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Wetiko – Cognitive Infiltration of the Third Kind
Wetiko – Cognitive Infiltration of the Third Kind
By
Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive Infiltration Pyramid (Image h/t to WB7 @ http://williambanzai7.blogspot.com/)
Just like millions of children before me, when I was young I would play imaginary games populated with scary monsters and evil space aliens. And of course I was always the courageous and handsome hero who saved the planet from certain doom and total annihilation again and again and again. I never tired of the game because the cast of characters and wacky scenarios I could play out was limited only by my imagination, thankfully a fertile garden at that time. In fact my mother still tells anyone who will listen that when I was an infant she could place me in my crib with a few scattered toys and I would be happily sated for hours on end. Such is the power of naval gazing and soul searching.
One of my favorite imaginary set ups was suddenly finding that while everyone around me appeared perfectly normal on the outside, on the inside they were ugly monsters or plague carrying mutants, most certainly something to avoid at all costs. Then I would spend the rest of the play period, sometimes for entire weekends, trying to avoid any physical contact with family, friends, neighbors and especially strangers in order to keep from being infected or consumed. Often I would entice a few select uninfected friends to join in the fun and we would craft powerful weapons to help us rid the world of the terrible pestilence.
This was excellent practice for a young mind to learn how to look and act ‘normal’, to fit in while living within an insane world, mostly because part of the game was to interact with the infected humans in order to dispatch them to hell or any available alien spacecraft orbiting above. If they saw you coming and suspected your intent, the monster within would suddenly spring forth and quickly devour or infect you. Since these inner beasts had eyes hidden in the back of their human heads, it was no use trying to sneak up on them because you would quickly be spotted.
So the best approach was always to act normal and walk right up to the human monster as if nothing was wrong, then quickly draw your weapon and gun them down. If we smirked or snickered or even wet our pants, we blew our cover and the jig was up. We always thought it was loads of fun, though I’m quite certain the adults in the neighborhood didn’t take too kindly to our antics. Then again, you would expect the insane and the infected to be that anyway. Ah, but to be young once again and not know what I know today. The good old days of blissful ignorance most definitely has its own compelling charm.
Today’s youth are much less likely to create imaginary worlds and then play in them, and much more likely to play within imaginary worlds already created for them a la video games and interactive 3D TV. There is a world of difference between these two applications of our imagination, though I will not be a hypocrite and declare that the imagination of my youth (or ‘yute’ as my cousin Vinny and I would say) was free from external influence. One cannot deny that my monster and space alien play things sprang from popular culture and that this has been true for thousands of years. So while the bogeymen might change from generation to generation, society’s cultural indoctrination and de-spiritualization does not.
But, and there is always a but in the way of our oversized ego, the one constant down through the ages has been that while the initial wisp of a play idea may have been supplied by our culture, the heavy lifting and finer details were generated entirely by our own powerful imagination, the only true reality creation device in the universe. That old saying about how if you aren’t creating your own reality, someone else will create one for you is frighteningly prescient. Will someone please stop this reality because I want to get off? Let’s just say I need to go pee and leave it at that, OK?
Today we are witnessing another giant (and possibly fatal) leap into the dark abyss of insanity begetting more insanity, only now our imagination is being held captive and molded by the use of artificially created computer realities on an ever increasing scale and velocity. Call it High Frequency Transcendentalism (HFT) only traveling ass backwards and rapidly accelerating. And we are talking about artificial realities, mind you, that 20 years from now will be indistinguishable from the ‘real’ thing. Though I bet I could successfully argue that anything created by our imagination is real in every sense of the word, which means our present day insanity is a product of……our………insanity. OK, now I really want to get off.
