Carl Abrahamsson's Blog, page 16

As free as free can be

Someone once uttered, ”Freedom ain’t free.”

Well… ”Ain’t that the truth!”

But which kind of currency do we use to pay for and maintain this most blessed of philosophical concepts? It seems the hard currency implied is more or less always human lives; sacrificed pro or contra freedom. Martyrdom is undoubtedly all the timeless rage these days.

Given that this unfortunate behavior of ostracizing the ”others” and then eventually diligently killing them off  (and then with the others bouncing right back and ostracizing their aggressors and killing them in spasms and spurts of Stockholm Syndrome) seems to be on constant repeat, perhaps it’s just best to stay in the shadows and bide the time until this behavior crumbles. But – I’m sad to say to myself – this is a most unlikely scenario. It will never crumble. The people involved are too set in their ways, and they don’t want change; in the same way as we who appreciate our freedoms certainly don’t want to change that around. A clash of cultures, and of basic approaches to life!

That some cultures actually get it and at least try in the face of oppression to maintain dignity and keep the human spirit high in esteem is nothing short of a miracle. In my experience, these cultures/spirits exist beyond the monotheist simplifications – and are therefore hounded especially hard by monotheists and their ilk.

 A good example of this would be China’s decades long aggression against Tibet and its spiritual and peaceful culture. ”Wait…” I hear you say, ”China isn’t a monotheist country…” I would argue the opposite. Just because Chinese communism isn’t of semitic origins, nor is looked at as a religion proper per se, it has all the trappings of the standard sado-masochistic set-up with loyal adherents (at trans-generational draconian gunpoint and surveillance jouissance) and priestly overlords – usually behaving exactly opposite to the commandments relayed to the serfs.

What is so threatening about peace- and successful cultures? Mainly that they are not interested in being in a dualistic relationship with an aggressor. This naturally aggravates any aggressor because the foundation of all aggression beyond the mere survival instinct is a deep-rooted lack of self-esteem. This is as true for Chinese communism as it is for the monotheist faiths and all their fabricated (and very angry) sky daddies. Unfortunately, violence and sacrifice is the price that we all have to pay for their inert and unnatural control systems.

I visited Tibet in 1999. It was depressing. Because in the midst of the still powerful remnants of all the greatness of Tibetan and Tibeto-Buddhist culture, there was the wet heavy blanket of Chinese Communist materialism suffocating everyone and everything. Freedom sure as hell ain’t free. And it’s an even worse deal to boot, because even when you have paid for it – like the Tibetans have for so long – you still don’t get any freedom.

I wonder if that’s not the case even in our own countries now, too: Swedes are suddenly being targeted for terrorism for what one Iraqi and one Danish guy have done on Swedish soil (repeatedly burning the Koran). And Muslim social media influencers are making up fairy tales about the Swedish government taking Muslim kids away from their parents and sending them off to other, non-Muslim parents!!

”You can’t make this shit up!” (Well, someone can, and does…)

So now we have to pay with actual Swedish lives, and very likely by having to eventually change our constitution, and diminishing our individual… that’s right: freedoms. It’s not only ”not free”; it’s actually very expensive, too.

So by being unable to be part of a world where people are encouraged to be free, these aggressive monotheists and totalitarian materialists have to desperately cling to their own pathetic slavery mind-sets, and also bring everyone else down with them; simply because the truth that we all, as human beings, inherently carry within us hurts so bad when you’re acting against it. 

”The more taboos and inhibitions there are in the world / The poorer the people become / The sharper the weapons the people possess / The greater confusion reigns in the realm / The more clever and crafty the men / The oftener strange things happen / The more articulate the laws and ordinances / The more robbers and thieves arise” (Tao Te Ching 57)

Into the Devil’s Den now for free

Let the spooky season begin! Today I release my film ANTON LAVEY – INTO THE DEVIL’S DEN for free on YouTube…. Enjoy!

Asocial Media and its discontents

Being a young man in the mid 1990s was pretty great. If you had logged on to the ”net” via a 14.4 whatever modem that made loud sounds like avant garde music, and if you knew how, you could get an e-mail address from CompuServe that was just a bunch of numbers. And you could have a cellphone with an antenna and a chunky battery that made your ear feel warm and fuzzy. What a strange feeling of hyper-modernity that brought…

This feeling only lasted for about a year, because by then the floodgates were already opened, and all the internet-based digi-demons passed through and into our unsuspecting bio-logical minds. Everything was too late in so many ways, and yet you gladly accepted it because so much of the technological progress served you so well in whatever you were up to (in my case, a lot!). It was almost as if someone had conceptualized it all in detail, and now catered to the whims and fancies of the up and coming generation of creatives, as well as of consumers. Everyone was hooked for life.

