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Perception, Inception and the Trojan Horse Money Meme - Part Four of Four
Perception, Inception and the Trojan Horse Money Meme
Chapter Four of Four
Find Yourself, Then Find The Others
By
Cognitive Dissonance
The intent of this essay is not to convince the reader of anything other than the need to expand our depth perception of the consensus reality. Consider this essay as an invitation to think free of constraints. In Chapters One (here) and Two (here) we explored perception and how it is intertwined with what we believe is our real reality as well as how our reality is distorted by manipulating our perception. In Chapter Three (here) we examined Inception or the implanting of our basic beliefs and perceptions. In the final chapter we discuss a way forward.
Comfort is Found Within Our Conditioning
While I most certainly hope it is not the case I suspect that I lost many of my classically trained empirically minded readers by the second or third paragraph of Chapter One. I don’t say this in a derogatory manner at all for in many respects I was and still am cut from the same bolt of cloth. And if I were reading this essay fifteen years ago I would probably shut down as well for I was a man of data, facts and science and to me this would all be seen as just nonsensical foolishness. By my late twenties I had discarded all the fantasy and fiction I mentioned in Chapter One as childish toys no longer needed or wanted.
As with so many other men and women I began to shake myself awake as part of what is often called the mid-life crisis, that time when so many begin to reassess all they have done and where they are going. For the vast majority this existential crisis is relatively short lived. And once the self doubt and reflection is washed from the system, the mind hardens and narrows even more than before. Once cleansed of any lingering non conforming thoughts that couldn’t be ignored or dismissed, they finish their career and retire in a blaze of corporate glory comfortably sated in their self induced numbness. After all, who the hell wants to be a rebel at fifty or sixty when retirement is just around the corner? That’s a young man’s game.
There is great emotional and intellectual comfort to be found within the highly trained and conditioned mind. Everything has a place and there’s a place for everything except for the few outliers that can usually be trashed as aberrant thought or even one offs. What I didn’t see at the time and only later began to grasp is that while I knew many scientifically proven facts, in reality I didn’t know much at all. I realized all the really important and interesting questions were still to be answered and that each conclusion was as unique as a person’s fingerprint.
The illusion of scientific, moral and intellectual certainty that had sustained me for several decades was ultimately not liberating at all. Instead it was a wonderfully constructed and quite convincing thought meme erected in honor of the false God of empirical thinking. As I began to pull back layer upon layer of the onion I was emotionally and egoically crushed to learn that the more I thought I knew the less I really understood about anything of real consequence. While I might be able to describe to you how my cell phone functioned I was unable to explain to you who I was and why I was here.
Just as important I came to appreciate that it was the pursuit of these questions that would be the source of my future growth rather than the answers themselves. What I had always believed was true freedom derived from the ability to examine everything through the lens of logic and scientific method was instead a mental straitjacket. What I considered to be a factual view of my world was actually a belief system supported by official supporting documents and authenticated certificates of proof. The more specialized I became the more narrowly I saw the world and the bigger the burden became of defending my belief system. Every outlier I came across was a danger to the whole and as such must quickly be qualified, quantified or derisively dismissed.
The seduction and denial begins in believing that we don’t do precisely what we have done. Having become second nature after decades of training, we are in a constant state of weighting and judgment, always sorting, collating or categorizing most everything even if just on the subconscious level. We are taught from birth that there is always correct and incorrect, true and false, approved and unapproved, black and white. And while we may intellectually claim we understand that the world is full of gray, emotionally we still collect those ‘things’ which confirm our consensus reality belief system and reject those that don’t.
This is a built in bias that works silently in the background and is part of the control system that keeps us safely confined within our perceived reality box. However if confronted as I now do with the reader, many will strenuously assert this isn’t so, that we fairly examine any new piece of information that enters our field of vision. But of course when an outlier comes floating by we use our established and cherished standards and processes to measure and validate what is real and what is not. In so many ways we use circular logic to confirm that which we already believe to be true.
When examining others it seems self evident that the more committed we are to a particular persuasion, belief or dogma the more likely we are to defend that belief as if we were defending our very life. And in so many ways we would be for our perception and belief determines how we view and live life. Yet we are mostly blind to this process within ourselves and we rarely see the belief system of “science” or of the “scientific method” as a similarly rigid or embedded point of view.
We assure all those around us that only the truth prevails in science. But always we apply the same tools already ‘proven’ to be ‘true’ to information that is nonconforming or suspect. Thus the measuring stick designed only to measure that which is already conforming to the accepted standard successfully rejects those that do not.
Any change of view or perception that does enter the control system must clear impossibly high hurdles. And even then the change doesn’t gain widespread acceptance until the old guard is long dead and buried. For a discipline that supposedly accepts proof that meets certain standards, why is it that long held beliefs and customs are jealously defended which just so happen to deny entry to change? Maybe it isn’t science itself that is the problem here, but rather the practitioner of science that is the malfunctioning component? In other words it is the application of the scientific process that is distorted, thus producing distorted results.
The Journey, Not the Destination When explaining this to others I often employ a thought picture to describe what is happening. As I grew older and my worldview and belief system became ever more complicated and interwoven it began to feel as if I were carrying around an eighty pound bag of ready mix concrete. While I could manage the load I needed to maintain a firm and constant grip which eventually eliminated any flexibility and adaptability I originally started with. This is one of the reasons why real breakthrough ideas spring from young minds not yet conditioned to know what they want to do or what they just did was impossible. Soon enough I became wedded to a white elephant in ways that were never really obvious to me because I was in the middle of what I had come to accept as normal. My box was not a box, but instead my entire world. This in turn ignited a severe case of normalcy bias well beyond anything I could imagine. So while I didn’t necessarily see it as a burden at the time it most certainly was. In effect I was so busy treading water that I was rarely making headway. And the more belief weight I took on the more burdensome the load became. I was now controlled by my own belief system and not the other way around. And because this is considered a normal and natural part of everyday life and something everyone else deals with, it was just the way things were. This is modern day life we are told, no more or less. When I realized I was on a treadmill going nowhere fast it quickly became obvious that a change in perspective was desperately needed. Instead of defending my belief system at every port of entry, why couldn’t I simply suspend belief (an entirely different concept than suspending disbelief in order to enjoy a fictional book, TV show or movie) and allow these nonconforming ideas and concepts to simply exist without vetting or qualification? This meant that everything had a ‘right’ to exist in my reality without affirmation, confirmation or rejection. If it didn’t fit my current belief system there was no longer a need to apply the only two choices I ever really afforded things like this in the past, to reject it or accept it. Instead I could simply see it as interesting or curious and place it on a back shelf in my mind ready at a moment’s notice to be pulled down for further examination and assimilation. This is more important than might be obvious at first glance. While we may reassure ourselves that anything we reject (or accept) can and will be reexamined if new information is presented (or if we reassess old information) in practice once something is ‘disbelieved’ there is very little incentive to reassess our position. We simply give little to no credence to things that have already been dismissed as impossible or improbable. And the reason we ‘disbelieved’ it in the first place was because it was impossible or improbable. We ‘proved’ that, right? The flexibility we claim we will apply to new or additional information is a deceptive conceit we afford ourselves in order to maintain the comfort of hard and fast rules of belief, which in turn maintains our narrow perception of reality. This is the circular logic I was talking about earlier. The parts confirm the whole which confirm the parts which confirm the whole. That’s not to say that we don’t nibble away at the outer edges of our belief system because clearly we do. But the very fact that we do accept minor changes enables us to believe that we could and would do the same with major sections of our belief system, when in practice nothing could be further from the truth. We are encouraged to think outside the box, but not too far. We are taught that in order to build a diverse and healthy social order we must be tolerant of alternative memes and beliefs. This is a fiction we practice only on the surface because in order to protect our belief system we must do exactly the opposite. The proof is the polarized and divisive world we live in. We are conditioned to recognize differences and to draw clear boundaries to affirm our narrow perception of reality, not to seek out similarities and to approach others with empathy and loving care. And this conditioning is deliberate in order to maintain the status quo of the consensus reality which in turn is controlled by the powerful. We so easily believe that powerful people work towards maintaining their power yet we find it nearly impossible to believe that the thought meme control system would be designed to enable precisely what those in power most desire. And make no mistake about it; controlling thought is the ultimate power. This is why major social change can only occur when a new and energized generation takes the helm and begins to control the prevailing meme. This is also why entire nations and regions of the world can careen off the rails for a generation or two when group think takes control of the collective. It works both ways.
Shock Therapy
If usually takes a shocking slap to the face, often in the form of acute physical illness, loss of loved ones or severe financial hardship, to force us to reassess the basic underpinnings of our beliefs. But even then the bias is towards regaining ‘normalcy’ rather than exploring new concepts or ‘realities’. It takes great courage to break from the herd mentality and blaze new trails when we have been conditioned to believe there are monsters under the bed. It’s even more difficult to go it alone when our world has just been shattered and the conditioned tendency is to seek comfort, not more emotional pain.