I’m not some old fart bemoaning the passing of yesteryear and the souring of today’s milk. Ok I am an old fart, but the real question here is do we even recognize the exponential increase of ever more insanity in our daily lives? And what would we actually do about it if we did? This is not intended to be a rhetorical question, but rather the springboard to a broader discussion, the details of which I will leave to Paul Levy in his new book “Wetiko, The Greatest Epidemic Sickness Known to Humanity”, (here) a book I urge you to purchase and read, either in paperback or electronic form. While I dance around the edges and act like I know what I’m doing (just like in my ‘yute’) Paul hammers out the ugly details and actually presents a recovery strategy. Well worth your time and Federal Reserve Notes (aka fracking fiat).
So how do we identify the infection within us when all seems perfectly normal on the surface? When I played the game, either I would bestow upon myself some magical powers that made the monsters visible only to me or I would just assume everyone was infected and blast away indiscriminately, the latter being the most fun. But my basic assumption was always the same, that I was infection free and thus perfectly positioned to be judge, jury and executioner. Such is not the case today, or should I say not in this particular reality. Because whether we care to admit it or not, we are all infected with Wetiko - The Insanity Disease.
I suspect we won’t need to worry about crafting weapons because the only effective antibiotic available to battle our insanity is the disinfecting power of conscious awareness of our own insanity. In a brilliant expression of cosmic karma, not to mention providing the last laugh for our alien Gods, we don’t even know how truly insane we are. I suppose a bright-side-of-life kind of guy might say that this alone saves us the staggering cost of intensive global psychotherapy, though no one has yet explained to me how the insane can cure the insane. But then again, what difference does it make anyway when we really don’t know what sanity looks like. Remember that all we know how to do is act the part, and all we have for role models is other insane asylum inmates.
In fact the only thing that separates you and me from those who are locked up in a mental institution is that we are the majority and thus we get to determine the rules of the game. Of course, this understanding then begs the bigger question. Are the evil space aliens all just members of an even greater majority and thus our collective mental institution is simply planet Earth? If this is the case, then Earth’s so-called leadership are simply Warden’s assigned to keep the inmate population so distracted and disorientated that we never become self aware long enough to organize a resistance and jump the fence. Oh, and they make sure we keep our cages clean and we are fed.
As humorous as this might sound, since we are all insane, I dare you to prove me wrong when your ‘logical’ explanation springs from the very same insanity that produces mine. The only reason yours might sound more reasonable is because it fits within the current insane narrative and thus is supported by the insane majority. By the way, your response at this point is to highlight my insanity by saying “But it is you who are insane, not me”, thus confirming for both of us the righteousness of our insane arguments. Who says insanity can’t be fun?
The only reason those we lock up in the mental institutions believe they are insane (and many do not) is because we tell them they are. Imagine that, the insane telling the insane they are insane and that the insane will cure their insanity. Makes you just want to kick back and watch your flat screen color TV for some more normalcy bias programming. Which brings us back to the future where the burning question in 15 months will be “Have you voted for your choice for Warden today”? I did and I have my red, white and blue sticker as proof, which means I am certifiably sane.
However, after careful thought and quiet deliberation, I’m beginning to see the wisdom of the majority who all pretty much agree that since we can never really tell the difference, there is little we can do about the problem and we might as well just break out the kegs and proceed directly to the party. This argument is not without merit since absent a disinterested third party (maybe a passing space alien volunteer?) who can quietly sort out the sick from the sicker from the sickest without anyone knowing, a sort of mental triage on the down low, that the best response is just to let our mental illness all hang out. But wait a minute, isn’t that precisely what we’re doing right now? Now I’m really confused. Damn you Cass Sunstein, get out of my head.
But wouldn’t you know it, just when the party hits full steam and the beer and projectile vomiting are both flowing freely, someone goes and blows the whole night by saying something completely and utterly politically incorrect, such as “Maybe our illness compels us to just give up and rut in the mud precisely so that the disease can not only survive, but even prosper. Maybe if we focused our conscious energy towards recognizing our disease and all its symptoms that it would almost immediately begin to recede and abate.”
Bummer dude, who invited him to the party and when is he leaving? Marge, I think next time I’ll handle the guest list, OK?
