The main obstacle to uncovering true coherence is the imposition of false coherence. Most conspiracy theories fall into this trap, by trying to paint a picture before all the facts are in and betraying the researcher’s own bias. Real coherence is what I’m after, and since emotional knee-jerk reactions (such as the desire to assign blame) prevent that, the resistance to coherence has to be factored into every attempt to establish it. In other words, any halfway coherent picture must include a clear acknowledgment of its inevitable incoherence.
One might ask, for example, if the Fabians have a global agenda, why are they “associated” with the Labor party? Is that really coherent? Doesn’t it only reinforce the idea of a genuine division in the factions of power, since if the conservative party was “Fabian free,” then every time they got into power they would threaten to undo the “Fabian agenda” which is supposed to be multigenerational? Ergo, Fabians must have infiltrated the conservative party too, and be pushing more moralistic, overtly capitalist agendas at the same time it is doing the opposite. Either that, or the Fabian Society is just another collective of useful idiots being employed by even more covert groups, to further yet more unfathomable ends.
I think it has even been set up this way (incoherence posing as coherence), to keep us hopping from one foot to the other trying to identify the “bad guys.” The agendas in question aren’t limited to social or political agendas or confined to any specific groups or individuals, but rather cross-pollinate over generations, cultures, creeds, and philosophies. It may even be that keeping us “hopping” is the primary purpose of every ideology: to prevent us from ever planting both feet on the ground and figuring out what we know is true and real. And so the tensions of a divided loyalty in the collective psyche, between “good” and “evil,” “right” and “wrong,” liberalism and fascism, collectivism and individualism (mother and father), keep us marching, in lockstep and en masse, into barracks or battlefield, to the never-ending beat of “Left, right, left, right!”
When I was growing up, Mary Whitehouse was a despised name in our household —a Christian conservative tight-ass whining about “family values” behind which lurked a fear and hatred of homosexuals and all other kinds of “deviance” (i.e., difference). The National Front was seen as even more beyond the pale, a bunch of moronic, Neo-Nazi skinheads. But looking at the history P.I.E. (the Paedophile Information Exchange), it turns out that Mary Whitehouse & the National Front were two of the fiercest voices speaking out against the group. Does this make them the good guys? Does the fact the Nazis had the Fabians on their hit-list mean the Fabians were the good guys? If a cop is being nice to us, promising to protect us from another cop who wants to beat us up with a phonebook, does that mean he is our friend, with our best interests at heart? The most immediately coherent explanation is rarely the correct one.
Mother and father (or father & grandfather) battle for control of the child’s psyche while they unconsciously wrestle with their own demon-traumata. Neither have the psychic welfare of the child at heart, even if both of them believe they do. Cops may really believe in the guilt of the suspect, too, as they torture and coerce him into a false confession. For the child it’s a lose-lose situation. Any allegiance at all is a kind of betrayal, because the demand to choose allegiance in such a situation is itself a betrayal (a child needs support from all its family members; it doesn’t need to be turned into a psychic territory being fought over). Betrayal can only be met with betrayal. To meet the demands of those that betray us, we learn to betray ourselves; that’s why the conspiracy is everywhere, and why no one can be trusted—because we can’t trust ourselves.
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The basis for all manner of anti-nature, body-denying totalitarian political movements seems to be the primary split between conscious and unconscious, mind and body (father & mother?). Yet these social movements make no bones about employing apparently nature-worshiping, body-conscious, libertarian and progressive ideas and cultural memes to maintain and increase that split. Maybe some of the individuals involved in these movements believe this is the only way to heal the split. Maybe they know something we don’t and aren’t simply deluded psychopaths in philanthropists’ clothing. (It’s best not to reach a verdict—claim total coherence—until the jury’s all in, no matter how overwhelming the evidence may be.)
Too much theorizing about conspiracy (which is a reaching for coherence) takes us away from the facts. My main conscious aim is to remove the sheep’s clothing to get a better look at the big, bad wolf. Maybe along the way I can figure out why so many wolves need to dress up as sheep and how aware they are of having done so. Isn’t that the perennial mystery—what is unconscious motivation (self-deception) and what is conscious concealment, the deception of others? When is apparent coherence just a cover for a deeper, more disturbing coherence, making it incoherence disguised as coherence?
The line is always moving, either towards transparency or away from it, depending on our willingness and capacity to be honest with ourselves (and own up to our incoherence). The whole notion of using ignoble means to justify noble ends is what power politics is all about, and it’s a close match, a cover-story really, for using conscious rationales as rationalizations for unconscious drives.
When I look at the dastardly plots of these Fabian wolves dressed up as Socialist sheep, or whatever, I know that I am looking at a magnified mirror of my own psyche, and that’s the only reason I am so compelled to look. It’s a bit like finding a family member in the echelons of the Illuminati: what is there to do except look closer? Like Jack Torrance at the Overlook, we may find our own image staring back from the photograph.
*
Getting back to some specifics, I recently followed a comment at my blog to another blog, Groupname for Grapejuice where I read a couple of well-written and thoughtful posts (by znore) about Jan Irvin and Joe Atwill’s somewhat controversial thesis, “Manufacturing the Deadhead.” While znore is sympathetic to their premise, he considers it exaggerated, and from what I know Irvin has come under quite a bit of attack for his work. It’s easy to see why, or at least why people would want to refute the suggestion that something as vast and multi-layered as a worldwide social movement could “all” be the “result” of a “psy-op.” Not only countless individuals but even the planets and stars are involved in such movements, not just Machiavellian groups of human beings (or alien ones), so unless the psy-operatives can also control the celestial bodies, it’s safe to say they aren’t the final, total creators of what’s happening. However, I think it is reasonable to suppose that there are structures—both social and psychological, internal and external—in place on this planet that ensure, in an almost total fashion, that any and all movements, at least when they gain sufficient “mass” and momentum to threaten large-scale social change, are shaped and directed by these structures toward foreseeable outcomes. A master chess player doesn’t have to control the movements of his opponent, only narrow the options enough to have the necessary counter-move ready at all times.
At znore’s blog, there’s a quote from Dennis McKenna, in response to Irvin’s contention that Terence McKenna was a CIA agent:
I just feel kind of sorry for Jan, actually. He seems to have this need to see conspiracies where none exist. . . . This is the web of delusion that you can fall into if you’re not careful and I think he has. . . . It looks like pathology to me, and a lot of people see that. But then Jan will say, well, you won’t go through these 20 databases that I’ve sent you and these 200 links. And you’ve got to understand, no Jan I won’t, because for one thing I don’t have time and the fact there are connections does not necessarily a conspiracy make. I mean, yeah, Terence talked at Esalen and Aldous Huxley talked at Esalen that doesn’t mean that Esalen is involved in some plot for world domination. . . . I just don’t buy it. It just seems like a waste of time. . . . I would think I would know that [Terence was an agent]. I would think he would have said something. You know, we were close. But then maybe he was but he didn’t even know he was. I don’t think so. I don’t know if you’ve seen Jan’s website? What is that? This is . . . like the [Terence’s] Timewave in a way—this elaborate model that you come up with that explains all and everything if you could just see it. I’m not seeing it, Jan, sorry.
On reading this I felt exasperation bordering on anger. Either Dennis McKenna is extremely naive or he is being disingenuous. A comment like, “I mean, yeah, Terence talked at Esalen and Aldous Huxley talked at Esalen that doesn’t mean that Esalen is involved in some plot for world domination” seems meant to trivialize the whole subject and exposes McKenna’s bias. I haven’t read much of Irvin’s material, and while I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he was drawing an overly literal, simplistic picture, deliberately or otherwise, I’m fairly sure he’s not expressing anything as childish as McKenna suggests. As for Irvin being pathological, isn’t that what “they” always say? It’s a non-denial denial and a form of (soft) character assassination that dismisses the arguer in the most demeaning way (under the guise of sympathy) without properly addressing the arguments being put forth. Bleh to Dennis M.
