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Enlightened Self Interest and Financial Industry Hypocrisy - Chapter One of Three
Enlightened Self Interest and Financial Industry Hypocrisy
Chapter One of Three
Benevolent Self-Deception
An Old Fashioned Rant
By
Cognitive Dissonance
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Too often we divide the world into black and white hats on good and bad people, or left and right ideology that’s right or wrong. Absolute certainties make the process of determining what to believe, to deny or just to ignore so much easier when we don’t actually need to navigate through the cognitive fog to reach critical thinking.
Sadly this duality of extremes is used as a weapon against us at every twist and turn for the benefit of the powerful. And we fall for it hook, line and sinker every single time. I’ve wanted to dig my teeth into the subject of hypocrisy as it applies to the financial ‘industry’ as well as average Joe for several years now, but have held back because the subject is extremely divisive and triggering. Now appears as good a time as any to turn the compost pile.
First let’s get the disclosures out of the way. I was ‘in the business’ for 25 years and I recently closed a small (emphasis on small) financial advisory firm. I ran small money for a living, though that hasn’t always been the case. So while I’ll point fingers and render opinions, and I am extremely critical of society in general and the financial industry in particular, until recently I was swimming in the same cesspool and faced the same ethical dilemmas. That said, while I live in a glass house I’m still going to throw a few stones. Breaking glass is extremely satisfying in a visceral kind of way.
In addition, regardless of how you may interpret what I write below, I am very optimistic that our problems can be solved, and relatively quickly once the individual and national ‘will’ finally develops. We have the power in our hands to change everything and always have. However, as has been the case for hundreds (thousands?) of years, the sole job of the magicians who cast the nation’s economic and cultural spells is to convince us on a daily basis to surrender our power to them in return for empty promises of pain free living and delayed (if ever) consequences.
Viewed from the perspective of technical analysis, it appears we are nearing the peak in the last wave of an eighty year long insanity rally. And while there is no way of knowing exactly when it will end, we do know it will end. A careful review of world history over several thousand years shows that insanity runs in cycles of intensity (but never really goes away) and we are in the final phase of this particular cycle.
When we grow up a bit more and recognize that no leader will guide us out of our own insanity, that it is up to us alone, this leg of our maturation process will be over. I see great potential, but I have low expectations that this potential will be achieved without a great deal of pain. Empires will fall, war will explode and people will die, of this I have little doubt. The death throes of self deceit are extremely destructive as the excesses of the insane asylum are discarded, then replaced just in time to start the next cycle.
With that said, please don’t make the mistake of assuming this article doesn’t apply to all of us just because ‘we’ don’t work in the ‘industry’. What is happening in the financial industry is just a symptom of global wide narcissistic naval gazing, blatant greed and overall rot that has permeated our global society.
There are no innocent bystanders in this debacle, only varying levels of involvement or passivity beginning with the ring leaders and flowing down through several layers of direct and indirect enablers. And as I will flesh out below and in subsequent chapters, I suggest it flows up as well as down in a dysfunctional and symbiotic positive feedback loop.

Ethics and ethical behavior, along with all its sub categories, including Enlightened Self Interest (ESI) and benevolent self deception, is not exclusive to financial professionals. In fact these moral concepts flow up from the individual into society in general and our institutions specifically. Thus if we declare our institutions corrupt we are clearly and unmistakably declaring ourselves corrupt as well. From a big picture point of view, in a representative form of government (and I would argue in any form of government) we (re)elect and/or support exactly the type of leaders we desire (notice I did not say deserve) but to which we will rarely admit any culpability.
For those who might strenuously object to that statement, let me give you an example. During the 2004 Presidential election cycle there was a voter survey conducted (very Orwellian that in the past year that poll has disappeared) asking about corrupt politicians. When asked what percentage of Senate and House congressional critters were corrupt in any way (an admittedly broad definition) the answer was 81%. Meaning 4 out of 5 were considered corrupt by those who elect them to office or who watch from the sidelines. When asked what percentage of the respondent’s own elected representatives were corrupt, the answer dropped to 19%.
Common sense dictates that if 4 out of 5 politicians in general are corrupt, on average the same percentage of our own representatives is corrupt. So why the large discrepancy? Well, if my elected representatives are corrupt it reflects poorly on me. Even if I don’t vote or care much about the issue I don’t want others (more specifically the poll taker) to think I ‘allow’ or ignore corruption after making such a strong statement about the large degree of corruption nationwide.
Thus when answering the survey questions, which are often posed by live individuals either in person or by phone, I must cover my cognitive butt and present myself as pure…..or at least more pure than the next guy who is the real idiot electing all these corrupt politicians.
The simplest way to avoid this cognitive dissonance is to lie to our ‘self’ under the cover of all kinds of slick and plausible excuses, such as bacon delivery, political clout or whatever. It doesn’t matter how I brush it away, just that I do. It’s OK to lie to myself, but I must not let anyone else see that my cognitive slip is showing.
If we wish to be lied to in order to hide from ourselves and any personal accountability or self awareness, that is exactly the style of leadership we will get. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with people from a variety of political and social convictions who will scream in outrage at this or that political transgression.
