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Zero Hedge – A Maturing Fight Club Community or Just an Excuse to be Rude and Abusive?
Zero Hedge – A Maturing Fight Club Community or Just an Excuse to be Rude and Abusive?
By
Cognitive Dissonance
The title of this essay asks a fair question. For quite a few who comment here on Zero Hedge the ‘Fight Club’ theme appears to be a convenient excuse to verbally bash heads and insult people, in essence to act like the school yard bullies some wanted to be and perhaps might even have been. For others, well………where else can you throw a temper tantrum in public and not be forced to deal with the embarrassing social consequences directly to your face? We’ve all had our moments and I’ve certainly had mine.
Deep down inside all of us is a petulant little boy and girl trying to get out, only for some he or she is more difficult to hide than others. It seems quite a few people who comment here find Zero Hedge the perfect place to let it all hang out and not be forced to clean up their mess afterwards. I suspect the wide open nature of Zero Hedge, meaning no rules and definitely no adult supervision, is the perfect breeding ground for egomania and naval gazing narcissism to run wild and uninhibited. And maybe that’s all we can ever really expect from a virtual Internet mosh pit.
From my point of view Zero Hedge (ZH) is singularly unique in the blogosphere (or anywhere else for that matter) and I’ve often wondered if the readers who visit or comment on The Hedge have ever attempted to look beyond the oftentimes stark brutality on display here and discern what’s really going on in the background. On the surface there appears to be three virtual worlds within Zero Hedge, first and foremost the avatar world of Tyler Durden and Fight Club (FC) that super secret place from which Zero Hedge’s creator posts a steady stream of articles exposing financial and political manipulation, corruption and other assorted skullduggery.
Tyler Durden is the creator’s alter ego here on Zero Hedge, an animated front man modeled after the principal character in the infamous book and movie “Fight Club”. For obvious and not so obvious reasons ultimately known only to him (though we may intuit a few) the blog’s founder has chosen to remain isolated from both the ‘real’ outside world and the universe of his own creation.
Instead he has chosen to speak with a booming and disembodied voice laced with biting sarcasm and unconcealed contempt for all he chooses to skewer, but usually with common sense, logic and verifiable fact, all arch enemies of the lies supporting the Ponzi facade. Howard Hughes, if he were still alive today, would be insanely jealous of the degree of anonymity the creator has been able to maintain over the last two years. It would be easier to find Waldo than ZH’s Tyler Durden.
However, Tyler’s world is isolated from the rest of the FC community with very little cross talk between the creator and the rest of the readership. Except for the occasional comment left by Tyler in an article thread as well as email conversations with tipsters, contributors and other community members, there is very little interaction. And while there are several dozen “contributors” who post to Zero Hedge, to the best of my knowledge all contributors write, post and comment with complete autonomy and freedom. I most certainly do as I please and other than the occasional emailed comment from Tyler I have no contact with him.
The second virtual world, the largest and most complex component of Zero Hedge, is found within the comment section where the general community talks to each other and where the verbal, emotional and psychological abuse is handed out. The third world, a place that’s rarely glimpsed by anyone other than Tyler and company, consists mostly of transient readers who come and go as they please and who rarely if ever interact with anyone else. It is the second world that I wish to explore more thoroughly and at the risk of being summarily expelled from FC as a heretic or traitor I believe it is time to break the rules and talk about Zero Hedge, if for no other reason than to prepare for the gathering storm.
In other essays where I’ve explored our collective insanity I’ve repeatedly asked a bigger and much more uncomfortable question than the title may suggest. Is the at times frightening escalation in rude and abusive behavior in society as a whole just another example of the Stockholm Syndrome playing out? Are the psychologically bloodied and abused of society, and thus by extension some of those who comment here on ZH, trying to gain favor with or appease their abusers in order to deflect or diminish their own abuse, if only in their minds? For many people, particularly the abused (regardless of whether they acknowledge their own abuse or not) these are truly frightening questions because finding the answer requires us all to bare our souls and look deeply within. The abusers within the general population and here on ZH are in effect pleading to their sociopath masters, “See, I’m just like you. I can hurt those around me just like you do so don’t hurt me. You wouldn’t hurt one of your own, would you?” Psychologically the abused are trying to join their tormentors in order to escape the worst of the abuse. When faced with prolonged and systemic pain and suffering the mind often copes by adopting precisely that which it fears the most. In essence this is what the Stockholm Syndrome is all about. If you can’t beat them or even escape then when facing almost certain psychological or egoic damage or death, in order for the mind/ego to survive it must join the tormentor. On an individual level, many surviving victims of childhood or adult on adult abuse often protected their tormentors during the abuse. And often they are at higher risk of becoming abusers themselves; for the children this can occur when they become adults or even when they grow just a bit older and are still considered underage and thus not responsible. And on a national level, a nation surrounded physically or psychologically by perceived enemies and/or with a long history of its citizens being abused and killed (by internal or external forces, it doesn’t matter) will sometimes adopt the methods used against them and act out while carefully wrapping themselves in religious piety and protective and self serving law. In essence they act out the very insanity they find it impossible to escape from. Israel comes to mind, but there are plenty of others. In my opinion contrary to popular belief ‘man’ and his social order are not ‘naturally’ violent and abusive. Or maybe I should rephrase that statement. Contrary to popular belief a healthy man and his social order are not naturally violent and abusive. This clearly implies that we are not a healthy society. In nearly every harmonious and healthy indigenous culture I’ve studied going back thousands of years, violence and abuse was simply not a central part of their society as it is today with ours. And if the reader cannot see the violence everywhere s/he looks this is evidence of the reader’s total assimilation and adaptation to our cultural violence. When it has become so integrated and seamless that it can no longer be seen, our conditioning is nearly complete.
In more healthy indigenous cultures of the past, upon reaching puberty or shortly thereafter, each male child (and in some cultures female as well) was required to pass what could only be described as a trial by fire before being accepted by the greater community as a contributing adult member. While the trial was most certainly physically exhausting and sometimes resulted in severe injury and even death, what was really being tested was the prospective adult’s mental, emotional and spiritual maturity and conditioning. During the years leading up to the trials, which might be conducted individually or with several young adults at the same time, the village at large participated in readying the children for their maturation labors. The entire community understood that its health and very survival depended upon their children successfully passing into adulthood and adding to the communities overall prosperity and growth. But they also understood that a poorly prepared adult could not only be unproductive, thus not contributing to the villages’ standing and development, but he (or she) could be poisonous to the community, causing strife and conflict among members and family. This is why the community as a whole understood there was a shared responsibility to each other and to the group to nurture and raise their collective children. Everyone ‘knew’ at the most basic and gut level that it took the entire village as a living, breathing and codependent entity to help shoulder the burden of the collective and the individual. When one stumbled or fell, all suffered more or less equally. So while the principal burden of properly raising and educating the child fell upon that child’s parents, everyone was expected and willing to join in, thus working to assure the continuation of the community and thus the individual. Family first, followed closely by community, was how they lived their lives and almost always in close concert with nature and the natural world. Supposedly this community spirit still prevails today in our Western culture. But at the risk of sounding like a bitter old man, this cooperative spirit was rapidly fading 50 years ago when I was a young child and it has all but disappeared today, except perhaps in some smaller towns and villages or as small isolated pockets within bigger cities or densely populated counties. The Amish Mennonites come to mind as a modern day example of a mutually supportive and nurturing community that still interacts to a limited degree with those who surround them. As the personal responsibility for our day to day existence has been shifted to ‘they’ and ‘them’, which so often today means all levels of the government and/or the schools as both parents are forced to work in order to keep a roof over their heads, we as a society and a community have become increasingly childlike, even infantile, in mind, belief and deed. We are dying as a people and as a culture, surrounded by our material possessions while long since become spiritually and morally bankrupt and destitute. What’s rarely discussed in our present day culture is exactly what it means to be a modern day adult and, equally important, what our individual and collective responsibilities are as both adults and as fully functioning members of our communities, regardless of whether community is measured by walking distance or national boundaries. As hidden entities attempt to exert more and more control over our lives and minds, we are being dumb downed and infantilized to the point where we are little more than children endlessly engaged in naval gazing and self indulgent masturbation. The inevitable result is that our community is burning down around us exactly as planned. The very same techniques that destroyed indigenous Native American cultures are now being applied to the current population. By this I mean the slow bleeding off of intellectual and cultural independence and self sufficiency which was and is the hallmark of all healthy indigenous cultures. A financial and political belief system based upon exponential expansion and conquest inevitably resorts to enslavement and even cannibalism of its own citizens. If nothing else history teaches us this very well.