However, great freedom and release comes from rejecting the confining parameters of dogmatic groupthink and belief. No longer do I need to haul around huge sacks of concrete mix while defending each meme intrusion as if it might be my last. In the same manner one would hold a butterfly, meaning gently with little to no force applied, if my belief system can’t accommodate an outlier or aberrant concept I can simply release that portion of my belief system that is acting as a roadblock and allow it to drift while I examine the new information. If the butterfly returns that’s all well and good. If it does not, that’s good as well because I’m not dependent upon the new belief just as I’m no longer dependent upon the old.
Actually if we are to practice this on a daily basis, to continue to use the term belief would be a misnomer because little remains that is fixed and immovable. I now make a conscious effort to avoid using terms such as “I believe” or “I know” because those words symbolize rigid thinking. There’s an old saying when trying to break ingrained habits. Fake it until you change it. By modifying my language usage I am trying to rewire my brain, the first step to exploring alternative realities.
This is not to say that I must outright reject or abandon my old belief system. Only that it no longer controls me by demanding that I use it and only it as the Gold standard by which I determine what is true or not. I can still drive my car, love my spouse and walk the dog. Only now, when something floats into my field of vision, I no longer must make judgments of fact, truth or reality and I can simply accept it for what it appears to be at the moment.
The outlier can no longer threaten me or even help me for that matter. Value or moral judgments are useless in this context because reality is no longer being measured by rigid standards, but rather is simply allowed to exist. It just is as it is at that moment. This small perspective change becomes a giant leap for our mind because now that we are no longer defensive in our approach, creativity and originality can come rushing to the surface. I no longer perceive the world solely through someone else’s definition of reality.
What I have just described is exactly how an infant or young child’s mind interacts with the world around her. There is no right or wrong, no true or false, no real or not real. There is simply what ‘is’ at that moment. Instead of saying “no, this can’t be real” or “yes, I believe this is true” the infant or very young child just sees and experiences. It is no more or less than what it is at that moment.
After exploring the new object (aka a new reality) the very young mind simply files it away as interesting or not and moves on to the next. She doesn’t categorize it (at least not yet) except in the simplest of terms such as tasty, colorful or fun. The child does not apply moral or value judgments in the manner we understand these terms to mean or how we use them to confirm or affirm our consensus reality.
We forget that very young children have very few innate fears and that most of their early fear perceptions are learned from fear memes their parents or guardians are conditioned to believe are real. While I would never argue that (at least in this consensus realty) some fear is not helpful in promoting longevity and health, most of the fear we experience on a daily basis is artificially induced for control purposes only and we willingly and for the most part unquestioningly go along for the ride.
In a very real sense the only thing we have to fear is ourselves because we are the ‘real’ boogie men in our lives. No one ‘makes’ me happy, sad, glad or afraid. The word ‘make’ in relation to any emotion is mostly a thought meme designed to encourage us to abandon responsibility for our own emotional sovereignty and independence. When we outsource responsibility for our emotional wellbeing we give our consent to be controlled. This is an integral component of the abuser and abused bonding, the symbiotic and codependent relationship with our abusers that I constantly discuss.
Breaking Free
If we are going to (once again) become sovereign entities and autonomous individuals we must begin the process by thinking and perceiving as one who is sovereign. A slave or captured mind does not see the world through his or her own eyes, but rather through those of the master. In every way imaginable the slave’s world revolves around the reality dictated by his (perceived) ultimate authority. The master creates the slave’s reality and thought memes, essentially his perception of reality, through the deep implantation or inception of programming memes which are then reinforced through conditioning and psychological and/or physical abuse.
Consider how ‘free’ and sovereign individuals who are captured and enslaved need to be ‘broken’ before they are considered to be usable or saleable. The external body is brutalized and nearly all sense of his or her former ‘reality’ is forcibly stripped from them physically, mentally and emotionally. Only then can the new thought meme (that of helplessness and dependency upon external control systems) be successfully implanted. The military follows a similar practice with new recruits. Break down the present reality, then program in a new one. The physical and mental shock to the system prepares the newly turned soil for the meme seeding.
This is the underlying premise behind Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”, an important read not only if we wish to understand what’s going on globally, but also locally within our mind. Our conceit, our enabling self deception, is that while we all recognize to some extent or another the effectiveness of this type of conditioning upon others, we fail to appreciate (for obvious reasons) how it is used upon us via the drip method of social conditioning and assimilation.
We all wish to point to evil doers manipulating the masses into unspeakable acts. Believing this sooths the ego and massages the mind which in turn allows us to believe that it’s all them and not me, thus absolving us from responsibility for our own (in) actions. While the master might physically control the whip, it is we compliant slaves who are the primary control system and by extension the remote hand on the whip.
We stifle dissent amongst ourselves for fear that by not doing so we will attract the whip, while at the same time by default we consent to being slaves because we do not raise objection nor do we dissent. In a similar manner we teach and train our own children the rules of slave hood before handing them over to the state, all the while following the rules and learning all the new thought meme tricks which we then dutifully teach our children.
Since our captured minds are already immersed within a world not of our own making, but rather one we have adapted to and adopted as our own, how do we break free from a prison when we cannot see the walls and barbed wire? In order for the slave or captured mind to (re)gain his freedom and sovereignty some fundamental understandings must be proactively germinated.
First and foremost we must recognize that our condition is not natural or normal and that we are not free, but can be free if we so wish. We must begin to accept that our world is not constructed as we perceive it to be, that our reality is distorted and manipulated. While the reader can easily see the slave is obviously a slave, can the reader see his or her own slavery? In order to do so we must deliberately and consciously push against every boundary we have been trained to believe is immovable and unchangeable.
This is the most difficult step of the entire process to internalize because we have always been a slave and being a slave is all we have ever know. There is nothing in our world other than that which already exists in our captured mind. This is our box and we have but one yardstick with which we measure our world. Because our mind and by extension our body is trapped within the box the only chance we ever have of seeing outside is to treat that which we formerly believed to be impossible with the same validity we now reserve solely for what has already been proven to us to be real. Question everything and accept nothing at face value, especially things we have always accepted because it has always been that way. It is not about changing the yardstick; it is about expanding it exponentially.
There Is No Spoon
We must suspend our confining and self confirming beliefs, even if at first we can only sustain this for a few moments, and train our minds eye to move beyond our self imposed limits by declaring that there are no limits and then acting as if it is so because it is so. In essence we make ‘real’ anything we completely and without reservation believe is ‘real’. By extension we delegitimize, dematerialize or make ‘not real’ anything which we seriously question as not valid or real. In my view this is the message behind that wonderful scene from “The Matrix” with the boy and the spoon. “Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth. There is no spoon. Then you'll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.”
The perceived impossibility of bending the spoon with just our mind is an illustration of our conditioned blindness to anything other than what we ‘know’ to be true. It is we who must bend our minds to perceive alternative realities. It is useless to try to achieve the ‘impossible’ and bend the current perceived reality into a form we wish to see. The consensus reality in its present form will only redirect our energy back against us. There is no winning in this present reality because we are only offered tools that will fail.
Do not fight the overwhelming river current of the present perceived reality, for this is impossible. Instead withdraw your consent to participate within the present consensus reality while at the same time opening your range and sensitivity of perception to alternatives. In essence we must improve and expand our depth perception of reality.
Ultimately it is a failure of our imagination that is the barrier to our freedom because the captured and conditioned mind does not perceive as real that which it believes is impossible or improbable. This is why we must suspend our beliefs for it is our belief system that defines the limits of our reality, not matter or science or our masters. It is the very definition of futile insanity to continuously use the same measuring stick to measure the same box and expect to perceive a different reality. Our masters control our mind and the body dutifully follows, thus for all intents and purposes perception is reality. This cycle must be broken.
Once started down the road to autonomous individuality and the sovereign individual, all concepts, beliefs and truths must be examined and reexamined in this new light. Everything that we believe we know must be washed and filtered with the absolute certainty that at this point we know only what a captured mind knows. As discussed in prior chapters, we cannot see outside of the box if we are unable to perceive the box itself. But this ‘limit’ is just an illusion when we understand that it only applies to the captured mind.
This illusion of limits is foisted upon us by the consensus reality in order to confirm the limited consensus reality. We are conditioned to believe that we must know nearly everything before beginning our journey. But this is only true if the only purpose for being on the road is to arrive at the destination, an outcome we do not wish to achieve nor could we achieve at this point. All we need to know is that everything we believe we know must now be viewed as suspect. We are in essence creating a new reality by questioning every aspect of the old one. We don’t need to know where we are going in order to go forward at this point.