But when asked about their own faults and hypocrisies they are nearly always unable to look at themselves with an unbiased eye, never mind make any real attempt to provide a semi honest self appraisal. As I like to say, space aliens don’t drop our political and business leaders from the sky. They are all home grown 100% USDA certified Earthlings spawned from mom and dad, at least until proven otherwise.

Every person carries around a bucket full of lies, half truths and self deceptions to which we add to and subtract from all the time. While many will claim this is simply human nature, I suspect it is more a cultural phenomenon than a natural tendency. If one believes we are a product of evolution, while I can see the utility of some social lies to promote harmony and cooperation, self deception is not necessarily conductive to a long life, particularly when resources are scarce.
During the present era of perceived abundance that is rapidly fading in the rear view mirror, our formerly over flowing cup might have something to do with our present day insanity. Self destructive behavior requires heaping helpings of denial front and center, and only the ideologically blinded or mentally ill can take a look around and consider the present sorry state of the human race to be the result of others and not ourselves. One of the hallmarks of insanity is the personal belief that there isn’t anything wrong with me, just everyone else.
Since by definition a culture is all encompassing and totally immersive, one cannot see ourselves for what we really are unless we make an honest and sustained effort to do so. Everything looks pretty much normal (in an insane kind of way) to the non-critical eye……which is often just the way we like it. This is where the lying and self deception comes into play.
One of the most common enabling lies we tell ourselves is that because we are more (mostly) pure of mind and deed (or at least thoroughly rationalized and justified) it is those people over there who are the real problem. So in our mind we make a generous offer and declare that we might clean up our own act, what little there actually needs to be done, once the bastards who are responsible for this mess are hung from the rafters. This is the epitome of blame shifting and magical thinking, and it is the root of the problems we all face.
At one point or another we have all pointed our finger towards (or should I say given the finger to) the ‘bad’ guys at the Federal Reserve and on Wall Street, at the White House, Congress, the Judicial System and the huge multinational Corporations. And while you will get no argument from me that all these players are both compliant puppets and powerful puppeteers, they are all essentially powerless without our direct consent or passive agreement.
As well, while the game is obviously rigged to compel our participation, many of us roll over and concede defeat, taking the softer easier way out while claiming the moral high ground to enable our own victimization. After all ‘victims’ aren’t responsible for anything, including ourselves, because we are all……well victims, right? Don’t blame me dawg, I’m just the poor trapped soul caught in the nasty spider web.
While I am sure there will be angry comments declaring that I am unfairly blaming the victim when it is clearly those lousy bastards over there that are responsible for this mess, short of putting a gun to our heads we always have choices. And to say otherwise is bordering on the infantile. What we are really saying when we claim there is no way out or that we are powerless to stop the insanity, is that all the easy alternatives have been eliminated and the only remaining paths we perceive as available involve high levels of pain, discomfort and distress.
This is an illusion we actively encourage to enable us to remain comfortably passive within the insanity, or which we use to give us the moral green light to participate in the looting under the guise of profit, saying we’re just taking care of ourselves and our own. You know, buy the f**king dip, regardless if whether it’s stocks, bonds, CRE, distressed housing, PM’s, whatever. Or one I heard just today, where the person states that it will never change so why not position ourselves to profit from the mess.
Of course, we nearly always exaggerate potential dangers or project undesirable outcomes when facing paths we don’t wish to pursue. I can always find a reason not to act, while finding reasons to act are far and few between. This isn’t human nature alone, but just as much nurture, meaning our training and conditioning beginning with our parents. Sure there are basic tendencies to procrastinate inherent in each individual, but children of proactive and positive parents tend to be the same and vice versa.

Very early in my career I was told by a wise mentor that successful people do the things unsuccessful people don’t want to do. I was then challenged to demonstrate this with the understanding that words without action accomplishes little other than verbal and mental masturbation. This applies so well to life in general.
Bottom line, if we don’t want to do something we will find every excuse in the book not to do so. Rather than closely examine our part in this slow dance of socioeconomic death, we paper over our own involvement in the very system we claim we want radically changed or even destroyed.
Time to take a closer look at what’s really going on here because this game is exactly what many of us want to play in order to avoid dealing with the very collapse or change we say is desirable. Many of us are junk yard dogs with absolutely no desire to bite except maybe each other out of impotent frustration.
If you give it some thought, to say that we wish to see our corrupt and patently unfair financial system collapse in order to rout the bastards from our house is the functional equivalent of wishing someone would burn down our uninsured home to rid ourselves of a severe cockroach infestation. Or better yet hiring (or electing) someone(s) to do the job for us.
Yes, when all is said and done the roaches might be gone, but there were less destructive ways of removing them. Sometimes we select bad choices to hide from even more frightening ones, a personal and collective insight we carefully conceal from ourselves in order to continue with our benevolent self deception.
Alas, we will find less damaging cockroach extermination methods only if we are willing to explore all avenues, including the emotionally, physically and economically painful. In reality we don’t wish to collapse our economic system. What we desperately desire is for the thieving and insanity to end (or at least to greatly diminish) and for a return to the mythical land of the Norman Rockwell lie of milk and honey.
Can’t say I blame us, though it appears to be time to short unicorns and fairy tales and go long courage and cooperative collusion. Aside from possibly preparing ourselves for the coming collapse, what are we doing to prepare our nation, state and community for this new beginning? Is it a matter of each of us waiting for everyone else to go first? Yeah, that will work wonders when the unrest goes local.
