Numerous Narratives 🍁

Welcome! This site is my personal space for creative exploration. It contains atomic essays, mini-explorations, and a “digital garden” of diverse ideas where fiction and reality may intertwine. Here you’ll find reflections on a wide range of topics from... economics and politics to culture and technology ...as well as updates on my novel and nonfiction projects. Writing tools I Use: I work primarily with open-source software, including Ubuntu and ZorinOS Linux in a Gnome desktop/laptop environment, Standard Notes, Signal for communications, Manuskript app, and theQuill.app for secure writing. Disclaimer – All content on this site represents my personal views only. It is created in my personal capacity, is unrelated to my employment, and does not reflect the views of any current, past, or future employer, organization, or client. The content is for informational and creative purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or professional advice. No Liability – While I make reasonable efforts to ensure the accuracy of the information provided, I make no warranties or representations about its completeness, reliability, or suitability for any purpose. I am not liable for any losses, damages, or consequences arising from the use of, or reliance on, any content on this site. Readers use all information at their own discretion and risk. My perspectives may change over time. Posts are a snapshot of my thinking at the time of writing, and older content may no longer reflect my current views or knowledge. - - -

@GaryArmstrong GaryArmstrong.blog

The Servant: Those Who Are a Service to Others

August 28, 2025•548 words

“I had no specific policy position or detailed plan for the future when I walked out of prison. But I did have a very clear conviction that all of us, black and white, were bound together in ways that were inescapable. Our shared humanity was greater and deeper than any racial or political divide. Resentment and vengeance would only perpetuate the cycle of hatred, and my country had already paid too great a price in blood and tears. I knew that when I left prison, I must leave bitterness and ha...

Hatred and Animosity Rarely Emerge out of Nowhere

August 27, 2025•751 words

“Hatred is not the opposite of love, it is the refusal to confront the painful truths within oneself. The one who hates is often the one who cannot bear the mirror of their own insufficiency, and so they break that mirror in the faces of others. But what is shattered outside still festers within, and so the cycle of hostility renews itself endlessly.” - Carl Jung “All resentment is born from comparison. A man does not hate another for what he has, but for what that possession reveals about his...

Self-Deception: We Are Unknown to Ourselves

August 27, 2025•641 words

“Every profound spirit needs a mask: even more, around every profound spirit a mask is continuously growing, owing to the constantly false, that is to say, shallow interpretation of every word, every step, every sign of life he gives.” - Friedrich Nietzsche “The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.” - Carl Jung “Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky Nietzsche's argument that people are strangers to themselves startled his re...

Master and Slave Mentalities

August 26, 2025•364 words

“People’s beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a fixed property; there is a huge variability in how you perform depending on the faith you have in yourself.” - Albert Bandura Nietzsche viewed the "master" and "slave" mentalities as mental development orientations that start to take shape in childhood. They are internal attitudes toward life itself, subtly shaped in early life by family dynamics, attachment styles, and the narratives we tell o...

The Will To Power

August 25, 2025•345 words

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” - Friedrich Nietzsche “What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization.” - Abraham Maslow “Man’s task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.” - Carl Jung “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” - Carl Jung “The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.”...

Trump's Bromance With Netanyahu

August 23, 2025•403 words

“The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference.” - Bess Myerson “The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants.” - Albert Camus “When you see a man seeking power and riches at the expense of his conscience, you can be sure he has already betrayed the people.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero “The world suffers a lot. Not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people.” - Napoleon Bonaparte “Every war, just or unjust, is fought...

The Love of Family

August 22, 2025•332 words

I love families. I love family gatherings. It's part of our soul. I come from an extremely close tight knit Metis family community. I clearly remember my father would fight for any disadvantaged ethnic group coming into Canada. When any family, including our new Canadians suffers a devastating loss, community support is there... We always have support for our new Canadians. When we step forward, whether through financial help, emotional support, childcare, education, sports, or simply by s...

Nietzsche's Social Psychological Has Changed Over Time

August 21, 2025•198 words

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.” - Friedrich Nietzsche "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” - Noam Chomsky "Walls turned sideways are bridges.” - Angela Davis "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” - Desmond Tutu "The most dangerous creation of any societ...

Nietzsche's Herd Power Mentality

August 20, 2025•350 words

"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule." - Friedrich Nietzsche "The price of freedom is death." - Malcolm X "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King Jr. "I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, ...