While disorienting at first this will quickly pass so long as we recognize that we don’t need to change everything at once, only those items that must be changed to enable the next step. It’s OK to continue to live within the fundamental premises of the current consensus reality in order to maintain our balance as long as we accept and understand that it is all someone else’s reality and that it all must eventually be reexamined. To thy own self be true is the ultimate goal for if we fully participate in the master’s reality, we are the master’s slave. The danger here is one of denial, of convincing ourselves we are only resting in the present consensus reality when in fact we are still fully immersed with no real intention of ever leaving.
Ordering of Priorities
Secondly while we must concede that at times we may have limited physical control over our body, particularly if we live within a police or debt state, our captured mind must begin to recognize that our sovereign mind is ours alone to command and control and only when we surrender it do we concede our sovereignty.
When we have (re)established sovereignty of our inner conscious being, of our mind and inner self, only then can we begin to command our body and external being. There is no way around this ordering of priorities, no shortcut to nirvana. I understand that this ordering can be extremely frustrating because we want change now. But in order to navigate our way to sovereignty we must be in control of our mind and our perceived reality.
For example, when sweeping around a corner on a motorcycle, we must look as far ahead around the corner as possible, not directly in front of us. When we look far ahead, when we focus on where we wish to go, not where we are, our body and the motorcycle follow smoothly and under control. By the same token, if we focus our attention on a spot just in front of the motorcycle, this results in unsteady operation, constant over correction and a greater chance of disaster. An experienced motorcyclist knows you should look to where you want to go.
This is also the case when driving a car quickly on a twisting road though it is much more pronounced on a motorcycle because the bike responds to our slightest body movements. Our mind is even more intimately connected to our body, thus if we wish to regain our inner sovereignty we must have a clear understanding of where we are going and be able to see far down the road if we are to successfully navigate our body through the coming insanity. Looking to where we wish to go expands our awareness and perception while gaining perspective and diminishing distractions.
The control system and the insanity are trying to do just the opposite to force us to see only the here and now directly in front of our nose. Returning to the motorcyclist one last time, an inexperienced rider is often plagued by something called target fixation. If a rider sees a pot hole in his path and continues to stare at the hole, despite his sincere desire to avoid the hole he will hit it every time. The body flows to where the eye is looking and the mind is fixed. The control system teaches us to be target fixated, to become so immersed in the consensus reality that we can see nothing else. This is why we must command our mind and soul before we can hope to direct the body.
We have been conditioned to believe that we have no control over our reality, that it already exists in a completed form all around us and that we are just pawns on the chessboard of life. The captured mind and the slave mentality is more than willing to accept that our reality is preformed and that our only job is to cope, not create. We are kept so busy exploring our mental confinement and its physical prison walls, often through school, work, television, entertainment and politics which all combine to make up our perceived reality as proven by the scientific, legal and governmental process, that we fail to understand that this control system process is precisely what defines our reality, not what our reality actually is.
The scientific process, law, governmental regulation and all the other associated instructions and procedures defining our daily life are simply methods and techniques used to describe our consensus reality. It is not reality itself in the same way that a picture of the person is not the person itself, but simply a visual description of the person.
Unlawful Justice summed up this concept nicely in the comment section of Chapter Three when he said “We must always remember that symbols and what [they] stand for are not the same thing. The flag is not the country; the uniform is not the person, the crucifix, the Star of David; the actor is not the character portrayed; the medal is not the courage; the college degree is not the skill or knowledge.”
If however we have been taught and conditioned to believe that the flag is the country or the picture is the ‘real’ person, we will then form that unquestioned belief into reality by our actions. We make real what we believe or perceive to be real in both the figurative and physical sense. This is an insidious confusion deliberately propagated to shift awareness from the limitless reality within to the fatally limited false illusion externally imposed.
Our consensus reality is simply a belief system cultivated through all aspects of the slave control system. Like rats in a maze, we spend our waking days in conditioned response mode similar to an athlete’s muscle memory. Get up, eat, go to work, eat, come home, eat, watch the indoctrination box and eat, then go to bed. This is all repeated endlessly with weekends reserved so we can shop and spend money to drown our abject misery. The only way to escape the present consensus reality is to withdraw our consent for and of the present consensus reality, a reality that is only ‘real’ precisely because it commands a consensus among the captured minds.
Sadly our consent often comes in the form of deciding to do nothing and surrendering to the river’s current, a current which in turn is nothing more than the consensus belief or herd mentality. The most important concept regarding consensus belief which we all wish to ignore is that a decision to do nothing is often the most destructive decision to ourselves that we could ever make because by doing so we surrender both our will and consent at the same time. Our apathy and indifference are the chains that bind us to our master. We willingly consent to be slaves, an idea that is viciously refuted by those who wish to avoid all responsibility for their present enslavement.
Finally, in order to avoid taking nothing more than the first step, then becoming hopelessly locked in an endless cycle of one move forward and the next one back, we must make a daily commitment to ourselves first to act on a daily basis, then to accept baby steps as the definition of progress. In this essay I am describing a lifelong pursuit, not a weekend retreat or week long workshop. We must manage both our expectations and our denial if real progress over longer periods of time is to be realized.
This statement alone will be entirely unsatisfactory to the vast majority of readers who clamor for change now, for quantifiable results we can feel good about and revel in. To this I ask a simple question. Have you ever wondered why after thousands of years of resistance, revolution, renaissance and renewal that we stand today at the peak of a consensus reality insanity, that we are repeating yet again the same mistakes all over again? External change is never permanent when the inner self remains abandoned, a fundamental truth that is always lost and forgotten once the belly is full and the mind calmed.
It is the fundamental intent behind our actions that ultimately determines our success or failure, not just the effort involved. If we simply wish to change our status in the pecking order of the present consensus reality or we want our pain to be relived in order to return to the familiar numbness of oblivion, then we are doomed from the start. As well, if we feel compelled to ‘save’ others from the escalating insanity without first focusing on ourselves, even if it is only our family we are trying to save, then we are acting for all the wrong reasons and we will fail miserably. Ask someone who is recovering from a severe addiction and has been stable for many years. Chances are they will tell you it was only when they dropped all pretenses and excuses and concentrated on themselves did they make any progress.
Our present consensus reality is coming apart, dematerializing before our very eyes because it is being delegitimized by way of an escalating loss of faith and belief by the masses. This in turn will compel the control system and those in power to ramp up their ultimately self destructive fear and control memes and physical oppression in the same manner a drowning man will flail and grasp at anything, including his rescuer.
All illusions and denials, particularly deeply held ones that are widely shared, die a hard and ugly death not because the next chapter is so difficult to accept, but because the old chapter is so painful to let go. It doesn’t need to be this way, at least on an individual level.
This is why we must save ourselves first. Nothing else we do matters if we join the others in the agonizing death throes of our dying false reality. As long as we believe that what’s dying is real and thus worth saving, we will never let go and we will be pulled under with it. The only path forward is inward. Find yourself. Only then will you be able to find the others.
Cognitive Dissonance
05-12-2011
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That's an interesting approach, indeed. I'll have to play around with it.
Might I suggest that you put this series somewhere which is easier to find than ZH? No disrespect to ZH intended, but sometimes useful things can be difficult to dig up later when you need them. And this is a useful series.
Suggestions on where I might post it are welcome. I really am a babe in the woods and I would have no idea where to start.
If nothing else, blogspot. That would make it easier to find. I was going to suggest a book, but I'm not sure how receptive publishers are to non-academic works that involve thinking these days.
So what you are saying is the riddle of steel is inadequate?
"To crush your bankers, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women"
Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, or why we died. All that matters is that two stood against many. That's what's important! Valor pleases you, Crom... so grant me one request. Grant me revenge to the bankers! And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you!
:)
Great writing CG. Have an excellent Friday the 13th.
thanks, cd. minimizing exposure to the endless stream of propaganda pouring out of the media and most people is the first step toward freedom. starve the beast in all the ways you can think of. remember that robert frost poem from junior high? "two roads diverged in a yellow wood". 45 years later, I now know what he meant. "I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference." free your minds. stop believing in anything and everything. stop believing the lies you have been told all your lives about almost everything and everyone. and stop believing the lies you gave birth to by intercourse with the liars. "fek'em all!" as my Irish granny would say.
How long exactly is one of your baby steps as measured against an infinitely short timeline? Or, as ZeroHedge would say, how long is "a long enough timeline" for one baby step? If you can answer that one question, I can then calculate your coordinates and easily find you, but only if I already know my coordinates.
The next obvious question would be "How exactly is it that Dave knows his coordinates?" Dave knows The Coordinator.
Dave Harrison
www.tradewithdave.com
"I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you."
Another thought -
The mind will not be subdued by the mind - it will require another faculty to take control.
at the risk of being shut out of more pie, an excerpt from the conclusion of clif's latest HPH report seems appropriate here:
"...