Conspiracy/espionage research can be overwhelming when we begin to see the extent of the deception. Resorting to shoving endless databases at anyone who disagrees so as to “prove” one’s position, as Irvin does, is one symptom of such overwhelm. Scoffing at it as nuts is another symptom. The temptation to take refuge in absolutism (“It’s all a Plot!” or “It looks like pathology”) may be nigh-irresistible for most researchers after a certain point, because the alternative is to try and understand and convey every nuance and intricacy of the conspiracy: how we have been deceived, and, most painful of all, how we have been made complicit with the deception. To do so requires the sort of patience, dedication, and wisdom that (I imagine) not even the arch-deceivers themselves possess, as individuals at least, though as groups they can span generations.
Whether or not Terence McKenna was a knowing agent of this or that agency or agenda is less important than how he and his ideas may have been used by the same. And McKenna, like Huxley, like Leary, like Manson, certainly seem to have been useful, at least if it can be shown that some of the ideas they put forth were successfully incorporated into social movements that served larger, more shadowy interests. And I think it can be shown, quite clearly. So then we are forced to consider that there are many “useful idiots,” gainfully employed by agencies which they might even be consciously opposed to, at least in the beginning. To be a useful idiot, it’s not necessary to be an idiot (ordinary idiots would be of little use to the power elite). Many “unwitting shills” may be allowed to see more of the scope of the “operation” over time, as they are deemed ready and “fit” to do so. This way, over time, they can become witting shills.
I find one sure way to gauge the level of an individual’s involvement with the darker side of these social movements is to look into their sexual proclivities. Sexual proclivities tend to unite many players who might otherwise seem to be on opposite sides of the fence—because what could be a more intimate form of involvement than sexual involvement? At the same time, one way that potential recruits are “screened” for “fitness” is by involving them in illegal sexual activities, not only to identify them as being made of “the right stuff,” but as a means to control them thereafter.
The trouble with looking into people’s sexual proclivities is that, by definition, these are the areas that are most carefully concealed from view. Yet I think that any far-reaching theory of conspiracy that doesn’t include the sexual preferences of its participants at, or close to, its center is probably a bit like the authorized biography of Tom Cruise: not worth spending too much time on.
“And McKenna, like Huxley, like Leary, like Manson, certainly seem to have been useful, at least if it can be shown that some of the ideas they put forth were successfully incorporated into social movements that served larger, more shadowy interests.” Very well reasoned. Freud is another good example.
“A master chess player doesn’t have to control the movements of his opponent, only narrow the options enough to have the necessary counter-move ready at all times.” brilliant! You put your finger on so many things simultaneously with that observation. And mass media, mass movements…push everyone onto narrow roads that can be monitored and controlled. And as for Dennis McKenna…I have no particular love for his writing/commentary. He is a very competent ethnobotanist, I have no doubt, but he always strikes me as a weak writer/commenter when it comes to Terence. From what I remember of the late 1970s (in suburban America), Terence’s writing, such as his book on mushrooms, was hard to find, and confined to “head shops”, or word of mouth. I borrowed a friend’s copy. It may seem hard for us now, with hundreds of youtube channels of his lectures, but he was truly an underground speaker, of a very underground movement in the 1970s and even the 1980s. In the 80s most people were rushing over each other to shed “hippie-ness”. So if Terence was co-opted, or used for social control (which I truly think he would have abhorred), it came much later. Like…even now.
I haven’t written much in response to your blogs lately, but I do read them, Jasun and love them even more than ever! I have been working through material about the Fabian society myself…coincidentally and am starting Atwill’s book, for different personal reasons than you, but your mind is the best at deciphering these things!
Debbie, glad to have your voice back at the blog. When I first discovered McKenna it was probably in the early to mid-90s and he certainly wasn’t an underground figure then. It’s true that even by the time he died he wasn’t anything like the uber-prophet he is today, but he certainly had a large following. The most significant influence he had was, I think undoubtedly, on the psychedelic revival, by providing a new “evolutionary” context for taking drugs (his famous theory that psilocybin was the “missing link(er)” – the epigenetic catalyst – between monkeys and men). He was very consciously an advocate of evolutionary acceleration through what I would now describe (having spent over a decade trying to do it, McKenna’s “white knuckle” way) as self-traumatization. And let’s not forget he had backing from the Rockefellers during his life (not sure of the dates) – so either he was truly naive or he must have been aware that his work was being co-opted with “the Big C” but chose, for whatever reason (probably hubris) to look the other way. When I listen to TM now (rarely) I definitely get a “bad feeling.” (The last thing I heard he was advocating the feminization of the species by eugenics.) So Bleh to Terence M too.
You mean you were looking into the F Society before I started posting about them? Wow. Is there something in the air?
LittleBat: Freud was a giant and so he’s a giant example. I’ve found his discoveries (albeit filtered through other writers such as Norman O. Brown) invaluable, but there’s no doubt that he glossed over a lot of things and didn’t take enough care in ensuring that his writings wouldn’t be misused. (Bit like Nietzsche, & Einstein.) All in all it seems safer – and sounder – to keep one’s circle of influence as small as possible so as to carefully observe the effects of one’s ideas, and ensure they aren’t being turned into an ideology – which is probably when the rot begins. The desire to change the world, etc, tends to override that healthy caution/restraint, IMO…
Yep, there must be something in the air! I have been spending time going the past few months going through the radio archives of red ice creations, focusing on topics about social control and how it has played out in European social democracies. There are obvious connections between social control and psychopathology and the Fabian society. But what drew me to the subject is what you pointed me to in the first place – what role, if any, does an autist play within the artificially constructed socio/political/cultural structure. I don’t know if psychologists still link autism as a subset of psychopathology, but they used to do so. However, though autists may exhibit some of those characteristics, but they also have huge differences that really matter. For those with degrees of Asperger’s, I think the literal quality of their minds allow them to “see” and feel the effects of control, but the oppositional nature of autism allows them an escape route. They resist – completely. And that must be a real threat to those who want complete power.
And you are the only person I have found who is seriously researching the connections and true sources of this group of topics.
having followed irvin’s take on mckenna I find dennis mckenna’s reaction pretty understandable –let’s say the episode was a little bit colorful (evading the “p” word here)– .. not siding on the mckenna side neither; i indeed found dennis’ book a little self-centered and a little naive about certain topics (hint: he wonders if he is on the spectrum. since he remembers himself doing stereotypies as a child) … to me more likely a case of “phantom factor” or soft conspiratorial/cultural inercy … also the mckenna/rockefeller link was if i remember correctly a widely hyped inaccuracy –green earth foundation was funded by R, yes, but it was ralph metzner’s project, not mckenna’s …
JFKT: Having read the full piece and as many of JI’s responses to comments at the blog as i could manage, I see what you mean. JI doesn’t appear to be a happy camper. I found JA’s article to be a bit scattershot, lacking focus, and also platforming, betrayed, as so often the case, by the desire to offer solutions/fix it, which means first framing it as a problem, rather than just showing what’s being seen. It’s the oppositional stance and it’s that energy (anger/blame) I discussed in part 1 of this current piece that seems to fuel JI’s engine. That doesn’t mean he’s not right, however. Just that he is a very poor arguer. Rather than discuss points, he attacks anyone who doesnt agree with him, and at best, tells them to study the trivium and come back when they think more like he does. (He should change his website name to Trivium Pursuit.) He argues like he feels cornered.
Whether or not this deserves a descriptor of “pathological” (I’d say angry and aggressive covers it well enough), it still doesn’t justify Dennis M’s comment, because JI’s character or mental stability or lack thereof doesn’t directly pertain to the information he’s putting forwarding or even the theories he is spinning around it. If DM had said, “I don’t believe JI because he’s an asshole” that would have been a more honest remark, and more obviously irrelevant, because someone’s being an asshole has nothing at all to do with whether their conclusions are well-founded or not. Pathological on the other hand clearly signals deluded, imagining things, paranoid, etc.
