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 two of a two part exploration (part one can be 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 actually know what will happen is definitely 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)

 

As a reminder of something emphasized in Part One, I am discussing a worst case scenario here. So please keep this in mind when your brain synapses start firing and you feel compelled to stop reading and fire off a nasty comment. There are thousands of lesser scenarios that could play out here as opposed to only hundreds of worse case scenarios. What you find below are just my thoughts on the matter, not fact or even hard opinion.

In addition, this essay isn’t directed towards the small PM ‘investor’ who owns ‘small’ amounts of Gold and Silver, for example under 20 ounces of Gold and several hundred ounces of Silver. Nor is it directed towards the whales, those who can purchase and safely store (preferably offshore) several hundred or even thousands of ounces of Gold. They have similar problems as everyone else, but much more flexibility. Rather this essay is directed towards those solidly middle class people who are converting their ‘wealth’ into Gold and Silver, even going so far as to cash out their qualified retirement accounts (IRA’s, 401(k)’s and qualified annuities) or mortgage their property in order to increase their Precious Metal stash.

I see and hear a great deal of cognitive dissonance among those who promote Gold as the way to salvation, all while ignoring or dismissing the idea of governmental confiscation of said Golden chariots. It’s not like doing so would be totally unprecedented in the US (or on other plantations for that matter) since President Franklin Roosevelt’s April 5, 1933 Executive Order 6102 did precisely that, promptly followed by a revaluation of said confiscated Gold to push the anal probe that much further up the rear.

What everyone seems to forget is that the United States is not the only plantation bleeding from every orifice while simultaneously ripping open new ones. This is a global party we’re throwing here and everyone who is anyone seems to have accepted the invitation, something many are beginning to regret as they desperately click the ‘un-send’ button. Actually this isn’t true, since we already know that the blue blood families play all sides against each other, then turn things around and transform former arch enemies in lifelong best girlfriends, the only way this global Ponzi could have progressed to this point in the collapse countdown.

I guess my point is simple. Today’s (global) disaster isn’t Argentina from 1989-1990 and again in 1999-2002. Nor is it Zimbabwe from 2004-2009 or even the Weimar Republic from 1920-1923. While the rest of the world was also (more or less) suffering during those turbulent times, Argentina, Zimbabwe and the Weimar were islands of disaster in a world of relative stability.

 

The Kleptocrat game is not chance

It resembles a well-rehearsed dance

With lifts, dips and spins

Until treachery wins

And the middle-class shits in their pants

(The Limerick King)

 

Remember that almost by definition disaster recovery requires relative normalcy somewhere nearby as the staging area from where you send in the life lines and supplies, as well as a place to evacuate the wounded. So when Norman, Oklahoma suffers a devastating tornado, help comes rushing in from 10-500 miles away. But what happens if the entire country is simultaneously ravaged by natural (Ponzi) disaster? Where does the help come from then? Overseas? But they are running the same Ponzi as we are here. So if we go down, they go down just as hard if not harder and vice versa.

One of the staples of the Armageddon genre of disaster porn is the notion that, in a national/global disaster, there is no safe harbor from which to coordinate and launch the rescue ships. Thus everyone goes into survival mode and if you aren’t helping yourself then no one is. Social rules of order and decorum are quickly abandoned for survival of the fittest and suddenly it is game on Mad Max style. Ironically if you remember the original Mad Max movie, it begins shortly after a terrible global disaster. Max was one of several cops working with the ‘authorities’ in an effort to maintain some type of order in the rapidly decaying remains of society. It was all downhill from there.

In response to those who would disagree with my line of reasoning by saying, “CD, you can’t compare a global natural disaster, where there is infrastructure damage, to an economic collapse, where at least initially all infrastructure remains in place and functioning” all I can say is that I disagree. The active ingredient in my analogy isn’t the level or type of global devastation as much as the equality or uniformity of it.

External rescue requires a more or less untouched area that contains a surplus of resources, financial or otherwise, and the means to organize and deploy them into the underserved disaster area. Because the Ponzi disease is globally and uniformly distributed around the developed world, in the event of a total or partial collapse, essentially there are no substantial surplus resources that can be gathered and transported from one area to the next. Everyone is in the same degraded condition. Well……actually there are ‘excess surplus assets’ available after a global economic collapse. Those assets are called the people’s Gold. But we’ll get to that in a moment.

So any rescue or recovery can only come from in-place assets and organized systems such as the existing military and governmental bureaucracy. Thus other than some shifting of leadership positions to create scapegoats and dispel slave anger, not much will change unless an armed and organized revolt is mounted. While that might eventually come about, it will not initially, thus allowing the military to disperse and dissolve any pockets of semi-organized resistance or even to prevent states from seceding so that they may create their own economic systems and/or preserve local and regional natural resources.