For many, the emergence of the tao into humanity's collective perception will be lost in the tumult and upheaval of worlds that is now occurring. That the multitudes will NOT awake to the touch of the tao is apparently necessary to universe, as it is. Since it is, it must be a necessary component of universe that some not be awakened, both for their own karmic needs, and to allow those who are awake to thus distinguish themselves.
And just as the rivers of time constantly shift the grains of sand (us humans in case you missed that poetic nod) laying on the river's bed, it is necessary for universe that shifts happen. These shifts are appearing now, not only to our data weary eyes, but also manifesting in the great changes flowing through our collective experience that we label humanity.
It is necessary to universe that many (perhaps most) humans experience these changing times blindly oblivious to the larger waves creating a new world/solar system around them. They, the unaware, the sheeple, will look up at the great changes that will be soon sending their people-herds into panic and mindless stampedes without understanding their place, part, or role in anything larger than the flow of the immediate now. This, the tao, as it manifests around and through them, will consume all their time, generate all their thoughts, and create their reality as they experience it, totally oblivious to it.
It must be so that universe may exist and express change. Change must occur, in spite of all human efforts to oppose change, deflect change, or control change, it must occur. And will so occur. As universe directs. Not us. Including the 'aware' amongst the sheeple. Those humans whose karmic burden is such that they need suffer awareness now, in these days, will not 'awaken the masses'. They will not, 'spark the revolution', nor 'incite the herd to turn'. They may not so understand now the 'why' of it all, especially those awakening minds in the early stages where it is ever-so-important to meet the emotionally driven need to go out and slap all your soon-to-be-ex friends among the sheeple herd to wake them up. They, we, do not understand, until later, that it won't work and will just annoy the crap out of the sheeple who are being slapped in the face. But, somehow, and for some 'why', it is necessary that a great many sheeple be slapped. It is necessary for universe to force massive social changes at planet wide scale through humanity at this time, and is also necessary, for you, at a personal level, to experience these changes in some greater state of awareness than the general sheeple herd. That is your challenge. That awareness alone, marks you as being offered the opportunity of service by universe. This is rare, as you well know. Not that many humans out there who are really thinking beings, most are operating under deep mind control, and are blinded by false perception of reality.
...
For its own reasons which are not particularly pertinent to humanity which must live through it, universe is in the process of transitioning, in a more dramatic than in the past fashion, to a new operating state. That humans have been favored by universe in the past offers some potential that we will also be well received in this emerging future state. But no guarantees exist in universe, other than the guarantee of opportunity to experience change. And if lucky, or personally karmically well situated, to not only experience change, but to be changed by so experiencing it.
It helps to be an artist. That is to say, those who can self identify as artists are able to more readily integrate the internal changes that the art itself forces on its creator. Probably why universe is an artist, and we are (some) of its works. As out, so in.
..."
full report available for the low low price of $9.99 + 1 faux copper penny if you know where to find it.
CD, thanks for the morning read.
I have been fortunate in my ongoing journey to make my career just that, a journey. Learning something new everyday. Whether it is something very "physical" during meetings with my scientists and engineers or something less tangible during time with my children.
Life is indeed a journey, during which we have the opportunity to make what essentially boils down to one of two decisions; 1) to be optimistic, to learn, to adapt and to live OR 2) to be pessimistic, to ignore, and to die.
Surprising how art and life reflect one another - Get busy living, or get busy dying people.
Great way to open up a friday the 13th morning CD with many great poster replies. It seems that conditions in life ,that are opposed to our higher good, are simply points of practice until we manage that strength in character which enables us to actually see.
things we have always accepted because it has always been that way. It is not about changing the yardstick; it is about expanding it exponentially
This analogy/thought process follows myself where ever I go and from the construction industry point of view has always worked, my example can apply to all projects that someone takes upon themselves; View the project as not from the start or beginning but from the end or finished conclusion. This yardstick thinking brings back the 200' wall painting project where most if not all folks would see and say-holy crap thats a long wall and the end is way down there, this will take forever- my response is, heck you can already see the end of the wall so start down their and come back to the beginning. Guess what, they have completed the project subconsiously, the wall is done in 8 hours. Some may say that this is backward thinking but in my mind looking at a project completed before starting allows one to have already finished said project mentally/consciously before picking up the tools for that project. This form of mental completion applies to all forms of activity wether gardening, IT, cooking etc.
An experienced motorcyclist knows you should look to where you want to go
Many would say that a journey is to tough, road to rough, not enough time just to much STUFF,
Be like the stream that flows from source, not like the mud within its banks.
Many thanks to CD and all the posters at ZH for a very enjoyable 4 days of thinking.
Re: Your reference to the motorcyclist section. It was truly a last minute addition to chapter 4. I had been struggling to find a way of explaining the mind/body connection in a different way which would show why we need to look within.
As someone who's been riding since I was 4 years old (my first minibike) and who has now passed 50 years of riding I was thinking on the way home last night about jumping on the bike this weekend for some quality time. And then it hit me. So I added it just before posting the essay.
So thank you for picking up on that section.
Of all the fields of philosophical study, existentialism appears the most fascinating to me. In what frequently feels like a narrow perception of reality, it seems as if these frail, transitory constructs known as human beings are limited by certain, arbitrary physical laws which manifest within this peculiar dimension of space and time.
We seem to be a primitive species with regard to our understanding of the cosmos. Our minds don't seem to be geared towards a comprehension of the infinite. And yet, we are all unique, conscious entities with an ultimate capacity for self-awareness.
We can learn to accept what we do not understand, however. No, not by adopting the blind zealotry and dogma demanded by most aspects of organized religion, but by personal reflection and an acceptance of one's own flaws and imperfections.
A very nice series of articles CD, many thanks for all the work you've done on them. Interesting and thought provoking.
DavidC
Thanks to all for your comments. What a family!!!
It will take me weeks to digest all of this.
CD, I have really enjoy this. Your insights explode in my mind with a thousand implications/associations. That alone makes this valuable. Truths covered over that I swore I would never forget, but here they are rediscovered and yet new, with a new power.
You know, intuition is something we don't give much respect. It is the sensory mechanism available only in the present moment. You really have to still the mind and force it to listen in order to "hear" anything - a letting go, if you will.
Years ago in a book about Zen, the author described our awareness of our world as having two aspects, much like a spotlight. There is the bright center (our conscious awareness) and the penumbra, the dimmer halo around it (our subconscious awareness, through which we "know" without knowing consciously how we know).
One of the things the intuition provides is a recovery of that subconscious "information". The older we get the more of this type of information we accumulate and thus the more we should cultivate this faculty. Anyone over 50 should be able to trust his/her intuition.
So much more could be said....
Thought provoking as always CD.
Well done sir ;-)
nmewn,
Every time I think there is friction between us suddenly I discover it is all because my perspective has narrowed and become distorted. We think and process very differently at times and yet there is remarkable similarity in our overall views.
This constant reminder of my ingrained (but removable) limitations, this constant self discovery, gives me great hope and I mention it in this chapter. We are trained to find differences, to see good and bad, black and white, rather than to discover the similarities and our shared burdens and joys.
Thank you for continuing to push my mind to expand nmewn. I have many miles to go before I sleep.
Your perception is real. But any friction develops from me...not you, its how I analyze things.
Life is full of conflicting thought, theory & emotion on the major issues of our times.
There are pedophile priests who have comforted the sick & grief stricken...greed and power lust consumed people who have opened orphanages and expanded hospitals...governments issue debt as they stare bankruptcy in the eye to keep people from rioting in the streets...on the surface, paradoxes and irrationalities abound.
How we arrive at a balance to obvious conflicts of reason and rationale is the real issue for me.
It is my position that there is, in fact, good and evil in the world, whether we are trained to recognize it or not is immaterial to me. We recognize that it is in fact there, so of course, it will forever fall on the good guys to point it out whoever they are and however they choose to do it.
If different paths lead to the same destination it can't be said that one is any better than the other...mine may be shorter but rocky, yours more distant but easier to tread.
As long as we get there in one piece old man...LOL.
Enjoyed it CD...take care.
Beautiful, CD. Simply beautiful. All that naval gazing really paid off! Thanks for the pleasure.
I found particularly interesting the contrast you drew between the experiential world of young children and the meme-determined world of adults. Very true, that.
Something that nobody seems to grasp, at least nobody I know of, is that adolescents are constantly questioning the fundamental "controls" or memes. I've moonlighted for the past 7-8 years doing educational testing work that required me to read 90-100,000 unsupervised essays written by kids nationwide on a broad range of subjects of social and personal importance to them. The probing intellect, sophistication, and freedom of thought they apply to the task is astonishing. I'm not talking about a few "free thinkers." I'm talking about the vast majority. They practice what you prescribe.