10 Stages of Genocide of Palestinians of Gaza

August 20, 2025•1,058 words

According to frameworks widely recognized in international genocide prevention efforts, such as those developed by Dr. Gregory H. Stanton of Genocide Watch (a model referenced by the United Nations and other bodies), genocide is a process that unfolds in ten stages. These stages are not strictly linear, they can overlap, occur simultaneously, or vary in order, but they provide a predictive model for understanding how genocides develop. Here are the ten stages, with brief descriptions: Classi...

Nietzsche's Psychology of Resentment: How Toxic Anger Rewrites Reality

August 18, 2025•813 words

"Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment." - Friedrich Nietzsche "The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution. Resentment is the wellspring of this reversal, the fuel that drives movements into rigidity." - Hannah Arendt "The oppressed, when they can no longer endure their lot, invent values that make their powerlessness into virtue. Resentment creates morality where strength has failed." - Albert Camus "Ressentim...

The West Democracies Proxy War via Ukraine Against Russia

August 17, 2025•405 words

"The hypocrisy of the great powers is such that they speak of peace while preparing for war; they extol humanity while practicing inhumanity." - Mahatma Gandhi "The supreme international crime is war of aggression. To initiate a war of aggression… is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." - Robert H. Jackson "States are not moral agents, people are, and ca...

My Mother Would Say, My Love!

August 16, 2025•214 words

“Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family.” - Anthony Brandt “Family is the compass that guides us. They are the inspiration to reach great heights, and our comfort when we occasionally falter.” - Brad Henry “What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.” - Mother Teresa Love of family is one of the most grounding and nurturing experiences us indigenous families ever come to know. It isn’t just about bloodlines or names written on a family tre...

Dostoevsky's Prophecy of Totalitarianism

August 15, 2025•645 words

"The most terrifying thing about dictators is that they love their victims, and their victims love them back." - Milan Kundera "The totalitarian state strives for the total destruction of the human spirit, for it knows that without the spirit, the body will submit willingly." - Hannah Arendt "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows." - George Orwell "The great strength of totalitarianism is that it can erode the distinction between trut...

Intent Through Actions Of A Genocide - Israel Targeting Palestinians of Gaza

August 15, 2025•545 words

“What is happening in Gaza is a genocide because Gaza does not exist anymore. … The level and pace of indiscriminate killing of a huge amount of innocent people, including in what Israel designated as a safe zone, destruction of houses, infrastructures, almost all the hospitals and universities, mass displacement, deliberate famine, the crushing of elites (including the killing of journalists, doctors, professors, civil servants…) and the sweeping dehumanization of Palestinians, create an overa...

Dr. François Burgat's Themes: When West Values Collapse - Racism, Discrimination, and the Blind Eye to Gaza Palestinian Genocide

August 14, 2025•538 words

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” - Martin Luther King Jr. “The most dangerous of all the forms of human stupidity is racism.” - François Cavanna “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.” - Albert Einstein “Racism is man’s gravest threat to man – the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.” - Abraham Joshua Heschel I recently read and watched Dr. François Burgat, a political scientist from a French u...

The Assault on Fact and Reason

August 12, 2025•429 words

"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history." - George Orwell "In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell "Propaganda is to democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state." - Noam Chomsky "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire When truth is negotiable, power flourishes. A shadow movement opposed to the Enlightenment ideals of reason...

Narcissism, The Darker Side

August 11, 2025•453 words

“Pathological narcissists can lose touch with reality in subtle ways that become extremely dangerous over time. When they can’t let go of their need to be admired or recognized, they have to bend or invent a reality in which they remain special despite all messages to the contrary.” - Bandy X. Lee “Underneath the so-called narcissistic personality is definitely shame and the paralyzing fear of being ordinary.” - Brené Brown “Narcissists have poor self-esteem, but they are typically very succe...

A Moral Imperative

August 10, 2025•329 words

“A nation’s foreign policy should reflect its values and ideals.” - George F. Kennan “Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.” - George C. Marshall “Thus, moral values and a commitment to human dignity have been not an appendage to our foreign policy but...

