This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Question Everything, Believe Nothing - Chapter Two - Group Think and the Hive Mind
Question Everything, Believe Nothing
Chapter Two
Group Think and the Hive Mind
By
Cognitive Dissonance
To subscribe to 'Dispatches', a periodic newsletter from Cognitive Dissonance and TwoIceFloes Creations, please click here.
Chapter One may be found here.
There is a pretty common ‘belief’ among many that to ask questions of some ‘things’ that others consider settled or ‘true’ is a sign of weakness, of someone who is weak minded, indecisive or one who just can’t be trusted when the nitty gets gritty. They ‘believe’ that the very act of questioning something that is obviously correct implies instability, doubt, hesitation, uncertainty, etc. They ‘believe’ that these people, the shameful Doubting Thomas’s, cannot be trusted and must be viewed with suspicion and distrust. You are either with the herd or you are against the herd.
Group think is most prevalent in the conditioned mind, a phenomenon that is completely invisible to the group members who truly believe they are thinking independently. The irony of group think is that each member is afforded just enough wiggle room with which to modify or mold the groups common ‘beliefs’ so that each member can call it their own original thinking. Does this sound familiar? No two members of the same political party are of exactly the same mind, yet they all pull the same political lever as one with the herd.

The hive mind is most certainly capable of great feats of strength and perseverance precisely because it is narrowly focused and of ‘one mind’. A common argument in favor of the hive mind is the great feats of human engineering that are part of our daily life. I do not argue that the results can be quite spectacular. In fact I am somewhat of an engineering geek and marvel at today’s ships, planes, bridges, buildings, technology and so on.
But I do not accept the premise that these co-created ‘things’ would only be possible under the direction and control of the coordinated hive mind. From my point of view it is a marvel that they actually exist considering all the truly cruel and destructive effects of the hive mind. War and genocide come to mind as something that can only be accomplished by way of group think and the hive mind.
This state of mind is the antithesis of awareness and perspective, of true compassion and empathy, the act of actually transferring yourself emotionally and spiritually into someone else’s shoes rather than simply believing yourself to be in their shoes. Believed empathy is telling someone you feel their pain dawg. True empathy is doubling over in pain and nausea as wave after wave of the shared agony crashes over you.
Those who claim they have a flexible mind often have the least and those who worry they don’t have enough flexibility usually have the most. The same applies to those who ‘believe’ they have questioned their beliefs enough and found them sound, and those who continuously question what they believe precisely because there appears to be no doubt. There is nothing more certain than the certainty that our perception of reality has been seriously distorted and we do not, and cannot, perceive clearly now.

Personally I have no substantial problems with questioning certain fundamental ‘truths’ that I have believed in the past were unassailable, yet still carry them with me to use until I have something better to replace them with………or I just decide to discard them altogether. Rather than flee in terror from this Cognitive Dissonance because it might undermine the very basis of my existence, I welcome the opportunity to cast off the binds that tie my mind to the hive.
For the hive mind though, this is a true paradox that sends the mind reeling and the stomach spinning. Having never begun an inward journey to locate the true source of their power, or if so, then quickly abandoning it as obviously too dangerous to the ‘self’ to continue, ‘certainty’ is the only force that group think has to propel itself forward. Remove that and the mind freezes, the body falters and the resolve quickly melts away.
For the conditioned mind there is no other fuel source to tap other than those resources supplied externally by group think and the hive mentality. This is why any approach to life other than slightly modified group think is seen as dangerous to the hive’s existence and must be repelled at first sight and expelled if found to already exist. Independent thought, let alone action is as dangerous to group think and the hive mind as Gold or any other ‘real’ substantial foundational basis is to ‘faith and belief’ central bank fiat.
To question everything and believe nothing is not an all or nothing proposition, a dead ended process of a lost soul endlessly chasing its own mind. To the contrary it is a fearless moral, spiritual and emotional self examination, an inner exploration that yields as much, if not more, from the process of journeying than from actually arriving at any particular destination. In fact if one allows their ‘self’ to believe they have actually arrived at enlightenment, most likely they are standing face to face with their carefully concealed ego.
Here’s the rub though. How does one even achieve enough sanity to begin questioning everything while simultaneously surrounded by, and interacting with, an insane world? Worse, how can we trust anything we might discover when we have finally accepted that deliberate deception runs ten layers deep and we haven’t even penetrated level one?
