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The Zero Hedge Effect – Crossing the Event Horizon - Part 1 of 2
The Zero Hedge Effect – Crossing the Event Horizon
Chapter One of Two
By
Cognitive Dissonance
[TV commercial script] (During the voice over we see a series of obviously distraught and distressed men and woman huddled in bed, pacing the floor or sitting on the edge of their seat slowly wringing their hands and quietly crying. The backgrounds are darkened and everything is slightly out of focus while the background music is dour and slightly off key.) “Do you have trouble sleeping at night, endlessly tossing and turning until, exhausted, you get up and begin your day? Are you constantly worried about money or your job? Have you been feeling alone and isolated, with your family and friends refusing to discuss those things that deeply concern you? Do you obsessively read financial blogs and web sites, but never find the answers you’re looking for?” (The scene slowly changes to a husband and wife angrily arguing. Then the scene dissolves into a close up of the worried husband hunched over his computer monitor in a darkened room, the glow from the monitor flickering on his face. The scene fades out while simultaneously fading back in to a close up of his right index finger repeatedly clicking the computer mouse.) “If any of these symptoms describes you or a loved one, you might be suffering from an increasingly common and very serious cognitive dissonance. The good news is that now there is real hope with a treatment available that can give you the peace of mind you need and deserve. Stay tuned for more information.” [End script] Of course, as soon as the TV commercial mentions ‘good news’ we quickly see lots of smiling faces and hand holding, along with people walking in fields of flowers or laughing with friends and family. The narrator then informs us of the latest greatest drug to benefit mankind…..immediately followed by a 30 second listing of potential side effects. If I had not given it away by mentioning financial blogs, one might recognize that the above ‘symptoms’ have been experienced by nearly every one of us at one point or another. Well, most of the symptoms anyway. But in this case it’s not a drug that ultimately cures the cognitive dissonance, but rather truth telling via a relatively new phenomenon sweeping the world. It is pretty clear that there is something special about Zero Hedge, along with several dozen other web sites and blogs, financial or otherwise. So let’s explore a bit and find out what is going on along with a warning not to become complacent and assume that we have arrived and can now stop searching. For hundreds of years there have been various sources of information which, when uncovered, enabled the determined searcher to peer through the facade and gaze upon some of the truth hidden by the official keepers of the public myth. But this knowledge was glimpsed only by a limited few who had the time and means to conduct a comprehensive search of original texts and documents, then publish their findings for an extremely small audience. When the Internet began to open up more of the mysteries hidden from the public, the few expanded into a few more that were, for the most part, clustered around so-called ‘fringe’ Internet communities, newsgroups and more recently small web sites and blogs. But even with the expanded modern day access to vast pools of information via the early Internet, most of the research was still limited to political assassinations, false flag attacks, governmental, military and individual skullduggery, wars of opportunity or empire, financial fraud and so on. More importantly, for the vast majority of time the perspective of this research was retrospective in nature, often looking back years, decades, even centuries into the past. Near real time analysis was limited mostly to pure speculation and supposition, often because real time info was extremely limited and required a consensus reality point of view to gain entry. You needed to be part of the group to be given the right to listen in on the group. Zero Hedge specifically, and several other blogs and web sites in general, approached the problem of near real time research and dissemination of contrary information from an entirely new and amazingly vulnerable sector, that of business and investment, an industry that already disseminates massive amounts of (near) real time information in order to give the impression of a level playing field among lesser competitors and a vast worldwide pool of patsy investors. Now more than ever, primarily because the world depends upon just in time Federal Reserve digital money printing and liquidity injections, as well as Congressional emergency bailouts and crony systemic manipulation, a growing understanding of the inner workings of the financial world, as well as widely disseminated global financial information, has begun to expose the secret world of the financially powerful and politically connected to ‘we the people’.
The democratization of financial information has evolved in a manner never considered particularly vulnerable to the powers that be for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, those who could understand (and use) the financial information flow were never seriously considered to be a source of disloyalty since it was always assumed ‘they’ were either using or twisting this information in order to deceive and/or trade off for power or profit rather than use it to help expose and potentially destroy or disrupt the very system they could profit from.
This limited perspective is a wonderfully penetrating example of the narrow mindedness and naiveté that is displayed by the captured mind of the central sociopaths and their large group of enablers, particularly when they believe they are all powerful. People often expect other people to think, act and say pretty much what they would think, act or say. The (financial) criminal minds, including those of the hard core sociopaths and their first and second tier enablers, are often not very imaginative, particularly if it isn’t required of them on a daily basis for anything more than to rape, rob and steal.
However, in the vast majority of cases the rich and powerful were correct in assuming no one would defect or that those who did would be ineffective, marginalized or quickly squelched. In their minds the equation is simple. Who would possibly give up the enormous wealth and income that flows from intimate business connections and insider information? Better yet, who would want to overcome the cost of entry and the risk of ridicule (or much worse) that comes with becoming a dangerous whistleblower?