It seems apparent to me that Jan Irvin does not have a pathology. He is simply autistic to some degree. The part about 20 databases and 200 links , per Dennis McKenna’s rant, was a dead give away. Actually, from the first time I heard Jan years ago, I thought, this guy has the asperger’s … going on how he interacted with the guests on his show.
I am also curious, like Debbie, to what degree autistic individuals are used by the wider social-control agents to get a whole hell of a lot of work done fast. I think that they (those with autism) have always been thought of as “the really useful idiots” by those who think of themselves as the power elite. It is an interesting time because there are clearer, wider known distinctions between the psychopathic individual and the autistic individual. In the past, the wrong guy was fingered, and as Jasun has pointed out, they are trying to get the collective to finger the same guy (the wrong guy) again.
That’s three mentions of autism in three comments – interesting because of course I’ve been thinking about when the subject is going to resurface at this blog, having seemingly stayed so far from it. First off, in response to Debbie, the epigenetic factor in the rise of autism is still pretty much unknown, as in, how much is this new “mutation” the result of environmental factors, possibly including trauma (many characteristics of autism having similarities to dissociation). Are the social engineers unwittingly engineering a subspecies that is immune to being controlled – as in a kind of unintended inoculation? If autism is in part at least a species response to extreme conditions, maybe the result is a resistance to conditioning?
If (big if) the Fabian Society et al, with their nature schools, sexual “experimentation” with children, and later use of psychedelic and other drugs, were trying to create a dandy-ubermensch (a la Russell Brand) or savage nobleman, an unexpected side effect was perhaps the autistic wild child – not just uncivilized but uncultured and impossible to “handle” at all – at least at the far end of the spectrum. But as Purple points out, there is a fairly wide “class” of autist that can be used, and is being, and in fact a big part of the socialization of autists involves putting them to work (they are great factory workers because they don’t get bored). Using autists for the more sensitive and specialist work of research and the like brings it closer to PK Dick’s prophetic fiction of precogs and whatnot. Perhaps Strieber, Geller, and others are some of the more successful cases of intentionally socially-engineered autists that CAN be handled?
As for the psychopath/autist confusion and fingering the wrong guy, that brings us round (back) to Girard’s scapegoat mechanism – which depends on finding a victim whom everyone can agree is guilty, but who becomes “innocent” – sacred – via the act of sacrifice. Supposed “serial killers” seem to serve this function to a degree, in the way they are first demonized and then weirdly canonized; and of course the overlap between “shooters” – sociopathic killers – and autists was the first thing I explored at this blog.
I still think DM response as quite understandable, more if you take into account the whole context. I mean, JI wrote to the CIA a request abt the existence of Mckenna files. With the fact that there was actually a file –mckenna for all we know was tracked by the CIA for hashish smuggling as he recounted on “true hallucinations”– he conclued, yaknow, that HE WORKED FOR THEM. Then he picked up an audio clip in which Mckenna joked playfuly that he was working for an agency (he clearly refering to the mushroom, as everyone who has digged Mckenna’s mythos understands) and concluded that EVEN HIMSELF ADMITZ HEZ A COVERED AGENT. He’s clearly distorting facts. Also take, as i said, the context: DM is writing a painful memoir abt a passed member of his family –very much expected by their followers– and then he goes public and DOH the guy jumps in on the memorial an starts to make false accusations based on what’s pretty clear deluded, imagined and distorted facts. DM’s reaction is, to me, quite understandable.
I’ve listened to the famous TM “admission” of being an undercover agent and I agree with JI’s interpretation of it. It sounds to me like TM is bragging about his intell connections in such a way that those who know will know it, and the rest (the hippie-goyim) can take it for a rip-snorting bit of psychotropic humor. Jimmy Savile did the same sort of joke-bragging, that’s only now recognized as being such. If TM was smuggling class-A drugs, that already makes him a likely operative – or at least very easy to get a handle on – and as he himself says, he had no money and had the FBI on his back, then somehow the “mushrooms” recruited him and magically sorted all those problems out? Say what?
If it looks, sounds, and acts like a spook, my guess is it *is* a spook…
well that’s a lot of assumptions … i’m more inclined to the “If it looks, speaks and acts as a kook then it’s a kook” angle .. mckennas quote actually fits with its won mythos as an agent of the mushroom …
But McKenna wasn’t a kook by any standards – he was an extremely influential author, public speaker, and social “engineer” (pioneer) with some very disturbing ideas about how to transform the world.
Which assumptions are you referring to? The assumption that if TM was in serious financial and legal difficulties, something besides a mushroom must have sorted them out?
Read the link, it’s very far from a refutation; I agree it’s too bad that JI scuppers his own cause by being so dogmatic and didactic and presenting interpretations as established facts. I sympathize with him (more than Dennis M) because I think he’s a lot closer to the truth that spiritual, mystical, shamanic, & psychedelic movements and key figures are being subtly or not-so-subtly handled, shaped, and directed for social, political ends. I don’t know if there are exceptions to this, but I find it hard to see how there would be/could be, past a certain level of anonymity.
After looking into Strieber’s deep background, I was left with no doubt that he is part of a larger agenda that seems to have significantly less to do with aliens than with devious human agencies. WS seems half-aware of this fact, and half-oblivious to/in denial of it. I am reasonably sure I’d find the same if I looked into Terence McKenna, but that IS an assumption, based less on JI’s arguments than on the larger picture (Esalen, SRI, Changing Images of Man, Fabian Society, etc) that’s emerged into my view over recent years, as well as on a gut feeling about McKenna (listening to him speak gives me the creeps) – a similar gut feeling that first rang alarm bells about WS, as it happens.
The “is he/isn’t he” an agent is a red herring IMO, however. Does it really matter if he was a witting shill or not, besides as a curiosity? It doesn’t address the question of how he and his ideas might have been used (and not necessarily misused either, TM himself advocates many of the same things) in a deceptive/delusional fashion, the evidence of which is I think a lot more conclusive…
Yep, as pointed above, not bashing out the phantom factor/social engineering neither … not entering in further discussion, but for my point of view, not a very strong case here … cheers and looking for your book abt pop culture, seems interesting …
I definitely don’t get a bad feeling from listening to TM speak. I totally understand DM’s viewpoint as well.
I was surprised at your response to DM. If someone came accusing my sister of being a CIA agent and insisted I read mountains upon mountains of data on her that would “prove” their assertions I might very well think that person was a little touched. I think anyone can be a useful idiot to someone else, so I find this rush to label this or that figure an agent tiring. Haters gonna hate. It’s a fact of life. Every time anyone stands up someone is gonna try to sit them back down, for whatever reason. DM even said “But then maybe he was but he didn’t even know he was. I don’t think so.” What else should we expect from a guys brother? What more can we reasonably expect? I’m surprised he even addressed it at all. Personally, I think everyone is a potential sleeper agent for some agency or another. Further, the more fame you “achieve” the more likely it is your mere existence will be seen as extremely detrimental to the entire civilization to someone, for the same reasons you cited above. Name any “champion” of any cause and I’ll show you someone waiting to tear them down if they haven’t already. I don’t believe TM was a CIA agent, but I haven’t looked at all the evidence and it makes no difference to me if he was. I should be able to discern my truth for myself, and if falling in a CIA trap is part of that process, then so be it. I have never agreed with everything TM had to say, but I always enjoyed listening to him say it, as you could tell he really thought long and hard about these things, it came through in his voice. I am also not convinced that all Rockefellers are inherently evil and can do nothing but serve their Dark Lords, but that’s just because I don’t actually know any Rockefellers.
More and more I’m inclined to think people writing this kind of stuff are at least partially empty individuals. Doing the research is one thing, but when you already “know” what your research is gonna reveal, I mean, why bother at that point? To “save” the world? Aren’t there other things you don’t know that you could focus on instead? These guys take the role of crusaders very seriously, and that alone makes their conclusions suspect. You kind of have to defend your position after doing so much research to reach a conclusion you already “knew”. There were a few crazy assumptions at the foundation of that article that I haven’t seen addressed yet. For instance, the quiet assumption that western civilization is something we should save, that American culture, circa 1900, is something that deserved to be left unchanged and unmolested. I’m not saying one way or the other, simply pointing out the flaws in the foundation.
