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Huxley's "Brave New World Revisited" - 2014 Redux
Submitted by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Under the relentless thrust of accelerating over-population and increasing over-organization, and by means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms—elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial—but Democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, published 1958
It’s always felt a bit bizarre and, indeed slightly embarrassing, that of all the books I have read in my days, Aldous Huxley’s 1932 classic Brave New World was not amongst them. Not only is the book frequently mentioned to make political and social statements about contemporary times, the novel’s concept always caught my interest. I just never got around reading it. Until late last year.
I loved this book and was very pleasantly surprised. I was prepared for a more fearful and overwhelmingly dark and twisted experience. While there were obvious elements of those things, it was a much more enjoyable read than I anticipated. Indeed, it was a very human book, as ironic as that might sound. As much as the “Controllers” in Brave New World were indeed in control, the human spirit still managed to bubble to the surface. To the point that the controllers had to designate certain islands for the iconoclasts which inevitably emerged from within the “Alpha” class. All of the drugs, brainwashing and conditioning couldn’t totally break the human spirit. As such, it was a much more hopeful and nuanced novel than I expected it to be. If you haven’t read it, I suggest making it your next book. If you have read it, read it again.
However, this post isn’t about Brave New World. While that book is indeed a creative warning, it is still fiction and a work of art more than anything else. Twenty six years after its publication, Huxley wrote Brave New World Revisited, in which he takes stock of the post World War II period. His analysis is grave. He saw the world progressing toward his nightmare much faster than he anticipated. Brave New World Revisited is a brilliant work of non-fiction and filled with almost incomprehensibly prescient predictions. It also provides a great deal of advice to future generations. Advice which we must immediately heed.
Of all the solutions Huxley focuses on in Brave New World Revisited, from proper education, to a simple acknowledgment of humanity as moderately gregarious animal not prone to over-organization; the most profound, and I think useful recommendation, is for us to decentralize. This has been a theme of mine and many other writers for some time now. Fortunately, through things like 3D-Printing, Bitcoin and other decentralized crypto-currencies, open source software, crowd funding, social media, etc, the world is moving from centralization to radical decentralization. People will be more connected than ever, but power will be more decentralized. We need to continue to push rapidly in this direction and a whole new incredible world will emerge. Indeed, it is being born as I write this.
Several years ago after reading Hayek’s Road to Serfdom I wrote a lengthy post highlighting key excerpts for those who were interested, but didn’t have the time or inclination to read the whole thing. Due to that post’s popularity and effectiveness, I have attempted to do the same with Brave New World Revisited. I hope this inspires you all to read the entire thing. Enjoy.
From Chapter 2: Quantity, Quality, Morality
And now let us consider the case of the rich, industrialized and democratic society, in which, owing to the random but effective practice of dysgenics, IQ’s and physical vigor are on the decline. For how long can such a society maintain its traditions of individual liberty and democratic government? Fifty or a hundred years from now our children will learn the answer to this question.
My Thoughts: Yes, indeed we are learning the answer to this right now. Just look around you.
From Chapter 3: Over-Organization
Under a dictatorship the Big Business, made possible by advancing technology and the consequent ruin of Little Business, is controlled by the State-that is to say, by a small group of party leaders and the soldiers, policemen and civil servants who carry out their orders. In a capitalist democracy such as the United States, it is controlled by what Professor C. Wright Mills has called the Power Elite. This Power Elite directly employs several millions of the country’s working force in its factories, offices and stores, controls many millions more by lending them the money to but its products, and, through its ownership of the media of mass communications, influences the thoughts, the feelings and the actions of virtually everybody.
My Thoughts: If you talk as Huxley writes above in “polite society” you will be labeled a conspiracy theorist or kook.
From Chapter 3: Over-Organization
It is in the social sphere, in the realm of politics and economics, that the Will to Order becomes really dangerous. Here the theoretical reduction of unmanageable multiplicity to comprehensible unity becomes the practical reduction of human diversity to subhuman uniformity, of freedom to servitude. In politics the equivalent of a fully developed scientific theory or philosophical system is a totalitarian dictatorship. In economics, the equivalent of a beautifully composed work of art is the smoothly running factory in which the workers are perfectly adjusted to the machines. The Will to Order can make tyrants out of those who merely aspire to clear up a mess. The beauty of tidiness is used as a justification for despotism.
Organization is indispensable; for liberty arises and has meaning only within a self-regulating community of freely cooperating individuals. But, though indispensable, organization can also be fatal. Too much organization transforms men and women into automata, suffocates the creative spirit and abolishes the very possibility of freedom. As usual, the only safe course is in the middle, between the extremes of laissez-faire at the one end of the scale and of total control at the other.
My Thoughts: Huxley accurately notes that the “will to order” is a natural part of the human psyche. There are disciplines where the “will to order” is actually useful and necessary to human progress; however, he warns that in the social sphere it is deadly and usually ends with totalitarianism.
From Chapter 3: Over-Organization
City life is anonymous and, as it were, abstract. People are related to one another, not as total personalities, but as the embodiment of economic functions or, when they are not at work, as irresponsible seekers of entertainment. Subjected to this kind of life, individuals tend to feel lonely and insignificant. Their existence ceases to have any point or meaning.
My Thoughts: Huxley clearly sees the sprawling metropolis as incongruent with human nature and freedom. It is a theme he consistently returns to throughout the book.
From Chapter 3: Over-Organization
Biologically speaking, man is a moderately gregarious, not a completely social animal—a creature more like a wolf, let us say, or an elephant, than like a bee or an ant. In their original form human societies bore no resemblance to the hive or the ant heap; they were merely packs. Civilization is, among other things, the process by which primitive packs are transformed into an analogue, crude and mechanical, of the social insects’ organic communities. At the present time the pressures of over-population and technological change are accelerating this process. The termitary has come to seem a realizable and even, in some eyes, a desirable ideal. Needless to say, the ideal will never in fact be realized. A great gulf separates the social insect from the not too gregarious, big-brained mammal; and even though the mammal should do his best to imitate the insect, the gulf would remain. However hard they try, men cannot create a social organism, they can only create an organization. In the process of trying to create an organism they will merely create a totalitarian despotism.
My Thoughts: A simply brilliant and incredibly important warning.
From Chapter 3: Over-Organization
The impersonal forces of overpopulation and over-oragnization, and the social engineers who are trying to direct these forces, are pushing us in the direction of a new medieval system. This revival will be made more acceptable than the original by such Brave-New—Worldian amenities as infant conditioning, sleep-teachings and drug-induced euphoria; but, for the majority of men and women, it will still be a kind of servitude.
My Thoughts: Yep, he predicted our current neo-feudalistic state in 1958.
