Image by William Banzai7

The high priests of the religious cult

When we point to the economic math as proof that the system is doomed, and then claim foul when ‘they’ manipulate the math (for example with understated inflation and unemployment rates or overstated GDP, corporate profits, total employment, growth etc.) all the hidden hands are really engaging in is massive (global) perception management among the mostly mindless minions. They are giving the unquestioning, but willing, a reason to continue to believe and a place to endow their faith.

But even more important the high priests must preach to the choir for this is where the (new and improved) dogma and doctrine is directly passed on, reinforced and deeply embedded. Perception management must occur among the million or more (U.S. and global) financial professionals who act as local and regional ‘economechanical’ priests and centers of influence (read faith and belief leaders) of the artificial economic reality being created and manipulated in ‘real’ time by the elite.

[‘Economechanical’ is a term I have coined to describe how the economists see the economy as a mechanical engine fueled by interest rates, incentives and stimulus rather than as an emotional organism driven primarily by faith and belief and (emotionally) manipulated by various whistles and bells. See Chapter Two for more details.]

As long as the music still plays on (and by constantly and incrementally changing the tune the music can play for much longer than we think) even if the professional financial priest harbors great doubt about the viability of the system or the ethics of what he (or she) does, he must continue to dance or be left off the dance floor and out of this very financially rewarding (religious) profession. As long as the professional priests continue to dance and lend their perceived credibility and influence to those who might be best characterized as laymen, thus buttressing the layman’s faith and belief, the system can and will limp along for quite a long time.

Not only must the lower level financial professionals buy in and be in sync with the dogma of the promoted financial reality, so too must the upper level of the economechanical hierarchy. Faith and belief in nonsensical ‘truths’ is difficult to maintain in isolation, especially when it contradicts our inner knowing and common sense. The upper echelons (other than the true psychopaths) are not immune to cognitive dissonance and will waver if not steadied and externally supported. Those who are not reinforced from time to time tend to stray a bit and begin to lose faith, particularly when there are locals with pitchforks and torches outside the main gate.

Thus we see the real reason behind high level financial and political conferences such as the recent gathering of the top tier faithful at Davos, Switzerland. Each level of the hierarchy must regularly gather in order to resynchronize with the ever changing alternative reality frequency, which in turn helps to harden the newly created psychological cement that binds together the money meme. This is vital if the farce is to be over powering and able to withstand dissent and disbelief.

This is also the real reason behind the Federal Reserve Board meetings every six to seven weeks. The high priests must gather to conduct cult policy review and hand out holy dispensations and divine guidance to the lower levels of the cult hierarchy while simultaneously engaging in ritual practices to strengthen the money meme, first within the gathered select attendees and then filtered down to the brain washed cult followers and sycophants. Fed speak is at least equivalent to, if not exceeding, Pope speak and anyone who cannot see this is either in denial or just in too deep.

Lots and lots of wiggle room

If we wish to believe that two plus two equals five or that the answer to life, universe and everything is forty two, then math is no longer a constraining factor upon the present economic system. But the socioeconomic system relies on mathematics to support our faith and belief in the system primarily because we have near complete faith and belief in mathematics and the sciences. In chapter two I questioned the wide degree of wiggle room we afford the sciences, the constant backtracking, correcting and amending that occurs in the so called ‘precise’ sciences, including physics and economics.

But one can see that this wiggle room, these allowed wide tolerances in what is consistently promoted as exact and precise, is actually regularly exploited by the cult leaders to maintain authority while handing down new and ever more fantastical decries and mandates. We observe the same thing in organized religion and various other ‘consumer’ cults. The word of (God, Fashion, Entertainment, Consumer products, fill in the blank) is THIS and must be followed to the letter…….except when it is this, this, that or those over there. Wait, is it Fed Tuesday? Then forget all that, because this right here is now the word of “Ben the Bearded Beneficent”.

Special thanks to WilliamBanzai7 for this image.

