Statists and Control-Freaks

Power corrupts...

The Cause of Freedom

The amazing Stefan Molyneux creates a compelling argument against the state:

Journalist Chris Hedges Challenges the Police State

This is an amazing and systematic indictment of the emerging tyranny:

Real Sugar Added

PsyOps and Cultural Programming

The following documentary uses the backdrop of the Iraq Wars to demonstrate the powerful propaganda machine at work and how it can be used to shape public perception:




Whistleblower Richard Grove breaks down the history of the Anglo-Eurpean Establishment:

Disturbing

Sometimes you have to wonder about the judgement of others. Then again, not everyone who gets a degree in Marketing graduates at the top of the class. 

I assume we are seeing C- students at work here.

Musings on the Beard I'll Never Know

My wife won't let me have a beard.

All I can get away with is a trimmed mustache/ goatee combination. But what I really want is a beard. Dynamic, moveable, thick, gray, brown, blonde with a smattering of red.

A calico of depth and dimension.

Unfortunately, the pattern of growth that my facial hair follows isn't exactly ideal. It grows all the way down my neck leaving a need to shave and shape the superfluous growth - the sort of metro-grooming that I hate to do. As did Walt Whitman:

My beard-line travels from the sideburns directly across the plane of my face to the mustache region passing just below the cheekbone. Were it allowed to grow wild - no shaping or modifications - the uncontrollable growth would resemble some 19th century revolutionary or text-book communist.

A Viking Berserker or a Gold Coast pirate. Strategically braided or even beaded. The potential to warp the fabric of space and time. The power of the ancients. Primal. Tribal. Timeless.  FREE!.

(Primate. Monkeyman. Sasquatch. Yeti.

Baskets of fruits and honey. The bark of the Yuba. Full-moon magic and the silky midnight.)

Someone once asked me while discussing Henry David Thoreau: How can you trust any man with a neck-beard?

How can you not?

If anything, these times call for such reckless disregard foe the opinions of others!

I could manifest a full mountain-man beard that billows in the wind as proudly as any banner. 

But my wife won't let me have a beard. My single friends might imply that this is an example of my gelding.

That is why they are single. And why I am beardless. 

Oh, Paul - were I capable of such amazing growth, my wife would demand it!  

But, alas. I bear the burden of Jim Morrison's Ewok pattern - which can only demand intervention:

"He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man." - William Shakespeare

Thanks, Bill. 

Emotional Manipulation by Facebook and the Currents of Control

"Twenty years have flowed away down the long river, but never in my life will return to me from the sea. Ah, years - in which looking far away - I saw ages long past when still trees bloomed free in a wide country. Alas, for now all begins to wither in the breath of cold-hearted wizards. To know things, they break them, and their stern lordship they establish through fear of death." - J. R. R. Tolkien, in one of his last public appearances. 


Recently, Facebook allowed a group of researchers to perform a massive psychological experiment on an admitted 700,000 uninformed members of its social network. 

The purpose of the experiment was to utilize specific content in order to alter the emotional states of the users and evaluate the effects. Basically they would monitor how generated negative or positive content would amplify the negative or positive posts of the users throughout the network.

The results of this experiment in "emotional contagion" have since been published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) and can be read here.

As one might expect, there is also a bit of shadiness behind the funding of this particular research. It seems that two of the three cited authors are affiliated with Cornell university whose initial press release regarding the experiment stated that "The study was funded by the James S. McDonnell Foundation and the Army Research Office". However, once this story began to catch fire, the initial release was retracted and the university claimed that there was "no outside funding".

Whatever.

To anyone who has a decent understanding of history, the Pentagon and other agencies of the military-industrial complex have a proud tradition of involvement in an entire assortment of unethical practices visited upon an uninformed populace. From the Tuskegee Syphilis experiments to MK Ultra mind control and countless other amoral violations of the public trust, the record is as clear as it is shocking.

The sorcerers and social engineers who seek to fashion the banners of reality have long employed such experiments as a means to determine the most efficient and effective mechanisms of mass control and manipulation. And though the Facebook experiment does not sink to the same depths of depravity as other examples of clandestine social experimentation, it is emblematic of realities equally sinister and disturbing.

When evaluated on both a physical and metaphysical level, the methodologies and pathologies of those who operate behind the curtains of power can be readily seen by an awakening public.

On a physical level, this is just another example of state preparation for the massive social unrest that will likely follow the implosion of the world economy or some other orchestrated crisis - or perhaps several.