TBH, the whole thing is ludicrous, to me. All 6 bullet points addressed are pretty ridiculous, as I see it. “Overt sexual images in the popular media” is inevitable. The nature of humans, and of media itself, is the reason for this. Humanity has been making depictions of itself naked and aroused since time immemorial. It’s interesting how to some people it’s a conspiracy that sexuality is repressed and to others it’s a conspiracy that sexuality is promoted.
Almost every culture has a place for “wildly uninhibited dancing”… from pubs to bonfires, it’s bound to happen at some point, but this is the same issue as the sexual one, as I see it. It takes a special blend of inhibition and paranoia to see this as evidence of a global conspiracy to revive archaic cultures, especially when this proclivity, like the one we have for having sex, never actually went anywhere.
Every culture has also had musical idols to some degree or another. This is more due to the power of music and the spread of radio, television, and now portable media, than anything else. Again, the media itself, and it’s relationship to human nature, is behind it all. I’m not arguing that some groups don’t exploit these things, quite the contrary, I think multiple groups exploit these things in different ways.
Humans tend to idolize the unattainable. It’s easy to see myriad ways to manipulate this fact. These kinds of theories are actually a perfect example. The ultimate answer is unattainable by it’s very nature, so people naturally become true believers, crusaders and conspiracy devotees, and they frequently idolize the luminaries in their area of interest.
Also, being in, or having connections to someone in the military is not strong evidence of anything other than you were in, or knew someone who was in the military. I know people in the military and military intelligence. Family members have been in the military. I almost joined the military. Now I work in the music industry. Coincidence?!? A lot of musicians are poor, a lot of famous musicians started from poverty. This has been the case for a very long time. The military is also populated with a lot of poor people. Clearly a very specific conspiracy.
Integration. I don’t even wanna touch this. The conspiracy circles have been getting progressively more concerned about race since the election (and re-election) of Obama. I watched it happen. It’s disturbing. Talk about mind-control. Actually, I first noticed this immediately prior to Obama’s election, from a surprising source, Michael Tsarion. He was on his forum spouting all kinds of racial ideas and being a world-class prick while doing it. He then deleted all of those posts, and even that entire forum, if I recall correctly (which I very well may not, but the posts definitely disappeared). Funny thing is, he was one of the people who helped popularize the idea of a Fabian conspiracy. Maybe it was his platform, as he did (does, IDK) have a a pretty large ‘following’ (much like TM). And he was openly a Rosicrucian as well…hmmm. His mentor, Jordan Maxwell, knew Bill Cooper, who was in the military, so…conspiracy?
Either way, this shift is interesting. Black people went from being the “lowest” victims of these conspirators, to the prized “possessions” of these conspirators.
“His campaign was considered successful simply because there was no violence at the convention.” Interesting thing to point out, but I wonder why the authors didn’t specify that the violence that was feared was due to a large amount of threats issued by racist white people? “Thus, Bernays’ promotion of integration was likely an attempt to debase the culture of white America, rather than uplift African Americans.” So, integration debases white America. Funny, I would have thought owning other people as slaves and practicing naked, violent, animalistic bigotry would be seen as debasing, but apparently, to the authors, it’s the opposite.
Interesting phrasing, as well, as wikipedia says, in a timeline, and I quote: “1920 Successfully hosted the first NAACP convention in Atlanta, Georgia. His campaign was considered successful because there was no violence at the convention. His campaign focused on the important contributions of African-Americans to Whites living in the South. He later received an award from the NAACP for his contribution.”
Anyway, for a line lifted directly from the Wikipedia page (just another in a long list of indications that the authors of this article are actually supremely lazy thinkers, lofty posturing aside) it sure seems to have a healthy amount of spin on it. Maybe the simply forgot to add the footnote, but in context it sounds pretty derogatory. The authors write “…since they were emerging from slavery, the culture of African Americans in the 19th century was much closer to the archaic revival promoted by the creators of the counterculture than that of white America.” I hope I’m not the only person who noticed how ridiculous this statement is. Freed slaves were wholly products of the culture they were enslaved by. That’s what chattel slavery did (does). It divorces a group of people from their culture and replaces it, through brutal physical force and mind control, with a crippled and limited version of the culture of the enslaving group. If Bernays had a hidden motive for his actions, which I do not know enough about to comment on, it was more likely money and/or influence. White people do quite enough to debase themselves on their own. They hardly need help from their former slaves to do that as well.
Psychedelics. I could write far more about this, but I am running out of time now. Suffice to say that psychedelics have been around for millennia, and never went anywhere. In fact, every point on the list has always been a feature of one major culture or another since culture existed, usually more than one. Usually all six. Drug use, altering our consciousness, is something that simply cannot be avoided in some way, shape or form. Many of the same functions are served/enacted by dreams. We can have nightmares as well. If we’re inherently fearful creatures we may tend to have more negative and traumatizing dreams, if we’re somewhere in between, like most of us probably are, we have a mixture of both. Psychedelic usage is a great therapeutic tool to me, but not without its inherent dangers. I don’t simply mean taking too much, though I’m sure that’s not a good way to go about it, but even in small doses exposing the underlying code can be detrimental to an individual. It’s not for everyone. It might not be for anyone. Life might not be for anyone. But here it is. I wonder, did you find TMs voice frightening even before ingesting large amounts of psychedelics? Is there an unconscious association there? I know similar things have happened to me. Cigarettes, lights passing in a car window at night, the voices of automated phone services, all of these things and far more took an a different mental mass, sometimes a very menacing and ominous tone was dominant, sometimes a more ethereal or mystical tone. This changes over time and with moods.
Anyway, that’s all I have time for now.
Just to be clear, as I understand it, you’re saying a lot of the same stuff as me, this ended up being more of a commentary on the JI article than yours, as I agree with most of what you said, at least, I think I do, aside from your reaction to DM on TM.<—Coincidence?!?!?
Damn, it always looks like less before I post it. I have a problem.
🙂
Yeah, this does seem to belong more at JI’s blog than mine.
The only thing that seems addressed to me is the odd question about my finding TM’s voice “frightening.” I think I used the term “creepy” or “creeps me out.” As in, makes my skin crawl. That’s not a fear response, a revulsion.
I am starting to regret bringing up TM at all however, since it’s effectively hijacked the “thread” by focusing on someone that people seem to feel very strongly about and I don’t really care for, or about, at all, save as an example.
It reminds me of that Monty Python scene in Meaning of Life:
Harry: That’s right, yeah. I’ve had a team working on this over the past few weeks, and what we’ve come up with can be reduced to two fundamental concepts… One… people are not wearing enough hats. Two… matter is energy; in the Universe there are many energy fields which we cannot normally perceive. Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person’s soul. However, this soul does not exist *ab inito*, as orthodox Christianity teaches; it has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation. However, this is rarely achieved owing to man’s unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia.
[Pause.]
Max: What was that about hats again?
Well, for my part, I was hoping to support the general tone of the article by focusing on the fact that the “main obstacle to uncovering true coherence is the imposition of false coherence.” I thought my post was more along those lines than dwelling on TM. For me, creepy things are also frightening, sorry for the confusion. Still curious, but if you don’t want to wallow in that, no worries!
Great Monty Python scene though. Also, I’m not extremely concerned with TM either, though he has undeniably been a large influence on me over the years. As I said “it makes no difference to me…I should be able to discern my truth for myself…”
OK, that adds context, thanks!
I’m glad to say TM wasn’t a great influence on me, unlike Castaneda, whose voice I found really delightful (whatever that proves, nothing really). I wouldn’t say it makes no difference to me if CC was a CIAgent (as Jay Fikes asserts), however; I’d be *extremely* interested to know anything about that (& wrote about it in “Prisoner of Infinity”). But I wouldn’t then automatically assume, as JI and JF seem to, that everything he wrote was therefore diabolic disinfo – any more than since finding out A.A. Milne once worked for British Intelligence means that I now believe Winnie the Pooh is a secret tract for pedophilia (tho I leave the possibility open). It definitely makes a difference tho, because I already know that I *can’t* discern truth for myself, and the more evidence I can find for that, and for the ways in which my discernment capacity has been hijacked by disinformation (& drugs), all the way from Pooh bear to don Juan, the better.
