(from 16 Maps of Hell)
Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory
“Consequently a necessary step for
most of us in the work of renouncing This World is to become aware of it as an
engineered control system. Thus the act of investigating the structure and
exposing the agendas of the New World Order, for those dedicated to the
spiritual path and also called to this work, can be of direct service to the
contemplative life. If we can witness the darkness of This World with apatheia, with detachment and
equanimity, then we will have accomplished the greater part of the work of
‘shadow-integration’; we will be led, God willing, to the point of supreme
nausea where we can vomit the World, along with the Ego, its master and slave,
out of our souls forever.”
—Charles Upton, System
of the Antichrist
Personally, I can freely admit that I do not know if there is a unified conspiracy being implemented by a constant and persistent group over long periods of time. But can the “skeptic” admit they don’t know there isn’t? Nor do I personally feel much need to try and find this out, since the very terms of such a proposition make it impossible to do so. A conspiracy revealed is no longer effective as a conspiracy (unless the conspiracy is to make us believe in one).
What I do find myself wondering is this: if the people who promote the idea of a grand, unified conspiracy had a better understanding of the subtlety, intimacy, and intricacy of psychological, social, cultural, and even spiritual engineering involved, would they still be able to maintain their belief? By the same token, on the other side of the river Styx, what of those who reject the idea as absurd? If they were to spend sufficient time sifting through the evidence—which generally they haven’t—would they feel secure in their position?
As any Marxist will tell you, there’s plenty of evidence of how a “purely” economic-based society acts as a program of dehumanization, with all the earmarks of organized malevolence or a “grand conspiracy.” A medical institution that “unconsciously” (covertly) prolongs people’s stays and undermines their healing process to maximize profits comes up with policies designed to fragment, destabilize, and unhinge the patients. This can be put down to cynical corporate profit motives; but at the same time, it’s quite in accord with how a “CIA MKULTRA front” would operate. So which is it? We have here a case of the effects of a conscious conspiracy, without the necessity of positing a fully conscious causal agency. The ball was set in motion long ago, and now it is simply rolling down grooves laid down by decades—or centuries—of “business as usual.”
In the same way, the cheapest sort of architecture tends to be the ugliest, and ugly architecture undermines people’s morale, their sense of meaning, purpose, and community, making them less and less at home in their families, their lives, and their bodies. Naturally, this also makes them more and more susceptible to being controlled externally, whether merely to consume the products being sold to them or, more proactively, to “act out” in ways that benefit the power structures lurking behind these corporate-based architectural decisions. Conspiracy, or blind economic forces?
I suspect there are as many examples of this sort of thing as there are destructive (or at least counter-productive) social trends and policies. All of them can be superficially accounted for with financial opportunism, greed, corruption and a lack of ethics (even stupidity). Yet all (I suspect) might also be seen as congruent with known psychological principals for demoralization, fragmentation, and dehumanization.
The common thread would be this last effect: running a society on the basis of a (fake) economy is inherently anti-human, because a system that doesn’t represent any natural, human reality renders human beings as currency within a system of numbers (René Guénon called it the reign of quantity). Could all of this conceivably have been researched and formulated in advance (by the Fabian Society and their economic wizard John Maynard Keynes, for example)? I don’t see how this can be ruled out, any more than it can be assumed merely from observing the consistency of the results.
In its loosest definition, conspiracy indicates malevolence, or at least criminality. There is a tendency for both conspiracy researchers and debunkers not to be able to separate the exposure (or simply the seeing) of organized malevolence with the need to oppose it. This unnecessary conflation feeds into both the conspiratorial and the anti-conspiratorial mindset. On Wikipedia, for example, it says: “A ‘conspiracy theory’ is a belief that a conspiracy has actually been decisive in producing a political event which the theorists strongly disapprove of” (emphasis added).
Making the element of disapproval—moral judgment—central to this definition suggests that the only reason to want to understand something is to condemn it. Yet exposing the hidden machinations of organized malevolence can also be part of a healthy desire to understand ourselves better in relation to the world. It can be a way of seeing more clearly our complicity with, and consent to, the malevolence in the world, but also our distinctness from it: how we are not of the world we find ourselves in.
This is very different from scapegoating—even the opposite of it—and potentially it can be the means to heal a split within ourselves, a split that was both caused by the world, and that is the cause of the state the world is currently in.
The World-Psyche as Split in the Soul
“Socrates believed that oratory was not a morally neutral skill that can
be directed at good, bad or indifferent ends, but intrinsically rotten because
it betrays the trust necessary for genuine conversation and, in so doing,
erodes the conditions of political (and other forms of) judgment. We should
think the same about spin. For many years, we in the democratic West have
praised conversation in politics as though it expressed an ideal of democratic
accountability. That may be a sentimental illusion about the nature of
politics, encouraged by politicians who spin counterfeits of conversational
intimacy to make us more vulnerable to manipulation.”
—Raimond Gaita, “Even Socrates drew
the line at spin”
Schismogenesis is a term derived from the Greek words skhisma “cleft” (borrowed into English as schism, “division into opposing factions”), and genesis, “generation, creation.” The creation of a divide. Anthropologist and OSS intelligence operative Gregory Bateson developed the concept while working for the OSS, and coined the term to describe “progressive differentiation between social groups or individuals.”
[I]f two groups exhibit symmetrical behavior patterns towards each other that are different from the patterns they exhibit within their respective groups, they can set up a feedback, or “vicious cycle” relation. For example, if boasting is the way they deal with the other group,and if the other group replies to boasting with more boasting, then each group will drive the other into excessive emphasis on the pattern, leading to more extreme rivalry, and ultimately to hostility and the breakdown of the system. .. . Schismogenic behaviors, when put into equations (!) and graphed as curves,are “bounded by phenomena comparable to orgasm.” They reflect conscious or unconscious hopes for release of tension through total involvement.[1]
Complementary schismogenesis is the term coined by Bateson for what happens when people with different cultural norms come into contact: they each react to one another’s differing patterns of behavior with the opposing behavior. This is colloquially known as “doubling down.” Given two groups or types of people, the interaction between them is such that one kind of behavior from one side elicits another kind from the other side, as exemplified in the dominant-submissive behaviors of, say, a class struggle or a sexual relationship. Furthermore, the behaviors may exaggerate one another, leading to a severe rift and possible conflict. One of the factors said to exacerbate conflict is “information asymmetries” between the two groups, that is, when one party has more or better information than the other, creating an imbalance of power.
