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...

The first half of this essay (rant to be honest) can be found here. Or maybe it’s over there. I can’t remember. My doctor tells me Viagra also improves blood flow to the memory centers of the brain and he gave me some samples. Wish me luck. You are looking at the second half, but I’m going to link to it anyway just to mess with your head. Just don’t look under here. The third half was eaten by my dog Rover and won’t be published because the laxatives aren’t working. Please download a copy from the Akashic field if you are so moved and can get a good connection. I live in the boonies and can never get a strong enough signal. Maybe I need to change to bran flakes.

 

Most of us, regardless of our education level, are not going to question something we know to be a fact. And we know something is a fact because.......well, because we know it’s a fact. After all, it was in the school textbook, newspaper or magazine. Or better yet, it was on the TV. From where I stand (what is that I’m standing in) it’s not as important to understand what we think we know as it is to understand why we think we know. While to some this may appear to be nothing more than a subtle distinction, to me it is all the difference in the world. As someone remarked the other day, if we want better answers we need to ask better questions.

Better questions come not only from studying the issue more closely, but from studying ourselves and those around us. Continuously questioning our basic beliefs and assumptions keeps us sharp and on our toes. More importantly, as we begin to recognize our own deep social conditioning and how this distorts our worldview, the public myths created by the MSM and the ruling elite become more transparent. Before we know it better questions are rolling off our tongue and the illusion begins to crumble before our eyes. This is the reason why I always return to the same theme, that it all begins within.    

Anyone who hasn’t been in a coma for the past 10 or 15 years would agree that we’re all cursed and living in some very interesting times. Yet the vast majority of us seem to possess (cling to?) some very clear ideas about what’s going on and what’s happened in the recent and distant past. Even when we don’t really know, we have the remarkable capacity to concoct something or another to explain the insanity, usually with the considerable help of the MSM or alternative information sources. Even those who consider themselves to be contrary or skeptical rarely spend the time to thoroughly exam and vet the things we ‘know’ we know.

I’m continuously fascinated by the process in which we as a society and a culture arrive at what we believe are conventional wisdoms, accepted truth or even common sense. While the myth is that these shared understandings have been thoroughly vetted and verified over time, in just about every case I examine closely I find just the opposite to be true. So why do we adopt these cognitive shortcuts when they mislead more than inform? And what role do they play in society and why are we so gullible and agreeable when walking down these blind alleys? Maybe what we’re seeing here is actually a sign of our conditioning and indoctrination. As I said earlier, why we believe or know is much more instructive and better explains, and thus predict, the human condition.

The modern day self induced illusion we all suffer from to some degree or another is ultimately several ideas or beliefs that gain purchase by flattering our ego and stroking our intellectual arrogance. “I am master of all that I see and hear. And while there are always flaws in my thinking, I’m not so weak kneed as to be swayed by a strong breeze like a common butterfly. I know what I see and I see all that I need to know. I’ve been around long enough to have figured out how the world works and the games people play. I will not be deterred by those who are weak willed for I know the truth. I can see through the lies and deceit and while I don’t have it all figured out, the principal players and hidden hands are clear to me.”

While the above paragraph might be viewed as over the top, most people truly do believe they ride herd over their little corner of the collective consciousness. Many feel quite strongly that they’re in control of their beliefs, that they’re intellectually flexible and even quite fair and open minded. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Our conditioned mind blends so well into our social structure that we can barely see the first level of conditioning, let alone the hidden hand. It takes a deep humility to question ourselves more than once or twice. While we are told that to constantly question ourselves makes us weak, those who say this wish for us to lock our blinders on and see only what is flashed on the (television, newspaper, magazine, Internet, political) screen in front of us. Don’t worry, we will tell you how things work and what to think about it.

We cannot find the tools we must use to free our minds within the very construct that has captured our minds. This needs repeating. We cannot find the means and opportunity to free ourselves from within the very system that enslaves us. To think otherwise is the height of self deception. The illusion will always reflect back to us all the proof we need to conclude that the illusion is completely real. This also applies to alternative points of view. In essence, we believe what we wish and are conditioned to believe and we will seek out and even fabricate evidence to confirm what we wish and are conditioned to believe. Intelligence and training makes this process that much easier because of our mental agility and super sized egos………which also serves to obscure that which needs to be more transparent.

The illusion for the most part is seamless, sensible and ultimately satisfying for those engulfed by and within the illusion. Consequently for the vast majority of us, we (not they, them and those, but we) will fight to remain within our conditioned box rather than break from the herd, even if the herd we belong to is a splinter group or self described rebel sub group such as Zero Hedge. To even consider breaking from the consensus reality in anything other than a superficial manner is extremely frightening and possibly even emotional suicide to an ego firmly attached to the group’s conventional wisdom and the acceptance received from that herd.