Alas, the sociopaths completely underestimated that which they do not possess, the single minded power demonstrated by those with strong moral character, fearless courage and righteous indignation. Combine this with the ability to monetize page views, thus mitigating some of the cost of entry, and a rapidly growing and thoroughly pissed off proletariat, including some morally outraged, burned out and/or jettisoned financial workers, and you have the means, motive and opportunity for economic truth mongers to blossom. The rest, as they say, is history. All of the above is obviously a gross over simplification of the phenomenon, but you get the idea.
I do not wish to diminish the contribution of dozens upon dozens of web sites and blogs that pre-date Zero Hedge (ZH), all of which served to plow the raw and underdeveloped truth speaking land and turn the soil in preparation for the Zero Hedge Effect meme seeding. But the prolific posting of 10 to 15 original articles a day by ZH’s founder(s), who uses the alias Tyler Durden, as well as guest posts and the output of numerous contributors, provides an at times mind bending journey into the alternative reality of truth speaking. As well, Tyler’s in-your-face style serves to embolden those who read his prose, a necessary attraction if one is going to entice reluctant or frightened souls out of their burrows and into what they’ve been told all their lives is blasphemous and heretical territory.
Zero Hedge, and all the other destroyers of the public myths, are so much more than ‘just’ truth telling web sites; they are a singularity, the precursor to a potentially mind expanding metamorphosis, a meme movement of historic proportions that will only be fully recognized and understood with the 20-20 hindsight of historical perspective. This grass roots movement is clearly a force to be reckoned with simply because it has made its presence felt despite mainstream media opposition and outright hostility from those who carry the water for the political, corporate and financial powers that be.
In fact this new and utterly unique form of near real time truth speaking is so revolutionary that I have coined a term for it, “The Zero Hedge Effect”, which I use to describe the overall financial and business truth speaking movement that includes dozens of other web sites and blogs, a sampling of which can be found on the left hand side of every ZH web page. This blossoming has emboldened others to double their efforts and either expand their (non) financial truth speaking web sites or to create all new ones. This is the definition of a popular movement and not a fad. The proof of its power is seen within the escalating efforts by disinformation agents to attack their credibility. One does not fight what one does not fear.
The Zero Hedge Effect describes the overall experience that must have overwhelmed Alice as she explored the rabbit hole and suffered one cognitive dissonance after another in rapid succession. The World of Wonderland must have been extremely distorted and disorientating for Alice, just as the world looks to those who stumble into The Zero Hedge Effect after clicking a stray link or hearing about the Hedge from other web sites. From that moment on they begin a journey into an alternative realty so demonstratively different from what is presented by the mainstream media, the education system and the general consensus belief system that severe vertigo and projectile vomiting are just a few of the early physical symptoms of old meme purging and cognitive disruption.
From that point on nearly all who enter The Hedge, or any of the other non coordinated (but still in the eyes of the PTB, co-conspirator) web sites, experience time and reality dilation and distortion effects similar to what one imagines we would experience if we were to cross the event horizon of a massive black hole, thus the reason I describe the actual transformation process itself as “Crossing the Event Horizon”.
For those who undergo the gut wrenching and emotionally destabilizing process of unlearning nearly everything they thought they knew while simultaneously downloading not only truth, but an entirely new vocabulary of financial and political terms and phrases, they are never the same again. And for this reason alone many quickly turn around and never look back as they scurry towards the warm and seductive embrace of near total truth blackout living.
However, there is great danger in thinking that we have now crossed through the event horizon and are safely on the other side, thus fully awake and seeing clearly. This just isn’t correct and to believe so is the act of the self deluded fool. One doesn’t overcome thousands of years of thought meme conditioning and cultural indoctrination by overcoming a few obviously transparent lies and self deceptions. In fact, one of the lies we tell ourselves in order to assimilate all the initial cognitive dissonances is that the tough part is done and the road forward is clear. Who really wants to face digging an endless pit for the rest of their lives? While I most certainly can be accused of beating this mule to death, let’s once again take a look at the group and individual psychology of this issue. One must begin to understand the reason why people and groups do, or don’t do, the things we do if one is to see the bigger picture. Otherwise it’s simply too easy to dismiss explanations such as what follows as silly and illogical or not applicable to us under the false belief that we act for the most part logically and in our own best interest. Or even that we know our self very well, thus we are finally free thinking, the ultimate self delusion. Forget about pointing fingers at others in order to shield ourselves from this potentially stinging rebuke. I’m talking about you and me here and no one else. Take a chance that you and I might not know everything about ourselves, that we might actually continue to lie to ourselves without even realizing it, and open our minds to other possibilities. For decades, the stock markets were supposedly influenced and even regulated under the ‘logic’ of efficient markets. Only now are people finding the courage to look closely at the illogical lunacy of these theories. Isn’t it interesting that these ‘efficient market’ theories, when accepted by the masses and by a large majority of financial advisors and money managers, had the effect of making suckers out of the very same masses it was supposedly designed to help? But I guess that was just a coincidental accident, right? The same applies when thinking about ourselves and how we act privately and publically. Is it such a surprise to discover that we act illogically and often at cross purposes to our own well being? Yet we are told we’re free to choose, that our leaders work for us, that we determine our own destiny, when a careful and unbiased examination tells us exactly the opposite. If we don’t begin to understand why we continuously fall for the same bag of tricks we will remain hopelessly stuck within the false illusion the rich and powerful present to us as our ‘true’ reality. Any book, article or video that discusses political, social and economic policy or even corruption without factoring in individual and group psychology is seriously flawed simply because the entire story isn’t being told. One simply cannot convey a complex and nuanced condition or idea using less than half of the available alphabet or dictionary. The unspoken presumption underlying many (but not all) attempts to expose ‘the truth’ is that if only the author could inform the sleeping masses of the ‘real’ story, of the hidden information, then