In effect when the ‘authorities’ lie and manipulate they are distorting our perceived reality and relying on the fact that our desire to maintain our status quo within the system through our support of the system (the compromised ‘we’ I discussed in Chapter One) will be greater than our desire to know the ‘truth’ of the situation, which all of us know will undermine our faith and belief and the system with it. So help me God we really don’t want to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Jean-Claude Juncker said as much when he stated that when things get serious you have to lie. The authority must lie because most people do not want to hear the truth precisely because that particular truth will undermine the BIG LIE. The official lie in question is actually just one lie within hundreds of deeper lies, all supporting each other like a house of cards. If the authority were to admit the truth, especially when faith and belief is at its weakest, then those who are psychologically dependent upon the entire house of lies would be forced to question everything if this truth were exposed. A crisis of faith is what would result, and the high priests (in this case Juncker) don’t want that to happen when blind unquestioning faith among the dependent believers is all that is holding the economic wreck together.

Based upon my casual discussions with average people everywhere I eat, shop and play, while the details may not be known, most people really do know that things are worse than we are being told. But to truly ‘know’ it, meaning to have it confirmed by an external authority, makes it real and undeniable and something we must now face. There will be no more wiggle room left for us to exploit; the warm dark place denial grows and prospers in. If we live by the affirmation of the external authority, then we die by the affirmation of the external authority. As long as they continue to tell us things are OK we’re gonna believe them…..even if we really don’t.

Once we ‘know’ something it is now ours to own and deal with. Since we cannot un-know something, only deny it, we would much rather not know it in the first place. This leads directly to believing anything but the truth which helps explain some of the incredible lies the authorities seem to get away with. Simply put a lie is a deliberate distortion applied to a perceived reality and the lie is always used to maintain or buttress faith and belief in whatever we want to believe in, be it our spouse, children, employer, friends, neighbors, teachers, corporations, government etc. Or in this case the very socioeconomic system that offers us a direct and continuing promise to enable our health, wealth and wellbeing. As we all slide down the slippery slope to economic hell the dying cry will be “But they promised……………”

The official lie is most effective when we want to believe the lie more than we wish to know the truth simply because the compromised person is supplying the unquestioning belief with no demand of the liar for ‘proof’ or confirmation. “Daddy, tell me another lie so that I may believe it is the truth.” For example, when there is suspicion but an unwillingness to believe the suspicion (aka denial), how many people really want their spouse to tell them the truth about their infidelity? I’ll bet ten bucks nearly every reader’s ego just reflexively said “I would want the truth”.

Under those circumstances (suspicion and denial) not only will many want their spouse to lie, but they will want their spouse to lie well enough that they have less trouble believing the lie to be the truth. In order to do this we will deny our denial by telling ourselves and our spouse that we really do want the truth, while ‘secretly’ hoping to be lied too IF there really is infidelity involved. When deeply conflicted and compromised we ask questions in such a way as to telegraph our desired answer, for example “Tell me you’re not cheating on me honey.” Who has not felt great relief to hear what we wanted to hear (“No honey, I am NOT cheating on you.”) even when nagging doubt and suspicion lingered?

How many times have we avoided asking our children the really tough questions when we harbored strong suspicions we weren’t getting the whole truth? Or that we ignored some glaring inconsistencies or a flat out lie in order not to know the truth we suspected might be lurking. Or sometimes we just want to avoid the hassle and confrontation, a convenient excuse, so we go along with it and not challenge the lie.

If we do this often and long enough, soon we begin to believe the lie because it has never been directly refuted. In effect the lie is being indirectly supported by not being challenged by the person being lied to, making us in many ways complicit. The ultimate effect is that the lie begins to take on a ‘truth’ life of its own. When this happens, truth becomes whatever we want it to be because it is constructed almost entirely of lies with just enough truth mixed in to give it some street cred in our minds. No ugly shapes or sharp edges to deal with this way. But deep down inside we know we are living a lie and it eats at us from within, creating a deep neurosis and a thoroughly compromised being.

Once we ignore the lie psychologically we become enablers of the lie. Every time we ignore the lie we are deepening our involvement and our own culpability. Soon enough we find ourselves defending the lie in order to defend ourselves. To out the lie and the liar at a later date means outing our prior complicity, even if only to ourselves. This is why we find so many people believing the official lie(s) and actively supporting that which is contrary to their best interest or basic beliefs.

