Perfect Timing

Icons of the Synthetic

"We have to stop CONSUMING our culture. We have to CREATE culture. Don't watch TV. Don't read magazines. Don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time - where you are now - is the most important sector in your universe. And if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered. You're giving it all away to icons. Icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y... This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion. What is real is you, and your friends, and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told, --NO! You're unimportant, you're peripheral - get a degree, get a job, get a this, get that - and then you're a player. 

You don't even want to play that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world." - Terence Mckenna, from "Eros and the Eschaton"

I Wonder What This Is About?

Follow That Tribe

The great Cherokee Chief, Two Eagles, was asked by a white government official:

You have observed the white man for 90 years. You have seen his wars and his technological advances. You have seen his progress and the damage he has done. 

The Chief nodded in agreement. The official continued:

Considering all of these events, in your opinion - where did white man go wrong?

The Chief stared at the government official and replied:

When white man find land, Indians running it. 
No taxes. 
No debt. 
Plenty of buffalo. 
Plenty of beaver. 
Clean water. 
Women did all the work. 
Medicine man, free. 
Indian man spent all day hunting and fishing and all night having sex.

The wise Chief leaned back and smiled:

Only white man dumb enough to think he could improve a system like that. 

Machine Matters

Leaps of Faith and Logic

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio..."

"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear-headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to the vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter." - Max Planck, Nobel Prize winner and founder of Quantum Theory

Illusions

Choices

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves." - Henry David Thoreau

Hmmm

Wisdom Transcends Life

"You may be 38 years-old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, for some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid... You refuse to do it because you want to live longer... You're afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose popularity, or you're afraid that someone will stab you or shoot you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand. 

Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you're just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of the earlier death of the spirit." - Martin Luther King Jr. 

Slogans for the Dead

Our existence on planet earth is a momentary flash of light in the enveloping abyss of an infinite mystery.

In the face of cosmological time – an  estimated 14 billion years since the universe began – a 70-year lifespan is but a speck of dust billowing in the crosswinds of eternity. The fact that you or I are even here at all owes itself to an infinite number of variables and conditions. To alter any one of these could literally erase us from existence.

It’s sad to consider how so many take this gift, this momentary sensory experience, this brief expression of conscious awareness, and allow it to be subjugated by systems, schemes, and dogma.

For those who spend their lives servicing empty institutions and for those who spend their spare time wading through the “apps” and icons of our fetid culture – mental obedience and subjugation are sadly the most comfortable of fits.

If it were called something trendy like “e-slave” and the proper celebrity endorsement were secured, Beyonce perhaps, many of the enraptured masses would pay for the lash and shackles themselves.

Our very culture has become the greatest barrier to individual awareness and enlightenment. The monuments of our ingenuity and tradition have become alters of sacrifice – offerings to the demiurge of distraction, decadence, and conformity.

We have become infected by the Cult of Personality and actually call our bureaucrats “rock stars” and “cowboys” and “mavericks”. We actually believe the Madison Avenue spin, the contrived photo ops, the tele-prompter-reading “reporters” and politicians selling the illusion like Vegas con men.  We continue to allow the least enlightened and the least visionary to sit in positions of power as we passively bear witness to the systematic advancement of authoritarian control.

An occasional Tea Party or Occupy movement aside, there is very little indication of resistance. You can hardly hear the rumbling beneath the den of iPods and Plasma television sets.

Why? 

Distraction certainly plays a role. But I think that there’s something much deeper and more primal being used to direct the actions of the enculturated: 

Fear

Sadly, it seems to be the driving force and most necessary variable in shaping this complex topography of ritual self-destruction. Those who seek to rule and dominate have long understood the power of fear in coercing the opinions and actions of the masses.  

Whether the crisis be real or manufactured, it is certainly never wasted.  

A cursory glimpse at the American landscape today reveals a clutter of surveillance cameras, threat fusion centers, TSA checkpoints, terror alert levels, manufactured crises, paramilitary police, riot gear, tear gas, tasers, chem trails, GMO foods, fluoridated water, BPA, tainted vaccines, endless warfare, propaganda, corporate corruption, government waste, financial collapse, derivative schemes, covert operations, ever-expanding prison populations, assassinations and kill-lists, suspicious “suicides”, enemy combatants, rendition – a literal hellscape, a soulless pathological playground of regression and repression – and fear.

A state of fear traps consciousness within the primal aspects of our reptilian hardware – our base cognitive core born of animal instincts and survival. This hardware can only sustain the lowest level of awareness.

Manifesting in denial, we seek escapism and distraction, routine and ritual, hierarchies and rulers, order and authority.

As goes the famous Litany:

“Fear is the little death that brings TOTAL obliteration”- FRANK HERBERT, DUNE

And unfortunately, fear shapes the landscape of today’s culture. It obliterates that spark of divine light and transforms life into a faint flicker of ritual, repetition, and redundancy – then the void.

