ANTIDOTE 3

The amazing Glenn Gould's interpretation of Bach's "Chromatic Fantasy":




Why not? Ali G:



Just Breathe:



Here's one I made with the help of Animoto.com:

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

The War On Drugs Is A Fraud

Is this sorry state the condition of man -- or is man merely being conditioned?

There is no greater testimony to the power of fear-driven propaganda than the willingness of so many Americans to submit to the so-called "war on drugs". Despite costing countless lives and billions in tax-payer debt, this heinous war continues with no end in sight.

In a 1791 letter, Thomas Jefferson stated: I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

This concept applies readily to the war on drugs: I would rather tend to the problems caused by addicts and addiction than to the absolutely heinous destruction wrought by sadistic and predatory street gangs, foreign paramilitary drug cartels, dangerous underground black markets, urban decay, senseless acts of violence and crime, endless cycles of poverty and oppression -- all manifestations, symptoms, and results of drug prohibition.

Since mankind is incapable of creating a Utopian society, I would much rather live in a Dystopia based upon excessive freedom than in the Orwellian nightmare we see unfolding before us today.

In our society, people can eat handfuls of doctor-prescribed Oxycontin or Adderall; they can ingest massive amounts of caffeine; they can literally drink themselves into fucking oblivion. But they can't take a bong hit? Sniff powder? Inject opium? What's the fucking difference? Where is the logic?

The most significant difference between a joint and a Vicodin is the vested interests of the institutions running the scam.

Pharmaceutical companies have a vested interest in controlling the pills that make us happy. CIA and black ops have a vested interest in secretly funding covert and clandestine operations. The prison industry has a vested interest in a steady influx of drug offenders to harden and institutionalize. The SWAT teams and DEA agents have a vested interest in raiding homes and exercising the force of corrupt law.

This is the tyranny of institutions over men.

Meanwhile, US troops, our own brothers and sisters, are being ordered to guard the opium fields in Afghanistan. It is necessary, they say, that the peasant farmers are able to cultivate the narcotics that end up on the streets of America -- just don't get caught selling, buying, or using the shit or you get to spend time in jail and suffer the consequences of institutionalized hypocrisy. Like our freedoms, you too can be gang-raped in the prison shower.

This is the sort of thing that one finds in countries where the reasonable are overpowered by the sinister. Outgunned. Outmatched. Outplayed.

We have forgotten what a free society looks like. We have forgotten many things.

In a free society, the only time a crime occurs is when one person (or group) violates the liberty and natural rights of another. A coke-head who commits a crime while jacked-up on coke should be punished for the crime. Not for the bag of powder in his sock. A primary reason why there are so few instances of drunk-driving in England -- a land awash in alcohol -- is because of the severity of the punishment associated with the crime. The same principle can be applied to drugs.

We can make it known that crimes committed while under the influence of drugs will be met with medieval justice. But if you just sit at home and shoot heroin into your eyeball -- who cares? What should it matter to society? Other than your loved ones, the rest of us do not even notice the tragedy of your circumstance. We're too busy with our own lives.

There is currently no logic, there is no consistency where our drug policies are concerned -- unless you consider the system from the perspective of those who control it. From that unholy and twisted perspective, the current system makes perfect sense.

What is sinister to a free man is benevolence to the despotic elite.

Seeking our broken submission and enslavement, the sole purpose of the war on drugs is to serve the leviathan of governmental power. It is the life-blood of corruption. Even if you have never inhaled, you become an asset to the bureaucratic network you serve and the criminals you create.

The implements of our own destruction are grown in the fields of far away lands.

The criminal elite use the powers of the CIA and other covert government agencies to maintain and control the trafficking of drugs within the borders of the US. We are living in an elaborately designed conditioning camp. Removing the countless billions of dollars generated by illegal drug trade would go a long way towards crippling the predatory institutions that prey upon the liberties of man.




I admit, I have a hard time even watching the footage of the above raid -- it disgusts me to such a degree that I literally feel sickened. This is what corrupt law and corrupt institutions can do to the mind of man. To condition an otherwise decent human being - a brother, a neighbor, a father - to become the extension and tool of tyranny. An officer of the unlawful.




It is time to end the war on drugs. It's time to break the conditioning. It's time to rediscover the concept of individual liberty -- before it's too late.

"I Love the Money Fires!"

Sometimes it takes a bit of satire:

Money, Banking, and the Federal Reserve

So maybe this documentary has a less-than thrilling production value. But it is an excellent overview of the role that money and banking have played in shaping the history of our once free republic.

This is the fetid core of corruption.


Here is something a bit more modern with a better production value explaining the sinister mechanisms of fractional reserve banking.



part 2

Police State

What the %#@! is Happening in America?

I know that it's hard to accept. I know you don't want this to be real. But it is. And you must.

Every day the noose seems to tighten. Each day we see the eroded monuments of our natural freedom -- we witness the ruin all around us. And we stare into the abyss -- until we become the abyss.

*******

Our beliefs are inexorably bound to our identities. Our moral code, our philosophical perspectives -- these are woven into the very fabric of who we are. We celebrate these virtues; we share them and solidify them within the social context. We forge our identities through the foundry of conversation and debate. We test the mettle of our beliefs, shape them, refine them... but seldom do we give them up.