If you have been conscious and awake at all, then you have certainly come to recognize the slow, methodical, and relentless transformation of the US into an authoritarian state. The legal, bureaucratic and technological architecture has been gradually put into place brick by brick over the course of decades.

Just a few off the top:

*The Federal Reserve
*League of Nations
*NATO
*CIA
*DEA
*United Nations
*Agenda 21
*Continuity of Government
*Telecommunications Act
*NAFTA
*Patriot Act
*National Defense Authorization Act
*Homeland Security
*NSA Surveillance 
*Internet "Kill Switch"
*Indefinite Detention
*Collapsing borders

…Not to mention the new militarized police forces equipped with vehicles and weapons straight off the battlefield and aimed at the very citizens who paid for them. Or the fact that every bureaucratic agency of the government is arming itself - and not just Homeland Security, but even agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service. 

No shit. The fucking Weather Service put out a solicitation for 46,000 rounds of hollow-point bullets. Google it.

As the state arms its agents for war, the social engineers and propagandists work to determine how to best use social media and other platforms as a tactical advantage in times of social unrest.

The biggest difference between an Arab Spring and an American Spring is the fact that Americans are armed to the teeth. Once the guys with the guns and water-canons show up, every other nation without a tradition as imperative as the right to bear arms is easily subdued. That is not the case here.

This is why so much time and effort has been spent in distracting and dumbing-down the American public. The fangs of the lion are irrelevant as long as it is sedated, distracted, or otherwise debilitated - lost in a network of propaganda and mass media. 

The Facebook experiment is not the only study of the mind of the masses. It is just another in a countless series of experiments from a thematically similar chapter in the tome of social control.

Paranoid? Perhaps. But to take a brief step back... 

Given what physicist today say about the nature of reality, the material world seems to be best analogized as some form of holographic creation of our collective intent. 

According to modern physics, matter is made up of particles that exist in an abstract ocean of potentiality - called a Quantum Superposition. It is only when measured or observed do particles "collapse the wave function"; that is, they cease to exist in a field of potentials and probabilities (the superposition) and become a "fixed" component of matter. 

As esoteric as it may seem, human consciousness plays a vital role in creating what we call reality. On some deep, metaphysical level, our attention actually fashions the universe we experience. 

The metaphysical benefit to those wishing to forge the sort of dystopian future that is constantly appearing in every form of modern media today is an understanding of the role of consciousness in shaping such a reality. With a profound understanding of the human psyche, the social engineers understand how to mould our intent and can use the powerful instruments of propaganda and mass media to direct our consciousness to a fixed point. A predetermined reality that has little to do with elevating the human spirit. 

Perhaps this seems too "out there". But if it is true that the particles that make up the constituent components of the material world are only fixed when observed or measured, then at the most fundamental level of conscious awareness, reality and the material world actually manifest.  

The limited instrumentation of our five senses cannot perceive the myriad energetic realities that transcend our sensory limitations.  

Of course, this is nothing new to mystics and gurus and spiritualists who have been teaching the same for centuries. But as long as people experience the material world as being separate and outside of the self and believe that this virtual experience is tangible interaction with an entirely separate and external material world, they will allow these forces to shape and govern the direction of their consciousness and intent. 

The Facebook experiment, both physically and metaphysically, speaks to the importance of such intent. Emotions can be very powerful allies but they can just as easily be used against us. It is important to learn to interrupt the stimulus and response circuitry by interjecting individual intention in the direction of individual will. Place your conscious intention before the automatic response. Don't allow your actions to be directed by reflex emotional states. 

At the level of stimulus and response, human beings are merely automatons - predictable biological machinery to be guided by those who hold a greater knowledge as to the nature of reality and the energetic fields beyond five-sense perception. To keep people trapped in this limited paradigm, the machinery of media is constantly promoting messages of fear, violence, and sexuality. These powerful stimuli keep many caught in the primal loop of base automation.  

The "emotional contagion" noted in the experiment is emblematic of both cultural conditioning and spiritual suppression. Self-knowledge, self-control, and directed intention are the only means to experiencing true humanity and the only way to bypass the primate programming. 

This is no easy task, however. It's a lifelong undertaking - the alchemy of our spiritual journey. As difficult as changing tin into gold. 

Our greatest work. 

Oracle at Delphi:

"Heed these words, you who wish to probe the depths of nature: If you do not find within yourself that which you seek, neither will you find it outside. If you ignore the wonders of your own house, how do you expect to find other wonders? In you is hidden the treasure of treasures. Know thyself and you will know the universe and the gods."