the slumbering giant would rapidly wake and shake off the tyranny. My apologies to all the sincere and serious authors out there, but this view is hopelessly naive and speaks more to the psychology and conditioning of the author than the reader. In fact, an important component of our social conditioning and an integral part of the Big Lie is the deeply conditioned belief that it’s impolite or even rude to speak to each other about our own tendency to defer to the manipulation and lies promoted by ‘our’ authority figures. It’s almost as if we are acting like children talking about serious flaws in our parents. If we make believe and don’t really talk about it, then it isn’t real. The only social class allowed to discuss this subject (other than our masters, along with the advertising and government intelligence agency classes) is the professional class of social scientists, doctors, psychologists and academics and then only in the most sterile and dispassionate clinical terms. There is this intellectual wall that’s erected around them forbidding anyone other than these ‘experts’ from discussing psychology in public. Only the great Wizards are allowed to discuss the mysteries of the human psyche. After all, they are all experts and we are just uninformed and potentially self destructive children. Any explorations and explanations offered by amateurs such as myself are quickly branded as deluded babbling or children playing with matches. Only the great Merlin and his anointed sorcerers are empowered to conduct such forays into the dark psychological arts. And God forbid if a non ‘professional’ embarrasses the reader by pointing out the obvious. It’s almost as if people believe that to speak about the unspeakable is just rubbing their noses in their own futility. Hush hush sweet Charlotte, civilized people don’t talk about such things. Or maybe it is all just our fragile little egos screaming at us to leave the blanket draped over the dead and rotting corpse. What we don’t see, what we are conditioned not to see, is that this is all part of our conditioning, that only the high priests are allowed to discuss the very subject(s) that can and will help set us free if only we would understand and use them. This is a constant within the illusion. Anything that can empower or free us is removed, restricted or demonized, thus severely limiting our innate and natural ability to heal, grow and flourish. At best we are told we should restrict ourselves to applying band aids and hydrogen peroxide. Anything more than this should be left to the professional mind magicians and the grand keepers of the public myths.
I’ve been told a number of times by ‘professionals’ including financial, medical, scientific, even philosophical (which just goes to show how deeply all professionals are indoctrinated to stay within the lines including myself) that I shouldn’t stray where I don’t belong. Sometimes I’m even scolded as one would an errant child who has just been warned to stay away from the sharp scissors. We are conditioned to believe that just about any emotional discomfort is considered an illness that must be treated with Makita skull saws and surgical mind grips when what our emotional pain should be seen as is a warning sign that something is seriously wrong with our present day reality and not necessarily with us. When waking up to a world gone mad the prescription that is needed is not additional heavy medication, more mindless TV indoctrination and desperate consumerism. Have you ever wondered why the ‘healing arts’ magicians claim they ‘practice’ their profession, that they own a ‘practice’? This is not a play on words; they use this term very specifically to describe an inexact process. As much as we wish to believe, as much as we are told to believe, that it is a complex science and well above our pay grade, much of it, particularly psychology, is simply theory and consensus belief systems that are applied under ‘sterile’ or controlled conditions. I’ve often wondered how many emotionally distraught individuals who are finally waking to their insanity are re-infected with mad human disease while prone upon the psychologist’s brown leather sofa. And do we not see the sublime irony in the fact that some of the nastiest and deadliest infections are ‘caught’ during a hospital stay? There is a world of difference between setting a broken bone, undergoing transplant surgery or treating psychological trauma caused by the sudden loss of a loved one, which I’m not talking about here, and understanding what makes us psychologically tick and how we are manipulated, how our own imagined and conditioned fears and phobias are used against us. We are confidently told that psychologists know what they are doing, but a careful reading of ‘accepted practice’ suggests to me that they are simply intensively and often narrowly trained practitioners rather than holistic healers. To a great degree this also applies to the medical field as well. We are all conditioned to be the passive and cooperative patient and are told to let the ‘health professionals’ control our health and well being, also known as the illusion. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard family and friends tell me that their doctor doesn’t listen to them. More often than not they don’t listen, at least not beyond the initial description of the primary symptom(s). About two years ago my extended family all agreed we would accompany each other to doctor appointments as each other’s advocate. While it is a huge hassle for all, it is remarkable the difference we have seen in the responsiveness of our doctors and nurses. Our passivity and isolation in the hands of the ‘healing’ professionals is our implied acceptance of their projected illusion. We cannot see outside of the illusion when we fully accept the illusion as the only ‘real’ reality. This is not to say that some people are not gravely mentally or physically ill and would do great harm to themselves and to others if they were not ‘treated’. And of course medical doctors perform a vital service in treating serious disease and injury. This is not what I’m talking about. But how much of today’s treatment, particularly psychological, is simply designed to get the wage slave back onto his or her feet and once again profitably producing on the economic chain gang. I owe, I owe, so off to work I go. Instead of treating the daily cumulative emotional distress so many of us experience as an issue with us personally, maybe we should begin to see that our emotional pain is an obvious and clear warning sign that something is terribly wrong with our world and that it is not ‘we the people’ who should be fixed, but rather that the sociopaths and all their enablers should be run to ground and destroyed while we debt slaves free ourselves. By not discussing the real chains that bind us to the illusion and by not willingly accepting personal responsibility for our own understanding and well being, we perpetuate the basic victim mentality that chains us to our own impotence and unhealthy practices, regardless of whether our bindings are physical or mental. The one constant among nearly all religions (including the Gods of money and consumerism) is the demand that we must willingly accept the proffered illusion if we are to be saved, born again, reach nirvana, live happily ever after, makes lots of money, comfortably retire etc. Instead of 70 plus virgins, I’m promised consumer nirvana if only I reject nearly all healthy physical and mental practices and blindly dive into the shallow end of the consumer pool. Consumer bliss is just another McFat burger away.