I am very happy to sound as old and nostalgic as I’m about to now: Wow! To have lived without cellphones (whether ”dumb” or ”smart” doesn’t really matter); to have lived without computers, and, most importantly, to have lived without the internet… What a blessing that is! I can get back to that mind-frame without any problem at all, and suddenly everything around me becomes visceral, physical, metaphysical, pleasantly causal, real, and surreal even. Dare I also say more ”human?”

Is this nostalgic mind-frame/memory a longing for an actual heightened sense of human existence, or perhaps just a temporary compensation of a fragmented contemporary brain involved in a thousand and one technological causalities?

I think I’ll go for both affirmative answers; quite simply because I can.

If we want to cock an eye on something Evil in this conundrum, it would have to be the concept of ”making things easier.” An elevation of laziness, cutting corners, and complacency, often hiding behind advertising catch phrases like ”smarter,” ”easier,” and ”time- and money-saving.” None of this has been true of course – it’s been exactly the opposite, actually.

The gadgets haven’t made us smarter in any way. Sure, it might be easier to press a button than to perform a task. But it also quickly sensitizes you so that you actually fear any real, visceral challenge; you would rather press that button or, even better, have someone else do it for you. This inherently makes life harder and us dumber. And we are certainly not saving time nor money; on the contrary, we’re wasting a lot of both thanks to all our machines and their interconnections.

A challenge for the daring: sum up your screen time each day, and consider how much – sorry, how little – of whatever you look at/consume is genuinely essential to your life.

Like any addiction, it’s hard to break away. When interest dwindles because of inevitable techno-ennui, a new gadget, platform or app zooms on by, and we’re hooked again to something even more addictive. We have also allowed it to develop to the point where real necessities can only be handled via web tech (pity the older generations!); paying the bills, getting in touch with authorities and companies, acquiring societal information. So much has been handed over to faith in that these things will work out. But do they, really? And will they in the future that is getting closer by the day?

The ever so important customer service that you might reach after being on hold for aeons will likely be AI-generated and surprisingly dumb. I recently tried to explain my question to responding voices that are literally dead; conveying messages back to me that make no sense – because these advanced answering machines are not human, nor intelligent. (But they sure paint snazzy & trippy digital pictures based on what you tell them to, or write up some quasi thesis or paper that allows you pass your exam because the crust of perception is thin, and, after all, aren’t we all swimming in a cess pool of simulacra anyway?)

I know how this will end. Not by nuclear wars or pandemics. No, the critical mass point will arise when the servers hosting social media platforms and all its gazillion selfies specifically can no longer host the exponentially increasing input. One tiny overheated server breakdown will lead to a domino effect of everything computerized crashing, including power supplies, and the logistics of ”supply chains” (sounds like something from the days of slavery, doesn’t it?) in general. The emperor bitterly realizes that he’s been naked all along, and now can’t find the old clothes that used to keep him warm.

Rest assured: there will be many selfies taken at the time of the apocalypse, but… ”why am I not online? Why isn’t the server uploading my selfie? OMG, I can’t seem to update my feed…” 

And then we all die!

In conversation with Nicholaj de Mattos Frisvold

In conversation with the great Nicholaj De Mattos Frisvold and Vanessa at #RenderingUnconscious … 110% MAGIC in a vibrating hotline between Sweden and Brazil!

#occulture #nicholajdemattosfrisvold #vanessasinclair #carlabrahamsson

The window or the screen?

When I look out the window everything is peaceful. It’s autumn; the leaves are shifting colors in bright saturation, and then gently falling down on the ground. It’s chilly, the sun is shining, and there’s always work to be done. The few people I see out there are walking their dogs, or on their way to some meeting or other; taking care of business, and – most importantly – minding their own business.

However, when I look into a screen – any screen – it’s a whole different story. People are killing each other endlessly, mindlessly, in technologically advanced systems of destruction of lives and property; promoting corruption and ideal-lessness, setting humanity as well as humanities aside in favor of aggressive causality and reactivity – and harming greater nature while at it.

Which vision should I trust? Which vision gives a more accurate view of the world as such? The window or the screen? I already know the answer to that one. And I already have the answer to why the screen-world is fucked up: for too long a time people have handed over responsibility to authorities that are entirely made up of compensating weaklings who are terrified of looking at themselves in the mirror; justifying their shameful and corrupt behavior by inventing an authority above all other authorities that no-one is allowed to question.

Here, we’re not talking about a healthy projection of different human psychological-emotional qualities into colorful and often humorous pantheons ready to help out and inspire us when we feel fatigued. No, here we only have just one angry sky daddy forcing his mindless minions into submission – via powerful priestly proxies of course! – so that they in turn can force the enemy and their angry sky daddy into submission.

What sounds like a really bad joke has brought our beautiful planet into a state of disrepair and disaster. In the not too far away future, when the human survivors of the cataclysms or the space creatures look at the remains of human culture and analyze the disaster, they will come to one very important conclusion: let’s never allow monotheism again. History has proven over and over again that it’s the worst religious construction ever, as it has only brought out the very worst of and in human nature.