Interesting video that speaks to the importance of conscious control of emotional states of being:

In Order to Avoid Bitterness and Paralysis

"Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions... Let us spend our lives in conceiving then." - Henry David Thoreau, Walden

The most formative years of our lives are aligned by the common theme of submission. Or perhaps this is more appropriately stated as a command - SUBMIT. 

And submit we do. 

From the moment we come into this world, we are dependent upon others for survival. We learn early the lessons of power and the fundamental dynamics of control and submission, weakness and strength. 

Most are fortunate in that those who control them also love them and provide for them. But there is no doubt that our first lesson is dependence - and those on whom we depend, our first authorities. 

Despite widely varying degrees of success in parenting, we all bear the imprint of this most fundamental dynamic. Granted, it does not mean that this will dominate the entire trajectory of our lives, but it does have a specific gravity that is different from person to person and contingent upon the level of supplemental exposure to the same power dynamic. The more this dynamic is reinforced through redundant external forces, the more difficult it becomes to evolve beyond a certain point of mental, psychological, and spiritual paralysis. 

Sadly, we have constructed an entire world of institutional surrogates - most a manifestation of our need for parental protection against an entire assortment of scary unknowns. These institutions provide both a physical and metaphysical separation between us and whatever fear awaits. And many live happily within the parameters of this illusion because it bears the hallmarks of material reality - buildings and uniforms and conference rooms and lecture halls and lounges and such. 

Of course, not every institution is inherently evil. However, if judged by the outcomes and byproducts they create, they seem to serve as mechanisms of some form of human destruction or another.

Just witness the outcome of over a century of compulsory education. The stereotypical meme of the dumb American is not without cause. Unfortunately.

We spend twelve years under fluorescent lights, mostly in neat little rows of uncomfortable, germ-infested desks, for eight hours a day - getting an education. During the most vibrant, energetic, and creative years of our lives, we sit and receive instructions and obey rules and learn to conform. The powerful dynamic of submission is reinforced on a daily basis. And an individual's potential is at the least stymied and sometimes demolished altogether by the unnatural conditions of this unnatural creation. 

Compulsory education constructs an artificial extension of childhood. And as college enrollment increases, more and more "adults" spend their first 22 years waiting for life to begin. 

Before compulsory education, these hard realities weighed in and were recognized and had to be managed from an early age. Today it seems we have forgotten that real life experience is the best teacher and offers the most substantial lessons. The only real lesson learned in today's public school is submission.

Of course, religious and governmental institutions are just as culpable when it comes to reinforcing this familiar paradigm. And though submission applies itself on many levels, the most harmful component is that which operates on our capacity for reason. 

Just as many students will dutifully accept the word of the teacher regarding facts and figures, history and science, art and literature, so does the member of the congregation accept the authority of the church, the priest, the holy book (whose history of misinterpretation and abuse is easily disregarded by the believer). So too does the citizen accept the word and authority of the government and its agencies in matters "too complex" for common consumption. 

The individual's intellectual, emotional, and spiritual development is hindered by the constant submission to institutions and their "authorities" and "specialists" and "experts".

The only way to avoid bitterness and paralysis is to create your own cosmology based on  direct experience. Bypass the system and start fresh. If you want to experience God, go into nature, experience the creation itself. 

What do you see? What can you observe? What can you learn about the mind of God? 

Go into yourself, the most complex of creations, and journey within. 

What do you find there? What do you discover? 

How can you take these direct experiences and conceptions and bring them in to material reality? How do you take them from the realm of imagination and make them manifest? What do you learn from this act of creation? What does the evaluation of your own creative process teach you about the mind of the ultimate Creator? 

Here you see direct evidence based upon your own unique, individual experience - without filter or middle-man or agent or institution. Here you compare your direct experiences with others. Here you gain more insight. Here you evolve and progress and develop from the ground up. As do we all. A congregation of individuals exploring the mysteries and complexities of reality. 

But institutions are top-down structures made for the purposes of control and management of the masses. Such has been the case throughout history. The more complex and condensed the population becomes, the more institutions put in place, the less freedom that is enjoyed by those outside the ruling class. 

Death by pyramid.

Avoid the authority of men in robes offering books and tradition and ritual. Beware those in suits and ties. Beware of bureaucrats and teachers. Disregard their structures and their hierarchies and their doctrines.  

With a focus on direct experience and a disregard for those paradigms which have been imposed or borrowed, the habit of submission is broken. All you have to do is treat your own thoughts, ideas, and experiences as sacred. Find ways to manifest these ideas and discoveries into a tangible, material form. Discover the meaning of those famous lines made manifest by the imagination of 19th century poet, Walt Whitman, and used to sell iPads: 

"The powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse."