The question is similar to walking into a clothing store and not knowing your size or even what you like. What do you do? The answer is simple; proceed slowly and try on many different garments for size, shape and feel. Most of all trust your intuition and gut. Equally important, before starting, be settled in the knowledge that you will make many mistakes and that this is entirely expected. Navigating a maze while blindfolded is not an easy task and managing your own expectations and disappointments is paramount to moving forward.
As well, we must recognize that because we were conditioned from an early age, a time when our vulnerability was the greatest because we had no real ability to differentiate between programming, propaganda and believed ‘truth’ (nor did most of our familial programmers), we enter this examination process with our cup full of beliefs and our mind convinced in ways we haven’t even begun to explore that there are unassailable truths. These ‘unassailable truths’ are thus the most difficult to question, let alone shake, and shouldn’t be the first to be challenged.
While our ego might insist we charge directly into the valley of death, understand that the ego, the supreme expert in the manipulation of our ‘self’, is sending us into a psychological trap, a sort of reverse psychology deception by luring us in with false bravado and confidence, only to put us at cliffs edge staring down into the black abyss.

Having little to no experience in these matters, many (including myself on several occasions) are quickly overcome by vertigo and scurry back to the safety of terra firma and our familiar self deceptions. Knowing what we have just done, our ego, the master puppeteer, then skillfully encourages us to bargain with what we have just seen to assuage our shame and remorse and to settle for just another comforting version of the original lie.
Instead of pealing back another layer of the onion, tragically we have successfully added yet one more deposit, this time deeply set in stone by our own frightened hands. If we ever venture back down this path again this self created monolith will mock us in ways we can only imagine. Best to travel carefully as if walking a crumbling sandstone path then to delude ourselves into thinking we are surefooted mountain goats.
How arrogant we are to think we could quickly and easily challenge decades, centuries, of pre-conceived group think notions, ‘beliefs’ really since they can be termed nothing else without a thorough examination, without losing our footing and skinning our knees or (perish the thought) breaking some cognitive bones.
I remember well the cold sweat that formed on the back of my neck when I realized I had been criminally deceived into believing the ‘official’ story of nine eleven. Why then, after such a disorienting blow to the egoic mind, would I not expect whiplash when the dawning realization finally sweeps over me that I actually enabled The Big Lie, that I wasn’t quite the helpless victim I had comfortingly conceptualized?
The cognitive problem is never a difficulty in learning about new people, places and things, but in letting go of the old ‘certainty of belief’. We are attracted to the perceived ‘order of certainty’ because our conditioning compels us to seek it out precisely because that empowers outside forces, external author-ities (those who create or ‘author’ their own right to receive/take our power) to supplant our own inner knowing. By rejecting the certainty of belief we are confronting the complete ‘self’ destruction, a rebuilding from the foundation up and then the reordering of all that we ‘believe’ constitutes ‘me’.
Once the curtain is pulled back just a smidge to expose the wizard and his motley crew, our world begins to fly apart as if ravaged by centrifugal forces greater than the human mind can withstand. It is ‘we’ who find ourselves swimming naked when the tide goes out. Worse, we are the gravitational force that determines when, and if, the tide actually ever recedes. The pain we feel when balanced at the cliff’s edge is entirely of our own making and completely within our control to extinguish. All we need do is to abandon the certainty of belief that is presently stuck in our craw.

Our identity, our ‘self’, our very basis, all that we think ‘we’ are, is called into question when we seriously question everything, then look within for some real honest answers. It all comes back to one of the questions I posed at the beginning of this piece. Who, or more accurately, what are ‘you’ if very little of substance differentiates ‘you’ from ‘us’? This is the stark reality we face when we find ourselves beached naked as a jay bird after being blissfully ignorant nearly our entire life.
Consider just for a moment that we carry around with us, on our backs if you will, a huge pack stuffed to the gills, crammed with all our suppositions, assumptions, beliefs and precious ‘truths’ we hold so dear to ‘us’. That in a nut shell pretty much describes each one of us once we are released from the primary school indoctrination machine, competently instructed in the ways of the beast (these days more like trained as disposable shock troops) and ready to make our mark upon the ‘real’ world.
Now consider how much more that backpack has been stuffed after twenty or thirty years of ‘real’ life experience and imagine what a burden, what an absolute impediment, it must present to real substantial organic growth, the type that nourishes from within, that frees the mind and spirit rather than furthers our enslavement.