The imbalance of information asymmetry might be seen to exist within each of us. When denied access to the more instinctive, atavistic wisdom of the unconscious (or the body), our rational minds are rendered helpless in the face of seemingly irrational acts (which the world is full of). At the same time, when our more primitive, instinctive awareness is denied the leavening influence of reason and logic, it sees patterns and meanings—devilish or divine—in everything. It has no way of deducing that, while we are being manipulated by shadowy forces, part of the manipulation is designed to engender our belief in something that isn’t real, to render us even more susceptible to manipulation. Hence we have the maddening paradox of a conspiracy to engender belief in conspiracies, sometimes referred to as “the revelation of the method.”
Another form of schismogenesis is known as “systems of holding back,” “mutually aggregating spirals” which lead people to hold back positive contributions they might otherwise make, because they perceive others to be likewise holding back. Again, this is easily observed in a marriage, family, or long-term relationship, when we choose not to be vulnerable or considerate because we want first to receive reassurance that the other person will do the same. Unless we make a conscious effort to counter this tendency, our interactions seem to naturally fall into these holding back systems. Because of this, they have been called “the single most important key to life-decreasing, reciprocity-trivializing and vitality-downgrading mechanisms in human life.”[2]
So we have systems within systems. We do it to ourselves, but we also have help. Perhaps the most critical feature of conspiracy theorizing in general is the failure to refer to personal, everyday experience and accountability within the agendas of social control being described. The cartographer fails to include his or her own faulty instrumentalities—as compromised as everything else—on the map being assembled. There is an outward gaze that projects wounded agency onto the systemic malevolence that has caused the wounding. But there is no inward gaze that recognizes how the wounding also causes the systemic malevolence, or malfunctioning. There is the acknowledgment of conspiracy, but none of complicity.
This split of schismogenesis—both self- and other-engineered—may be central to maintaining and extending power and control over human psyches, both individually and collectively. Divide and conquer: as within, so without. Our intuitive, subrational mind believes in demons and in the divine aspect of existence because it has direct experience of archetypal—or at least “psychic”—reality. Our conscious, rational mind “knows better”: its job is to manage the everyday, mundane realm of hard, cold facts. Yet both are effectively useless without a dialogue with the other. Schismogenesis is the key to maintaining territorial jurisdiction over both sides of this divide.
As C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters has it: “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and un-healthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”
The Conspiracy Demon depends both on our disbelief and our belief, and uses whichever modus operandi suits his ends. Yet his only power over us is by installing his “program” inside us, and ditto the State. If the conspiracy believers and the conspiracy debunkers were to get together and compare notes, both sides might come away with a more coherent and wholesome picture of the world. For the maintenance of the sociocultural hegemony of “the world,” however, it’s paramount that such dialogues, both inner and outer, do not happen.
Continued in Part 3
This series forms the basis of 16 Maps of Hell: The Unravelling of Hollywood Superculture.
[1] Christian Hubert, citing Bateson’s Steps towards an Ecology of Mind, p. 68, 111. http://christianhubert.com/writings/schismogenesis.html Schismogenesis “was built on Bateson’s experience as an OSS intelligence officer in South Asia. Bateson spent much of his wartime duty designing and carrying out ‘black propaganda’ radio broadcasts fromremote, secret locations in Burma and Thailand (Lipset 1980:174), and alsoworked in China, India, and Ceylon (Yans-McLaughlin 1986a:202).” “Bateson’sSchismogenesis as a propaganda tool,” Off-Guardian,February 18, 2015. https://off-guardian.org/2015/02/18/batesons-schismogenesis-as-a-propaganda-tool/
[2] Saarinen, E., & Hämäläinen, R. P. 2007. Systems Intelligence: Connecting Engineering Thinking with Human Sensitivity. In R. P. Hämäläinen & E. Saarinen (Eds.), Systems Intelligence in Leadership and Everyday Life: 39-50, Espoo: Helsinki University of Technology, Systems Analysis Laboratory.
Wow, this thesis is brilliant!
I’m not well read by no means but this is the clearest description of the current widening ideological polarity in the world as well as a sobering explanation of my own inner and outer struggles.
I haven’t come across someone who is equally adept at rational and spiritual thought!
thank you; that’s definitely the bridge that I aspire to be building here.
Dave Oshana has been a big assist in that, exemplifying how to be hard-headed & soft-hearted.
Could you take a look at this site, and do you have an opinion it?
https://www.secretintelligenceservice.org/
Do I have too? 😉
Terrible 90s style design, but it looks like a massive data base. Where to begin? Can you quote some excerpts you find relevant?
Unfortunately can’t pull quotes from the site – I suppose I was wondering if anyone else was paying attention to whats being pushed as “The New Mind war”
https://www.secretintelligenceservice.org/?page_id=12334
Also, I was wondering if you had any further inclination to explore the UFO phenomena? I thought Crucial Fictions was eye-opening.. But as somebody who’s witnessed numerous UFOs it’s still a subject that causes me some dissonance.
I don’t know where the psy-ops end and reality begins..
Another kickass post! I heard you say on the Liminalist you prefer people get your book through some means other than BezosCorp. So when I went to Powell’s Books (I have the advantage of living a mile from their bricks n mortar original store). There had been 5 copies as the ’employee’s choice pick’. I snagged the last one, so hopefully it’s doing well.