But what if? I mean seriously, what if? What if all this raving lunacy isn’t just human nature, at least not as it has been experienced for several thousand years? Suppose instead that humans are infected with a spiritual deficiency or corruption that has slowly rotted the humanity out of our spiritual being, leaving only the lying, thieving, cheating, sociopathic predator behind that was formerly balanced out and even suppressed by an inner guiding light? Could it be that all the ugly destructive traits we attribute to the human condition are caused by a treatable malady? And the only reason we don’t resist is because we are controlled by the disease in the same manner as some types of parasites compel the animal host to eat or drink substances that, while harmful to the host, feed the parasite?
<All at the party are dead silent as crickets chirp in the background and the grass continues to grow.>
Kidding, just kidding folks. So who’s ready for another round? Marge, where did you put the shot glasses and Jagermeister? Man, I’m gonna get bombed tonight or die trying. And maybe even both.
07-18-2011
Cognitive Dissonance
___________________________
Those readers who have been following me for some time, both in the general comment section and as I post essays, know that I rarely if ever recommend any specific reading material for a variety of reasons. I just don’t. But I am making an exception for an important work by Paul Levy; someone for whom I guest posted an article (here) back in January of this year that became part of his new book “Wetiko, The Greatest Epidemic Sickness Known to Humanity.”
I’ve know Paul for a little more than two years now, speaking often with him in private session. And I’ve come to greatly respect his process, knowledge and inner connections. When I talk about looking within and knowing yourself, I am in effect speaking about Paul Levy, who walks the talk and has done so for decades. However I am not alone in my praise for his new work, for no less than Catherine Austin Fitts wrote the Foreword and Sting contributed a ringing endorsement for the back cover, along with Dr. Arny Mindell, founder of ‘process-oriented psychology’.
At 152 pages long and in paperback format (as well as a .pdf downloadable version) this is not an epic read. But neither does this mean you’ll breeze through it in two hours on the beach. While the book might not be thick, it is chock full of penetrating insight though surprisingly readable considering the material. What I love about this book is that you can open up to any random page and just jump right in. Within a few paragraphs you are fully engrossed, but if you wish you can flip 30 pages ahead and start in all over again. And best of all for Zero Hedge fans, Paul talks about vampire squids. So what’s not to love about this gem of a book?
Please visit Paul’s web site, the only place at the moment where you will find this early release, and purchase the paperback or downloadable file. The price is extremely reasonable and the paperback includes free shipping in the USA. But best of all, the contents are absolutely priceless and highly recommended.
CD
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No.
But I'm glad to know I live in a world where someone is.
Edit: Fiction is a means to explore the distant corners of the world, meaning the corners of the human mind, that being our "world". Personally I think the most interesting fiction intersects with the natural world itself, where simple survival is the rule combined with occasional and passionless -- though necessary -- acts of sexual reproduction. Humans elevate being above surviving, most days, I guess it's our egoic attachment to our abstract image of ourselves. Or something. Writing about people being casually predated while blindly pursuing their abstract desires has a -- er, well -- delicious irony to it.
Money, meet your unmaker.
Hahahahahah!
Sounds like a load of bollocks.
Philosophical arguments suggest we may be living in a simulation: http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.pdf
No celebrity endorsement, but this is THE book on the subject: http://www.ascolibooks.com/vera-verba/god_wants_you_dead.html
The proposition "A and not A" is false.
The statement "1 + 1 = 2" is true.
Some truths are inwrought in the human mind - present even in the infant. These are not part of an "insane narrative... supported by the insane majority".
And viewed materiallistically, a bunch of brains cannot produce true or false patterns any more than a stomach can produce true or false acid. It is only in the human mind where truth is defined. It matters not whether you label it "truth" or "insanity".
The idea that everyone is insane is as stupid, pointless, and irrefutable as the position of the sollipsist who believes only he is concious and everyone else is an unfeeling automaton. Do yourself a favor and cut loose the metaphysical baggage.
have you ever done something, you didn't really want to do?