Yet many times, we must.

Even in the face of overwhelming evidence, a deeply held belief is difficult to diminish.

*******

The term Cognitive Dissonance is used in psychology to describe the inherent tension that exists when an individual tries to hold two contradictory beliefs in his or her mind at the same time.

--If a person believes that he or she is good and decent but steals money from a relative, he or she will likely experience a form of cognitive dissonance. Sociopaths are common exceptions. As are politicians.

Dissonance increases in intensity the more profound a given subject is to an individual. A scientist, for example, who discovers "anomalies" contradicting conclusions held through years of academic blood, sweat, and tears will not easily relent -- just witness the crumbling evidence regarding the entire man-made global warming scandal. Al Gore must have literally crapped a carbon credit when the little scheme know as climategate lit up the Internet (despite a mainstream news blackout).

For the scientists at the IPCC, it was quite natural to disregard the medieval warm period in perpetuating and promoting a previously held belief. Many other statistical "anomalies" were also easily disregarded. In truth, we should expect nothing less. People have objectives. People have bias. People have perspectives. People have agendas.

*******

I love philosophy and theory. I always have. Especially as applied to politics.

-- I began as a democrat (long before I had to pay taxes), became a republican (G. Gordon Liddy used to talk to me while I would search for a parking place near campus), mutated into a libertarian (I rediscovered Ayn Rand and started to obsess on political theory), transformed into a neo-con after 9/11, then mutated back into an extreme libertarian a few years ago. Each time, various degrees of cognitive dissonance had to be overcome. Now I might have a knack for it. Perhaps it's time that you join me, if you haven't already beat me to it.

In Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous essay,"Self Reliance", he spends a good deal of time negotiating this psychological phenomenon (mind you, over one hundred years before Leon Festinger codified and developed the idea into a theory):

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you speak now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today. -- 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misundestood.' Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."

Emerson argues that an important part of human growth is a willingness to shed the skin of yesterday. We must be willing to accept new realities for what they are and not condemn them to obscurity through the foggy lens of "foolish" consistencies. This means overcoming the cognitive dissonance associated with shifting positions and giving ground.

I think that most Americans are willing to admit that there was some level of deception on the part of the government concerning the tragic events of 9-11. Even several of the actual commissioners who sat on the 9-11 Commission have acknowledged that the government narrative regarding the events of that day is erroneous at best, deceptive at worst. Of course, this is just scratching the surface. There are so many anomalies and inconsistencies regarding the events of 9-11 that anyone with a willingness to investigate just a little will come away realizing that agencies within the government must have been complicit. This is difficult to say, and difficult to believe. Tremendous dissonance. But the truth is truth.

The vision of our free and great republic has been replaced by a gradual yet familiar tyranny. The incremental erosion of our freedoms leading up to 9-11 has only been amplified since.

It has served as the excuse for endless warfare abroad and overt assaults on personal liberty at home. The militarization of the police. The Orwellian surveillance grid. Body scanners and sound cannons. "Free speech zones" and "unlawful assemblies". The death of posse comitatus. Check points and blood samples. The list goes on and on and on.

Somewhere along the line, there was a quiet coup that struck at the foundations of our governmental systems. The shadow government that Eisenhower warned us about has ASSUMED CONTROL.

I know that it is hard to accept. I know that you don't want this to be real. But it is. And you must.

Divided By A Common Language

Today is April 15th. The most disturbing day of the year.

My colleague at work, call her Jane, is British by birth and is still British by citizenship. She has been living here since the 70's, so I often kid her about being a Yankee by default. She is highly intelligent, well-traveled, and well-educated. We see eye-to-eye on a variety of issues. We are both lovers of literature, the great Romantic tradition, and have had some lively conversations about art, poetry, philosophy, and even politics. It is in the latter, however, that our perspectives begin to diverge.

When I told her that I was thinking about going to protest the government today, she seemed a bit surprised. She truly believes that the "tea party" movement is dominated by racists and narrow-minded white men clinging to their guns and their religion. While I could not disagree with her more, she did get me to thinking about what the tea party has become.

The tea parties began with the Ron Paul revolution. From what I remember, it was dominated by Libertarians, a strong "End the Fed" sentiment, and vocal 9/11 truth activists. I count myself friendly to each of these.

Now I see what my British friend sees: Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity... republicans.

I think it's unfortunate such a genuine anti-establishment, anti-tax, anti-big government, anti-big-brother movement has been captured by the familiar Left versus Right schism. It is a proven tactic that has worked well for our rulers in the past -- divide and conquer.

As long as people on the left, like my British friend, see divisive figures of the neo-con establishment serving as the lauded representatives of the tea party movement, then they will likewise view the movement itself with reflexive disdain -- a common reaction engendered by years of hating country-club, bible-beating, blow-hard republicans.

Once the establishment figureheads on either side of the political isle co opt an organic grass-roots movement -- half the audience is lost. The fight degenerates quickly along party lines. This makes our masters very happy.