So what does any of this have to do with Fight Club and Zero Hedge? Well I suspect Zero Hedge, whether planned or not, is capable of helping us to work through this insanity more or less intact. Or at a minimum to survive whatever comes after society’s great fall. In order to pursue this thought experiment one must ask themselves something that I’ve never seen discussed here or anywhere else for that matter. Why did the creator of Zero Hedge use Fight Club as his central unifying theme? For those who claim it’s all about the fight may I suggest you look just a little bit deeper? Zero Hedges’ Tyler never allows us to peek into his mind by way of editorial comment regarding the community nor does he conduct state of the community reviews. Because I would never presume to know what he is thinking or why he does anything, one is forced to examine his source material, his inspiration if you will, if we are to try to understand what Zero Hedge really might be………or could be. This requires that we pull out our dusty old dog eared copies of Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk and re-read the original text, then spool up that scratched up DVD copy of Fight Club the movie to refresh our memory of Hollywood’s interpretation of modern day insanity. One needs to do both since there are major differences between the book and the movie, particularly the end. For those who claim that the Fight Club model was used simply to pretty up the place with Brad Pitt’s six pack abs and handsome face or as the means to justify Zero Hedge’s in-your-face sarcastic style of truth mongering, I’d say you don’t recognize the creator’s genius when he beats your face into the concrete floor or he happily pisses in your lobster bisque. After re-reading the book, then watching the movie twice, I suspect the real reason for the Fight Club theme can be found several layers deeper. The disclaimer is that all this is pure supposition on my part mixed with literary flights of fancy. Neither Zero Hedge’s Tyler nor any other Fight Club characters were harmed or consulted during the writing of this essay. In the book Palahniuk explains. “Most guys are at fight club because of something they’re too scared to fight. After a few fights, you’re afraid a lot less.” One simply cannot gaze into the coming financial upheaval with clear eyes and a deprogrammed mind without some serious trepidation and a churning stomach. The movie goes further by explaining the unique perspective fighting with purpose, honor and dignity brings to the mind and soul. “After fighting, everything else in your life got the volume turned down.” Those who profess little to no worry about the killer storm on the horizon are either still fully doped up on propaganda Kool-Aid, in serious denial over the coming global dislocations or outright trolls and psyops disruptors. I hear much false bravado and feigned certainty in many ZH voices in the comment section, though few will admit to it. But based upon what I’ve been reading over the last 24 months, many of us are clearly fiat refugee’s looking for an island of sanity along with the intellectual equivalent of three hots and a cot. Only the sociopaths can look into the face of chaos and sleep well at night. The rest of us need some help to face the gathering storm. In the movie Tyler explains that Fight Club is all about changing boys into men….or rather boys into responsible men with a purpose in life. “Narrator: I can’t get married. I’m a 30 year old boy.’ ‘We’re a generation of men raised by women,’ Tyler says. ‘I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.’” And later, “Fight club isn’t about winning and losing fights. Fight club isn’t about words. You see a guy come to fight club for the first time and his ass is a loaf of white bread. You see this same guy here six months later and he looks carved out of wood. This guy trusts himself to handle anything.” It appears that we are supposed to be building something here beginning within ourselves. This is boot camp for the spiritually deficient and morally decrepit. “It doesn’t matter.’ Tyler says. ‘If the applicant is young, we tell him he’s too young. If he’s fat, he’s too fat. If he’s old, he’s too old. Thin, he’s too thin. White, he’s too white. Black, he’s too black.’ ……Narrator: This is how Buddhist temples have tested applicants going back for a bah-zillion years, Tyler says. You tell the applicant to go away, and if his resolve is so strong that he waits at the entrance without food or shelter or encouragement for three days, then and only then can he enter and begin the training.”
Is this what’s going on within Zero Hedge? I suspect we are being encouraged to look within in order to discover our inner metal, our backbone and courage, with Zero Hedge itself the dimly lit basement proving ground where we clash with other nameless half dead souls looking for some kind of personal redemption. Are we being groomed to be Project Mayhem space monkeys ready to spread the word and bring about some sort of financial and social equality? Or are we just financial snuff film voyeurs endlessly returning to Zero Hedge for our daily blood and guts adrenalin rush? Is it dead yet? And when can I get a good look at the fiat corpse?
Before the reader brushes away that last paragraph as preposterous and not directed at you, maybe you need to conduct a fearless examination of your own motives for visiting Zero Hedge. All some seem to be doing is picking fights and bullying others while reveling in the present day insanity that presages the pushing of the global reset button. Oh, and working on their “I told you so” speeches. This was not the purpose for Fight Club put forth by Chuck Palahniuk when he penned his novel. The fighting was a means to an end, a tool used to move forward personally and collectively, not simply a fast vehicle to more blood sports and ego boosting.
Why are you really here? What is your real purpose for showing up on Zero Hedge on a daily or weekly basis? Once again this is a reasonable question, one only you can answer but only if you are capable of being honest with yourself. Are you here to strengthen yourself emotionally, mentally and spiritually as you work to prepare yourself and your community for the coming worldwide trials? As corny as it may sound to some, that’s mostly why I’m here on Zero Hedge. I see The Hedge as my virtual community, a place I wish to nurture and grow just as I would my local physical community.
More to the point, are you going to participate in the rebuilding of our physical world by preparing minds (beginning with your own) before they are paralyzed in fear by the coming collapse, the central theme of Palahniuk’s classic and something I believe Zero Hedge’s Tyler is doing? Or are you just slowing down the car a bit to get a better look at the decapitated financial mess jammed under the crushed tractor trailer and school bus strewn all along the side of the road? Look ma, is that a head? Yuck! Go slower for crying out loud, I can’t see a thing.