While I agree that ideas can be the most dangerous weapons of mass destruction man has ever created, rebellious talk without action is in my opinion ultimately self deceptive, superficial and self defeating. To leave the larger herd and join a smaller division while essentially remaining within the confines of the overall mythology must be recognized for what it really is, a repositioning, not a break or repudiation. We might take up residence in a different cave, but we are still on the very same island.

This isn’t a judgmental statement, though I’m sure many will feel otherwise. It is, however, a partial explanation for why so many ‘rebellions’ wind up adopting the same oppressive methods they originally denounced and overthrew. It is a self deceit to think we are being rebellious if all we are doing is changing position in the food chain or expressing bravado to kill the pain of our own impotence. Once we decide to walk the path of self discovery, it is a continuous and lifelong journey. Some would go so far as to say many lifelong journeys. To think it is not a forever endeavor simply indicates how close our new cave is to the original grouping.

Just because we believe we are already awake and aware doesn’t mean we are, or that we don’t practice self deception. In fact, we are much less likely to question ourselves or our perception of reality since we sincerely believe we know what we know, having already broken through several cognitive dissonances to arrive here. The hard work’s already done, we tell ourselves, and we have cleared all the major hurdles………right?

Zero Hedge for the most part has its own consensus reality and belief systems which are constantly reinforced and rarely seriously challenged, other than superficially. Just read the comment section if you don’t believe me. While there are many people willing to ask questions pertaining to actual factual knowledge, there is no shortage of firm beliefs and opinions and a shocking scarcity of open minds. Spend a few hours in the comment section and it is quite obvious that there is very little willingness to seriously consider contrary points of views with a weighting equal to our own already established belief system. That is not the definition of someone being open minded and flexible or of someone willing to learn. And yet we have the gall and audacity to declare our superior awareness. 

From a more removed point of view and looking directly in the mirror, we can all easily see how those poor North Korean’s have been brainwashed and manipulated into adoration of their “Dear Leader”. And while we shake our heads at how stupid they must be to not see what’s so obvious to us, the North Korean’s are saying precisely the same thing about you and me. But of course that’s just their conditioning showing, not ours, right? It’s them, not me. Our conditioning is much more subtle and quite a bit more sophisticated than the blunt techniques used in other banana republic’s and democratic dictatorships.

In fact our conditioning is extremely well hidden within our consumer culture and conditioned belief that we are free. Ironically while discussing this very idea with some long time friends the other day, even though they begrudgingly admitted that we ‘might’ be somewhat conditioned, they also agreed that we are much smarter, or at least better informed, than those pathetic North Koreans. So while the ruling elite here in America must use more sophisticated methods to accomplish our conditioning, my friends, who all consider themselves aware and awake, somehow concluded that the elites ultimately failed to (fully) condition them.

In a remarkable example of group self deception, by admitting and then accepting that there are attempts to control us, my friends somehow concluded that the attempts were unsuccessful without presenting any evidence other than that it was ‘self evident’. I’m aware, thus I’m awake, thus I’m not controlled or conditioned, because being controlled means you are not awake or aware……I think. Circular logic always makes perfect sense and is supremely satisfying. And when we use circular logic to prove we aren’t conditioned or controlled, well……you get the picture.

Even though I understood why and how this happens I was still astonished with the ease by which my friends flattered their egos while contemplating their possible, though ultimately ineffective, conditioning. I suspect the ego flattering was crucial to ignoring the illogical conclusion reached by the group. It’s even easier to accomplish this self deception on an individual basis since no one is watching us except ourselves, and we make the rules of evidence that allow us to self deceive. In my opinion this is one of the signs that we are even more deeply immersed within the illusion and myth of who and what we think we are than we could ever see without a thorough self examination.

Our constant feeding on a diet of American exceptionalism and superiority has its benefits, at least for those who wish to promote apathy, passivity and self delusion among the slaves of all social classes. And make no mistake about it; there are slaves among the rich as well as the poor and middle classes. Given the choice between recognizing that we are subtly, but effectively, conditioned and controlled or believing we are free and independent, which way do you think we will lean, particularly if our consumer culture reinforces the ‘free’ belief? Promoted and enabled self deception is always the most effective mind control because we willingly accept the programming and then customize it to suit our own particular belief system, thus assuring its effectiveness.

Do you remember seeing those Dodge Challenger ‘Freedom’ TV commercials where George Washington roars into battle against the redcoats behind the wheel of a growling black Dodge? To those engulfed within the illusion it seems perfectly normal because we have been conditioned to suspend disbelief while in front of the idiot box. But for those who are beginning to escape, it all looks a little surreal. The narrator’s only words at the end speak loudly to the blatant bleating of the Newspeak drum of consumerism equals freedom. “Here’s a couple of things America got right. Cars and freedom.” It’s all very seductive, even if you don’t like the car or George Washington.

The message is loud and clear and it is endlessly repeated not only by corporate America, but by government and private institutions as well. To deny the conscious and subconscious effect of this programming and conditioning is an admission in and of itself that the programming is successful. Please take a moment and view the clip here.