The greater the distance between the person and the effects of the (official) lie (i.e. death by Drone of brown people in Pakistan) the easier it is to maintain the lie. Vice versa, when close proximity to the effects of the lie threatens exposure to or even direct (emotional, psychological or physical) harm to us (i.e. death by Drone of American citizens in America) we tend to ramp up our righteous indignation to psychologically cover our complicity. Maybe it’s just best to just leave sleeping dogs lie (sic). We do exactly the same thing with all aspects of the government, military, judicial system, corporations and of course the financial system. Please don’t tell me because I just don’t want to know. And to make sure I don’t know what I don’t want to know……I won’t ask.

Willing participation doesn’t necessarily mean in agreement with

Earlier I stated that willing participation can be defined as just about any participation, regardless of whether it’s agnostic, mindless, suspect, hostile, even forced or compelled. One’s faith and belief in the socioeconomic system doesn’t need to be total and unwavering (though that would be ideal) nor even in agreement, just that there be no other viable competing meme to divert or distract the participants’ focus and energy.

This helps explain the tremendous amount of energy expended by the fiat magicians to demean, deny and manipulate the meme competing precious metals. When you cut through all the smoke screens, deliberate distractions and ritual practices this is a truism for any cult, not just the money meme. In order to maintain its supremacy, a cult and its leaders cannot tolerate significant internal dissent or disbelief (or external for that matter, though it isn’t quite as critical) because its primary energy source is belief.

Even if we don’t agree with the process, even if we feel compelled to do as we are told, as long as we exchange our labor, goods and services for script, then exchange that script for other labor, goods or services, we are willingly participating. It doesn’t matter if we are locked into the money meme by law, which in turn is enforced with an implied state threat of violence if we do not obey.

Each time we accept currency in exchange for our labor, we want to believe that it will maintain the ‘value’ we just embedded in it with our labor so that we can exchange the script for whatever it is that we wish to purchase at ‘fair value’. The fact that it does maintain the vast majority of its value for the relatively short period of time it takes us to engage in most of our transactions just serves to reinforce our belief in the currency. The proof of our (mostly unquestioning) belief is that we give this concept little to no thought while we are engaged in our various purchases.

We open our wallet or purse and pull out some currency or a credit/debit card and we pay. While we may complain about the price, on a day to day basis most of us don’t see the rising price(s) for what it really represents, the diminished value of our currency, but rather just the need for more ‘money’ for that week’s groceries because prices always go up. Even those of us who understand what’s really going on don’t automatically think currency devaluation when we stop at the gas pumps. We just think in terms of the need for more money because gas is up again. This just serves to prove how much faith and belief we really do have in a currency we say we don’t believe in.

To those who would argue that they really do not believe in the system, that they are simply going with the flow and accepting their paycheck or any other compensation they receive in whatever coin of the realm is demanded of them, my response is simple. The system feeds upon your ‘willing’ participation in whatever form you present it as.

You believe that for now, with ‘now’ measured in years, months, weeks, days or just hours, that whatever fiat chit you are handed can and will be used to pay your bills, purchase your precious metals and do whatever else you desire. Belief does not have to be total and unquestioning in order to be effective and energizing. The system feeds off of this mental and emotional flow, and not necessarily in any static stock of belief. As Zero Hedge’s Tyler Durden likes to say, it’s not the stock but the flow.

Our voluntary tax

The same concept of ‘willingness' applies to the US Federal income tax system. It is promoted as ‘voluntary’ by those who control and benefit from it because we voluntarily file our own tax return with ‘volunteered’ information. Our tax declaration (aka our tax return) is not prepared for us by a central authority (because that would be involuntary) but by us and us alone, thus the reasoning behind this twisted logic.

Most importantly, we declare our voluntary participation in the money meme to be true or ‘real’ when we sign the tax form (“….and to the best of my knowledge and belief, they are true, correct, and complete.”) thus closing the mind control loop with our affirmation of the true or ‘real’ nature of the artificial reality. We then document or seal this consent with our symbol of willing participation, our signature. This is an extremely powerful form of mind control magic in every sense of the word.