Is it really so hard to recognize that ‘belief’ is just another tool we may use, one of dozens we can employ at any time we wish to transport our ‘self’ from one way station to the next as we work our way through life? Instead, when unsettled or directly challenged, we desperately grasp for our beliefs with the ferocity of a drowning swimmer, our backpack clutched to our bosom with a death grip, certain beyond belief that we are identified by our beliefs rather than condemned by them to be chained to a life of spiritual stagnation and decay on every level. Either we sink to the bottom firmly anchored to the herd’s beliefs or we rise to the surface and beyond buoyed by true freedom of thought, mind and conscious spirit.
If I were to hold my hammer, chisel or even my chain saw with the same death grip I hold my beliefs I would soon find myself maimed for life, if not pushing up daises six feet under. Fortunately any and all damage done by the mishandling of my beliefs by my ‘self’ can be undone in mere minutes with a decision born of desperation or determination, it matters not, that I am not my beliefs, that it is my beliefs that control me and not the other way around.
This is why it is advisable to hold the contents of my backpack as I would a butterfly rather than the anvil it so often is. If I view my certainties as fragile and fleeting rather than anchored and immovable, much less effort is required when displacing one for another. Or better yet, to simply discard as no longer need or wanted, as outmoded and useless, what previously I could not imagine living without. Cut the ties, one by one, that binds our mind to the hive. This is the true genesis of substantial original organic life fulfilling growth.
03-06-2014
Cognitive Dissonance
www.TwoIceFloes.com is unlike anything you will find on the web, a truly unique destination. There you will find distinctive Premium Members only articles as well as discussions on wellness and health, homesteading, spirituality & philosophy and most importantly ‘safe’ forums not found anywhere else. Come by for a peek and stay a while.

- advertisements -


Although I can't say where that's from, I've heard it once before, and it is awesome.
Robert Frost
I have miles to go before I sleep awaken. :)
Robin Williams Weapons of self destruction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-JUF3xHdbI
Blindman - Good link, funny stuff. Like how he starts making fun of Tim Geithner.
Blindman - Good link, funny stuff. Like how he starts making fun of Tim Geithner.
" I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms upon awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning."
Aleister Crowley
the question is: what does AC (as he was affectionately known to his close friends and also the acronym for Anti CHrist)...what does AC feel about this now??
He doubts it.
Lol. Surely, you jest. a bit stronger, perhaps? Maybe he sees, too late.
There is nothing to see, except perhaps the reflection of the moon on water.
nice thought fer sure.
"all control is an illusion and what we see now is the actual reality."
we can do nothing about the reality...so me must find a way to restore the illusion. "take me to your leader" is not just some trite phrase. "he's got a funny sounding voice and weird looking clothes...but he is the leader right now."
"and we sit and drink tea...and talk."
There's another factor in play, which is the inner doubt or the inner fear that one's lesser intelligence compared to others around will be discovered. If we speak and act like they do, hopefully, they'll not discover our mental disabilities. Their fearful ego seeks to prevent discovery of it's host's mental disabilities by staying within the herd.
Fear of their thinking creates a world wherein most join the herd. Those that do not are mavericks, or psychopaths, or fools, or brave bold explorers and some are survivors. Not all the lemmings jump off the cliff. Beliefs, suppositions, schooling or specialized training are tools which may or may not be usable or valuable. I observe. Then, I think, wherefrom I act. And, I repeat.
"Not all the lemmings jump off the cliff."
True that. Some are incapable of breeding. And some just aren't strong enough to make the trip - and some are eaten by the predators who look forward to a lemming lunch.
Every time I see someone using the lemming suicide meme with confidence, I recognize that they have an unquestioning hive mind that believes whatever absurdty they've been told. FYI - lemmings do NOT jump off a cliff in a mass suicide due to over population. In the famous original "discovery, they were swimming off toward an island where they party like they mean it - and add copiously to their numbers. ie it's a breeding behavior.
I am an iconoclast.
Here's a link for the lazy, or find your own link...
http://www.lemming.com/reuters.htm
again..."take me to your leader."
He will have Big Hat too...but he will not be wearing it.
And nice rug, modest house.
He will say "all is good, we drink tea and talk" and I will say "ahhh, all is good. we drink tea. What shall we say..."
Nice photo of a chemtrail pointing at that mountain peak! Do any of you believe in "chemtrails"? Or did GOD start making linear clouds, perhaps dating back a few decades now? Did Steven Spielberg touch up that photo the way he's rumored to touch up old movies with chemtrails painted over hitherto blue skies?
After 60 years on this planet, it didn't take much for me to grok "chemtrails", later subsumed as "geoengineering". Connecting dots to appreciate the sheer magnitude and virulence of TPTB and just a few of the nefarious schemes to....Do what?!?! Still working on that rabbit hole (see also www.geoengineeringwatch.org, Dane Wigington's site).