From Chapter 4: Propaganda in a Democratic Society
Given a fair chance, human beings can govern themselves, and govern themselves better, though perhaps with less mechanical efficiency, than they can be governed by “authorities independent of their will.” Given a fair chance, I repeat; for the fair chance is an indispensable prerequisite. No people that passes abruptly from a state of subservience under the rule of a despot to the completely unfamiliar state of political independence can be said to have a fair chance of making democratic institutions work.
My Thoughts: Would’ve been nice if we thought about that before we invaded Iraq (of course, the problem is our goal was never to bring Democracy to Iraq in the first place).
From Chapter 4: Propaganda in a Democratic Society
In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies—the development of a vast mass communications industry concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.
For conditions even remotely comparable to those now prevailing we must return to imperial Rome, where the populace was kept in good humor by frequent, gratuitous doses of many kinds of entertainment—from poetical dramas to gladiatorial fights, from recitations of Virgil to all-out boxing, from concepts to military reviews and public executions. But even in Rome there was nothing like the non-stop distractions now provided by newspapers and magazines, by radio television and the cinema.
My Thoughts: This brings me to a short story I’d like to share. I was on the plane as I was reading this and I put down my book for a second to look around me. I had an aisle seat, and so was at a good vantage point from which to take stock of the plane. I was actually stunned to notice that there was not a single other person reading a book anywhere around me. I actually enjoy the lack of Wifi on flights as it forces me to engage in some old school book reading. To my surprise no one else seemed to see it that way. Horrifyingly, the only people that weren’t dozing off or watching television were still on their smart phones. Even worse, at least five of them seemed to be playing the same game! It looked like some sort of Tetris game with jewels. So despite the lack of Wifi, humanity’s ability for mindless entertainment and distraction prevailed. Wifi or no wifi, these folks were going to be on their “smart”phones one way or the other.
From Chapter 5: Propaganda Under a Dictatorship
Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice. Their suggestibility is increased to the point where they cease to have any judgement or will of their own. They become very excitable, they lose all sense of individual or collective responsibility, they are subject to sudden accesses of rage, enthusiasm and panic. In a word, man in a crowd behaves as though he had swallowed a large dose of what I have called “herd-poisoning.”
Reading is a private, not a collective activity. The writer speaks only to individuals, sitting by themselves in a state of normal sobriety. The orator speaks to masses of individuals, already well primed with herd poison. They are at his mercy and, if he knows his business, he can do what he likes with them.
My Thoughts: This is something to always be aware of. Oration to crowds is the most effective form of propaganda distribution and brainwashing.
From Chapter 5: Propaganda Under a Dictatorship
In Hitler’s words, the propagandist should adopt “a systematically one-sided attitude towards every problem that has to be dealt with.” He must never admit that he might be wrong or that people with a different point of view might be even partially right. Opponents should not be argued with; they should be attacked, shouted down, or, if they become too much of a nuisance, liquidated. The morally squeamish intellectual may be shocked by this kind of thing. But the masses are always convinced that “right in on the side of the active aggressor.”
My Thoughts: This is why Obama just lies non-stop with zero shame. His strategy is to just stick to the propaganda and go with it at all costs, no matter how irrational and obviously deceptive.
From Chapter 6: The Arts of Selling
People may start out with an initial prejudice against tyrants; but when tyrants or would-be tyrants treat them to adrenalin—releasing propaganda about the wickedness of their enemies- particularly of enemies weak enough to be persecuted-they are ready to follow him with enthusiasm.
Almost all of us long for peace and freedom; but very few of us have much enthusiasm for the thoughts, feelings and actions that make for peace and freedom. Conversely almost nobody wants war or try nanny; but a great many people find an intense pleasure in the thoughts, feelings and actions that make for war and tyranny.
My Thoughts: That’s probably the scariest and most depressing thing I read.
Chapter 6: The Arts of Selling
“Both parties,” we were told in 1956 by the editor of a leading business journal, “will merchandize their candidates and issues by the same methods that business had developed to sell goods. These include scientific selection of appeals and planned repetition…The political merchandisers appeal only to the weakness of voters, never to their potential strength. They make no attempt to educate the masses into becoming fit for self-government, they are content merely to manipulate and exploit them.
In one way or another, as vigorous he-man or kindly father, the candidate must be glamorous. He must also be an entertainer who never bores his audience. Inured to television and radio, that audience is accustomed to being distracted and does not like to be asked to concentrate or make a prolonged intellectual effort. All speeches by the entertainer-candidate must therefor be short and snappy. The great issues of the day must be dealt with in five minutes at the most-and preferably (since the audience will be eager to pass on to something a little livelier than inflation or the H-bomb) in sixty seconds flat. The nature of oratory is such that there has always been a tendency among politicians and clergymen to over-simplify complex issues. From a pulpit or a platform even the most conscientious of speakers finds it very difficult to tell the whole truth. The methods now being used to merchandise the political candidate as though he were a deodorant positively guarantee the electorate against ever hearing the truth about anything.
My Thoughts: It’s simply incredible how clearly he saw all of this more than fifty years ago.
From Chapter 7: Brainwashing
The effectiveness of political and religious propaganda depends upon the methods employed, not upon the doctrines taught. These doctrines may be true or false, wholesome or pernicious—it makes little or no difference. If the indoctrination is given in the right way at the proper stage of nervous exhaustion, it will work. Under favorable conditions, practically everybody can be converted to practically anything.
From Chapter 8: Chemical Persuasion
That a dictator could, if he so desired, make use os these drugs for political purposes is obvious. He could ensure himself against political unrest by changing the chemistry of his subjects’ brains and so making them content with their servile condition…But how, it may be asked, will the dictator get his subjects to take the pills that will make them think, feel and behave in the ways he finds desirable? In all probability it will be enough merely to make the pill available…But the demand of the American public for something that will make life in an urban-industrial environment a little more tolerable is so great that doctors are now writing prescriptions for the various tranquilizers at the rate of forty-eight millions a year.
My Thoughts: Yep, it is definitely a huge problem that such a huge percentage of the population is drugged up pretty much 24/7.
From Chapter 8: Chemical Persuasion
Too much tension is a disease; but so is too little. There are certain occasions when we ought to be tense, when an excess of tranquillity (and especially of tranquility imposed from the outside, by a chemical) is entirely inappropriate.