Your comment about grand conspiracy meta narratives “The ball was set in motion long ago, and now it is simply rolling down grooves laid down by decades—or centuries—of “business as usual” made me consider this: Perception management schemes go back quite a ways. A great book about Ancient Egypt might be worth your while to peruse (“The Mind of Egypt” by Jan Assmann) talks about how the ‘let’s all get together an build a big old building to honor the sun which gives us all life” days of the Old Kingdom slowly turned into the systematic propaganda of Ankhenaten’s bizarre state monotheism and then the nationalistic propaganda of Rameses II. (though the average person could not read the sacralized inscriptions, the pictorial material on the Abu Simbel and others are direct and not very subtle forerunners of the newsreels of the WW2 period. It’s as though people in positions of power in a society realize by observation that the can motivate people in a number of ways- to build holographic respositories of mathematical knowledge like the pyramids or to march off and murder people and steal their stuff.
I’m sure you are aware of Joseph Atwill’s spiel about the entire edifice of CHristianity is a grand spritual engineering programme that, though started by one ruling family, was readily picked up by successor families an employed. What then, is Islam but a copy designed by a merchant baron with a mystic streak?
thanks LC; I am aware of Atwill’s thesis but I am not curious enough to explore it for the same reason I am not curious to explore flat-earthism. It just seems too far from being a reasonable premise and seems more likely to lead people astray than to any sort of practical insight. I doubt Joe has read Girard. As you may know I am not one to toss out the baby of religion (that which alerts us to the divine) with the bathwater of mythic engineering.
so POI is on Powell’s employee’s pick shelf! Whodathunkit? Must be one of my irregulars…. 😉
Thought of something else. The big utopian systems of the 19th/20th century arose from the ‘Enlightenment’. A thing they all have in common is the idea that you can somehow ‘improve the breed.’ They never aim to create a system that works for people as they are. (Maybe you can give the American Revolution a pass in this regard, as the Constitution of the 2d American Republic (the one they rgularly both worship and abuse now) seems to be a compromise between how 18th century landed gentry and merchant classes actually behaved and the ideal recreation of something resembling the Roman Republic. (Which also merrily commited genocide an collected slaves). National Socialism was about purifying a race of Spartans who would rule Europe with an iron fist and a skull mask. Marxism-Leninism was about creating a utopia for industrial workers (which were in very short supply in 1919 Russia- and we see how they went abotu creating more). Then you get the utopia we live in now- that you have wonderfully outlined; An Anglo-American establishment utilizing crass materialism as an ontology, improving the breed through actual genetic and electronic manipulations. It’s materialism taken to its uttermost extreme. Extinguish the human spirit by convincing the children of the ruling class that it does not exist. Only numbers on a bank ledger and numbers in a physics paper are real. But now that the old heretical Nazi and Soviet physics are turning out to be more correct than the bland Einsteinian physics, the whole world seems to be spinning off its axis.
Fantastic piece. This reactive pendulum and deep digging into trenches is constantly on my mind these days. Having developing knowledge of this phenomenon, it now seems so obvious how real it is in my day-to-day and how integral it would be to social engineers/culture molders. That quote from the OSS agent is really something. Seems people in power are really in the catbird’s seat with awareness of this phenomena. The idea it would be even possible to pre-plan, design and spin both narratives into society like colliding tops in an enclosed ring (kind of like that Beyblade game the kids used to play) still has me reeling a bit (WTF!). By the token (as you’ve greatly helped in pointing out) awareness of this can be a way to heal. So thank you for the edifying post and keep up the good work!
hi James
thanks for posting (your first?); nice image, conjures the religious perspective of human society, the world, as the playground for demons. But what are demons besides disowned aspects of our greater nature? I don’t mean that as a rhetorical platitude. It’s a puzzle because it seems as though Christians like Lewis are better equipped to understand/explain human society because of believing in literal demons. And yet, like conspiracy theorists, they may also end up prisoners of their own maps of meaning.
Hey Jasun, No not my first. I’m the same guy who went back and forth with you over animal issues quite a while ago. Yes I agree with you to certainly stay liminal on this. I should’ve emphasized more that this possibility as a real world phenomena is tough to accept (internally too) and and might very well be a reality. Certainly humbling ourselves and looking inward about our disowned greater natures is equally important and this schismogenesis reflects that. The possible choice is to see both the tops colliding as simply one big ball of confusion. We were that but now through awareness have see the choice to individuate and be something different (what that is I don’t know)? I think this is tricky though I think seperating the wheat from the chaff of those spinning tops is vitally important and might lead to the path of wholeness. (Art/Pop culture being one I’d say is worth it to attempt to discern the false from the genuine or at least more genuine) There are many kernels of truth embedded in them. Slow them down so you can see the colors, the forces that guide them, the design etc….It’s the the perennial ‘where did this come from?’ question, Christianity has an answer and it resonates obviously. I agree that it certainly is a puzzle as I embark on learning more about Christianity to find more sense in seemingly more grounded folks like Lewis (of whom I’ve only read Mere Chrsitianity and smattering of other stuff). I have this steady faith but not yet to adopt that particular map of meaning either. It’s a true leap. However, before that leap though we should certainly put everything on the table. But if we vacillate too much are we are also prisoners of our indecision? I live amongst many northeastern u.s liberals (of course Eastern religion gets a pass) and I’m always defending Christianity in a way because I’m aware the former’s arguments are so biased and illogical. I’m also aware that this is tricky that I don’t just react schismogenitically (?) and wind up letting something in through the back door that’s not grounding. Awareness of this phenomena is certainly helping me out internally big time. But can we also react against phenomena like schismogenisis so as to be eternally on the balance beam and somewhat bound in the in-between too? Can we ever find our true gut after integrating the unconscious elements of ourselves, trust it and take that leap? A puzzle indeed.
Is the leading triangle image supposed to hold through into the Lewis framework at the end?
Is the triangle supposed to be the ‘demonic’ attempt at offering a system to view divinity?
Good questions; it’s an old diagram I made some years back; I think it represents the more-sophisticated attempt to come up with a unified grand conspiracy theory that acknowledges schismogenesis; insofar as it;s correct it is still “wrong” because maps always end up reducing the territory to the finite. This would include religion maps, which also come under the rubric of “paranoid awareness,” IMO
Jasun,
As an evolved but now devolved Anthroposophist over the last 42 years (maverick to heretic to apostate), I must tell you how close your diagram comes to being AC=Anthroposophically Correct.