A teacher I had encountered posthumously liked to say "Anythng beLIEved is a LIE." A model of consciousness, which newly ensconced denizens of twoicefloes tackle still as a topic, might serve as a starting point for coherent discussion of beliefs, believing, thoughtings, thinking, all exercises of consciousness.
Thanks, CD!
It is amazing how people, when I point out 'chem-trails' in the sky to someone without using the actual words, simply shrug and walk away. I can understand the younger adults among us not recognizing that something is wrong because the sky has always looked that way. But older folks, in their 50's, 60's or older who certainly know what an actual jet vapor trail looked like all those years ago, just look at me with a helpless/disinterested/WTF look plastered on their faces.
Sometimes I catch a glint of fear in their eyes, other times recognition which is quickly shape shifted to a blank stare. People know......something isn't right. The herd senses something stalking them, but they quickly avert their eyes and return to feeding. They know slaughter time is almost here. Best just to eat hay while the eating is good.
You had me until this. Belief in chemtrails (by far the silliest of the popular conspiracy theories) defies any kind of rational thought. I can't take someone seriously who is striving for clear thought and enlightenment when they profess a belief in nonsense. Groupthink indeed.
I remember back 4 1/2 years ago when I, as well as others, were posting our thoughts here on ZH about the "conspiracy theory" of 9/11. There were ten flamers for each supporter under those comments. Slowly, as people were repeatedly exposed to such deviant thought, the idea didn't seem so crazy anymore and people became more willing to take another look with a more open mind.
Since then there have been many converts to one simple idea. I may not know what happened that day on 9/11, but it most certainly didn't happen the way authorities say it went down.
I propose the same thing regarding what is going on in our skies. I have no real grasp of what is happening to our skies. There are many theories out there and I don't endorse one over another simply because I just don't know.
What I do know is that something is going on and even the US and British governments are beginning to admit in fits and starts that something is going on and they are doing 'something' to the skies.
We shall eventually see where this goes.
Hasn't been happening in my area for as long.
I'm 40 now & watched the transition in just the last 10 years from barely any of those linear clouds - plenty of evaporating contrails & I can easily spot the difference - to bazillions of non-contrail "clouds". The key: they don't evaporate & they do expand like big fat bands of dust, as if someone dropped sand out a plane except it isn't sand.
It sure isn't water vapour.
A key thing to watch for: no contrail 'cloud' can sustain itself where regular clouds can not. A few seconds, a minute at most, but otherwise the prevailing conditions that permit clouds to stay white or to dissipate will have the same effect on a contrail. A contrail will never collapse into a spreading band of dust. It can't, it isn't dust.
Airliner engine tech transitioned from 1950s turbojets to early high-bypass turbofans in late 1970s. So not even the same engine type used any more. And the aircraft are flying much higher than ever before as well, most are 10k ft higher, passing through completely different atmospheric properties. Much more ice trail formation becomes likely in upper level jetstream.
Ice is polygonal crystalline, thus light diffraction passage through it = rainbow-colored fringe, just like any other prism. Plus there's a LOT more flights now, ~6,000 at any given moment in the US NAS. So lots more fringe-colored vapor trails are seen as jets are literally flying nose-to-tail IFR RNP (Required Navigation Performance for separation minimums under GPS autopilot control) separated down packed parallel jet routes. When you fly that high, the jetstream blows the parallel ice trail lines out from source, varying between 50 to 175 knots. Hence the stacked appearance of trails when conditions are ideal for it.
The US NAS has been filled to capacity since about 2005 and desperate measures are being taken to try and increase capacity via reducing separation distances (both lateral and vertical above 29k ft). So it is not a conspiracy Cog, it's just rapidly growing high density jet-route traffic. The military have also been developing decoys etc., for air combat for decades, especially since AWACs became crucial to winning any BVR air battle.
And that's all I have to say on that topic. ;-)
Finally... a point of disagreement. :)
I have been a reader of Aviation Week and Space Technology since I was a young man in high school and a paying subscriber going on 25 years. So I have closely followed the industry since the very early 70's. I fully agree that the number of planes have exploded over those 50 years and the technology has advanced tremendously.
The modern (meaning within the last 15 years or better) aircraft engine is much more fuel efficient with a greatly reduced particle exhaust than back 30-40 years ago. And the newer engines on the B787 and (just being flight tested now) A350 are amazing. The fuel has also been cleaned up over the years though the blend remains basically the same as it was 40 years ago. And here comes Syn fuels just around the corner. And yes, it is now common for traffic to be flying at FL400 and even FL450.