My Thoughts: This is very similar to what Martin Luther King wrote in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” in which he states:
“Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”
From Chapter 9: Subconscious Persuasion
In the light of what has been said about persuasion-by-assocation and the enhancement of emotions by subliminal suggestion, let us try to imagine what the political meeting of tomorrow will be like. The candidate (if there is still a question of candidates), or the appointed representative of the ruling oligarchy, will make his speech for all to hear. Meanwhile the tachistoscopes, the whispering and squeaking machines, the projectors of images so dim that only the subconscious mind can respond to them, will be reinforcing what he says by systematically associating the man and his cause with positively charged words and hallowed images, and by strobonically injecting negatively charged words and odious symbols whenever he mentions the enemies of the State or the Party…Because all of this is still safely in the future, we can afford to smile. Ten or twenty years from now, it will probably seem a good deal less amusing. For what is now merely science fiction will have become everyday political fact.
My Thoughts: We are living it and there’s certainly nothing amusing about it.
From Chapter 10: Hypnopaedia
A person in deep sleep is unsuggestible. But when the subjects in light sleep are given suggestions, they will respond to them. Mr. Barber found, the the same way that they respond to suggestions when in the hypnotic trance.
From the heightened suggestibility associated with light sleep and hypnosis let us pass to the normal suggestibility of those who are awake—or at least who think they are awake. (In fact, as the Buddhists insist, most of us are half asleep all the time and go through life as somnambulists obeying somebody else’s suggestions. Enlightenment is total awakens. The word “Buddha” can be translated as “The Wake.”)
From Chapter 11: Education for Freedom
Freedom is therefore a great good, tolerance a great virtue and regimentation a great misfortune.
The genetic standardization of individuals is still impossible; but Big Government and Big Business already posses, or will very soon possess, all the techniques for mind-manipulation described in Brave New World, along with others of which I was too unimaginative to dream. Lacking the ability to impose genetic uniformity upon embryos, the rulers of tomorrow’s over-populated and over-organized world will try to impose social and cultural uniformity upon adults and their children. To achieve this end, the will (unless prevented) make use of all the mind-manipualting techniques at their disposal and will not hesitate to reinforce these methods of non-rational persuasion by economic coercion and threats of physical violence. If this kind of tyranny is to be avoided, we must begin without delay to educate ourselves and of children for freedom and self-government.
From Chapter 11: Education for Freedom
But unfortunately correct knowledge and sound principles are not enough. An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood. A skillful appeal to passion is often too strong for the best of good resolutions. The effects of false and pernicious propaganda cannot be neutralized except by a thorough training in the art of analyzing its techniques and seeing through its sophistries.
In cases where the selecting and abstracting have been dictated by a system that is not too erroneous as a view of the nature of things, and where the verbal labels have been intelligently chosen and their symbolic nature clearly understood, our behavior is apt to be realistic and tolerably decent. But under the influence of badly chosen words, applied, without any understanding of their merely symbolic character, to experiences that have been selected and abstracted in the light of a system of erroneous ideas, we are apt to behave with a fiendishness and an organized stupidity, of which dumb animals (precisely because they are dumb and cannot speak) are blessedly incapable.
My Thoughts: Essentially, the reason humanity is able to create such gigantic instances of suffering relates to our higher intelligence combined with our ability to be easily brainwashed and manipulated by the nastiest of humans on the bell curve.
From Chapter 12: What Can Be Done?
Under the relentless thrust of accelerating over-population and increasing over-organization, and by means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms—elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial—but Democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.
Or take the right to vote. In principle, it is a great privilege. In practice, as recent history has repeatedly shown, the right to vote, by itself, is no guarantee of liberty. Therefore, if you wish to avoid dictatorship by referendum, break up modern society’s merely functional collectives into self-governing, voluntarily co-operating groups, capable of functioning outside the bureaucratic systems of Big Business and Big Government.
Over-population and over-organization have produced the modern metropolis, in which a fully human life of multiple personal relationships has become almost impossible. Therefore, if you wish to avoid the spiritual impoverishment of individuals and whole societies, leave the metropolis and revive the small country community, or alternatively humanize the metropolis by creating within its network of mechanical organization the urban equivalents of small country communities, in which individuals can meet and cooperate as complete persons, not as the mere embodiments of specialized functions.
My Thoughts: His ultimate conclusion, and one with which I agree, is that we need to decentralize to main free.
The older dictators fell because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough circuses, enough miracles and mysteries.
If you still haven’t had enough Huxley, I strongly suggest watching the following video. I hope you found this helpful, and as always…
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Excerpts suck...if that is as far as you go. Don't be lazy. Read the entire story...unabridged. Please! When you are finished, I suggest Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury as a more than suitable second course, pairing Huxley and the perils of drug use and genetic engineering with Bradbury's frightening censorship and all too real surround television.
Long library cards, short televisions.
Speaking of bees. HH, based on your lifestyle, I think you would enjoy a couple documentaries about bees. They're both on nutflix.
"More Than Honey" and "The Vanishing Bee"
Another good documentary relating to food is "Farmageddon." Also on nutflix.
Huxley's dystopian future is more likely than Orwell's. People will inherently fight against totalitarianism, but will happily drown in a sea of inanity. "Amusing ourselves to Death" hits the nail on the head:
http://www.prosebeforehos.com/image-of-the-day/08/24/huxley-vs-orwell-infinite-distraction-or-government-oppression/
I would suggest following up Brave New World Revisited with reading The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.
http://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/030745...
Our innate moral sense is what the control freaks manipulate.
Present real life is more to be like "Brave New Animal Farm".
Praise Ford... tractors!
But me say is present world more like movie "Brazil"
We're all in (sh)it together.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlCPkmb6cuY
How funny the ZH naggers all believe that the reality they live in is based in fiction?
Anyone here believe they create their reality or is the media you cannot taste, touch or smell more signifigant?
Stop being such naggerz and tell a story of what works biatchez.
Dear Mr. Isgood,
You are confuse expressive metaphorical relation to literature and fiction as equation of reality to fiction. You are accuse ZHer of delusional, when by fact YOU are ignore reality in front of you. Reference to literature is adjunct to fact, not replacement of fact, but because you are ignoring of fact, here is little fact sheet for you pleasure and enjoying...
This is not anecdote, is not metaphor, is not rely on fiction, these is fact!
For closing, please dig hole in loose dirt and insert you are head. You are not safe, but you are temporarily feel safe.
Sincerely,
Boris
Democracy? No, no, no, NO!!!!!!!! To the Founding Fathers democracy was a dirty word, which is why they set the US up as a Constitutional Republic. Hence, they are labelled as terrorists by the dopes in charge. Tyler, perhaps you could do a thread about this.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNHcKnjrSNE&list=PL5C7E393389616B3A
Look into the history of Huxley and his father. He was not an oracle, They were insiders.
+1
For... the Neil Postman reference. A classic and well worth the read.
You are the only person I have ever seen on any forum that has read Postman's treatise on the death of our culture.
If you haven't, try, "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television"; and, "The Culture of Narcissism in the Age of Diminishing Expectations" by Chris Lasch.
