I vaguely remember reading an analysis of the novel many years ago. It claimed the story was actually true, in the sense that the Axis really did "win" and the Allies "lost": the "victors", the US and the Soviet Union, were mired in an endless, costly, and dangerous cold war, while the supposed "losers", Germany and Japan, enjoyed economic prosperity and freedom under US protection.

“Narrative warfare”, an excellent and very useful concept.

This made me reappraise my own humble work at the Records Department in Oceania.

In the reality I live in, narrative warfare is called Weltanschauungskrieg.

So good! The main thing I remember from watching the TV series was the discomfort from wanting the good Nazis to win over the bad Nazis.

_The Man in the High Castle_ was Philip K. Dick's attempt at writing science fiction literature using the Japanese Ichigo Ichie.

Pull back the curtain to reveal the uncertain. You cannot remain in this domain. You have seen the others behind the mirrors.

Glad I found your page. Great, quality stuff. "If youre shouting answers to these rhtorical questions right now, thank you." 😂😅 Gotta love it. I find myself quick to judgement as Im sure the vast majority of us to do. So, it's great to find things that tend to force you to think outside your own box. Thank you.

Interesting take. Here's another. It is an alternate history novel, but _The Grasshopper Lies Heavy_ is the alternate history. Note the significant differerence between that and the revealed history of what we laughing call _our world._

Another incredible video! The narrative wars is an incredible label for the times we live in!

PKD combined brilliance and madness so perfectly they become nearly indistinguishable. Never once read someone who made me the reader feel insane quite like he does.

I tell my children that story tellers rule the world. I encourage them in their creative endeavors, whether that be writing, drawing, dancing, whatever. I disnt come to a full appreciation if the power of story telling until the last few years, now 42 years old. I think 2020 is what really cemented it. Watching the while world go crazy and fall in line finally shattered the illsuion that i was living in. I believed that most people actually saw the world the way that i do, or at least could be brought over to my point of view woth reason. Lol! I am still so naive in so many ways. But now i see that shaping my childrens world view is the only way forward. I used to feel guilty or dirty about intentionally shaping their perception of the world. But then i realized that if i dont do it, there are wolves at the door just waiting for the opportunity.

Yes. Yes. Also yes. Philip K Dick. Telling insight.

In my latest novel, Above Dark Waters, brainwave data allows companies to use generative media to craft the perfect ads (aka "stories.") The kinds of pseudorealities and narrative warfare that PKD talked about, but hyperaddictive since it hijacks the base layers of our instinctual mind.

Thankyou! Just found your channel. Very interesting.

Perhaps I should try re-reading 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep'. You've made me think that I might have missed something. Perhaps I was paying excessive attention to the dissimilarities between the book and 'Blade Runner'?

Fantastic dissertation. Good job and love the way you introduced modern political narratives was very clever. Good food for thought.

Not all narratives are morally equal.

I found the show very enjoyable. The alt history world building took center stage to the detriment of thematic development, but there are thematics in the background. They're morphed a bit, but then Blade Runner also made some significant deviations from DADOES. Wish they'd made more of the opportunity, but it really wasn't a complete miss.

We can't answer some questions as they are theoretical and rhetorical but we can do a little thinking about how our lives and the lives of others would be affected by different answers. SO on one side of the mental spit screen there is getting through today, and on the other side there is tomorrow and tomorrow's tomorrow.

I like the audio, but the AI art is ... odd, but maybe appropriate to this topic.

I thoroughly endorse this video. Thank you for sharing.

It could only be Hollywood type shallow. They have nothing else.

Well the algorithm did well pointing me here. How fascinating. I put a hold on this book at my library! Thanks!

Thanks!

I like your take, but a well done alternate history approach would have been accectable as well. No worries, this is on our minds these days for some very good reasons. Someone will give it another try and perhaps be better at getting us to think about your point here.

yeah this book was sold to me as alternate history and instead I read slices of life of characters in this world with little to know ties and plot threads that hung

"What is the truth?" - Pontious Pilot?