-- I appreciate the old adage preaching to the choir. I think it aptly describes the relationship that most people have with Information. It is no secret that the human mind is quick to discard information that does not correlate with a preconceived world view. It is also no surprise that we seek media and sources of information that reinforce our systems of belief.

At this stage of my life, I'm trying to get down to the brass tacks: Liberty. Freedom. Repeat.

If it does not harmonize with my fundamental belief in the absolute sovereignty of the individual, then I will do more than disregard it... I will actively fight against it.

For someone coming from the political right, this means a willingness to criticize and question the military-industrial empire. The intelligence apparatus. The Patriot Act. The idea that the U.S military should be used in preemptive wars. Or that it should be deployed in over 130 countries with over 730 military bases for the purposes of democracy. Or that "free speech zones" and check-points and body-scanners and CCTV surveillance and a militarized police force keep us safe from the 'terrorists' lurking in every grandmother's luggage.

As someone coming from the political right, these and many other sacred cows have been sacrificed on the alter of a new awakening. Yet I must also remember that there are always greater and greater truths to be discovered and that time has a way of making fools of most.

Perhaps ages hence, after our decayed society has long since rotted away, our primitive progeny will build monuments to lament our dystopic ruin. The few who were actually on to something will be venerated as prophets. The rest remain history's fools.

-- As for Jane, my British friend, we will never see eye to eye. When we get down to the heart of the matter, our difference is an issue of philosophy. She is a collectivist. I am an individualist. She believes in the potential power of the state to create social justice. I do not.

So while we may be able to sit down and agree on a variety of political issues, in the end, there can never be a kindred revolutionary spirit.

I'm just glad that she can't vote.

Narrow Shaft of Light

Those seeking power and influence have always been quick to capitalize on man's ignorance, fears, and prejudice.

Frightened men find solace in institutions and hierarchies which hold the allure of truth while serving the pragmatic function of control. As observed off-handedly by Thoreau, "Where there is a lull in truth - an institution springs up." --Be they religious, governmental, military, or corporate... most institutions are born of primal fears and metaphysical ignorance.

-- When man was ignorant regarding the cosmos and mysteries of nature, religious institutions served to fill the vacuum.

-- When man was ignorant to the philosophies of liberty and freedom, governmental institutions manifested kings, lords, emperors, and master.

Though such claims to truth are the centrepiece of their perceived importance, the hierarchical nature of institutions ensures that the truth, if any exists, is always compartmentalized. It is disseminated according to relationships of importance within the hierarchical order. Institutions, by their very structure, are designed to control knowledge from the top down. The archetypal pyramid of power. Those at the bottom of the order -- the masses whose labor and zealotry service the institution -- receive only partial truths and disguised deceptions. This provides the greatest benefit to the few at the top -- ensuring, through incentive, the perpetuation of the lie.

-- According to a recent United Nations study, "The richest 2 per cent of people in the world own more than half of all household wealth, while the poorer half of the global population control just 1 per cent". This is the malignancy of power.

The controlling oligarchy which, as Aldous Huxley asserted in his speech at Berkeley, "has always existed and presumably will always exist", has managed to manipulate the masses from time immemorial simply by controlling the institutions in which they rely. It is in this way that the ruling elite have managed to keep populations in servitude while they themselves are privy to a life of hedonistic freedom and indulgence. Power. Domination. Secrecy. Control.

This is why the founders of this once-great republic originally created such an incredibly limited governmental structure. They understood the systemic corruption and deceptive tendencies inherent to all institutions -- especially those with potential for real power.

-- I wish my "liberal" friends would acknowledge the prevalence of this fundamental reality: What holds true for the excesses of corporate greed holds true for the excesses of governmental power. Again to quote Thoreau, "Society is EVERYWHERE a conspiracy against the individual." Not just in it's systems of managed capitalism, or merely as a product of the military-industrial complex (the traditional enemies of the political "left"). It is within the bloated bureaucracies and welfare institutions whose existence is cloaked in the guise of charity. It is in the regulations and laws which serve to limit the choices of the individual for the sake of perceived safety or security. It is indeed everywhere.

Ultimately, at its rotten and festering core, is the brutal murder of the human soul -- a state of dependence is the most wicked result of all. Thomas Jefferson put it best: "Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." It is a prison built of deception -- a mighty citadel of institutions and bureaucracies. Human beings cannot evolve, either spiritually or intellectually, when they are being regulated and controlled. It is Freedom that brings the evolution of spirit, not government agencies and entitlements.

-- I wish that my neo-con/ republican friends could see the folly of imperialism. I wish they could acknowledge the effective danger of such a pervasive military and intelligence apparatus (especially when it is ultimately used against dissenting Americans). But hearing some of the bravado and testosterone-laced comments regarding the need to "nuke them middle-eastern bastards back to the stone age" disheartens me to the point of nausea. Human beings are human beings. Nations make war. Institutions make war.

Stobe Talbot (Bill Clinton's Deputy Secretary of State) observes in a 1992 Time magazine interview, "In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single global authority." He then shamelessly asserts, "National sovereignty wasn't such a great idea after all."

The existence of a constitutional republic built upon the principles of Individual sovereignty -- the ultimate expression of liberty -- is the bane of all tyrants. Unfortunately, tyrants are more vigilant than a fat and complacent population undereducated in the virtues of limited government and individualism.