>have you ever done something, you didn't really want to do?
Never have I've done something I didn't want to do ex ante.
For example, when I was a child, I sometimes cleaned my room. Obviously I prefered laboring to clean the room and having my parents leave me alone, over the choice of not cleaning it and receiving punishments from my parents.
Was there a point to your question?
Then you were a good boy.
Good for you.
I thought we are not talking good or bad, but insane or not.
Ah, we are oldmen, as old as insanity prison that is Earth.
It is a good diagnostic question, and an even better diagnostic answer.
Ah, this is my world!
Computers are full of machines, switches that go on or off. There are no unstable states, no ambiguities, no guesses, no emotions, no wishful thoughts. 1 and 0 all day long without stop.
But on that foundation, on the floating point instructions and NAND operations and logic gates and wire-level capacitance, on all the on and off clarity, I can deliver to you an email that will convince you I am a bank manager in Nigeria with $1M I need to move and I need your help would you please forward your bank account information. Kind sir.
Hook. Set. Ka-ching...
Do not confuse the foundations with the applications. The foundations are as solid as stone. The applications, as weak as the human heart.
The pleiadians in the constellation of taurus like us. {I'm only kidding.}
Dude,
In CODE please. You know the communications rules. Today's code sequence can be found by visiting your favorite NFL football team and using the second letter of the official name of each opposing team for the regular season games only (because we all know preseason doesn't count) then plugging those letters into your Johnny 5 decoder ring I sent you last month.
No un-coded communications of any kind are allowed or you'll lead them to our hideout at Banzai7's house. Remember, loose lips sink star ships. :>) :>)
I don't get this article at all.
Don't worry. It's all about you.
So you're saying I'm cognitively infiltrated?
Probably coming from someone who believes in the invisible sky daddy and combustible shrubberies.
Probably? Far from it. My goddess would devour me outright if she caught me doing that.
But the source hardly matters. It's all over darkness inside the box.
I'm getting hungry for another chapter cougar.
You can't swing red meat in front of me like this and then pull it back from my cage. Next time you do that you'll pull back a bloody stump. :)
http://madscienceunlimited.com/fiction/index.html
Ha ha. These are my lovely fans, people. So demanding. So terribly lethal.
An worthy inspiration, surely.
Very well, I'll see what's sitting around.
Alway a great read and a book right now sounds like fun
CD, your post put a smile on my face... "Calvin Ball" ...... here are the rules.... After reading all of Bill Waterson's cartoons to my kids, I did add one rule to Calvin Ball...
MOM'S Rule: Any action requiring a trip to the ER will result in severe and painful (think mental anguish) punishments to all parties involved...
The Unofficial Official Rules of Calvinball
Permanent Rule: You may not play the Calvinball the same way twice.
Primary Rule: The following rules are subject to be changed, amended, or deleted by any player(s) involved. These rules are not required, nor necessary to play Calvinball.
1.0. The following words in these rules are mostly freely interchangeable, the Primary Rule applies:
Can
May
Must
Shall
Should
Will
Would
1.1. All players must wear a Calvinball mask (See Calvinball Equipment - 2.1). No one may question the masks.
1.2 Any player may declare a new rule at any point in the game. The player may do this audibly or silently depending on what zone (Refer to Rule 1.5) the player is in.
1.3. A player may use the Calvinball (See Calvinball Equipment - 2.2) in any way the player see fits, whether it be to incur injury upon other players or to gain benefits for himself.
1.4. Any penalty legislation may be in the form of pain, embarassment, or any degradation the rulee wishes to execute upon the other player.
1.5 The Calvinball Field (See Calvinball Equipment - 2.3) should consist of areas, or zones, which are governed by a set of rules declared by players. Zones may be appear and disappear as often and wherever the player decides. For example, a corollary zone would enable a player to make a corollary (sub-rule) to any rule already made. Or a pernicious poem place would require the intruder to do what the name implies. Or an opposite zone would enable a player to declare reverse playibility on the others. (Remember, the player would declare this zone oppositely by not declaring it.)
