All Parts of this series can be found here: Perception, Inception and the Trojan Horse Meme

Comfort is Found Within Our Conditioning

While I most certainly hope it is not the case I suspect that I lost many of my classically trained empirically minded readers by the second or third paragraph of Chapter One. I don’t say this in a derogatory manner at all for in many respects I was and still am cut from the same bolt of cloth. And if I were reading this essay fifteen years ago I would probably shut down as well for I was a man of data, facts and science and to me this would all be seen as just nonsensical foolishness. By my late twenties I had discarded all the fantasy and fiction I mentioned in Chapter One as childish toys no longer needed or wanted.

As with so many other men and women I began to shake myself awake as part of what is often called the mid-life crisis, that time when so many begin to reassess all they have done and where they are going. For the vast majority this existential crisis is relatively short lived. And once the self doubt and reflection is washed from the system, the mind hardens and narrows even more than before. Once cleansed of any lingering non conforming thoughts that couldn’t be ignored or dismissed, they finish their career and retire in a blaze of corporate glory comfortably sated in their self induced numbness. After all, who the hell wants to be a rebel at fifty or sixty when retirement is just around the corner? That’s a young man’s game.

There is great emotional and intellectual comfort to be found within the highly trained and conditioned mind. Everything has a place and there’s a place for everything except for the few outliers that can usually be trashed as aberrant thought or even one offs. What I didn’t see at the time and only later began to grasp is that while I knew many scientifically proven facts, in reality I didn’t know much at all. I realized all the really important and interesting questions were still to be answered and that each conclusion was as unique as a person’s fingerprint.

The illusion of scientific, moral and intellectual certainty that had sustained me for several decades was ultimately not liberating at all. Instead it was a wonderfully constructed and quite convincing thought meme erected in honor of the false God of empirical thinking. As I began to pull back layer upon layer of the onion I was emotionally and egoically crushed to learn that the more I thought I knew the less I really understood about anything of real consequence. While I might be able to describe to you how my cell phone functioned I was unable to explain to you who I was and why I was here.

Just as important I came to appreciate that it was the pursuit of these questions that would be the source of my future growth rather than the answers themselves. What I had always believed was true freedom derived from the ability to examine everything through the lens of logic and scientific method was instead a mental straitjacket. What I considered to be a factual view of my world was actually a belief system supported by official supporting documents and authenticated certificates of proof. The more specialized I became the more narrowly I saw the world and the bigger the burden became of defending my belief system. Every outlier I came across was a danger to the whole and as such must quickly be qualified, quantified or derisively dismissed.

The seduction and denial begins in believing that we don’t do precisely what we have done. Having become second nature after decades of training, we are in a constant state of weighting and judgment, always sorting, collating or categorizing most everything even if just on the subconscious level. We are taught from birth that there is always correct and incorrect, true and false, approved and unapproved, black and white. And while we may intellectually claim we understand that the world is full of gray, emotionally we still collect those ‘things’ which confirm our consensus reality belief system and reject those that don’t.

This is a built in bias that works silently in the background and is part of the control system that keeps us safely confined within our perceived reality box. However if confronted as I now do with the reader, many will strenuously assert this isn’t so, that we fairly examine any new piece of information that enters our field of vision. But of course when an outlier comes floating by we use our established and cherished standards and processes to measure and validate what is real and what is not. In so many ways we use circular logic to confirm that which we already believe to be true.

When examining others it seems self evident that the more committed we are to a particular persuasion, belief or dogma the more likely we are to defend that belief as if we were defending our very life. And in so many ways we would be for our perception and belief determines how we view and live life. Yet we are mostly blind to this process within ourselves and we rarely see the belief system of “science” or of the “scientific method” as a similarly rigid or embedded point of view.

We assure all those around us that only the truth prevails in science. But always we apply the same tools already ‘proven’ to be ‘true’ to information that is nonconforming or suspect. Thus the measuring stick designed only to measure that which is already conforming to the accepted standard successfully rejects those that do not.

Any change of view or perception that does enter the control system must clear impossibly high hurdles. And even then the change doesn’t gain widespread acceptance until the old guard is long dead and buried. For a discipline that supposedly accepts proof that meets certain standards, why is it that long held beliefs and customs are jealously defended which just so happen to deny entry to change? Maybe it isn’t science itself that is the problem here, but rather the practitioner of science that is the malfunctioning component? In other words it is the application of the scientific process that is distorted, thus producing distorted results.

The Journey, Not the Destination

When explaining this to others I often employ a thought picture to describe what is happening. As I grew older and my worldview and belief system became ever more complicated and interwoven it began to feel as if I were carrying around an eighty pound bag of ready mix concrete. While I could manage the load I needed to maintain a firm and constant grip which eventually eliminated any flexibility and adaptability I originally started with. This is one of the reasons why real breakthrough ideas spring from young minds not yet conditioned to know what they want to do or what they just did was impossible. Soon enough I became wedded to a white elephant in ways that were never really obvious to me because I was in the middle of what I had come to accept as normal.

My box was not a box, but instead my entire world. This in turn ignited a severe case of normalcy bias well beyond anything I could imagine. So while I didn’t necessarily see it as a burden at the time it most certainly was. In effect I was so busy treading water that I was rarely making headway. And the more belief weight I took on the more burdensome the load became. I was now controlled by my own belief system and not the other way around. And because this is considered a normal and natural part of everyday life and something everyone else deals with, it was just the way things were. This is modern day life we are told, no more or less.

When I realized I was on a treadmill going nowhere fast it quickly became obvious that a change in perspective was desperately needed. Instead of defending my belief system at every port of entry, why couldn’t I simply suspend belief (an entirely different concept than suspending disbelief in order to enjoy a fictional book, TV show or movie) and allow these nonconforming ideas and concepts to simply exist without vetting or qualification?

This meant that everything had a ‘right’ to exist in my reality without affirmation, confirmation or rejection. If it didn’t fit my current belief system there was no longer a need to apply the only two choices I ever really afforded things like this in the past, to reject it or accept it. Instead I could simply see it as interesting or curious and place it on a back shelf in my mind ready at a moment’s notice to be pulled down for further examination and assimilation.

This is more important than might be obvious at first glance. While we may reassure ourselves that anything we reject (or accept) can and will be reexamined if new information is presented (or if we reassess old information) in practice once something is ‘disbelieved’ there is very little incentive to reassess our position. We simply give little to no credence to things that have already been dismissed as impossible or improbable. And the reason we ‘disbelieved’ it in the first place was because it was impossible or improbable. We ‘proved’ that, right?

The flexibility we claim we will apply to new or additional information is a deceptive conceit we afford ourselves in order to maintain the comfort of hard and fast rules of belief, which in turn maintains our narrow perception of reality. This is the circular logic I was talking about earlier. The parts confirm the whole which confirm the parts which confirm the whole. That’s not to say that we don’t nibble away at the outer edges of our belief system because clearly we do.

But the very fact that we do accept minor changes enables us to believe that we could and would do the same with major sections of our belief system, when in practice nothing could be further from the truth. We are encouraged to think outside the box, but not too far. We are taught that in order to build a diverse and healthy social order we must be tolerant of alternative memes and beliefs. This is a fiction we practice only on the surface because in order to protect our belief system we must do exactly the opposite. The proof is the polarized and divisive world we live in. We are conditioned to recognize differences and to draw clear boundaries to affirm our narrow perception of reality, not to seek out similarities and to approach others with empathy and loving care.

And this conditioning is deliberate in order to maintain the status quo of the consensus reality which in turn is controlled by the powerful. We so easily believe that powerful people work towards maintaining their power yet we find it nearly impossible to believe that the thought meme control system would be designed to enable precisely what those in power most desire. And make no mistake about it; controlling thought is the ultimate power. This is why major social change can only occur when a new and energized generation takes the helm and begins to control the prevailing meme. This is also why entire nations and regions of the world can careen off the rails for a generation or two when group think takes control of the collective. It works both ways.

Shock Therapy

If usually takes a shocking slap to the face, often in the form of acute physical illness, loss of loved ones or severe financial hardship, to force us to reassess the basic underpinnings of our beliefs. But even then the bias is towards regaining ‘normalcy’ rather than exploring new concepts or ‘realities’. It takes great courage to break from the herd mentality and blaze new trails when we have been conditioned to believe there are monsters under the bed. It’s even more difficult to go it alone when our world has just been shattered and the conditioned tendency is to seek comfort, not more emotional pain.

However, great freedom and release comes from rejecting the confining parameters of dogmatic groupthink and belief. No longer do I need to haul around huge sacks of concrete mix while defending each meme intrusion as if it might be my last. In the same manner one would hold a butterfly, meaning gently with little to no force applied, if my belief system can’t accommodate an outlier or aberrant concept I can simply release that portion of my belief system that is acting as a roadblock and allow it to drift while I examine the new information. If the butterfly returns that’s all well and good. If it does not, that’s good as well because I’m not dependent upon the new belief just as I’m no longer dependent upon the old.

Actually if we are to practice this on a daily basis, to continue to use the term belief would be a misnomer because little remains that is fixed and immovable. I now make a conscious effort to avoid using terms such as “I believe” or “I know” because those words symbolize rigid thinking.  There’s an old saying when trying to break ingrained habits. Fake it until you change it. By modifying my language usage I am trying to rewire my brain, the first step to exploring alternative realities.

This is not to say that I must outright reject or abandon my old belief system. Only that it no longer controls me by demanding that I use it and only it as the Gold standard by which I determine what is true or not. I can still drive my car, love my spouse and walk the dog. Only now, when something floats into my field of vision, I no longer must make judgments of fact, truth or reality and I can simply accept it for what it appears to be at the moment.

The outlier can no longer threaten me or even help me for that matter. Value or moral judgments are useless in this context because reality is no longer being measured by rigid standards, but rather is simply allowed to exist. It just is as it is at that moment. This small perspective change becomes a giant leap for our mind because now that we are no longer defensive in our approach, creativity and originality can come rushing to the surface. I no longer perceive the world solely through someone else’s definition of reality.

What I have just described is exactly how an infant or young child’s mind interacts with the world around her. There is no right or wrong, no true or false, no real or not real. There is simply what ‘is’ at that moment. Instead of saying “no, this can’t be real” or “yes, I believe this is true” the infant or very young child just sees and experiences. It is no more or less than what it is at that moment.

After exploring the new object (aka a new reality) the very young mind simply files it away as interesting or not and moves on to the next. She doesn’t categorize it (at least not yet) except in the simplest of terms such as tasty, colorful or fun. The child does not apply moral or value judgments in the manner we understand these terms to mean or how we use them to confirm or affirm our consensus reality.

We forget that very young children have very few innate fears and that most of their early fear perceptions are learned from fear memes their parents or guardians are conditioned to believe are real. While I would never argue that (at least in this consensus realty) some fear is not helpful in promoting longevity and health, most of the fear we experience on a daily basis is artificially induced for control purposes only and we willingly and for the most part unquestioningly go along for the ride.

In a very real sense the only thing we have to fear is ourselves because we are the ‘real’ boogie men in our lives. No one ‘makes’ me happy, sad, glad or afraid. The word ‘make’ in relation to any emotion is mostly a thought meme designed to encourage us to abandon responsibility for our own emotional sovereignty and independence. When we outsource responsibility for our emotional wellbeing we give our consent to be controlled. This is an integral component of the abuser and abused bonding, the symbiotic and codependent relationship with our abusers that I constantly discuss.

Breaking Free

If we are going to (once again) become sovereign entities and autonomous individuals we must begin the process by thinking and perceiving as one who is sovereign. A slave or captured mind does not see the world through his or her own eyes, but rather through those of the master. In every way imaginable the slave’s world revolves around the reality dictated by his (perceived) ultimate authority. The master creates the slave’s reality and thought memes, essentially his perception of reality, through the deep implantation or inception of programming memes which are then reinforced through conditioning and psychological and/or physical abuse.

Consider how ‘free’ and sovereign individuals who are captured and enslaved need to be ‘broken’ before they are considered to be usable or saleable. The external body is brutalized and nearly all sense of his or her former ‘reality’ is forcibly stripped from them physically, mentally and emotionally. Only then can the new thought meme (that of helplessness and dependency upon external control systems) be successfully implanted. The military follows a similar practice with new recruits. Break down the present reality, then program in a new one. The physical and mental shock to the system prepares the newly turned soil for the meme seeding.