Since we aren’t especially willing to look too closely at all aspects of the insanity for fear it might implicate us nearly as much as the bad guys, we declare we would rather watch the entire stinking mess disintegrate and then wash away with the evening tide.
This allows us to individually and collectively wash our hands of the enormous social disintegration that will result from economic collapse while emotionally and intellectually shielding us from any danger, real or imagined, that we may encounter if we were to work towards other less destructive ‘solutions’, or to help prepare our surrounding community for the storm we are forecasting.

It’s so much more comforting to suffer misery as part of the collective herd than to suffer alone while feeling vulnerable. This is one of the reasons we latch onto the “It’s just impossible to change” or even “It’s not me, it’s those damn idiots over there who aren’t doing anything about this” excuses.
The list of reasons why we should not act is as varied as our imagination. So how convenient it is that if everyone says the same thing, everyone has a wonderful excuse not to do anything yet still remain blameless. This is the collective self deception that is ostensibly benevolent to both the individual and the group, or so we wish to think.
Essentially this is a Bizzaro World Catch 22 that works to our advantage over the short term, but destroys our souls and our neighborhoods quicker than we think. However, in a world of short term thinking this doesn’t look like such a bad deal when my focus is squarely on what’s in it for me, myself and I.
Make no mistake about it though, denial, both individual and collective, is so overwhelmingly powerful that not only will tortured souls self destruct and commit suicide while in its throes, but nations will rush head long into the dual abyss of self destruction via war, civil or otherwise, and economic self immolation.
However, a nation doesn’t self destruct because its land and buildings are consumed in the fires of economic hell. Nope, it is the citizens of a nation that wither away on the vine, eventually taking the physical and economic infrastructure with them into the bottomless abyss of insanity.
The only saving grace is that who can really say what is or is not insane when we are all on the same glide path to hell? That’s our own special theory of insanity relativity. The same insanity that drives nations into competing rounds of destructive currency devaluation also drives us into feeding off each other’s delusions and delirium tremens.
When a sovereign state’s currency and credit system, its blood and circulatory network, depends entirely upon the faith and belief of its captive and captivated population, stability for the most part can be manufactured simply by believing in the system. Understand though that in this case ‘belief’ can mean active or passive participation and/or dependency. This ‘belief’ also includes ignoring potential dangers to the system, especially terminal dangers of the mind numbing variety.
This explains perfectly why as the system gets closer to the edge, people can continue to go nervously about their lives. Truth be told, on some basic level most of the population already knows things are in very bad shape, but we chose to ignore it. The level of governmental and corporate corruption, the rise of the surveillance/police state, chronic unemployment, rising food and medical costs and the escalating taking of rights and freedoms are not unseen by the population at large, just desperately ignored.

What does one do and how does one act when the myth can no longer be sustained and we find out our protectors are actually the predators and our torturers? What would we do if we suddenly discovered our father was a child molester or our brother a mass murderer and we were next on the list if we attempted to expose him?
For most of us the drill would be duck and cover baby, duck and cover, then head even deeper into the mind numbing embrace of denial. Without question most of us would move to the center of the herd and act like there’s nothing wrong in the suburbs. Only we would do so quietly and with baby steps. After all, you don’t want to alert the wolves circling the herd that you are injured and ripe for the taking.
Just as the world is beginning to recognize that the efficient market theory was efficient solely in snowing people into believing logic and reason ruled the market, we should understand that much of our individual decision making process is subconscious and totally illogical. So is it really surprising that ‘We the People’ have made a mostly subconscious decision to carry on as if nothing is wrong and hope for the best? This is the childishly adult equivalent of covering our ears and repeatedly screaming ‘I can’t hear you’.
As long as the government is successful in keeping the wolves at bay, at least for the ever decreasing majority, we will happily ignore the growing desperation in the streets in exchange for some make believe ignorant bliss. Just leave me and mine alone and I will avert my eyes and hurry about my business.
Of course, this can only be accomplished if we discard critical thinking and independent thought and stick to binary input and output. If no one wishes to recognize the full insanity, all it takes to accomplish this in a leveraged fiat system is a collective and unspoken understanding to ignore the ugly truth and move along. What you don’t make ‘real’ by specifically acknowledging it just can’t hurt you, at least for today and hopefully a few more tomorrows.
As nonsensical as this might sound, we make our own emotional and intellectual reality fresh on a daily basis. While doing so, we mold our physical world to fit our belief system as we have conceived it. Do this, don’t do that, deny those, ignore them, focus of this and before you know it our world begins to conform to how we denied it. Multiple our individual effort by two or three hundred million, or two or three billion, then conjure up several hundred trillion of Federal Reserve electronic ones and zeros while casting a collective self propaganda spell of ‘all is well’ and temporary stability is created out of thin air.
The only problem is this huge edifice has no foundational support and can easily be toppled by a small percentage of bolting members of the unsettled herd. Panic is easy to generate among the hard core deniers because deep down we all know it is just a lie. All but the truly clueless stand around with their hands in their pockets, trying to look innocent and unconcerned while memorizing all the exits and escape routes. Only a fool or the hopelessly self deceived will actually drink their own Kool-Aid mix, though I am constantly amazed how many do. Mine is cherry banana by the way.