The only tweaks that Rudolf Steiner might make for the two lower vertices of your Triangle would be to designate Satan as Ahriman and then the ideology-Christian God as Lucifer.
For ancient times, Steiner validated this statement; CHRIST IS THE TRUE LUCIFER.
In modern times, I come along and say: BUT NOW, AHRIMAN IS THE TRUE CHRIST
I don’t know the Steiner lingo, though judging from Tom’s description, the overlap in the ideas of the piece, where they touch the words and concepts of Christ and Christianity, feel like a fracture-point in aligning the frames with what Lewis was structuring around theologically.
I tend towards reading screwtape as an apophatic outline of Christ and His divinity. Not a veritable duality of the situation leading to truth, rather a demonic privation of repentance to beware of.
Hello Nick,
When you mention CS Lewis and Rudolf Steiner in the same sentence, then I would direct you to contemplate the Great War between CS Lewis and his fellow inkling Owen Barfield over anthroposophy.
I would like to quote Barfield from an article he wrote about his friend Lewis — all about the polarity of things, so quite germane to Jasun’s topic here.
http://www.owenbarfield.org/on-c-s-lewis-and-anthroposophy/
It comes naturally to us to think of many, perhaps most things in a certain mode of thought for which the only possible name appears to be ‘polarity’; that is to say, of opposites which nevertheless interpenetrate each other, of antagonists who are nevertheless co-operating, and so on. That whole mode of thinking was entirely alien to Lewis’s temper. I am not sure that it was even intelligible to him; so that, if you tried to base any argument or description on it, he would assume you were merely bemusing yourself with sentences that had no meaning.
It is inevitable that most of the great questions that have exercised the mind of man should strike differently upon a mind that thinks in that way and upon one that is unwilling or unable to do so: for example, the relation between light and darkness, between good and evil, between spirit and matter, between freedom and necessity, and one must add, I think, between life and death.
Thanks Tom,
I will try and read a bit on that.
Would you say that this gray area Lewis has trouble with has any correlation with the topic of greys?
Yes, it could correlate very well given that the Greys are ETs and ETs are messengers of deception, and therefore they are confronting us with the Liar’s Paradox, which can only be solved — better yet resolved —by transcending the polarity of Belief vs. Disbelief.
Thanks for this installment! The above conclusion is music to my ears because, on the Faceborg groups devoted to Tom DeLonge, TTSA and UFOlogy in general, I am formulating a way to challenge the cultic UFO True Believers to acknowledge and accept the UFO Debunkers as the only way to balance Belief against Disbeliefhus balancing the “see-saw” only when both warring tribes make peace together.
Actually, I would like to Beta-Test it with you here, since the results from the UFO crowd would correlate strongly with the regular conspiracy crowd. A lot of overlap!
I first call upon the insight of Jacques Vallée that whoever these ETs are, they are all “messengers of deception.” That means the ETs are forcing us earthlings to confront the Liar’s Paradox.
I imagine a public gathering , an Aliencon, say, where an actual ET is going to appear and Annoncen himself.
He says to the audience: “According to Jacques Vallée, ‘all ETs are liars’. But I am an ET. Do you believe me or not?”
Two groups emerge. The first takes the ET at face value and believes he is an ET. They form the cult of True Believers.
The second group logically concludes that if he really is an ET, then he is lying, and therefore he is just some silly earthling guy, like David Wilcock, making grandiose and untrue claims. So they become the group of Disbelievers who are constantly naysaying and debunking the first group.
But the Disbelievers fail to push their position to the next logical step, which is that, if this guy is *NOT* an ET, then he might be telling the truth, in which case, he really *IS* an ET. And if he really is an ET, then he deserves belief like the first group gives him.
And so it toggles back and forth, or goes round and round because we encounter here an “undecidable proposition.”
But my point is that the undecidability (read: ambiguity, uncertainty) is so untenable and intolerable to us humans, that we *DO* decide the proposition. We choose a side. So, some of us decide to be True believers in ETS and UFOs while others decide to become True Disbelievers.
The takeaway is that in order to hold one side or the other, you must keep yourself from going to the next logical step, which is accepting that the opposite side has equal validity. Believers fail to acknowledge that the ET is lying, while the Disbelievers fail to acknowledge that he might be telling the Truth.
Rather than live with the uncertainly, each side must then demonize the other side so that going to the next logical step becomes taboo.
And that mutual demonization is also evidence of psychological collusion (not to mention enmeshment and co-dependence) whereby each side needs the other side to be a good enemy.
The true Believer (unconsciously) says to the Debunker: “Hey I need you to be the best debunker, naysayer, mocker, arch-skeptic of me and my tribe” while the Disbeliever (unconsciously) says: “OK, I will trash you unmercifully so that you belief is strengthened, in which case, I will online you all the more.”
OK, let me stop here before I cross into tl;dr territory.
Must correct the next to last sentence above. It should read:
“OK, I will trash you unmercifully so that your belief is strengthened, in which case, I will happily demonize you all the more.”
Yes.
The alternate approach is stay liminal and keep sifting through the narratives and separating the known knowns (def. lies) from the known unknowns
Did you ever discuss the UFO phenomenon with Arthur Young? If so, did he have any useful insights?
Hello Martin,
Yes indeed I had many discussions with Arthur Young about UFOs — but they were exclusive to the Billy Meier material based on the book UFO Contact with the Pleiades that Col. Wendelle Stevens had written and that Donald Keys had lent to Arthur in 1988.
Now even though Arthur had invented the Bell-47 helicopter (just in time for the Korean War, hence the ones you see on M*A*S*H), he was not interested at all in the UFO mechanisms or hardware; rather, his focus was only on the message of the ETs, not their medium!
And he found much in the transcripts of the conversations between Billy Meier and the Pleiadean female named Semjase that confirmed many aspects of his own Theory of Process outlined and developed in his book The Reflexive Universe.