Bradbury was a Luddite; rode his bike often rather than driving an automobile.
Add John Madden to the list, who is still alive unlike Ron Brown.
Ron Brown... Secret Service is clean up Ron Brown problem, but why is in Croatia!? Is similar to Vince Foster who is kill self with two shot to back of head.
A very light trigger pull will cause that.
Fortunately, through things like 3D-Printing, Bitcoin and other decentralized crypto-currencies, open source software, crowd funding, social media, etc, the world is moving from centralization to radical decentralization.
And how the frok do any of these web based squid tenticle apratuses lead me to believe they are not on a grid based idea that operates supposedly as if it were as regualr as a sun rise?
You dumb naggerz slaves to whiney ZH glasses - ask for forgiveness and actually act in a manner that is good for someone today - before it is too late.
Frack you, HH. I love excerpts. I could eat them all day instead of whole meals. How would I know that I loved sushi but for excerpts. How would I know I love Brave New World Revisited but for excerpts.
I would like to order a whole meal of these BNWR excerpts, please.
Thank you.
i
I'd have to take issue with this. A lot of people that are for these things are also for Democrat Party progressivism in the US and its equivalents elsewhere. This does not make a good environment for decentralization. Quite the opposite.
I do agree that Brave New World was incredibly prescient and a must read.
You/we are not centrally enclosed and controlled. To the contrary, we are are trapped in a distributed network and being modulated remotely.
This is Burrough's concept of a so called "Society of Control".
Although the Reds seem to be behind the curve technically, this is not a Red or Blue or other labelling phenomena.
This is a manifestation of the new techno-corporatist state.
Arguing about which politcal party/ideology is driving these developments is precisely the kind of diversion our apolitical overlords have in mind for us.
Take a look who is going to Davos this week to hobnob with Ms. Yahoo and her entourage. Cantor and Boehner, for example.
We should utilize the Deleuzean "Rizome" like properties of a distributed network to our own advantage. No matter how much they try to adapt, the statists are essentially in a pyramid formation and therein lies their potential downfall.
i once had a bad rash around the "groinal" area, most discomforting, I believe the doctor in charge diagnosed it as a "Deleuzean Rizome" (sorry for the slow typing as I have to copy your spelling). Damndest thing, it took months to clear up and the scratching was most unfortunate when in the company of young women. I hate that fucking Rizome....
It can crop up almost anywhere. I had mine up my nose.
Sometimes, my commentary is too compact. However, in this case I would urge anyone who is interested to explore this subject further. What I am talking about is important for those who are trying in their own small way to contribute to a counter statist inertia.
I just Googled Rhizome, for example, and found this: http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/11/from-slime-mould-to-rhizome/
As many of you know, I do not like to engage in political label tossing. What is interesting in this case is it is written by a self described new conservative. Most of what I have seen on the subject has been written by academics or from the perspective of self described radicals and/or social activists.
The concept of the Rhizome is not political. It is a "natural" metaphor for operating in a decentralized manner. It is a model for organizing group attributes when facing a deeply entrenched heirarchical structure such as a statist pyramid.
Green rhizomes bitches.
the shame about Deleuze (other than his writings being impenetrable to all but a few who have the patience & time to carefully dissect them) is that he used terminology that is most associated with the political Left. however, upon closer examination, they do seem to transcend all political labels (much like BNW) once one is willing to shed any preconceived connotations of the terminology he used.
good on ya Bill for locating an example of how Deleuzan prinicples can transcend political ideology.
been reading much on mycelial (mushroom) networks lately. lots of Paul Stamets. if his intuitive reasonings are correct, it seems to me that these networks are even a more accurate metaphor for a potential counter-strategy than even rhizomes are, being that they have the ability to decompose dead material and transform it into a rich layer of humus that then support plant life. without mycelia, there are no rhizomes.
plus, rhizomes have a tendency to become invasively destructive if not kept in check, and thus undue attention is focused on ways to eradicate them (however unsuccessfully), which turn out to be even more destructive to the ecosystem as a whole. which then requires more mycelium to decompose and then transform all over again.
examples: "Al-Queda" or other "terrorist" organizations, "Anonymous" or other hacker collectives are all rhizomes in the Deleuzean sense. and as we have seen, the State's counter-response to these rhizomatic entities have just created more oppression for everyone.
another cool thing about mushrooms is that they seem to pop up in the most unlikeliest of places and then disappear as quickly as they appear. there's a great little aside that Stamets makes on how psylocibins can be best found around churches, police stations & government buildings.
one of his best talks on the subject is Mysteries of Mycology found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px5cm9rmCGY
Mushrooms yes ;-)
+1
Thought I recognised your work...
Link to rhizome youtube and article at counter-currents are blocked by Websense. For my protection, I guess.
It seems that any site that contains real information for breaking our chains is blocked by Websense. We really need to fix that problem.
Good stuff WB7.
We can fight the machine on ZH and other venues utilizing the same weapons as the enemy.
Keep up the visual warfare!
The pen is mightier!
Why do we always contrast ideology based on our 2 party system? Neither Cantor nor Boehner represent the ideology of conservatives/libertarians/constitutionalists in America. In fact they all represent the progressive ideology of big gov.
It's a long list and I don't see any self described libertarians on there.
I'll tell you something else, many Europeans use the term as a negative slur. "Oh, you are a libertarian then?"
To which I respond quoting Brother George: No, I got this moron thing I do, it's called thinking.
I presume Britons? then on the Continent I find it's hard to even talk about Libertarianism without having to explain first what's about
imho Libertarianism, while having ideological similarities with other movements, has strong Anglosphere cultural roots on which it regularly stumbles
in the rest of the world, you find three main ideological families: conservativism, liberalism and socialism. followed by more narrow movements like ecologists, etc.
as such, Libertarianism is an extreme/radical form of Liberalism. some excellent ideas and concepts, but very little pragmatic all-round value
p.s. from what I read from Harbanger, he would be seen as a conservative, here on the european continent. yet I guess if he would be joining a conservative party here, he would be on the liberal fringe of it
There is not much substance to it. The Global MSM paints anyone who disagrees with the statists as fringe libertarians. It's just a label. It's an intellectual short cut.
I will say this as well. The Central Europeans who have not drunk the kool aid understand what it is all about. Surrender one basic freedom and you might as well surrender them all.
not much substance to what, exactly? you leave me quite confused, at this
put the "Global MSM" aside for a moment (otherwise I have to go into how things are painted in languages different from English or Chinese)
are you saying that there are two sides? statists and anti-statists? honest question
if I put my "statist" hat for a moment I'd have to ask you: prove me that basic freedoms as we understand them exist at all outside of the State Paradigm
I am not here to prove anything.