Although I am happy to see more and more Americans becoming aware of the deceptions and illusions which have dominated the controlled political debate for the better part of a century, I fear that we may have already crossed the bar -- once more we have drifted into the tumultuous seas of despotism.

All that we can do is RESIST.

Junk Politics

This is a well-assembled excerpt from a speech given by John Pilger, Australian journalist and documentary film-maker:



It is more important than ever that the people wake up to the manipulation and deception created by the false left versus right political paradigm.

Obama's betrayal of those principles held dear by the ideological left is no different from Bush's betrayals of the principles of his conservative constituency while creating prescription drug bureaucracies and furthering federal control of education through No Child Left Behind. Clinton engaged in similar betrayal when he sold the American worker and the American manufacturing base down the river to Mexico when NAFTA was codified into law.

Americans must wake up and realize that the only paradigm that matters, the only dichotomy that has ever mattered when measuring an individual against his or her society is this: freedom versus servitude.

We need to stop blindly supporting the false two-party establishment. It has been used as a lever of control by the banking and corporate elite as a means of creating the illusion of choice while invariably steering us towards global serfdom.

"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a formal and more permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and response in the absolute power of an Individual: and sooner or later, the chief of some prevailing faction more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purpose of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty." ~George Washington, 1796

Only Ourselves to Blame

I am always amazed by what is available now on YouTube and other video-sharing websites. Aside from the ubiquitous videos of fat men on bicycles demolishing their own testicles or some other form of humiliation, you can also find much more serious and important material -- interviews with great thinkers and writers like Ayn Rand. Lectures by noble laureates like Milton Freedman. Debates about God with the likes of Christopher Htchens. Lessons in Quantum Mechanics and matters of scientific theory with John Hegelin. You can watch mainstream media heads like Dan Rather or esoteric gurus on the tattered fringes like David Icke. So much is available with seemingly endless possibilities.

The other day I was watching an old interview with an equally old Carl Jung: He spoke with a difficult German accent into a 1950s-era sound system with a video quality that reeked of archive, but I was mesmerized nonetheless. The interview is interesting just as much for the provocative content as it is for the fact that here is this lauded figurehead of psychoanalytical thought -- a man whose theories I was tested over in college, whose works I have conceptualized, whose ideas I find provocative and enlightening, a guy who only existed on paper until this very moment -- and now I get to watch his animated and colorless image defy mortality.

His thin form bears the curvature of age, energetic beyond his years -- I can get a sense of the man behind the theoretical models and case-studies. I can see him staying up late and writing into a relentless journal, testing hypotheses, investigating literature and art and history for evidence of that common realm of mystical consciousness that connects all mankind.

There is a great line in the interview when Jung emphatically asserts: We know nothing of man. Far too little. His psyche should be studied because WE ARE the origin of all coming evil.

And from this simple and elegant observation... I have been spinning all day.

***

Our systems of government and rulership are manifestations of our own psychological weaknesses. These rulers and institutions and politicians are the mutated growth of our own fears and phantoms. Just as religion speaks to our primitive need to be ruled from the seat of celestial power, our bloated government bureaucracy reflects a desire to be ruled from the secular throne as well. We are the source of our own enslavement. We exist in a sort of hypnotic trance and naively believe in the good intentions of man -- but we fail to see the clumsy brutality of government when we employ its power and force as the grand master of these good intentions. --Healthcare for all! Homeland Security!

Men and women who seek power are attracted to this manifestation as if by force of gravity. They believe that their own vision of a "just" society must be imposed upon everyone else... for their own shitty good. Others who share this vision seek the same source of power from which they can apply a similar conception. Those who disagree seek the same. And our rulers suckle the erogenous zones of power for the strength required to dominate their fellow man -- satisfying their sadistic psychological hedonism for the good of us all. As such, our system of government becomes a weapon of inevitable self-destruction.

Power creates a frenzy, an ecstatic orgy. And the orgy must go on...

Will we ever realize that we do not need to be ruled or governed? Will we stop employing the destructive power of government -- imposing restrictions on others so that we may force them to live as we imagine to be proper? It is merely a reflection of our own fears and weaknesses that we have created such a devious system of power and manipulation. Carl Jung was right. We are indeed the source of all future evil.

Our children will call it tyranny.

A Tyranny of Illusions

Ah, Mars...

Because we love to be deceived:

*Whatever the government tells us is true.

*Government-controlled bureaucracies are efficient and only deal in naked facts.

*We are never lied to or mislead by those in power.

*The corporate media services the public interest.

*We live in a republic based upon principles of self-determination.

*Knowledge is never horded or obscured.

*Elitists respect their lower-class brothers.

*Secret societies are not the incubators of the oligarchy.

*Advancements in science are always made public and never used for the purposes of control, manipulation, and destruction.

*The shadow government is a tin-foil fantasy.

*War is not a racket. It is always about freedom and ideals.

*The government is capable of running health-care and saving the planet from fucking carbon.

*There is nothing strange in the skies. There are no moon bases. Mars is dead. NASA Scientists are searching relentlessly for illusive evidence of life outside of our blue sphere -- so far, nothing. And they always tell the truth.