This is the underlying premise behind Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”, an important read not only if we wish to understand what’s going on globally, but also locally within our mind. Our conceit, our enabling self deception, is that while we all recognize to some extent or another the effectiveness of this type of conditioning upon others, we fail to appreciate (for obvious reasons) how it is used upon us via the drip method of social conditioning and assimilation.

We all wish to point to evil doers manipulating the masses into unspeakable acts. Believing this sooths the ego and massages the mind which in turn allows us to believe that it’s all them and not me, thus absolving us from responsibility for our own (in) actions. While the master might physically control the whip, it is we compliant slaves who are the primary control system and by extension the remote hand on the whip.

We stifle dissent amongst ourselves for fear that by not doing so we will attract the whip, while at the same time by default we consent to being slaves because we do not raise objection nor do we dissent. In a similar manner we teach and train our own children the rules of slave hood before handing them over to the state, all the while following the rules and learning all the new thought meme tricks which we then dutifully teach our children.

Since our captured minds are already immersed within a world not of our own making, but rather one we have adapted to and adopted as our own, how do we break free from a prison when we cannot see the walls and barbed wire? In order for the slave or captured mind to (re)gain his freedom and sovereignty some fundamental understandings must be proactively germinated.

First and foremost we must recognize that our condition is not natural or normal and that we are not free, but can be free if we so wish. We must begin to accept that our world is not constructed as we perceive it to be, that our reality is distorted and manipulated. While the reader can easily see the slave is obviously a slave, can the reader see his or her own slavery? In order to do so we must deliberately and consciously push against every boundary we have been trained to believe is immovable and unchangeable.

This is the most difficult step of the entire process to internalize because we have always been a slave and being a slave is all we have ever know. There is nothing in our world other than that which already exists in our captured mind. This is our box and we have but one yardstick with which we measure our world. Because our mind and by extension our body is trapped within the box the only chance we ever have of seeing outside is to treat that which we formerly believed to be impossible with the same validity we now reserve solely for what has already been proven to us to be real. Question everything and accept nothing at face value, especially things we have always accepted because it has always been that way. It is not about changing the yardstick; it is about expanding it exponentially.

There Is No Spoon

We must suspend our confining and self confirming beliefs, even if at first we can only sustain this for a few moments, and train our minds eye to move beyond our self imposed limits by declaring that there are no limits and then acting as if it is so because it is so. In essence we make ‘real’ anything we completely and without reservation believe is ‘real’. By extension we delegitimize, dematerialize or make ‘not real’ anything which we seriously question as not valid or real. In my view this is the message behind that wonderful scene from “The Matrix” with the boy and the spoon. “Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.There is no spoon. Then you'll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.”

The perceived impossibility of bending the spoon with just our mind is an illustration of our conditioned blindness to anything other than what we ‘know’ to be true. It is we who must bend our minds to perceive alternative realities. It is useless to try to achieve the ‘impossible’ and bend the current perceived reality into a form we wish to see. The consensus reality in its present form will only redirect our energy back against us. There is no winning in this present reality because we are only offered tools that will fail.

Do not fight the overwhelming river current of the present perceived reality, for this is impossible. Instead withdraw your consent to participate within the present consensus reality while at the same time opening your range and sensitivity of perception to alternatives. In essence we must improve and expand our depth perception of reality.

Ultimately it is a failure of our imagination that is the barrier to our freedom because the captured and conditioned mind does not perceive as real that which it believes is impossible or improbable. This is why we must suspend our beliefs for it is our belief system that defines the limits of our reality, not matter or science or our masters. It is the very definition of futile insanity to continuously use the same measuring stick to measure the same box and expect to perceive a different reality. Our masters control our mind and the body dutifully follows, thus for all intents and purposes perception is reality. This cycle must be broken.

Once started down the road to autonomous individuality and the sovereign individual, all concepts, beliefs and truths must be examined and reexamined in this new light. Everything that we believe we know must be washed and filtered with the absolute certainty that at this point we know only what a captured mind knows. As discussed in prior chapters, we cannot see outside of the box if we are unable to perceive the box itself. But this ‘limit’ is just an illusion when we understand that it only applies to the captured mind.

This illusion of limits is foisted upon us by the consensus reality in order to confirm the limited consensus reality. We are conditioned to believe that we must know nearly everything before beginning our journey. But this is only true if the only purpose for being on the road is to arrive at the destination, an outcome we do not wish to achieve nor could we achieve at this point. All we need to know is that everything we believe we know must now be viewed as suspect. We are in essence creating a new reality by questioning every aspect of the old one. We don’t need to know where we are going in order to go forward at this point.

While disorienting at first this will quickly pass so long as we recognize that we don’t need to change everything at once, only those items that must be changed to enable the next step. It’s OK to continue to live within the fundamental premises of the current consensus reality in order to maintain our balance as long as we accept and understand that it is all someone else’s reality and that it all must eventually be reexamined. To thy own self be true is the ultimate goal for if we fully participate in the master’s reality, we are the master’s slave. The danger here is one of denial, of convincing ourselves we are only resting in the present consensus reality when in fact we are still fully immersed with no real intention of ever leaving.

Ordering of Priorities

Secondly while we must concede that at times we may have limited physical control over our body, particularly if we live within a police or debt state, our captured mind must begin to recognize that our sovereign mind is ours alone to command and control and only when we surrender it do we concede our sovereignty.

When we have (re)established sovereignty of our inner conscious being, of our mind and inner self, only then can we begin to command our body and external being. There is no way around this ordering of priorities, no shortcut to nirvana. I understand that this ordering can be extremely frustrating because we want change now. But in order to navigate our way to sovereignty we must be in control of our mind and our perceived reality.

For example, when sweeping around a corner on a motorcycle, we must look as far ahead around the corner as possible, not directly in front of us. When we look far ahead, when we focus on where we wish to go, not where we are, our body and the motorcycle follow smoothly and under control. By the same token, if we focus our attention on a spot just in front of the motorcycle, this results in unsteady operation, constant over correction and a greater chance of disaster. An experienced motorcyclist knows you should look to where you want to go.

This is also the case when driving a car quickly on a twisting road though it is much more pronounced on a motorcycle because the bike responds to our slightest body movements. Our mind is even more intimately connected to our body, thus if we wish to regain our inner sovereignty we must have a clear understanding of where we are going and be able to see far down the road if we are to successfully navigate our body through the coming insanity. Looking to where we wish to go expands our awareness and perception while gaining perspective and diminishing distractions.

The control system and the insanity are trying to do just the opposite to force us to see only the here and now directly in front of our nose. Returning to the motorcyclist one last time, an inexperienced rider is often plagued by something called target fixation. If a rider sees a pot hole in his path and continues to stare at the hole, despite his sincere desire to avoid the hole he will hit it every time. The body flows to where the eye is looking and the mind is fixed. The control system teaches us to be target fixated, to become so immersed in the consensus reality that we can see nothing else. This is why we must command our mind and soul before we can hope to direct the body.

We have been conditioned to believe that we have no control over our reality, that it already exists in a completed form all around us and that we are just pawns on the chessboard of life. The captured mind and the slave mentality is more than willing to accept that our reality is preformed and that our only job is to cope, not create. We are kept so busy exploring our mental confinement and its physical prison walls, often through school, work, television, entertainment and politics which all combine to make up our perceived reality as proven by the scientific, legal and governmental process, that we fail to understand that this control system process is precisely what defines our reality, not what our reality actually is.

The scientific process, law, governmental regulation and all the other associated instructions and procedures defining our daily life are simply methods and techniques used to describe our consensus reality. It is not reality itself in the same way that a picture of the person is not the person itself, but simply a visual description of the person.

Unlawful Justice summed up this concept nicely in the comment section of Chapter Three when he said “We must always remember that symbols and what [they] stand for are not the same thing. The flag is not the country; the uniform is not the person, the crucifix, the Star of David; the actor is not the character portrayed; the medal is not the courage; the college degree is not the skill or knowledge.”

If however we have been taught and conditioned to believe that the flag is the country or the picture is the ‘real’ person, we will then form that unquestioned belief into reality by our actions. We make real what we believe or perceive to be real in both the figurative and physical sense. This is an insidious confusion deliberately propagated to shift awareness from the limitless reality within to the fatally limited false illusion externally imposed.

Our consensus reality is simply a belief system cultivated through all aspects of the slave control system. Like rats in a maze, we spend our waking days in conditioned response mode similar to an athlete’s muscle memory. Get up, eat, go to work, eat, come home, eat, watch the indoctrination box and eat, then go to bed. This is all repeated endlessly with weekends reserved so we can shop and spend money to drown our abject misery. The only way to escape the present consensus reality is to withdraw our consent for and of the present consensus reality, a reality that is only ‘real’ precisely because it commands a consensus among the captured minds.

Sadly our consent often comes in the form of deciding to do nothing and surrendering to the river’s current, a current which in turn is nothing more than the consensus belief or herd mentality. The most important concept regarding consensus belief which we all wish to ignore is that a decision to do nothing is often the most destructive decision to ourselves that we could ever make because by doing so we surrender both our will and consent at the same time. Our apathy and indifference are the chains that bind us to our master. We willingly consent to be slaves, an idea that is viciously refuted by those who wish to avoid all responsibility for their present enslavement.

Finally, in order to avoid taking nothing more than the first step, then becoming hopelessly locked in an endless cycle of one move forward and the next one back, we must make a daily commitment to ourselves first to act on a daily basis, then to accept baby steps as the definition of progress. In this essay I am describing a lifelong pursuit, not a weekend retreat or week long workshop. We must manage both our expectations and our denial if real progress over longer periods of time is to be realized.

This statement alone will be entirely unsatisfactory to the vast majority of readers who clamor for change now, for quantifiable results we can feel good about and revel in. To this I ask a simple question. Have you ever wondered why after thousands of years of resistance, revolution, renaissance and renewal that we stand today at the peak of a consensus reality insanity, that we are repeating yet again the same mistakes all over again? External change is never permanent when the inner self remains abandoned, a fundamental truth that is always lost and forgotten once the belly is full and the mind calmed.

It is the fundamental intent behind our actions that ultimately determines our success or failure, not just the effort involved. If we simply wish to change our status in the pecking order of the present consensus reality or we want our pain to be relived in order to return to the familiar numbness of oblivion, then we are doomed from the start. As well, if we feel compelled to ‘save’ others from the escalating insanity without first focusing on ourselves, even if it is only our family we are trying to save, then we are acting for all the wrong reasons and we will fail miserably. Ask someone who is recovering from a severe addiction and has been stable for many years. Chances are they will tell you it was only when they dropped all pretenses and excuses and concentrated on themselves did they make any progress.  

Our present consensus reality is coming apart, dematerializing before our very eyes because it is being delegitimized by way of an escalating loss of faith and belief by the masses. This in turn will compel the control system and those in power to ramp up their ultimately self destructive fear and control memes and physical oppression in the same manner a drowning man will flail and grasp at anything, including his rescuer.

All illusions and denials, particularly deeply held ones that are widely shared, die a hard and ugly death not because the next chapter is so difficult to accept, but because the old chapter is so painful to let go. It doesn’t need to be this way, at least on an individual level.

This is why we must save ourselves first. Nothing else we do matters if we join the others in the agonizing death throes of our dying false reality. As long as we believe that what’s dying is real and thus worth saving, we will never let go and we will be pulled under with it. The only path forward is inward. Find yourself. Only then will you be able to find the others.

Cognitive Dissonance

05-12-2011

Inception

All of the Chapter One and Two discussions of a manipulated and distorted perception of reality have led us to the concept of Inception. For those who may not have seen the recently released movie “Inception” let me give you a brief primer. When you strip away the special effects, action sequences and great soundtrack, what you have left is a basic movie plot that presents us with the perfect analogy for how basic manipulative programming is implanted.

In order to compel an intelligent, wealthy, business savvy and motivated individual to make a business decision that is contrary to his own best interest, in this case to break up a hugely profitable multinational business recently inherited after his father’s death, a team penetrates this person’s subconscious mind while he’s dreaming (and thus more susceptible to ‘Inception’) in order to deeply implant the seed of the belief that his father would have wanted him to break up the business in order to be his own man. Once embraced, this germinating false belief leads the implanted person to take action that he sincerely believes is his own decision and beneficial when clearly it was not.

