"If you want to know the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face... Forever" George Orwell.

All systems imposed on society that try to give structure to our economical and political way of life eventually turn to an Orwellian nightware. Because they ultimatly put their own survial above all else. The text bellow is an edited section taken from R.A Willsons book "everything is under control".
I did the editing myself which wasn't easy, and the result should pretty much give you a good idea of how totalitarian nightmares start, even out of so called "Democratic" societies. The text is actually ment to provide an answer to the question of political conspiracies but it's verrry interesting never the less.

A bit long so grab a cup of tea, open your mind, sit back and relax.


________________________________________
Written by: Robert Anton Wilson
Edited by: yours Trully.


A random telephone survey of 800 American adults in September 1996 found that 74 percent virtually three out of four citizens suspect the government of felonious and nefarious activities. That means that quite ordinary people now believe what only embittered left-wing radicals believed a centaury ago, in the 1890s. Now not just the far left and the cynics see all manner of double-dealing in Washington: The far-right wing has even more dire suspicions than all the galoots ahoof in the republic added together. Nobody in the U.S. today has the sort of blind faith in the rulers that they taught us in grade school, and the above-mentioned three out of four of us hardly trust them at all.

But the government does not have any monopoly on the low end of the confidence curve. We live in an age in which humans distrust other humans more than ever before. One can hardly think of any subset of the species, homo sap, that has not become an object of uneasy suspicion by some other subset. The professions all belong to the criminal classes, according to popular opinion: TV repairpersons cheat us regularly, and so do auto mechanics. Doctors, merchants, the clergy, and alleged "experts" can be hired to testify to any side of any case.

The U.S. government and all advanced governments believe in conspiracies and have laws against them. Special branches of the police power have the job of investigating possible conspiracies and in various areas-the SEC looks for bank swindles, the red squad of every police department looks for subversive ideas, district attorneys hunt for books so evil they are not protected by the first Amendment (which radicals like the late Justice Brennan believed was intended to protect all books), even the CIA (when it can spare the time from its profitable cocaine business) looks for external conspiracies, etc. If we (or three out of four of us) don't trust the people who govern us, they don't trust us, either.

Conspiracy theories therefore flourish in times and places of anxiety and uncertainty; but they come to full flower in those times when the government also fears conspiracies, i.e., does not trust the people. We here enter a truly murky area, where many people are presently under surveillance precisely because they once thought and said that the government might spy on them.

Playwright Bert Brecht once asked, "If the government doesn't trust the people why, doesn't it dissolve them and elect a new people?" A government afraid of it's people cannot "dissolve" them so easily, or replace them with a people seized and imported from somewhere else, so it simply spies on the people it has and probes into their privacy even more than usual.

"Superstitions like bats mostly fly at twilight"
-Sir Francis Bacon

Similarly, after studying conspiracy theories for nearly 30 years I think that I have found that batty conspiracy theories and modern folklore in general thrive best in an environment of uncertainty and anxiety. When people do not know what will happen next, any wild yarn will travel very rapidly through the population; it appears humans need any narrative, even a nonsense narrative, rather than having no explanation at all about their predicament. And the essence of any good story is, as in conspiracy theory, the plot.

If the people do not trust the government, it does not trust them. If the government does not trust the people, they do not trust it. This merry-go-round is almost a perpetual motion machine. In a nation where even one's urine is not private, where the Power Elite sends it's snoopers to search into your very innards-your bladder, no less-what man or woman can feel any sense of freedom or security? Hence the people grow more hostile and "paranoid' about the government, and the government, noting this, grows more nervous about "militias" or "cults" or "hippies" or "extremists" or some other anti-government minority that might live anywhere and might secretly plot anything. It therefore hires more eavesdroppers, installs more wiretaps, and spies on the people with greater vigor. This strange loop quickly becomes a vicious circle, since governmental paranoia about the people and people's paranoia about government each reinforce each other. This cycle continues until the system collapses. In the interlude, endless and labyrinthine conspiracy theory flourish, among both government and governed, as each becomes more frightened of the other.

The Cold War has left us a legacy of spying, snooping, and paranoia that no longer serves any rational function (if it ever did). This continues even after the Cold War has ended, because politics like Newtonian mechanics has a law of Inertia whereby a political crusade in motion continues in motion in the same direction until some outside force interrupts it. No such outside force has yet slowed our general drift toward a Kafka-Orwell world where the worst fantasies seem more and more plausible to more and more people. Another factor tending to multiply conspiracy theories lies in the fact that all intelligence agencies have two functions, viz.:

1. Collection of accurate information.

2. Planting and encouraging inaccurate information

An intelligence agency, in other words, needs to know what the hell is really going on for the same reason a bank or a grocer or you and I need that kind of factual input. Hence, the huge budgets for item 1 above. Intelligence agencies, however also need to keep ahead of their competitors, the rival intelligence agencies of other and hence, perfidious governments. they therefore engage in frantic efforts of spearing misinformation, "disinformation" (a euphemism for the former), "cover stories", "Cover-ups", etc. In order to deceive whoever currently functions as "the enemy", these fantasies must have enough facts mixed into them, and enough general plausibility, that they will deceive many others not yet defined as "enemy". Always, they must deceive persons of average intelligence and average education of they just don't work. the best disinformation should also deceive persons of more-than-average wit and know-how for a while at least. in brief, modern secret police work functions much like poker. All players try to send false signals at least part of the time, and all players try to detect "the real truth" behind the false signals sent by the others. In a world where nations relate to each other in this manner, conspiracy models flourish like bacteria in a sewage system. As Henry Kissinger allegedly said, "Anybody in Washington who isn't paranoid must be crazy". Indeed, any citizen in a world run like that who doesn't have some "paranoid" suspicions must have suffered brain damage in childhood.

When the government engages in extensive (well-publicized) snooping and spying on the public, this paranoia escalates rapidly. Where there exists a secret police agency of any sort, in any nation, the people soon learn to suspect those who suspect them. Concretely, many Americans fear that any part of government, or even any organization not admittedly part of the government, may function a front for the CIA, the FBI, the BATF, the National Security Agency, or groups even more esoteric and manipulative.

Thus the more omnipresent the government’s "control," the more suspicious and uneasy the people become. And the more people indicate a lack of faith of such government, the more such government will need to spy on them, to feel absolutely sure they have not become alienated enough to hatch rebellion or set off more homemade bombs of the Oklahoma City variety. The government will therefore increase it's spying and snooping, and the people will become more "careful." As a crude kind of survey, I (R.A Wilson) have asked audiences in hundreds of lectures and seminars if any of them ever willingly tell the whole truth about anything to a government official. Nobody has ever held up their hand and claimed that degree of faith and tractability.

No man or woman in the united states today wants the Feds to know too much about what he or she is really doing. Since the government long ago passed the point of "anything not forbidden is compulsory" and now wishes to enforce "anything not compulsory is forbidden," we all suspect that we are technical criminals at least, although like Kafka's hero we are never quite sure which statute or statutes we may have violated. We thus arrive at a situation that in the army is called Optimum Snafu. Those at the top are never told what might cause them to punish the informant, and those at the bottom keep their mouth shut about more and more of what they actually see, hear, smell, taste or otherwise sense of the environment. In the long run, the top people in the pyramid are attempting to regulate things they know nothing about, based on reports that have been invented by liars and flatterers to prevent them from using their awful powers too destructively. But if most people lie a little in dealing with the state, the state must have a very weird and inaccurate picture of who the people are and what they really think and want. Laws will therefore direct themselves to fictitious citizenry, not to the people we really are. thus, the laws increasingly make no sense to the folk who have to endure them. and more hostility to government appears. All these cycles make up a set of strange loops and Vicious Circles from which there presently apears no exit. Until as stated before the system collapses, conspiracy theories will flourish, both among the increasingly anxiety-ridden citizenry and among the politicos and bureaucrats who try to command them. And every voice that tries, or pretends, to tell the truth in this schizoid situation immediately comes under suspicion as another possible Deceiver and Manipulator whose yarn has to be looked at as critically as any post-Modernist would look at the Declaration of Independence or the second law of Thermodynamics.

We are all deconstructionists now, whether we ever heard the word before or not.

The age of uncertainty

In case anybody thinks the above picture is exaggerated or merely satirical, let us point out that two recent surveys show that public confidence in the media, which allegedly "inform" us, has sunk to what must be an all-time low. A wall street Journal/NBC poll found that only 21 percent of the respondents rated the news media "very" or "mostly" honest. That means that nearly 80 percent of us don't trust the media quite as much as we used to. Similarly, a Gallup poll found that only 29 percent of us express "a great deal" of confidence in the newspapers specifically. About seven out of ten, then, have growing doubts and suspicions about the medium where we once looked to find the facts behind the incoherent sound bytes of radio and TV "news." Buy since most people need some narrative or model to explain the world, if they don't trust the media, who can they trust? Nobody. Then how can they make decisions? more and more, they relatively assume reality is precisely the opposite of whatever they are being told by the Voice of Authority...
_______________________________________________

___________________
Courageous, untroubled, mocking and violent; that is what Wisdom wants us to be. Wisdom is a woman, and loves only a warrior.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

Last edited by Illusion on Oct-29-2002 at 17:20

Hmmm, interesting.