It’s a real challenge to allow that, at the very best of times, truth is mixed up with lies, sometimes pernicious lies but probably mostly just self-delusional ones (which may be more pernicious still), and to know that as a writer, I am doing it too, no way to avoid it.
Couple of points I didnt address:
I was surprised at your response to DM. If someone came accusing my sister of being a CIA agent and insisted I read mountains upon mountains of data on her that would “prove” their assertions I might very well think that person was a little touched.
Here’s a much better comparison: If someone came accusing my brother of being a MI5 agent and insisted I read mountains upon mountains of data on him that would “prove” their assertions, I would say, “Let me at it!” and spend as long as it took to look through it. And my brother was a significantly *less* likely candidate for spook than TM, all things considered. The main difference is that I didn’t work with my brother & write books with him, nor were we what you’d call close.
It’s interesting how to some people it’s a conspiracy that sexuality is repressed and to others it’s a conspiracy that sexuality is promoted.
I addressed this *seeming* discrepancy above, as well as in the “World-Psyche Control System & Objects Relation Theory” post. I agree it’s significant that researchers haven’t zeroed in on this “contradiction” before, or have they? Surely I can’t be the first to do so, without using it as an argument for debunking? Or can I?
How I feel: The only truth that we can discern is our own. This is not to say that this truth is Absolute, as I might have an opinion on absolutes but that opinion is hardly relevant to any actual absolutes, but it’s to say that our personal truth can only be determined by our selves. This is where I think a lot of false cohesion is birthed, in the misunderstanding of this condition. We can’t trust ourselves because we’re not even listening to ourselves. I wouldn’t go so far as to say we are incapable of listening to ourselves and thus to our truths, as that starts to verge on “doing it too” but it’s not as blatant as the “truths” espoused by JI, etc. Those are the kinds of ‘truths’ that I personally see as stemming from a desire to be “The Guy Who Figured It Out Because You Were All Too Stupid To Do It Yourselves, You Lazy Sheep” or “The Guy Who Led Us To Safety: One (Intellectually Superior) Man’s Conquest of Mountains of Obscure, Original Research.” It’s like “hipster” conspiracy theory, conspiracy chic, it seems like an affectation at its core, or at best, reactionary self-rejection stemming from, what, a mid-life crisis? A decades-old trapped sigh that started as a yell finally being released? The comments section is the most informative part of the piece. If there were more YELLING AND CAPS and less European turns of phrase I would assume I was at Infowars.com. There is much clinging, and aggression, and repetition, but no consideration whatsoever, but I couldn’t even make it past 10 or so comments, so who knows, maybe JI changed his mind by the end.
He didn’t. I posted there yesterday and tho he didn’t attack, or even disagree with me (I didn’t give him any reason to), he didn’t engage in dialogue either, just diatribe. I agree with all of the above about platforming ^^^ – but we all have it in us to one degree or another.
As for discerning our own truth . . . at the risk of being pat (and stealing Charles Fort’s line), I think we can *become* true, and certainly that we can be honest, and try to be accurate in representing our experience. But as long as we are more unconscious than not, we are always playing with an incomplete deck – so it’s like, “Everything i say is inaccurate, including this….”
Yeah, my sister and I are close, and I can still simply speak to her myself. As I understand it, TM and DM were fairly close, so there’s that. Of course, JI would probably say DM is “in on it” as well.
Regarding certain sexual discrepancies (I feel very British writing that), I think I’ll have to lean towards saying that very few people have addressed this. It’s always been of interest to me because if sex were politics I’d consider myself a moderate, I guess, and I seem to be surrounded by extremists on either side. That discrepancy has always stood out to me as indicative of something incredibly significant. Hypocrisy, perhaps. But more. More towards this: “It may even be that keeping us “hopping” is the primary purpose of every ideology: to prevent us from ever planting both feet on the ground and figuring out what we know is true and real. And so the tensions of a divided loyalty in the collective psyche, between “good” and “evil,” “right” and “wrong,” liberalism and fascism, collectivism and individualism (mother and father), keep us marching, in lockstep and en masse, into barracks or battlefield, to the never-ending beat of “Left, right, left, right!””
“but we all have it in us to one degree or another”
That’s the only way I could recognize it!
“if sex were politics”
Of course sex is politics, sorry about that!
It’s interesting how to some people it’s a conspiracy that sexuality is repressed and to others it’s a conspiracy that sexuality is promoted.
I addressed this *seeming* discrepancy above, as well as in the “World-Psyche Control System & Objects Relation Theory” post. I agree it’s significant that researchers haven’t zeroed in on this “contradiction” before, or have they? Surely I can’t be the first to do so, without using it as an argument for debunking? Or can I?
Wilhelm Reich has in his wonderful book Children of the Future: On the Prevention of Sexual Pathology.
I feel pages 58-59 are worth reading. http://books.google.com/books?id=N7ulkOpZtDsC&pg=PA58&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false
Pages dont show up, unfortunately. Do you have scans?
WR is an interesting case: there’s plenty to suggest that he wasn’t “on message” since his books were burned and he was imprisoned and hounded to death (or so the story goes). Yet he was an early advocate of PIE-notions about sexual “initiation” of children by adults, AFAIK, and for “the prevention of sexual pathology”
Includes an essay “The Sexual Rights of Youth”…? Oh dear….
From comment at amazon: “My mother was a zealous Reichian supporter but I wasn’t given a choice about whether or not I wanted to be raised according to his theories. While in the overview I agree with much of his work, to be a Reichian guinea pig wasn’t a fun experience; it’s taken me most of my life to come to terms with the treatment I got, all in the name of genital freedom and self-regulation.” http://www.amazon.com/review/R320G130YISD6X/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0374518467
Would have to read her book to see how it all went wrong.
I have no scans of it. Did you try google booking it? It’s page 74 in the content and page 58 in the actual book itself.
eyeofsiva: “Also, being in, or having connections to someone in the military is not strong evidence of anything other than you were in, or knew someone who was in the military. I know people in the military and military intelligence. Family members have been in the military……” This one hits home for me. My baby brother is retired US Air Force, he worked in ‘surveillance’ and had a lot of survival and “what to do if you’re captured by commies” training. My boyfriend from when i was twenty (‘bunnyface’) is now the executive producer of a major nationwide mainstream news show. I realize that for many people who look for patterns (and rightly so), those two facts will forever condemn me to ‘spookland’.
But my brother and i have deep, profound differences in philosophy, though happily we get along very well. He is a complete and utter hardass when it comes to revealing anything relating to ‘national security’, so really we don’t talk about that part of his life much at all. And i haven’t spoken to ‘bunnyface’ in over thirty years.
But that’s what i ‘would’ say, wouldn’t i? There’s no way i can convince anyone who doesn’t know me well, all i can do is use my own experience to inform my view of the world – namely, that there is a huge amount of stuff we’ll never know for sure and it’s thus critical to keep in mind how we know what we think we know, and to keep track of all the ‘blank spaces’.
Jasun: “Here’s a much better comparison: If someone came accusing my brother of being a MI5 agent and insisted I read mountains upon mountains of data on him that would “prove” their assertions, I would say, “Let me at it!” and spend as long as it took to look through it.” Well of course you would! Even someone like myself, who only knows you via bits and bobs thru the web, can recognize that you’re on the obsessive side of researching, and very highly motivated to find out whatever you can about your family history/patterns, not to mention of a conspiratorial paranoid bent (if i may be so bold as to so assert, speaking as one to another).