Remember this sequence of actions and reactions; a deeply implanted emotional belief or meme which when adopted and embodied by the host, primarily because he believes it is his own intent and desire, leads the individual to make choices that shape his ‘real’ world. This includes actions that are contrary to his best interest and something he would not have done if he had not been manipulated.

While the process of ‘meme’ implanting, or of artificially inducing the inception of a belief or an ideology, appears to be straight forward there is one basic problem. We always know when we are lying to our self even when we don’t wish to admit or acknowledge it. By the same token we always know when a thought or idea is not ‘ours’………at least initially. If someone whispers something in our ear, regardless of our impression of the information, for a while at least we will ‘know’ it is not our own.

In a pure environment uncorrupted by outside influences we always ‘know’ the genesis of our own thoughts, beliefs, comforting lies and half truths. So even in the corrupted and distorted sociopolitical order of today some effort must be made to conceal the intruder from the host. In order to be effectively utilized, the foreign or artificial belief must be buried several layers deep and of the simplest creation. This is why commercial, political and religious thought memes, for example the commercial print advertising seen below, use basic impulses such as sex, greed, ego, hunger, fear etc to deliver the meme package deep into our subconscious mind.

 

Meme Transplant

By going deep into the dark reaches of our mind and by obscuring the original foreign meme under layers of ego, denial and self deception, it is more likely to be embraced and embodied as our own, as a part of us. We make it our own and adopt it as our ‘truth’, thereby leaving us with no reason to reject it as foreign or unwanted.

The concept of deep meme implantation is similar to finding an organ transplant donor who is a decent match to the recipient so that the body will be more likely to accept the foreign organ as its own and not reject it as an invader or imposter. Once accepted, the body then treats it as its own and begins to feed, repair and defend the organ just like any other. It is now my vital organ and essentially always was my organ. That’s the theory at least, while in practice organ transplant is much more complicated.

But contrary to what you might think, controlling human emotion and perception is much easier when those who manipulate have thousands of years of experience doing so and we are already part of a massive and complex thought meme control system. It’s not like base meme’s are being created from scratch on a daily basis. Our beliefs and ideology have been created, maintained, changed and morphed over thousands of years and the process is ongoing.

Slap a wig on yourself and you’ll notice a difference. But the slow growing nature of your hair means the ongoing change is accepted as natural and as your own, therefore no need to refute its basis in reality. In fact as part of our conditioning we are trained to call it progress, growth, nature or natural, thus the basis for accepting manipulated change is already built into the control system. Once you begin looking down the rabbit hole there is no end to the manipulated perceptions of reality we experience to say nothing of the layers upon layers with intertwined cross connections.  

In the movie “Inception” the main character used a small metal top to help him determine whether he was back in the ‘real’ world or still dreaming. When he needed to verify his whereabouts he would pull the top from his pocket and set it spinning. If it kept right on spinning and spinning he knew he was in an alternative reality dream. But if the top slowed and then tipped over he was assured he was back in the ‘real’ world where ‘normal’ physical rules applied.

Unfortunately it’s not so easy for you and me to distinguish between illusions since we have no base reference from which we may compare. All we know is where we are now; a place we are assured by our masters is the one and only reality. Under these circumstances nothing can be trusted as ‘real’ until we undergo an honest and thorough vetting by looking deeply within. There is simply no other way to determine what is true and real when distortions are piled this high.

My Reality Right or Wrong 

Think about how deeply and unconsciously we identify with entities we dislike or even hate. Even though we may reject the government and its actions, how many times have we said ‘my government’ or ‘our troops in Iraq’ or ‘my bank’ or ‘our congressional representatives’ or ‘our President’? While the reader may brush this off as simply a casual usage of the collective and cultural ‘we’, it does illustrate how deeply embedded these memes are in our daily lives. Love the sinner (country/nation), hate the sin (corruption, manipulation etc) keeps us running on the tread mill.

We live in an insane world with its ongoing Ponzi operations, various wars of distraction and resource taking and the endless cycle of ‘we the people’ consistently allowing actions to be taken in our name that are not in our best interest. At times the present day insanity feels like we’ve been invaded by brain sucking body snatchers. How many times over the last few years have you resisted the impulse to pinch yourself to see if you were dreaming?

Push past the obvious reasons for this insanity, for example the deliberate structuring of a social order that creates internal and external conflicts of interest that to the average person is essentially a trap. Instead see that the process of ‘meme’ implanting begins at birth and continues until we die. Our ‘reality’ is in part an artificial creation that only feels ‘real’ because we know of no other. One cannot see outside the box unless one recognizes we are in a box and that we are capable of recognizing what ‘outside’ would look, feel and sound like if it were ever presented to us.

This is similar in concept to the missing keys spoken of in Chapter One which were always where we eventually found them to be from the very moment we began our search. But we initially failed to find them ‘there’ because in our mind they weren’t supposed to be ‘there’. In our known reality the keys were supposed to be where we constantly went back to look for them, which is why we repeatedly looked on the corner table or the nightstand or in the loose change bowl.

We were perceptually blind to other reality possibilities, other potential key locations, even though light that reflected from the keys was actually hitting our retinas as we looked directly at them and then passed by. We sincerely believed we really were searching everywhere when in fact we kept mentally and physically returning to where they ‘should’ have been.

While we insisted to anyone who asked that we were trying to find our keys and that we were looking everywhere, this really wasn’t the case. We continued to believe that we would eventually find our keys right where we believed they should be. Thus in our mind, a mind captured by a thought meme, we could not ‘see’ the keys until we capitulated and began to expand our physical search and opened our minds eye to other potential locations. Once we opened our mind to the possibility that the keys really were lost, thus they could be found anywhere and not just where we believed they should be, suddenly we ‘found’ the keys. The confining and blinding thought meme was broken.

The keys were not hiding from us. Rather we were hiding from them in the sense that our closed mind, our narrow worldview, couldn’t see any other possible or potential reality other than what was already recognized as ‘real’ in our minds. This is how our eyes could pass over the keys lying on the counter several times, but not register them in our present reality as physical matter in the shape and form of keys. We simply don’t recognize or acknowledge as ‘real’ that which is impossible or even highly unlikely, our single biggest flaw since it is our beliefs that determine what is or is not possible. At least in our mind, perception is reality.

This is why I constantly say that we ‘make’ our own reality and that perception is reality. This also means that the potential for limitless alternatives to, or expansions of, our present reality may already be ‘here’. Only we cannot see, feel or sense them because either we ‘know’ they aren’t here or we believe they shouldn’t be here because we have been conditioned to believe the one and only ‘realty’ is already present and all around us. Since the observer determines what is real or not, thus ‘real’ is relative to the observer’s state of belief, this is how several realities can co-exist at the same time. The Ponzi is ‘real’ in millions of minds even though it is not ‘real’ in mine.

Seeing, Thinking, Living Inside the Box

This is a terribly difficult concept to grasp when one views it with a closed or narrow mind. But I don’t use these words to insult the reader because by definition since we all live inside an artificially created box, a shared alternative reality thought meme, we all posses a narrow or closed mind to one degree or another. Closed is the definition of a mind that has been conditioned to see or believe only that which we have been repeatedly told and reassured by science and authority is real and true.

I assume the reader can see the self fulfilling closed loop circular logic of this concept. We believe something is real because we are told by an overwhelming majority that it is real, a majority who learned what was real from the prior majority. This reality is then confirmed by a scientific process that will only prove something is real if it can be measured by instruments we are told will only measure what is real. Thus if something is not measured by the instruments it can’t be real since our instruments can only measure reality. Finally, all that we believe is real is confirmed to be real or not by the thought meme authorities who are the high priest of reality, who in turn manipulate the social order that is the control system that tells us what is real.

How many times have you heard disturbing news or information that is outside your perceived present reality and you found it difficult to fully believe until it was confirmed by an authority, be it a spouse, friend, parent, government official etc? For example, in 2003 I was told by a stranger on the street that the Space Shuttle burned up on reentry. So does this mean that if there were no confirming authority available we would continue to disbelieve this very real (albeit disturbing) reality? Or would we seek out some other authority for confirmation that our reality had changed?

Personally I didn’t fully believe what I had been told until I turned on the radio and confirmed it from an ‘authoritative’ source. Consider how dependent we are upon external authorities to tell us what is real and what is not. Why do we need any external authority to affirm our reality when the ultimate authority lay within us? Maybe this is because our reality isn’t ‘real’ and the only mechanism sustaining the illusion is our dependence upon outside authorities to ‘make’ it real. We already outsource our emotional state or condition, saying “you make me happy” or “don’t make me mad” or “he made her angry”. We surrender our emotional sovereignty so why not our reality sovereignty?

We have been thoroughly conditioned to percieve our shared reality in a certain manner that is in direct contradiction to what our inner self knows to be true. This inner tension, this cognitive dissonance, is painful and to relieve this pain we seek constant external assurance that what we perceive as real is in fact ‘real’. There is a constant conflict between our shared reality and our inner knowing. Since we are conditioned to believe only in our shared reality, we seek confirmation from that shared reality that it is real. Said differently we are asking the liar to prove he is not lying or to confirm he is telling the truth. This is insanity and why our world feels so insane at times.

We create the proof we need in order to believe our reality is real. We live in a dream world that is self sustaining, self proving and always self correcting. In order to cope and adapt to this growing insanity, as outside the box unexpected or surprise events continue to intrude, temporarily destabilizing our own artificially created reality, we quickly attempt to incorporate them into our shared and individual reality as we would the ringing telephone into our dream.

As Real as Real Gets

It’s becoming clear to me that the majority is the sole arbiter of what is and is not real since the majority determines which (cognitive) tools are used to authenticate our own reality. And the mind of the majority is captured by a relatively small group of official and unofficial thought meme authorities who I have labeled in the past as the (official) keepers of the public myth.

As a defense mechanism, when nonconforming components of an alternative reality are recognized by individuals or very small groups, these people are perceived to be a threat to the majority and their controllers. When this occurs, the controlling thought meme authorities quickly call it blasphemy and the heretics are labeled crazy or insane. This is often expressed by calling those who are denouncing the present shared reality as ‘conspiracy theorists’, ‘terrorists’ and ‘radicals’.

Our current inherently unstable and rapidly destabilizing reality, one that is not based upon true and honest creation that springs from deep within the majority, is very susceptible to disturbances from more ‘pure’ components. Think of these disturbances as applying reverse leverage to the insanity. To compensate, as the Ponzi destabilizes from the population’s growing doubt and the Ponzi’s self destructive flailing, more and more Ponzi leverage must be applied just to maintain the status quo, thus the need for the exponential escalation of the Ponzi as it nears its end.

The Ponzi is nothing more than an aberrant alternative reality meme that is spiraling out of control while sucking up all available energy within reach. One doesn’t need to fight it head on in order to destroy it. In fact to do so just strengthens it by validating it as ‘real’. We just need to unplug, to default on our buy in and to seriously question or reject the false reality. This has the effect of reverse leveraging the insanity and starving it into rapid self destruction.

Decoupling one compliant mind has the same reverse leverage effect as the Ponzi gets from adding several new compliant minds because the additional minds are needed just to maintain the same head of steam. A decoupled mind, meaning a mind that is proactively suspicious of and questions all aspects of its present reality, is essentially a rebel mind and acts as a counter virus to the Ponzi worm.

Think about the scene in “Fight Club” where Tyler Durden kisses the narrator’s hand, then pours lye on it to initiate the chemical reaction that burns the skin. To pour water on it would just make the chemical burn worse, the equivalent of fighting against the present consensus reality meme using tools provided by the Ponzi that are useless since they can only be used to lose in a rigged game. There is no ‘winning’ because we aren’t using effective tools. But using the Ponzi’s tools does legitimize the Ponzi. Essentially any force applied directly against the Ponzi is redirected back against us.

But pour a little vinegar on the lye and the chemical burn instantly stops, which also is what happens when a mind decouples. Because the chemical reaction ceases there is nothing there to fight. Instead of wrestling with an overwhelming ‘reality’, just remove its power by delegitimizing it. After all, it is you and I who legitimizes it on a daily basis with our participation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg3m8wRVXWg  Youtube link to Tyler using lye on the narrator's hand.