After several generations of media in-breeding and propaganda conditioning for abject apathy and subliminal boob tube pacification, this blog’s creator, just like Palahniuk’s Tyler Durden, has some very poor raw material to work with despite the lies we tell ourselves and the false bravado we display to each other after our morning preening ritual and in between meals of tasteless bread and mystery meat. As Tyler reminded the Narrator in the movie, “We are all part of the same compost heap.”
Fight Club is far more than just a physical challenge, far more. From the book: “I see the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived,’ he says, his face outlined against the stars in the driver’s window, ‘and these men are pumping gas and waiting tables.’…And this…. ‘If we could put these men in training camps and finish raising them.’…Still more…‘You have a class of young strong men and women, and they want to give their lives to something. Advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don’t need. Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don’t really need.”
Palahniuk spares no feelings and gets down and dirty here in the book. “We don’t have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression.’ Even more to the point is this quote from the movie. “We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”
This is a theme repeated endlessly in both the book and the movie, that our lives are wastelands and that we have become willing and compliant slaves to the social and political order. Palahniuk holds nothing back in his scathing review of modern man. And when this blog’s creator, through his Tyler Durden alter ego, mocks the insanity of the financial and political status quo, whether he intends to or not, we are being mocked as well. And very often we are blissfully unaware of it because we have convinced ourselves we’re completely different from all the rest of the mindless zombies because…………because why exactly? Might this be just another lie we tell ourselves to kill the pain and get through another day of silent screams and abject misery?
Like the commodities we are to the ruling elite, many of us are packed in like sardines in our own cooking oil. “Home was a condominium on the fifteenth floor of a high-rise, a sort of filing cabinet for widows and young professionals.” We are desperate to kill the pain we share with our fellow canned anchovies and one of the ways is to become material girls and boys. “And I wasn’t the only salve to my nesting instinct. The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue’.
And one more from Palahniuk that hits just a little too close to home. “Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own; now they own you.” Understand that Palahniuk isn’t just referring to physical possessions when he says ‘the thing’ own us. We create a fantasy world view in our minds and then twist facts and information to fit our comfort level. When our controllers turn up the fear we constrict our worldview to conform to their manipulation. It is our denial that ultimately owns us lock, stock and barrel.
Our national fiat credit card, our SUV’s and our flat screen TVs have become 24/7 oxygen masks used to kill the pain of our existence. “Tyler Durden [pointing at an emergency instruction manual on the plane] You know why they put oxygen masks on planes?” Narrator: “So you can breathe?” Tyler Durden: “Oxygen gets you high. In a catastrophic emergency, you're taking giant panicked breaths. Suddenly you become euphoric, docile. You accept your fate. It's all right here. [in the seat back instruction manual] Emergency water landing - 600 miles an hour. Blank faces, calm as Hindu cows.” Narrator: “That's, um... That's an interesting theory.”
No……it is not a theory at all, but rather a sad fact. It’s all around us yet we claim we’re different, special cases who aren’t affected by the insanity like all the others. We can see the truth and thus we are immune to the disease. But we always seem to miss the big question. How does one see his own insanity when the only measuring stick offered is fundamentally broken and has been created by the insane?
Would we recognize our own insanity when we’re totally immersed in everyone else’s? The creator of the Zero Hedge blog has softened the egoic blow of self recognition when he holds up the mirror by allowing us to believe it is a see through mirror with a view of outside. And in so doing, many of us never find the courage to take a really close look at whom or what stares back.
So how do you escape from your own insanity? How do you break from the herd when all you know is the herd? What does insanity look like? Palahniuk takes us to the edge and shows us the spectacularly warped view, insanity carefully disguised as a 9 to 5 office worker. “What I would do, I say, is I’d be very careful who I talked to about this paper. I say, it sounds like some dangerous psychotic killer wrote this, and this buttoned-down schizophrenic could probably go over the edge at any moment in the working day and stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-180 carbine gas-operated semiautomatic. My boss just looks at me.”
How many of us have fantasized about getting back at all those who we believe have harmed us, who have exposed our cowardice to all the others, who have not participated in our insanity confirming social rituals, who have laughed at us as we rush for the safety of the pack just as the herd is being corralled for the next culling. All those petty social injustices can finally be rectified, balancing the scales and bringing us back from the edge of the abyss. Instead we mindlessly bang away at any one within reach on Zero Hedge. And we call this awareness? Tell me again how good it is to be so well adjusted to an out-of-control and totally insane world.
But of course we rarely follow the urge to kill. Instead our normalized insanity is repressed or more accurately morphed into something that can be expressed in a more socially acceptable and personal way, as part of our genuine imitation self image. We paint over our madness with pretty colors and pleasing pastels. “I flipped through catalogs and wondered: What kind of dining set defines me as a person?”….And again…“It's just, when you buy furniture; you tell yourself, that's it. That's the last sofa I'm gonna need. Whatever else happens, I've got that sofa problem handled”…and again…“How embarrassing, a house full of condiments and no food”…and again….” I had it all. Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of... wherever.
And the piece de la resistance; the mattress warning tag we assume is meant for everyone else, but most certainly not us because we are the end user, the ultimate consumer, the cosmic dead end. Tyler Durden: Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think everything you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned- Tyler.
Isn’t this what Zero Hedge does for us on a daily basis as Tyler and his contributors trot out one financial, political and social snapshot of insanity after another for our daily inspection? We declare to ourselves and any other person within blog earshot that we know the truth, that we are one with Tyler, that we see the Golden light and the Silver path to heaven. Is this really true or just a different form of herd masturbation? Are we simply a sub herd of the insane, tightly packed together for warmth in our own little corner of the Zero Hedge insane asylum, our territory carefully marked out in Gold to identify the Zero Hedge tribe? Just because we might be correct about the financial insanity doesn’t by itself make us sane by any stretch of the imagination.
Palahniuk’s Fight Club wasn’t about daily beatings and its attendant letting of blood. Nor was it about humiliation of our opponent or about revenge seeking, flailing about in the dark basement at all the anonymous bags of skin and bones as we feed upon our inner demons. Fight Club was not about posing in front of the mirror admiring our own muscles or beating others simply because we haven’t the courage to strike back at our real tormentors.
Fight Club was and is about personal growth and community, of discovering what we are all made of, of seeking the inner steel and honing it to perfection, then using our newly strengthened muscles to build a tighter more functional community. Fight Club is about creation, not random destruction. When the fight ends we lift our fallen brother from the floor and hold him tight as others tend to both our wounds. And after a while even the fighting is no longer needed, a fact directly acknowledged in both the book and movie when Tyler Durden declared to the Narrator that either they move up to the next level or it all dies a stillborn movement.
This is about teaching each other how to cope, live and love, not to spit on each other because we are too cowardly to fight our mutual enemy. We weep together in bonded self discovery and we become blood brothers in a manner only those who have shared blows and blood can understand. Fight Club is the means to building brotherhood and community, not a means to rage against our frustration and dull the unrelenting pain of our own self imposed impotence. As Tyler Durden explains in the movie, “Fuck what you know. You need to forget about what you know, that's your problem. Forget about what you think you know about life, about friendship, and especially about you and me.
Fight Club is all about pushing beyond the limits we allowed to be set for us many years, even decades, ago and which we are all terrified of crossing. Fight Club is about the process of breaking down and purging, of hitting bottom and then rebuilding. In the movie Tyler tells us to go back to basics. “Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.” From the book: “Disaster is a natural part of my evolution,” Tyler whispered, “toward tragedy and dissolution.’
