This entry is part of a series on “The Pull”: Preface. The Pull. Intro. Overcome The Pull. 1. The Road. 2. The Fronts. 3. The Tools. 4. The Practice. Conclusion. Beyond The Pull.
You’re free. Congratulations. You made it to the other side. Something “popped.” No longer are you a slave to The Pull.
You stopped feeding the spectacle—no longer mindlessly creating “content” or consuming it without true intentionality. You are solid in yourself, with a sovereign will and newfound agency to create what God asks of you.
Amen.
By overcoming The Pull, the most devilishly tricky addiction, chances are you have—or soon will—overcome the other addictions of modernity: hedonic eating, caffeine dependence, and oniomania (shopping addiction). Good riddance to the lot of them.
Being addiction-free is indeed freeing. But it’s official—you are no longer normal, since addiction is the norm.
Day-to-day living is more peaceful for you, as you’re no longer being pulled from one thing to another, never feeling like you have quite enough time (or are quite enough as a person) because you couldn’t step outside of it.
Now you can. Now you see more clearly that your previous “sense-making” of the metacrisis, however authentic and good-hearted it was, was really “spectacle-making” about the metacrisis.
A case of “recuperation,” as Guy Debord would phrase it. However real you believed your sense-making to be, it was co-opted by the spectacle, ultimately diluting its signal. It was never dangerous because you were still playing the game—either as a spectator or a creator—spectacle-making with unexamined motives and “this is just the way it is” rationalizations.
Thanks to no longer being pulled, you see the real game now, not concerning yourself with your status in the spectacle or following those who have “spectacle status,” determined through crude markers such as likes and followers. No, the real importance now is the status of your soul, as “soul status” only comes through “soul-making,” and true ensouling requires following a different “algorithm.”
Soul vs. Spectacle—the choice of our moment. You’ve chosen wisely, even if you were not fully aware of the stakes. Many others are presently choosing the opposite, without knowing the stakes either.
Yes, you can sit back and celebrate your newfound freedom. Or you can begin to play the real game. You find the others. And you become free together.