The landscape of fear bends toward the point of ultimate density like a spiraling black hole collapses into its singularity. The level of fear when confronting the endless unknown is inversely proportional to awareness.  As such,  the only way to combat this form of manipulation is through individual awareness and awakening – the basis of true spirituality.

From the moveable type of Gutenberg’s imagination was born an entire revolution of awareness. The ripples of that single moment of invention radiate outward from the Renaissance and Reformation through the Age of Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution. By making print ubiquitous, the common man was granted access to knowledge never before imagined.  

Culture generated by the grass-roots can bypass the institutions and monuments of control much as the pervasive jungle swallows the pyramids and cities of the Aztec.

The revolution is ultimately a reclamation. A return to awareness and reality.

In this age of technology and connectivity, we can either be enslaved by the cultural monuments of distraction and celebrity or we can go around them and create new culture.

The individual moving towards enlightenment, maturity, wisdom necessarily seeks a life free of constraint. A life based in liberty. A self-directed form of existence.

The unaware, the uninformed, the ignorant, and the slothful – these fall victim to the manufactured lies of the state and believe only the shadows upon the walls.

The age of the internet has the potential to usher in a new revolution of awareness as monumental as Gutenberg’s machine. Though the oligarchs seek to inundate this technological marvel with mindless distraction and celebrity narcissism, many have begun the historical process of awakening.  Soon the “shams and delusions” of modern culture will dissolve along with the framework of lies upon which the scenery is arranged.

Dissent is the byproduct of the creative consciousness – born of awareness and enslaved by none. AWAKE. ALIVE. EMPOWERED.   

“…You don’t have to stick a flower in your hair and go to San Francisco. You just go to the Web. Find the others. We all need to create affinity groups which are subsets of the much larger community that we are part of. And then, using this technology, which was designed to keep track of us, to pick our pockets, and to sell us junk we don’t want, use this technology to produce art, massive amounts of subversive art. And all art is subversive… All truth that springs from the individual is subversive...” –Terence Mckenna, 1996

The culture of rebellion is the culture of creativity.

Any time we control and direct our own attention toward the fulfillment of our own unique and personal inner-convictions, we are engaged in the creative process. As such, one’s own life becomes the work of art.  It is necessarily subversive to modes of control and manipulation.

We cannot solve the many problems of the world, but we can work to free our consciousness from the dungeons of ignorance and the unexamined life.

A new Age of Enlightenment begins and ends with the enlightenment and awareness of the individual.

So go meditate! Paint a picture! Plant a garden! Write a book! Build a cabinet! Compose a song! Direct a documentary! Choreograph a Dance! Bring forth from the imagination! Bypass the system! Turn off the TV! Begin anew!

The time is now.

Nervous Energy

(Pencil on canvas 16"X20")

"...To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet..." - T.S. Eliot 

Write A Brief Summary

The modern system of American education was established for the purposes of homogeny and standardization. It is a system conceived in the sin of aristocratic lore - the underlying idea that the masses must be managed, controlled, subordinated. Despite the sincerest efforts of meaningful professionals and educators, they are confined within a system that scorns innovation and rewards conformity.


With the advent of standardized testing, this condition has worsened to the point of critical mass. Creativity of thought has been replaced by the mental management of sanitized bits of information. Abstraction of thought has been replaced by linear and contained processes which limit the ability to make insightful connections across disciplines. 


Random dots. Zero pattern recognition.


Because the teenage years are characterized by the overt dominance of the pleasure-principle, the easy homogenization of modern education is perfectly suited for a generation of people who have had everything pre-imagined for them. 


From 3D-Imax-seat-rumbling-hi-tech-special-effects-driven-cinema (which can even make redundant, unimaginative plot lines bearable), to total-immersion-graphics-enhanced-high-powered-intuitive-interactive gaming systems, to the inherently narcissistic Facebook/Twitter/social networking cites which gobble-up the limited attention of a drama-prone teen, to High Def television and high-speed smart phones which have replaced actual interaction with virtual interaction - we can see Aldous Huxley's distraction-based society come into being. We are living in the Brave New World of centralized social management and control. Soma is our everywhere.


The institutional inclination of modern public schools is to take the inherent hallmarks of youth (curiosity, creativity, authenticity, imagination) and remove them from the equation. A nation of critical and independent thinkers is antithetical to the pre-ordained paradigm envisioned by the global elite and the hidden oligarchy financing this unsettling reality.


The only solution is a complete systemic change.


****


Today I learned to respond to bells, sit in rows, be still, memorize bits of data, and not question the methodology of the state agent charged with my mental development nor the design of the standardized curriculum. 


Because my brain has been rewired by highly interactive video games and other facets of modern technology, I am easily bored by lecture and classical modes of instruction. This boredom manifests in a variety of ways and can often be medicated into submission. Regardless, I would much rather update my Facebook profile while texting my girlfriend and playing Temple Run on my iPhone than listen to one of my classmates struggle to read aloud.  


