and Cancer

Many people have shared experiences where they claim to have recovered from cancer using cannabis oil (aka “Rick Simpson Oil”, “RSO”, “Phoenix Tears”). Some of the first promising research about cannabis being effective against cancer cells in vitro was published as early as 1974. If it’s true that cannabis is a safe and effective treatment for diverse forms of cancer, why haven’t we heard about it before? Could big pharma, government health agencies and the media all be sitting on this story? That would be horrible and, dare I say, an extremely negative state of affairs to become aware of.

If cannabis isn’t useful against cancer, then the belief that so many people are participating in a cover up could accurately be described as “negative thinking” because it would mean those who believe such corruption exists are choosing to see their society as worse than it really is.

But, what if cannabis really is useful against cancer and widespread corruption really has been hiding the truth for decades? In that case, we’d have, if not a cure, at least a potent and relatively inexpensive tool for fighting against cancer that might save millions of lives in the coming decades. Shouldn’t we call that positive thinking? Wouldn’t that mean we’re seeing a future unfold that is significantly better than our present status quo? Isn’t the belief that we have the potential to save so many lives at least, dare I say, optimistic?

Whether we decide the “conspiracy theory” about cannabis being a cure for cancer is negative thinking or positive thinking comes down to our judgement of whether it is true based, usually, on an assumption about whether or not it’s possible to keep a fact like that hidden for nearly fifty years. Many people still think it would be impossible to hide something like an effective treatment for cancer for so long. They could be right in their assumption or they could be wrong. It could be that, as a society, we really have little understanding of the mechanisms by which information is published or suppressed. We might not understand how significantly networks of wealth and power manipulate public perceptions and opinions.

When We Don’t Want to Know (#DontLookUp)

In the film “The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, (spoiler alert!), the plot revolves around sci-fi technology that allows a customer to elect to undergo a medical procedure that scans their brain, targets and destroys specific cells or synapses containing unpleasant memories, such as memories of a former love relationship that went awry.

Such a technology could be very appealing for anyone who feels they’ve experienced something or learned something they’d rather not know, something they’d rather forget.

Is the prospect of a possible cure for cancer worth the downside of finding out that many thousands, possibly millions, of trusted professionals in pharmaceuticals, public health, medicine and media are corrupt and routinely put personal career goals and rewards ahead of consideration for the public good?

I think if you feel it really is worth exploring the possibility, then you’re a positive thinker— you are open to the positive possibility that a cure exists, even if it might mean exposing the malfeasance of a great number of people in the medical professions.

And, if you don’t it’s a possibility worth exploring, I doubt I’ll ever understand how one could discount the very lives of millions of people just for an illusion of safety provided by the belief that medical professionals are nice and trustworthy people who would always do the right thing no matter the cost to their career. I’ll grant you this: You are probably a very good person and you are probably someone who could be trusted to do the right thing if you were a medical professional who became aware of corruption by their colleagues. You are probably so good, in fact, that you assume others are generally more-or-less as good as you are and the possibility of such widespread corruption is practically inconceivable to you.

I believe, in the case of cannabis and cancer, the comfortable illusion wherein professional competence and integrity are the norm is a lie— not just a lie told to us by authority figures, but a lie many of us choose to tell ourselves, a chosen forgetting in the face of a fearful truth. It is a choice to “excise” inconvenient truth-spots from our minds, if not by sci-fi surgery, then by a kind of unconscious self-hypnosis.

This kind of deep denial is why, when we reach out to friends and family for validation about inconvenient truths, we often get gaslighting. We don’t realize we’re threatening their reality or their identity. We don’t realize we are asking them to go someplace about which their final answer is (or was) “Let’s not go there.” Little do we know that they’ve already been there and done that, at least at a subconscious level (the subconscious mind works so much faster than its conscious counterpart), and, at some level, they’ve already decided our information is bad news to be resisted at all costs, even if that cost is to (figuratively speaking) cauterize the parts of their brains that know too much, the parts of their brains that recognized something they weren’t ready to acknowledge.

Thus, we are often surprised and hurt by their reactions. We take it personally. We don’t understand it’s not really about us. It’s about their fear of an idea that we just happen to be the most recent messenger of. We flash a big idea at them— an idea that contradicts a big lie that they’re clinging to— and, of course, they feel their world view is threatened, they perceive us to be wielding a weapon against them, so they react from their lymbic brains, defensively and aggressively.

In Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s popular formulation of the grieving process (DABDA — Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance), we can recognize their initial reactions as part Denial and part Anger. This is because we have threatened their world view with a new idea and their identity is based on an old idea that they are afraid to give up. Nobody wants to live in a world where corruption is ubiquitous. Everyone wants to believe corruption is the exception and most people are trustworthy. Being around people in those first two stages is no fun at all. If only we understood the timing of their processing so we could just go away for their Denial and Anger processing and come back as soon as they got to Bargaining!

What A Wonderful World It Would Be

Still not seeing the positivity in the upsides of “negative thinking”? Let’s drive that point home a bit.

There is an idea that Aspartame (aka Nutrasweet) should never have been approved as an artificial sweetener by the FDA because it can cause neurological damage. Many consider this a negative idea because, if we assume it must be false, then it only serves to disparage FDA workers and offers no health benefits. But, if it’s true, it provides a rationale for cleaning house at the FDA and offers a healthier America with many thousands fewer cases of neurological disorders. I would call that positive.