 

So who could have guessed Marx was right?

That the Bourgeoisie class is a blight?

All our wealth they will take

While they let us eat cake

We are slaves who must stand-up and fight!

(The Limerick King)

 

There seems to be a never ending stream of comments left on Zero Hedge that are short and sweet. Let it all burn to the ground baby so that we can rebuild it from scratch. I honestly think these people have no idea what that really means because in today’s world of massive financial leverage and staggering amounts of derivative contracts, too big to fail banks using 40 or 50 to 1 leverage and the majority of the slave population living paycheck to paycheck etc., burning it all down just might be an act of compassion compared to what would happen if it all just fell apart.

Anyone who doesn’t think martial law would be immediately declared and our remaining civil rights forcibly removed in the event of a partial or total economic/currency collapse has been brewing and taste testing their own brand of Kool-Aid. When order begins to break down, the existing power base WILL attempt to restore order and they won’t be gentle while doing so. And for the most part the plantation slaves will welcome the intervention because they have not prepared for the chaos, having ignored all the warning signs because they relied upon their masters to protect them.

So once again let us circle back to the principal question. What will you do with all that Gold and how will you reintegrate it into any new currency system that is implemented? During the first few hours, days, even weeks after the partial or total collapse, on a local basis you will be able to use your Gold (and especially your Silver) in small increments to barter for the goods and services you need to continue to live.

But very quickly, most likely the same day of the collapse, the government will announce draconian banking, price, wage and possibly even barter controls. And they will begin to implement unilateral decisions about what is needed where and when. If you have something the ‘greater good’ needs or wants and if others know about your good fortune, it could very easily be taken from you.

On a more practical basis, because the established control system will want to quickly put in place some type of replacement currency system, our Gold and other precious metals may actually escape any attempt at a quick governmental grab and go. But within days, and at most a week or so, global decisions will be made (correction: they have already been made, they will be implemented after a week) and in my opinion the priority will be to establish confidence in any new currency system or reestablish confidence in the old.

While one can’t know exactly how it will go down, considering that Gold and other PMs will probably have gone through the roof by this point, it is highly likely that Gold, along with other PMs or a basket of commodities (and possibly other new or old foreign currencies) will be used to back any new or renewed currency. The IMF’s so called Special Drawing Rights (SDR), essentially a global currency, is a perfect example of a cobbled together currency that might gain traction.

 

When HFT algos have ceased

And those who had most have the least

Is gold the best bet?

For a system reset?

Or will Banksters create a new beast?

(The Limerick King)

 

Now here is where I strongly suggest that, for several reasons, ‘they’ will feel compelled to confiscate Gold from the population. And this works on a global as well as national scale folks. The principal psychological warfare technique they will us is to vilify and scapegoat those ugly Gold hoarders and evil speculators. And there is no doubt in my mind that they will claim with absolute confidence and with concocted evidence that these evil Precious Metal terrorists destroyed the old system.

‘Truth’ will be immaterial at this point and actually counterproductive for those trying to beat back the resurgent Ponzi Hydra. Frightened people are not deep thinkers and they most certainly are not very reasonable. The emotional pain of collapse must be relieved, so any handy pain killer will be willingly ingested. History is replete with examples of this and a frightened and extremely angry slave population will gratefully latch onto the offered Gold hating piñata rather than soul search and examine their own role in the present disaster.

Depending upon the believability of various figures bandied about, less than one percent of the US population owns Gold as an investment (even less own the physical) and less than 2% own Gold miner shares. At the peak of the last Gold rush in the late 70’s and early 80’s I believe 8% of the US population owned investment Gold. Even if the present Gold love affair reaches that level of participation before the End Game commences, this group will still be a small minority and it will be very easy to turn the general population against them/us.

In addition, those who hold their Gold in bank safety deposit boxes or private vaults, at bullion banks or any other private, public or governmental storage facility will find that it will not be there for long. I suspect that the entities that own or control the facilities will be ordered to close their doors and to turn over the Gold. So even if we own Gold in ‘real physical’ fund companies such as Sprott, we will soon find that it isn’t available for withdrawal after the fall. And please don’t talk to me about the rule of law. We saw how the rule of law was respected when the US ran over the GM bond holders. Let’s get real here folks, under these circumstances the law is what they say the law is.

As well, plantation (country) borders will essentially be meaningless because every modern country will be in the same predicament. So the smart play for the new political puppets will be to cooperate with every other plantation (even enemies) to reenergize the system as quickly as possible. The precious metal mining companies will probably be nationalized, even if that just means that all of the output from the mines will be directed to the vaults of the ‘host’ plantation. China is effectively doing this now. So the only Gold you can count on is the Gold coins and small bars buried in the sand at the bottom of your fish tank.