Sure the fundamentals are slowly deteriorating (again) and the second (third?) plunge appears just around the corner. Real reality will eventually re-assert itself with a vengeance because it’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature. But (sadly) not before several more revolutions of the fiat paper around the toilet bowl have been completed.
After all, to some degree or another we are all engaged in group psychological can kicking, if for no other reason than to keep the inner boogieman at bay. Binary thinking doesn’t allow for long range planning or constructive positioning, just blame shifting and avoidance, something we do with typical American arrogance and excellence.
We all have a tendency to exaggerate the value of our prior investment in our jobs, our family and ourselves. So when considering what to do or not do, often the decision we make is to make no decision at all, to go with the flow and to make no waves. We never really acknowledge that making no decision is actually a decision in and of itself, an affirmation of the status quo and the present day insanity. “Hey, it wasn’t me that made that decision. I’m not responsible.”
The more out-of-control we feel our life and world is becoming, the more we will seek to avoid making any decision we (want to) believe might endanger our life or position in the social order regardless of its present state of advanced decay. Misery is always relative to those who are around us. I can be the happy king of the soup kitchen or just another miserable nobody in the corporate cafeteria.
In addition we will avoid any responsibility for decisions (or non decisions) made by ourselves or anyone else. We learn this behavior early in life, first from our family, then from our social interactions in school and later corporate life. Cover our ass begins and ends in the familiar warmth and comfort of our duplicitous mind.
04/14/2014
Cognitive Dissonance
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So you are going to assert universal truths on the back of a totally subjective piece of anecdotal evidence...
Tell me where the top of a circle is.
Yes, Future Jim!
"The fish rots from the head."
I also agree Radical MJ with you and Jim. Sociopaths creating pain is part of the process of evolutiom.
Remember the saying no pain no gain? The sociopaths spur on the cycle of centralization. Since they take the easiest path of least resitance which is robbery, they continue until stopped. Since they are born to take the path of least resistance, they can't form organic plans of growth even in this age knowing what is coming.
The center cannot hold and decentralization begins. Robbers betray one another, especially at the international level... Most times the best one can do is get out of the way and that is a matter of scale on details of how and ascertaining risks then attempting to manage them with hedges or having less to rob. Sociopaths want power to edify themselves, it is at it's core a self-esteem issue. So what they want on top of easy money is glory.
If you can't get out of the way or the robber does indeed intend to strangle you, all have a natural right and eventual execise it in self-defense.
best part of z.h. is coming back to the comments part and seeing a post like this. i humble myself to more intelligent people like you- r. d. so refreashing when someone sums it up and keeps it brief. i think you explain exactly the evolution and deevolution ie. the ongoing cycle which we have zero impact collectively. but individually, well i am going to do what i do, avoid getting caught breaking one of their stupid rules and live to see another day all whilst trying to be a better person from reading these self help blogs. thanks to all that post, you are making me a better person one thought at a time!
New Game - I humbly appreciate the compliment. I agree about coming back to the post to see the commentary, great stuff here! I appreciate the time all put into the interaction here. We're at the end of our evolution and going back to the garden so to speak. On that note just have to put in the link to that song by Crosby, Stills & Nash:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sH0uR2u7Hs
This last evolutionary hurdle reminds me of a very big castle wall. Think of repelling up that wall and our collective exertion, the sweat and tears knowing it must be scaled and needing multiple attempts, approaches, all while the cycles have shortened leaving the feeling there is less time to do it, an urgency.
That we will make it over the wall is certainty. What needs to be offered needs to be universally accepted, even by some in the status quo to fund it. "Operation Eternity" has a nice ring to it. We all get old and die. So every person on earth has the same problem. The solutions must be framed into simple language all people can understand. That is easier said than done but it happens.
Some of the problems at the root level is demographic imbalance. People fear the unknown especially older folk. Who is picking up the phone to call some of them that have wisdom and funds? Sometimes you have to reach out and touch someone. Cog knows sales, so do I. So do some others of you. You know what I talking about, "dialing for dollars" etc. etc.
Market demand exists for a social media platform that connects the Boomers with the younger folks. I actually do have a business plan for that and ran a successful beta already. You can email me at jrines@ragingdebate.com . But I won't keep posting my email like this, advertising should be paid to ZH site owners.
I only differ with RM or perhaps should say want to add a dimension on one but important point: At the end of cycles and start of new ones, that is the timing to offer something of real value. Sure, it will eventually be co-opted and corrupted to become a tool for robbery or deceit again but that life. The bad cycles force us in pain to relearn and at the end of them that is when the best tools are built to scale the wall. After we enjoy 40 to 80 years of prosperity then apathy sets in and that is when the tigers smell the blood and gets the heard running again.
Speaking of 40 or 80 years want to know what 666 is? Give me a shout. It has to do with dimension of government and monarchy. But don't expect me to enter into a religious debate over Revelations haha! I wrote an article called the Pyramid of Thought. It is a four paragraph articles which gives some insights into how and why mankind builds the systems they do in these forms of 3x3x3 dimensions.