***

Our benevolent government leaders treat the population as idiot children incapable of grappling with any basic truth that alters our comfortable understanding of life and metaphysics. The assumption is that our illusions and superstitions are profoundly necessary to our social and personal condition. Without them, society would fall into chaos. Control would be lost. I repeat, control would be lost.

But to maintain the social order on the basis of lies and coercion is far worse than any revelation could be -- regardless of how devastating to our fables and fantasies. Yet truth is horded, compartmentalized, and maintained by the establishment for the good of the establishment.

Of course, there is only a good-will desire to maintain cultural harmony. To ensure social cohesion. For the good of us all. Right?

Our illusions are necessary only because they serve the interests of the powerful -- those who build monuments and institutions to the lie. And many monuments I see.

Cycles and Permanent Waves: Leviathan Eats Man

"All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie." ~Bob Dylan

"All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream." ~Edgar Allan Poe

***

The following observation is attributed to an 18th century British historian, but the actual genealogy of the quote is a bit sketchy. Regardless, the wisdom suits my purposes:

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequences: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back into bondage...

I realize that there are imperfections in the formula. In all actuality, it seems that every civilization maintains a precarious and compartmentalized balance between all of these manifestations simultaneously. In the post-revolutionary United Sates, at a time when the white male landowner was enjoying the "Golden Age of liberty", his African brother was being sold into bondage and stripped of all humanity. His wives and daughters, too, were made mute in matters of politics -- religious and social mores encouraged their docile submission.

But because we love our illusions, there was freedom. Because of the sacrifice of the revolutionary, we have inherited this freedom. Say it aloud. Lie to me.

Though society as a whole may have tendencies and characteristics that favor individual freedom, liberty is mostly a matter of perspective. To the oligarch, the wealthy ruler, liberty has always existed. There are no restraints and conditions. The objective of life is to indulge the self and temper the intellect with the esoteric knowledge of secret orders and fraternities. Occult thinkers, writers, artists and historians -- explorers of the deeper mysteries of life and metaphysics -- these are the lauded figureheads whose works are horded and made cryptic by rulers and their scholars. And while the masses pray for a better life, the elite seek to become the gods to which we pray.

Makers of law. Captains of industry. Noble bloodlines. Divine Right.
-- Gods of Celebrity and Distraction, deliver us from evil.

Of course, the oligarchs do not need a savior. They are not waiting for rapture or deliverance from the drudgery of life and the tedium of obligation. They may run around in the woods debauching and worshipping stone owls and other secret gods of their mystery schools, but they are not so limited by the framework of existence that deliverance is the objective of a life well spent. Living is.

Slaves need religion in order to make their bondage bearable. Elitists need civilizations and institutions in order to siphon the power and wealth of the fluoridated masses.

Many of us see civilization and social order as one of mankind's crowning achievements. It was designed as an escape from the barbarism of nature's law, an improvement upon the tribe and village whose resources were often limited and whose power inadequate against the larger, more dominant tribes.

As philosopher and pragmatic materialist Thomas Hobbes noted in his epic treatise on government, the transition into civilization was to prevent man's perpetual war against man -- in the state of nature, everyone has an equal claim on everything and power and force underlie man's life and determine his stake. Ultimately Hobbes argues for a strong central authority as a means to maintaining peace and harmony among men, to escape this constant warfare.

While Mr. Hobbes was far more brilliant than I will ever be, his argument loses its pragmatic appeal the moment he begins to lobby for such authority. To Hobbes (and to both modern political parties as well) the individual cannot even exist until the Leviathan emerges. Without the state and the authority of rulership, an individual is meaningless. He can't exist. The state of nature negates the development of the individual. It is only the safety of the Leviathan that offers man the stability needed to actualize. Of course, this complex line of reasoning has its merits, but seeing as though it was argued at a time when Copernicus was still revolutionary, there may be room to criticize.

Four hundred years after Hobbes, what is civilization really? What has the Leviathan become? What are its accomplishments? What has it done? How has it worked to help the human individual achieve happiness and harmony? -- Surely it has given us more than three dollar gas. Micro-regulation. Disintegrating families and community. Increasingly severe limitations on freedom. Taxation. Inflation.

All of this so that we can have a "free" society? One that is constantly at war with other factions, one that incarcerates a larger percentage of its people than any other nation on earth (a higher percentage than Iran, China, and Russia). One in which a ruling establishment of bankers along with government and corporate elitists rape and pillage the wealth of future generations. How is this superior to a state of nature? Air conditioning and grocery stores? Traffic?

Civilization has become (and probably always has been) a construct of the oligarchical establishment, a creation of elitists who have infiltrated (if not founded) every important institution known to man -- calibrating each for the advancement of their own fraternal order. We are all fools if we consider it otherwise. But in the world in which we live, Obama is wisdom and rhetoric such as this is on the tattered fringes -- on the edge of the fringe -- storing food and ammunition -- waiting with tin-foil hats and HAM radios for the FEMA camps to open.