To us who remain on the outside, as pagans, or poly-, pan-, or atheists, the bad joke has gone too far. Perhaps the saddest thing of all is that the monotheist perspective has no respect for nature as such because whatever sky daddy they’re praying to has of course sanctioned unlimited exploitation for his specific people. This we all now have to pay for in weird and decidedly unwanted ways.

So yeah, thank you sky daddies of the world, and all your cretinous followers, for ruining a great world and a beautiful planet. And please don’t try to pull any cultic cards of accusations and scapegoatishly pointing your finger at anyone else, while stating that you’re so much better than they are. It’s too late for that trick: we all know you are all exactly the same.

While awaiting the apocalypse I will keep looking out my window and working away; minding my own business and respecting that of others around me. I am not a monotheist. I am very happy.

Altruistic Selfishness

In an increasingly chaotic world (or so it seems), it’s always best to focus on things you know with certainty have a tangible value for you, before delving out as a contemporary don Quixote on the evanescent barricades of social media.

These things probably are/should be ultra-personal, and hence you should perhaps indulge in private rather than spilling all your beans publicly. This in itself is a challenge in such a flaunting culture as ours. But that’s exactly why it’s extra important.

When someone asks you what you’ve done for others/the world today, either lie and say “nothing,” or tell the truth if that’s more comfortable. You may have masturbated, had sex with someone, cleaned the house, listened attentively to your favorite record, read a great book, etc. Something that is of no apparent utilitarian use to anyone else but you.

Why is this more important than engaging in ambitious problem-solving in these times of global crises? Because it genuinely makes you happier. If you are indeed engaged in altruistic work and efforts, that’s great as long as it’s not only a lifestyle accessory. It needs to be an honest endeavor to have meaning and value – just like masturbation.

It’s the indulgence in making your innermost fantasy a satisfying, tangible reality (albeit temporarily) that creates meaning in life. Integrating that meaning in your daily existence is an irrevocably efficient way to create a much better and happier world.

Genuine general altruism never stems from frustrated individual sources. Therefore never believe any one demagog who’s frustrated or not successful at what they claim makes them happy.

Have they not masturbated enough lately? Have you?

Video lectures on YouTube

Just moved all my video lectures to YouTube to make them available FOR FREE. More will follow! I have also made a special section for podcasts… Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXDwsiT3pi3eI9YElMJPL9A

#carlabrahamsson

Cut-up class coming up

Beginning next week, Vanessa and I will host a class on CUT-UPS IN THEORY & PRACTICE c/o Morbid Anatomy. Pencil in four consecutive Sundays of randomness, psychic void fills, and trippy fun as we enter a MAGICAL landscape of synaptic sensuality… Join us!

https://www.morbidanatomy.org/classes/harnessing-the-magic-and-creative-power-of-the-cut-up-method-a-la-william-burroughs-david-bowie-genesis-p-orridge-dr-vanessa-sinclair-and-carl-abrahamsson

#morbidanatomy #cutups #magic #occulture #vanessasinclair #carlabrahamsson

A great Chimera Obscura print

A brand new photo print from Trapart Editions. This time it’s an image from my trippy photobook Chimera Obscura. Available in a signed edition limited to nine numbered copies. Includes a signed book too!

h ttps://store.trapart.net/details/00191

Back on Ultraculture

We’re back on Jason Louv’s great Ultraculture podcast:

Swedish author Carl Abrahamsson and American artist and psychoanalyst Vanessa Sinclair join us in an engaging conversation that explores the integration of magic, art, and psychoanalysis in their daily lives. As a married couple, they have successfully merged these fascinating fields, creating a unique blend of creativity, self-discovery, and mystical exploration. In this episode, Sinclair and Abrahamsson take us on a journey through their ideas, theories, practices, experiences, collaborations, successes, and even occasional failures. They share their relentless pursuit of erasing the boundaries between magic, mysticism, art, and the unconscious, experimenting with various artistic expressions while strengthening their occult work. We delve into their relationships with influential figures such as Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, their experiments with the cut-ups technique of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, their insights into the power of exposure and honesty, and their exploration of dreams, creativity, inertia, entropy, and much more. Abrahamsson & Sinclair’s casual and inspiring style offers an intimate glimpse into their lives, filled with experimental output, including portraits, photographs, film stills, collages, and cut-ups. Their insights provide a refreshing perspective on how psychoanalytic thinking, language, and artistic expression can have transformative power. Join us as we explore the rich tapestry of Abrahamsson \& Sinclair’s work, filled with wisdom, experimentation, and a relentless pursuit of deeper insights. Don’t miss out on this enlightening conversation that unravels the extraordinary lives of two exceptional thinkers and creators!