6x6x6 dimension, the 80 year cycle of a monarchy. I just gave a clue up, let's play :) Talk to some of you thinkers soon!
dupe
Enough with the unidirectional causation theory. The universe is more complex than that.
You make a lot of good points but when you assert such simple causational theory you lose credibility. You continue to claim that you know whether the chicken or the egg came first. How do you know such things?
Sounds good.
Then why do we tolerate, even support, a rotting head?
because we believe, are indoctrinated to conclude,
(are instructed and taught)
that it is the only rotting head available to "us"?
and, we are told, surely, we need a common head or
we may become prey to the "other", sinister foreign
demons or terrorists, or the rabble? hmmmm...?
Could this be humanity's Achilles heel? Was not the first group leader of the first human commune the meanest, baddest SOB in the group not the one who was altruistic and cared? People feared and yet admired that form of invincibility. We are no different today.
Indeed, Nobody, in fact, "bullies are popular." In a real world which ALREADY has globalized electronic fiat frauds, backed by atomic bombs, it is IMPERATIVE for human survival for us to go through sufficient intellectual scientific revolutions to understand why the bullies were popular, and their bullshit able to dominate civilization.
I suggest that militarism is the supreme ideology, because it deserves to be. We ought to understand "death controls" in ways which are utterly backwards to the ways that we now understand them. It is impossible to exaggerate the degree of cognitive dissonance that actually dominates our society. The death controls are the crucial, and most important, controls. Money is measurement, backed by murder, because all private property is based on backing up claims with coercions, and therefore, access to resources is regulated by the biggest bullies, who have developed their bullshit to rationalize and justify that.
Within that context, the controlled opposition has been tolerated by the biggest bullies, to promote completely backwards ways of perceiving their society. Right now, we are trapped with the runaway vicious spirals of the death controls being done through the maximum deceits, which are backing up debt controls done through the maximum possible frauds. Meanwhile, the controlled opposition continues to promote "solutions" which are backwards. Since those "solutions" are impossible, they always backfire. The real result is the same runaway social polarization and destruction of the natural world, due to the triumphant cognitive dissonance, or evil deliberate ignorance, which manifests through a world mostly controlled by lies backed by violence.
That is why I say we need an intellectual scientific revolution, in order to understand the reality of lies and violence through paradigm shifts that perceives everything backwards to the ways that we perceive it now. There were good reasons why weapons were the biggest business, and things like atomic bombs were developed. However, along the way, we got seriously lost in the tunnels of almost infinite deceits, which were developed as labyrinths surrounding our situation. In that context, the scientific truths that made atomic bombs possible have practically no role within the various old-fashioned religions and ideologies that still dominate our political processes.
We should think of entropy backwards to the way that we think about that concept now. (The history of science reversed the meaning of entropy, without recognizing what it meant to do that when it happened, by inserting an arbitrary minus sign into the entropy equations of thermodynamics, and then information theory.) Understanding that we understood entropy backwards would enable us to understand the ideas of evil and death better, which would enable us to operate evil death controls better. There can be nothing less than that which could cope with the existence of weapons of mass destruction. However, right now, the biggest bullies are manifesting runaway criminally insanities, while the degree to which they were popular is therefore being undermined and eroded.
Articles like this series of examinations of Cognitive Dissonance are ways that some people are somewhat waking up to the degree to which there is outrageously egregious hypocrisy. However, that is merely scratching the surface of the magnitude of this problem. There continues to be no possible better real solutions, as long as the "solutions" proposed continue to be based on impossible ideals, which force the reality to still be hypocritical. To go beyond those impossible ideals requires going beyond thinking using false fundamental dichotomies, towards using more scientific unitary mechanisms to understand real political problems, in order to base real solutions upon those more scientific perceptions of human society.
The troubling sensation you feel when thinking about the extent of the the lies, deceipt, corruption, enslavement, willful evil done for the very sake of being evil - that's the effect of magnitude. The web of lies goes so deep that it is impossible for the human mind to try to grasp it all - thus the conflict one feels when thinking about it.
I kid you not when I say, if everyone understood thoroughly the characteristics and differences of analog/continuous and digital/discrete systems (in theory, practice not even mattering), this species would be on a totally different level.
You don't comprehend infinity - you simply tap into it, consciously or subconsciously, at all times.
O.K., CD, since you asked:
THE "Bizzaro World Catch 22" is that there was no practical way to stop those who are the best at being dishonest and backing that up from violence from controlling society. Since they became more wealthy and powerful from their organized systems of lies and robberies, they were able to promote themselves as the "good guys," and brainwash almost everyone else to believe bullshit, through the use of carrots and sticks, by rewarding those who agreed with their bullshit, while punishing those who did not agree, for generation after generation!
By that process, America gradually transformed from a country which was supposed to have its money supply backed by gold and silver, whose value was set by Congress, to having a public "money" supply created by private banks out of nothing as debts. Meanwhile, everyone who wanted to survive and be successful within that system had to accept that situation, despite it being the result of the triumph of the application of the methods of organized crime taking control over the government.
Almost the entire world's political economy is now based on the legalized counterfeiting of the public "money" supplies by private banks. At no time did the general public ever fully agree to that, because, even now, the majority of the public does not understand those basic social facts, since they have been conditioned to not want to know.
