top of page
  • Writer's pictureLisette Verri

META's Tiger & Buffalo TV Ad Explained



According to Webster’s newly dedicated section for Zuck’s virtual world, this is how Webster defines the word "metaverse":


“In its current meaning, metaverse generally refers to the concept of a highly immersive virtual world where people gather to socialize, play, and work. “


Meta--here efficiently conveys the idea of transcending reality (as in metaphysics) and the more current use of meta as an adjective meaning “self-referential” or knowingly distinct from the conventional and concrete world.


Zuckerberg says that “meta comes from the Greek word for beyond,” and that’s basically correct. Etymologically, meta meant “after” in Greek, so metaverse also neatly implies a world or conception that requires the “real” world in order to move beyond it and acknowledge another realm.


Interesting.


VIDEO:


Here’s the summary of the advertisement.


A group of teens is in an art gallery. They approach a painting that depicts a tiger and a buffalo in a jungle landscape. The tiger has his teeth around the buffalo’s neck but as they approach, the tiger shifts his eyes to meet theirs. Then the painting seems to come alive, the tiger begins to pet the buffalo and the tiger says in a deep male voice, “this is the dimension of imagination.” Then it bursts inside the jungle with all types of animals and birds are dancing to the beat, toucans, pelicans, monkeys, even the trees are dancing. All of the animals have anthropomorphic faces, eyes facing front, human characteristics.



The jungle scene from the painting begins to emerge from the painting and surround the teens. They are surrounded by trees with hanging dancing serpents. In the painting, the horizon reveals another earth-like planet and Saturn hanging large in the sky along with a setting sun and some strange geometric-shaped structure. They are drawn inside the scene and there is no distinction between the real world, which was the art museum, and the surreal, animated jungle scene from the painting. The tiger is dancing with the buffalo, the kids are in sync with the animals and nature all moving together to this sort of techno beat. A caption that says “this is going to be fun” appears on the screen.



Points of interest…


The paintings in the gallery, these cartoony, brightly colored jungle scenes are actually from a fairly well-known artist who is important in the academic world for a specific reason. Henri Rousseau, a French artist from the late 19th century, was a Socialist Darwinist. Socialist Darwinism is the idea that natural selection creates societies that cooperate as moral communities. This concept actually predates Social Darwinism, which emphasized natural selection as competitive and individualist. The latter, Social Darwinism, which was fully rejected by socialist thinkers throughout the 1860s-70s saw the former, Socialist Darwinism, as an important tool for promoting progressive social change.



For people who thought like Rousseau, and to boil it down to very simple terms, it was the idea that humans could adopt a more harmonious, communal, societal structure as the one they believed exists in the animal world. In other words, Socialist Darwinists saw the animal world as one of harmonious sharing and communal care for each other. They did not see it as survival of the fittest, or survivalist at all, which is what Darwin proposed.


Rousseau remained relatively unknown until he was celebrated by Pablo Picasso, an outspoken communist and activist who used his art and fame to influence communist thought in the cultural and political world. Rousseau's painting, used in this advertisement, depicts this ideology in visual form; all the animals living harmoniously in nature and with each other, all grooving to one beat and welcoming humanity, well, most of it, to come and join them in this Eden-like utopian garden setting.



After Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species published in 1860, many socialist and communist thinkers, theoreticians, and opportunistic politicians applied Darwin’s findings to human society. Darwin’s theory became the foundation for late 19th-century intelligentsia that reinforced the emerging notion of materialism, the exchange of God for science as an authority, and the desire for social change along a specific order.


Socialist Darwinists found Darwin’s theory liberating, utterly destroying the last vestiges of the religious world views that had dominated society for so long. “Science is the liberator of humanity. Natural science liberates us from God,” said Wilhelm Liebknecht, a Marx devotee and founder of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, who expressed this view at Marx’s funeral. After reading Darwin, Marx and Engles had proclaimed that Darwin had finally banished all theological authority lending strongly to their anti-religious, materialist view of the world. Socialists’ feverish zeal to publicize evolutionary theory was directly related to their hatred and animosity toward religion, valiantly enlisting science in their campaign against it.



Darwin was very disturbed at the thought of his theories being applied to socialist thought. “What a foolish idea seems to prevail in Germany on the connection between Socialism and Evolution through Natural Selection,” he wrote in strong consternation believing his theory would be tarnished by the association. Socialist Darwinism was a monstrous hybridization in his view and was horrified to discover that his theories were being hijacked by revolutionary socialists to support their political and social positions. For these heirs of Enlightenment rationalism, science was the ultimate authority, God is a dead superstition, and advances in science and technology could build a utopian society and ultimately transform humanity. They hijacked Darwinism for their own purposes and considered it an important propaganda weapon.