1.6 Flags (Calvinball Equipment 2.3) shall be named by players whom shall also assign the power and rules which shall govern that flag.
1.7 Songs are an integral part of Calvinball and verses must be sung spontaneously through the game when randomly assigned events occur.
1.8 Score may be kept or disregarded. In the event that score is kept, it shall have no bearing on the game nor shall it have any logical consistency to it. (Legal scores include 'Q to 12', 'BW-109 to YU-34, and 'Nosebleed to Pelvic Fracture'.)
When I was writing this piece I wondered if anyone would mention Calvin Ball. Thank you for confirming that I am not alone in my insanity.
"Who says insanity can't be fun."
Calvin Ball === Capital Markets
Cog,
" Then I would spend the rest of the play period, sometimes for entire weekends, trying to avoid any physical contact with family, friends, neighbors and especially strangers in order to keep from being infected or consumed."
Ditto, except that I am still doing this--for weeks and months at a time. My re-entry into constant socialization for the past 20 months has confirmed the wisdom of return to isolation. Back to the forest soon, I hope.
not replying, but merely adding
"But then again, what difference does it make anyway when we really don’t know what sanity looks like. Remember that all we know how to do is act the part, and all we have for role models is other insane asylum inmates. "
Yeahbut,
We really do know what sanity looks like when we are alone, quiet, and in the presence of the other species. We talk to them, they listen, and advise us----only we pretend that we cannot understand them in a lie to ourselves, but when one returns to human company after such a sojourn, be it a few hours or days, one is different and others recognize this by our faces which are glazed and untroubled as they might be after having the psoas muscles worked.
I don't know if this makes sense to others, but it is a 'knowing' available to all.
I assume you are responding to me and not yourself, since you have posted a reply under your first post.
I was using the royal 'we'. It is ultimately up to the reader to decide if they are included in the royal 'we' or not. This of course gives us all just enough wiggle to deny our own insanity while actively pursuing our own insanity.
If you are seeking out other species in order to communicate and to receive a greater wisdom and 'knowing', then IMHO you should not be including yourself in the royal 'we'. Unless (of course) you are part of the royal 'we', thus you would consider someone like yourself to be insane. This was exactly why I placed the following paragraph in the piece.
cog,
For me, this subject is 'un-sayable'---I am too inarticulate, at least, to communicate without certain accommodations----such as 'we' when to use 'the human species' is too abstract, but perhaps, I should have used it in this instance. I could not the the first person because 'I' am not special, but one of that segment of the species that is silly enough to be in this conversation at all. I sense that this is a larger group than any of might imagine, though 'we' are not special; through some accident of birth, possibly, we missed getting something the rest have.
Anyway, I enjoyed the piece and will get a copy of WETIKO.
more:
"What if all this raving lunacy isn’t just human nature, at least not as it has been experienced for several thousand years? Suppose instead that humans are infected with a spiritual deficiency or corruption that has slowly rotted the humanity out of our spiritual being, leaving only the lying, thieving, cheating, sociopathic predator behind that was formerly balanced out and even suppressed by an inner guiding light? Could it be that all the ugly destructive traits we attribute to the human condition are caused by a treatable malady? And the only reason we don’t resist is because we are controlled by the disease in the same manner as some types of parasites compel the animal host to eat or drink substances that, while harmful to the host, feed the parasite?"
Perhaps, it is a sickness or perhaps, 'sane' and 'insane' are too archaic and we might rephrase your what ifs using 'normal' and 'mutant'. The constant application of personal pronouns to this topic confuses me because I cannot see how a 'self' so completely conditioned by the age of what?---five, six, seven years of age is the owner of a single thing; thus, 'mine', 'yours', 'theirs', 'hers', etc. is not necessarily appropriate, if you and I are speaking about the same things(maybe not).