(You’ve inspired me to dig up Arthur’s autobiography called Nested Time where he writes how disappointed he was with the lurid lack of spirituality in Whitley Strieber’s Communion and how deeply spiritual he found the Billy Meir material)
Here is Arthur’s webpage for the book
http://www.arthuryoung.com/aybooks.html#nt
BTW, I consider Arthur Young to be the greatest astrologer in this day and age. More on that another time, though.
That’s fascinating Tom, that someone with such a deep understanding of aeronautics should only be concerned with the message. I find myself preoccupied with the entirety opposite questions:
If there are such machines, what is their mechanism of propulsion? Has human science bifurcated into a secret and public form around this mechanism? Is such a bifurcation possible with so many people working in public science? Would not such a mechanism already be observable in many aspects of nature? Are their indications of this bifurcation that I have experienced?
How can conservation principles in physics be violated, as they apparently must be to account for the erratic motion of UFOs, if these principles are derived from deep symmetries in nature?
What is the relationship between this field and mind control/child sexual abuse? Is it only a cover for this mind control activity or something more nuanced – such as subjects of mind control being used as test subjects in this field?
Is it just a fantasy designed just to waste my time?
from email exchange today:
If social trends and changes closely match long-term goals and agendas that can be traced back in time (as I did with my family and the Fabians, or Strieber), and seen to predate said trends, then either we allow for causality at work, or we have to deduce that the apparent causal agencies (Tavistock etc) are themselves effects of a larger causal agency, along with those social trends. In other words, either there’s a grand conspiracy or there is something much vaster and more complex at work that includes the grand conspiracy as one of its organs of instrumentality. This is sort of like hands on a clock: they certainly don’t create time, or anything, or even cause the clock mechanism to turn; but they are useful – in fact indispensable – to telling what time it is.
My favorite conspiracy writer is also the wildest. James Shelby Downard. I felt his presence in this post. No matter how crazy his theories seemed I couldn’t help but feel he was onto something. Along with Jim Brandon, another who was beginning to unravel the twine of deception wrapped around our necks. When you begin to see just how twisted and Long the threads are and how they all seem to lead back to one puppet master after another, after another, you can only conclude what Charles Fort did. We are the damned. I applaud you Jasun, for working hard and diligently for all these years. Using your paranoid awareness like the fine sense it is. Honing it. I feel you are getting close. Keep your wits about you. Damn fine post by the way.
Fort saw us as property, not necessarily damned because of it (damned was his phrase for rejected data)
What am I getting close to, do you think?
“I think we’re property.
I should say we belong to something:
That once upon a time, this earth was No-Man’s Land, that other worlds explored and colonized here, and fought among themselves for possession, but that now it’s owned by something:
That something owns this earth — all others warned off.”
I think to be owned is to be damned. Have you ever truly felt what it’s like to be a slave? The data that is rejected is the key to allot of this. I’ve spent my life paying close attention to all the things everyone else goes far out of their way to ignore. The human mind is incredible, yet it is also incredibly limited. And many of those limitations are self imposed through aeons of lies we call culture. I’ve been reading your work Jasun because you don’t flinch at pulling back the curtain. Why do you ask what I think you are close to seeing? Let him who has eyes to see, see. Unfortunately our perceptions are another big limitation. We are like a blind man exploring an art gallery and it’s inconceivable what is all around us. Once in a while we get our hands on a piece of something that astonishes us. If we fondle it long enough we might think we know what it is, but the truth is we lack the proper organs of perception. But if the theory of evolution is correct, maybe our desire to perceive will one day create a mutation in our biology that allows us access to this hidden dimension. Until then it’s all guesswork really. But if I had to guess, madness is what you’ll find.
Wouldn’t it depend on what owns us or, perhaps better said, on who is defining “ownership”?
Do I own my cat? Not from my POV or my cat’s, but from other people’s perspective I might.
I would be happy if my life belonged fully to my soul and my soul to God. These are just words, right?
As for what I am getting close to, my question was meant to determine better your POV, not mine. I would hope I am getting closer to The Truth but when it comes to mapping the circles of social hell we have been hurled into by generational trauma, I don’t honestly believe that’s possible, so then I suspect it’s getting closer to some resolve or closure in my own psyche that would allow me to put the whole question to rest.
If I thought “madness” was the answer, I would quit right now, assuming I was able to.
That seems like a lovecaftian & nihilistic position and at odds with anyone finding my “process” healthy, healing, and soul-nourishing, as i know some people feel they do.
I’m afraid my internal possession by the Trickster comes through in my response. I can not answer who “owns” us. Or to what degree said ownership we are at. I can only speculate like any of us. I feel confident though, based on what evidence I have seen, collected, and examined over the course of my life, that whatever it is that “owns” us is NOT benevolent. Does NOT have OUR interests in mind. Look at it this way maybe….98% of all biomass on Earth is humans and cattle. Cattle is 75% of that biomass. WE condemn it to a vicious cycle of death and torture for our benefit. We used to at least give it a decent life up until the slaughter. Now there are people who pay extra for meat that has been tortured intentionally so it died awash in fear hormones. Humans take the cake in the department of evil. The other 2% of biomass on this planet is being exterminated at an unbelievable rate. We have initiated the 6th mass extinction. We are truly a failed species. Our culture, our habits, our bodies and our minds are contaminated and rotten. Does the intelligence that “owns” us want to use us like we use cattle? Does it want to see us go extinct? Does it feast on our souls? Or is it maybe a projection of our diseased souls? I digress. It matters not because soon we will all be gone. Human experiment ended. When I say madness is what you will find, I wasn’t insinuating you were looking for it. But I fear the truth is dark. I see the darkness taking over our realm. Not that we are all evil. But if we don’t fight it, how are we any different? And if you are just looking for some kind of internal release of tension or something you may call psychological “healing”, then I misjudged you. As I thought you were a beacon in this darkness. I can only hope there is a spirit within us that wakes up soon.