The simple point I am making is people whom I have met have used that label to describe something in the US, but they really have no idea what the what substance is.
It is a label they use essentially to describe "angry white American male over 50" who does not like Obamacare.
To this I respond: "That government is best which governs least" has a corollary: that government is worst which governs most. At this point the good old USA is on the wrong end of this spectrum. We have government, up the wazooo. And they certainly can't claim it is doing a good job.
Does this mean I am an anarchist? Absolutely not. When everything works fine the discussion becomes academic. However, when everything is in the shitter except for elitists and cronies using the state primarily as a means of entrenchment, the discussion becomes a necessary.
I agree on the use of the label. yet I see one recurrent theme in here: lots of talk about the quantity of gov, and little about the quality
what if the choice was between a lot of good gov or very little very bad gov?
methinks that there lies the twin knot to where the discussion started, i.e. that left-right or Dem-Rep has only one dimension while I maintain that there are three directions. in the same way I maintain that gov has two dimensions, quantity and quality
but of course the answer to the first knot is unthinkable to many: change the electoral system, allow several parties. unthinkable
what if the choice was between a lot of good gov or very little very bad gov?
For the former: Acton's Law says it all.
sorry to butt in G, but doesn't the UK have several parties? how has that changed that nation for the better? wouldn't that strategy in the US just make the corruption that much more complex, especially now that a template has been drawn up across the Pond?
it seems to me that simply expanding the party system would just be a limited hangout, deluding the citizens that there is a top-down political solution to the problems that face us as a people.
damn, I'm late to answer this. to keep it simple:
1. more parties change the political discourse. from black & white to at least red, yellow and blue
2. more parties make life for the single parties more difficult. a corrupted party can be more easily be exchanged with one that is less so. the same principle can be seen in the difference between a healthy market with many small participants and an oligopoly or duopoly where few have "moats"
3. the UK has the same electoral system, yes. but it has also a deeper, more fractured political landscape. so it does profit from the advantages of having several parties, even though the system itself would tend to a duopoly. note how Cameron has to steer his party more on the right so to preempt UKIP. note how the LibDem have to deliver added political value or risk losing their role
the added value of a more diverse political landscape is comparable to the market landscape. more product choice is similar to more policy choice. parties risking to lose their "market share" are more attuned to what their electorate really wants. all very human, if you think about that
Enlighten me, where is central Europe?
Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Parts of Germany that were formerly East Germany. But I would expand it. Anyone who has lived and suffered under the boot of totalitarianism usually gets it right away.
Many people today are out to lunch, so be it. I read the article you linked, very interesting. It explains the grassroot movements that are manifesting. Interestingly, I've studied Rhizones many years ago in botany, that's when I first questioned the inevitablility of death. In theory the same organism can live forever through clonal growth. I'm a mad scientist, Just a funny side note.
Not mad at all, HB, just progressive in its proper context:
An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense “intuitive linear” view. So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate). The “returns,” such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There’s even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity — technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light. — Ray Kurzweil, "The Law of Accelerating Returns," http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns
This is why I fully agree with Kreiger when he states:
"The most profound, and I think useful recommendation, is for us to decentralize. This has been a theme of mine and many other writers for some time now. Fortunately, through things like 3D-Printing, Bitcoin and other decentralized crypto-currencies, open source software, crowd funding, social media, etc, the world is moving from centralization to radical decentralization. People will be more connected than ever, but power will be more decentralized. We need to continue to push rapidly in this direction and a whole new incredible world will emerge. Indeed, it is being born as I write this."
Just as it it being born as Marc Andreessen writes this:
A mysterious new technology emerges, seemingly out of nowhere, but actually the result of two decades of intense research and development by nearly anonymous researchers.
Political idealists project visions of liberation and revolution onto it; establishment elites heap contempt and scorn on it.
On the other hand, technologists – nerds – are transfixed by it. They see within it enormous potential and spend their nights and weekends tinkering with it.
Eventually mainstream products, companies and industries emerge to commercialize it; its effects become profound; and later, many people wonder why its powerful promise wasn’t more obvious from the start.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/why-bitcoin-matters
ZH ate my original comment, so I'll try again...
While I agree with decentralization, nothing you note here is decentralized:
... Bitcoin and other decentralized crypto-currencies, open source software, crowd funding, social media, etc, the world is moving from centralization to radical decentralization. People will be more connected than ever, but power will be more decentralized. -- Dick Buttkiss quoting Ray Kurzweil
The hardware is manufactured by a handful of corporations. The internet infrastructure is a collaborative effort of governments and corporations (and was originally developed by DARPA). Power generation (which runs both your home computer and the internet) is centralized. The NSA's most successful information gathering comes from exploiting individual computers connected to networks and intercepting digital communications over computerized networks (of all types).
The only secure decentralized communications are person to person, face to face, with someone personally known to you.
Sure, DARPA was instrumental in creating the Internet. But so what? It obviously couldn't control it, nor will governments ever be able to, as the Deep Web — http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/deep-web.jpg — will only get deeper the more it's interfered with, aided and abetted by dark wallets, dark email, dark text, dark phones, etc., etc.
The genie's out of the bottle, in other words, and there's no putting it back in.
Obviously you do not understand how telecommunications, including the internet, works at a technical level. And no cute iceberg graphic will change that fact.
"Life is a comedy for those that think, and a tragedy for those that feeeeel".
Yes. Re: pyramids, there are some interesting thoughts posted here: Breaking Down The Pyramids That Govern – Part 1 of 2
I think my reading of Lois Lowry's "The Giver" at such a young age is what I will attribute to my being here today.
I see this society lining up to fulfill the storyline in BNW. Children detached from the parents, family unit a thing of the past. No one belongs to anyone, drugs and selfish pleasure. And my favorite, Ford helps those who help themselves.....can't wait for that fubared future. Please let me slit my wrist now.
You gotta live the good life and others will naturally follow. It takes a bit of humility though - you gotta give up a lot of preconceptions you might have had. Start at the base level of human, ground zero. There are many things we feel, we cannot describe, that we need to find the source of. That's the curse of sapience, to forever seek the source. Evil seeks to supress ascension. You must fight it always, and others will see. Good article from Krieger though - he delivers choice pieces.
Mandatory listen for the thread: Iron Maiden - Brave New World album.
p.s. pot aint drugs [in general].
Amigo TPTB work every day chipping away at the family unit, the goal to isoate humans completely from one another. Even sexual contact will be frowned upon. I would like to share your outlook but I'm a realist. Just reporting on what I have observed.
sorry I was looking for a bitcoin thread and ended up here,
BONESTAR! where art thou Bonestar?
edit: is it just me or is the ad for "fitness singles" oddly alluring
As an ex marathoner, I like seeing 'fit' womens. Loved chatting with the ladies running groups once in a while haha. They would always ask me to finish out with their run - no way, I can only be a slowpoke for so long. ;)
god have mercy on those who take the running gear thing seriously. I wore the same shirt and shorts for a decade straight.
fonestar is doing virtual push-ups so that he can finally throw down with chumba instead of being a bitch.