While I deeply respect and even admire the tremendous amount of time, effort and dedication that goes into becoming a doctor, psychologist or anyone else in the ‘healing arts’ field for that matter, at some point we must ask ourselves what it is we think they are doing to and for us. I have no doubt that the vast majority of them sincerely believe they are doing ‘good’ and would never intentionally harm their patients. That’s not the question here and it never really was. But that doesn’t mean they do not do harm, just that they do not intend to do harm. In my book, malpractice is far more than negligence, be it gross, intentional, misguided or otherwise. “God forgive them for they know not what they do” sounds like it might apply here. They practice in a field that is a business first and their business is to get the patient back up on the hamster wheel and plugged into the illusion, either physically or mentally. Doesn’t this make them at a minimum conflicted or possibly misguided? Just because everyone else is doing the same thing doesn’t make it right nor does that absolve the practitioner. In so many ways the ‘healing arts’ are just another form of consensus group think run rampant, controlled by Big Pharma, Big Health Insurance and Big Government. The men and women of the health professions are without a doubt subjected to the same propaganda you and I are, including cultural and social indoctrination. And it is the rare individual who can see beyond their social and professional conditioning when it pays them not only to fit in but to excel. That sounds like a serious conflict of interest to me and while I’m sure I will hear screams from the comment section that these professionals put their own self interest last, isn’t that what we all tell ourselves. I would argue that they are even more intensively indoctrinated considering all their years of training. Yet rarely do we view them as a critical part of the control system. Instead we are conditioned to believe they are trained to be impartial and thus impervious to the same influences we recognize affects us. They are showered with drug company information, including ‘incentives’ to prescribe various drugs to fix or repair our mental and physical ills. Or as I like to say in all seriousness, they are given incentives (even if it is simply personal motivation to help) to cast their magician’s spell(s) to keep us within (or to reenter) the illusion. These professionals, and in fact all intensively trained professionals (of which I am one) are the epitome of group think to the nth degree. Only in this case it’s OK because we want to help rather than harm. Show me one professional who willingly admits he or she wishes to harm. We all want to believe our intentions are good and benevolent. And yet harm does and will continue to occur because of our professional actions. Why doesn’t this worry us? Under conditions such as this why do we still willingly surrender our will and our bodies to their dictates without serious questioning? Why don’t we inform ourselves? It might be in our best interest to look just as closely at what they tell us about our mental and physical health as we do regarding our financial health. I suspect that most of us would avoid professional financial advisors who are still completely plugged into the Ponzi and who continue to spout ‘efficient markets’ and ‘endless growth’ nonsense. If so, why are we still playing by the rules when it comes to our mental and physical health? Why don’t we question our doctor or therapist as closely as we might our financial advisor? Might it be that we are still under the influence of the magician’s spell, but our ego won’t let us admit it? The Big Lie is so much deeper than ‘just’ the financial Ponzi. I’ve talked about this in great detail in other articles so I won’t go any further (thank God some are saying). But the reader should consider that their professional doctor and psychologist are just as caught up in the illusion as we are. Their job, whether they are fully conscious of it or not, is to keep you and I peddling away on our hamster wheel and thus fully immersed within the illusion. If you’re reading this article it seems to me you wish to do the opposite. So maybe it is time to reexamine everything including your most basic assumptions. In Chapter Two we will explore our individual and group self deception and how it keeps us trapped within the event horizon. Cognitive Dissonance 07-12-2011
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I love to discuss these subjects, not to feed the fantasy gene, but to exercise the imagination where we create our world long before we pick up a hammer and chisel.
It's fun when the door opens like that.
Though of course there really is no "open" assuming there was even a door. But it's just like that. Only it isn't like that at all.