On a side note, for the most part we don’t recognize the power words and language have over us and how they are used to control, both in obvious ways such as using the term ‘conspiracy theory’ to disarm and mock someone who questions the present reality, or in very subtle ways, such as to twist the meaning and intent of words as was wonderfully described by George Orwell in his masterpiece ‘1984’.

While we can all describe in general terms what propaganda is and how it is used, very few of us understand how the basic component of propaganda, language itself, is a form of control. Language is an insidious controlling meme because it has been (and continues to be) constructed using deeply hidden subliminal messaging which reaches far deeper into our minds than we realize. Language is a captured tool of the magicians in the same way the financial system is a captured tool of the Ponzi.

Money is a Trojan Horse Thought Meme

Have you ever given much thought to what ‘money’ really is? I’m not talking about those physical pieces of cotton and paper in your wallet or purse, but rather what money is psychologically and emotionally to you and me. Money is a thought meme or belief, a powerful symbol in a world of hidden symbols, a universally agreed upon representation of something else that supposedly contains the ‘real’ value, initially your expended labor.

However, while intellectually we understand that it’s just paper and therefore of little ‘real’ value, when we posses physical money or we see digits on a computer screen or paper statement, what we ‘see’ is what we can exchange it for, not what it is, the ultimate in psychological camouflage. Money is a genuine imitation real thing, an alternative reality representation of our ‘real’ expended labor. It is real and not real at the same time, thus the most powerful tool of the reality distorting wizards, warlocks and magicians.

Money is nothing more than a concept, an idea or belief. We believe in money so thoroughly and completely that it has become ‘real’ through force of conscious and subconscious will alone. How money should be seen, as a mental virus that has infected us all and as a shared illusion or hypnotic trance that distorts and influences our lives inside our box, would immediately change our perspective of everything if only we could maintain this clarity inside the raging storm of insanity.

Money is a Trojan Horse thought meme, an alternative reality virus or worm similar to invasive computer code that controls our minds from within. Money subverts and molds us into acting in ways that are often contrary to our own best interest. What we think of as money is actually an inception belief or meme buried so deeply into the collective consciousness, and then reinforced so completely by our experienced reality, that we have integrated it fully into our body/mind reality.

We have assimilated the money meme so thoroughly into our collective and individual consciousness that it is nearly impossible to imagine life without it. We believe this with complete and unquestioned faith in the same manner we believe it is impossible to live without our lungs or heart. Since we don’t consider ‘real’ those things we perceive to be impossible or just plain improbable, via reverse psychology, since we can’t imagine living without money, by extension money must be real.

Money is the primary controlling thought meme of the overall social control system, surpassing even that of religion. I have come to believe that the money meme is so corrosive to the human mind and spirit (at least in its present form) that it is slowly destroying us from within while at the same time providing some short term benefits. This destructive force is similar to how some drugs can have a short term beneficial effect while over the long term can and will kill us. For example, steroids can dramatically shorten our overall lifespan while improving it in the here and now.  

Once the basic money meme inception was implanted and accepted many thousands of years ago (with hundreds of modifications added along the way) most thought memes that follow are implanted using the money meme as the Trojan Horse delivery package. This sets up an intertwined system of cross affirmations and confirmations validating the new thought meme. Since ‘real’ money is being used to both implant and validate, both the new meme and the old money meme reinforce each other. It’s brilliantly insidious in its conception and implementation and now that the meme is growing exponentially out of control, it is driving us ever more insane at the same escalating pace.

Consider how many stories we’ve heard that describe how sudden wealth from the lottery or other sources has destroyed lives. Or that the pursuit of money compels so many people to forsake nearly everything else in their life. When you dig into these stories you often find that it is said that the person and those around them went mad from the influence of the money (meme). Greed is a form of extreme emotional excess brought about by an obsession or trance like state revolving entirely around a concept of ‘money’ which itself is little more than a substitute for things we believe are ‘real’ in the first place.

Greed in particular and money in general is an obsessive compulsive personality disorder of the most insidious type. Because the concept of money is an integral part of our social order it is accepted as part of the overall illusion. Since we must have money in order to survive, we must work in order to obtain money. If we wish more money, we must be more highly ‘trained’ in very specific and narrowly drawn worldviews defined as professions and occupations. We self identify ourselves with money, thus proving the assimilation is complete. The most common question asked is “What do you do?” meaning what is your capacity to earn money.

The money meme is infectious and all consuming, occupying a greater portion of our waking thoughts than sex. Money is the central authority that confirms and reinforces everything else we are told is real, therefore whomever or whatever controls money in effect controls our reality. Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty, is quoted as saying “Give me control of a nation's money supply, and I care not who makes its laws.” Power of this magnitude does not come from guns, but from control of the mind at its inception level.

Authorities are Authors of Belief, Lies and Thought Memes

Consider for a moment our insatiable desire and desperate need to be told by authorities what is real and what is not, what is true and what is false. Why are we so dependent upon external sources for affirmation of truth and reality when the ultimate authority lay within? I contend it is because more and more the reality we live within is twisting and distorting well beyond the ability of the control mechanism to explain or justify it. This leaves us in a state of constant confusion and uncertainly which in turn compels us to seek affirmation and confirmation that our present reality remains ‘real’.

Our minds are beginning to question the basic premises by which we conduct our lives and we are now questioning our world, ourselves and the artificially implanted memes. In fact we are beginning to question everything including the inception or genesis of our most basic beliefs. The collective has begun to suspect that we are (and have been) living a lie, that a part of ‘us’ is not natural, but in fact a foreign invader. Just as the body creates and then dispatches white blood cells to attack foreign entities in our body, so is the collective mind beginning to attack the artificially implanted meme’s we have been conditioned to believe are real.

And while on the surface it may not yet appear to be happening, more and more people are beginning to awaken and with ever increasing velocity. This is the root cause of the increasing external conflicts, economic depression, religious extremism, political infighting and corruption etc. The symptom list of the awakening is endless. Our world, our consensus reality, appears to be coming apart at the seams because our belief in the consensus reality is being withdrawn through the collective’s increasing doubt and disbelief.

However, while we are now increasingly questioning our present reality, we have very little understanding of what’s really going on at the conscious level. We are so disconnected from our inner being that the alarms and warnings we’re receiving are coming through as little more than unease and blind fear. This in turn is perceived as nearly the same message as the external insanity is broadcasting.

Our blindness and inability to discern the difference in messages is caused by our narrow worldview and a mind mostly closed to the possibility of alternative realities, starting with the one I call the inner being. We sense something is terribly wrong, but we don’t know what and probably wouldn’t recognize it if we saw it anyway, at least for now.

Destabilized by this reality earthquake we quite naturally revert to our base programming. And that basic impulse is to seek proof and affirmation of the present (crumbling) reality directly from our thought meme authorities and public myth generating leaders and guardians. This is why we see an increasing bifurcation between those who blindly follow and those who increasingly question. Sides supporting different realities are forming.

In effect we are trained to default back to our source code for error correction protocols. This is why so many seemingly intelligent and aware people are becoming increasingly passive and infantile when facing ‘truths’ that are frighteningly contrary to their belief system aka thought memes. Remember that the terms ‘belief system’ and ‘worldview’ are simply other phrases used to describe the artificial box we all live within. So while people are waking up, they are also extremely disorientated and thus particularly vulnerable to additional programming and manipulation. While the body may be that of an adult the mind is that of a frightened child looking for emotional comfort and reassurance.

There is no doubt that in this state, while some minds will be re-assimilated back into the hive mentality of the present consensus reality, many more will not. For this reason alone consistent and relentless truth speaking, while apparently a failure because of little visible results, is actually slowly working to wear away centuries of mind control and conditioning in the same manner a slow steady drip of a faucet grinds away at the porcelain surface of the kitchen sink. This is the reason blogs such as Zero Hedge must be supported and its alternative realty thought meme spread wide and far. The decoupling builds its support one mind at a time until suddenly it goes exponential and the façade crumbles.

In Chapter Four we discuss a basic roadmap to expanding our capacity to perceive not only the truth regarding our current consensus reality, but alternatives that already exist.

 

Cognitive Dissonance

05-11-2011

The intent of this essay is not to convince the reader of anything other than the need to expand our depth perception of the consensus reality. Consider this essay as an invitation to think free of constraints. Chapters One (here) and Two (here) explore our distorted and manipulated perception of reality while Chapter Three (here) examines the concept of Inception or the implanting of thought or belief memes into our individual minds and our collective culture. Chapter Four (here) discusses a basic roadmap to the expansion of our perceived reality.

 

Perception Is Reality

As a young child I traveled extensively starting around seven years of age and extending deep into my twenties. For almost two decades I visited exotic and faraway lands where I witnessed strange native customs while struggling to understand the local culture. I marveled at the foreign architecture, the strange smells, sounds, colors and textures as I abandoned restraint and became totally immersed in my surroundings. Each day I experienced the inner thrill of discovery tinged with the latent unease that comes from being totally out of my element and hostage to the unknown. It was wonderful, it was frightening and it was inspiring. And none of it was real because all of it was in my mind.

Or maybe it was real. Is reality exclusively a hard slap across the face by my angry lover or the cold biting wind in my face as I rush to catch the last available cab? Perhaps reality is also the delicious inner joy I experience while watching my young children play with utter abandon, squealing with delight simply because they are alive and uninhibited.

In many respects the emotional joy derived from my children, as well as its physical manifestation, is no less real or less grounded in reality than the frigid wind. In fact the cold wind can only be experienced during the winter season, yet I can experience happiness at any time. The lover’s slap requires a shared reality and the right conditions, while my pleasure and inner peace can be deeply personal or widely shared, can be summoned upon command and is infinitely repeatable.

Yet we seem to believe there are major differences between these perceptions, with one supposedly real and the other not quite so much. We are emphatically assured by science that one is based in reality, defined as ruled by physical laws, theorems and conditions, the other solely in our mind and thus……well, not really ‘real’ in the sense of a physical presence of mass, weight and volume, the final arbiter of real reality.

Since our modern day scientific magicians have yet to thoroughly measure, quantify or reproduce under sterile laboratory conditions our consciousness, the unproven reality of our inner being is relegated to a corner of the lab as a fascinating curiosity for later study. And there it remains in a sort of no man’s land with all the other unproven dead ends languishing in scientific purgatory. We are assured it isn’t ‘real’ if it can’t be proven, so if the wizards say it ain’t real who are we to argue? We are just the creators of our present day conscious reality. What would we know?

Lost in this discussion is the understanding that thought and emotion compel action which in turn propels physical outcomes that create our external reality. All of the man made physical reality that surrounds us began in our mind, in our inner consciousness, and only after we imagined it did we form it into a physical presence. Yet we rarely question what ‘real’ and ‘reality’ actually is. After all, isn’t it obvious? Well, maybe not.

Without being aware of it (we are told) our brain filters out much of what we receive via our five (six?) senses in order to prevent sensory overload. In addition our eyes see only a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum, our ears hear just a small range of frequencies and our nose can only detect relatively heavy concentrations of odors. The nose doesn’t necessarily know.

It appears our senses are primitive compared to many other animals and our brain filters out much of what is received in order to protect us from being overwhelmed by the information deluge coming from the ‘real’ world. So if we perceive only a small slice of our world and even that tiny portion is filtered by the brain, how do we have the arrogance to claim we know what ‘real’ is in any comprehensive sense of the word?

Considering how science and scientific knowledge is constantly being surprised, amended, revised and rewritten, for some authority to declare that our emotions and consciousness are somehow different or separated from physical reality boggles the mind. We do not know what we do not know and once we accept this basic premise, to then make sweeping statements of absolute truth and clearly defined boundary is hubris, arrogance and self deception to the nth degree.

I suggest that in theory there’s an extremely permeable barrier separating all our perceived and unperceived realities and little to no barrier in practice. Furthermore, what is preventing us from fully recognizing all facets of our reality isn’t so much physical limitations, but instead conditioning, indoctrination and social training. It’s not nature so much as it is nurture that blinds us to the extent of the world around us and possibly other worlds that exist beyond the horizon. As well, if I cannot ‘see’ or perceive the world around me as it truly is, how do I recognize duplicitous and manipulative behavior by those of ill intent that prey upon my blindness?

