An uncanny glitch from the hinterlands of weirdness

Something really strange happened to the Youtube version of my “State of the World Address” on Saturday. As I describe it, notice your default explanation and be open to an ‘explanation” that is much weirder.

There is a gap in the Youtube video of my presentation — 55 seconds of material are missing. We have the Zoom recording as backup, so we know we aren’t imagining things. Here is a transcript of the content that mysteriously dropped from the video:

It's also been in the news quite a bit — I’m going to call it UFO disclosure. I like using the word UFO, not UAP, which is a way to make it kind of sound more scientific. It seems more precise, using fancy words. What is it — “unidentified aerial phenomenon?” What is a “phenomenon” anyway? Aerial, another fancy word. I mean, come on. Although unidentified flying object was also a way to make it sound more scientific originally, but then it took on a life of its own. So for so many decades, this phenomenon has been suppressed. explained away with explanations that are so ridiculous that it requires your willing participation to believe them. Swamp gas. Weather balloons. These do not fit the sober observations of reliable witnesses to these events, yet to accept their authenticity means unraveling your entire worldview, or unraveling the standard worldview, the dominant worldview of science, and also to unravel the worldview that our government is basically trustworthy.

That’s right — the missing time coincides precisely with my introduction of the UFO topic. Prior to that, I’d been speaking about world events, Palestine, Julian Assange, etc. Now why, why would this particular segment disappear? Here are five possibilities:

1. A random glitch in the streaming software.

2. Malevolent censors silencing mention of a forbidden topic.

4. A misfiring censorship algorithm tuned to the UFO keyword.

5. A “warning shot” by shadowy powers to let me know they are watching, warning me to stay away from such topics.

None of the latter three options make much sense upon careful consideration. (There wasn’t a #3 there. I skipped it just to mess with ya.) Number 2 doesn’t make sense, because there are thousands upon thousands of videos on Youtube on UFOs and other, far more controversial, topics. What I said was extremely mild in comparison.

Number 4 doesn’t make sense either, for a similar reason. And I’ve not heard of AI censorship happening in realtime in the middle of a livestream. Sometimes Youtube cuts off broadcasts in the middle (it did that to one of RFK Jr.’s speeches), but I’ve not heard of an algorithm that prunes offending content in real time. Not that it is impossible. IBM researchers recently demonstrated new AI technology that enables them to hijack a conversation midstream and replace your conversation partner with a deepfake replica without you knowing about it. Merely flagging and removing disfavored content would be child’s play in comparison.

I am curious though, whether there was an interruption in the original live-stream. Please let me know in the comments if you experienced that. That would point to #1. If there was no interruption, that means it was edited out post-facto, which would be much weirder.

As for #5, it just feels too paranoid and too self-important. The content was quite innocuous, as such things go. Furthermore, it’s a poor warning that is so easily interpreted as a glitch.

Now for the much weirder explanation (which is also a non-explanation, in normal causal terms). Coincidences like this are not random. Nor are they necessarily the product of conscious agency. Rather, meaningful coincidences — synchronicities — accumulate around intense experiences, beliefs, and fields of consciousness. I apologize for the vagueness of that last term. What I mean is that when you enter a reality-story matrix, you experience events consistent with it. Investigate the paranormal, for example, and odd things start happening. Here I was, speaking about apocalypse — the lifting of the veil. I said that people will not accept an expanded reality that includes UFOs as a result of the archetypal event known as Disclosure. It is, rather, the reverse: Disclosure will happen as a result of people’s willingness to see behind the veil. Until then, the transmission from that reality will be staticky. In other words, the glitch in the livestream was a feature of the ontological borderland the UFO phenomenon occupies.

“The Giant,” by Cary Eisenstein on his 11th birthday.

Disclosure will not deliver us from our blindness. It will happen only as a marker of our awakening into a willingness to see. And that will happen as the realities we live in become less and less inhabitable, and we face a choice to cling to them nonetheless, or to drop into the current of unknowing.

Exploring the various explanations I offered, 1-5 plus this one, you may have noticed that each bears an emotional resonance. The part of me that feels persecuted and victimized by powers beyond my control resonates with #2 and #5. The part the resonates with #1 is a bit cynical, dismissive, or smug, and underneath that fearful of engaging the mystery. And when I engage the synchronicity explanation, I feel a sense of adventure and numinosity and aliveness. The world-story matrices we inhabit are no mere conceptual systems. Each provides a habitation for the soul in its current phase of experience.

As I continue to explore topics from the ontological hinterlands, you can expect weird things to continue happening. When I speak of “the state of the world,” I mean to include the wavering boundaries of what we consider real. Whether it is political reality, scientific reality, or social reality, the world is entering a phase of accelerating breakdown and reformation.

You can view the whole thing here on Youtube. I was not entirely satisfied with it. I will stop using the word “address” to describe it. Too formal. As one particularly harsh critic said, “That wasn’t a State of the World Address, that was some guy in his living room sitting with his shoulders slumped in front of a camera.” Touche. Also the whole first part was infused with a somber tone that reflected some turmoil I’ve experienced recently. I have first-hand experience of my own unwillingness to accept the demise of “an old reality-story matrix.” I’m sure you have that experience too. I think we will face it a lot in coming times.

Anyway, the show still wasn’t bad, but the next show will be better, I promise.