Tell me there are no overt and subliminal messages behind strapping the American flag to the black Challenger as George Washington charges into the panicking redcoats and routs them in defeat behind the steering wheel of a car created 235 years in the future. This is followed by a stern faced, but victorious, George Washington standing next to the American dream, the Dodge Challenger, while the background voiceover cements the mental conditioning. Edward Bernays, the father of modern mind control and propaganda techniques, must be laughing in his grave. Bravo!

And don’t even get me started on the astonishingly bald faced mind control effort put forth by the rebranded Ally Bank, the old GM finance cesspool that has risen from the ashes to haunt everyone, not just car buyers. We are told straight out that we love our bank, that we really really love our bank, that bank (of course) being Ally Bank. Even the name is amazingly subliminal. Of course I love my bank. My bank is my Ally, courageously fighting by my side against all those other nasty banks that are just out to screw me. The first time I saw that Ally Bank commercial of the dog (Rufus) barking every time his ‘master’ told him he loved his bank I was shocked how in-your-face the conditioning was. Talk about a Pavlov’s dog in-your-end-dude? Have they no shame? Apparently not in the anything goes world of corporate consumer whoring. See for yourself here and then consider how far we have sunk into the abyss.

To say to myself that “Because I’m awake and aware of the government propaganda and corporate advertising efforts to condition and control me, they have little to no effect on me” is the height of arrogance and self delusion. How can we possibly think that even our small day to day purchases of various consumer products, not to mention our beliefs regarding social, political and corporate events or history, are not heavily influenced by the massive and extremely effective propaganda and mind control techniques directed towards all of us? Billions of dollars are spent each year perfecting and implementing these meme programs. To say that we are not significantly and continuously influenced by this massive propaganda onslaught is the prima facie evidence of the very success of that conditioning. 

We are smothered by hundreds of 30 and 60 second bits of mind control on a weekly basis, all of which are cleverly supported by additional print, radio, movie and Internet assaults on our state of mind. And I’m speaking about both commercial advertising and state propaganda. To believe, or even simply think, that since we know what’s going on we aren’t greatly affected, is denial of the deepest kind. Either we remove ourselves from the most egregious (and effective) control device, the boob tube idiot box, or we accept that we are conditioned and blissfully submit to the mind control. Then all that remains is for us to devise a way to deny it is happening. As harsh as this may sound, to swim with the sharks and declare we won’t be bitten is the ultimate act of the self deluded fool.

Simply put, the very fact that we regularly visit Zero Hedge for our refreshing dose of alternative reality, the so called ‘truth’, is in and of itself just another form of self conditioning and indoctrination if all we do is blindly accept this ‘truth’ as fact, just as we did with the ‘truth’ before Zero Hedge. The path to awareness does not end simply because we have found an alternative set of plausible facts and theories that satisfy us enough to believe that we now know ‘the truth’ and all we need to do is hunker down and wait it out. To simply take the opposite side of the mainstream meme is dangerous on several counts, least of which is the fact that not everything we read, see or hear from the MSM is a lie and not everything on Zero Hedge is the truth.

The danger of attempting to cross through the Event Horizon created by The Zero Hedge Effect is that we might become hopelessly trapped between the alternative reality offered by the master keepers of the public myth and the running commentary offered by Zero Hedge and company, this contributor included. There is a truth even greater than offered by the so-called truth speakers, but it can only be found by first questioning everything, then looking deeply within. ‘Truth’ is not a single point or destination, but rather a lifelong journey. In fact ‘truth’ is not what we are really seeking, but rather ‘knowing’, a much deeper comprehension that is sourced within and cannot be externally imposed or learned.

Our culture teaches us that truth is an external reality when it fact truth, just like all things we consider to be real, is a temporary construct entirely dependent upon our perspective and interpretation of reality at that moment. ‘Knowing’, on the other hand, is absolute and irrefutable and requires no translation or analysis. We are told that we must be informed of the truth, that it must be shown to us in order for it to be found. This is the fundamental distortion that keeps us blindly bumping around in the dark, the BIG LIE if you will. Since we are taught to only seek truth externally, we are always subjected to manipulation and extortion by those who wish to control and abuse.

There must be a better way and there is. However, it requires that we abandon the ways of the perpetual deceivers and look within to discover our innate and powerful capability to ‘know’ everything we need in order to grow and live a healthy and prosperous life. This isn’t starry pie-in-the-eye stuff I’m promoting, where if we all just hold hands things will get better. Real change and freedom, not that garbage proffered by the charlatans and magicians, springs from within and there is simply no substitute. As long as we wish to believe it is the responsibility of someone else to do the hard work, any change we may experience is artificial in substance and temporary in nature.

The process by which we achieve the substantial and lasting change we all crave is as simple and as difficult as seeking it within. In order to know something, first we must know ourselves. In order to heal something, first we must heal ourselves. As long as we wish to believe it is more complicated than this, we will continue down our current path of self destruction.

 

07-13-2011

Cognitive Dissonance

[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