But not everyone is like that. So it’s, in my humble ‘o’, ridiculous to make that kind of argument. At the same time, as you’ve pointed out many times, it’s very difficult not to look at the world through our own habits and conditioning. I find it very freeing to scrape away any little areas of conditioning i can, so i keep at it. Best, steph
oh jasun i forgot! Heard a long podcast a few days ago at Where Did The Road Go? with Peter Robbins, the ufo researcher, about Robbins’ lifelong fascination with and study of Wilhelm Reich. Interestingly enough, Robbins gets pretty heavily into the whole Reichian idea of raising kids so they ‘at least have a chance’ of sexual wonderfulness (i forget the term he used). I’ll use your term ‘creepy’ to describe what it was like to listen to, at least for me. Here’s the link if you want to check it out:
http://wdtrg.blogspot.com/2014/04/peter-robbins-on-wilhelm-reich-part-2.html
I couldn’t help but think of your current research while listening.
Happy Day, steph!
But not everyone is like that.
The fact I am married to someone who is, if anything, even more of the “conspiratorial paranoid bent” than I am does make it hard for me to know when it’s time to reign myself in. But I’m not feeling like it’s anywhere near that time yet. Even in the present company, referring to a desire to understand the hidden forces in our lives as a “paranoid bent” veers a bit too close to the dull view that keeps busy pathologizing whatever challenges its dominion – just as I felt, and still feel, Dennis McKenna did with JI. If with everything he knows and has seen, DM honestly believes there’s nothing fishy about Esalen, well, WOW. Just wow. I’m sorta speechless at that. What can you say? That’s certainly a “bent.”
Honestly though, I don’t believe it, and I don’t believe it when EoS says it doesn’t matter whether such and such a person is a CIAgent or not (tho I believe he believes it). I think we’ve been hoodwinked and that if platforming and ranting a la JI or Alex Jones is one obvious trap we can fall into, the other extreme being the “nothing to see here, it’s all in your imagination, you’re just paranoid” trap which we are mostly born into, then I think somewhere in the middle there is the trap of “Oh it’s just your personality bent/psychological make up/astrological configuration/conditioning, and it doesn’t matter because matter is energy and everyone is an operative whether they know it or not, and/or we are all working for the Cosmos and ‘falling in a CIA trap is part of that process’ so why bother to try and sort the seeds, just toss ’em out there and see which one sprouts!” It’s as if somehow there’s a “high road” that bypasses all of this messy, complicated, para-socio-political stuff and that getting too deep into it is only for the fanatics like AJ or JI (who give the whole thing a bad name). But if there is, it’s not the road I’m on.
In other words, I have noticed – perhaps wrongly – a tendency to roll out the old “it’s all subjective/personal” line as a way to avoid some unpleasant possibilities about the state we’re in, which I see as an attempt to transcend the shit we are in rather than transform it. Maybe it works, but again, it doesn’t seem to for me & mine.
Is it my conditioning that created a conspiracy out of thin air? Or did the conspiracy create the conditioning and so make it very, very hard for me to see it, much less talk about it, without confusing the thing that is seeing with what is being seen?
Is my allowing that I might have grown up in a hornet’s nest of spooks, Fabians, and pedophiles without having the first clue about it a result of conditioning and evidence that I have a weird “bent”? Or is it the result of my taking real (baby) steps towards becoming conscious of the environment that we *all* grew up in, to one degree or another?
In other words, when this brother or that sister says, “Him a spook? No way!” all I can really think to say is, “Just wait…”
I don’t believe that it doesn’t matter in every case, I just feel that way about this case. I can’t see it making any actual difference in my life at this point. I’ve already taken my psychedelics. I’ve already been transformed. The reason I think it doesn’t matter to me is because it reeks of overwrought BS in the first place. If the Fabians/CIA/FBI are capable of executing their plans this perfectly then we have no real hope of ever finding our way out of the maze. That is the problem I have with most conspiracy theorists. The zeal exhibited seems to stem from the kick they get out of convincing everyone that everything is basically royally fucked. It doesn’t matter that they claim they wish to fight The Conspiracy, and even fashion themselves as Freedom Fighters who have only a small amount of time left to convince us all before the hammer falls, it’s all romanticism, and reminds me of every Hollywood action movie ever, you know, when the bomb is about to go off, and ten seconds turns into twenty seconds, then thirty seconds, then a flashback, then a fast-forward, then forty seconds, then fifty, and then the hero does something amazing…
If the conspirators are this competent then we might as well give in, because they will tear down the cities and thrust us screaming back into the dark ages regardless of what we do, apparently. If we resist, the cities wall fall anyway. We can assume that whatever we might come up with has been planned for, well in advance, and the game masters are simply smiling, watching it all unfold. Our only options are to give in, be crushed, or surrender to a paranoid paralysis.
In all honesty it seems far more likely that members of governing bodies would want us to think this way. It is a far more tried and true tactical method, historically.
@Stephanie Qich
You could have saved me 50 minutes. All that time he talked about UFO and the Orgone theory.
But of course, don’t listen to me, as according to JI I’m part of the conspiracy solely due to my race and status as a musician.
@Stephanie Qich
1:07:00 ish Peter Robbins did sound suspect and creepy when the interviewer bring up pedophiles.
EoS: Is there a third option? I mean, besides that they are all-powerful so we may as well give in, and they are just trying to make us believe they are all-powerful so that we give in?
Again your response seems reasonable if aimed at another conspiracy researcher; but the first web page I ever wrote on the subject began with “There is a worldwide conspiracy to make us believe there is a worldwide conspiracy, to make us BELIEVE…”
So I do feel that my POV is subtly different from the one you are addressing/challenging.
Absolutely, and that wasn’t directed at you or your entire position (if anything, just at that element that seems to me to resonate more with JI than DM).
I think there’s at the very least one other option, more likely many more, but this is often not the way these discussions are framed within conspiracy circles. One element commonly agreed upon in the majority of, if not all, conspiracy circles is that there is some kind of overarching, consciously directed conspiracy in the first place. This is not necessarily the case. The Conspiracy may be one of perceptions both personal and collective, and there may be no actual direction or goal behind “it” at all. As Fort said, “if there is a universal mind, must it be sane?”
I don’t view entertaining these options as “a way to avoid some unpleasant possibilities about the state we’re in” at all, quite the opposite. Being possessed by billions of insane demons is perhaps a bit more unpleasant than being possessed by a single, relatively sane one. Either way, though, I believe our own self-consciousness can ultimately carve a way through the mist.
I feel like we resonate more than you and DM do, or JI for that matter, but the more I say the less likely you might be inclined to agree!
Had a feeling I was just parroting something, so I looked up that “Fort” quote, and it is apparently commonly misattributed to Charles Fort when it in fact originated with the author Damon Knight in his biography on CF called Charles Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained.
All being said, just came across some reading abt paranoia related to lack of theory of mind worth reading. It’s on “Doctoring the mind” (download here). That is not to say I buy everything there, still a good reading (second half of chapter 7) …
Good post and thanks for the mention. I generally agree with EofS’s initial slab of text on DM, but I think your point, Jasun, is a key one: “…that any and all movements, at least when they gain sufficient “mass” and momentum to threaten large-scale social change, are shaped and directed by these structures toward foreseeable outcomes.”
Very likely true. This is, though, quite different than claiming that social movements are manufactured by “these structures” from scratch. This seems to be JI’s claim, but it probably isn’t the case most of the time. Creativity by committee is not all that convincing. Usually these things begin with an authentic burst of vision. Then, as you suggest, when the movement reaches a significant size it has money thrown at it, it is infiltrated, it is misdirected and it becomes wildly popular. All this, that is, if it is not squashed from the start.
By this time, the movement’s original members have either dropped off, sold out, been martyred for the cause, or have stayed on and enjoyed the success while at the same trying to be true to the original vision. This vision, after all, is still there however covered with dross it has become. It is what continues to attract sensitive people. Even newcomers, although rarely, can touch the core. This is one reason why trying to unwind all of this is so perplexing. Many forces are at play.