Excellent agin CD. Thoughtful and incisive. But are you hitting your intended audience? Are you preaching to the converted? If someone is genuinely cognitively challenged, are your words the right blend and level to kick start the reflective process? I guess if they're astute enough to come to ZH they're capable of taking on board your message. I sure was!
I always remind myself that between 70% and 80% of the people who read ZH never leave comments and many are not even registered to leave comments. My personal email shows this to be true.
And the people who do not comment are in many ways very different from those who comment. They are not as converted as those who leave comments. And their interests are quite a bit different than those who seek financial information from ZH. It is those people whom I'm really speaking to. The silent majority.
you ain't just whistling dixie
CD-
Very well written article, wrapped around a seemingly well formed philosophy.
One observation I have: You refer to popular reality (as it exists today) as the Big Lie, comparing it to the wool that been pulled over our eyes via the process of societal indoctrination and professional bias/prejudice (viewpoints I definitely share)...
However, from the tone of your writing, I infer that you harbor a resentment toward the "Wizards" that spin/maintain this illusory reality, or that you somehow feel that they are acting maliciously... On this point I am just not sure. Commonly, the question can only be answered one of two ways:
1) The "Sociopaths" are evil, or
2) "They" are right and "We" are wrong.
Truth is little more than a fabric of common perception. The old addage that the value of the whole is the cumulative sum value of its constituent parts seems apt.
Would Ben Bernanke (who, it seems, is the most stereotypical example of "Them") rather watch the system implode than relinquish his chair of "authority"...? The answer to this question (which we will see in the fullness of time) should provide us the glimpse into the mindset of those who feel the most personally fulfilled by ignoring their individual potential and striving instead to be the most perfectly shaped cog in the machine...
You paraphrased the statement that summarized it so well:
"Forgive them father, they know not what they do..."
Evil requires an inborn need to do harm. Is there malicious intent behind Lloyd Blankfein's actions, or is there merely a cosmicly humongous stupidity? I don't know the answer; nor, do I think, does Lloyd....
I think most of today's "Sociopaths" are simply deluded souls who don't understand how big "reality" really is....
Still a fun exercise to explore common popular psychology from a philosophic viewpoint. Perhaps you will be regarded by history as this century's Socrates.
Ultimately the evil springs from within all of us. I'm not talking about original sin. I'm saying that this evil comes from us, it is tolerated by us, we allow it to exist, we make little to no effort to stamp it out, it is us.
I've actually stated this in several articles along the way. So the anger you hear is the anger I have at us. We can stop this at any time. We choose not to do so for a million reasons and for just a few reasons. This evil is projected from us and part of the deep denial we all practice is the denial of this simple fact.
No no, it's not me, it's them over there.
In the long journey to attempt to seperate me as an individual, I constantly deny the superconsciousness that engulfs us, that is us, no?
Sounds like you should be writing this stuff instead of me. :>)
not a chance, CogDis. You do nice job always.
I was following your advice to express in first tense that I do not usuallly do... :-p
.
i love the contrast between CD and banzai. CD taking the 'system' of 'slavery' uber seriously and Banzai making fun of it.
yes we are all slaves of one kind or another. but to focus exclusively on the province of control is also a trap. even the master is beholden to the labor of his slave. and can be trapped into a losing pattern of trying to obtain ever increasing control.........
and yes, at the end, we are all slaves to biology and time. we all die and from the death the renewal.
i'm not knocking CD's post. i think CD is emphasizing that you need to have strength to change the things you can and to accep t the things you cannot. but his particular slant is that there is a GRAY area as your belief as what is POSSIBLE to change. and that defining what is changeable or not is what makes it so . thought is supposed to provide certainty and certain action. but as so often ...thought can get lost in circles and uncertainty and doubt.
hamlet syndrome perhaps.
Banzai7 and I have done a few posts together. I write and he illustrates. Did you see them? Here's one.
Here is another.
Maybe it's time for another. When we work together there is this incredible synergy and we fire off of each other's energy.
yea i've seen them and thanked you guys i think.
here is a latin phrase (latin is cool remember) to descibe social circumstances, i think you would both like
accipiunt leges, populus quibus legibus ex lex
it translates to
They consent to laws which place people beyond the pale of the law
This was fucking awesome... I'm at a complete loss for words, as I think that many of us have at one time or another experienced all of your scenarios. Thank you for writing this, and thank you #ZeroHedge I thought I was alone for a long while, but this type of platform truly represents what Liberty is... I am reminded of "Common Sense", and the underground community that evolved around that little leaflet. Think about how someone whom hated the crown of England must have felt, alone, fearing execution, when he first read the leaflet. His eyes and his soul must have been completely released from the burden of servitude. Every time I take a position to try and defend my hard earned wealth thanks to the information I read on this website I feel as though I am not in this alone... I feel like someone was watching out for me and warning me of the rigged game just in time. And the best part is that I have slowly begun to turn others around my circle of influence to our side. They are waking up and realizing that the game is rigged, and we are the bold, sometimes reckless bunch that was sticking up for them the whole time... And we're all mad as hell!