We think we’ve hit our limit, but we’re not even close. It’s easy to stop now, when every fiber of our being is screaming for us to halt. If success were that easy, everyone would never fail. ‘Tyler says I’m nowhere near hitting bottom yet. And if I don’t fall all the way, I can’t be saved. Jesus did it with his crucifixion thing. I shouldn’t just abandon money and property and knowledge. This isn’t just a weekend retreat. I should run from self-improvement, and I should be running toward disaster. I can’t just play it safe anymore. This isn’t a seminar. “If you lost your nerve before your hit bottom,” Tyler says, “you’ll never really succeed.” Only after disaster can we be resurrected. “It’s only after you’ve lost everything,” Tyler says, “that you’re free to do anything.” What I’m feeling is premature enlightenment.
There it is and there’s no hiding from it any longer. Premature enlightenment is that thrill, that excitement we feel in our toes when we begin to discover the truth and we know we’re on to something. We desperately want the pain to stop and this certainly looks like our final destination. Or at least it’s as good a place as any to stop….right? Please, someone tell me the storm has passed and I can come out now. Our biggest fear is that our cowardliness will be so obvious even those trying not to look can’t avoid it.
But it is not our final destination and deep down we all know this. What really scares us to our core, what keeps us tossing and turning in the dead of night, is the knowledge that the spiritual fight of our lives, of our generation, has only now just begun. And we don’t know if we have the courage to initially engage, let alone fight to the bitter end. We aren’t talking about those pitiful sheep and the walking dead any more. Nope, this is all about you and me and us.
There is no escape from ourselves, from our own deep seated fear that we find staring back at us from within our own black abyss. This is why we fear looking within and precisely why we are so easily manipulated. This is where all our personal blackmail material can be found, conveniently stored in our own cerebral lock boxes. And it doesn’t even need to be exposed to be effectively used against us. Just the threat of showing us to ourselves is more than sufficient to keep us all plugging away within our customized hamster trail.
What we are beginning to see and think on Zero Hedge and other blogs is suddenly starting to make sense. This is what Zero Hedge appears to offer, premature enlightenment. But we don’t really know if we have the balls or the courage to do anything about it. This in effect makes us tits on a bull, useless to the bull and to pretty much everyone else. But look we say, they are tits…..as if that makes all the difference in the world and that alone should bring value to an all together useless entity. It’s not the information that makes the difference my friend, it’s the information carrier. This is why the controllers don’t even try to hide their crimes anymore. What are you going to do about it? What am I going to do about it? What are we going to do about it?
How far are we willing to go to find our bottom? What depths of our soul will we plumb for our salvation? These are the questions Zero Hedge’s Tyler asks us on a daily basis. Hour by hour he throws the gauntlet down in front of our faces and asks us to determine how much pain we’re willing to withstand before we let go and are reborn. Tyler can’t do it for us; we must commit and bravely move forward into the fear and pain. “The back of your hand is swollen red and glossy as a pair of lips in the exact shape of Tyler’s kiss. Scattered around the kiss are the cigarette burn spots of somebody crying. ‘Open your eyes’ Tyler says, his face shinning with tears. ‘Congratulations,’ Tyler says. ‘You’re a step closer to hitting the bottom. You have to see how the first soap was made of heroes.’
Under these circumstances there are only two ways to die, by our own hand or by the hand of another. Fear is what controls us and nothing else. What we refuse to face, outright deny, bargain with or flee from has us by the balls. This is why we must jump from the cliff, to face our mortality and be free of deaths grip. We must shed everything if we are to gain anything of substance. “I’m breaking my attachment to physical power and possessions,” Tyler whispered, “because only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit.”
Once we clear all that clutters our mind, only then can we be truly free. “The liberator who destroys my property,” Tyler said, “is fighting to save my spirit. The teacher who clears all possessions from my path will set me free.” Only by surrendering our illusion of control do we gain something even greater. “And then, something happened. I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.”
It's long past the point where people can simply be shown what's really going on and they will understand and embody it. The programming and conditioning has been so thoroughly assimilated that the average person will rationalize away anything contrary to the image of the fantasy world constructed for their mind by their mind. One, two, even 100 pieces of truth will be lost in a sea of propaganda and disinformation repeated endlessly day after day. All we have to do is not look.
Sure people understand that something is terribly wrong. But given the choice between looking into the abyss and floating back into another few hours of mindless bliss, few will choose the path of emotional pain, particularly when they can believe they are already free. How can we expect anyone else to face the pain and shock of their own cognitive dissonance if we aren’t willing to do the same?
So……is it up to you and me to show the way by example? If so, how do we do this? For most of us the fight has been bred out generations ago. This is the purpose of breaking down within Fight Club, to reanimate those dormant DNA strands. Palahniuk explains that those who might possibly resist will only truly fight when cornered and have nothing left to lose. This is when you learn who you really are. “A man on the street will do anything not to fight. The idea is to take some Joe on the street who’s never been in a fight and recruit him. Let him experience winning for the first time in his life. Get him to explode. Give him permission to beat the crap out of you. You can take it. If you win, you screwed up. ‘What we have to do, people,’ Tyler told the committee, ‘is remind these guys what kind of power they still have.”
And what kind of power might that be? What kind of power could a slave possibly posses? I’ll tell you what power. Power enough to change our world while sweeping away our hated tormentors, for we hold an innate and naturally derived power only found deeply within. Besides, we are the machine. “Remember this,” Tyler said. “The people you’re trying to step on, we’re everyone you depend on. We’re the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you sleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your calls. We are cooks and taxis drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life.
Either we begin our own process of deprogramming beginning deeply within, then progressing to those around us willing to listen and learn, or we lie to ourselves that we will survive while all around us are herded off for the next culling. One approach is proactive and supremely liberating, the other narrowly defensive and mind constricting. One doesn’t free oneself from physical slavery until the mind has already been liberated.
The idea that I see bandied around Zero Hedge, of buying PMs and filling the storm cellar with the basics and hunkering down, is just another form of self delusion. One man cannot withstand an assault from his own community let alone the county, state or nation. Either we begin to educate ourselves and our communities now or we will eventually be overrun by those very same communities. First you look within and find yourself, then you find the others and begin rebuilding your community.
05-25-2011
Cognitive Dissonance
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I can't wait to print this article, read in its entirety and put it with the rest of the CD articles I have kept to re-read and share. I won't comment fully till finished reading. I learned long ago that it is easier to light one small candle than to curse the dark. CD thanks for lighting the candle and there will always be innumerable souls cursing you, me, and the dark.
Today I had a migraine.
My head was exploding and came here looking to kick some ass.
It suddenly subdued and I slept without noticing.
Now I'm staring at ZH, with a clear head. Live to fight another day... You have been spared today.