The Mind Knows Not

I grew up immersed in the world of fiction, in particular science fiction. And when I was caught up in some dramatic alien invasion or visiting a strange new planet or even racing a spaceship through time while dodging laser beams, in many ways it was as ‘real’ as anything I’d ever physically experienced. And I would argue even more so because when engrossed in a fictional book I wasn’t a spectator or passive participant of physical reality who lives strictly within a preformed physical world, but rather an active creator of an alternative reality.

The fictional written word is simply the two dimensional blueprint for an alternative reality which is then fleshed out and given depth, texture and color via my imagination. A really well written book doesn’t create the alternative reality, but simply acts as a powerful catalyst for my consciousness to then create that reality by way of my imagination. This is similar to the process by which I imagine something I wish to possess and then I create it with my hands in the real physical world. So does my ‘real’ present reality make the alternative reality I perceive through the pages of a novel any less real or even demonstrably fake or false?

If I laugh or cry or even fall in love with a character while immersed in some alternative reality, my emotions and their outward physical manifestation are just as real as if my ‘real’ lover dumps me or I miss that last cab and must walk in the rain. My passion for my lost ‘real’ world lover is still very real even though it is no longer returned and thus not validated. Her emotional rejection continues to affect me physically even though she no longer touches me.

If while dreaming I experience an epiphany which when awake I physically translate into a ‘real’ life changing event for myself and those around me, where is the divide between real and not? It’s almost a chicken and egg thing. Which comes first, the inner emotion and imagination or the external reality? From my point of view one cannot exist without the other, thus one is just as real as the other. They simply manifest in different ways and different forms.

I find it fascinating that we accept Einstein’s theory that energy is never destroyed but only transformed. And yet we don’t think to carry that theory into our daily lives when it comes to our perceived reality. Why can’t reality move, shift and transform between our perceived physical and metaphysical realities? And why would we possibly think we are not an integral part of that transformation either as the instigator or creator of the change?

Our subconscious mind accepts as ‘real’ everything that it perceives or senses regardless of whether it is actually occurring in our physical world, our imagination, on the television or in our dreams. This is one of the reasons subliminal messaging is so effective. While the hidden message is flashed to our subconscious mind, the intent is clearly for the message to manifest in the ‘real’ world through our physical and emotional expression. Essentially subliminal messaging is designed to penetrate that porous barrier between the real and not so real world in order to be acted upon in the physical world. We are compelled to emotionally react and then physically act via our capacity for subconscious perception of something which we are not consciously aware of.

It is only within our physical world that reality is constrained and narrowly defined. Yet even in the real world we hear echoes and see distortions which we quickly explain away as not real or unproven. Many of our cultural legends and much of our entertainment is preoccupied with ghosts, evil demons, ancient Gods and scary monsters. Science has all kinds of wonderful explanations for this ‘hysteria’ and all of the explanations confidently declare they aren’t ‘real’. In fact that is the default starting point. Either we are experiencing massive global hallucinations spanning hundreds of generations or quite possibly we can and do perceive shadows of other realities.

There are hundreds of subtle alternative reality reverberations that often go unnoticed. Consider photos or video of Asian men and women bowing to an unseen person on the other end of the phone line. Who are they bowing to; the ‘real’ person who is hundreds or thousands of miles away and can’t see or acknowledge the bow? Or to the perceived image of the person that occupies the callers mind? Which one is real and why would they bow to something that is not ‘real’?

If pornographic images are not ‘real’ why do the same areas of the brain light up with activity regardless of whether the person is witnessing a live sex act, watching a pornographic video or actually engaging in the sex act itself? What is real and what is not if ultimately our subconscious mind, and very often our conscious mind, cannot tell the difference?

Within 20 years computer generated alternative reality worlds will be so ‘real’ we won’t be able to tell the difference between real reality and fake reality. So which world will be ‘real’, the computer world we perceive as real or the physical world we perceive as real? If reality is determined or measured by how we sense and perceive our physical world, and computers will be able to simulate a world exactly as we experience our physical world right down to neural stimulation that leads us to believe we are in a physical world, then which reality is real?

At one time we believed that our physical world was ruled by laws that were cast in iron. Then along came quantum mechanics and suddenly there are two (or more) sets of rules. Wait a minute. So you’re telling me there are two different realities depending upon the state in which I ‘exist’?

The concept that our physical reality is real and everything else is not is predicated upon the belief that ‘we’ die when our physical bodies stop functioning. We are told that our consciousness is local and thus will cease to exist when the physical host expires. What if this is not the case? We presume by default that our consciousness ‘dies’ when the physical body expires, yet we have no proof of this one way or another. Since there is no ‘proof’ why do we default to a limited point of view?

Maybe this restricted belief is encouraged in order to limit our depth of perception of everything else? The physical world would certainly look different if we believed our consciousness was immortal and without limits. While the reader might quickly note that the world’s major religious organizations don’t promote the view of a mortal inner being or soul, each religious organization has its own set of rules and regulations that must be adhered to in the physical world in order to achieve immortality afterwards. Why must there be exclusivity?

Believing that ‘we’, meaning our consciousness, have no limits might actually encourage us to perceive our physical world without internally or externally imposed limits or restrictions. This certainly wouldn’t be helpful to those who wish to control and corral thought, body and soul. I’ll explore the concept of deliberately restricting perception and thought in a later chapter when I discuss Inception and meme implanting.

There is a metamorphosis that occurs as we assimilate our ‘real’ world conditioning during our early childhood. We are told we’re not fully formed at that time, that we have much to learn about how the ‘real’ world works. Instead of believing that we are learning what reality is from the moment we are born, consider that we are being trained to perceive a shared reality through a very narrow lens tuned to a small minority of frequencies similar to a multi band radio/transmitter permanently set to receive just one channel and never transmit. What we think is reality is based almost entirely upon how we are trained to perceive it, not solely upon what is there physically.

What I See Is Real, What I Cannot Is Not

How many times have we gone looking for our car keys and searched unsuccessfully for five or ten minutes while becoming increasingly frantic? Suddenly they materialize out of nowhere on the kitchen table or next to the tropical fish tank and we swear we already looked there several times. The problem was simply that we didn’t ‘see’ them. We couldn’t see the reality of the keys even as we repeatedly passed over them with our eyes because our filtered perception of reality told us the keys weren’t there. Instead we reasoned they would be found where we usually left them. So that’s where we physically and mentally returned to look again and again and again.

We know the image of those keys lying out in the open must have registered in our eye and processed somewhere in our brain several times during our search. And yet we didn’t ‘see’ them until suddenly we ‘found’ them. If our perception of reality is so impaired when trying to find something we ‘know’ to be a part of our (shared) reality, then we must seriously consider there is a very real possibility we aren’t ‘seeing’ all of our reality.

There have been some interesting theories put forth which hypothesize that physical reality is only formed (materialized, created, brought into existence) when we observe or recognize it, when our conscious mind focuses on it. And I’ve discussed this in other essays. But from a practical point of view even though the keys are assumed to exist during our search, from our perspective the keys are invisible and simply not there until we allow our mind to adjust to a reality different from what we expected, assumed and believed was real.

We fully expect the keys to be found somewhere other than where we eventually find them. That’s why they are always found in the last place we look and rarely where we expect them. When we finally allow our mind to imagine the keys as being somewhere different from our expectation or belief we open our mind to alternative realities and are then able to see them. We call this clouded perception a mental block and I suggest that we suffer from larger and more encompassing mental blocks than just some lost keys.

From a variety of perspectives we are quite blind to the world around us. Enquiring minds want to know why this happens and where does this distortion come from. I propose that our experienced ‘reality’ on a day to day basis is heavily influenced by how we perceive our past experiences in relation to those we are currently living as well as to our preconceived and conditioned notion of what reality is or should be.

A Shared Reality Agreed Upon is Agreed to Be Real

We might say that reality as experienced in the ‘real’ world is nothing more than a shared perception based upon arbitrary measurements using commonly agreed upon standards and interpretations. History and reality is a set of lies and beliefs which form perceptions that are agreed upon as real and thus acted upon as if real, in effect making reality.

On a daily basis Zero Hedge exposes a set of financial lies that are agreed upon as true (reality) by the majority. And The Washington Post and The NY Times offer up a set of political lies agreed upon as real. So is Zero Hedge or The Washington Post living in the ‘real’ world? Maybe they both are. If the physical world can have several sets of rules and laws depending upon if you’re in the ‘real’ world or the quantum world, who is to say there are not more exceptions to the rule of ‘real’? Yet we dare to claim we know what reality is.

Turning to more ‘real’ world things such as the markets, one point of view is that the stock market is moving higher because of the Fed’s POMO infusions of liquidity which enable the buying of stock. The POMO comes first, then the buying of stock. Another would be that the market is rising because people expect it to go higher, thus they act in advance to fulfill their expectations and push up the market. The buying of stock comes first, then the POMO. So which is it?

I might say that the investing technique of “buy the f**king dip” (BTFD) is simply investors buying stock based upon an expectation or belief of a real event and not upon an actual real event, at least not at that moment. But then BTFD is validated or made ‘real’ by the actual POMO pump. The proof would be a drop in the market if the Fed were to unexpectedly curtail POMO operations after the market had already gone up in anticipation. If so, is BTFD real or not? What comes first, the BTFD or the POMO? Can one be ‘real’ without the other? Consider what “buy the rumor, sell the news” is telling us about perception and reality.

I often find myself thinking about the placebo effect and the ‘will to live’. Both of these concepts seem to be at odds with our scientific world. On the one hand we are told they are not real and are to be ignored other than as curiosities. Yet the efficacy of all new drugs is measured against the apparent power of the mind to heal the body, the so called placebo effect.

A random 5% to 10% of the population appears to be able to ‘heal’ or ‘feel better’ simply because we believe we are receiving drugs or other types of treatment that will help us. This is contrary to the reality that we are not being ‘drugged’ or treated in the pharmacological or physical sense, but rather only psychologically. In other words when we perceive so strongly that we believe, we seem to create a physical reality that mimics our belief.

In addition, when modern medicine has nothing left to offer us, we are often reminded by the doctor that it all comes down to the patient’s ‘will to live’, as if to say our ‘will’ is a physical force to be reckoned with. It appears we have another example of two alternative realities rubbing elbows with the ‘real’ world.

So on the one hand we are told the mind doesn’t control or make matter ‘real’ (or maybe make ‘real’ matter) and yet here is an example acknowledged by science as something not exactly ‘real’, but in the case of the placebo effect, is measurable, quantifiable and repeatable. It is almost as if the meme masters of our present consensus reality are acknowledging aberrations in our shared reality that can no longer be denied, while at the same time diminishing it as much as possible to hide from us our own inner power.

If the placebo effect alone does not make us question our perception of reality I don’t know what will. Yet the average conditioned mind brushes off this type of aberration as immaterial to our ‘real’ world.

In Chapter Two we continue to explore our limited and distorted perception of reality.

Cognitive Dissonance

05/09/2011

With limericks by The Limerick King

 

This is part one of a two part exploration (part two found here) into what the world might look like after a total or partial collapse of the currency/economic system from the perspective of holding Gold. As the title explains this is a thought experiment, not a dissertation filled with footnotes and references. Consider it one man’s flight of fancy, so take what you need and leave the rest. Anyone who claims they know what will actually happen is a fool greater than me.  

As markets are starting to sink

The end could be here in a wink

So should I prepare?

Should I even care?

My PMs will save me!!! (I think......)

(The Limerick King)

When I first entered the business 20 plus years ago the firm I started with had a mentoring program that paired the fresh faced rookie with a veteran for the first 6 months. The idea was that for a piece of the action paid to the veteran from the rookie’s commissions, the veteran would offer hands-on review, insight and support. While some on both sides of the office divide groused over this arrangement, from management’s point of view it made all the sense in the world because now the office was raising the rookie, not just one or two managers.

I found the mentoring system to be beneficial simply because I was coming in quite a bit older than the younger shark chum fresh from the diploma mills. Most of them felt they had the world by the balls, thus as long as they showed up the (fiat) spice would flow. But I knew these financial chop shops had a tendency to chew up the rookies, and then spit them out once they’d been used and abused. Since I didn’t want any part of the rookie churn and burn I relished the chance to work with a veteran and develop good habits early rather than be left with trying to break many bad habits later. 