CD, whenever I am feeling that I have lost direction, I always look to ZH, where I always seem to find an article like this or your most recent virtual dialog series. These truly keep me sane and help me to explain to others how it all doesn't need to be like this. We are in control, we just need to wake up. Thank you.
What a wonderful compliment.
I said something similar to a friend with whom I talk regularly. When all around you there is insanity, those pockets of sanity are like life jackets or a cool well watered oasis.
+1
The fundamental problem is the natural human tendency to confuse psychological power with epistemological power. The power of suggestion has the great power to influence belief by psychologically manipulating the psyche into thinking that a good reason for a belief has magically appeared without needing to be presented with that reason.
While it is claimed that when we watch a movie, one willingly suspends disbelief in the veracity of what one is watching, I don't think that is entirely accurate. It seems like the suspension of disbelief is automatic, at least with a good movie. The only choice we are making is to put the DVD in the player or walk into the theater. Once the show starts we would have to willingly remind ourselves that what is going on before our eyes is not happening in our living room or on the theater stage. Fortunately, for those of us somewhat in the know, in the ongoing real world of finance and economics, inconsistencies appear similar to an anachronism in movie, or out of place things in a dream, continually waking us up to a more accurate ontology or at least allow us a nice lucid dream.
I would love to tackle this subject and will some day. But if we are all insane, then all our thought processes are insane? So what exactly is normal or natural in light of the fact that we might be able to regain our sanity?
I've found that ZH has allowed me to think in critical ways about something I've never given any thought to: Money.
As an artist, writer and all-around mad scientist my intersection with money was always pretty thin. Do I have enought to pay rent, buy some parts for my latest contraption, and maybe later get something to eat? Since coming here I've started thinking about all the ways that money and wealth and the flow thereof have taken humans down a garden path of delights and destructions.
Happily, my emerging understanding about money in all its manifestations has provided my seething imagination with even more material to think about. Is money a new form of life? If so, is it a parasite or a predator? Or maybe money and greed are manifestations of an ancient and malevolent spirit, returned to the stage of human drama to work out some smoldering hatred. Or maybe greed for wealth is just our own inner demon, something unique to mankind born of the intersection of our intelligence, our invention of abstraction, and our fear of the darkness.
Seething, indeed.
Mad science too is a form of human insanity. It is a great greed for knowledge and is as dangerous to the continuity of human life on this planet as greed for wealth. I assume that some of the practitioners of "mad wealth" can be as eerily artistic as the practitioners of mad science. Still I will embrace the latter, for they are my people. And as my fictional character Fortran says to herself as she is shooting down a laser-guided missle with a 50-caliber rifle before it blows up her and her party guests; these are my people, I am their shield, their enemies are my enemies, and though all of Hell may rise up in riot I shall fear no evil.
It's always a long shot. Keep the faith ZH.
Oh and if you are wondering if she manages it, she does, though the resulting blast front proceeds to ruin the party anyway. But that's another story for a different day.
You are right. Money is alive. Well, maybe not the money alone, which is more like a neurotransmitter in a giant emergent mind composed of sociopaths and their synchophants and the institutions they have created. But the whole system is most definitely sentient, parasitic, ancient, and thoroughly evil. This mind has grown into a matrix which has infested our culture and brainwashed 99% of the population into thinking that our laws and institutions exist to protect us from sociopaths (or from ourselves). Most people, even most sociopaths, are blissfully unaware of the fact that all sociopaths at all levels serve the interests of their sociopathic overmind. Nobody sees that this monster causes far more damage than the assorted evil brown people.
For more, look at the first major indentation on this thread:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-road-madness-paved-100-bills
Deep stuff Cougar...
Money is interesting, if for no other reason then the fact that it is completely UNNECESSARY for a thriving, healthy economy. Barter works just fine, even if it is a trifle inefficient.
Money is simply a time-independent proxy for the stored value of real work.
Plato gave us the 5 principle qualities of money, but I've always wondered:
"If you have a goat and you need two chickens, and I have two chickens and could use a goat, then do the chickens or the goat constitute the money in the exchange?"
To the best of my own rationale, the answer comes down to personal need:
If you need those chickens MORE than I need that goat, then at that exact moment in time, the chickens must have the stronger currency.
If you understand what money is to you, then you are better equipped to focus your capital (energy) toward the avenues that will bring you the particular money you need at any given time.
Proxies are there for convenience. Your example illustrates this.
Most proxies represent an agreement of some kind. Money falls into that bucket. But what are we agreeing to? Usually it is a kind of trust, a contract that we will all use the proxy in the same way and in the way it was intended. Of course the Fed and the TBTF banks have violated that contract entirely, so the value of the money proxy is void. It no longer serves its intended purpose once it is void. But it is already so deeply embedded in our thinking about the physical world that money has become a physical thing like water and air, so vital (not really) that we (most of us) cannot imagine existence any where in the universe without it.
No longer merely a proxy, as an abstraction money is now immortal. And it's entire world is the collective human mind.