The prevailing meme about teens is that they have no interest or capacity for deep thought about "what it all means." When they deny the prevailing memes, it is shrugged off as "rebellion." There's a public echo chamber filled with critics who declare kids victims of a public school industry that shackles them to ignorance and destroys any potential for real thought . . . based primarily upon their standardized test scores for "academic skills." This, of course, is amplified and then broadened into an even less flattering global image of our kids by the public media.
Sharing the inner worlds of so very many teens has left me wondering what the fuck happens to all these people? The simple truth is that very few adults question assumptions and beliefs as meaningfully or rigorously as teens do. Early on I concluded that "real life" happens once they become fully subject to the social control system. The shame is that we would be looking at a profoundly different world if not for this surrender. Essentially, it looks to me like "Graduation" is a slipping on of chains celebrated as "freedom and responsibility." It's a tragedy.
I guess the immediate implication of my observations is that we don't actually have to go back to early childhood to rework ourselves. We had great potential in our relatively recent adolescence.
"what the fuck happens to all these people?"
2 words : college loans
Bob, my 2 cents is it's because in this day and age, specifically last 10-12 years there has been an assault on the psychology of our young. I've talked to someone extensively that is well respected in the psychology field and dealt primarily with abused children(she also worked in a mental institution for many years, no thats not where I met her.LOL). She sees society deteriorating rapidly, not because of the kids but because of the parents that are raising them. I think the med field is deliberately attacking the psychology of the youth by prescribing meds for ADD and depression, etc. Kids are open and ask a lot of questions, most don't buy into the bullshit. I think it's horseshit to prescirbe ADD drugs just because they are "high" energy. Give them attention and things to release that energy on in a positive way. But that falls on the parents who are probably fucked up themselves or too busy to give time to their kids.
As a psychologist myself, I gotta say I'm at a loss for any professionally accepted model for the phenomenon I describe. Adolescence is usually conceptualized as a process of "searching for one's identity" that is commonly driven by a more or less mindless rebellion against one's parents. It works very well as a theory. My problem is having such a vast body of expirical data that just doesn't fit.
I agree about the AD/HD. In my clinical experience, 1/3 of the kids brought to me for alleged AD/HD actually needed meds for the condition. The remaining 2/3 only needed structured training in attention and self-discipline (the book 1-2-3 Magic provides a complete 3-session "cure.")
Depression is another matter entirely. Some kids are certainly depressed, but not "going with the program" brings a whole lotta shit to a child. If they're not suffering depression to begin with, the world will do everything in its power to impose one.
Of course, that is equally true for us adults. Given the craziness of our world, is it any wonder so many people are on anti-depressants? That said, however, I find no merit in blaming parents. They inherited their problems just as their children have. Expecting them to heroically pull themselves up by their parental boot straps is comparable to expecting an illiterate parent to teach his/her child to read. It's tempting to blame, but it gets you nowhere.
No you are right. I'm not perfect myself and sometimes I might come across as mis-aligned. Us adults bear much of the responsibility but that can only come with the willingness to look in ourselves first. That is the problem, being the cynic that I am I feel there is an agenda that is cleverly designed to keep us adults from doing just that thus affecting our youth and the overall human species. Being in the psychology field do you agree that a lot of the foods we eat specifically trans fat and high fructose corn syrup, aspartame, etc have a direct affect on how our mental processes function. Now mix in meds without altering the diet and you have a recipe for psychosis.
Here is a real good lecture talking about what I'm describing. Dr. Blaylock has done extensive research into this subject and it is well worth taking a look at. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2963728494205235281#
God knows that there is a dizzying array of potential environmental factors that could--and probably do--play major roles in our so-called psychology and functioning, from chemical pollutants (including food additives) to more natural dietary elements to various forms of radiation. Sorting them all out seems akin to developing a robustly powerful model for weather. But it makes sense to keep trying. It's certainly complicated--different people respond to different "solutions," even when they exhibit the same problems.
My own pet theory is that attention span has been trained to be progressively shorter over the past thirty years by mass media. Sesame Street was in some ways great prgramming, but it sure as hell didn't tax attention span--in fact, it severely under-trained it, imo. Even for very young children. Follow that up with video games, the quickening flow of data in all areas of life and you end up with people who just can't stretch their attention to encompass more than a severely limited set. People are basically holding on by their nails . . . just to maintain their grasp on so-called "reality."
This seems congruent with CD's much more ambitious model. 8>) Love it, CD!
Here and now boys, here and now...
Island, Aldous Huxley
I skimmed through waiting for all four to be completed. Now I will read them thoroughly. I'm a big fan of psychology and these types of writings, so I'm looking forward to it. This is the type of stuff that needs to be taught more in our education system. But that is wishful thinking. Keep up the good work.
Michael: I don't know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They're more important than sex.
Sam Weber: Ah, come on. Nothing's more important than sex.
Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?
From "The Big Chill"
LOL
A week without sex is normal. A week without rationalizations is 'Hell Week On Earth'. :>)
Fascinating. Well written and explained.
Buddha, Ghandi and indeed if you believe the apocrypha, Jesus all taught similar things.
None culturally western.
Introspection has always been an oriental trait! But it has its uses!
Wonderful and insightful series CD. It has been both fun and a privilege to play with you here at ZH.
Blessings from Wakanda to you for your generosity.
This brings me to my initial remark : Perception of reality. As seen from the person from within. Whereas your series as you rightly pointed out focuses on 'perception is reality' : the distorted vision IMPOSED on us. A state of mind we must resist as we learn to travel through life, as it installs in our mind-set a state of 'conditioned reflex' that pervades our whole perception of the world and of ourselves. How to get out of this distorted sense of reality is what your essay has been all about.
Then we are back at the beginning, where the real question that man asks himself is : what do I really perceive life is all about, and his realization that it lies as much within himself as without! In fact, it begins inside of him...as Gautama had intuitively understood from the beginning...when he decided to shed his outer carcass of conditioned reflex : that of blue blooded prince; to become introspective mystic! Thus Buddha.
Universalis and particularism, universal truths as expressed in each of us through our very personal experiences. Each of us is an expression of a bigger whole.
You be son of Aristotle, as his whole philosophy tried to reconcile universals with particulars.
Well done! Very original and refreshing essay. Beautiful expression of ideas through 'forms', the key word of Plato's philosophy and exemplified by modern art form as photo! Says it better than a thousand words! Period, enuff said!
And I want to add that intuitively your post speaks to me as an early chapter within a book a transcendentalist would write in order to guide a non-enlightened human towards escape from the outer wall of the matrix prison, that wall being the mind with its ego and intellect.
A course in miracles in almost the exact number of words. I find it quite manipulative.
Great stuff, and spot on. I had a spontaneous kundalini awakening/experience 3 years ago at the age of 26 and it completely shattered my entire reality construct. I peeked behind the veil of the 6 senses (5 plus mind) for a brief period and traveled to a place that I have now dedicated my life to returning to and co-existing in. Ascending into the conscioussness field, even if for a moment, is a feeling, experience and discussion outside the scope of this forum, but I have a feeling some of you may relate to what I am talking about. (I am not talking about lsd, marijuana, or an out of body experience, all of which i have also experienced but pale in comparison). After this kundalini "episode" I thought I'd been spiritually attacked or just had a stroke/heart attack, and then fell into a pattern of listlessness and complete indifference to reality for a few years, almost in a constant state of wanting to return to the real reality outside of our restricted and narrow sense perception and leave this matrix.
Since then I have found much more constructive ways to experience the journey. CD is right about the totality of the struggle being an internal one. Although I have no foresight regarding the outcome of the change that faces us globally, I would say that it doesn't matter. Death itself is the ultimate foundation of the myriad fear tools they employ to sketch chalk lines outlining the boundaries of the system. CD is also right about communication between humans on a level that exists outside of the electromagentic spectrum, between outer auric bodies separate from our physical.
Anyway. I'll stop here before I ramble on too long. Great post CD. Do you look into the vedas? Yogas? By your depth of understanding I'm sure you need no guidance from me.
http://slv.collective2.com
C.D. Thanks for sharing.
I will wait impatiently for the next series.
Fear is the Everest.
Good Luck!
Cog Dis:
Thank You !
For making ZH and the world
A better place.
+1
sitting on a toilet in the vast recess of space
reading an article that is suposed to put man in his place
left me wondering what that smile meant on mona lisa's face
and why all just felt right contained in my child's embrace
Reading your well stated article reminds me of how small differences in the way we hold ideas makes such a huge difference in how well we cope with new ideas and new possibilities.
Over and over you talk about "beliefs". Clearly this must be the form you hold most ideas in your consciousness. For practical purposes, I have no beliefs. Instead, everything that's labeled "a belief" in your head is labeled "provisional inference" in mine (or in the best cases, a first-hand observation or experience). But even when we have [raw] first-hand observations and experiences, we still must formulate provisional inferences from them to get much utility from them.