I think the picture painted there is mainly aimed at the American Government / Society, but I suppose it could be applied elsewhere. The polarisation between the government and the "average man" continues to grow, probably more so in a democratic society - where we choose those, with an implicit level of trust, to govern us - somewhat ironically, than in a genuine "totalitarianistic" state. Do we have reason to be paranoid though? Are we just more paranoid because we're more adept at being sceptical and not accepting the word of the Government at face value, or is there a genuine case history we can look at that gives us very good cause to distrust the Government?

Still, I think the picture painted there isn't really consistant with what would occur in a true Orwellian, totalitarianistic state. In such a state, I should think, the issue isn't one of surveilence or of unjustifiably subversive, somewhat clandestine issues of "governmental lies and spies" but rather, in an Orwellian state, the issue is more one of control. In 1984, the entire idea, I believe, is that it is the aim of the government (Big Brother) is to control and modify the behaviour of those under its watchful eye, yet I doubt - even taking into account the points raised by that essay - that we have reason to believe that the government of any democratic, western society has any intention of denying us the freedom of (legal) autonomous behaviour. The surveillence used by Governments isn't used to censor us, or to control our behaviour, so much as it is to montor and understand this said behaviour. It can be a fine line, perhaps, but the issues of control and surveillence are mainly seperate.

A better comparison to draw - instead of the usual Orwellian allegory - may be John Stuart Mill's conception of the "Panopticon", a theoretical prison where inmates could be observed from a single vantage point which they themselves are unable to view. Thus, all the prisoners know is that they could be viewed at any time and that this fact - even though they aren't being viewed all the time - is usually enough to ensure that their behaviour is kept in check. Indeed, as I may or may not have read somewhere, the fact that they don't know whether they're being viewed or not is likely to cause more distress than if the same prisoners knew they were being viewed 24/7, and could see the viewer/means by which they were being viewed. It is this uncertainty about whether or not you are being viewed that causes the paranoia, and the irrational (heavily modified) behaviour, not the act of being viewed in itself. So, in this sense, I believe that the Panopticon is a far more accurate depiction of the strained relationship the paranoid people have with their subversive government, not so much the Totalitarianistic relationship depicted by Orwell in his novel 1984.

Anyway, just an idea or two. Good text anyway.

___________________
http://eschatonnow.blogspot.com/

Renegade, do you always have such insightful thoughts at 4:30am?

quote:

Those at the top are never told what might cause them to punish the informant, and those at the bottom keep their mouth shut about more and more of what they actually see, hear, smell, taste or otherwise sense of the environment. In the long run, the top people in the pyramid are attempting to regulate things they know nothing about, based on reports that have been invented by liars and flatterers to prevent them from using their awful powers too destructively.

Interesting, sounds like where I work. Management have no idea of what goes on down at pleb level (me ), nobody has the courage to tell them because they'll get fired, so we all continue on our merry way

___________________

quote:

Originally posted by webmeister Renegade, do you always have such insightful thoughts at 4:30am?

You'd be suprised.

___________________
http://eschatonnow.blogspot.com/

finally had a chance to read all of this. interesting.
im not one to belive in elite conspiricies at the high level of governments, so i didnt read the essay too favorly, however renegade your analysis was very interesting.

i think to is no reason not to trust your government if everything from the outside seems normal, that is to say you are presented a chance at a good life and the world around you sees you in good standing. the inside might be complete chaos but they are achieving their goal as a governing body. when this things start to fade then doubt should be applied to the government and one should more close analize and scrutinize them.

also i feel that the best way to keep away any paranoia between upper and lower society is by keeping full and open dialouge at all times, as is the case for every relationship between human beings.

___________________
If God is the answer, it must have been a very stupid question.

quote:

Originally posted by Illusion "If you want to know the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face... Forever" George Orwell. All systems imposed on society that try to give structure to our economical and political way of life eventually turn to an Orwellian nightware. Because they ultimatly put their own survial above all else. The text bellow is an edited section taken from R.A Willsons book "everything is under control". I did the editing myself which wasn't easy, and the result should pretty much give you a good idea of how totalitarian nightmares start, even out of so called "Democratic" societies. The text is actually ment to provide an answer to the question of political conspiracies but it's verrry interesting never the less. A bit long so grab a cup of tea, open your mind, sit back and relax. ________________________________________ Written by: Robert Anton Wilson Edited by: yours Trully. A random telephone survey of 800 American adults in September 1996 found that 74 percent virtually three out of four citizens suspect the government of felonious and nefarious activities. That means that quite ordinary people now believe what only embittered left-wing radicals believed a centaury ago, in the 1890s. Now not just the far left and the cynics see all manner of double-dealing in Washington: The far-right wing has even more dire suspicions than all the galoots ahoof in the republic added together. Nobody in the U.S. today has the sort of blind faith in the rulers that they taught us in grade school, and the above-mentioned three out of four of us hardly trust them at all. But the government does not have any monopoly on the low end of the confidence curve. We live in an age in which humans distrust other humans more than ever before. One can hardly think of any subset of the species, homo sap, that has not become an object of uneasy suspicion by some other subset. The professions all belong to the criminal classes, according to popular opinion: TV repairpersons cheat us regularly, and so do auto mechanics. Doctors, merchants, the clergy, and alleged "experts" can be hired to testify to any side of any case. The U.S. government and all advanced governments believe in conspiracies and have laws against them. Special branches of the police power have the job of investigating possible conspiracies and in various areas-the SEC looks for bank swindles, the red squad of every police department looks for subversive ideas, district attorneys hunt for books so evil they are not protected by the first Amendment (which radicals like the late Justice Brennan believed was intended to protect all books), even the CIA (when it can spare the time from its profitable cocaine business) looks for external conspiracies, etc. If we (or three out of four of us) don't trust the people who govern us, they don't trust us, either.

