What the Epstein Files, the Doctrine of Polarity, Divine Femininity, and the Online Marketing Industry Have in Common — and It's Not Just Deepak Chopra
pssst...part 2 is called "No Human Is Prey: How the Marketing Formulas You Were Taught Replicate the Grooming Playbook — and the Six Commitments That Break It" and it's now posted. You can find it here https://houseofculturalinfluence.substack.com/p/no-human-is-prey
I thank you for this incredible research and analysis. It articulates and makes so many connections between these themes that will certainly be swimming in my mind for weeks to come. I’ve been highly allergic to marketing bros since stepping into online entrepreneurship in 2019. I thought due to their racism and refusal to acknowledge systemic realities, and I’m sure that’s still valid but what you’re offering here are philosophical lineages that keep the system in place even by those like me who try to be more intentional in educating leads, avoidance of urgency , etc… but I still share the freebies, structure the launches and sell courses. I want to ask about alternatives, but I don’t even have capacity to imagine that right now as I simmer in this new awareness. Again thank you for this incredible work.
This is brilliant. Thanks for articulating a clear through-line that my intuition has always registered simply as "Gack."
"Gack" to the "divine feminine." "Gack" to sales funnels which are nothing more than pyramid scams. "Gack" to "empowerment" rhetoric that acts as a tool for compliance, wealth extraction and systemic oppression. Gack to all of it.
Not only is this economically and socially ruinous, it's spiritually fraudulent. If the world's great spiritual traditions have any truth to them, it's screamingly obvious that the integral nature of existence obviates hierarchy. I am exactly as important as every other being in the universe, no greater and no lesser. The only true relationship is an "I and thou", where we balance energies within ourselves as well as between us.
The move from transactional reciprocity to ontological receptivity is what stayed with me. When “receiving” shifts from tactic to identity, the compliance is already pre-positioned. That’s a devastatingly clear frame.
And the supply chain lens matters -- it shifts this from hypocrisy to infrastructure, from individual failure to system replication. That’s the harder argument.
Fucking brilliant! Thank you for continuing to break the frame. As a Nonbinary that argued against divine feminine for years with my philosophy professors, the ones that loved Ken Wilber, this needs to reach those halls. I had to start doing my own version of the daily Cholq’ij because most English versions rely heavily on divine gender because they mutate the original Maya teachings. Please make this an audio or video version too. Substack will give it better reach. This must disseminate.
Thank you for writing this Kelly. I can come full circle with your work as I came in at the FLEB and now we see exactly how it all plays out. I fell for all of this and my eyes are wide open now, in large part due to your work. Thank you.
I wonder about the source of all the modern polarity talk too, and I was beginning to potentially trace it back to Carl Jung’s teachings on anima and animus? Maybe it’s correlation not causation, but I have been suspecting that somebody along the way wildly misinterpreted the concept of inner union from a depth-psychology perspective, and now we have this dumbed down external binary of feminine and masculine that is over simplified and taken to extremes by coaches who don’t even realize they are in one big subliminal MLM
I so appreciate all the research and the analysis that you have done here. Outlining how the patriarchal system plays out on all these interconnected levels is illuminating.
I remember exactly where I was in 2014 when I read Jeff Walker's product launch book! It totally made sense. I also have the Influence book, I just found recently when I was unpacking things. I remember thinking, "oh I don't need this book because I don't want to manipulate people." I had forgotten that it was a warning!
Damn! This landed not only intellectually, but physically. Thank you for doing the deep work to surface these connections. (Now I know why I’ve always gotten an icky vibe off Ken Wilber.)
Reciprocity and “receptive” feminine archetypes as the groundwork for grooming through marketing, religious, spiritual, and personal spheres.
Coerced consent through unasked for gifts in many iterations.🎁
“Consent is something that can be produced — through the right triggers, the right gifts, the right theology, the right combination of authority and reciprocity and scarcity and surrender. Attraction is not a choice. Reciprocity is a psychological trigger. “
My question that I think part 2 will hopefully answer: “And it works because the culture has spent millennia training women to believe that their power lies in being received upon, and training men to believe that their power lies in engineering the reception.”