Just read 640 odd replies. I had a snarky response to 'jm', so I apologise - reminded me of Lady Gaga.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeMFqkcPYcg
Disclosure:
#1 Overly educated but idiosyncratic - check
#2 Non-American but Western with globalist influences - check
#3 Producer / Employer - but took zero salary whilst doing so - check
#3 TPTB - we'll just say; try it from within, or try having a different logic / mindset to the prevailing cognitive patterns, and you'll learn that torture is a cultural meme, not reserved just for the hotel maid fiddlers - check
Cognitive - I get the essay. Could have been shorter, but the point was pure. My reply is simple - ZH just needs to tighten up a little on the ease of use [tracking should dump you @ that poster's post within a thread, for instance; a reply to a post should track within a user account (i.e. "click replies to posts")].
The rest? Such is life. ZH requires economic intel, but it also requires blood and blue collar interactions. A generation gap of 'politeness' will always exist, especially for younger posters. Try /b/ and the bottom-line sociopathic semantics of Anonymous [srlsy. Newfag - you're doing it wrong] for some references to where the 'clued up kids' are coming from. If you wish to teach the young Spartans, you have to rhizomatically approach culture, language and in some cases - beat the intellectual shit out of the little pompous twats (irony included).
If ZH wants to reach a critical mass, these are the trades. It reminds me of the changes from phone to electronic trading - and the drama that caused. In all, it changed nothing, and everything [lunches got shorter; insider deals still got made].The internet isn't a neutral place - there are sniffers, spiders, bots, State posters, automatic posters, meme machines, hyperstitions and so forth - learn to model it, outside behaviours will cause you to get burnt. For one, drop the idea that empathy / compassion are anything but mental masturbation online - you lack 90% of the body language, you've no proper intel on whether what you read is 100% true or not, and you'll never bond with another poster. You can respect them; you can honour them; you can give kudos... but you can't love or feel for an electronic ghost, and trying to do so is a recipe for disaster.
Meet them outside after meeting online? If you can avoid the psycho-killers, then good friendships might prevail.
If nothing else - ask yourself if this echo chamber is still interesting, and does it teach anything. I hope it does.
My input - I shall add links / info / complexity to the collective spirit, until I am junked into oblivion. That is all there is.
Thank you CD. If you should come upon my mountain, I will provide shelter, food and spirits for you, your men and your horses. Godspeed.
We can all do better if we try.
And try we should!
Thanks, CD. I've already put chunks of this on my quote board.
It's true that my journey on ZH started with "holy cow, someone's explaining CDS on CDOs" and "what's a VWAP algo and what is it doing to the market"? Since then, it developed into a much more significant and involved process. And it also eventually becomes something we move past.
The details of any given daily market/system skullduggery becomes somewhat irrelevant to the interests, goals, pursuits, and projects of a person who has had the realizations you discuss and begun making his preparations to change the world. Staying connected to it only helps in the process of offering knowledge to others who may be ready to see beyond the story we're being told - those who are starting to suspect they may not be their fucking iPads.
I'm truly anonymous, so I won't tell you what I'm doing. But I did want to let you know that there are some of us who are not just building bunkers - we're attempting to build communities, too, in real world places. Compared to that, the community that morphs and changes in the comments section of ZH is transient and (largely) unimportant.
Leave the comments section alone. It will get nastier or nicer as trolls and visionaries come and go. Because TD stays above the whole fray, the comments area can never derail the fundamental mission: the flow of data from what was unseen to what is seen.
Well in fight club the target was those entities that stored the debt records of everyone.
I always thought that since ZH thinks it's going to 0, perhaps through infinity (pretty much) first, or whatever, and that is what has been stated many times, 0 or a reset button, that in the movie, such an act against the debt records, would be a reset button.
I always thought that factored in...possibly. Could be way off, just complete speculation.
Glass-Steagall is also a form of a reset button, except it's a bit more targeted, not everyone loses everything, just the crap gets wiped away. Much cleaner, and fairer, whatever that means in today's world.
Spot on.
Our leader's gift into the new millennium was fear. Hollywood's were both The Matrix & Fight Club. 1999. How strange.
I was 18 in 2000. Will be 30 in 2012. Welcome to the New Millennium young man. And welcome to the Machine 2.0!
I could feel, if i was the kind that lives in the past, that my 20's were, in a way, stolen from me because of the US NeoCon Bullshit Parade. I did what i had & needed to do and i'm doing fine now BUT all this growing up took place in a fear-dominant environment. It changes people in an insidious, ugly way and slows down personal development, the process of enlightenment.
It is something that is realized and integrated most easily by travelling to places where people know no mortal fear such as India or native indian lands in South America. Spending time (a month at least & outside of that tempting resort) in such countries is transcendental for those who are seekers.
I can't even imagine raising up kids & being an average employee in western cities, too much nihilism, selfishness, loneliness : fear. Strangely similar to a certain Tower metaphor of the ancient times. The Dream has broke. Time to invent a new one.
Poor kids. Ten year-olds having iFuck microwaves going through their balls & eggs all day long, MTV and over-worked, over-stressed, paranoid parents. Bad food, insidious child-marketing and falling schooling quality & priorities.
It's like we're digging our own grave, almost every single sector, type of people, government & economy is ruining its own little patch of temporaly-allocated personal and collective paradise in order to have more.
"The ones who come next will manage." Yeah sure. They'll just crawl in their glass-free 3D virtuality looking for comfort and safety. We won't have given them the willpower necessary for living outside the Matrix. Why should they expose themselves to hazards they don't have the tools to confront them with? Why should they be any better than their parents?
When you start to wake up you realize the extent and the profoundness of the mass manipulation that started with Bush's election. It goes DEEP. People feel disturbed by something that they can't really identify. It's called collective insanity and it is next to impossible to extract oneself from it if one keeps living amongst the crazies and their craziness. Hence MSM & Gov & religion to prevent the sheeples from shipwrecking on more reasonable shores.
Lies = Truth and Craziness= Normality. This is the recipe to make sane people go mad.
It's a b!tch. I'm not pessimist though, man IS because man is meant to do & witness magic, and those doing it actively are growing in numbers. But they won't save the others. The others either wake up & change their lives or carry on dreaming the "civilized" dream until they or their children will take that fatal extra-step and fall off the high cliff of illusion like stupid Californian kids competing for Gold in the bloody Darwin Awards.
The Earth will manage fine & so will beautiful Humanity, but not under its current form / masters.
CogD, I have always enjoyed your posts as they challenge me to think 'outside of myself' so to speak. I always look forward to the mental sparring and internal dialogue that happens after reading one of your pieces, and for that, thank you.
I come to ZH (and have for quite a bit longer than I have been posting) to 'hone the razor's edge' so-to-speak. It provides intellectual stimulation and contrarian viewpoints that require me to face my original assumptions.
On occasion, ZH also is about commiserating with other like-minded people on the obvious direction our planet is hurdling -- not just financially but geo-politically as well. This allows me to continue to speak with other people (i.e. 'The Sheeple') and provide food for thought for them and not get worn out myself.
I enjoy ZH. I enjoy the comments of the individuals that I find informative and push me to research ideas on my own. It allows me to 'deprogram' myself so-to-speak from all the mainstream corporate marketing group-speak.
It also allows me to try to understand what might be happening or what might come down the path, which allows me to be more educated and in return educate and 'deprogram' others that might be willing to take off the blinders.