After all, waking up to those facts mostly rubs one's face in the "Bizzaro World Catch 22:" governments are the biggest form of organized crime controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals, while the "citizens" are members of an organized crime gang, called their country, regarding which they have been almost totally taught to perceive backwards.
The first paragraph in the article above starts off discussing what I call the problem of FALSE FUNDAMENTAL DICHOTOMIES. In my view, we should develop unitary mechanisms to think about these kinds of political problems, rather than continuing to presume absolute dichotomies, which then support "solutions" based on impossible ideals.
One of the reasons why most citizens appear to be so incompetent is that the biggest gangsters, the banksters, make a habit of controlling the opposition to them. Over and over again, the resistance is channeled into dead end cul-de-sacs. Over and over, the banksters are able to start funding opposition groups in ways that subvert them. Almost all of the "opposition" that I am aware of ends up being reactionaries, that continue to operate within the same frame of reference as the biggest bullies' bullshit does. That "opposition" tends to promote the same old impossible ideals, which continue to backfire badly in the real world. In my view, to cope with the "hypocrisy" we should understand that false fundamental dichotomies, and related impossible ideals, force us to be hypocritical. That is why I promote the notions that the ways to overcome our collective runaway cognitive dissonance is to go through intellectual scientific revolutions, which are profound enough to develop unitary mechanisms to understand politics.
The only way to make a "democratic republic" work is IF enough of the citizens understand that they are actually members of an organized crime gang.
".....and brainwash almost everyone else to believe bullshit,....."
I need to stop right there. So we are 'brainwashed' against our will? I certainly understand that conditioning from birth is a powerful force to counter........but at what point does an individual have the responsibility to apply critical thinking to their surroundings?
If the answer to that question is 'never' because they have been 'brainwashed' then we are all simply domesticated animals doing stupid pet tricks for our masters and there is, and never will be, freedom.
When "We the People" concede that we have been brainwashed and that we have nothing do to with our own brainwashing, nor can we counter it, then we are conceding that we are incapable of self rule and personal sovereignty.
I do not agree with that supposition.
Ifthe answer was never, there would have been no founding fathers.
We all really do need to begin to examine more carefully the entire "founding father" myth.
Considering how much history has been distorted and rewritten, why would we possibly think the 'founding father' story is correct and true?
with all humbleness I can muster: why can't you be your own founding fathers?
without going into examples from europe, where constitutional changes, treaties and revolutionary changes are more common, please consider this: every time a US constitutional amendment was passed, the people involved were engaged in "founding fatherhood"
even when it was about banning alcohol. and then reallowing it back, later
note how any changes to the US constitution have become a thing of history. note how America is only engaged in interpretation of constitutional matters, instead of rewriting them
and note how the US electoral system, built for the needs of far-flung territories with little and slow communication, is literally archaic if compared to the hundred-odd other republics with democratic principles on this globe
the last amendment to the US constitution is dated 1971. just saying
The founding father myth has the same resonance for me as Moses. Those who need to believe it and can no longer deal with reason will believe it. I have to admit that reality is not for wimps and few confront it.
The founding father myth has the same resonance for me as Moses. Those who need to believe it and can no longer deal with reason will believe it. I have to admit that reality is not for wimps and few confront it.
Yes, of course, Cognitive Dissonance, what I am saying is that the majority of people were always in a kind of arms race with the ruling classes. There was always class warfare, while one of the biggest problems with that was that only the ruling classes were consciously engaged in that class war, while the majority of the rest of the lower classes were divided and conquered. The very idea of there being a "middle class" was a divide and conquer strategy, which enabled the mainstream morons to have a false class consciousness, which, therefore, made them think wrongly about who their worst enemies were. The current annihilation of the middle class is demonstrating what the real social situation always was.
The most common strategy that the ruling classes have successfully employed is "false flag attacks." The events on 9/11/2001 were the most spectacular symbols of that strategy. However, the simplest symbol was transforming hemp from being the single best plant for people, for food, fiber, fun and medicine, into becoming "marijuana, which is almost as bad as murder."
Obviously, I am personally committed to engage in the mental arms race, which seeks more radical truths as weapons against the dominating huge lies. However, I concede that I do tend to assert the facts that the overwhelming vast majority of "We the People" ARE Zombie Sheeple, at the present time. While, of course, I do not agree that is a good state of affairs, it nevertheless seems to be the objective social fact at this time.
I repeat that I believe that the necessary sorts of intellectual revolutions we need radically change your concept of "personal sovereignty." I continue to insist that "sovereignty" is based on the power to rob, and that everyone has some power to rob. Power is always distributed. However, it can be assembled and channeled. What has happened is that the collective power to rob of "We the People" has been aggregated into the state, and then that power to rob has effectively been privatized by the biggest banks. The foundation of "personal sovereignty" is the power of individuals to operate their own systems of organized lies and robberies. That is why I say that the better solutions are for more citizens to understand that they are actually members of a country which IS an organized crime gang. That approach is the only one in which their attempt at an arms race against the psychopathic ruling classes has a hope of better resolution.
"I continue to insist that "sovereignty" is based on the power to rob, and that everyone has some power to rob."
I agree that your statement above has been the standard that defines sovereignty. And it quite likely will remain the standard for some time.