Did anyone notice that the history in Grasshopper isn't QUITE the same as our reality...?

Minor question if anyone has the time, is the music Tristam und Isolde or is it a different opera? It's familiar to, but I am not sure which it is.

Is that Richard Strauss in the background?

1000 psychic wars.

Yup. Let's acknowledge that old time peoples may have been told one version of reality by parents and maybe one other by school or employer, we are swimming and maybe drowning in a sea of told versions of reality. Hearing the other side of a story is not automatically clarifying, not as clarifying as learning to spot the agenda of the story. In this our public and higher education is not helpful so far.

I haven't read the book, but I tried to watch the series. I abandoned it in the first show because it was too literal an alternative history. There are conspiracy theorists who believe Hitler won the war, but fled to antarctica with his master race, and left all the Germans he wanted killed off behind. He ran off the American expedition to Antarctica, as operation paparclip was taking over America, and experimenting on Americans and American soldiers. The idea is that the enemy is running things from behind the scene. The constitution has been thrown away and our leaders are actors. No one would know who the man in the high castle is.

Smart people attempt to influence gullible people. An example of that is taking this truism and making it sound menacing. What's truly revolutionary is simply teaching critical thought rather than exploiting their lack of it. Uplifting, as it were. As with nations, independence, not influence, is the measure of worthiness for a vote.

Well consider also the "Handmaids Tale". They have the Nation by the throat, but at the slightest ripple of individuality, or deviation of thought, the "Herd of Independent Minds" has a mass seizure. 🙂

How can we assess our own believes objectively? I think your interpretation and if that was Dicks intention is good. Anyone constructs narratives, some just in their mind for themselves, some on the big screen for anyone. But is that not a very simple truth? Don´t get me wrong, there are a lot of people who don´t really think about that. They eat what they get served. But it´s still not that big of a realization. The much greater truth is, that not all storys are equal. But at least in my opinion this, your and Dicks narrative seems to led to a "everyone makes these, so everything is the same" conclusion. Which is just not true.

the man in the high castle isn't alternative history, its alternate future

... 👍👍👍...

The Man in the High Tower show on Amazon did not fail.

I think Phil was on to something when he wrote that "The empire never ended..."

Remember, PKD was a rather weird guy with some very strange life experiences, and a splendid intellect and imagination.

It is also about leveraging the variously different values that were taught to the various generations, like everyone is supposed to be equal,, which is not True, but it is widely believed. And so the Politicians and the TV New Networks have to produce that story, while shutting down anything else. - T

nice warfare

What if Germany Conquered all EU except one small country .Serbia.

And who are you to say all of this?

Philip K. Dick was a deeply troubled man. You can read it in his novels and short stories, and see it in quite a few of the movie and TV adaptions made of them. There is always something that is not right or that is just out of reach; always something that looks different from what it really is. He had mental health issues, used drugs, had hallucinations etc. and once even tried to end his own life. I'm sort of glad all these sad things happened to him, because he produced quite interesting science fiction. Too bad he died early.

I get it. The right is ‘far right’ but the far left is political. One may become fascist but the other merely authoritarian.

What if Joe Biden became president of USA?

One interpretation I've seen for 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘢𝘯 𝘐𝘯 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘏𝘪𝘨𝘩 𝘊𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘭𝘦, is that it's actually a documentary. The Germans were very invested in high technology and the occult. They did create functional field propulsion craft, as evidence by their 𝘏𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘦𝘣𝘶 disk craft. A handful of these craft, armed with energy weapons were able to quickly overpower a US naval fleet during 𝘖𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘏𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘫𝘶𝘮𝘱. The 𝘋𝘪𝘦 𝘎𝘭𝘰𝘤𝘬𝘦 device was intended to be able to wage temporal warfare. It doesn't seem like too much of stretch that they may have perfected the technology. The CIA was founded by high ranking German officials brought to the US through 𝘖𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘗𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘭𝘪𝘱. The Germans won the war, but made everyone believe they lost.