That is, unless you are reading someone else's lines. 

  

Syria and a Shoe Spanking

"Because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, "Sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you're too busy." He said, "No, no." He says, "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, "We're going to war with Iraq? Why?" He said, "I don't know." He said, "I guess they don't know what else to do." So I said, "Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq." He said, "I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments." And he said, "I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail."

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?" And he said, "Oh, it's worse than that." He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, "I just got this down from upstairs" -- meaning the Secretary of Defense's office -- "today." And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." I said, "Is it classified?" He said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Well, don't show it to me." And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, "You remember that?" He said, "Sir, I didn't show you that memo! I didn't show it to you!"  -- General Wesley Clark




Perhaps this is disinformation, perhaps it's an exaggeration, maybe it's an honest confession. It's hard to say. But it is certainly coming true.

And there is no doubt that Mr. Clark is and was an establishment insider and certainly privy to the inner-workings and behind-the-scenes machinations of the Illuminati elite. To what degree and for what purpose or end - there is plenty of room to speculate. 

Looking at his life, we see a guy who graduated at the top of his class at West Point before becoming a Rhodes Scholar and acquiring a degree in Philosophy and Economics from Oxford. His military career is highlighted by his actions as the head of NATO's Central Command and running the Kosovo operation for Bill Clinton in the late 90's.  

Currently, he sits on the board of BNK Petroleum out of California (shady globalist vampire George Soros is a significant shareholder). If his insights into the workings of the Military-Industrial Complex and the sinister agenda regarding the Middle East are legit, then it makes sense to see him on the board of an oil company. 

From his involvement with the Rhodes Foundation (the Globalist-directed legacy of Cecil Rhodes who sought planetary control for the Anglo establishment) to heading up the Globalist-run and Globalist-conceived NATO, to his current political involvement, Mr. Clark has all of the necessary requirements to serve as an upper-management minion of the New World Order. 

My tendency is to believe that what he said in 2007 is pretty close to true. The idea of the "I don't know why" bit regarding Iraq strikes me as less than accurate. But otherwise, I tend to think that he was telling the truth. If so, then the Globalist march towards governmental, financial, and military control of the planet is behind schedule. 

Perhaps this explains the desperation and urgency to get involved with Syria. The recent reports of chemical weapons use by the Syrian government as a justification to start the bombing is pure desperation - shrouded in lies and disinformation. And everyone knows it.  

The American propaganda machine is being subverted by the internet and people are no longer buying into the bullshit psyops propagated by the cultural engineers in the Pentagon, NSA and CIA. 

"WAR IS A RACKET" wrote Medal of Honor winning general, Smedley Butler. 

A line worth repeating: 

"War is just a racket. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
                                                                                         -Smedley Butler, 1933

So True So True

Borderland Memories

"There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don't come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations because there will be no humanity." - Isaac Asimov

"From space I saw Earth - indescribably beautiful and with the scars of national boundaries gone." -Muhammad Ahmad Faris, astronaut

Now that congress has stepped in to "solve the problem of immigration" - we can all rest assured that matters will get much worse for everyone concerned. Given that the very legislation that is produced is not even read by those responsible for enacting the law,  and given that every measure within the law is obscured by convoluted legalese, questionable data, voodoo actuaries, and hidden agendas - there can be no doubt that the final product will be further away from freedom and closer to global serfdom.

As usual, the crisis of the moment will be solved with the same methodology involved in its creation. 

This is freedom. 

Don't look away. 

******

The word "border" itself was a 14th century Middle English word, derived from the French "bordure", and indicates that which is contained by the outer edges of an escutcheon - the surface on which a coat of arms is depicted. 

Though the tradition of heraldry extends into ancient times, the coat of arms itself serves as an emblem of exclusivity and a likely indication of aristocratic privilege. From here the irony completes itself. 

Borders do not benefit the common man. Borders serve the purposes of systems - governmental, corporate, legal. And these systems have always been dominated by those oligarchs and money-interests whose favorite pathology is power.  

It seems that regardless of the nation identified by a given set of "scars" on a map - those at the top of the symbolic pyramid, those wielding the heralds of their "nation", those influencing and directing the Leviathan of state are the only ones with a real vested interest in the concept of borders, and must be concerned by the tangible shape of their relative power.

Any time I meet someone who was once contained by a border different from my own - I am not surprised to find a deep similarity. After all, people are people. Left to their own devices, in a world without borders and division, I am certain that humanity would flourish beyond measure. Systems of control, on the other hand, would not.  