Luckily I was paired with an old pro who quickly took a shine to me and showed me the ropes, spending far more time with me then he was ever compensated for. In fact the experience re-invigorated him and he went on to become the top producer of the office two years running. The more I learned the harder he pushed, reasoning that since I knew this, I damn well better know that. So he took most of his compensation in the form of my spilled blood and an inner satisfaction that he was making his mark. For me, the processes, morals and methods he taught me are still paying sweet dividends two decades later.

One of his demands was the weekly ritual of a portfolio review of each holding in every client account. When Friday came round he insisted I justify why this or that position was in a client’s account and quite frankly it drove me crazy. I would complain that we had done the same damn thing every week for months and not much had changed. So why was he still asking me the same questions again and again. And every time I complained he would respond with a question of his own, often dramatizing it by looking out the window or throwing the Wall Street Journal on his desk. Prove to him that the world was the same one that existed when we reviewed the accounts the last time.

And of course he was right; the world was not the same and often quite different from week to week. This trial by fire is something I still force myself to go through every Friday afternoon. Knowing the client and the world situation, if I can’t justify the position, why the hell is it still in the account? But of equal or greater value to me were my mentor’s questions each time I tried to add a new position to an account. I hated his probing and poking and often I took it personally. And that bastard knew where all my buttons were and delighted in pressing every single one until I finally wised up and stopped letting him goad me.

After we had discussed why I was adding the position, and well before I was allowed to call the client and make the pitch, he always had one final question for me. How was I going to dispose of it if things went wrong in a hurry? Or in his words, “What’s the end game on that?” At first I felt his question was downright stupid and my rote answer was always that I would cross that bridge when I got there. But he never let me get away with my intellectual laziness and he’d ask the same question 6 different ways until I saw all the possible pitfalls based upon the knowledge I had at the time.

I can still hear him today. “Don’t ever take on a new position until you have thoroughly considered how you will dispose of it under the worst of conditions.” It forced me to look beyond my nose and consider how circumstances change, and with those changes the ability to sell something that, while saleable today, might not be tomorrow. Liquidity and desirability can dry up quickly and always when it is least convenient to you and your client. This perspective broadening exercise was extremely useful beyond my business world because it can and should be applied at all (not just major) life decision points.

As this Keynesian game nears an end

And the Banksters can no longer lend

What will we all treasure?

Will gold be our measure?

Or the love of our family and friends?

(The Limerick King)

So……what’s the end game here folks? Regardless of whether we are USA centric or more globally focused, the fact is that we ‘own’ a political, economic and social portfolio that is the foundational basis not only of our wealth and investments, but of our very lives and those of our family, friends and neighbors. So have we done a fearless and thorough portfolio review or are we simply buying Gold and other precious metals, along with guns and various food stuffs, and hunkering down to wait out the storm?

I don’t pretend to have all the answers, let alone the proper questions. So don’t look to me for instructions when the T-1000 HFT bots crest the ridge and cream our asses. But a little proactive introspection is well warranted here considering we are now entering uncharted territory. And it is uncharted territory; at least for plebs such as you and me, even though there have been fiat currency collapses throughout history. This time really is different (as were all the other times for each generation caught in the middle) if for no other reason than the massive use of financial leverage combined with the humongous explosion in global population over the last 100 years.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m basically a hard asset guy at this point in the great unwind. But as I have said in the Zero Hedge comment section several times before, it’s one thing to grow and/or protect your assets and wealth in Precious Metals (PMs) (and other hard assets) and another thing entirely to move those assets to the next game board when this one is reset, replaced or recreated.

I see and hear a great deal of cognitive dissonance in many of the articles and comments discussing PMs as the best vehicle to use when moving to dry land……….that is, when dry land finally does rises from the ocean floor to form the new capitalist capital called Atlantis Redux. I find that many are kind of fuzzy on how the actual transition/transaction will go down and nearly all just sort of insert “and then a miracle occurs” at some point in the discussion when they recite the precious metals (PM) mantra.

Let’s just say for a moment that our Gold, Silver, Platinum and Gold-plated Tungsten have all quintupled in price (as measured in whatever fiat is the favorite at the end) and we are now all sitting pretty. Do we really honest-to-God no-fingers-crossed cherry-on-top believe that the powers-that-be will simply allow us to mosey up to the cashiers cage and redeem or convert it all for whatever monetary unit reigns supreme? Really? Because from my point of view it’s just crazy talk to assume that the enemy of the state (Gold and other PM’s) will be welcomed home with a warm welcoming embrace.

Now before you bite my head off (remember boys and girls, this is just a thought experiment) understand who this essay is directed towards. Or rather isn’t directed towards. If you are capable of purchasing several LBMA Gold bars and are able to store them overseas and you can easily relocate yourself to where your Gold is, then this rant really isn’t directed towards you. While you may not be a power-that-be, you are in a class above the middle class regardless of your protestations to the contrary. I’m not saying you don’t share many of the problems others are facing, only that you have a great deal more flexibility to deal with them.

In the same respect, if you own several Gold Eagles and a couple hundred ounces of Silver, then you are also not to whom I’m speaking. Most likely you will run under the radar because your small amount of Gold and Silver is being held in the form of the U.S Eagle coin which, while not exactly produced as a numismatic, is a US Mint produced Gold and Silver coin that is considered US legal tender. So from my point of view, if Gold and Silver Eagles are held in small quantities, they will not be considered an investment, but rather savings or collectibles.

The people I am talking to are those who are converting a substantial portion of their investable assets into physical Gold. Or who are selling other assets or breaking qualified retirement accounts (IRAs, 401(k)s etc) in order to purchase relatively large amounts of physical Gold and Silver, though the focus of this essay is Gold. Their intent is not only to grow their PM assets, but to carry the bulk of their wealth over to the Promised Land when the current Ponzi Empire crashes and burns.

You know who you are and unfortunately so do the government goons if you have ever bought any quantity of Gold from an established dealer with a check, a cashier’s check, wire, electronic funds transfer or other traceable method. And because of Check 21 everything is traceable nowadays (even cash within a few degrees of separation) if you used one of these instruments to gather the cash.

The End Game is here so I'm told

Will the last valued asset be gold?

If so, keep it tight

From the thieves in the night

For they know every ounce that you hold

(The Limerick King)

Where I have a problem with the logic used by some is this. There seems to be a general consensus that Gold is the arch enemy, the Kryptonite if you will, of the out of control fiat creation by central authorities in order to extend and pretend while looting the executive bathrooms of the Gold faucets and monogrammed bathrobes. This understanding, along with a host of others, is always proffered when explaining the reason behind PM manipulation and the entire PM paper racket. And I don’t necessarily disagree with this general supposition.

What I don’t get is the idea that if Gold has been considered ‘contrary’ or ‘dangerous’ to the unfettered debasement of fiat in the past and present, thus the reason for the manipulation, then why would this suppression and resistance to the ‘Golden enemy’ by the powers-that-be suddenly disappear precisely when the powers (or more accurately their agents and puppets) are desperate and have the most to lose? It is clear to me, and judging by the comments clear to many others here on Zero Hedge, that these guys and gals play for keeps, consistently pushing nearly all their chips to the center of the table in an endless game of bluff and intimidation.

More important to me, at least for the purposes of this essay, is that those lovable sociopaths would rather burn to the ground than play to lose or walk away. This, by the way, is precisely why they rarely lose. They play for keeps and they’ve been doing so for thousands of years. They not only have the power, but they know how to use the power they have. Meaning they are ruthless cutthroat bastards who see you and me as cattle to be consumed or beasts of burden to be used. And I’m being kind for the sake of the weak stomachs among us.

As best as I can tell the general assumption is that when the partial or total collapse comes (not if because we are talking worst case scenario here) the failed powers that be, perhaps inspired by some public hangings and decapitations, will pack up their lawn chairs and vacate the levers of power, allowing more responsible adults and even some advanced children to take over and save the day. Or at the very least, the expectation is that the new kids on the block will clean up the mess left behind by those traitorous bastards and that they will do so in a reasonably fair, open and egalitarian manner. Let me take a moment to collect my thoughts before rendering my opinion on this matter.

I DON’T THINK SO!

Why am I so confident of this? Well, from studying history of course. And by history I mean good old fashioned world history dictated and approved by the Empire for high school or college textbooks. You see, from the perspective of long term history, while we may have a new production company and support system for the global Ponzi screenplay, as well as fresh faces to fill the role of puppets, enablers and useful idiots, and even a (relatively) new political system to emotionally and culturally unify us all as we labor away in our hamster cages, the Ponzi is at its central core the oldest con in the books.

Essentially we are all experiencing plantation living at its highest and most efficient evolution to date, where the sole purpose of our existence is to serve our immediate masters who then serve their masters who then serve their masters in an ever narrowing pyramidal hierarchy. This goes on until it reaches the point where at the top we find several hundred to a thousand elite scattered across a number of blood-line families that share the power and spoils. And there is serious evidence available to be examined by the determined researcher that there might even be another level (or two) above that.

BTW for the most part, but with certain exceptions, you will not find these elite of the elite on any list of richest people in the world. I personally suspect that many of those who you do see listed are in fact the public caretakers of the wealth of others and who are paid handsomely to play the role and weather the slings and arrows of public scorn in exchange for growing the assets and guarding the anonymity of the real owners of Mother Ship Earth.

The Powers That Be are concealed

Their identities won't be revealed

They will hide from the light

And continue their fight

Until all of our fates have been sealed

(The Limerick King)

History is full of examples of crumbling empires and nearly all of them seem to share several characteristics. First and foremost in my mind is that regardless of how dire things may seem to be, the collapse progresses much slower than expected. It always seems like today’s bad news signals the end of the world as we know it….until tomorrow’s even worse news hits the ticker.

Grab Mr. Peabody and fire up the WABAC (pronounced ‘wayback’) machine to travel a few years into the past, say to 2007, and consider some of the headlines we saw and the reactions they provoked. What were considered Earth shaking events back then are nearly routine today, no big deal really. This is a severely misunderstood and underappreciated, and thus under weighted, counter balancing force to the general insanity level. The (normalcy bias) force is strong in you young Skywalker.

I suspect this isn’t so much because the powers that be are holding it all up, but rather it is the common folk living on the ground floor of this insanity that are doing the heavy lifting. Never underestimate the desperate desire of those who are chained to the plantation to preserve that plantation even when it would be easier and saner just to walk away. This Stockholm syndrome conditioned mind is of course exploited by the masters to rape and pillage long past the normal or even expected expiration date of the Empire.

Also, collapse (partial or total) is a relative term. For the financial elite, politically powerful and top tier business people, collapse is just another word for a really severe business cycle downturn. When conditions become harsh, the script is always the same. Shed useless eaters, strip all usable assets and sell the estate to the last of the greater fools, then move on to a more favorable business location. So by the time the barbarians are at the gate, the rich and powerful are long gone and have stripped most of the wealth from the kingdom.

In the modern era this means that the rape and pillage of the middle class is the purpose and eventual outcome of any severe recession/depression. So of course it is the purpose of the ongoing collapse. See ‘The Great Depression’ of the 1930’s for the Cliff Notes on the coming fun and games…exponentially escalated by $708 Trillion (notional value) in derivatives. But always remember that the explosive firepower released back in the 1930’s is nothing compared to the massive potential energy that is about to be released. The real purpose of can kicking is to try to slowly release that energy rather than to allow it to go BOOM all at once. Consider it a form of extended game play for the elite.

When the global reset is complete

And the Kleptos are in full retreat

Secure family and friends

For their game never ends

And they'll never accept their defeat

(The Limerick King)

The true powers that be have a long history of backing all sides in nearly every conflict or collapse. So it is not a stretch to assume they are supporting the very barbarians who are beating the door down while also relocating their kin from the collapsing empire. If you spend any time studying the blood lines of the rich and powerful, despite our general indifference to this seemingly inconsequential subject matter, to Earth’s owners the blood lines are carefully massaged, managed and manipulated in order to maintain a balance of power and influence among the bickering kings and queens. Do not underestimate the utmost importance of blue blood hierarchies or of the interconnected web between supposedly bitter enemies and plantations/countries. If it is important to them, then it should be considered life and death to us. 