I think I have noticed a trend in the world besides the mad rush towards materialism and scientism and it’s expressed here: the belief in demons without the context of faith in God. That’s the second trap which C S Lewis describes above, and one symptomatic error is the promulgation of resisting evil.
those who fight evil, become evil; that’s the condition of human existence
The belief in demons? Who is suggesting demons? Better question might be “define” demons. I suppose I wasn’t clear enough when I pointed out that “evil” is the work of man. There is little evidence of a “God”, little evidence of demons and/or angels either. There IS massive amounts of evidence of “things” flying around our skies that possess technology greater then we are to believe humans currently posses. Those “craft” have been here a long Long time. Certainly they are more then delusions. Certainly they have an agenda. The evidence would seem to indicate it’s not to our benefit. At BEST, they are indifferent to us. I gave the example of humans relationship to cattle as just one analogy. Do with that as you will. More so the only evidence of evil I see is the actions of humans. At this point no one can plead ignorance to the deeds of our species. I could cite encyclopedias of information on just how thourougly corrupt we are. Fortunately karma exists in biology because we will surely go extinct if we continue to live as rotten as we are. Now, please explain how fighting this evil will make us evil? Does not shining a light in dark places elimate the dark? Is not light itself the only destroyer of darkness? The darkness you have cast a light on Jasun, in your work, has it not been to fight it? This darkness is corrupting the entire human race. Religions warned us, now even science warns us. Still no one listens. No one ACTS! And you have the arrogance to claim fighting evil makes you evil!!!??? I’m left speechless. What is the point to what you are doing? If your not helping to shine a light into dark places, to cast out ignorance and corruption, then what are you doing? Who are you serving?
Maybe ask instead who or what your indignation serves? You appear to have made your mind up about a lot of things and to have assumed what you think is the appropriate emotional reaction to them. Does it help open up to deeper understanding or dialogue? Or does it only serve to confirm a sense of self-righteousness?
Shedding light on darkness is very different from attacking or resisting what is revealed in that darkness. The light may “destroy” darkness but it doesn’t do it by fighting; a better analogy would be penetrating, even embracing it.
Can you offer some examples of people or groups who have fought evil and been effective?
I certainly didn’t come here to start arguments or shoot accusations around. Yes I may sound indignant, and yes I probably am. I will respectfully disagree with you about whether or not my emotions are a appropriate response. It serves to motivate. I think the comments to your post are not the best place to have an in depth discussion on the nature of evil or how to fight it. Great idea for a future discussion. I will just say I absolutly believe you can fight evil. What I believe is evil. You fight it with truth, Justice, beauty, kindness, and actions that reflect that. Standing up for the oppressed. Not being apathetic. Making amends for wrong doing. SELFLESS ACTION!! Even though I’m not religious, I’ve read all the religious books. Read the Bible, the Torah. Read the Koran. The Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita. You will find numerous examples of evil being fought and won. Battles mind you, not the war. Light only needs to shine slightly better then 50% of the time to keep the world in balance. I’m angry because the darkness is overtaking us. Humans are becoming apathetic, soft, selfish and living in vain. Anger is the correct response. Lastly, if you want more examples of evil being fought and defeated, pick up a history book. Asking me for examples is ridiculous. Sure, there are nuances, but honestly if you think no battles were ever won against evil then what’s the point?
That would be the same point that you have missed in my collective output, probably from not reading or listening closely enough; there’s no point in my trying to argue for it if the work hasn’t spoken for itself. Maybe start with simple principles of martial art? (As discussed in today’s podcast)
Of course, it could be a semantic difference; but the dichotomy you present of apathy vs. violence is one I reject as a false dichotomy.
Maybe go back to the Upton quote that opens this post and start over.
Let’s start over then. I don’t really ever leave comments on the internet. I have been loosely following your work since your first book. I have never commented I believe until this post. At least with anything to ask, or reason to delve deeper. This post of yours really struck my attention. I read it multiple times. I had lots of thoughts, lots of questions. Instead of just asking you to explain your view better, I assumed some things. Dangerous, yes. I apologize. It struck a nerve in fact. Hence the “tone” of my comments and replys. As someone who had read your work I’m always intrigued with your viewpoint, but notice is is never firm, never succinct, and has changed allot over the years. Nothing wrong with that, but It probably plays a role in my assumptions. Because I found this blog post about Schismogenesis so damn interesting I wanted you to go further to explain some things. You are all over the place in the course of the article. There is some deep and heady concepts one has to be acquainted with. Bateson’s work for example.
You say you don’t KNOW if there is a unified conspiracy, but then go on to say you don’t really care to find out. Yet these are topics you go on about extensively in your writings. Are you doing it merely for “shadow integration”? If anyone still thinks there might seriously be a grand unified conspiracy I implore you to answer who? Humans are too stupid. Conspiracies sure, they happen every day. Rich people trying to make the world go their way, absolutely. Even 20 people smart enough to strategically manipulate society for years and years and years, to bring about the dehumanization of us all. Preposterous. The level of intelligence to achieve something like what most unified conspiracy theorists speculate is lacking among humans. Also the level of long term gratification programming. Humans don’t posses it to that level. You are giving humans WAY too much credit. Technology dehumaizes. Capitalism dehumanizes. Sure our government does despicable things. They like to keep us in check. Lots of programs for that, lots of systems to keep the pitchforks and nooses in the closet. Once you understand how quickly society crumbles and chaos reigns if order is broken down you can easily see why the powerful elites want us kept docile. But hundreds of interests are constantly acting for and against one another. So then WHO is acting out the Schismogenesis? And why? And isn’t it in our best interests to halt this? To keep it under control? If the Fabian society was/is so powerful and they built this entire system to dehumanize us, why? We are all humans. (Unless they aren’t)
Now Bateson. You mention something about “doubling down” I am guessing you mean his Double Bind Theory. It seems to me that You are the one creating this condition. In yourself. Is that what you are saying here? Or that authorities are? Or that its just erupting from out of nowhere when two cultures come together? I don’t think there is much evidence to support that happening spontaneosly. If so, would love to see some examples. My understanding is that these dichotomies are put there by someone. Sometimes unwittingly. Like many things humans do. One thing Bateson talked about is that evolution is driven by the double bind, whenever circumstances change: If any environment becomes toxic to any species, that species will die out unless it transforms into another species, in which case, the species becomes extinct anyway. I think this is more what should be talked about. Because unifying conspiracy or not, we are headed in this direction. Our environment is going to become unlivable to us as a species. Our sub-rational mind looks for someone to blame. Or navel gazes. Or outright buries its head in the sand. Our conscious rational mind has to see what’s coming. Mine does. You want to talk about cold hard facts and living within a dialogue with the other. Who is the other? Lets start this dialogue. That’s all I was trying to do. I am absolutely against violence to solve problems. I am all for dialogue and getting a conversation started. That’s my only intent here. I have assumed your readers are more intelligent than the vast majority of the internet. At least possessing the “right” mind to enter into such divergent places and wide ranging topics of discussion. And I admit, my previous comments were all over the place, as my thoughts were racing and I should have not respoded so quickly. I believe some of our differences were semantic. My biggest concern of all here, is your view of apatheia. Or Upton’s I guess. Or his exact or your exact definition. If you, Upton means the Stoics definition, then I may have to argue against it. To live unfazed, or unpassionate is to not live at all. But its a loaded word. I agree to some extant its best to try and live composed and calm psychologically. But to try and achieve an mind that is undisturbable seems an issue to me. Feeling disturbed is our first line of defense against danger. I’m seeing massive danger signs ahead, and too much of humanity is “not to be bothered”. So, how can this help?