What a difference this tiny tweak makes. The very formulation "provisional inference" explicitly states the idea may be wrong (is an "inference"), and also that it is subject to change (is "provisional"). Just being self-aware that everything we hold in our consciousness (other than [raw] first-hand observations and experiences) is a "provisional inference" prevents the problem the article warns about --- the lack of intellectual flexibility when appropriate, and also "normalcy bias".
Oh, I almost forgot. I also have another category in my consciousness, which I more-or-less consider "junk pile". What is in the "junk pile"? Everything I've ever read or heard anyone say. To me, 100% of what humans have written and said are nothing more than a "junk yard". I'm totally serious. That's exactly how my brain thinks about it. Having said that, I used to paw around in junk yards long ago when I first set up a machine shop in my garage. Sometimes I'd find really cool gizmos I could try to make something out of, and sometimes it would save me quite a bit of work.
In the case of my mental junk yard, the value is similar but slightly different. My brain is trained to give zero weight to everything in the junk yard. Yup. I'm not saying I reject everything, I'm just saying I give it zero weight. To be specific, I consider everything in the junk yard to be a simple "claim" or "statement" that somebody made... without any notion of whether it is a lie, wrong, vague, correct, or any combination. Everything in the junk yard is simply something to look into myself if the validity or lack thereof might help me understand something about reality.
In other words, I can and do come up with my own ideas about the nature of reality, and I go perform observations and run experiments as necessary to test those ideas and hopefully create or tweak various provisional inferences from this process. But I can take ideas from the junk yard (from other humans) and perform observations and experiments on them too. But either way, whether the idea came from my own brain or from the junk yard (some other brain), I must perform observation, experimentation, reflection and thought to get anything of value or utility out of the idea. Until I do that, those ideas are utterly useless as a practical matter. While ideas from both sources can be useful, I prefer my own. Why? Because so many ideas are carefully crafted by diabolical scumbags to further their agenda and mislead others, while my ideas are simply attempts to understand reality, with no built-in bias. I want to understand the nature of reality, no matter what that nature is.
It is interesting how holding the same content of consciousness but with different premises about the nature of that content makes such a huge difference. I do not require "slaps in the face" or jarring life circumstances to direct my understanding of reality in a different direction. Since my core assumption is "every idea is a provisional inference", new evidence always adds richness, and sometimes exposes new connections that greatly enhance overall understanding and integration with other ideas.
Maybe the reason I developed differently in these ways traces back to a very specific and probably very key point in my life at age 4. That's when I noticed that different adults gave me radically different answers to the same question. Sometimes 5 adults would give me 5 very different answers. By then I had also learned that people in different parts of the world believe in different gods, practice different religions, believe very different things about the nature of reality, wear different clothes, eat different foods, and so forth. I thought this was very curious that virtually everyone in one area had one set of beliefs and habits and tastes, while virtually everyone in another area had a very different set of beliefs and habits and tastes. How could that be? The only answer I could imagine at age 4 turned out to be correct - that people were not learning from reality, they were simply accepting whatever they were being told by others.
That was my first and most fundamental "lightbulb" realization in my life, I am convinced, because it conditioned my most fundamental and pervasive mental processes from that day on. I recognized I could never learn anything from other humans. Not that nobody would ever tell me the truth, but I could never distinguish which claim was true, and which was arbitrary cultural nonsense. I had to conclude that my only hope was to perform first-hand observation and figure things out myself.
This was unbelievably depressing at the time. I figured the process of learning from first-hand observation and my own thinking had to be a million times more limiting than learning from books or "authorities". But I saw quite clearly that learning from authorities was (from my observation of the nature and distribution of human beliefs in the world) that learning from authorities is equivalent to lying to myself, destroying my own mind, and in the end having no idea which of my ideas was correct, and therefore being terminally confused my entire life. Though I didn't have the concepts to identify this explicitly at the time or for many years thereafter, this decision to believe nothing from other humans but to learn by myself was the ultimate form of intellectual and existential independence. From that day I was master of self, and responsible for self in the most fundamental way - my intellect. In effect, my "prime directive" was "always be absolutely, completely, utterly honest with self". Unlike the prime directive in StarTrek, I've never had even the slightest temptation to violate mine.
When I think about this point in my life, I often wonder what would have happened if this didn't happen at such a young age. What if I adopted a prime directive like "be popular" or "get along"? Would I have permanently destroyed myself? I don't know, but I assume probably so.
To my great surprise and relief, I found it is possible to learn quite a bit directly from reality by first-hand observation, experience and endless hours of reflection and thought. We don't need to accept the lies of others, and we need not even hold any "beliefs".
Ah, good to see you too rejected the notion of "belief" (I'm writing this reply as I read your article). Things like the "gold standard" should not be anything like "beliefs". The general operant point is "actions have consequences". This action has these consequences, that action has these other consequences, and so forth. If you want to be a predator and lie, cheat, steal, defraud and control mankind, then fiat currency has the consequences you want. If you want to be a producer and be honest, ethical and productive, then a real honest gold standard has the consequences you want.
To be sure, I can "advocate" an honest gold standard, but what that really means is, I want the consequences of living in an honest, ethical, productive world. And I recognize that 7 billion humans cannot live as predators on planet earth, because the natural processes of earth create far too few naturally recurring goods to support 1/1000 of the current population. Not to mention the many other nasty consequences of living in predatory environments.
I keep reading the term "consensus", and I find that term doesn't register as anything significant in my consciousness (beyond "generally agreed upon ideas"). To me, it invokes the fictional silliness of some kind of "collective consciousness", which is an obvious fallacy. I hope everyone sees why. No? The processes in your brain are your consciousness. Those processes are physical (electrical and chemical) processes. Those processes do not jump across gaps to people in China, so "somehow" the entire mass of mankind functions as one consciousness. That's just nonsense and fantasy. To be sure, you hear things from others, and some of those things originated in minds far, far away. But your processes of consciousness are limited to your physical interactions (including sound waves emitted from another human mouth and absorbed in your ears).
Your discussion of sovereignty and politics makes me think of "fictions". The most fundamental understanding we need to cope with life in this elitist-statist-predator dominated world is the distinction between reality and fiction. Every human is real. Every building is real. Every book is real. But every "organization" (including "government" and "corporation") and every "title" or "position" (like "president" or "CEO") is pure unadulterated fiction. A fiction is a concept (like "SantaClaus" or "the USA") that has no referent. Which is to say, "SantaClaus" does not exist and "the government of the USA" does not exist. I mean this literally, and I mean to say that nobody who let's the lack of reality slip from their minds when thinking with these concepts can cope realistically with the world today.
When some people sit down and say "we hereby create a new organization called the UnitedFederationOfPlanets", nothing pops into existence. When JoeSchmo and his cousin sit down and say "we hereby create a new business called SugarHighBakery", nothing pops into existence. However, they do reconfigure the neurons in their minds to create a new concept. What has been "created" is nothing more than an idea... a fictional idea. Another way to describe these is this:
<insert list of individuals> DBA "united federation of planets"
<JoeSchmo, FredSchmo> DBA "SugarHighBakery"
This formulation makes the fictional nature of the situation very clear. We say "list of real, physical entities" are "doing business as" some "arbitrary name of the fiction". This makes it clear that only the individuals are real, and they are pretending the organizations exist, just like kids pretend SantaClaus exists.
Well, this is precisely identical for all governments. Some group of bozos got together and decided to "do business as" some fictional name (like "these united states of america"). Today we must always remember that governments and large corporations are blatant fictions of the following nature:
predators DBA government
predators DBA corporation
Once we realize the true nature of these fake entities, and the existence of a bunch of real, physical, intentionally diabolical predators operating and hiding behind those fictions, we can make more appropriate decisions about what is our relationship to those predators, and what actions are appropriate to take, if any.
After a human being gets used to identifying fictions, they are often astonished. All countries vanish (are fictions). All country, state, county and city lines on maps vanish (become fundamentally meaningless). All governments vanish (are fictions). All corporations vanish (are fictions). And all that is left is real, living, breathing, lying, cheating, defrauding, destroying, enslaving human predators and their buildings and books full of lies, schemes and demands.
Most importantly, we understand it is just us and a bunch of predators. While almost everyone else believes the endless fictions thrown up by predators to confuse us, we can now see and understand the reality - the predators, their schemes, their actions, and the consequences of their actions. That helps us decide when and what actions we should take, if any. And we can have no doubt about the nature of the situation and the nature of any conflicts. We can correctly characterize the situation as "predators versus us". All confusion vanishes.
Which brings us full circle. Your article concludes by identifying the crucial point I understood at age 4... that most people in a given location believe things that are completely arbitrary and largely insane. And I do mean insane, literally, clinically and epistemologically. Every human must have noticed the basic facts that I noticed at age 4. They must have realized they have a choice - to be willingly stupid and insane, or to take responsibility for their own consciousness, and throwing off those who try to control us.