Inside the sprawling plantation the conditioning of the slaves is ongoing and ever changing and relies heavily upon the older, more experienced slaves to indoctrinate and condition the new ‘volunteers’, thus cementing the bond that is often expressed as nation or community…..or more properly ‘misery loves company’. For several thousand years religion was the center of the indoctrination process and controlled by the blue bloods, all of whom had no aversion to donning priest’s robes to spout the all important rites and rituals. A close inspection of history shows that while the vehicles of power shifted and morphed, the methods used and the personalities involved always remained the same.

Closer to the modern era, there was a shift to the sharing of power between religious centers and blue blood families who presided over kingdoms. Again, there really wasn’t a divide, only the public appearance of division. Mom usually decided which son became King and which became a Cardinal or Pope, thus assuring her it all remained in the family.

Over the last several hundred years the center shifted once again to the façade of central governments organized under ideological memes such as democracy, communism, socialism and of course the more traditional blue blood families aka Kings, Queens and royal families, sometimes along with a quasi democratically elected congress designed to create a false sense of self control for the naïve native slaves.

Regardless of the method or ideology used today, they are all simply more sophisticated methods to organize and exploit the plantation and nothing more. In much of the so called ‘free’ world today, giving the slaves the illusion of freedom of (limited) choice has been found to dramatically increase productivity. An intelligent plantation manager will allow any work rules as long as they still maintain order while increasing efficiency because strip mining the human and mineral resources of Earth is the one and only goal of the ruling elite.

Preserving your wealth can be fun

The first thing you'll need is a gun

Trust no one you meet

Each night soak your feet

Just in case it is prudent to run

(The Limerick King)

Regardless of whether the financial elite remain in place or move on during or after the collapse, there will still be some type of procedure set up to exchange the old slave script for the new slave script. Without a doubt there will be different tiers or exchange rates depending upon which social and/or economic class you reside in. And rest assured the transition will not be fair and it will be used to extract whatever remaining wealth the middle class still holds. This is a given, but it will not be readily obvious or even visible since most of the dirty work will occur behind closed doors and well in advance of the general scrum.

There is also no doubt, once again predicated by a careful reading of history, that regardless of the leadership actually holding office, when the gates are busted down (or as is more likely the case pulled down from within, often via false flag attacks), in order to placate the increasingly restless slave population, fresh faces will magically appear from the cloning rooms to offer stirring speeches and heartwarming platitudes about how all the slaves must engage in mutual sacrifice and work even harder to ensure that the elite make a clean getaway before the cleansing fires are set and the system is finally rebooted. I can’t wait for the games to begin because I still have more cognitive room left over for that hope and change thingy.

Every crumbling Empire always reaches into the same bag of tricks when the heat is on and the slave nation becomes restless. After all, the elite must maintain order so that the fleecing can be completed. ‘Order’, especially near the end of the End Game, is usually maintained by a heavy handed police and/or military presence via outright martial law or the stealth version implemented by (executive) decree. Let the head bashing begin. Desperate puppet leaders will most certainly do desperate things, first to maintain their own illusion of power, then just to save their asses. Count on it.

Two tricks of the deception trade that often work hand in hand are scapegoat harvesting combined with war mongering, which usually leads to out-right-war in order to deflect attention and blame those evil elites over there and their supporting band of vicious baby eating enablers, indentured servants and wage slaves. And while it might be an old trick, even the oldest, it still works every single time it is used because we slaves would rather support the devil we know then to take a chance and actually live free. Spend enough time in a locked cage under dehumanizing conditions and the jailer no longer needs to lock the door anymore. We slaves will keep ourselves just fine, thank you very much.

While I could extend this list of common denominators for several more pages, let me cut to the chase and list the one commonality that is near and dear to my heart and the core function of every central government that administers the (crumbling) Empire……..to be a blood sucking parasite. The bottom line is that governments, Kings and religious orders do not ‘produce’ anything nearly equal to their consumption no matter how you measure it, unless you have been drinking their Kool-Aid. These entities will consume from all sources using one or more of the following strategies; regulation, taxation and ultimately confiscation.

In Chapter Two we will examine the third method as the end game worst case scenario draws ever near.

  

11-20-2011

Cognitive Dissonance

 

Special thanks to The Limerick King for his wonderfully apropos limericks. It is an insult to describe the process of condensing complex subjects into 5 lines of prose as ‘writing’. The term ‘stupid good talent’ just begins to scratch the surface of what The Limerick King has to offer. Thank you TLK.

I also wish to thank Dagny Taggart for the ongoing and wonderfully diverse conversation that always leads to further inspiration. Thank you Dagny.

PS: For those who just can’t get enough of The Limerick King, below please find some more of his work that just couldn’t be fit in. Momma always told me never to waste a single mouthfull of The Limerick King.

 

To those who think gold is the cure

For everything fake and impure

You may get your wish

If gold catches fish

By making an outstanding lure

 

As the great global reset draws near

Consider the things you hold dear

Will others agree

With the value you see?

If so you have nothing to fear

 

My wealth is so precious to me

Without it I just couldn't see

Life would be dour

I'd lose all my power

I'm spawn of The Powers That Be...

[TV commercial script]

(During the voice over we see a series of obviously distraught and distressed men and woman huddled in bed, pacing the floor or sitting on the edge of their seat slowly wringing their hands and quietly crying. The backgrounds are darkened and everything is slightly out of focus while the background music is dour and slightly off key.)

“Do you have trouble sleeping at night, endlessly tossing and turning until, exhausted, you get up and begin your day? Are you constantly worried about money or your job? Have you been feeling alone and isolated, with your family and friends refusing to discuss those things that deeply concern you? Do you obsessively read financial blogs and web sites, but never find the answers you’re looking for?”

(The scene slowly changes to a husband and wife angrily arguing. Then the scene dissolves into a close up of the worried husband hunched over his computer monitor in a darkened room, the glow from the monitor flickering on his face. The scene fades out while simultaneously fading back in to a close up of his right index finger repeatedly clicking the computer mouse.)

“If any of these symptoms describes you or a loved one, you might be suffering from an increasingly common and very serious cognitive dissonance. The good news is that now there is real hope with a treatment available that can give you the peace of mind you need and deserve. Stay tuned for more information.”

[End script]

Of course, as soon as the TV commercial mentions ‘good news’ we quickly see lots of smiling faces and hand holding, along with people walking in fields of flowers or laughing with friends and family. The narrator then informs us of the latest greatest drug to benefit mankind…..immediately followed by a 30 second listing of potential side effects. If I had not given it away by mentioning financial blogs, one might recognize that the above ‘symptoms’ have been experienced by nearly every one of us at one point or another. Well, most of the symptoms anyway.

But in this case it’s not a drug that ultimately cures the cognitive dissonance, but rather truth telling via a relatively new phenomenon sweeping the world. It is pretty clear that there is something special about Zero Hedge, along with several dozen other web sites and blogs, financial or otherwise. So let’s explore a bit and find out what is going on along with a warning not to become complacent and assume that we have arrived and can now stop searching.

For hundreds of years there have been various sources of information which, when uncovered, enabled the determined searcher to peer through the facade and gaze upon some of the truth hidden by the official keepers of the public myth. But this knowledge was glimpsed only by a limited few who had the time and means to conduct a comprehensive search of original texts and documents, then publish their findings for an extremely small audience. When the Internet began to open up more of the mysteries hidden from the public, the few expanded into a few more that were, for the most part, clustered around so-called ‘fringe’ Internet communities, newsgroups and more recently small web sites and blogs.

But even with the expanded modern day access to vast pools of information via the early Internet, most of the research was still limited to political assassinations, false flag attacks, governmental, military and individual skullduggery, wars of opportunity or empire, financial fraud and so on. More importantly, for the vast majority of time the perspective of this research was retrospective in nature, often looking back years, decades, even centuries into the past. Near real time analysis was limited mostly to pure speculation and supposition, often because real time info was extremely limited and required a consensus reality point of view to gain entry. You needed to be part of the group to be given the right to listen in on the group.

Zero Hedge specifically, and several other blogs and web sites in general, approached the problem of near real time research and dissemination of contrary information from an entirely new and amazingly vulnerable sector, that of business and investment, an industry that already disseminates massive amounts of (near) real time information in order to give the impression of a level playing field among lesser competitors and a vast worldwide pool of patsy investors.

Now more than ever, primarily because the world depends upon just in time Federal Reserve digital money printing and liquidity injections, as well as Congressional emergency bailouts and crony systemic manipulation, a growing understanding of the inner workings of the financial world, as well as widely disseminated global financial information, has begun to expose the secret world of the financially powerful and politically connected to ‘we the people’.

The democratization of financial information has evolved in a manner never considered particularly vulnerable to the powers that be for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, those who could understand (and use) the financial information flow were never seriously considered to be a source of disloyalty since it was always assumed ‘they’ were either using or twisting this information in order to deceive and/or trade off for power or profit rather than use it to help expose and potentially destroy or disrupt the very system they could profit from.

This limited perspective is a wonderfully penetrating example of the narrow mindedness and naiveté that is displayed by the captured mind of the central sociopaths and their large group of enablers, particularly when they believe they are all powerful. People often expect other people to think, act and say pretty much what they would think, act or say. The (financial) criminal minds, including those of the hard core sociopaths and their first and second tier enablers, are often not very imaginative, particularly if it isn’t required of them on a daily basis for anything more than to rape, rob and steal.

However, in the vast majority of cases the rich and powerful were correct in assuming no one would defect or that those who did would be ineffective, marginalized or quickly squelched. In their minds the equation is simple. Who would possibly give up the enormous wealth and income that flows from intimate business connections and insider information? Better yet, who would want to overcome the cost of entry and the risk of ridicule (or much worse) that comes with becoming a dangerous whistleblower?

Alas, the sociopaths completely underestimated that which they do not possess, the single minded power demonstrated by those with strong moral character, fearless courage and righteous indignation. Combine this with the ability to monetize page views, thus mitigating some of the cost of entry, and a rapidly growing and thoroughly pissed off proletariat, including some morally outraged, burned out and/or jettisoned financial workers, and you have the means, motive and opportunity for economic truth mongers to blossom. The rest, as they say, is history. All of the above is obviously a gross over simplification of the phenomenon, but you get the idea.

I do not wish to diminish the contribution of dozens upon dozens of web sites and blogs that pre-date Zero Hedge (ZH), all of which served to plow the raw and underdeveloped truth speaking land and turn the soil in preparation for the Zero Hedge Effect meme seeding. But the prolific posting of 10 to 15 original articles a day by ZH’s founder(s), who uses the alias Tyler Durden, as well as guest posts and the output of numerous contributors, provides an at times mind bending journey into the alternative reality of truth speaking. As well, Tyler’s in-your-face style serves to embolden those who read his prose, a necessary attraction if one is going to entice reluctant or frightened souls out of their burrows and into what they’ve been told all their lives is blasphemous and heretical territory. 

Zero Hedge, and all the other destroyers of the public myths, are so much more than ‘just’ truth telling web sites; they are a singularity, the precursor to a potentially mind expanding metamorphosis, a meme movement of historic proportions that will only be fully recognized and understood with the 20-20 hindsight of historical perspective. This grass roots movement is clearly a force to be reckoned with simply because it has made its presence felt despite mainstream media opposition and outright hostility from those who carry the water for the political, corporate and financial powers that be.

In fact this new and utterly unique form of near real time truth speaking is so revolutionary that I have coined a term for it, “The Zero Hedge Effect”, which I use to describe the overall financial and business truth speaking movement that includes dozens of other web sites and blogs, a sampling of which can be found on the left hand side of every ZH web page. This blossoming has emboldened others to double their efforts and either expand their (non) financial truth speaking web sites or to create all new ones. This is the definition of a popular movement and not a fad. The proof of its power is seen within the escalating efforts by disinformation agents to attack their credibility. One does not fight what one does not fear.

The Zero Hedge Effect describes the overall experience that must have overwhelmed Alice as she explored the rabbit hole and suffered one cognitive dissonance after another in rapid succession. The World of Wonderland must have been extremely distorted and disorientating for Alice, just as the world looks to those who stumble into The Zero Hedge Effect after clicking a stray link or hearing about the Hedge from other web sites. From that moment on they begin a journey into an alternative realty so demonstratively different from what is presented by the mainstream media, the education system and the general consensus belief system that severe vertigo and projectile vomiting are just a few of the early physical symptoms of old meme purging and cognitive disruption.