There is another idea that drinking water fluoridation causes increased cancer rates and lower IQs. Many consider this a negative idea because, if we assume it must be false, this it only serves to disparage water treatment officials and decision makers while taking away a tool used for dental health. But, if it’s true, it provides a rationale for saving money at water municipalities and stopping the practice of water fluoridation in addition to a more cancer-free and intelligent America. Again, I would call that positive.

There is an idea that when you die, your consciousness ceases to exist because consciousness is presumed to be dependent on a living brain and since death includes brain death it must also bring the end of consciousness for the individual. Yet there is a growing mountain of evidence that consciousness persists even after the brain flat-lines during so-called “Near-Death Experiences” (NDEs) and there also appear to be a number of documented cases of reincarnation where children are able to recall details from past lives that they’d have no prosaic way of knowing— details that turn out to be verifiably true. Such ideas are typically dismissed summarily by academic authorities and characterized as misguided and negative in the sense that they detract from a purely scientific view of the world where “scientific” is equated with “materialist”. But if death turns out not to be the end but, rather, something we needn’t fear, does it not undermine the ability of powerful people to control us through fear of death? Does it not make us more free to do what we know is right without coercion by people who would “make us an offer we can’t refuse”? Is that not, indeed, a very positive idea?

And, of course, finally, there is an idea that the new mRNA-based COVID-19 “vaccines” are causing immune dysfunction and greater susceptibility to variants, cancers coming out of remission, myocardia, pericardia, heart attacks, strokes, clots, menstrual irregularities, organ damage and other ailments. Many consider these to be negative ideas because, if we presume they are false, they only serve to disparage medical authorities and make people more fearful and less likely to get “vaccinated”, which could be counter-productive if these products are beneficial in fighting COVID-19. But, if these ideas are true, then the status quo may be causing the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people and those needless deaths could be stopped by suspending the “vaccination” programs and relying on natural immunity and social distancing and masking instead. Stopping needless deaths is a very positive kind of thinking.

Needless to say, whether one considers these conjectures negative or positive depends entirely on whether one assumes they are false. I haven’t included links to supporting information in this column because, if you’ve read this far, chances are high you already agree with at least some of these so-called “conspiracy theories”. An earlier article I wrote, titled “A Conspirituality Curriculum” is here and contains links to many supporting data and testimony.

If it’s true that you already agree with these views, one might well ask what the point of this article is. I admit I am preaching to the choir. I know that being belittled, ridiculed or ignored by friends or loved ones is painful. I know that pain and I want to help you avoid it as much as possible.

This is a pep talk, actually.

First, you’re not wrong about these things. There is nothing wrong with you for believing in some ideas that others often consider “Conspiracy Theories”. You are just ahead of the curve. You are not a negative thinker. You are a positive thinker. Ideas such as those you hold are making the world a better place.

Second, even though they cause you pain, have compassion for your friends and loved ones who just aren’t ready yet. Can you remember how long it took you to process the cognitive dissonance before you could actually complete the shift from conventional thinking into what we’ll call (since this is an article for US, after all) a conspiracy realist? Be honest. When did you first hear about the first conspiracy-related issue that you later became convinced of? How long was it before you could state your conclusion without a sense of nagging doubt in the back of your mind? In my case, some of the basic ones took years of studying and self-questioning.

Thirdly, although I can’t prove it, I’m convinced what we’re participating in is no less than a second Enlightenment. We are changing the world. The corruptions we are calling out will, eventually, be relegated to the scrap heap of history. A new era of integrity, honesty and fair-dealing is emerging. That is why the legacy media are so shrill, repetitive and heavy-handed in their denunciations of our ideas. They are desperate. Behind those well-coiffed talking heads atop expensive suits on meticulously slick sound stage newsrooms are some very powerful and very panicked people. They know they’re losing control of the narratives. They know they are outnumbered. They know we’re not even a fraction as gullible as the public was in the 1950’s and 1960’s — every decade more of us have gotten wise to them as they’ve committed more and more attrocities. We are winning and we will win.

Finally, be thoughtful about who you choose to confide in. When we first get excited about a conspiracy that turns out to be true, we often think all we have to do to convince others is tell them what we found out. But it’s much more complicated than that. You might need to protect your career and family relationships by working on these issues anonymously. Believe me, many of us, in hindsight, often wish we’d taken that road.

Most importantly, don’t do this work alone. It may be hard to find a few brothers or sisters who can match your levels of curiosity about these difficult subjects, but they are worth finding and they make this journey much more enjoyable or at least tolerable. Keep exploring!

If you’ve come this far, you’ve been able to connect a great many dots in your mind. The truth will, ultimately, set us free. The truth is always positive. If others try to shame you or belittle you for what they like to call negative thinking, just remember the ideas you carry in your dots-connected mind hold great promise and potential for the future, regardless of what they say. Either they’ve failed to connect the dots as you have or they already did connect the same dots once and it scared themselves enough to go into denial and to lash out verbally against anyone who tries to get them to question their denial, maybe even enough to retrace their own mental footsteps and try to forget what they discovered.

They’re just not yet ready.

Keep connecting the dots anyway.

1. The Power of Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale, 1952