***

Frederick Douglass once asserted that if you want to know the exact measure of the injustice people will suffer, discover to which oppressions they will "quietly submit". This principal is taken to heart and applied readily by the ruling oligarchs -- the "quiet submission" of the masses is ensured by the doctrine of incrementalism. It is behavioral conditioning on a historical, societal scale. This is how B. F. Skinner was able to teach a pigeon to play ping pong. The is how the elite are able to teach serfdom to you and your children. This is the way the world ends. This is how the Leviathan grows.

Obviously, a global scientific dictatorship cannot be born overnight. There would be open revolt and turmoil. It has to put into place over a long enough period of time and to such incremental degrees that the sleeping public hardly notice. Those who do -- those who recognize the difference between liberty and encroaching tyranny -- are easily silenced or marginalized. This is how traffic cameras become military surveillance blimps and GPS-tagged front doors. This is how police go from Andy Griffith to paramilitary roid-ragers. This is how the New Deal becomes government operated health-care and car dealerships. This is the way that all liberty dies. Small steps. Not with a bang but a whimper.



(Police: Then and Now)








In order for the Leviathan to grow, in order for civilization to "advance", self-reliance must be sacrificed, as does individual liberty. It presents itself as a cruel irony that mankind fled the "state of nature", where constant struggle bred constant fear, in order to embrace the Leviathan where fear is managed by the state and used as a lever of control. Once we become invested in the machinery of the Leviathan -- its banking institutions, its public services, its regulatory and bureaucratic labyrinth -- we become more easily manipulated by the phantoms of these institutions. Fear allows it to grow.

The more self-reliant the man, the less important the machinery, the less susceptible to the manufactured crises of institutions and nations. The Leviathan has no use for the self-reliant man.

Through control of wealth, commerce, and education, the Leviathan has made the self-reliant man much more difficult to produce. On the other hand, the dependent man flourishes. They are born within our borders and they come from far and wide. A new serfdom has been created. And a mighty chain has been fashioned. We call it democracy. Love it.

But at least you can watch the NFL in high def while being ritualistically gang-raped.

The once mighty dream of America has become government-managed health care, Obama's teleprompter, and carbon enforcement brigades. Perhaps Hobbes was right. So is Obama.




***

In some ways, and to varying degrees, we each maintain an overinflated sense of importance -- a center-of-the-universe mentality that is monumentally out of proportion considering our relative existence to the unimaginable expanse of the known universe.

We are all equally insignificant when we stare into the night sky and across the starry expanse. The leviathan of universal order makes Hobbes look like a pussy.

Disorder Waltzing with Emerson's Ghost

"In a world where we are forced to conform to society, it is necessary to have personal chaos." ~T. Alan Armstrong

“What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized. What we call random is just patterns we cant decipher. What we can't understand we call nonsense. What we can't read we call gibberish. There is no free will. There are no variables. There is only the inevitable.” ~Chuck Palahniuk

***

In the beginning, we are told, or at least 13.7 billion years ago, all matter in the entire universe was condensed into an infinitely hot, infinitely dense "singularity". How did it get here? From where did it originate? We have no idea. But science seems pretty certain that the universe did indeed have a beginning. "Hubble's Law" consistently demonstrates that galaxies are moving away from us at rate of speed proportional to their distance. Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation is the pervasive evidence of the once infinite heat of this expanding singularity in which we now live.

Somehow, in some way, it all began.

Quantum entanglement implies that all of the matter in the known universe, all of the planets and stars and Hollywood actresses, everything that originated from this infinitely dense singularity of energy, is in some way connected. On an atomic level, all matter is one. There is a "New Age" stigma attached to this notion along with the archetypal image of the long-haired Wiccan who practices martial arts and uses crystals to commune with Gene Roddenberry's ghost -- but this idea of "oneness" is as old as it is new.

Imagine this: Life, or at least our own experience of it, is holographic in nature. We are a component of infinite consciousness merely having a finite, physical experience. We are all psychonauts with amnesia. To quote the great Bill Hicks' "enlightenment" routine -- all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration... We are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves... here's Tom with the weather. -- Truth can be found in strange places.

The quantum world is a bizarre world indeed. I have nothing close to the faculty to fully describe its nuances or to even to provide a competent synopsis. But there are certainly some underlying principals that resonate. The observer effect, entanglement, the role of consciousness -- these are all components that harmonize nicely with ideas of human potential and human transcendence that I consider integral to the life experience -- at least my own. Clearly there are many physicists who are more cautious in asserting the role of the conscious mind in the creation of this holographic reality, but there are many who are rather bold in elaborating this connection. I am enough of a Romantic to believe that the latter are closer to the truth.

Interesting Article:
http://www.renresearch.com/consciousness.html

Interview with John Hagelin, PhD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrcWntw9juM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSxluvq5HI0

I now offer you this pine cone.

***

In an essay that I recently discovered by Ralph Waldo Emerson, entitled "Compensation", he observes the underlying elegance of this entanglement as expressed in perceived opposites. Even in such "opposites", the nature of the counterpart implies connection. Unity. Synthesis:

POLARITY, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the equation of quantity and quality in the fluids of the animal body; in the systole and diastole of the heart; in the undulations of fluids, and of sound; in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity. Superinduce magnetism at one end of a needle; the opposite magnetism takes place at the other end. If the south attracts, the north repels. To empty here, you must condense there. An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole; as, spirit, matter; man, woman; odd, even; subjective, objective; in, out; upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay.

Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its parts. The entire system of things gets represented in every particle. There is somewhat that resembles the ebb and flow of the sea, day and night, man and woman, in a single needle of the pine, in a kernel of corn, in each individual of every animal tribe. The reaction, so grand in the elements, is repeated within these small boundaries.

This elegant balance, or compensation, as observed by Emerson, is at the core of nature and existence. What appeals to me about this philosophy, as well as other perspectives and belief-systems which defy static, religious models of "good" versus "evil", is the notion that the universe acts in concert with our conscious experience. It is not independent of us at all. Nature supplies the compensation, we supply the choice given the circumstance -- and to many degrees, we even create the circumstance itself.

There is no independent "good "or "evil". Only action and reaction and the interpretations and intentions therein. There are no objects to consider -- just relationships. That does not mean that one cannot commit an "evil" act. Or that righteousness does not exist. Or your chair. Rather, both good and evil must exist. They demand one another.

Your chair is a bonus.

I have always had an inherent skepticism in viewing "God" as the spiritual personification of a king or ruler seeking to govern the behaviors of man and punish accordingly. It feels too primitive and tribal to attach such qualities to something as vast and magnificent.

Certain voices in the "religious" ranks may express the view that the AIDS virus is God's punishment for homosexuality. Others may view a natural disaster to be some form of judgement on the wicked. Primitive man would sacrifice to the volcano, to the river, to the sun. In many ways, such sacrifice was an attempt to create the same balance and compensation that expresses itself in the creation itself. Death brings about life.

Applying the laws of compensation to "punishment" reveal that a compelling balance is hidden within. Punishment could bring about one's enlightenment and spiritual dedication. In the end, if one believes that "God" intervenes in the affairs of men, then He arguably rewards wicked deeds. For there is no affliction that does not have its just compensation. It is inherent to the design. An eloquent expression, if not a bit of a tricky one. So punish me now, but "affliction shall advance the flight in me." Ultimately, it is my reward.

***
Emerson once stated that a part of wisdom is recognizing the journey's end in every step of the road. Every motion is a beginning and an ending. The moment is now. All at once. Every step forward, an end of a journey. To live as such, to liberate yourself from your own habits and institutional beliefs, to acknowledge the fluid pulse of consciousness as it fashions experience, this is transcendence. Or maybe I am just talking shit.

I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings. ~Albert Einstein

***

Even though I despise the New World Order and banking oligarchs who have been working behind the scenes to manipulate the world into a global fascism, I realize that even in matters of oppressive polity, there is balance, compensation. There is a natural cycle that exists which is larger than the elitists who seek to thwart this balance. And so it will fail. Their agenda will fail. and liberty will rise.

Until it is forgotten. And then the laws of compensation favor the fascist once again.

And now: Charles Hawtrey and the Deaf Aids...

Rainmakers and Reptilians

Illusional Delusional

"It's not a matter of what is true that counts but a matter of what is perceived to be true." ~Henry Kissinger, one evil fuck

I have always held that if there is any evidence that contradicts a given theory, then that theory needs to be re-examined. This does not necessarily mean that the theory is discarded altogether, but rather, at least it be introduced once again to the rigors of scrutiny. If a given anomaly is not an error or hoax, then a theory must be considered incomplete at best.

Ah, but modern science is more dogmatic than religion when it comes to the sacred cows of their "objective reality". The great narrative that they have fashioned becomes a rigid paradigm of concretized belief. The anomaly works against the plot of the story. It tries to show them an alternate version of the movie that they have been watching for most of their lives and careers. The anomaly must either be destroyed with layers of jargon, tied in mathematical knots, or ignored altogether. Because that's not how the story goes.

About 97% of the human genome is "junk DNA." Though this explains most politicians, what does it mean for the rest of us? The answer to this question, no doubt, is obscured by the illusions of science and culture which demand adherence to the Darwinian model and the prevailing theories of evolution. This being said, it seems that at least one of the group leaders for the Human Genome Project, Prof. Sam Chang, is not held captive by science's holy relic:

"Our hypothesis is that a higher extraterrestrial life form was engaged in creating new life and planting it on various planets. Earth is just one of them. Perhaps, after programming, our creators grow us the same way we grow bacteria in Petri dishes. We can’t know their motives - whether it was a scientific experiment, or a way of preparing new planets for colonization, or is it long time ongoing business of seedling life in the universe.”

“Soon or later, we have to come to grips with the unbelievable notion that every life on Earth carries genetic code for his extraterrestrial cousin and that evolution is not what we think it is.” A broken paradigm? Nothing to see here. Move along.

Humans carry 46 chromosomes while our primate cousins carry 48. Why would we lose a pair of chromosomes in the evolutionary process? How could it account for such a tremendous difference? Scientists point out that we didn't actually lose a chromosome as much as the 2nd and 3rd chromosomes were fused together... by nature, of course. Or Darwin himself. No evidence of genetic tampering by an alien species here. Move along.