Aside from the uncontrolled corruption and unrestrained fiat creation, if the old system collapsed because the general population lost faith in the financial system (ultimately the real reason behind any fiat collapse because it is not the unrestrained fiat printing, but the loss of public faith and belief the printing engenders, that destroys a fiat) and Gold in its role as the ultimate safe haven was the lightening rod that inflamed and focused that loss of faith, it will be incumbent upon the ‘new’ leadership to defuse and deflect any pockets of resistance to the new or reformed currency. By making a show of confiscating Gold ‘for the good of the people’ many non Gold holding people will go along with the theft because it essentially helps pull their asses out of the fire.

In effect the reckless and imprudent will cheer on the confiscation because backing the theft of others increases the chance they will be rewarded, or at least not severely punished, for their bad behavior. Moral hazard works wonders for the general population as well as the too big to fail. Because the general population can (and will) be stampeded when the crisis gets ‘real’, this will allow the political puppets to set up tiered currency conversion systems and unfair Gold and other PM reintegration rules. The rich will get richer and the poor will……well, you know. We will hear a lot of crying by the rich and powerful about how they just can’t put their glorious talents to work unless they receive special ‘incentives’. I just can’t wait to hear the imaginative sob stories of the down and out crony capitalists.

 

The dollar says, "In God We Trust"

But the dollar's about to go bust

So who betrayed whom

That has led to our doom?

(Twas the one who embraced greed and lust)

(The Limerick King)

 

While black and barter markets will most definitely spring up as they did in the 1930’s and 70’s, they might be less effective than they were back then unless we use them strictly for locally produced items and services. And even then I can see many problems and pitfalls. The one hope I have here is that the underground market for drugs and stolen goods will not go away because of the collapse, particularly since the new Ponzi will once again want to use (inter)national drug money to feed the beast. This might help to create pathways for black market currency to flow back into the main system which in return sustains the PM reintegration. We shall see if I am correct.

I see Gold and PM dealers becoming highly regulated and required under heavy penalty of law to report any and all relatively large PM transactions, for example anything over two or three ounces of Gold, thus effectively cutting off Joe’s ability to feed his or her Gold back into the system and extract or convert the wealth they tried to transport from the old system to the new. It can be done, but only very slowly and at considerable time, money and labor expense. And most importantly, with no free floating Gold market to set realistic prices, we will once again be robbed in broad daylight. They don’t need to ‘take’ your Gold, just take its value through price controls.

I expect that one of the national and possibly worldwide changes that will be implemented after the collapse and rebuilding of the financial system might be mandatory electronic fund transfers for things such as paying taxes, utility bills, mortgage as well as insurance and/or rent payments, payments to any local, state or federal agency or contractor as well as any large purchases such as cars, homes, businesses or anything else above an arbitrarily drawn currency amount.

Once these rules and regulations are introduced into the system, most retailers will follow the lead and refuse most or all cash transactions, preferring to use lower cost and more efficient electronic transfers. Expect a higher price or penalty to use cash (which you received when you sold your PMs) to purchase just about anything. Remember that a vibrant black market can only exist if there is a way to launder the proceeds back into the main system or if there is a parallel alternative currency system that fits the needs of the local users. This explains the need for drug and organized crime money to blaze a trail into the official money system. I have faith the new Ponzi will open that door for their own purposes.

Throughout history the key to forcing the public to accept new monetary and currency systems is to demand that all payments to the false sovereign master be made in the new script and/or using the new method of payment. This has the effect of forcing people to adopt the new system, thus validating it. Wide spread use by the general population for all their financial business usually quickly follows. The oldest tricks are still the best tricks from the (global) Ponzi point of view.

This will have a two pronged effect on the system, washing out any chance of laundering larger quantities of our Gold by using it for large purchases and more effectively binding the indentured servant and wage slave to the new currency system. If the slave gets too mouthy and begins to complain, just cause a few problems with his or her electronic payment system and watch them quickly buckle. After all, we all have to eat now don’t we? Never let a crisis go to waste, especially when you are creating it in the first place.

 

So how will the End Game play out?

The answer is surely in doubt

When all fiat dies

Will sound money rise

Or will all assets suffer a rout?

(The Limerick King)

 

This is one of the reasons I feel Silver will be more usable as an alternative unit of currency if this global collapse does transpire. Hopefully Silver is incorporated into any new national/global currency as part of its backing, for this will lend tremendous credibility to using Silver in alternative barter/currency systems. Silver throughout the ages has always been used as money and not necessarily as a store of substantial wealth.