In part, this is why I referenced above being part of a different group of those who came to life incomplete. Below is the sentence that I found most revealing about this piece.
"<All at the party are dead silent as crickets chirp in the background and the grasscontinues to grow."
Though, I do not know what this means to you; it means silence, solitude, and the nurturing of humans by all of the other species from which we have insisted upon separating ourselves from.
Good idea.
Just remember that night vision goggles can now be bought over the counter, so any insane Yahoo can enter the forest at night and hunt you down. Make sure you have plenty of rabbit holes pre-dug to fall into. The insane avoid those like the plague. Too much cognitive dissonance down there. :)
I've also found it's really hard to get out of the rabbit hole once in, sort of like a Roach Motel.
Cog,
it's OK----it is truly a place of no fear---just one more or one less organism, but the energy----where does it go(rhetoric only)
I forgot the /humor tag.
Sorry.
you seem hung up on cognition, but the information age is over (we only call things by their right name after they become obsolete) does information make a stock trader? or does the speed of that information matter more? when i watch my cat hunting i realize its all in the speed of their reflexes. likewise Jeopardy contestants, where the winners usually ring in before the know the answer.
memory is a process by which we relearn things. a certain set of conditions arise, and we respond, because we have programmed our nerve endings to respond. i would say the insane have pretty much the same degree of self awareness as the normal population. ask the next 100 people if they think they are sane, and a lot of them won't have an answer, some will think they are not.
the late Spalding Gray (Swimming to Cambodia) thought that perhaps evil was a cloud, and no one really understood how and why it moved the way it did. there is a lot of smart stuff, but the media empire insists that only new thoughts matter, new entertainers, singing old songs mostly, which is why they have to be new. the attention span is perilously short for good reason, there is very little of original value to any of this.
we compensate by turning over ideas at electronic speeds. everything new is old again.
Actually I'm hung up on spirituality and knowing. Since the present insanity is hung up on cognition the only way to reach people in order to convince them to change the course of the iceberg bound ship is through their cognition facilities.
Long been hung up on spirituality and knowing, myself.
Studies on consciousness are finally gaining traction in the established scientific community.
The idea that "there is no truth" is self refuting, and some how many of our youth are taught this in school.
At one point in your essay I went from Jim Morrison to this: (best if played in high fidelity)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Juols744nFk&feature=related
Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
Where have you been?
It's alright we know where you've been.
You've been in the pipeline, filling in time,
Provided with toys and 'Scouting for Boys'.
You brought a guitar to punish your ma,
And you didn't like school, and you
know you're nobody's fool,
So welcome to the machine.
Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
What did you dream?
It's alright we told you what to dream.
You dreamed of a big star,
He played a mean gituar,
He always ate in the Steak Bar.
He loved to drive in his Jaguar.
So welcome to the Machine.
CD: In a curious parallel, I recently began working on a theory to describe how money is actually a life form and a parasite. That would slot in nicely with some of the conjecture you are conjuring here.
There is a very scary intersection between our love of abstractions, our willingness to be manipulated, and our love of money. If I set out to devise a human mental virus, one that could propagate and spread, mutate and learn, and drive us into behaviors that serve the parasite and not the host, I would have exploited human imagination in exactly the way that money does, with exactly the same outcome.
Mind you, this is money apart from wealth. The two are not equivalent in my thinking. There is something about actual money (fiat or gold or tulip bulbs) that sets it apart from wealth (which can be anything of value including land or knowledge) such that the abstract measure (money) makes us behave differently, even irrationally. Further, I think the wealthy "think about" wealth very differently than the rest of us "think about" money, if only in that the latter group obsesses over money to the point that it can ruin their lives, which is the clinical symptom of a disease.
I don't know where the idea takes us, but even if it ends there it has served a purpose. Humanity has spent a million years overcoming a nightmare zoo of sophisticated predators out for our meat, but we are still overcome by parasites against which we seem to have little or no defense. And why should the parasites stop at exploiting our gut or blood stream when the most important and powerful tissue in the natural world is between our ears?