Bounce right and enjoy your own company
Federal government (NSA) to keep track of public school children via common core. Will include private information including opinions and attitudes, and those of their parents, and will include a total of 400 data points. Common core to shape said attitudes to conform to new 'non-cognitive' educational goals, which is a polite way of saying they are dumping math and science to emphasize social conditioning, and monitor it, for citizenship.
Feds are not allowed to gather such information, but states will now do it for them if they want to receive FED money. The info will be hoovered up and go into womb to tomb individual databases.
gwar5 Perhaps you shed light on the solution, just maybe if the parents ditch the public schools, we will have a chance at remianing real human beings. Public schools and television.......get rid of them and save us from our brainwashed selves.
RED ALERT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
social conditioning has been happening for DECADES under a top secret program called the NFL.........
check it out
Could you believe how many people were sticking up for Sherman and his classless rant?
UGH. Social conditioning and bread and circuses indeed!
O'Doyle rulz!
My kindergartner was awarded for Empathy. Is that a data point? Probably a bad one, huh
"People will be more connected than ever, but power will be more decentralized. We need to continue to push rapidly in this direction and a whole new incredible world will emerge."
Great stuff, ZH.
I believe the key is not merely decentralization. The key is to remove coercion from life. When relationships are voluntary on all levels I believe Freedom and human interaction will have a minimum of agression.
I do not believe in utopia as the socialists but I do believe in an ideal, as in best possible result. This tends to be instructive in an of itself, just as the old autocratic socialist societies had to admit a modicum of economic freedom to survive much less prosper.
Decentralization leads to individual empowerment, which in turn promotes cooperation that displaces coercion. The Internet, 3D printing (additive manufacturing), Bitcoin, etc., are the technological means to this end, which is destructive of the status (statist) quo and revolutionary on a vast, unprecedented scale.
It represents a true New World Order, in other words, whereby the order is spontaneous, not regimented, as thus open-mindedly evolutionary, not close-mindedly self-destructive.
-1
Because...
The technological means you advocate are not decentralized. Rather, they are the result of government and corporate cooperation and centralization.
Like this, you mean?
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-08/wiki-blueprint-would-le...
Whom builds the printer? Joe Blow next door? Or a billion-dollar corporation?
"Whom" builds it?
"Youm" must live in a centralized cave somewhere.
Here, maybe?
http://www.google.com/search?q=nsa+utah+data+center&client=safari&rls=en...
Apparently you can't answer the question... so you dissemble and attempt a crude smear. Typical bullshitter.
If you're right, we're all dead, whether that's just die, die, die for naught or, more likely, species extinction.
You're just another nihilist, in other words, who defends the statist quo because you're either a slave to it or have lost the ability to think.
Which is one and the same thing.
I put myself through college working nights for a large telco and am simply cognizant of the facts of the matter: Government and big business developed the internet for their own interests and purposes.
That observation makes me a neither a nihilist nor a statist, merely a realist. Most of us (in the industry at the time) understood the jig (internet freedom) was up long ago, esp. after Phil Zimmerman of PGP fame caved to the USG over "export licensing"... and after which PGP became very user friendly and public key encryption became the standard for transactions over the web. Strong encryption cannot be allowed to exist "in the wild" if no such agency desires "total information awareness".
Now, contrast Zimmerman (who is well known) with the "mysterious" Satoshi... Sorry, but the latter looks a helluva lot like an intel cutout from where I sit -- esp. with the recent rush by financial institutions to extend the "benefits" of bitcoin to the masses. I esp. like the block chain of all past transactions -- just how long will it take no such agency to correlate those records with specific wallets and their IP addresses? How long did it take the FBI to get access to the seized Silk Road wallet?
If you question whether or not centralized control can be exerted over the internet, go to China or, better yet, just wait until the newly enacted "net neutrality" law begins to take effect...
All you've done so far is show your ignorance, which you back by slurs and poorly attempted smears when called on it. Like I said above: Typical bullshitter. Or paid troll. Which is it?
"He saw the world progressing toward his nightmare
much faster than he anticipated."
That is the most consistent theme that
I too have discovered to be the case!!!
Huxley was a genius.
That first quote at the very top says it all.
Excellent stuff, and bulls-eye spot-on quotations and interpretations of our present situation.
I was dismayed to learn that neither of my children now graduated had ever been required to read 1984; a crime in my opinion but not surprising seeing the landscape of modern un-society.
They'll be required to read it in my house or the daddy bucks won't flow.
Ahh, there is the krux of the matter. Each generation does not know what their children are being taught. We are way behind, and know nothing. Our perception is that our children are being taught as we were. Corporations spend millions of dollars to lobby everywhere, on OUR children's cirriculum.
I attended one of Canada's most elite private schools, and in Grade 11, we read: Brave New World, and Nineteeneightyfour and Gulliver's Travels. Three dystopias in one term! Nowadays, my kids are reading crap like Incredibly Long and Extremely Boring, Margaret Atwood, and other hacks. They don't want any of them kids thinkin' nowadays...
I find Orwell's so-called "book within the book" — i.e., his essay inside Nineteen Eighty-four titled "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism" — to be the equivalent of Huxley's followup to Brave New World, only more fiendishly prescient, as it's the rationale behind The Party's relentless assault on humanity.
That said assault is, I believe, nearing its apotheosis, if not already having arrived at it, seems clear to me in that the tyranny of the world's nation-states (the den of thieves that constitute The Party), led, of course, by the American state, is more and more openly on display. At some point, then — a point that I believe the Bitcoin revolution is hastening — so transparent is the assault that even the most brainwashed finally can't deny the fact of it and start saying no to it accordingly, just as our Soviet counterparts did a couple decades ago.
Only this time the Just Say No, while led by the disintegration of the American state, will be a global phenomenon that cannot and and will not be stopped.
anyone who didn't think there was a correlation between the growth in tech (i and bio) spending and the NSA-military-industrial complex has only to look as far as tech earnings to figure it out. as soon as the world found out America is using its tech companies to spy on foreign officials, revenues began to collapse, which is to say, the encroachment of the NSA into all aspects of daily tech lives is frowned upon not only by anti-fascists and libertarians, but also by foreign gov't's. Huxley's dystopia has been here, and growing for a couple of decades. "We're not too stupid and we're not too bright, to be a Gamma is to be just right"
I found it on line.
http://www.huxley.net/bnw/one.html
You know what? I would like to know what the kids in da schools are learning now. Every once in a while I get a flyer from the local school district proclaiming the glorious achievements of the school district. How many yutes they serve and how much money is spent per kid. I want to know the names and publishers of the text books for every class they have. I also want to know the grade distribution, attendance, discipline and SAT/ACT & PSAT scores for all of the kids. I know, I'm wishing out loud but just imagine the kind of choices you could make with information like that. Just saying.....