My series has been about redefining personal sovereignty. I do not expect many to embrace the redefinition while still enthralled by the concept of 'taking back power' (i.e. personal sovereignty) when in fact it is a matter of giving it away rather than taking it back. When we finally recognize that we oftentimes willingly surrender our power to those who now ride roughshod over the human race, those whom we presently empower will be dethroned and dis-empowered.
In my view, any kind of free-floating psychological theory of "personal sovereignty" could never make enough scientific sense. As far as I can tell, those kinds of "redefining" the concept of "personal sovereignty" continue to be primarily psychological, in ways which deliberately do not examine the schedules of reinforcement in the evolutionary ecologies which selected for those frequencies of psychological habits. While I recognize that everyone actually operates themselves through their own kinds of symbols, as a kind of transcendental poetry, which operates by connecting their minds with their bodies, even though they do not know how that works, I see insufficient benefit in continuing to indulge in such an approach.
There is no freedom without a force, and there is no right without a remedy. That approach can theoretically reconnect with the rest of the sciences, because that approach can integrate human energy systems with general energy systems, and therefore, have operational definitions which are relatively useful, as body, mind and spirit become more thoroughly interconnected, in usefully scientific ways, where the same energy blends into its different forms, without there ever being any fundamental dichotomies between those forms.
Way too much of the mainstream economics is able to rely upon such bullshit psychology as "animal spirits" that manifest "irrational exuberance," and other such nonsense phrases, which are conducive to the financial industry's hypocrisy. The most basic principle of science is the conservation of energy (within which the conservation of matter is a special case). From that perspective it is plainly obvious that privatized fiat is fraud, and that the whole financial industry has been built on that fraud, through the British Empire continuously for about three hundred years, and through America, for about one hundred years.
The only reason that private banks making "money" out of nothing as debts works is that fraud is enforced by governments. The primary way that the government enforces that fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting system is the strongest of all the manifestation of legal tender laws, which is that the government forces people to pay taxes using that fiat form of currency. Therefore, that fiat "money" system is primarily based on the government's power to tax, which is the central core to real sovereignty, i.e., the power to rob. The power to defraud was built on top of the power to rob, and both are backed up by the most extreme form of robbery, which is to take someone's life by murdering them. Therefore, in fact, money is measurement backed by murder, because the debt controls depend upon the death controls.
There is no good that comes from developing any other fancy footwork psychological theories about "personal sovereignty," since all those would do is enable the immaculate hypocrites in the financial industry to better dance around the basic realities of what they are actually doing. The financial industry as it exists today makes nothing, but only exists because it was able to apply the methods of organized crime to take control over the governments, in order to legalize lies, which would be backed up with legalized violence. The financial industry, as it exists today, is almost 100% based on being able to legally counterfeit the public "money" supply, and therefore, that financial industry is almost 100% hypocritical.
The currently dominate financial industry is almost totally based on having been able to privatize the collective powers of "We the People," so that private banks are allowed to create Their "money" out of nothing as debts, whereafter everyone else is forced to pay taxes using that form of "money," which changes otherwise trivial pieces of paper, or encoded bits of electricity, into things which can command the physical matter and energy in real goods and services.
I will wait to see what the second and third parts of this series of articles have to say. However, so far, I agreed most with the first comment that was posted above. In my opinion, it makes no scientific sense to talk about sovereignty except as that is based on the power to rob, because it was the power to rob, in the form of taxation, which is the foundation of the current financial industry, as American history demonstrated in 1913, when the Federal Reserve Board and the Income Tax came as a package deal.
The history of the bribery, intimidation, and assassination, of politicians was the source of the current runaway fascist plutocracy juggernaut, in the form of the financial industry being able to consume the rest of the economic system. That was the crucial real history which enabled the hypocrisy of the financial industry to develop at an exponential rate. The bribery, intimidation, and assassination of politicians to make them become the banksters' puppets is what led the way towards the masses of people becoming muppets. The psychology of those masses of muppets should be traced back through history, to demonstrate how lies, backed by violence, were the sustaining sources of the enforced frauds which enabled the current financial industry to manifest its immaculate hypocrisy.
I can see no value in any free-floating, purely psychological theory of "personal sovereignty" which is divorced from the real history of how sovereignty actually emerged as War Kings made the sovereign states, whose powers were covertly captured by the Fraud Kings. I repeat that every individual operates their own systems of organized lies and robberies, which are assembled and channeled through governments. The only sensible theory of "personal sovereignty" that I could respect is one which was consistent with that view.
excellent points, I agree with many
sovereignty is based on force. it does not have to be absolute, yet it's based on a certain degree of power and it's recognition by other powers. as such, "personal sovereignty" makes only sense... if you have lots and lots of power. oligarch-level power. (robber-) baron level power. in short, it's for giants, princes and tycoons, not masses. personally, I see this wish as a product of the near myth of the "Individual Above All Else". it's a fine myth, perhaps even worth dying for, yet I don't see an historic proof that it's more than a myth, and a lot of evidence that it's propagated by our new age's barons to elevate them above the citizen
all the financial state instruments you mention, from fiat to fractional reserve, are based on... public credit
while I do agree that they are at the source of all the problems you mention, it's like the guns debate: it's about how they are used
to simplify, they are like a giant public credit card. a financial agreement. a consensus
there is a difference between having 10 credit cards and... redlining every one of them and ordering 10 more. remember that doing that at sovereign level gives the holder a temporary advantage on everybody else
In a pseudo democracy, the head must recruit and empower cronies, not just at the top, but also what we refer to as the free shit army. Then there is also a lot of cronyism in between, such as protecting doctors from competition. Given that the entire mainstream media has also been corrupted and promotes a distorted but consistent version of reality 24/7, it is actually very difficult for an ordinary person to see through it, but nothing will change until they do. People lack the self-esteem to think independently, they often lack the genes that promote independent thought, and they often possess the genes that make them terrified of losing all their friends by not conforming.