Nice summation. Nothing to add really, besides approving silence.
pseudonym3000: “You could have saved me 50 minutes….” ooops! (face of abashedment) i’m glad you got thru to the end, tho – Robbins is getting quite a bit of play in the UFO community these days, with younger researchers as well, i think it’s valuable to get a look at some of his foundational philosophy. I also felt that the ‘anti-pedophilia’ statement was more than a bit pro-forma, Robbins and the host spent a lot more time and emotional ‘oomph’ on the risk of being falsely accused. How this fits in with or influences Hopkins’ whole approach to and research on the abudctee phenomenon, i don’t have a clue but i very much doubt there’s no connection.
eyeofsiva: “If the conspirators are this competent then we might as well give in…” Exactly. This is my philosophical disagreement with the approach of people like JI, not to mention that we’re all humans on planet earth and plans are constantly coming to naught. This is just not the place, we are just not the species, for total control. Sure there are many many thruout history who have done their best, with many horrible consequences, but still. It’s a depressing and paralyzing viewpoint, on top of that it’s wrong.
jasun: “The fact I am married to someone who is, if anything, even more of the “conspiratorial paranoid bent” than I am does make it hard for me to know when it’s time to reign myself in.” oh, i hope i didn’t come across as trying to ‘reign you in’, it wasn’t my intention. I’m firmly in your spouse’s camp re:conspiratorial paranoia. To quote myself, “As for me – well, i’m a known conspiracy theorist/paranoiac and have been since a tender age. At nine i was nicknamed ‘Fred’ after the uber-paranoid character in Dan O’Neill’s alternative comic strip Odd Bodkins, which ran in the daily paper…..”
I also share your concern with our conditioning and mental/emotional habits…..how to at least get a little peek thru/around that scrim? I’ve been very fortunate in having experiences, like with my brother and ‘bunnyface’, which have shown me a little tear here and there in the fabric. I just wanted to point out that as a reader i find it helpful for writers to clearly lay out their sources – what is referenced in a book or a primary source, what is your emotional reaction, what is your line of thinking that got you from sources to any tentative or firm conclusions….i’ve also found this nitpicky attention to my own process along these lines actually helps tear down the ‘scrim’, however briefly. As they say on the makeup fora, ‘your mileage may vary’. I think i have been lucky enough to have seen thru a bit here and there, so while i agree that we are caught up inextricably in our own ‘programming’, at the same time it is possible to develop parts of ourselves which are less than completely enmeshed. Maybe – question yourself at every turn, also keep an eagle’s eye out for anything that looks outside of it and follow that bit like a bloodhound!
re: families. My mom’s mom had four surviving sisters, they were born on a rancheria or reservation outside of Fresno, CA as part of the Chukchansi tribe. The sisters fought constantly, undermining and torturing each other, always two against two in a game or “who’s out and who’s in”. My mom kept us away from them as much as possible, and called them the ‘killer aunts’.
So, a couple of times in the past year This American Life has run this very interesting radio piece on the Chukchansi tribe:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/491/tribes?act=1
I joke to my mom that we had more Chukchansi heritage than we thought. Good grief. anyways, Happy Friday!!! steph
“If the conspirators are this competent then we might as well give in…”
This seems a very outer-directed attitude to me. What about if they *are* that competent and there’s nothing we can *ever* do to change our external reality. Can we live with that? Or does it really mean that life isn’t worth living? Isn’t this point of view just a higher version of, If I can’t be successful, beautiful, rich, and famous then I may as well just give up? In other words, life on the ego’s terms.
The whole recurring argument about human beings just not being that organized to achieve “total” control doesn’t seem very well-thought out to me. Is it really all that different from the tired old argument that “No one could keep this sort of thing secret”? It’s just an assumption and, in the second example at least, demonstrably erroneous. I personally don’t know *what* human agencies (and maybe nonhuman ones) are capable of, in terms of long-term planning, organizing, focus, consistency, persistence, and all-reaching strategies of control, and I don’t think it would be wise to base my opinion solely on my own experience of people, even tho, in a way, that’s all I CAN base it on (hmm conundrum).
I agree there’s a tendency in us that is much-exploited by others to attribute superhuman powers to ordinary humans and groups; but there is also the reverse of that, the persistent idea that “they” are just a bunch of bumbling and inept fucked up people like the rest of us. No wonder Icke decided to identify them as Reptilians – it takes care of the whole problem if you attribute them with a higher-dimensional existence. I’m against positing fantastic scenarios as long as we can still find some sort of coherent picture without them, and this is where the sexual angle for me is proving so fruitful, because it seems to prove beyond reasonable doubt the existence of a far-reaching, super-secret, chillingly efficient, ruthless, and tightly managed conspiracy at work. Of course there will *always* be some doubt insofar as we can’t ever really know if what we are being told is true, or that we aren’t living inside a Truman Show world surrounded by actors, and so on. But using that line as a reason (excuse?) not to question more unpleasant social realities or ideas that threaten beliefs in which one has invested (such as the idea that psychedelic drugs and esoteric literature – and homo/sexual liberation – are part of a long-term countercultural “dissociation-by-trauma/ego-inflation agenda” directed by the Powers That Be) – as opposed to say, whether or not the local supermarket is really a movie set – strikes me as needing to be questioned. Simply put (to use current debate as example, and without intending any offense), EoS’s siding with DM’s POV and against JI’s is hardly surprising considering his chosen lifestyle in relation to “therapeutic” psychedelic drug use, being an aspiring musician in Hollywood, and so on.
Eos wrote: One element commonly agreed upon in the majority of, if not all, conspiracy circles is that there is some kind of overarching, consciously directed conspiracy in the first place. This is not necessarily the case.
If you mean One Conspiracy to Rule Them All, ie, that everything that happens is being controlled by some group, then sure, that would be pretty unlikely without positing uber-sorcerers and aliens and all the rest. If you mean that it’s not necessarily the case that there is an overarching conspiracy that spans the whole planet and that ties together many if not all of the major players and parties in power, I do think this is on the verge of being demonstrably verified, in my own life-sphere at least. But I also think that there are missing pieces (or context), and hence still some surprises as to the nature and “bent” of said conspiracy, things which I hope to get into in the next post or two….
Good Friday!
Well, I’m addressing it as if speaking to a person who is a crusader against this all-consuming conspiracy, I guess.
I can live with that just fine actually, an all-consuming conspiracy (and I have, as I used to see things this way), because if I have no choice I have no choice. There a number of things I have learned to live with that I know I cannot change. I can only change my perspective.
If these guys think there is some giant detrimental conspiracy specifically designed to plunge us into a new dark age and they’re fighting against it, they obviously would prefer not to live in just that sort of world, and may find it unbearable. But in my eyes that sort of world occurring again is pretty much inevitable, as I think occurrences are cyclical.
“The whole recurring argument about human beings just not being that organized to achieve “total” control doesn’t seem very well-thought out to me.”
Well, the key word for me is total. That implies perfection, which I do not believe is humanly possible. Sure, we can call something perfect, but we cannot have actually accounted for every atom and subatomic particle, nor every moment or motion, nor every single possibility.
There may be non-human agencies with an eye or two (or billions) out of time that can direct key events towards a specific goal, but regardless, there is still a margin of error, and either way, if they can do that why do they need to? It’s tricky, and hard to pin down, probably because it reaches into realms it is actually impossible for us to explore in any meaningful way. The burden of proof would be with those who propose the Total Domination model, not with the rest of the people still living their lives as if they have choices and some measure of freewill. And without an eye outside of time I don’t see how such a thing can actually be demonstrably proven. So does it matter as more than an intellectual exercise/pursuit/distraction? It’s the same as positing an eternal battle between God and Satan as an explanation for the world.
“I don’t think it would be wise to base my opinion solely on my own experience of people, even tho, in a way, that’s all I CAN base it on (hmm conundrum)”
Yes. Granted, our personal experience cannot be counted on to reveal everything about the nature of the world, but it is something we should reference. Who do we know of that has presented an airtight demonstration that there is one specific group of people (or non-people) controlling every social event towards a specific goal?