Couger said:
"Of course the Fed and the TBTF banks have violated that contract entirely, so the value of the money proxy is void."
I don't think so. I think when money issued by decree finally violates the value-proxy contract, then society simply seeks alternate forms of money that re-instate a legitimate value driven proxy.
To use the modern allegory- Many here on ZH still blast Gold because it does not pay a yield. Fair enough, but neither do Treasuries in a practical sense... and Gold has the possibility of price driven equity upside- How negative could Treasury yields really go?
So, the logical question must be- Which one makes a better stuffer for your pirate treasure chest? Gold, or US Treasuries?
Another practical question- if you discovered a Gold mine in your backyard, would you not consider yourself suddenly rich?
As for money.... asking what money is, is a bit vague. Are we talking about fiat? Are we talking about a neutral medium of exchange, basically just representing wealth.... or rather potential power? Are we talking about wealth/ownership as a representation of "control"?
As for humans..... even though i've been busy with analyzing this stuff for many years now, i do not claim to know the full picture. I do however know of one puzzle-piece, that i haven't seen mentioned anywhere - neither on the net, nor in literature:
When it comes to how much humans can "make stuff happen", they depend on ressources. They transform ressources into what they want to achieve. By doing so, some ressources are usually lost (the "cost")... or dimished or transformed into something else - it doesn't matter so much if it regenerates... even then, it takes some time, so over a given timespan, ressources are reduced to achieve what one wants.
Okay, so far, so good.... next, imagine an environment - some other planet - where ressources are just enough to survive, and regenerate at approximatelly the speed necessary to survive. In such an environment, people would be restricted from using ressources in a wasteful manner. Like for example, war and other forms of aggressive expansion. The point that i'm trying to make, is that when ressources are very limited, expansionist and parasitary behaviour does not pay off - it's like shooting oneself in the foot. Even if it would in the shortterm pay off, those acting more efficiently would be able to fend off the invasors, isolate them, and let them starve themselves to death with their behavior.
Okay, now imagine another environment. An environment where ressources are still quite limited in the longterm, but where in the short and midterm (thousands of years), there is a giant surplus. In such an environment, "greedy" and "expansionist" cultures could quickly mobilize much more power, than someone who uses ressources in a way that is longterm sustainable and fair. Even if such a spree of conquest would not be longterm sustainable, it would be sustainable for thousands of years - more than enough time, to totally marginalize more fair, balanced and mutualistic cultures, to the point of extinction. Either you become like them to gain equal force, or you get destroyed/assimilated.
Question: Does the 2nd described environment apply to this planet?
Where it gets weird is that humans can do things entirely in their heads, the only resource being the mind itself.
They can then sell or exchange those mental constructs nearly as easily as material constructs. Religions are thus born, as are entire industries in writing, the arts, finances and the like.
The intersection of this process with money is the root of a vast and intractable problem, and is the one CD perhaps alludes to here. Which is that creations of the mind may be false or void, and it's very hard to tell once you have already incorporated that mind-scape into your own thinking, because the inclusion of the thought into your thinking validates the thought after the fact, not before. The error detection system is reprogrammed by the error itself, and it then hides forever in a blind spot it created for its own uses.
Typical parasite, btw.
Mind-scapes can then drive other activities in the physical world. This is where my thesis that money is a parasite enters. Your ideas about money may not even be yours. You might not have any idea where they came from, in the end. And your thoughts about money might be money using you to think about itself and forcing you to buy that 60" LCD television on credit.
Welcome to my world. I said it was crazy.
My solution to your later problem: It does not matter where the idea came from... unless we bring trust into play (which is another subtopic that would make this post too long), the only aspects that matter are:
1. Is it structurally consistent? (what in german is called "logically right/false")
2. Does it match what it relates to? (what in german is called "logically true/untrue")
3. Does it benefit my intentions and how efficiently? (usefulness)
All three are things which one can check oneself, without knowing the source.... possible limitations:
#1 Can be counteracted by deception.... typically either by oneself being unexperienced, or making the idea so complicated that no one can introspect it anymore - at which point, one should probably discard it because of inefficiency alone already.
#2 Can be counteracted by lack of information or false information.
#3 Can be counteracted by lack of selfunderstanding and introspection. (EDIT: Popular "personalities" play a very big role here, because they can "replace" honest personal intentions. This includes ideologies, including those popular on this site. The reason why such preprocessd "personalities" are problematic, is that they A) Act as an unquestioned replacement for individual conviction, and B) Replace per-case decision, with maximes that do not care about the situation at hand.)
Yet, for all those things, knowing the source would change nothing (except of as earlier mentioned trust).
As for "trading" with ideas.... i'll here piss off an entire sector of laws and trade-rules, by saying: Ideas and knowhow, are services, where one pays for distribution or original content. It cannot with any halfway sane way be "property", unless one tells no one, for the simple reason, that all ownership has to be backed by *control*.... if you cannot control something, you can claim as much as you want, it changes nothing about the facts. Any aspect of property and ownership has to be rooted in control, else it's just wishful thinking and totally seperated from reality on the ground. I'm aware that such a drastic switch in trade-doctrine cannot happen overnight, because the entire economic infrastructure is based on it.... especially the "sell-the-worthless-copy-to-refinance-the-expensive-original"-idea... i'm aware that trading-mechanics depend on a moral and infrastructural base, and that just saying "abolish all IP" is insane..... but i DO think, that time is quickly running out to even BEGIN a transition.