However an individual gets to the point they decide to take responsibility for their mind, and become intellectually independent, they must find it stunning beyond description too to watch most humans defend the predators and fictions that enslave, abuse, fleece and destroy them. Virtually the entire world is afflicted with terminal Stockholm syndrome. And I do not mean that to be an exaggeration or funny. I mean it exactly and literally, if not an understatement.
In many posts in this forum I have said "Wake up!". In many posts I have stated "mankind is an abject failure". I thank the author of this article for trying to convey some of the reasons for these and similar conclusions, because I tire of the effort myself. I often wonder whether most humans have habituated certain mental processes that after a time literally prevent them from "get real" or "wake up" or "question conventions" or "see what is right in front of your eyes". After all, once you habituate how to walk, can you undo that habituation? Beyond a certain point, maybe not. It almost seems that maybe we can only add new [hopefully good] habits.
Sanity is seeing what's in front of your face, and not seeing what isn't.
Given that statement, being sane doesn't sound very difficult, does it? Yet virtually all humans are massively insane. All those fictions that people assume are real things constitute insanity (see the second half of the above statement).
Modern humans are an abject failure. That's simply fact. They've abandoned reality, sanity, responsibility and even simple common sense. The predators-that-be have constructed systems to habituate insane mental processes into them starting at the youngest ages via television and "free" [public] schools, and they succeeded. They've faked healthy human beings into destroying their own intellects. What to do? Well, if I was stupid enough to have kids of my own (no chance), we'd have to live in extremely remote boonies, have virtually no communications with the outside world, and make sure they exclusively experience only reality and healthy intellectual processes for at least 10 or 12 years. I don't trust that 4 or 5 years is sufficient.
Honestly, I doubt it is reasonable to hope for more than a tiny fraction of humans in the modern world to "wake up". But if humans don't wake up very soon, and in large numbers, planet earth will become a permanent slave planet. That seems clear. The predators have been implementing technological systems to assure this for years, and they are close to reaching a point where escape from complete intellectual and physical slavery is impossible. They purposely halted serious development of outer space decades ago to assure there was never any new frontier where people could go to be free. The predators have won. In theory the predators can still be defeated of course, but not by the kind of human conformity and rampant Stockholm Syndrome that dominates the world today. The predators walk the walk while the few honest producers who are awake only talk the talk. But talk is cheap. Clarity is required, and only actions have consequences. But both are absent today.
CD: Another good article and great photos. Good work.
Wow, and I thought I was the only one who knew the real reason why they stopped the space race and cancelled SETI!
They don't want us to learn about aliens because we would be inspired to go to space. They don't want us going to space because there would be no way to control us, and we might figure out that a precarious but free existence is better than their slave planet. Even worse, we would bring the internet with us, meet up with aliens and weave the entire universe into the ultimate emergent mind: God!
Here's an idea for cheap space transport: The rotovator (rotating space elevator). Doesn't need carbon nanotubes and could be built for perhaps a few billion dollars. Asteroid mining would be hugely profitable, fuel the growth that fuels the ponzi, and also kill the stocks-to-flows ratio of precious metals, thus changing them from hard money to mere commodities. So, why doesn't the rotovator get financed? I think we know. And if any individual billionaire tried to build it, he would be lucky if he was merely regulated to death.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotovator_(tether_propulsion)#Rotovators
Too bad you consider having kids to be a stupid mistake, honestann. You sound like you've got some good brain genes and would be a good teacher as well. Smart, aware, alturistic people are rare because the elites are trying to breed these traits out of us. That's just one reason why the whole system is designed to favor parasites, sociopaths and useful idiots at all levels.
My guess is, aliens have not visited earth. But hey, if I'm wrong I'd sure like to know about it. But without doubt we need a new frontier, and since the predators-that-be have pretty much corrupted every government on earth, frontiers have become difficult to come by. The predators-that-be will go to any lengths to stop any significant instance of honesty, ethics or liberty.
I looked at the whole list of ideas on the link you gave. Unfortunately, they all look like rather huge projects. In fact, after reading that page, regular old rockets look pretty good to me (sorry to say). The laser-on-the-ground powered techniques have always interested me. My focus has been on bootstrap processes that occur in space. The focus here is on sending the absolute minimum into space, and performing as much development of habitat with materials already in space (mostly from "black snowball type" asteroids). But we're always on the lookout for better approaches.
I'm not sure how important genes are to intelligence. If you read my original post, you'll see how much weight I give to having a key insight at a young age, and taking that insight very seriously. That was not intelligence, that was just a decision that "I want to understand reality, not just conform".
you reminded me of a thought i had today. after years of not stepping foot into one, i was at the library searching for an encyclopedia on wildflowers and as i was combing through the stacks of the endless upon endless books that were once trees sitting on shelves that were also once trees, i thought to myself, "what a fucking waste..." this was profound at least for me, as i have spent countless hours of my life in libraries scouring through those very same books, searching for some golden needle in the haystack, some hidden clue to the location of the philosopher's stone. yet it was only that when i stepped outside of those buildings with all those books and went out and fell asleep under a tree that i found any semblance of peace and understanding inside myself.
with that said, as much as i choose to agree with you on many things that you have written, there are others in which i choose to think differently on. i do not wish to discuss or argue those differences, rather ask you a question ann : is it possible do you think for those that hold different views on certain concepts (e.g. the nature of reality for instance) to achieve a level of acceptance with each other (i.e. 'agree to disagree') in order to build a community (for lack of a better word) that we have discussed in the past?
the reason i ask this is that, in mine eyes, i see a fierce simpatico on a practical level between persons that have the skills that you have (who coincidentally mostly have similar worldviews as you) and those who have skills that i have (who coincidentally mostly have similar worldviews as i). it seems to me that if those 2 groups can be brought together (not all of them together, but rather in small pockets everywhere), something extraordinary could be created.
however, after hours upon hours of experiencing endless, fruitless dissension between individuals who do not agree (sometimes on the slightest of issues), i wonder if perhaps this is just the utopian in me spinning fantastical visions again. one thing i am sick and tired of for sure is the constant bickering over spilt milk and at this point would rather make the mistake of excluding myself from the conversation, rather than repeating the same mistake that i see is the very thing that keeps the hosts weak and unable to purge the parasites from the body.
i hope this makes sense. your thoughts are welcomed.
Sure we can agree to disagree. If you fully understood what I was saying about holding every idea as a "provisional inference" rather than a "belief", you'd realize disagreements are natural... just as natural as modifying our own provisional inferences as we gain additional experience or perform additional reflection. Sometimes brainstorming with others who have different opinions raises an issue we forgot to reflect upon, or didn't notice had certain connections or relevance... which might shift the understanding of one or both brainstormers.
Which raises an important point. Most people FIX their belief, and then emphasize supporting evidence and ignore contradictory evidence. That process is "rationalization", not "rational", and is in fact intellectual self-destruction. While it is impossible to brainstorm [effectively] with someone who "believes" and "rationalizes", brainstorming with someone who holds provisional inferences and only seeks to gain more insight into reality can be an extraordinarily valuable and enjoyable process.
A group of folks who only share one single firm value, namely "individualism", can coexist quite effectively and harmoniously. Those who believe in "top-down authority" cannot possibly coexist effectively unless everyone agrees about every single individual idea and thought. Note that the believers in individualism are not threatened by each other because they all assume everyone can live their own lives any way they wish. The authoritarians are all threatened by everyone, because they are subject to whoever gains authority.
I too have been repeatedly bummed out that people who agree about important issues cannot cooperate. For example, I'm atheist but have tried to cooperate with others on liberty and individualism issues. In principle, I could not care less whether they are religious or not, since we are trying to achieve a goal we both want. However, being fundamentally authoritarian, they always end up trying to destroy me because I will not say "rights come from god" (directly or indirectly). As far as I'm concerned, we can collaborate perfectly well to further liberty while I claim "rights are a consequence of the nature of man" while they claim "rights are granted by god". They will not accept this difference, which contradicts their claim to support liberty. Essentially, I can collaborate with anyone who does not seek to force me. But I cannot collaborate with anyone who insists on forcing me.
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How would you briefly characterize those 2 world views?
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I agree that humans badly need to collaborate, because the predators-that-be and predator-class are finishing up a monitoring and control system that will turn earth into a permanent slave planet. If we want much longer, the game is permanently over, and we can write off human beings as a permanent abject failure.