******

I realize that it's idealistic, but I imagine a truly free society, one without force or coercion exercised by centralized authority of any kind. One available to all of humanity. One that operates on the basis of volunteerism - financial, social, and commercial. One in which the only purpose of government is to ensure the liberty of each individual and to provide an open and fair legal system for the settling of disputes. Anything more concentrated in terms of power would become a danger to the people. At least this is the prevailing lesson of history. 

Henry David Thoreau once stated that government serves to show "how successfully men can be imposed upon, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage."This is just as true today as it was in the 19th century. And it's for this reason that the apparatus of government must be as weak and diluted as possible. Only then can we be assured that those who control the levers of power will have control over nothing of consequence. 

Without the power to impose, there can be no significant gain. The same view must be held when evaluating the concentration of power within the corporate model - a model whose sole purpose and legal obligation is to maximize profit regardless of socially enlightened concerns. But to paraphrase the wisdom of noted economist and defender of free-markets Milton Friedman, the best argument for limited government is that it prevents corporations and money interests - which inevitably take control - from gaining anything of real advantage. 

Without the ability to game the system - because there is no substantial system to game - corporate and financial insiders would be unable to gain unfair advantage over competition through the regulatory power of the state. This would serve to create a new atmosphere in the world of commerce. 

Fair competition is the people's regulator. Governments belong to the likes of Monsanto and Goldman Sachs.   

One might ask, where would we be without national pride? Patriotism? Flags? Social Security? Welfare? Compulsory schooling? Exponential debt? Centralized banking? Corporate domination? Standing armies? Clandestine military operations? The CIA's rendition? The NSA's spy-grid?  Constant warfare? Environmental exploitation? Covert experimentation? Sophisticated forms of propaganda? Bread and circuses? 

....Well, we would certainly be somewhere new - somewhere far removed from the world we see today. 

And whatever problems would arise from such a radically altered reality would be preferable to the problems we face at this critical moment in history. As Thomas Jefferson once stated, "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it." 

Sadly, however, the machinery of the system has supplanted self-reliance.  Unbridled freedom is equated with visions of anarchy and roving bands of lawless marauders, citizens starving in the potholes of unpaved streets, the old being fed to the young, the strong dominating the weak. 

How are we to survive without an enormous and inefficient bureaucracy to offer shelter from the storm of reckless freedom? 

Thus, our fear of freedom empowers systems, institutions, and authority. It enables the illusion. It fortifies the lie. And it transforms us all into servants and slaves. 

In the United States, our rigged, gerrymandered, and digitally questionable elections grant us a new class of royalty every two years - complete with privileges, excesses, and levels of compromise and corruption never imagined by those who sought to establish a government of, by and for the people. An entire class of insiders who sell themselves willingly to the system for gain and who are harvested with enough frequency to provide the electorate with the illusion of choice. 

And now these same people are going to settle the issue of immigration and borders. If anyone thinks that it will get any better for either the immigrant or the common citizen - then may your ignorance grant you bliss and "may your chains set lightly upon you." As for me, I no longer have any faith in our current political reality and have no expectations that any of this will lead to anything less than increased centralized control and the continued sacrifice of liberty.  

******

Perhaps it is mankind's metaphysical purpose to do away with systems of control altogether. To rid ourselves of rulers and restrictions. To find harmony and peace without need for force or coercion. To evolve beyond the need for leaders and rulers.   

Carl Jung once offered this aphorism: Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. 

The answer lies within the journeywork of the individual. Not nations. Not states. Not political parties. Not collectives. Individuals must awaken to their own power. Those who place their faith in the material world are placing their faith in illusions and dreams. The mania of ownership and wealth and power are sorry substitutes for the true alchemy of self-actualization.  

If we are to evolve as a species, then we must no longer comply with systems of control. We must consider human freedom to be incompatible with borders and other phony divisions.  

"...all of the countries and all of the boundaries - all the legislation - all the statutes - and all of the limitations that have been put upon human consciousness are all a construct of human consciousness. We made the whole thing up, folks. It's not real. What's real is life. What's real is us." -Max Igan, 

The ruled are many. The rulers are few. The system is what we allow it to be - if we allow it to be at all. 

Adios, mis amigos. 

Happy Birthday, Uncle Walt (And Sister Stacey)

ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT ALONE

-Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

On the beach at night alone,

As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song, 

As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the

universe and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all,

All spheres, grown, ungrown, small. large, suns, moons, planets,

All distances of place however wide,

All distances of time, inanimate forms,

All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different

worlds, 

All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,

All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,

All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,

All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,

The vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd,

And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them. 

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"