Do I think everything on ZH is gospel? Of course not. However, if one does not collect all sides to an argument and research both sides, how do you know whom is talking out of thier ass? ;) Not to mention -- would I be challenged to find out the answer if not faced with another viewpoint?
That's why I return to ZH.
Thanks again for the intellectual food and challenges, I do appreciate and look forward to them.
What I really enjoyed about your comment was the repeated use of the phrase "it allows me" which implies a strong willingness on your part to look down into the black abyss. And this is the point I try to make all the time. As frustrating as it is for you and me and everyone else, we simply cannot force those who don't wish to look to actually look. Period. Full stop.
In fact the more we push the more they will resist. No one in their right mind, meaning safely ensconced in deep denial and self delusion, would possibly stick their neck out once they smell trouble in the air. For the already insane it is the height of reckless insanity to step out from behind the protective cover of their existing insanity.
This is why I say that I am not trying to wake anyone. I am speaking only to those who are beginning to come to, have overcome the initial shock of the awakening, and now wish to explore a bit more of their prison planet. They must allow themselves to do so.
Thank you for your comment.
"For most of us the fight has been bred out generations ago."
This article was very worthwhile and should be read slowly and in it's entirety by all ZH readers.
Rule #1 detach from the material world.
Rule #2 there are only 2 ranks in combat, the composed and the un-composed
Rule # 3 you the individual has a natural and legal right to self defense which requires no permission from the collective.
Rule # 4 "be prepared" this is not a drill, it is natural selection.
Rule # 5 this was not an accident, it was orchestrated by financial engineers who worked along side with social engineers.
Rule # 6 The basics of life will be used as weapons by the collective against the individual.
Rule # 7 The collective will use all the provacitive techniques at their disposal to break down and divide society so they can rebuild the pieces under their jackboot.
Rule # 8 surround yourself with a team who is also prepared ,who you trust implicitly
If rule #5 is untrue, are the rest of the rules null and void?
I take it that someone went out of their way to junk the question, it must mean something? I know. Dreams are precious.
I like your eight rules. I sometimes search for a way to express the process. Then I come across a comment like yours and I'm rewarded with new information and/or a different perspective simply from writing my essay. I have always said that I get much more from the comment section than I ever give with the articles.
Thanks.
I'm humbled that you responded. It made my day.
Banzai7 is another of my favorites. He, like you & I is a seasoned veteran.
Maybe these kids will reflect upon themselves .
The quality of ZH commenters in Q4 2008 was exponentialy better than it has decayed to now.
I try to stick around after the article goes stale because I often find some of the more thoughtful comments are left at that time. People have a chance to read without any pressure to leave a timely post and/or they are more likely to be thoughtful now that the trolls and nasty people have moved on.
I think many people would be surprised by how many people read ZH, but don't comment or rarely comment because they don't like the treatment they receive in the comment section. At least that is what my personal email conversations tell me. By my estimate 75% to 80% who read ZH never comment. So the comment section does not represent the opinion of the readership.
Cog D,
I really enjoy your writing(s). The title of your article has hit upon something that has puzzled me, and apparently you, not just about ZH but all blogs: healthy discussion/opposing views are often met with condescending, vulgar, insulting remarks. Personally, I would not write any comment that I was not willing to say to someone in person. Maybe it's just an age thing...I'm 53. The irony,from my perspective, of some comments is found in both commentors being 'right'. Take for example the often hot topic of silver. Commentor's will argue endlessly over the price going up/down. Being long/short can both be 'right' depending on one's purchase/sale point (bulls make money, bears make money, hogs get slaughtered). But argue they will until it turns in to a name calling contest. Interesting.
Second, you make mention of those that are buying PM's, food, etc... in preperation for what many believe are tough times ahead (I'm guilty). What are your suggestions on preperation for what may lie ahead?
Lastly, I read ZH because the articles align much more closely to my perception than those of the MSM.
Viva la Zero Hedge!
I was not saying you should avoid doing all of the above. Rather I was saying that if you think doing so will protect you from a local, state or national community that has turned terribly dysfunctional and attacks you.....then you are delusional. If and when social disorders comes to America you and I will feel it in our local community.
If we don't begin now to rebuild that community now it will soon be knocking down our front doors. In fact precisely because we have stockpiled we will be seen as a target of opportunity. The only defense from your community is to build a sense of shared goals and results in your community.
This message falls on deaf ears of those who don't wish to work on anything other than their immediate gratification, in this case preparation for self survival. Individuals destroy their community. Soon after the community destroys its individuals.
I gave up the Stoic and the Brahman at an early age, long before the biological appeal of Punk and Bitchez set in... Whether I ironically wound up more Taoist after following a path that would appear orbital- since I repeatedly find myself encountering reiterations of past footsteps, is a needless intellectual self-indulgence and fool's errand as far as I am concerned.
When on a walkabout I find it easier to balance by walking with an open stance even though we are conditioned to naturally follow any path with a closed stance (whether by coloring within the lines or self-identification through various incorrect but socially acceptable and promoted dichotomies: political, ideological, racial, urban/rural, etc.) I think much of the psychology canon is based on false dichotomies regardless whether Jung's or Eysenck's delineations are actually as inviolate as the lines in a child's coloring book, but I am digressing into an area where my disinterest exceeds my knowledge.
Cognitive dissonance can only exist after one is conditioned to accept the lines as presented in the coloring book. Iconoclasm, anti-authoritarianism, and anarchy can be perceived as synonyms or as a dichotomy. That is the beauty and the flexibility of the common English language that divides so many.
Enlightenment is often found through transcendence, and transcendence through baptism-by-fire. Fight club was destruktion and resocialization conforming to Palahniuk's ideology, just as Parris Island is destruktion and resocialization conforming to Uncle Sam's ideology. In my opinion both ideologies, regardless of the linguistic intricacies of delineation, are constrained by syllogistic fallacies. Both venues are also more baptism-by-warming-oven than the true baptism-by-fire that occurs so often in the world.
Zero Hedge is what you make of it. Children are amenable to involuntary behavior modification, adults are not, although this dichotomy is certainly not delineated by age. In my case Zero Hedge is useful for stropping the blade edge, as honing it can be a very costly proposition in the physical world. Ironically, I am actually less abrasive in the virtual fight club than I am incarnate, but luxury of the flesh has comes at a professional price if you accept society's boundaries of professional behavior. If someone uses Zero Hedge merely to release otherwise internalized rude and abusive tendencies, so be it- I've been there and it is not the tick or leach on the beast that I worry about.
What Zero Hedge is beyond what you make of it is Tyler Durden's concern. To the anonymous reader transcendence is a funny thing, and sometimes occurs when watching a replay of the same fight for the 33rd time, or witness the same stone for umpteenth time along the side of the road. The endless replay of the discussions and debate of gold price- whether measured as an ancient ratio, 20th century central bank yardstick of borrowing capacity, or nominal Comex commodity price measured in fiat currency is a fitting example.
deep shit bro
"In the province of the mind, what is believed to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind, there are no limits." - j.lilly
Damn, I reread that when I wasn't multi-tasking excel monstrosities, and it does read like it originates from the John Lilly-Timothy Leary continuum. I've haven't even been around a psycadellic in a couple decades. If you plot a line through time and space between Henry Rollins scooping ice cream and "the BITCH set me up" you can determine (within 10 years and 10 miles) where I wandered after I got done borrowing drafting pens and adding my own lines to the coloring book.