Israel Is So Powerful, Washington DC Succumbs to Tel Aviv, Israel as the Capital of USA

August 9, 2025•393 words

“Without the U.S. weapons, Israel cannot fight.” - a former Mossad intelligence director “What is happening in Gaza is a genocide because Gaza does not exist anymore… mass displacement, deliberate famine, … create an overall picture of genocide.” - Israeli historian Amos Goldberg “The cataclysm that you and I are witnessing in Gaza is a genocide in the awful making… It is not even a ‘war’. It is a genocide.” - Andrew Mitrovica “The United States… would not use any of its material leverage… I...

The Power of Drone Surveillance - Break the Soul Before the Body

August 8, 2025•328 words

"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." - Sun Tzu "There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment... you had to live, did live, from habit that became instinct, in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized." - George Orwell "He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play sp...

Israeli Military Occupation: Concealing Genocidal Actions After 2 years of Israeli Bombings

August 7, 2025•597 words

“The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold on us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold….” - Thomas Jefferson “We are already in the midst of a catastrophe… Israel is using famine as a weapon of war and that is contrary to international law.” - Josep Borrell “It is not possible to create a famine by accident.” - Alex de Waal “Israel made its intentions to starve everyone in Gaza explicit, implemented its plans and predictably created a fa...

Drones, Everyday More Deadly

August 7, 2025•398 words

“The future of warfare is not boots on the ground, but bytes in the sky.” - P.W. Singer “Technology is teaching us that war no longer needs human closeness to kill, only human intent.” - Chris Hedges “What makes drone warfare so psychologically destabilizing is the fusion of omnipresence with invisibility.” - Laurie Calhoun “The terrifying thing about drones is not just what they destroy, but what they reveal about our moral distance from violence.” - Noam Chomsky “With drones, we have outs...

61 Years Later, A Review of Malcolm X’s Essay, "Zionist Logic"

August 5, 2025•913 words

"You can’t drive a knife into a man’s back nine inches, pull it out six inches, and call it progress." - Malcolm X "Facts do not at all speak for themselves, but require a socially acceptable narrative to absorb, sustain, and circulate them." - Edward Said "There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless.’ There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard." - Arundhati Roy "Palestine is a moral litmus test for the world." - Angela Y. Davis "We know too well that our freedom...

The Mickey Mouse Economics Presidency: One Man Rule Under Fake State of Emergencies

August 4, 2025•759 words

"The United States is now governed by the least responsible, most corrupt, and most dangerous leadership in its history." - Jeffrey Sachs "The truth is that the Congress in Washington is a bunch of millionaires working for billionaires. They don't represent the people, they represent the money." - Chris Hedges "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies... a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." - Dwight D. Eise...

An Educated Canada

August 3, 2025•243 words

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” - Nelson Mandela “Investing in education is not just the right choice, it is the smart choice, nations that prioritize learning build the strongest and most adaptable economies.” - Justin Trudeau “Ignorance is not a virtue. It's not cool to not know what you're talking about.” - Barack Obama “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character, that i...

Let’s Pause and Revisit This When We’re in a Better Headspace

August 3, 2025•267 words

"When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion." - Dale Carnegie "Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it." - Mahatma Gandhi "You can’t always control what happens to you, but you can control how you respond." - Epictetus "Emotional self-control, delaying gratification and stifling impulsiveness, underlies accomplishment of every sort." - Daniel Goleman People are drawn into emotional territory by con...

Gaza is Canada; Gaza is USA!

August 1, 2025•241 words

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." - Desmond Tutu "The Palestinians are treated as human refuse. This is not a war. It is state-sponsored mass murder." - Chris Hedges "When Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely-crowded refugee camps, schools, apartment blocks, mosques, and slums, that is not a war. That is murder." - Noam Chomsky "In Canada, we are strong not in spite of our differences but because of the...

Trump: The Green Light for Ethnic Cleansing and No Statehood for Palestinians

July 31, 2025•993 words

Examine closely the deep disappointment and hostility expressed by U.S. President Donald Trump in response to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recognition of a Palestinian two-state solution. Trump’s reaction, particularly his dictatorial threat to withhold any future trade deal with Canada, reveals the extent of his rigid stance on total unconditional support for Israel, even when blatant starvation and genocide is committed against the Palestinians. Trump has demonstrated a profound anim...

Trump: “Mexicans Can Make America Great, Again!”

July 30, 2025•643 words

“Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.” - George Orwell "Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?" - Steve Jobs "A narcissist paints a picture of themselves as being the victim or innocent in all aspects. They will go to great lengths to make you believe it..." - Shannon L. Alder “Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.” - Will Rogers "Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own." - Jona...