Sadly, my culture has made me the ultimate materialist and the empty pursuit of shiny objects and meaningless celebrity is my greatest ambition. In reality, my level of intellectual development (which has been vigorously restrained) has prepared me for the life of cubicles and taxes and repetition and drudgery. But I'll never notice. 


And I will still update my Facebook daily.   


****

Above is the first part in a rather extensive interview with John Taylor Gatto. The actual interview begins around the 17 minute mark (there is an overly lengthy intro by the interviewer). The entire series covers a variety of topics. You can read his amazingly thorough and eye-opening book, Underground History of American Education, here. Highly recommended. 

Until we do something about the way in which the young of our nation are being educated, the future is truly lost.  

Making A Rabbit Hole

After the death of the Dalai Lama, the process of seeking his new incarnation begins. A young “candidate” is presented with several objects. Some are favorites of the previous incarnation, while others are randomly selected. If the candidate is attracted to the items cherished by the previous incarnation, he is Dalai Lama.

Currently, we are living with the fourteenth incarnation.

Regardless of one’s religious alignment, the implicit idea in this approach is that the human soul has natural compulsions – specific tendencies inherent to the design. We are drawn to certain realities like the tides are drawn by the pull of the moon.

An artist picks up a pencil for the first time and sketches a bird. From that moment on, the trajectory of his or her life bends to the weight of that compulsion. Various compulsions have various densities and thus various gravities.

For me, the ultimate-density compulsion is the esoteric realm. From UFOs to Martian ruins to ancient astronauts to occult societies to advanced technology… a thousand steps leading through the grassy knoll of paranoia or revelation or both.

Many consider these topics the natural habitat of the insane. Yet in all actuality, any abstract examination of human activity is the very stuff of insanity.

What’s Happening Now?

Right now, I am typing into a complex software application specifically designed to be compatible with the intricate design of my iMac while interfacing with a worldwide network of signals. Insane, right?

I am also streaming a live radio broadcast that is represented by a small “window” in the top right-hand corner of my monitor. With ninety-something pixels per square inch, this window occupies about nine hundred or so.

My LCD monitor is made by pressing two specially treated, polarized planes of glass together. Sandwiched between them is a liquid crystal material that responds to an electrical current and allows different wavelengths of light through to varying degrees across the plane. Absolutely insane.

As the man on the radio rants about the globalist banking cartel, I recognize that this is all being transmitted across fiber optic cables – voices transformed into signals at one end are received and converted back into voices at the other end.

This is to say nothing about the very molecules and atoms holding all this together. Atoms – which pop in and out of existence – which exist as both particle and wave – which exist in a superposition of potential manifestation – are currently holding me up while I type onto a very solid keyboard and stare into a seemingly solid monitor.

Reality is insane.

How insane is it then to investigate the reality of topics considered taboo by the so-called “mainstream” media?

Given the absolutely insane nature of the media monstrosity - given the rigid insanity of scientific dogma - given the insane nature of politics and political involvement in the scientific endeavor - given the verifiable insanity of clandestine groups like the CIA and NSA (groups that function as the organ of paranoia for the state) - given the insane secrecy of the "military industrial complex" and its use of classified technologies for the purpose of spreading death - given the endless stream of lies and disinformation that continuously flows from national security institutions – how likely is it that topics ridiculed by each of these authoritarian entities may actually be the only things worth examining?

A paranoid conspiracy theorist I am.

For The Sake Of Clarity

Any investigation into the realm of the esoteric reveals a chaotic swirl of ideas, hypotheses, speculation, and conjecture. I am reminded of a quote that I keep coming back to from Alan Moore (writer, "magician", anarchist, cult icon). In discussing his own investigation into the subculture of conspiracy while developing the graphic novel, From Hell, a tale told around the Jack the Ripper murders, he states:

“The truth is that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy, or the grey aliens, or the gold-foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is far more frightening. NOBODY is in control. The world is rudderless.”

Though he discounts conspiracy as the domain of “paranoid fantasists”, I can’t help but appreciate the point that he is making. At least with the so-called “mainstream” there is order. Overt propaganda, yes. Product placement and suggestive advertisement, yes. But to the conscious mind, all of this is rather obvious and plain.

The world of the paranoid fantasist, however... the world of conspiracy and occult secrecy, the world of the greys and reptilians... this is a world in complete disarray.

And while Alan Moore may be right – the underlying chaos of existence may be the ultimate truth of existence – it does not preclude the many layers of truth along the way.

It may be that conspiracy trips over conspiracy in a race for the illusion of control, but the race does indeed exist. It may be a futile effort by bags of carbon and water seeking dominion over a small pixel of a planet on the tattered fringes of a spiraling arm of a ubiquitous galaxy in a universe of billions of galaxies, stars, planets.

But the effort does indeed exist. Futile as it may be.

We plummet into the ultimate black hole of oblivion.

"Alea jacta est." The die is cast.