Brave New World, Farhenheit 451, Animal Farm, 1984, etc., those used to be considered cautionary tales. Now they're used by elected officials as "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Running a Government."
Edit: Kinda makes you hope no one in .gov has been watching old re-runs of Soylent Green or To Serve Man...
Borrowed words from borrowed words from borrowed words so someone can feel important. When you look back throug history, you find it's all made up. Every. Fucking. Bit. I say fuck it ; have too many drinks ; try too many drugs ; fuck too many people ; then decide.
my first reaction was to down arrow but then I thought about what you said, and while crude, it appears to be sage advice. you want to be free? don't listen to anybody. they all have an agenda. real freedom is agendaless, and that is why it is practically unknowable.
If you enroll your children in public schools you are just feeding the beast.
Decentralize bitchez.
It hurts to critically think...Does anyone have some Soma?
Split infinitives equals splitting headaches, no?
I had some really smart things to say but since I drank eight 5% beer and smoked four 35% joints I'm a little fucked up and now it all makes sense.
Stack On
Remember to drink a liter of water before you pass out. Good night.
You have been Rogered
But even in Rome there was nothing like the non-stop distractions now provided by newspapers and magazines, by radio television and the cinema.
Fortunately nobody looks at that shit these days. Even cable subscriptions are dropping like flies hit by napalm.
The guy "I don't know his first name -- Pelton" suggests to get out of the country and go to Thailand or some other free society. You know some place that you can earn a living.
Anyone can still go to college and get a 2 year degree as an LVN or for 4 years and get an RN license and be able to survive at 40 or 65 per hour respectively. Other than that you got your lawyers and your doctors as well as business managers that specialize in winding down US corporations and liquidating them.
And, you can still go to Harvard to become a waiter.
It is no longer a free United States of America, because the globalist bankers invaded, took over the US Department of Justice and the US military did not stop them, but,there are places in the world that pretty much free by comparison.
Live Long and Prosper Bitchez.
You're listening to Coast to Coast. Pelton sounds like a CIA. Nory is there to catch any little fishy that knows something.
"Or take the right to vote. In principle, it is a great privilege. In practice, as recent history has repeatedly shown, the right to vote, by itself, is no guarantee of liberty. Therefore, if you wish to avoid dictatorship by referendum, break up modern society’s merely functional collectives into self-governing, voluntarily co-operating groups, capable of functioning outside the bureaucratic systems of Big Business and Big Government".
Of course, there is no "right to vote" only the right to not be discriminated against once a state gives the franchise. That was the brilliant beauty of the original concept of the United States REPUBLIC. The electoral college was originally a decentralization feature, as was the APPOINTMENT of Senators by the individual states. The founders knew that 75% were idiots and that "democracy" is tyranny of that majority. Over 220 years the Oligarchs promoted a false "right to vote", and separated the family unit by giving women the "right to vote", and also giving the young and dumb the "right to vote" (neither have a "right to vote," just not to be discriminated against-- a state could still not offer a public vote for President, and just appoint electors) See McPherson v. Blacker, See also Bush v. Gore, see also Fitzgerald v. Green.
The Oligarchs Centralized power by making the election of Senators an electoral process, run by the political parties rather than an appointment by the states, and ironically (or not) the 17th Amendment came in the same year as the Federal Reserve Act. The electoral college was destroyed by its centralization to the political parties who could pledge electors to guarentee their vote for the political party candidate who won the states popular election (See Ray v. Blair, 1952)--- thus came the derision of the "faithless elector". Political parties, a concept not even mentioned in the Constitution, now run the government, and the object of that is Centralization and control. To return to the original concept of the Republic we must get rid of the political parties, and decentralize power to the states.
So yes, Centralization ruined the Republic, and yes, the false "right to vote" (there is no "right to vite" in the Constitution, neither is there a "right to marriage") was used to Centralize power by the Oligarchs and feudalists.
I think Huxley's dad helped Hitler set up "the 10 hertz hum".
Huge sub-woofers were set up in the back of the venue where Adolf spoke. The inaudible subs cause rational thinking to go out the window and emotions to surge, useful.
So, um, how's your surround system hooked up to your TV? Oh yeah, did you install "subs" in your car? That BOOM BOOM BOOM you hear... even cars driving by can elicit the Hitlerian dumb down.
Next false flag... watch out, this shit gonna crank up and your intellect WILL NEVER HAVE A CHANCE!
Just watch Monster Inc for the latest brain washing and rah rah rah, of our children.
this movie tries to tell you that being watched is not really scary, the monsters are there to help.
I like the callout of a kids movie, but I also think there are powerful people who are free-minded and who do assist their brothers, and in this case, the movie presents a scenario in which childhood phantoms are confronted and investigated, as well as adult phantoms are satirized, and uncovered as only as powerful as your voluntary inputs to them. I try to avoid discarding the better parts of some movies although tricky concepts must be tied up in 90 minute bites, usually in a clumsy manner.
tinfoil hat theory of the day: most, if not all, modern pop "music" has that hum implanted underneath the audible sounds, whether consciously intentional or not. it's all about the booty baby.
not to mention those blockbuster movies that have all those foley sounds of gunshots and explosions that everyone's watching on their couches in full Dolby 7.1 surround sound.
got to keep the sheeps firmly focused on their bottom 3 chakras, lest they get too "uppity".
(good way to know if you're being dosed by it is if you all of a sudden feel the need to take a shit, as that frequency stimulates the bowels. wonder if they had extra toilets set up in the auditoriums when Herr Leader spoke?)
If Der People didn't shit during the speeches, they certainly did when the full scale fire bombing started... BOOM BOOM BOOM....
On the subject of centralization. A few observations. The opposite of decentralization is concentration. In the modern US, concentration has occurred most decisively in three places:
NYC Metro: Financial Concentration
DC Metro: Statist Concentration
Greater Silicon Valley: Data Processing Concentration
The new golden triangle. Is it any surprise that asset wealth has increased exponentially to the benefit of those residing these three locales?
Who has that been good for? Certainly not for the serfs living in the wasteland in between. There is where the club essentially resides.