The 5-word summary in more generation appropriate language:
PUNK ROCK. BITCHES. CHILL. PEACE.
Some may think I'm crazy, but in order to do so they must first discard the entire scientific canon and research of "crazy" - since it is built on a foundation of alternation and oscilition between alter egos or personalities, and precludes the posibility of dualism and simultaneous dominance. Even adding the 21 century's HFT proclivities only gets one as far as ADHD.
Thank you for that CD, what a wonderful read. I agree Fight Club/Zero Hedge are places where people are strengthened and taught community building but I have a different overall message from the book/film.
I believe the main message of Fight Club is one simple question.
"What do you want to do before you die?"
If you aren't doing it then you are a waste.
I watch the people driving their cars each day to work and see the disfunctional in our society expressed in the way they drive - mostly angry. I read the comments on ZH and see the same disfuntionalities.
"We are dying as a people and as a culture, surrounded by our material possessions while long since become spiritually and morally bankrupt and destitute."
Remember CD, Jesus was put on a cross for speaking like this. Forgive them for they know not what they do (or say or think or feel).
JM, is right about the many cyclical panics of the industrial age, and that we need a broader perspective, per Reinhart and Rogoff's "This Time It's Different". The difference, of course, is that this time OUR ox is being gored, so we necessarily lack perspective.
I suspect we will muddle through, although I admit to running numerous scenarios, the most dire of which ends with taking a round in the forehead while standing at the kitchen sink. Most likely, we will see the Leviathan state grow stronger through war and worsening Gini Coefficent. Superficial social dislocation will be repaired by intensified Orwell/Huxley mechanisms even as the spiritual and psychological dislocation gets worse. Externalize the shadow self, feed the senses.
ZH questions the received narrative, challenges the propaganda megaphone, which is why the site is also a mental health spa. To the extent that ZH is a forum for the awake and aware I would say the posts in response to CD's essay (cri de coeur!), reflect a bell curve distribution of the ZH subset of a wider culture that has not even begun to notice the Matrix effect, much less confront the inner process suggested by CD's thoughtful and soulful piece.
The implications of this are humanity-bearish, since we also happen to be hurtling toward a Malthusian endpoint. The worst of our problems is too many people, per Jeremy Grantham's latest quarterly letter, but I digress.
There are many levels to a ZH conversation, moving up and down Maslow's pyramid. CD seeks to inspire us. He describes the esoteric path the stark implications of which are, to put it mildly, unsettling to an audience unprepared for profound self-examination. I've done the work, and I'm still a train wreck. Chop wood, carry water. Pogo got it right: "We have met the enemy and they is us."
The many churlish and hostile responses to CD's essay demonstrate that many posters are coming from vibrational levels not in phase with CD's message. For example, when swerving to avoid a car crash I am coming from reptilian survival.
Kicking Obe Wan Kenobi in the nuts does not make you an initiated warrior.
I don't know where this "community" crap comes from: it is kind of like a Kansas NIA (neighborhood improvement association), I guess. Spy on neighbors, report what they say, call the police if there is a stray dog or an unknown face. Kind of like East Germany before the wall came down.
The free enterchange of ideas is not a little group of tea sipping effetes. I agree with the blogger who said (paraphrase) if its too hot in the kitchen get out.
People hate me in here, call me names, and very occassionally I take after someone. What harm has been done.
This wordy and often sophomoric essay is a good release for its writer, but is a waste of time.
Atch- you've spoken like the 18 weeker you are. Old timers such as myself are rare, but we remember when people were a little bit more articulate than they are now.
Thanks for a great article, CD. Maybe your cry into the wildernes will mean something.
One can hope.
CD, you see the highway but you don't have a car.
Zerohedge has come and gone. When MrsCreant and Gekko etc were posting, I came every day.
But silver is even a better buy than before. The Evil Empire Death Star was only able to take the price down to $33? Shit, they are weak, I'm freaking Drunk again.
And the only stock to consider is CANA!!
I don't know where this "community" crap comes from: it is kind of like a Kansas NIA (neighborhood improvement association), I guess. Spy on neighbors, report what they say, call the police if there is a stray dog or an unknown face. Kind of like Berlin before the wall came down.
The free enterchange of ideas is not a little group of tea sipping effetes. I agree with the blogger who said (paraphrase) if its too hot in the kitchen get out.
People hate me in here, call me names, and very occassionally I take after someone. What harm has been done.
This wordy and often sophomoric essay is a good release for its writer, but is a waste of time.
"Community" can vary from person to person, but in my business (agriculture) we are very dependent upon one another as our very livelihood is threaten by something bigger than any government or wall street fucktard on a daily basis. We (my business and those around me) depend on each other very much in the daily fight to adapt or die. Thanks to the dramatic rise in cotton and soybean prices, we are actually quite happy right now. This doesn't make predicting the what the next valuable crop will be any easier. if you think you can really be successful without ever having to rely on anyone else in your community, then you really are ignorant. You don't need a college degree (and many successful people don't have them) to know the difference between knowledge and wisdom.
Nice work CD. You are right to be careful in words and terms as it makes all the difference (i.e. the "healthy man"). In the past, tribal communities did indeed recognize the importance in preparing their children with respect to the survival and growth or the entire tribe. The great transition that people seem largely unprepared for is the fact that the "tribe", as it were, may have gotten a little ahead of itself in terms of it's physical size in comparison to it's spiritual growth. In regard to the relationship to zerohedge, I offer the following change - "On an infinite time timeline, the chances are that the atomic material that brought you into being will do so again and everyone will experience every side of every trade eventually".
We will all be here again, and we will definitely be switching positions. Interesting note, the physical properties of electromagnetic radiation are such that when we determine the atomic structures for particular drug targets using X-rays (that constructively interfere as they are diffracted by the atoms in the crystal lattice), the reason we can solve the phase problem is because the properties of light (electromagnetic radiation) are such every single atom in the molecule contributes to every single diffraction spot we observe. Just like humans, some atoms contribute more than others. Have a great day CD.
Oh, Cog Dis...You're more than a Joseph Cambell-esque Hero. You're...you're...you're our Guru! Your Depak Chopra insights are so profound. Lead us to enlightenment and heightened consciousness. Please Cog Dis, could you write another Multi-Volume-Manifesto about our "collective insanity"? Oh, Cog Dis...You're amazing!
Has it been six weeks? Yup, about time for Dan Duncan to drop by.
Oh, there you are. Hi Dan Duncan. I love what you have done with your hair Danny boy.
Hahaha, thank you Cognitive Dissonance for pointing out some flaws in our collective experience. I find your point of realization that we are all collaborators within our experience (for good or ill) to be the salient point.
I find this human tendency to blame others instead of taking corrective action to fix one's own self to be troublesome in my own life as well. I think it is merely a failure of will, and can be remedied, indeed practiced upon.
A smarter man than me said: "Peace is not a destination, it is an action."
I amend his statement with the following: "In such an understanding, all goals are actions. Any ideal one can imagine can be embodied daily."
I enjoy your writing. As I enjoyed Fight Club.
Cheers,
Beef
Whatever !!