However, the esteem held by the socialists for Darwin was not just about exchanging God for science. They adored the idea of biological transmutation as an acceptable hypothesis but completely discarded Darwin’s notion of natural selection through the struggle for existence. For Darwin, it was survival of the fittest and nature would balance itself out naturally on its own. These socialists, particularly Fabian socialists, discarded Darwin’s theory of natural selection, especially when applied to the individual since it contradicted their vision of social harmony and economic abundance.



The basic idea of Social Darwinism was that human evolution was essentially the same as animal evolution but discarded the natural selection aspect of this theory except in one regard, human transmutation. They loved the idea that human biology, according to Darwinistic thought, could transmutate into something more, something better, evolve into the Übermensche, the super human. And they were counting on this for their future utopian society where humans can be as gods themselves. If you listen to today’s Socialist Darwinists, they are frustrated that humans are not evolving as their notions predicted so they’ve modified their thinking. Humans evolve with the aid of their tools, in other words, technology. The next stage of human evolution will come with merging man with machine.


While Marx and his disciples vehemently rejected the Malthusian population theory and insisted that humans are qualitatively different from animals, Marxists, including Marx, continued the Darwinization of society despite this difference. Revisionists continued with their version of the Darwinization of society by discarding the aspects that they didn’t want, like Darwin’s “human struggle for existence” and “survival of the fittest” because it flew in the face of their ideals of nature, animals and humans all working harmoniously in concert to achieve a perfect utopian society. They held on to Malthus’ population theory, the idea that human population will grow beyond our resources and nature could not balance itself out on its own, it needed specialized human help, namely in the form of eugenics and population control.


It must be frustrating for these transhumanists when their biological evolution into superhuman gods because of their great intellect just refuses to happen. And, the revolution? Why does it continue to fail?


Today’s Social Darwinists have adopted that very position and we see that playing out in society today. As absurd as it is and surprising that anyone with a single functioning neuron can view the animal kingdom as all working together in harmony sharing everything they have in some wilderness communal effort, some people still think this is true. Throw a raw rib roast out in the middle of an open field in a nature reserve and see if all the different animals join together to share it peacefully with each other. In the metaverse ad, the painting invites young humans into this idea of all of nature dancing to the same tune in total harmony in an Eden like garden setting in the utopian futuristic vision of Social Darwinism.



In the back of the gallery in what looks to be another room or hall are more paintings. These paintings are from another socialist, Hilma af Klint. Hilma af Klint was a Swedish artist, medium and self-proclaimed mystic whose paintings were among the first in Western abstract art. Af Klint was a theosophist who studied the teachings of Helena Blavatsky. She was also a Rosicrucian and studied the writings of Christian Rosencreutz, Hermeticist, alchemist, and founder of the masonic Rosicrucian Order. Her paintings, which resemble cryptic geometric diagrams, were a visual representation of theosophical, occult, and masonic ideas.

She belonged to a group called “The Five,” a coven of women artists who would make contact with the “High Ascended Masters” often by way of seances. During their seances, af Klint would channel the Masters who promised to aid the group in their spiritual training. She would create automatic drawings and writings which became wildly popular among the Surrealists of the 1920s. After years as the sole medium of The Five and their many, many seances, Hilma af Klint accepted a special assignment from one of the Ascended Masters, a commission to create Paintings for the Temple.


This commission was to create a series of paintings for a temple that should be built. These paintings were carried out in two phases between 1906-1916 and contained almost 200 paintings, all large in scale, and of which she explained were painted “through” her with “force,” a “divine dictation.” She said she had no idea what these cryptic abstract shapes were supposed to depict but worked swiftly and surely, without changing a single brush stroke.

Theosophy is Luciferianism and Luciferianism is atheistic Satanism. In Theosophy, the writings of Blavatsky hail Satan as a cultural hero akin to Prometheus. It was Blavatsky in her seminal work The Secret Doctrine (1888) that first reinterpreted the Christian account of the end of the age of innocence in Genesis 3. Satan, in the shape of the serpent, brings gnosis and liberates mankind so they can become as gods themselves. Adam and Eve were held prisoner in the garden by a cruel and unjust God. Lucifer, the hero, liberates and sets mankind free.



How can they be atheists if they were holding seances and contacting the Masters, you ask? They believed the High Ascended masters were humans with the gift of gnosis or sometimes they were cosmic extra-terrestrials believed to be simply organic living beings much like us but from advanced civilizations from other worlds. Theosophists, Luciferians, and all members of the secret occult societies of the mystery schools are atheists. They are humanists and more, they are transhumanists.