I still trust the people, and I think just about all of us carry the Soul of Humanity in our genes. Therefore, we just have to wake them. One example of how to wake people up is to present them with a smoking gun like WCT7, or the USS Liberty, or how there has been no recovery.
A smoking gun is a single compelling fact, but once someone has been awakened and has thus regained a little bit of confidence to think for themselves, and once they know they are being lied to in a big way, they can accept more complex evidence where there is no one smoking gun, but where there is a pattern, such as how the US government is trying to provoke armed conflict with the people.
I don't think someone 'has been awakened', meaning an outside force brought them out of their slumber. I suspect they are in the process of either sleeping or awakening on their own.
If you bring something to their 'attention' and they are already in the process of awakening, they will notice. Otherwise it just rolls off their back. This is why I concentrate on those who are showing signs of life. Plenty of those around if only we are to look.
Back when I was in sales those people were called 'warm leads'. I think the term still applies.
I also have an issue with the concept of being fully awake. We may be
much more aware of "things" around us, but we are always in the process
of awakening. It is called growth and the learning process. A healthy
person is learning right up to the point they take their last breath.
I agree, except that it sounds like I think a much larger percentage have much greater potential for awakening further. Of course, the warm leads are indeed where to focus one's efforts, and once others sense the changing tide of opinion, it could quickly snowball. The media seem to be working 24/7 to stop such snowballs, and to create and perpetuate their own snowballs.
Clearly you have good genes.
I prefer Wrangler. :)
You don't believe in evolution?
Future Jim:
I believe in evolution is the sense that "ENERGY IS SPIRIT."
I believe in evolution only after one goes through a creative synthesis of postmodernizing sciences with ancient mysticism. Primarily that means taking things like the special theory of relativity, that made atomic bombs possible, seriously. The material world is extremely concentrated energy. Time and space are not independent absolutes, but relative illusions that depend upon energy to appear to exist. (Therefore, entropic processes are all relative illusions too. Hence, the way that I think about "evolution" easily eats all other old-fashioned religions for breakfast.)
Mainstream science currently has its philosophy just as dominated by the biggest bullies' bullshit as does every other social enterprise. In that context, the mainstream view of "evolution" is just as much bullshit as every other social story. That is why I insist that a good enough political revolution should start with revolution in the philosophy of science!
Ironically, in my view, most people who promote the notions of human "Unity" or "Cooperation" continue to do that through the same old-fashioned false fundamental dichotomies, which means that they always tend to go to the wrong pole of the dichotomy to base their "solutions" upon. That is what I still detect in your and Cognitive Dissonance's approach to these problems: good analysis, followed by collapse to the same old bullshit when turning to idealized "solutions."
My view is that we have no choice but to continue to muddle through the madness that the real world operates as the evolutionary ecologies of different systems of organized lies, operating robberies. We would be able to do that better if we stopped promoting ideologies in which governments either did not exist, or existed in idealized ways.
I say that governments are necessarily on a continuum of unitary mechanisms of a range of different organized crimes. They always were, and they always will be. Better government is necessarily better organized crime. The best way to achieve that is through a greater use of information, enabling higher consciousness, in which more citizens understood that they were members of an organized crime gang, and therefore, were able to act more competently.
It is imperative for a technologically based society to go through intellectual scientific revolutions in order to be able to survive its own evolution. At present, we have things like atomic bombs, inside of a society which almost totally does not want to understand what the special theory of relativity is saying. The same applies throughout all the rest of our current urban barbarian world, which has developed a globalized electronic fiat fraud, backed by atomic bombs, which are being channeled through social pyramid systems based on backing up lies with violence for thousands of years.
While it is obvious that system is becoming utterly rotten, because scientific technologies are primarily employed to be better at backing up lies with violence, however, that can not be improved without some social evolution (with episodes of re-evolution within that context) that develops radically different scientific understandings of how and why that happened.
I try not to 'believe' anything. If nothing else I attempt to avoid the word 'believe' and substitute other words in my vocabulary. It is remarkable how much different the thinking process is when we no longer rely upon 'belief' for our starting premise(s).
I do think that revolution of the individual is the way towards dry land. This is why I always talk about looking within.
I think evolution is critical if one wants a solution compatible with human nature, like free markets, instead of an idealist solution that cannot work - like communism.
Communism and capitalism founder for the same reason. The most corrupt riseo to power and destroy whatever virtue ther was in the original idea.
Humans prey on one another, it's what we do. Be it physically, financially, sexually, or spiritually, all humans do it. And evolution can both work for and/or against this. Just ask the neandertals..It was our propensity for concete that gave us the edge, in displacing them..