From that point on nearly all who enter The Hedge, or any of the other non coordinated (but still in the eyes of the PTB, co-conspirator) web sites, experience time and reality dilation and distortion effects similar to what one imagines we would experience if we were to cross the event horizon of a massive black hole, thus the reason I describe the actual transformation process itself as “Crossing the Event Horizon”.

For those who undergo the gut wrenching and emotionally destabilizing process of unlearning nearly everything they thought they knew while simultaneously downloading not only truth, but an entirely new vocabulary of financial and political terms and phrases, they are never the same again. And for this reason alone many quickly turn around and never look back as they scurry towards the warm and seductive embrace of near total truth blackout living.     

However, there is great danger in thinking that we have now crossed through the event horizon and are safely on the other side, thus fully awake and seeing clearly. This just isn’t correct and to believe so is the act of the self deluded fool. One doesn’t overcome thousands of years of thought meme conditioning and cultural indoctrination by overcoming a few obviously transparent lies and self deceptions. In fact, one of the lies we tell ourselves in order to assimilate all the initial cognitive dissonances is that the tough part is done and the road forward is clear. Who really wants to face digging an endless pit for the rest of their lives?

While I most certainly can be accused of beating this mule to death, let’s once again take a look at the group and individual psychology of this issue. One must begin to understand the reason why people and groups do, or don’t do, the things we do if one is to see the bigger picture. Otherwise it’s simply too easy to dismiss explanations such as what follows as silly and illogical or not applicable to us under the false belief that we act for the most part logically and in our own best interest. Or even that we know our self very well, thus we are finally free thinking, the ultimate self delusion.

Forget about pointing fingers at others in order to shield ourselves from this potentially stinging rebuke. I’m talking about you and me here and no one else. Take a chance that you and I might not know everything about ourselves, that we might actually continue to lie to ourselves without even realizing it, and open our minds to other possibilities.

For decades, the stock markets were supposedly influenced and even regulated under the ‘logic’ of efficient markets. Only now are people finding the courage to look closely at the illogical lunacy of these theories. Isn’t it interesting that these ‘efficient market’ theories, when accepted by the masses and by a large majority of financial advisors and money managers, had the effect of making suckers out of the very same masses it was supposedly designed to help? But I guess that was just a coincidental accident, right?

The same applies when thinking about ourselves and how we act privately and publically. Is it such a surprise to discover that we act illogically and often at cross purposes to our own well being? Yet we are told we’re free to choose, that our leaders work for us, that we determine our own destiny, when a careful and unbiased examination tells us exactly the opposite. If we don’t begin to understand why we continuously fall for the same bag of tricks we will remain hopelessly stuck within the false illusion the rich and powerful present to us as our ‘true’ reality.

Any book, article or video that discusses political, social and economic policy or even corruption without factoring in individual and group psychology is seriously flawed simply because the entire story isn’t being told. One simply cannot convey a complex and nuanced condition or idea using less than half of the available alphabet or dictionary.

The unspoken presumption underlying many (but not all) attempts to expose ‘the truth’ is that if only the author could inform the sleeping masses of the ‘real’ story, of the hidden information, then the slumbering giant would rapidly wake and shake off the tyranny. My apologies to all the sincere and serious authors out there, but this view is hopelessly naive and speaks more to the psychology and conditioning of the author than the reader.

In fact, an important component of our social conditioning and an integral part of the Big Lie is the deeply conditioned belief that it’s impolite or even rude to speak to each other about our own tendency to defer to the manipulation and lies promoted by ‘our’ authority figures. It’s almost as if we are acting like children talking about serious flaws in our parents. If we make believe and don’t really talk about it, then it isn’t real. The only social class allowed to discuss this subject (other than our masters, along with the advertising and government intelligence agency classes) is the professional class of social scientists, doctors, psychologists and academics and then only in the most sterile and dispassionate clinical terms. There is this intellectual wall that’s erected around them forbidding anyone other than these ‘experts’ from discussing psychology in public.

Only the great Wizards are allowed to discuss the mysteries of the human psyche. After all, they are all experts and we are just uninformed and potentially self destructive children. Any explorations and explanations offered by amateurs such as myself are quickly branded as deluded babbling or children playing with matches. Only the great Merlin and his anointed sorcerers are empowered to conduct such forays into the dark psychological arts.

And God forbid if a non ‘professional’ embarrasses the reader by pointing out the obvious. It’s almost as if people believe that to speak about the unspeakable is just rubbing their noses in their own futility. Hush hush sweet Charlotte, civilized people don’t talk about such things. Or maybe it is all just our fragile little egos screaming at us to leave the blanket draped over the dead and rotting corpse.

What we don’t see, what we are conditioned not to see, is that this is all part of our conditioning, that only the high priests are allowed to discuss the very subject(s) that can and will help set us free if only we would understand and use them. This is a constant within the illusion. Anything that can empower or free us is removed, restricted or demonized, thus severely limiting our innate and natural ability to heal, grow and flourish. At best we are told we should restrict ourselves to applying band aids and hydrogen peroxide. Anything more than this should be left to the professional mind magicians and the grand keepers of the public myths.

I’ve been told a number of times by ‘professionals’ including financial, medical, scientific, even philosophical (which just goes to show how deeply all professionals are indoctrinated to stay within the lines including myself) that I shouldn’t stray where I don’t belong. Sometimes I’m even scolded as one would an errant child who has just been warned to stay away from the sharp scissors.

We are conditioned to believe that just about any emotional discomfort is considered an illness that must be treated with Makita skull saws and surgical mind grips when what our emotional pain should be seen as is a warning sign that something is seriously wrong with our present day reality and not necessarily with us. When waking up to a world gone mad the prescription that is needed is not additional heavy medication, more mindless TV indoctrination and desperate consumerism.

Have you ever wondered why the ‘healing arts’ magicians claim they ‘practice’ their profession, that they own a ‘practice’? This is not a play on words; they use this term very specifically to describe an inexact process. As much as we wish to believe, as much as we are told to believe, that it is a complex science and well above our pay grade, much of it, particularly psychology, is simply theory and consensus belief systems that are applied under ‘sterile’ or controlled conditions. I’ve often wondered how many emotionally distraught individuals who are finally waking to their insanity are re-infected with mad human disease while prone upon the psychologist’s brown leather sofa. And do we not see the sublime irony in the fact that some of the nastiest and deadliest infections are ‘caught’ during a hospital stay?

There is a world of difference between setting a broken bone, undergoing transplant surgery or treating psychological trauma caused by the sudden loss of a loved one, which I’m not talking about here, and understanding what makes us psychologically tick and how we are manipulated, how our own imagined and conditioned fears and phobias are used against us. We are confidently told that psychologists know what they are doing, but a careful reading of ‘accepted practice’ suggests to me that they are simply intensively and often narrowly trained practitioners rather than holistic healers.

To a great degree this also applies to the medical field as well. We are all conditioned to be the passive and cooperative patient and are told to let the ‘health professionals’ control our health and well being, also known as the illusion. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard family and friends tell me that their doctor doesn’t listen to them. More often than not they don’t listen, at least not beyond the initial description of the primary symptom(s). About two years ago my extended family all agreed we would accompany each other to doctor appointments as each other’s advocate. While it is a huge hassle for all, it is remarkable the difference we have seen in the responsiveness of our doctors and nurses.

Our passivity and isolation in the hands of the ‘healing’ professionals is our implied acceptance of their projected illusion. We cannot see outside of the illusion when we fully accept the illusion as the only ‘real’ reality. This is not to say that some people are not gravely mentally or physically ill and would do great harm to themselves and to others if they were not ‘treated’. And of course medical doctors perform a vital service in treating serious disease and injury. This is not what I’m talking about. But how much of today’s treatment, particularly psychological, is simply designed to get the wage slave back onto his or her feet and once again profitably producing on the economic chain gang. I owe, I owe, so off to work I go.

Instead of treating the daily cumulative emotional distress so many of us experience as an issue with us personally, maybe we should begin to see that our emotional pain is an obvious and clear warning sign that something is terribly wrong with our world and that it is not ‘we the people’ who should be fixed, but rather that the sociopaths and all their enablers should be run to ground and destroyed while we debt slaves free ourselves.

By not discussing the real chains that bind us to the illusion and by not willingly accepting personal responsibility for our own understanding and well being, we perpetuate the basic victim mentality that chains us to our own impotence and unhealthy practices, regardless of whether our bindings are physical or mental. The one constant among nearly all religions (including the Gods of money and consumerism) is the demand that we must willingly accept the proffered illusion if we are to be saved, born again, reach nirvana, live happily ever after, makes lots of money, comfortably retire etc. Instead of 70 plus virgins, I’m promised consumer nirvana if only I reject nearly all healthy physical and mental practices and blindly dive into the shallow end of the consumer pool. Consumer bliss is just another McFat burger away. 

While I deeply respect and even admire the tremendous amount of time, effort and dedication that goes into becoming a doctor, psychologist or anyone else in the ‘healing arts’ field for that matter, at some point we must ask ourselves what it is we think they are doing to and for us. I have no doubt that the vast majority of them sincerely believe they are doing ‘good’ and would never intentionally harm their patients. That’s not the question here and it never really was. But that doesn’t mean they do not do harm, just that they do not intend to do harm.

In my book, malpractice is far more than negligence, be it gross, intentional, misguided or otherwise. “God forgive them for they know not what they do” sounds like it might apply here. They practice in a field that is a business first and their business is to get the patient back up on the hamster wheel and plugged into the illusion, either physically or mentally. Doesn’t this make them at a minimum conflicted or possibly misguided? Just because everyone else is doing the same thing doesn’t make it right nor does that absolve the practitioner. In so many ways the ‘healing arts’ are just another form of consensus group think run rampant, controlled by Big Pharma, Big Health Insurance and Big Government.

The men and women of the health professions are without a doubt subjected to the same propaganda you and I are, including cultural and social indoctrination. And it is the rare individual who can see beyond their social and professional conditioning when it pays them not only to fit in but to excel. That sounds like a serious conflict of interest to me and while I’m sure I will hear screams from the comment section that these professionals put their own self interest last, isn’t that what we all tell ourselves. I would argue that they are even more intensively indoctrinated considering all their years of training. Yet rarely do we view them as a critical part of the control system. Instead we are conditioned to believe they are trained to be impartial and thus impervious to the same influences we recognize affects us.

They are showered with drug company information, including ‘incentives’ to prescribe various drugs to fix or repair our mental and physical ills. Or as I like to say in all seriousness, they are given incentives (even if it is simply personal motivation to help) to cast their magician’s spell(s) to keep us within (or to reenter) the illusion. These professionals, and in fact all intensively trained professionals (of which I am one) are the epitome of group think to the nth degree. Only in this case it’s OK because we want to help rather than harm. Show me one professional who willingly admits he or she wishes to harm. We all want to believe our intentions are good and benevolent. And yet harm does and will continue to occur because of our professional actions.

Why doesn’t this worry us? Under conditions such as this why do we still willingly surrender our will and our bodies to their dictates without serious questioning? Why don’t we inform ourselves? It might be in our best interest to look just as closely at what they tell us about our mental and physical health as we do regarding our financial health. I suspect that most of us would avoid professional financial advisors who are still completely plugged into the Ponzi and who continue to spout ‘efficient markets’ and ‘endless growth’ nonsense. If so, why are we still playing by the rules when it comes to our mental and physical health? Why don’t we question our doctor or therapist as closely as we might our financial advisor? Might it be that we are still under the influence of the magician’s spell, but our ego won’t let us admit it? The Big Lie is so much deeper than ‘just’ the financial Ponzi.

I’ve talked about this in great detail in other articles so I won’t go any further (thank God some are saying). But the reader should consider that their professional doctor and psychologist are just as caught up in the illusion as we are. Their job, whether they are fully conscious of it or not, is to keep you and I peddling away on our hamster wheel and thus fully immersed within the illusion. If you’re reading this article it seems to me you wish to do the opposite. So maybe it is time to reexamine everything including your most basic assumptions.

In Chapter Two we will explore our individual and group self deception and how it keeps us trapped within the event horizon.

 

Cognitive Dissonance

07-12-2011