I love ZH !
financialmarketsdaily.blogspot.com
OK, who are the powers that be? Who is Tyler? My best candidate that makes any sense is that Cognitive Dissonance is a sneaky Tyler, for t is ultrapersonamenial.
I have a request. Put up a permanent discussion group called "who are TPTB?". This would be a joy, not what the common life expects of us.
Anger! Always
TPTB, I think, are anyone who perpetuates the status quo and has some power to do it. Who TD is publicly isn't important... He does his thing well being anonymous. However, there is a post in these comments, relatively recently, that has a link that reveals who TD is. But again, does it matter? Who is Dry Drunk? Who is fledermaus?
I think PRIVATELY the players were known to each other in fightclub. They had avatars / aliases, so they could, be unfettered in their new roles, but everyone knew who they really were when they 1st broke rule #1 then arrived, on the front porch step, before they became part of the club. I'm NOT for unmasking everyone publicly. The stakes are high and the patriot act is pervasive. Being hassled, intimidates, and there is enough money at stake to launch multiple 10+ year wars... spend Trillions for crony's etc...
However peaking under the kimono to "unplug the avatar?" PRIVATELY revealing? for if and when the site, or grid, goes down. Having some organization? There should be a way to keep it going...among members unplugged style. That's why the local clubs popping up, was a natural evolution. If TD or ZH goes down the 160K readers a day will be without...
Is it time for Tyler to get a fist full of plane tickets? and go on tour to local ZH fight clubs?
I'll pick him up at the airport...
...I am Tyler Durden.
I think you violated rule #1...
Funny because everyone did in the movie/book? -and here-. -Point is- each of us sees the collapse and gloom and doom, in our face... Each has to confront "what are we doing about it?" CD has the right idea, a challenge to make one "self aware". I see anonymity without proximity, as being the reason for hit and run posts / negative. It promotes no holds barred commenting at the expense of accountability. That was a deliberate choice of Tyler. Have real names and faces and it would stifle the irreverent, free flow, or dangerous information to TPTB, BUT, we wouldn't hide behind our avatars. I for one would like to know outside of this 'ZH matrix' where the best thinkers and best leaders are to organize, before it goes down... Because I want to move the mayhem forward and want to have the ZH army ready, as a natural extension of seeing these stories EVERY day.
I mean, how can you sit on the shitter reading Ikea after being on ZH, more than a few times? How can you go on as normal, with this knowledge?
Just Bitching?
Just Trolling?
Just Witty/Pithy/sarcastic/funny commenting?
That's it?!#@$%^^??
WTF? Is ZH a movie to the "posters -without follow through??" What are you doing about it, aside from this board with your avatar friends? In the real world. I hope something. I hope you are talking to, and mobilizing your own fight club cell. For survival. And to wake others up.
This is real. And your comfort zone is about to go "bye bye" YOur condo is going to be blown up by Patriot act or by your own subconscious. Preparing or becoming self aware in a like minded community, seems like a good next step.
Thank you CD, and Mr. Durden. And I thank those that do contribute to the discussion.
I assumed 99% of the visitors here don't read the comments. I love this site. I'm clearly addicted to it, checking in easily an absurd 10 times a day. The ratio of informative, value add comments to meaningless tripe is easily 1 to 20 on this site. Sometimes I wonder if the commentors (ers?) read and process the articles at all.
This site brings the wheat. Great content with little filler a vast majority of the time. The commenters bring the chaff. It's no matter just read the articles and skip the blather.
Amazing how many people want to blank out this post.
I wonder how many of them work in the basement of the White House or Pentagon.
My posts usually garner a huge number of comments. I wonder why? People seem to like to be rubbed the wrong way....even as they demand I stop. How many comments were left telling me what I wrote was garbage, but they never actually read it? What does that say about the person? We already know what I think because I posted my thoughts above.
For so many the cowards way out is to yell and scream and pout, anything to avoid doing the work. We are children in adult bodies. While it can be said it has always been this way it definitely ebbs and flows. We are currently at high tide and approaching record flood level.
This is a very nice article CD, long-winded, but nice, as is your style.
Words have power. They affect people. Great care should be given when using them. In the hands of a sage, they can create; in the hands of a fool, destroy. Inside each of us is both the sage and the fool, and life is an epic struggle to see which one prevails. But neither aspect of ourselves is set in stone, each moment is fresh and new, and the choosing begins again.
Yes.
LOL, I am waiting for the tweeter version of this long essay. :)
Stop masterbating and find a women....check
BRILLIANT piece, CD. Thank you big.
There's no real purpose for me here, except that it helps keep me from kicking cats and breaking furniture...or worse.
CD, very good article. I agree.
The only thing left would be some concrete advise like "Do this, don't do that".
I am sure, many understand, but when it comes to action, people get lazy.
Say what they (well, we) are supposed to do, say what they shouldn't.
"There is a solution. This however involves lots of education and a working financial system. What I do about education is discussing such stuff with my friends. What I can do about the financial system is removing all equivalents of my personal work (i.e. paper money) from the influence of corrupt institutions, namely the state and the banks. It's not much, but it's a start.
The problem is just that as long as the corrupt elite stays in power, they will actively work against education (see govt expenditures on edu vs military, politicians' stance on freedom in the internet) and a just monetary system (see bail outs, money printing, rigged financial markets). Moreover, they will define every push for transparency as a threat to security and reject it.
So they have the motivation to keep the status quo, the power to hide the facts and the power to keep people uneducated.
Therefore the current system first has to fail. "
if you can't take the heat, stay the fuck out of the blog kitchen. if an idea is unchallenged, it isn't an 'idea'. it's propaganda.
Solid post mate,
Funnily enough I recently joined the Royal Marines Reserves to feel a sense of belonging/community/being around other guys who love physical training. During the day people are students, brokers, waiters, whatever, at night we are ground to dust by Marine PTIs. Its amazing. Alone I can push myself to a certain limit and the wimp out. With training friends I always exceed my limit. I spend most of my time training, and thinking about training. (And reading for University, an unnecessary distraction, need to find a way to earn £, and fuck the rat race...... )
At the guy above, We need a forum for proper discussion, scrolling down the comments section is fucking annoying.
To anser your question: I came to ZH because of the crash and wanted to understand why it happened. I watched Matt Taibbi's video on short selling and saw a comment about ZH there. I had worked as a shipborker (aka leach) for a while, and realised Economics being the profession of the best and brightest was a fucking sham.
I initially was so happy to find a place that had plausible and informed answers. I then found out about Nassim Talib and from there its been philosophy and psychology all the way- to the extent of including it in my written assignments at University (varying degrees of success :P ). Initially it was such a relief to find a place where my thoughts were confirmed and I could feel 'normal' as there were others thinking the same way. I must admit CD point about partial enlightenment being spot on in my case. I went around talking to anyone who would listen about the ills of the current system and was shocked at peoples reaction. I thought people would be so interested (as I was) and start digging further down the rabit hole. Fuck me was I wrong. My parents think I'm a lost soul who has given up a 'good' career at a 'respectable company', and those 'friends' I had from work ignore me, as in there eyes I have failed. Lucky I have training, reading, and ZH as I know I'm not alone.
Cheers all, even the trolls :)
KEEP FAITH!!