Blavatsky despised Christianity and the idea of a Creator or a Supreme Being and she did not acknowledge the existence of Satan, either. The only divine beings in her view were humans with gnosis once they’ve evolved to their full potential, or other advanced gnosis bearing beings like ETs from other planets. Theosophy became even more popular than Eliphas Levi’s occultist movement especially under the leadership of Anni Besant (1907-1933), Blavatsky’s successor, who was an important part of the socialist and feminist political culture. “I am a Socialist because I am a believer in Evolution,” wrote the women’s rights activist Annie Besant. She saw in Darwin’s work the best evidence to date that the status quo had nothing to do with divine intervention.

Theosophy was thought to be the vehicle to bring about a utopian social transformation and the cultivation of noble traits in Theosophists would lead the charge in this change. While Blavatsky was not a socialist per se, she was indeed a radical, was deeply connected to dedicated socialist elites, well versed in Western esotericism, fringe masonry, and hermetic orders. She even referred to Jesus as “the great Socialist and Adept.” It was Blavatsky that chose Annie Besant to be her successor. Besant was considered one of the most important voices of the 20th century, a staunch atheist and eventually became a Marxist.


The three paintings by Hilma af Klint, all of which are titled Altarpieces, are said to relate to Theosophy’s version of evolutionary theory in which evolution occurs in two directions, elevating from the physical to the spiritual and descending from the divine to the material world. These three paintings are meant to be shown together in the sanctuary or the innermost part of the temple, a culmination and a bringing together of forms, colors, and motifs. Af Klint imagined this temple to be a round, three-level structure connected by a spiral staircase of which visitors could proceed upward, or ascend (Read more here)


So, there you have it. The art gallery in Meta’s ad is acting as a theosophical temple, one that is Socialist Darwinian, Luciferian, transhumanist, Satanic atheist, and materialist, and your kids are all invited to enter and spend every waking moment existing on the inside of this thing.


As I talked about in my previous video that analyzes the film Lamb, Saturn, which is shown in the Meta ad in the futuristic utopian sky of the metaverse, is also a symbol used by occultists of the same ideological perspective:


Did anyone else find it unsettling when the tiger’s eyes shifted to meet the gaze of the teens? The first time I saw that was in the movie Black Swan, when Natalie Portman’s character goes into her mother's room and the paintings all shift their gaze? This is not a warm and welcoming behavior. It is the stuff nightmares are made of. The anthropomorphizing of animals in this instance is disturbing, almost hypnotic.


Anthropomorphism is a term coined by Greek philosopher Xenophanes describing the similarity between religious believers and their gods. In other words, there is a tendency to make our gods look like us, look human. But, anthropomorphism is also the adding of human features to non-human entities or inanimate objects and this can be done to either humanize an animal or object or to dehumanize a person to make it look more like an animal or object.

According to Psych Central, neuroscience research has shown that similar brain regions are involved when we think about the behavior of both humans and non-human entities. Human brains, using neurons called “mirror” neurons, are identical in activity when we’re performing an action or watching another human perform an action. The same regions of the brain are employed when attempting to predict the actions of animals or inanimate objects. Though we can consciously differentiate between human and non-human, the same mechanisms in our brain are activated when we are observing the actions of both. Those who have deficits in this region of the brain correspond to deficits in empathy.


Those who lack empathy typically fall under these categories: narcissistic, anti-social, or psychopathic personality disordered. Add to that a rhythmic syncopated beat and now the operant conditioning portion of the central nervous system is activated. So, anthropomorphized jungle animals moving to a syncopated beat disturbs the discernment feature in regions of the brain that differentiate between human and non-human entities. Adding visuals to rhythmic music activates the central nervous system for conditioning. Ever wonder why a jingle from a television commercial sticks in your brain all day long? Put hypnotic and repetitive visuals to a beat and it sticks with you forever. There is certainly a distinct creep factor with these wide-eyed and wildly staring anthropomorphized jungle animals jumping hypnotically to a syncopated beat which is intended as a welcoming feature to lure young people into this synthetic digital world.


Interestingly, lonely people and those who lack social connections with other people tend to seek out connections from non-human items. Anthropomorphism helps us to simplify and make more sense of complicated entities. Anthropomorphism or thinking of a nonhuman entity in human ways renders it worthy of moral care and consideration. Anthropomorphism in reverse, or when humans are presented as nonhuman objects or animals is dehumanization.


My kids are adults now, but if I were a parent of growing and developing kid, I wouldn’t let their brains anywhere near the Metaverse.




bottom of page