But even the government not openly admits that they are conducting solar radiation management. And this is just what they are admitting to.
Well Cog, we've probably both been around aviation all our lives. I see nothing inexplicable in the sky that lends credence to the chem-trail propositions and I really think I would have noticed. More than that I can not say except to add it grates on me when people talk about it like its 'real'. It's not damn it! :D
I'm with you Element. If it IS a chemical being sprayed, then what is it, and what's the purpose?
In my book, this meets the "extraordinary claims" test, and we all (should) know what that means.
Element, I greatly enjoy your posts.
There are instances where planes are using for solar radiation management and geoengineering. Snowy Hydro in Australia has been quite open about cloud seeding with silver oxide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_radiation_management#Cloud_reflectivi...
And there have been military programs as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Popeye
My concerns are not that the ends are nefarious, but that the consequences might not be fully understood. However, the fact that there is spraying going on is inquestionable.
in my area there's never been, and never will be, such high traffic jet activity. No one's going from A to B over me. Our very small airport can't support those types of planes & the military base can but those are clearly not the destinations as one can see from following the trail in the sky from one end to another. There's nothing in those directions for hundreds of miles that's a legit destination.
And what is a legit destination for making a horizontal & vertical grid? Not a grid that formed over a day of flight, but over an hour or two.
That's a mighty strange set of flight patterns for 'legit' destinations.
I live in Huntington, WV s town of 50k and our skies are constantly covered despite us only having one crappy little airport (actually it's a dream to get into and out of). No reason to have so many flights overhead though the explanation I've been given is pilots use the confluence of the big sandy and ohio as a navigation marker. I dunno.
I do think if I were a corrupt beurocrat I would not want a bunch of well armed woods knowledgable hillbillies within a half days drive from the capital. I would do what I could to depopulate that area.
The sky was so beautiful September twelve, two thousand one.
I remember the day.
Clearly.
This is why it is advisable to hold the contents of my backpack as I would a butterfly rather than the anvil it so often is.
Love your butterfly analogies Cog. ;-)
Instead, if we are to truly begin the process of breaking free from our chains, we must begin to treat all those so-called ‘beliefs’ as if they were tiny, delicate butterflies. One does not ‘hold’ a belief butterfly as much as one is visited by it. We observe it as it flutters from one thought branch to another. If we were to extend our hands to make contact we would exert the lightest touch, that of a gentle breeze that momentarily freshens before moving on. If the butterfly graces us with its presence and alights upon our cupped hands, it remains only as long as both are enriched by the encounter before it moves on, hopefully to be replaced for a moment by another. (CD 7-11-11)
I really do need to go back and read some of my earlier stuff. It wasn't too bad. :-)
http://twoicefloes.com/cogs-works/
http://twoicefloes.com/series-of-cogs-articles-from-zh/
the analogy could be as simple as a good house cleaning. I moved recently and wow, our physical stuff is like the anvil!
could simply say less is more! as we move towrds the notion of "free think" we find our past is (also) held dearly by physical possesions.
did you throw away those college books yet :) sorry recycle...
'...the ‘Offal-CIA-l' story of 9/11/01...'
Everything you ever wanted to know about the 9/11 conspiracy theory in under 5 minutes.
http://www.corbettreport.com/911-a-conspiracy-theory/
But more laughing entertainment is Woody Allen movie for sex.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh4LikiGBrQ
(Bonus, with Chinese subtitle... "eba li ting yu eba wan tu no bau tse xsiu")
nothing is funner than spending the day watching woody allen
-dylan
.. or watching 'the odd couple'!
hugs,
tony
jack
neil
and rahm
It begins when a child is taught to conflate morality and religion. It plays out as politicians usurp the authority attributed by adults to religious leaders. Name an agnostic politician. (I never said any of this as I value my life)
"Question is everything, or shutting up and become victim of authority" - Green Day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CT9sf6GIFc
hey Cog (if that is your Real Name) --
that black and white photo at the top of the post ...
you found my high school yearbook!!
that's me, in the back row!
go team!
hugs,
SG pep squad, booster club, and hall monitor
I had to scroll to the top and look. Thanks for the laugh this am. Did you know that if you grab a sheep by the throat they get docile? Give up. I would bet it wouldnt' work on wild sheep but sheep have been domesticated a long time. Kinda handy to have that in your meat animals, eh?
Too funny. May you forever graze safely my friend.
It never ceases to amaze me the huge variety of avatars here on ZH. :)