“but there is also the reverse of that, the persistent idea that “they” are just a bunch of bumbling and inept fucked up people like the rest of us. No wonder Icke decided to identify them as Reptilians…”
I agree, and I don’t see “them” as a bumbling and inept gaggle of misfits, exactly, but I do see “them” as a pretty diverse group with varying goals and pursuits unified only by the fact that they collectively control much of the world. I do not think they have one shared goal.
“I’m against positing fantastic scenarios as long as we can still find some sort of coherent picture without them”
I don’t have a problem with fantastic scenarios regardless of whether the same can be explained without including them (only because I have witnessed some fantastic things while sober, and as such, I cannot dismiss vast areas of unknowns which many people might see as improbable, and very few theories actually account for some of the things I’ve witnessed), but I do have a problem with throwing all of it under the same umbrella just because it’s easier.
The sexual angle is very interesting, and it seems as much of a tool as a core component, but again, sexual proclivities vary widely, and not all people in entertainment or policy have the same proclivities at all, so it can only account for a subset, not the whole.
“But using that line as a reason (excuse?) to question more unpleasant social realities”
Do you mean “NOT to question”?
For the record, I can easily say that this is only one factor in a much larger equation, and that these things are probably being deliberately muddied in order to confuse the (currently) dominant binary paradigm and add enough tension to put one or a few groups in a position to be able to exploit any sudden or planned social turmoil that may arise. This does not mean that any of these things are an ultimate goal. It does not mean that there is one group with an ultimate goal. It does not mean that these ideas were conceived of by an all-knowing sect of dark wizards and we’re all stupid pawns that are being duped into supporting our own demise. It does not even imply that ALL of the possible conspirators are involved with or even concerned about these ideas. You have the other side as well, the conservative right, who are also involved in plots to control, divide funds, oppress and invade numerous other territories. All conservatism is not part of the conspiracy, just as all liberalism is not part of it. There is no reason to assume that plants that currently grow naturally around the earth are really all part of a Fabian plot to drag us back into a condition where the plants will still grow naturally from the earth. The forward march of technology flies in the face of that, and the trillions of dollars of development poured into various ventures by many of these same groups cause me to wonder what these guys are even talking about. Rather than waste time tricking us into taking drugs wouldn’t they be better off tricking corporations into not becoming monolithic beasts of industry that drop concrete and tar on everything they touch? Or are the corporations the good guys, valiantly dumping all kinds of waste all over the planet to prevent the Fabians from returning us to nature? And the US military, by invading and shipping troops into all “developing” nations, they’re also the good guys, because they bring democracy and big buildings and coal and oil to every region they stop in? These would have to be the most inept conspirators in the history of conspiracy if this is the case, because they have not done a single thing to stop the spread of modernization at all. Perhaps I’m misreading vast portions of this, or maybe this too “is all part of the plan” because of the trauma it would inflict on the tiny portion of us left living once their plan reaches fruition. Seems absurd and extremely impractical to me, but I don’t know, as I said, I’m probably part of it.
Sexual and homosexual “liberation” are also vast subjects with a ridiculous amount of nuances and complexities, and gathering everything under one umbrella seems unrealistic to me. I haven’t ingested a psychedelic in a few years (one small salvia usage probably two years ago is all I can recall, which was terrifying) and while I am an aspiring musician, and I do work in Hollywood, I wouldn’t exactly frame myself as an Aspiring Musician in Hollywood. It’s happenstance that I’m still here (I stayed for a relationship, already had a plane ticket and everything), and I’d much rather be on the East Coast, or in Europe. I have no interest in Hollywood, and rarely even enter Hollywood for anything other than work, after which I leave and return to my corner of LA.
Looking forward to the next posts!
Very brief response for now (or I may never get the next post ready): for me one of if not the major flaw in JI’s hypothesis was his attempt to sum up the End Goal of the Plot. I don’t think there *is* an end goal – besides that PIE in the sky of Total Control, by any and all means necessary (and maybe They keep switching strategies according to how well a given one is working or not? It seems likely). I don’t see how there could be, since the sort of Plot being posited is transgenerational and there’s really no way to totally predict what sort of condition the planet or the species will be in, a hundred or thousand years from now.
I am definitely talking about LOCAL total control, as in, of mass media, government, education, but even there not of individuals within it much less molecules! If you create and constantly regulate the system, then the elements of that system tend to naturally conform to it (self-regulate) – as we saw (maybe) at the BBC with Jimmy Savile, etc. And yes there will always be the RANDOM FACTOR which, by definition – being that which CANNOT be controlled – will always overcome in the end (not in the sense of tearing down the maze, but in the sense of finding a way out of it; I suspect that the Black Iron Prison of Empire really *does* never end, because I suspect it’s the nature of Matter itself to “oppress” the Spirit – like a womb “oppresses” a fetus perhaps, tho hopefully without substance abuse!).
However, in terms of individuals’ ends, I think these *can* possibly be determined, and I suspect that the variety you posit is not as wide as you may think, in HW or the other high levels of the sociosphere. My suspicion is that there’s a narrowing of sexual (and therefore all other) interest as a person ascends the social hierarchy and has his or her sexual neuroses inflamed and indulged, into a fine diamond point of pathology (symbolized, once again, by Icke’s reptilians and the Vampire archetype)…
But I am now writing the next post….
(And yes, I meant “NOT” to question; corrected now)
“I suspect that the variety you posit is not as wide as you may think, in HW or the other high levels of the sociosphere. My suspicion is that there’s a narrowing of sexual (and therefore all other) interest as a person ascends the social hierarchy and has his or her sexual neuroses inflamed and indulged, into a fine diamond point of pathology (symbolized, once again, by Icke’s reptilians and the Vampire archetype)…”
I see that point (no pun intended), and am inclined to agree with it, but this still only accounts for a subset, a minority, of much larger social organisms. I have no proof that it is exclusive, though the variety I mentioned very well may not be as wide as among the lower-level upper “echelonians” if you’ll forgive the made-up word, as there simply aren’t the numbers to support such diversity. Unless, of course, each individual who rises to the very heights of their own field or social sphere is also a representative of a particular sexual attenuation, and the more widespread pedophiles and such are simply an army that is viewed as incredibly useful, largely because of the fact that they have such aberrant appetites…
Stephanie Qich: “This is just not the place, we are just not the species, for total control. Sure there are many many thruout history who have done their best, with many horrible consequences, but still. It’s a depressing and paralyzing viewpoint, on top of that it’s wrong.”
I agree with this fully. This is just not the place.
I agree with this because I also feel that “the Black Iron Prison of Empire really *does* never end, because I suspect it’s the nature of Matter itself to “oppress” the Spirit…”
And this goes both ways for me. Matter serves a certain function, and thus, it’s possible, if not probable, that nothing initiated within matter, that depends upon matter, can ever be fully realized. There is always a countering force offering resistance. This is ancient stuff, nihil novum.
Working on the next part, I find that the opening section is already a bit out of date, followng these exchanges, so I will post it as a comment here instead:
At his blog, znore makes this comment:
If, as according to Irvin and Atwill, the hippies were “manufactured” in order to transform culture then why would TPTB try to bring down their own creation just a couple of years after it gained mainstream attention?
As I commented at znore’s blog, I don’t think conspiracy history ever makes sense when we try and theorize within the terms laid down by ordinary social awareness, in the context of a few years, or even decades. What works better for me is looking at the facts through a psychological lens, and allowing that the same principles that work on individuals (for example Stockholm syndrome) may be equally effective with groups of people, even entire nations—as I suggested earlier with the “good cop/bad cop” routine being applied collectively.
In a previous post, I mentioned Lloyd deMause’s idea about a period of liberation leading to one of social restriction, and vice versa (left, right, left). Understanding this principle, and knowing how to manipulate it, may be behind a great many of the events and movements which we see arising in the world. It would also leave plenty of room for the supposedly “random” element to give such movements the flavor of spontaneity and authenticity, such as the counterculture for example. As long as the overall outcome, psychologically, is the same, then “the Powers That Be,” like a master chess player, can be ready with their next move.