What caused this culture to begin with? Was it just happenstance? Was it because childbirth was so taxing and child rearing so time consuming that women didn’t resist the narrative? Frogs in slowly boiling water?
Could it have just as easily been women seizing power over men and the bad and powerful women at the top preying on men?
Could Japan have colonized the United States? Could blacks have enslaved whites?
What makes these horrific systems begin in the first place? Is it inevitable?
Thank you for this, Kelly. I have loved being in your orbit as you’ve excavated the reasons for your innate knowing that the workings of traditional marketing is not only extractive but manipulative in the darkest ways.
No wonder I have intuitively been unable to embrace traditional marketing strategies. I have sensed it as sleazy and manipulative. But from this lens it’s worse.
I’m so grateful for you, and your interpretations and guidance as we build culture making businesses.
Thank you for writing this Kelly. So many of these threads are familiar through your writing and teaching over the years, and it's really potent how you weave them together to meet this moment.
I'm curious if you'd be interested in doing a Substack live together sometime in the coming weeks to discuss not just these core dynamics at the root of business as usual, but also to dream and voice and name together some of the ways that we can structure our businesses to be forces of cultural transformation toward more matriarchal structures?
After years of experimenting (you know how long we've been at this) the vision we have been stewarding for our own work is really gaining beautiful momentum, and I see the ways that it is seeding regeneration and matriarchy, both through the things we refuse to do, and the things we have chosen to do on our own terms.
Your voice and teaching has been essential to us along this path, and I would love to introduce my audience here on Substack to you in a way that they can really feel. (Also idk if you've explored it much, but Substack makes it sooo easy to share the highlights of a live as reels and little birds on this and other platforms, with an almost effortless workflow that creates many stacked functions from one live conversation.)
pssst...part 2 is called "No Human Is Prey: How the Marketing Formulas You Were Taught Replicate the Grooming Playbook — and the Six Commitments That Break It" and it's now posted. You can find it here https://houseofculturalinfluence.substack.com/p/no-human-is-prey
I thank you for this incredible research and analysis. It articulates and makes so many connections between these themes that will certainly be swimming in my mind for weeks to come. I’ve been highly allergic to marketing bros since stepping into online entrepreneurship in 2019. I thought due to their racism and refusal to acknowledge systemic realities, and I’m sure that’s still valid but what you’re offering here are philosophical lineages that keep the system in place even by those like me who try to be more intentional in educating leads, avoidance of urgency , etc… but I still share the freebies, structure the launches and sell courses. I want to ask about alternatives, but I don’t even have capacity to imagine that right now as I simmer in this new awareness. Again thank you for this incredible work.
Nina thank you! I have so many concrete wars to do it differently. We truly can make something new
This is brilliant. Thanks for articulating a clear through-line that my intuition has always registered simply as "Gack."
"Gack" to the "divine feminine." "Gack" to sales funnels which are nothing more than pyramid scams. "Gack" to "empowerment" rhetoric that acts as a tool for compliance, wealth extraction and systemic oppression. Gack to all of it.
Not only is this economically and socially ruinous, it's spiritually fraudulent. If the world's great spiritual traditions have any truth to them, it's screamingly obvious that the integral nature of existence obviates hierarchy. I am exactly as important as every other being in the universe, no greater and no lesser. The only true relationship is an "I and thou", where we balance energies within ourselves as well as between us.
beautiful beautiful beautiful. Cosigning everything you just said
The move from transactional reciprocity to ontological receptivity is what stayed with me. When “receiving” shifts from tactic to identity, the compliance is already pre-positioned. That’s a devastatingly clear frame.
And the supply chain lens matters -- it shifts this from hypocrisy to infrastructure, from individual failure to system replication. That’s the harder argument.