Agenda 21. Just read it. Become aware where it comes from and how far it has come.
think about controling 7 billion peoples.
food, hmmm gmo, stamps for garbage food, check.
debt, check
housing, long story but manipulated right up to its limit-50 percent of income, check
money left over to act freely and be free of labor output in 24 hr day, check
only person free imo, is debt free, able to buy free of sub consious marketing program from birth. think gotta have now mentality. monthly fees for more mind garbage, check
people are easy to contol, because they act in the moment, think buyers remorse.
majority actually pay amonthly fee to be controlled, cable,dish-check
it determines your free time fate. debt bondage; i owe. off to work i go, check
you should be unchecking or have no checks to be free-simple.
idealy off the grid, anonymous and free of mind controls.
i can come here and get my daily dose of red pill freedom, think and resist the
controls of bondage, self imposed by the majority. you have all the freedom you want if you know
what to do, that is by actually doing it...
we are 10 percenters, out of the box thinkers, creating a free destiny of our own choice.
in that respect we are free with time to further explore our red pill fate-enjoy the day doing wtf you freely desire....
edit; left out education, that is abook unto itself, sufice to say home schooling, or at least home deprogramming of your childern from the public ed and university lib-tard group think for money grants and union pay scale of unpresidented growth funded by non qualilfy loans(like health care in a way) opt out, think freely...
There is only one thing other than a new financial system not controlled by humans that will actually make a difference in America. Term limits.
Without term limits expending energy on political analysis is a complete waste of fuckin time. There is no leadership. There are only campaigns and elections.
and the money...
...and there you have it. There is hardly another discussion worth having. None. No analysis needed. Waste no effort figuring out the complexities of our ultimate failure. UNLESS and UNTIL we figure out a way to have "turnover" the clock will continue to tick to final serfdom.
1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451. Walls of screens on every wall. Book burning. Firemen burning books. Free thinking. We have TV programming for a reason. It is called programming for a reason. I just saw where there is going to be a reality TV show about arm wrestlers. I wonder if boys in school arm wrestle any more? It may just be considered too violent. I just saw where a New York congressman wants to outlaw tackle football for any boys under the age of 14 as there may be a chance for concussion. We drug boys in grades 2 , 3 , 4 etc because they don't want to sit still in class. The big pharma folks call that ADD. If you picked the kid up once and physically planted his ass down hard in his desk and explained to him that he is in your house now, he will sit still. We suspend kids for drawing toy guns. Hell, we climbed a water tower when we were in middle school. We all knew if we fell we would most likely die, in fact a kid did finally fall and die about 20 years after I grew up and they barb wired the tower. We may not have gotten the greatness of the finality of death nor had read all the great philosophers in college yet but we damn sure knew we better hang on tight. Outlaw tackle football? Really. It's for the kids you know. I see families riding bicycles with dad in the lead in full body armor on the chance one might fall and hurt themselves. God help us. It is called the school of hard knocks. A high school kid gets high/drunk and wraps his car around a tree and dies and we need grief counselors at the high school on Monday for the whole student body. Good God help us. I say put them all on buses, leave the body in the car until Monday morning and drive them all out to the death scene. Then line up those who still think they need a grief counselor. Until you have had your nose broken you can play all the video games on earth making you a bad ass. Getting hit in the face hurts. Hell, I have totally lost control of where I am going. Sorry for the rant. Brave new world and it doesn't run on feelings.
So what you're saing is.... kids these days are being turned in to mindless little pussies whose aspirations aren't to be astronauts or even firemen, but to be stars on a reality shows or to get the most Instagram likes for their selfie photos, which actually isn't good enough anymore, as you now gotta have a GoPRo camera ON A FUCKING STICK so you can take selfie action video of yourself: http://www.quikpod.com/gopro-stick.html
Its about consequences...and risk. Our society will do anything to prevent consequences while also concealing risk (when profitable to do so). The safer we perceive ourselves to be the more dangerously we live. If that safety is false, then really bad things will happen. I don't have a problem with helmets and seat belts. I just have a problem of surrendering freedom for security and anyone who has ever ridden without a helmet understands what that means. Rather than bullying people into wearing helmets it would be much more advantageous to educate people as to the risks of going without....and then living and dying free, and we will all die eventually. "Is it better to have lived and had heartburn then to have never lived at all?" I doubt that commercial could ever air today.
But to allow some person to judge and then decide for themselves doesn't lend itself to the overall goal of authoritarianism; the goal of the State is to eliminate self awareness, confine exploration and replace it with a instinctual petition for the permission from others, I climbed the water tower myself, it was one of the badges of youthful exploration of one's own self and capabilities, such as riding calves or owning a BB gun.
Education alone leaves too much to chance, what if the subject decides not to follow the social model or worse develops a mind capable of independent thought..
It's something the FertBerts of the world will never understand.
Awesome post deerhunter. I have students whose parents won't let them step outside, or go to the park, but they'll be allowed to play Left for Dead or World of Warcraft or Call of Duty Black Ops till 4 am on school nights and everything's cool. Isn't the XBox controller similar to real military drone controls for a reason? Everything is "safe" if done anonymously over the web? The black wings of death that the government offers as security are coming to help. Shhhh, the sheeple are dozing off again, possibly for the last time....
In addition to the excellent books suggested I would add Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here.
The times change but human nature does not. The greater the technological progress of a society the easier it is to control the masses.
Governments, initially anyway, only serves to fill a void. Overtime, it assumes control. You pollute, you get the EPA. You starve your neighbor, you get medicare & social security. Those that would hold themselves out as "the best and brightest", in the relevant area of concern, should be held most accountable when government finds a crack and fills the void so as to provide sufficient incentive to ensure that that any cracks that can be filled without government filler are closed and to limit the rate that unpatchable cracks are allowed to form that lead to government control and collapse.
exactly.
question is: in what way should these individuals be held "most accountable"? and who determines who "the best & the brightest" are? and wouldn't this eventually create a Tyranny of the Idiotic, whereby no one will be willing to step up and put their neck on the line for the sake of the greater good?
but i completely agree : government exists only to the degree that individuals are willing to abdicate responsibility for themselves and their immediate environment. unfortunately, in a large nation-state like the US, that environment has been so abstracted that people can even fathom what their environment even is anymore.
Jefferson killed his own lofty ideals the day he bought that land mass from the French.
Those in control really don't care about the level of carnage on the highways, what they do care about is conforming others to arbitrary standards.
Does a .08 alcohol level really mean anything as to the overall safety of our highways?
..no, it is another arbitrary figure provided to allow LE to intimidate and arrest otherwise law abiding people and incarcerate many in the process- but the greater of the reasons is control. Absolute control can never be sated nor reasoned with."The only power a government has is to crack down on criminals, if there are not enough criminals one makes them, One declares so many things to be criminal in nature that it becomes impossible for man to live without breaking laws"..
..she knew what she was talking about.
Resistance to Socialism HOTT #1860
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