Let’s start over then.
Good idea.
I have been loosely following your work since your first book.
Since Blood Poets? That would be very remarkable, if so.
You say you don’t KNOW if there is a unified conspiracy, but then go on to say you don’t really care to find out.
For something to be desirable it must first be seen as possible. I don’t think this is possible and I think there are multiple reasons for it, the main one being that the whole framework we’re using, of agency, individuality, causality, is wrong. I discussed this in my last online meet, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9knHkZMq_8
Yet these are topics you go on about extensively in your writings. Are you doing it merely for “shadow integration”?
Yes, but a phrase like “shadow integration” is similar to, even equivalent to, a phrase like soul-salvation; it conceptualizes something that’s beyond ordinary rational understanding, and it points to something that, if real, would by definition be the sine qua non of human endeavor. I’m a little surprised, since you cite all those spiritual texts, that you seem ignorant of the spiritual principle that all perceived evil in the world is sourced in our own ignorance or blindness. This is why fighting or even resisting evil is always futile and counterproductive, in psycho-spiritual terms, tho it can be seemingly effective, for a time at least, at a material-social level.
The level of intelligence to achieve something like what most unified conspiracy theorists speculate is lacking among humans. Also the level of long term gratification programming. Humans don’t posses it to that level. You are giving humans WAY too much credit.
This seems like a bit of a non-argument to me, or a circular one anyway. & it’s not really referring to any of my points, so I’ll just say that, for me, the evidence that humans can conspire, for decades, if not centuries, secretly or otherwise, criminally or not, with an astonishing degree of success, is everywhere I look, from the CIA to organized crime, to capitalism to Hollywood to the space program. The idea that humans are stupid is contradicted by all this evidence, IMO, unless you mean it in the sense of spiritually blind and self-destructive, in which case I would agree. The best-laid plans…
So then WHO is acting out the Schismogenesis? And why? And isn’t it in our best interests to halt this? To keep it under control?
I thought you just dismissed the notion as preposterous, so why do you want to stop it? The answer to our question, IMO, is that we are. And the only way to stop one’s behaviors is to see them and own up to them. Seeing them in the world is the best way to see them in ourselves, because unconscious behaviors can’t be identified directly, only by inductive reasoning. (I hope I am using that term correctly.)
It seems to me that You are the one creating this condition. In yourself. Is that what you are saying here? Or that authorities are?
Both/and, not either/or. Think of a pathogen that enters the system and then turns the system against itself. Is the problem inside us our outside? Or is it both?
You want to talk about cold hard facts and living within a dialogue with the other. Who is the other? Lets start this dialogue.
Isn’t that what we are doing?
I am absolutely against violence to solve problems.
Then we can agree; how is fighting evil not violence? Are you positing some new sort of nonviolent combat method?
To live unfazed, or unpassionate is to not live at all. But its a loaded word. I agree to some extant its best to try and live composed and calm psychologically. But to try and achieve an mind that is undisturbable seems an issue to me. Feeling disturbed is our first line of defense against danger.
It is to do with non-reactivity, turning the other cheek. Girard describes at length why this is essential to the survival of human community if we are to ever move beyond the “violence of the sacred” of scapegoating the other, i.e., fighting “evil” in order to maintain the social “good.”
There is something beyond mere physical or social survival. That’s the higher road not taken, the narrow way, the straight gate.
If you haven’t yet, I suggest you read my parallel series about working in the thrift store, esp. the most recent one; it’s possible you are assuming things about my practical application of these principles that is just that, assumption. I am not prescribing the feigning of a Buddha-like placidity in the face of pressures and trespasses of the world, since that almost invariably requires a suppression of emotion. Resisting a supposed “evil” within us (anger, hatred, condemnation) to not resit it outside of us obviously isn’t going to work.
To be honest, IMO the problem begins with the concept of evil itself, which is a metaphysical one. As I said before, if you are going to posit demons, then first establish the correct context, which is God-the-divine. The same applies with evil. Either it is a demonic force within existence, or it’s just what we call stuff we don’t like about the world in order to feel better about ourselves.