Fucking brilliant! Thank you for continuing to break the frame. As a Nonbinary that argued against divine feminine for years with my philosophy professors, the ones that loved Ken Wilber, this needs to reach those halls. I had to start doing my own version of the daily Cholq’ij because most English versions rely heavily on divine gender because they mutate the original Maya teachings. Please make this an audio or video version too. Substack will give it better reach. This must disseminate.
Thank you for writing this Kelly. I can come full circle with your work as I came in at the FLEB and now we see exactly how it all plays out. I fell for all of this and my eyes are wide open now, in large part due to your work. Thank you.
I wonder about the source of all the modern polarity talk too, and I was beginning to potentially trace it back to Carl Jung’s teachings on anima and animus? Maybe it’s correlation not causation, but I have been suspecting that somebody along the way wildly misinterpreted the concept of inner union from a depth-psychology perspective, and now we have this dumbed down external binary of feminine and masculine that is over simplified and taken to extremes by coaches who don’t even realize they are in one big subliminal MLM
take a look at Ken Wilber Integral Theory
I so appreciate all the research and the analysis that you have done here. Outlining how the patriarchal system plays out on all these interconnected levels is illuminating.
I remember exactly where I was in 2014 when I read Jeff Walker's product launch book! It totally made sense. I also have the Influence book, I just found recently when I was unpacking things. I remember thinking, "oh I don't need this book because I don't want to manipulate people." I had forgotten that it was a warning!
Such wonderful work!
Damn! This landed not only intellectually, but physically. Thank you for doing the deep work to surface these connections. (Now I know why I’ve always gotten an icky vibe off Ken Wilber.)
Thank you for making these connections!
Reciprocity and “receptive” feminine archetypes as the groundwork for grooming through marketing, religious, spiritual, and personal spheres.
Coerced consent through unasked for gifts in many iterations.🎁
“Consent is something that can be produced — through the right triggers, the right gifts, the right theology, the right combination of authority and reciprocity and scarcity and surrender. Attraction is not a choice. Reciprocity is a psychological trigger. “
Wow.
Psyops is hard to escape in this monetized world. When given a choice, most will choose the ego.
A tour de force!
My question that I think part 2 will hopefully answer: “And it works because the culture has spent millennia training women to believe that their power lies in being received upon, and training men to believe that their power lies in engineering the reception.”
What caused this culture to begin with? Was it just happenstance? Was it because childbirth was so taxing and child rearing so time consuming that women didn’t resist the narrative? Frogs in slowly boiling water?
Could it have just as easily been women seizing power over men and the bad and powerful women at the top preying on men?
Could Japan have colonized the United States? Could blacks have enslaved whites?
What makes these horrific systems begin in the first place? Is it inevitable?
Thank you for this, Kelly. I have loved being in your orbit as you’ve excavated the reasons for your innate knowing that the workings of traditional marketing is not only extractive but manipulative in the darkest ways.
No wonder I have intuitively been unable to embrace traditional marketing strategies. I have sensed it as sleazy and manipulative. But from this lens it’s worse.
I’m so grateful for you, and your interpretations and guidance as we build culture making businesses.
Thank you for writing this Kelly. So many of these threads are familiar through your writing and teaching over the years, and it's really potent how you weave them together to meet this moment.
I'm curious if you'd be interested in doing a Substack live together sometime in the coming weeks to discuss not just these core dynamics at the root of business as usual, but also to dream and voice and name together some of the ways that we can structure our businesses to be forces of cultural transformation toward more matriarchal structures?
After years of experimenting (you know how long we've been at this) the vision we have been stewarding for our own work is really gaining beautiful momentum, and I see the ways that it is seeding regeneration and matriarchy, both through the things we refuse to do, and the things we have chosen to do on our own terms.
Your voice and teaching has been essential to us along this path, and I would love to introduce my audience here on Substack to you in a way that they can really feel. (Also idk if you've explored it much, but Substack makes it sooo easy to share the highlights of a live as reels and little birds on this and other platforms, with an almost effortless workflow that creates many stacked functions from one live conversation.)