Good stuff CD.
Nice one, CD. Might I suggest an M.C. Escher picture? Reading your writings is like popping out of one, and I thought it would be appropriate.
Hans Werner Sahm
Looking forward to part two, to see if you actually have the balls to not just question the society "we" distance ourselves from, but also things that apply to almost everyone, including "we" :)
Go back and read my articles over the last 2 years. I speak in the first tense so often that people were/are convinced that I am an egomaniac. I always include myself in these discussions.
I think you're interpreting too much into what i wrote. What i meant wasn't that you're excluding yourself from the question.... what i meant simply was not just calling for "us" to question ourselves, but actually doing precisely this in the article. I do not think, that you necessarily do not want to do that... i was simply provoking you to "dig deeper" :)
I now see what you were saying.
I am regularly hammered for writing loooooooooooog. How deep do you want me to go? Because the deeper we go, the more nuances that need to be covered.
Good question. I guess, the bogstandard answer to this is: Don't bother so much "solving" and completely explaining an issue that affects most, but instead just straight-forwards explain unanswered issues.... up to the detail neccessary to avoid misunderstandings, but no more.... and leave the "problem solving" up to the audience.
Or to phrase it another way: Be an unambigious muse, without providing the solution. Explain problems and contradictions, and leave the "solution" and "problem solving" to the audience.
Thanks for the feedback, but I agree with Rocky above. There is no making everyone happy.
I write for myself to myself. All my articles are my effort to work out things in my head. I rarely know where I am going when I start, though I do go back and fill in or expand when, after reading it, I find I did not make myself clear to me. Let me make that clear. To me. I am not writing for ZH nor the readers of ZH. I have tried to do that before and it always feels like it is missing something. Because it is. It is missing me.
When I am done and I feel that some healing has been accomplished I then share it with others with very little editing. It is what it is. You are seeing the inside of CD here, the process. The making of the sausage.
Yeah, and then he'd be pissing off the other half of the readers. No solutions, wrong solutions, failure to state the problems -- ain't no winning this writing game.
Cognitive dissonance is real.
Tax cuts pay for themselves.
That is a careful understatement...
The problem with social sciences infected with scientificism is that it takes the model (used to define the field) as a dogma, if not as the reality itself.
It was carefully thought out. I didn't wish to insult the profession.
But I did want to discuss things that are not usually discussed in polite company. Or at least start.
16 years ago was when I discovered I was a Renaissance woman. I discovered I like to do my own thinking about everything, not just believe the experts. It's a pretty frustrating way to be though, as I am still required to ask the doctors for the medicine I think I need, and tell them no about other things. I hate the confrontation required by being your own thinker in this society.
"Do you obsessively read financial blogs and web sites, but never find the answers you’re looking for?”
I just loved this line.
The only thing worse than an independent man (in the eyes of many authority figures) is an independent women.
Keep on fighting back DM.
I saw an article the other day about TPTB implementing "another internet", completely voluntary....highly secure.......for our own good of course. The internet as we know it will not even exist 20 years form now; it will be the equivalent of route 66, and all of these tweeny-somethings that go around plugged in all day won't even know it went missing. Great article BTW, plenty to think about. I can relate to 99% of the content and only wish I had more knowledge than I do, in strength and measure enough to illuminate the darker regions of the human condition in my realm of influence; alas I'm but a humble ex-carpenter (boy that housing bubble was a bitch, bitchez lol) who had the great fortune of stumbling down the rabbit hole, for whatever purposes may unfold. p>
Route 66. A fine analogy. I well remember the TV show back in the 60s. Even had a 1964 Chevy Impala SS as advertised on the show. It was my first car.
I can see CD cruising the old asphalt in his Corvette.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_ykDw-06H8
Beep beep!
66 Vette
Some quotes on insanity:
"Reality is always controlled by the people who are most insane." - Scott Adams Dilbert (c) 2002 United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
Dilbert to Dogbert: "My invention will turn people into mindless sheep."
Dogbert to Dilbert: "I'm curious how you'll know it works. I assume it's mostly a cosmetic change." - Scott Adams, Dilbert (c) 2002 United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
"Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage." - Ray Bradbury
"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane." - Hermann Hesse (1877 - 1962)
"Insanity -- a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world." - R. D. Lang
.... and the best of all (drum roll)
"What luck for rulers that men do not think." - Adolf Hitler
It helps sometimes to know that I am most certainly not the first to dwell upon man's insanity. And the ego loves that I keep good company. Well, except the last one. :>)
I love that you put Dilbert first. Clearly you have your priorities set right.
I'd say that in the past,it was like connect the dot's with no number's-tend's to be a bit frustrating coming up with something recognizable. Thank's for numbering the dot's!