He who is without sin… (etc)
Thanks for the reply. So to be more precise, I started reading your work as Aeolus Kephas. I haven’t read allot of your material on movies, because I just don’t really care about other people’s opinions or critiques of movies, or art in general. I don’t need or want other people suggesting how I should think or feel about art. I like to read people’s insight into life, or witness it through art. I like to see imagination manifested. You suggest that spiritual texts are rather clear in the fruitless endeavor of fighting evil. Or that evil is just sourced in our own ignorance. Which is fair. It may be. But many if not most traditions, from Hebrew, to Christianity, to Buddhism, point out the existence of demons. Buddhist texts are very descriptive of all the demons and how to avoid them. Christ went around casting demons out of people. In fact, almost every religion and shamanic practice in the world that I’m familiar with believes in actual demons. How YOU want to define demons, is your game. But I think its foolish at best to disbelieve, and arrogant to say the correct context is God-the-Divine. Which God? What is Divine? These Demons are not from us. They are not just our shadow side, or a psychological construct. But I’m not sure what they are. I’m not saying they ARE this or that. Can they be fought? I believe so. There are myriad of ways. None of which have to include physical violence. Spiritual warfare tactics are a topic for a different discussion. The first step I’m sure you are aware of is self-mastery. That starts with self awareness. The door into ourselves for “demons” is through our own self deception. Step one to self mastery is self honesty. Maintaining integrity. Once we can control our SELF, only then can we fight any evil OUT THERE. But the more light we can shine out into the darkness, the less shadows, or Demons and lurk. Shining light is easy. We can all do it. Spreading truth, and calling out the lies. Don’t let the bullshit fester. Now, as for the unified conspiracy….again, I will repeat that you give humans too much credit. The examples you give where conspiracies exist are not unified. CIA, Hollywood, organized crime, are all internal conspiracies that yes, happen all the time. The most prosecuted crime in the United States is Conspiracy. But that is way different then saying there is a small cabal of men siting around plotting the next 100 years of the country, or even suggesting that there is a group of again, men, deciding exactly how to design and program our entire culture by infiltrating every artist, musician, film maker, and writer. Because then, you too are a part of the conspiracy. No one is free of it. In fact one could look at your background, your family, and piece together enough “connections” that point to you being an agent of manipulation. If there is an underlying pattern in our culture, and I DO think there is, its not possibly in the design of men. We are all just actors. Some just get their lines ahead of time, while most of us are just extras. Or better yet, maybe we are just characters in a game. But the level of genius that is needed to write and direct this illusion, is unheard of in humans. Call it the cliche Matrix, if you will. Then when you say the way to stop it is to see ones behaviors and own up to them, that is the truth. Back to self awareness, and self mastery. But unconscious behaviors CAN be identified. Pattern recognition is part of the art of paranoid awareness. One can train oneself to literally see the building blocks of the “crucial fictions” getting assembled. Train yourself to tear them down. Further on you mention another basic human truth. To live together we must work together. Not fight one another. Not scapegoating the other. I’m all about the straight gate, and the narrow way. And I have read your other series about your run ins at the thrift store. This is the universal current manifesting in your life now. That thrift store can and will teach you self mastery if you let it. I truly appreciate the responses and the conversation. I think we agree on more than we disagree.
I just want to also clarify, this word “demon” is too loaded. I don’t like it. I just wanted it known that they have always been believed in by cultures around the world. Now a days, maybe they are a malignancy of our mind. But that too deosn’t do it justice. That which we ignore, we project? Possibly. But I really think there is an intelligence, not of our mind, or creation, that may be from another world, or dimension, that fucks with us. For purposes we don’t and may never know. On a recent podcast (one of the best you have been a guest on) you Jasun, said you wanted to “stand naked in the face of reality”. I share that sentiment. What if the truth, as laid out in the book “Unmasking the Enemy”, is that the “reality” behind the ufo phenomenon-“ is due to a manifestion of non-human preternatural consciousness-for the purpose of deception-that can interact with our physical environment and with our human consciousness to produce visual, physical, and psychological effects. The artificial construct created by this consciousness mimics our three-dimensional objects and systems and even our religous imagery-the purpose being to slowly condition our minds through subtle deception to accept a false belief, while undermining our rational thought processes and our human spirit.”
I’ve been working on some material for a musical project and I’m going through some fairly tense shadow material at the moment. I hatched this concept/image/theme called “split the moon” which bears no relation to the Islamic story but I couched it more of an anima/animus, yin/yang formation. “Dark paths that split the moon” – one of the lyrics. It touches upon the “satanic” aspect of the libido, libidinous activity that leads to ruin. The moon arises in darkness, splitting it places a traumatic wound upon the soul (or self). The bladed that splits is a double edged sword – as the blade reveals on one hand, passion, excitement, thrill and risk while on the other it reveals, danger, dread, regret, shame etc.
My research has lead me to read about the symptom of hyper-sexuality on sufferers of bipolar disorder – affecting around 60% of those with bipolar. With a mixture of bipolar mania, alcohol and other substances, natural libido and the polarity of social hope/anxiety and the need for attention, at a certain point the self-control switch flicks off and individuals engage themselves in high-risk and desperate sexual behaviours which at the time (often incredibly drunk/ under the influence) they feel they want and enjoy but the next day may often regret. But the polarity returns them from depression back to mania and with self-medication through alcohol the cycle begins again.
After 30 years of an adult sexual life I am just about ready to pack it in and head for the monastery. I am emotionally exhausted and I see no way out of the field of eros – it is a total mindfuck with no clear objective in sight. Certainly as it comes to realising our connection with source I can’t see anyway that playing in the erotic field is going to bring us closer to that goal, rather it will distract us particularly if we are filtering eros through the messaging from culture.
Our culture is dominated by an out of control focus on the erotic and the attention and discussion in the mainstream is only amplifying the noise. Women in particular are stepping up more to talk about female sexual drive, desire and pleasure – see Esther Perel, Keeley Olivia to name a couple. This material is wise and well-needed but there is a distinct lack of talk about self/soul with a capital S, so I wonder where it will go without that foundational orientation to interpret and contextualise these experiences. Our culture is focused on Eros without Soul and that is a highly potent situation.
My number one piece of advice for a young person today would be “discover your own inner integrity” before anything else. Make that your mast and know it well.
As C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters has it: “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and un-healthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”
–For those who might wish to exercise an agnostic caution about, say, pizzagate, Mr. Lewis’ words are well founded. There is smoke, there is fire, but neither the magician nor the materialist can be trusted on this matter.
The International children’s charity Ark and Jeffrey Epstein:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/50295603@N02/51826653197/in/dateposted-public/
Take note that the Epstein funded Josha Bach plagairised Jacques Aviles work on schismogenesis and the feedback loop: https://thebridgelifeinthemix.info/australia/pandemic-pseudo-science-born-hands-jeffrey-epstein/