Do describe what you have in mind.
thanks for your response and for putting words to what i had in mind. i was using the 2 of us as an example as i see the necessity of bringing those together who would or do not interact with one another except through fate or coincidence or what have you. but yes, like you, i also have a fierce individualist streak and resist any attempts to be forced or manipulated. i guess that's the american in us.
there has definitely been a rift/constant conflict between the individual and the collective throughout the history of "reality" as we know it. however, on an abstract level of "reality" that maybe i only see, i do not see those two supposed opposites as mutually exclusive. one can honor the individual and honor the collective and vice versa. this is how wealth is actually created, not in infinite layers of zero-sum games.
since this series is entitled money memes, if i could ask you something that's been tugging on me for quite some time : i understand all the arguments on the gold standard and agree with many of them. however, how would a gold standard (which i could argue that on the central bank level of "reality" we are on and always have been), at all loosen us from one of the most dominant control memes of them all, the Golden Rule ("he/she who has the gold rules")?
sure a formal gold standard would reward those who had the means & foresight to accumulate at the right time. but did those wise people create any wealth (as defined above) in doing so? and what about the rest of humanity, those who had neither the means or the foresight? or they doomed to be slaves to the metal instead of the paper and tough shit, that's the way the rocks roll?
curious to know your thoughts about this before i make any further assumptions...
First of all, let me say that only a real, honest gold standard has any chance to work. Such a standard has the following characteristics:
#1: No "gold certificates". In other words, no "paper money". The instant we accept some "bank" or "authority" holds onto physical gold, and issues paper "gold certificates" against that gold, corruption goes wild... always. It sets up a system in which liars, cheaters and defrauders always win. The purpose of a gold standard is to eliminate dishonesty, theft, fraud and corruption, not encourage it.
#2: One necessary consequence of #1 is: no "fractional backing". If "paper gold certificates" do not exist, then it is also impossible to have a system in which the "banks" or "government" or "monetary authority" supposedly "backs" their "paper gold certificates" with less gold than correspond to the "paper gold certificates". The instant any form of fraction backing or fractional anything is permitted, you enable the predator class to lie, cheat and steal with infinite ease... just print more "paper gold certificates", or even officially change the "official fraction".
NOTE: It is perfectly acceptable for a real, honest gold standard to include "banking". In other words, it is not necessary to always in every case exchange physical gold for goods. It is perfectly okay to have "checking accounts" denominated in "grams of gold"... as long as the "bank" or "gold warehouse" keeps a 100% correspondence between "checking account balances" and "physical gold in the vault". And, of course, no form of lending or renting or leasing or shorting by the bank/warehouse would be permitted. Therefore, the "I don't want to carry physical gold" crowd has no complaints - they can have their checking accounts, debit cards and credit cards... all denominated in grams of physical gold.
#3: Also implicit in the above, absolutely, positively no "fractional reserve practices" of any kind whatsoever. NONE. To allow any form of such schemes instantaneously creates a predator-class with total control of mankind. They can lend to whoever they wish, favor whoever they wish, harm or cripple or destroy anyone they wish, bribe whoever they wish, and so forth. There must be literally NOBODY on earth who has any special position over anyone else, no matter what. Everyone must earn their wealth by being productive and trading what they produced for gold or other real physical goods.
#4: There must be ZERO requirements that force anyone to save gold, exchange gold for goods, accept gold for goods, or otherwise have anything to do with gold. It will be perfectly natural and acceptable for anyone to hold platinum, palladium, silver, rhodium, copper, lumber or any other real, physical valuable good instead of gold... though gold will be usually be most convenient for short time frames. Anyone who believes the "price" (exchange rate) for a specific good is low (or will rise) is wise to accumulate some of that good.
#5: The essence of the gold standard is barter --- the mutually voluntary exchange of real, physical, valuable goods for real, physical, valuable goods (or services). One primary aspect is - nobody is ever holding fictional representations of value, everyone is holding real, physical goods that have value.
#6: The only necessary role of gold is... to be the exclusive real, physical, valuable good that every other good has an exchange rate to and from. In other words, the way people can determine the exchange rate between "eggs" and "lumber" or any other goods is to look up the exchange rate between those two goods and gold, then divide to get the exchange rate between those goods. As a practical matter people will think about "prices" of goods in "grams of gold", but this is nothing more than this standard list of "every good" versus "grams of gold". This makes carrying around gold coins most convenient, because almost everyone will be willing to exchange their goods for gold, but does not require anyone to exchange their goods for gold, or save in gold, or contract in gold, or have anything to do with gold.
NOTE: Thus, the "real, physical gold standard" is 100% voluntary for everyone. It requires nothing of anyone, but only supplies (by convention) a standard list of "exchange rates".
#7: Since there are no "fractional reserve practices" to enrich a predator-class of ganster banksters, the only "lending" and the only "debt" that would exist would be private lending between individuals. Yes, they could "go through brokers", but let's hope people would not be stupid enough to fall for bankster scams to a very large degree. Even if they did, the size of this market would be INFINTESIMAL compared to today, because it would be limited to real, existing savings and only that portion of savings that people are stupid enough to lend (or so confident in the plans or business of the borrower that they're anxious to take the risk and lend).
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Now, to answer your question. I'm confident there is absolutely no way to "set the past right". There is not way to compensate people for past crimes (where "past" means more than several years). Every honest, ethical, productive being will be sooooo much better off in a real, honest gold standard that we must focus on that aspect of the change.
To start with, IF there is any physical government-owned gold remaining in Fort Knox or elsewhere, that must be divided by the number of people in the USSA, and given to them. This does not favor the rich. This is not exchange of fiat for gold (which would favor the rich). This gold was stolen from the people in the 1930s, and must be returned.
On the other issue, I don't think people have even the faintest clue how quickly and efficiently an honest, ethical economy will shift wealth to producers. Look what happened in China... a giant pile of massively poor folks rise from nothing to world powerhouse in one generation. And they are FAR from living in an honest, ethical society!
The key point of the gold standard is this: when someone is productive, they receive gold (or any other agreed-upon real, physical good) when they exchange their goods. They can then save, accumulate, become wealthy --- honestly and organically.
You are correct that people who have been accumulating gold (or any real, physical good) as wealth before the gold standard is formally established will be in a better situation than total fools and advocates of fiat, fake, fraud, fiction, fantasy, fractional-reserve paper debt-currency. However, this is just another way honest, insightful, reality-oriented people are rewarded for their honesty, insight and reality-orientation. I'm willing to bet that rich people have a greater percentage of their wealth in paper than average folks.
As part of the switchover, it is appropriate to take 99% of the wealth of those who have been running the current criminal fiat, fake, fraud, fiction, fantasy, fractional-reserve system. This refers to the owners and everyone involved in any central bank, to the owners and everyone involved in any institution that has been able to create fiat/debt/money out of thin air via the fractional-reserve system, to the owners and everyone involved in any of the huge financial institutions that borrows from the federal reserve at low rates, and anyone else who has stolen wealth via those systems. Take everything they own, and leave them with only 3000 grams of gold worth of their property. All this recovered wealth should be distributed evenly to all americans.
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The most important thing to remember is this. If we live in an honest, ethical, gold-standard society, productive people will accumulate wealth at a what will be an astonishing pace to most people. Most people have no freaking idea how horribly the current system holds down average productive people today. Without the burden of the predators and parasite classes (which totally dominate the world today), people would advance soooo fast, that within one generation the "lazy bums with wealth" today will be destitute, and "productive poor folks" will be relatively rich. Of course, few people will become super-rich, because very, very few of the super-rich got so rich via honest, ethical, productive activity. Most got so rich via connections and massively artificial, corrupt, fractional-reserve mechanisms.
The bottom line is, we can't repair all past injustices. It will be extraordinarily difficult to find a way to implement a real, honest gold standard. While it is fun to dream, I think we must settle for the honest, ethical gold standard. That plus a few million criminal and civil suits to achieve as much restitution as practical.
Bravo!
I like the idea that it will happen organically as paper debt money destroys itself trying to retain control.
I too find the process of reverting to a gold standard quite interesting. Surely due to the paper games that have been played, reverting to a gold standard now would consideably reallocate wealth and not necessarily to those who lost it through inflation.
Another (as in FOA/FOFOA) stated that the paper markets have hidden the cornering of gold by the saudies in exchange for oil. What happens when gold is realised as a true store of wealth once again? The average american can rest assured in that the paper money supply will still be divisable into the US's gold reserves but what of the realtive wealth transfer when they realise that the saudis have far more per person again?
Regardless, there's somethings we can't control and so long as the gold standard isn't applied to the existing debt money and owed to the banks - which it likely won't as the transfer will more likely occur organically as paper is destroyed while trying to preserve itself - a 'free' society may well develop on the other side.
When the switch from fiat to gold happens, fiat becomes worthless. That wipes a lot more wealth from "the rich" than "average folks" or "the poor". To be sure, the rich also have plenty of their wealth in real, physical goods (land, dwellings, etc) and that will continue to have value. But their fiat vaporizes. Good riddens.