This is why you might consider purchasing 1964 and earlier Silver U.S. coins, junk or not. It is important that we incorporate flexibility and diversification into our wealth transfer vehicles as this is the key to successfully crossing over. To assume, hope really, that our one and only method, that of Gold, will be successful is wishful thinking at best and foolhardy at worst. For the masters, Gold is a well known and understood escape mechanism and it will not be allowed to pass totally untouched. We must be different from the masses in order to survive while still being transparent enough that we don’t draw unwanted attention.

And that, in my opinion, is the more realistic path to dry land in this global disaster scenario. The worst thing that you and I can do when preparing for tough times is to develop a severe case of tunnel vision and focus only on our Golden boat as the exit strategy. The bottom line is that we must try to own the same assets that will be owned and transferred by the financial elite and their henchmen and puppets.

While one of those assets will most definitely be Gold, it will not be their only asset or their most valuable. While some of these elite alternative asset classes are out of our reach because of our much smaller stash, and there is little we can do to combat the planned inequalities that will be built into any new system, that doesn’t mean we are helpless or that it is hopeless.

On the contrary, just as the elite see the coming chaos as the perfect time to rape, rob and steal, I see it as ushering in a generational opportunity to build family and community ties like never before. And maybe, just maybe, begin to do some of the hard work we need to do within. Just because we are being buffeted by the fierce rain and wind squalls that precede the hurricane doesn’t mean we can’t use this to our advantage.

However, if we see everything through fearful eyes and with great trepidation we are going to drop the ball and hurt ourselves worse than if we had done nothing. Regardless of what the bad guys did or will do, if we aren’t right within we will wind up harming ourselves much worse than they ever could.

And so this all leads directly to my final thoughts, including one I have shared many times before and which can never be repeated too often. Over the years I have found that regardless of my heartfelt desire for a positive outcome or the gentle and considerate methods used, if my intent and motives are not honest or if I’m not honest with myself or others regarding them, rarely is the outcome to my satisfaction.

Bottom line, this isn’t about the bad guys or their enablers, their greed and lawlessness or even what is right or just. This is about me and my motives and how square I am with myself and others. Just because others lie, cheat and steal doesn’t mean I must follow suit in the name of staying alive or even to justify keeping my head above water. What this isn’t about is sugar plums and fairy tales or holding hands and singing Kumbaya. This is about developing our own Karma and being true to ourselves.

 

To those who seek power and greed

It will soon be your hour of need

What good is your gold?

When you’re hungry and cold

And the price for some flour is seed

(The Limerick King)

 

So it is with great concern that I have noticed a disturbing trend among the articles and comments posted of late. I have been a ZH contributor for two years now and I watched the discussions about Gold begin as one of several ways to protect our assets. This conversation began way back when Gold was still largely out of favor even here on Zero Hedge. And I have slowly seen it morph into a widely accepted concept of wealth protection as more and more began to see without a doubt that we are on a collision course with history. There is nothing wrong with this and I have no real problem with it.

But lately sentiment has changed from preserving wealth to growing wealth. And now I am beginning to detect the next stage of the emotional escalation. I am hearing greed and wanton self interest along with the self satisfied chuckle of the prospect of both making a killing and of being proven right when everyone else told us we were wrong. I am hearing the sound of avarice and lust, of rationalization and justification, of outsized egos and very little perspective.

Tunnel vision can take many forms and can strike the best and the worst with the same crushing blow. I have no intention of being self righteous or of calling the kettle black when this pot can be even blacker. That is not the purpose or intent of this essay because there is no denying that I have also felt the seductive tug of jackpot thinking. But when our motive for holding Gold and Silver is distorted and warped by greed and self interest, so is our thinking and perspective.

Which means that if there comes a time when the best move forward is to sell most of the Gold and move on to another asset class, one more likely to survive the transition intact, will we be able to see this as obvious and a no brainer? Or by this time will we so blinded by the Golden glow that we become nothing more than obsessed slaves kneeling in prayer to the almighty God of Gold, seeing nothing but our beloved promised land?

I hope not! From my point of view our most valuable asset is, and will continue to be, an open and flexible mind.

 

When all markets finally go bust

From our greed induced hubris and lust

To whom do we turn?

What skills should we learn?

It's all just a matter of trust

(The Limerick King)

 

 

11-21-2011

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 I just couldn’t fit in. Momma always told me never waste a single morsel of The Limerick King.

 

On the day when the fan meets the shit

And the Kleptos have taken a hit

Will gold save the day?

As all wealth fades away?

I suspect that those bastards won't quit

 

Do Oligarchs ever retire?

Do they ever just lose their desire?

Does their job ever suck?

Do they ever feel stuck?

Is there ever a Klepto for hire?

 

I'm glad that I followed my gut

My gold makes me feel like King Tut

But what will I do

Should a riot ensue?

Will a Kilo bar fit up my butt???