I really enjoyed reading that! Thank you for posting it! Even if this was originally posted all the way back in 2002, it's still good to see that not everyone's bearing on reality is dependant upon looking at the shadows which are cast upon the wall of Plato's cave!

quote:

(Excerpted from Plato's Allegory of the Cave) "And now, I said (Plato), let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: --Behold! human beings living in a underground cave, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the cave; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets. - I see. And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent. - You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners. Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave? - True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads? And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows? - Yes, he said. And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them? - Very true. And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow? - No question, he replied. To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images. - That is certain. And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision, -what will be his reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them, will he not be perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him? - Far truer. And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take and take in the objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be in reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to him? - That is true. And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he 's forced into the presence of the sun himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities. - Not all in a moment, he said. He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day? - Certainly. Last of he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate him as he is. - Certainly. He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives the season and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been accustomed to behold? Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then reason about him. And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the cave and his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them? - Certainly, he would. And if they were in the habit of conferring honors among themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which of them went before, and which followed after, and which were together; and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future, do you think that he would care for such honors and glories, or envy the possessors of them? Would he not say with Homer, Better to be the poor servant of a poor master, and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their manner? - Yes, he said, I think that he would rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions and live in this miserable manner. Imagine once more, I said, such an one coming suddenly out of the sun to be replaced in his old situation; would he not be certain to have his eyes full of darkness? - To be sure, he said. And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the cave, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable) would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death. - No question, he said.

Last edited by Trancer-X on Oct-16-2007 at 23:37

quote:

Originally posted by Illusion ____ "Courageous, untroubled, mocking and violent; that is what Wisdom wants us to be. Wisdom is a woman, and loves only a warrior." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Damn I love that quote!!! Soooo true!!!

quote:

Originally posted by webmeister Renegade, do you always have such insightful thoughts at 4:30am? Interesting, sounds like where I work. Management have no idea of what goes on down at pleb level (me ), nobody has the courage to tell them because they'll get fired, so we all continue on our merry way

If you haven't seen it already rent "Cube", a Canadian flick that explores that same idea.

If you get a chance to see "Cube II" after seeing the first one ... ah, don't. It's like the matrix sequals, once the cat is out of the bag the mystery is gone and there's just nothing mindblowing left.

At least some people in the UK see the devious plans of the globalists

quote:

Trevor Colman is a retired UK Police Superintendent and is very concerned that his country is no longer governed by the British people. He warns of an Undemocratic one world scheme that will affect most nations around the globe. Hidden plans to take over and diminish national sovereignty are now being implemented by the EU. He urges lawful and Democratic resistance to this planned erosion of representative government. The succession of UK Prime Ministers leading to the nation’s demise all had hidden plans. He urges support from all freedom loving peoples around the globe in this fight to regain lost Freedom.

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quote:

David Noakes tells what to expect when the European Union takes over in the near future. The unnerving answer is the Police State in the Post Democratic Era. After all the wars in Europe through the centuries the EU is the next anti democratic group to seize power. Legislation is crafted by the unelected European Commission and rubber stamped by the European Parliament. Common Purpose is playing its hand in the process. David outlines several steps to counter this powerful adversary with grassroots involvement. More can be found on www.eutruth.co.uk (Disclaimer: Views and opinions presented here are for informational and educational purposes only and may not necessarily be those of the makers of this video.)

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Thom Hartmann interviewing Paul Craig Roberts



http://youtube.com/watch?v=cLFBUrHPmNM

From YouTube:

quote:

Paul Craig Roberts, a Republican who worked in the Reagan administration, is predicting a 9-11 type of attack before the 2008 elections. If that occurs, Bush can declare martial law and begin arresting those who disagree with his foreign policy (based on Executive Orders recently issued by the Bush Administration that grant the president these powers and more.)