Money. Is. Alive. The threat comes from without but it grows within and we are as much the parent as the prey.
Cougar,
You may remember my "Perception, Inception and the Trojan Horse Money Meme" 4 part series (Chapter One here) that I posted here in May where I begin to outline the idea that money is an meme infection, just another word for a mind parasite.
If you click to Chapter One, you will find the links to the other three Chapters at the beginning.
Ch-3 contains elements of a similar synthesis. The significant departure might be that I would propose "money" is not imposed on the human mind by other humans as a deliberate act of manipulation. Rather money is imposed on all susceptible human minds by "money" for its own purpose (or more correctly imposed by some predecessor to money, money being just a recent mutation) that purpose being its own continuity in the environment to which it is adapted, being the human mind. Certainly human behaviors are modified or even invented to promote the continuance of "money" as a mental virus, and some humans may be more explicitly employed in this propagation than others, but those humans are no more aware of what they are doing than any other. What they are doing is ensuring the propagation of the parasitical abstraction that has overtaken their brains. The corollary is a computer virus that can start and stop software, change the host operating system , and create network connections to spread itself but also convinces the computer user to engage in activities that spread the parasite further, for example by encouraging them to think the parasitic software is helpful (free virus checker, for example) and telling their friends to use it too. You would have to be really stupid to fall for that, but people do, because malware exists in the wild that proves it. Notice here the intersection with money.
Apart from malware that might collect personal information, living parasites (or marginally living parasites like viri) do not require an explicit purpose to continue. They only need possess the means to continue, and perforce of contingent history should they be successful in this, they continue. End of discussion on causality or intent; there need be none.
I'm not sure where/when money became viral. I think the realm of barter is harmless, however the idea that abstract items (coinage) can have great meaning was a start. Somewhere in the Middle Ages was born the idea that money could be abstracted from coinage, and the game was on.
Thanks for getting back to me cougar.
Since you do not point to a specific paragraph or sentence from Chapter 3, let me simply say that I do not think I said (but most certainly could have said) that the Trojan Horse Money Meme was born or originated of or by man. If I did say this at any point it wasn't intended and a careful reading of the entire series will bear that out.
However, I did most certainly say that it was spread far and wide (and expanded upon) by man for man was/is the means for the infection to spread.
Wasn't it told by Jesus himself that "love of money is the root of all evil" ?
Not money per se which is a tool just like any other, but the LOVE of money. Love which is a product of the mind (an insane one perhaps). So a question I would ask "is that where the infection starts?"
"Suppose instead that humans are infected with a spiritual deficiency or corruption that has slowly rotted the humanity out of our spiritual being, leaving only the lying, thieving, cheating, sociopathic predator behind that was formerly balanced out and even suppressed by an inner guiding light?"
Not only should one take this consideration seriously but also prepare for it. Keep it simple. Right? Being left with no other explanation for the malfeasance...
I have to get this book, looks good.
Ugly cover, though. Not that you should judge a book by its cover or anything.
Sorry about the multiple posts. Computer appeared unresponsive, so . . . try and try again.
Never hit refresh on your comment box in ZH.
To be polite, go back and delete the duplicates, just type in <dup> or something like that.
Cheers
Thank you. Duly noted, and appreciated.
Something about .. try and try again. and expecting different results..
Insanity is a bitch!
Haha, nice
+100
Please go back to each duplicate posting and hit the "edit" button to remove the text while adding "dup" or something like that. This way there is less 'extra' for everyone to scroll through. Makes sure to "delete" out any extra space as well.
Thanks.
Hey Cog Dis,
Is an obessession with "our collective insanity" a form of insanity?
Of course.
On the other hand it is even more insane not to discuss our insanity if you agree with my theory that the insanity exists and worsens precisely because we don't discuss it, but rather just pass it all off as normal.