The Mitochondrial Eve theory, based on examination of the maternal line, reveals that modern humans appeared on the scene quite suddenly 170,000 years ago. According to the dogmatic narrative of science, the first civilization to appear in our story occurred about 5,000 years ago with the Sumerians. Stone Age farmers, the story goes, came pouring from the Zagros Mountains into the "fertile crescent" between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern-day Iraq. They are remembered for the development of cuneiform, the first known system of writing. They also developed a clever system of "printing" using finely marked cylinders that they would roll across wet clay. And this is pretty much where the story ends in Western Civ 201 or high school World History.

But the Sumerians also created a complex mathematics. Developing the "place" concept, giving us the 360 degree circle, and the dirty "dozen" as a unit. This was complimented by a system of weights and measures used in everything from commerce to architecture. They also developed a complex system of astronomy, creating the first calendar and first known map of the solar system (with 12 planetary bodies, including the sun and moon and mysterious planet X). Metalurgy, courts, laws, religion, medicine, botany, irrigation, agriculture, husbandry, textiles, seafaring, music, culture. Boom. 165,000 years of nomadic living and tribal cave-dwelling, then Boom. Civilization. Significant. Advanced.

No aliens? No Atlantis? The fact that disparate ancient civilizations develop similar monuments, mythology, writing, and culture completely independent of one another or a common "lost civilization" ancestor is just the way the story goes. Get over it. Move along. Nothing came before. Go away.

***

-This metal sphere with three grooved lines circling the equator was discovered in a Precambrian mineral deposit dated at 2.8 Billion years old.









-This ancient hammer or tool embedded in a piece of petrified wood dated at 140 million years old.

-This "spark plug", known as the Corso Artifact, was discovered encased in a 500,000-year-old mineral.

It is a difficult thing to divorce ourselves from our favorite delusional illusions. As such, we are constantly at odds over the narrative of life. This is the way the story goes. This is how it all began. This is where it all comes from. This explains the diversity of life. This is where we are now. This is where we go from here. Woven somewhere into these comfortable mythologies is a thread of reality -- perhaps the slightest strand of truth, right?

Most likely, everyone is wrong. Especially me.

(Mars is riddled with anomalies)

"I'm fairly convinced that we have discovered life on Mars. There are some incredible photographs from [the Jet Propulsion Laboratory], which to me are pretty convincing proof of the existence of large forms of life on Mars! Have a look at them. I don't see any other interpretation." ~Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Dec. 2000

***

1926, Billings, Montana: A human tooth is found in an Eocene deposit dated at 30 million years old.

1958, Tuscany, Italy: A human jawbone is found at a depth of 600 feet, in a coal mine encased in a Miocene stratum, geologically dated at 20 million years.

The Great Pyramid at Giza is made of 2.5 million limestone blocks with each weighing an average of about 3 tons. Its entire mass is more than 6 million tons. Some of the stones were quarried from miles away.

The body of the Sphinx indicates significant water erosion.

The matrix is mighty, indeed. A given system of belief -- intricately connected to a series of neuro-networks firing and wiring and recombining and connecting to a larger array of concepts--becomes a part of our very identity. It is integral to who we are. To lose a given system, in many ways, is to lose a component of one's self. That is why all of our dogmas exist. Persist. Heavy and onerous.

***

The following video is a quick compilation of NASA's own astronauts referencing the alien activity in space. Of course, "bogey" and "alien spacecraft" mean "ice crystals".

Skeptics (hey, dad) often assert that it is impossible for human beings to keep a secret this large. Without mentioning The Manhattan Project or other top secret government activities that are only learned of after the fact, one can clearly see that the secret has not been kept. Whistle-blowers abound. The CIA propaganda that has permeated our media has conditioned the public to dismiss such claims as "bizarre" or "out there". But a mere cursory attempt at research reveals hundreds of very credible witnesses. From former astronauts, like Dr. Edgar Mitchell, to high-level pilots like John Lear (son of Lear jet inventor, Bill Lear), to military personnel from all ranks and walks of life. Hell, even Jimmy Carter reported seeing a UFO. The truth is indeed "out there". But to even take a step in the direction of reality, one has to divorce themselves from the multi-layered illusions of culture, science, religion, propaganda, and other "norms" and institutions that work to encumber the human psyche. Or not. Who knows?

The following amazing video is from NASA's STS-75 mission in which a 12 mile long electromagnetic tether breaks off and floats into space. The crew video tapes the tether as it drifts away. The unbelievable swarm of UFO activity is dismissed as "debris" or "ice crystals", but if you watch the footage, you will see many of these glowing, pulsing pieces of "debris" move behind the 12 mile tether -- this indicates that the so-called "debris" must be EXTREMELY large. Ice crystals the size of football fields. Who knew space was so dangerous. NASA tries to dismiss the incident. One thing is certain... this is not goddamn debris.

In looking back across human history and humanity's attempts to explain the mysterious elements of life and the universe, we see a comedy of errors and misinterpretations. No worries, however. I am certain that modern dogma concerning the nature of reality will stand the test of time, this time around. No such thing as ether. Nothing to see. The earth is hollow. Move along.