This concept can be applied to all (financial) contracts we negotiate and enter into. In the eyes of the ‘law’ (another powerful mind control meme I won’t even begin to discuss here) and with the benefit of centuries of social conditioning, as well as the proclaimed foundational basis for the capitalistic economic system we supposedly live within, we are all free to engage in commerce and to sell our labor to the highest bidder.

The presumption is always that you are a willing and engaged participant and that any transaction you undertake is done without coercion or duress despite the obvious nature of your coercion and duress. In fact, even when we know that we ‘have no choice’ (aka under duress) we still (must) apply our symbol of acceptance and agreement, our signature, to the document saying that we do so willingly, freely and of sound mind and body.

Without understanding (or believing) the subtleties of exactly how subliminal mind control works, it is extremely difficult to understand how powerful this force is. Our total subjugation is never more apparent as when we see polling that indicates that a tremendous percentage of the population believes that regardless of whether there might have been fraud involved in the mortgage process, since they signed the loan documents to purchase their home they are personally bound to honor the loan.

This in spite of the clear and obvious fact that the other party to the fraudulent transaction did not feel honor bound either to (any of) their agreements or to the (spirit of the) law underpinning their agreements, thus invalidating the loan contract based upon common sense and moral grounds if nothing else. Sadly the average person still wishes to believe that the courts and the legal system are there to protect them (the prey) from the predators, when in fact it is explicitly designed to protect the predators from the prey.

Only the thoroughly captured psyche of the mind controlled and conditioned (wage) slave exhibits such a distorted and misplaced sense of honor and subservience to their abusive owner/master. The controller/master will always stack the socioeconomic deck in his or her favor as long as willing wage slaves keep lining up to play. Sadly the system stacking goes so much deeper than just the deck.

Frogs in the pot

I am not being judgmental here, just calling it as I see it. It is obvious that I’m cooking in the same mind subliminal control pot as everyone else and I struggle to find ways to protect myself and my family, often from me and my own life long conditioning. If I am to have any hope of success then I must understand both my mind and that of the predator, thus the reason for my constant self examination and for posting my occasional musings here on Zero Hedge.

Unfortunately nearly everyone rejects the notion that they are under the influence of any type or form of mind control (well………they might be influenced, but certainly not me) despite enormous and glaring examples everywhere we turn. Advertising is a huge example of continuous overt and covert manipulative mind control and conditioning techniques employed to the nth degree. Because a more aware and deeper understanding of our everyday exposure to advertising totally contradicts our own deeply held (manufactured and conditioned) image of a self directed life, our ego goes to great lengths to shield us from this emotionally disturbing information.

When shielded by our ego, when protected from ourselves by our ‘self’, we tend to mostly ignore any information contrary to our deep seated belief systems or we prefer to believe that we are forced into participating, that we have no choice in the matter. Victimhood is always and forever a perfectly blameless occupation. Or better yet, at least from the mind control perspective, we (want to) believe we have freedom of choice and that we willingly choose mind control and slavery. Though our ego would rather have us think of it in terms of modern day prosperity and opportunity via a college education and a career ladder. Every right thinking individual wants a well appointed hamster cage with exercise wheel and flat screen TV.

This is where the leverage of the mind control comes from and where it is applied; by skillfully using our self induced blindness of what is quite obvious to any disinterested and unaffected observer against us. The art of mind control is not just to compel you to do something you would not ordinarily do if of sound mind and body, but to instill in you the belief that the idea originated within, and that it is what you truly desire. This sub conscious high jacking simply cannot be accomplished for long if we always keep a central self awareness in the front of our mind. I was the problem, I am the problem and I will always be the problem for as long as I do not see the problem. And the problem is that I am the problem. This is not an exercise in self abuse as some (egos) might claim, but rather an exercise in humility and self understanding. The problem, and thus the solution springs from within.

If we understand how ‘willing’ doesn’t mean ‘in agreement’ then it really doesn’t matter if our Federal income tax participation is compelled in dozens of different ways, including involuntary tax withholding and mandatory reporting of our financial information from various financial sources. From the mind control perspective certain acts must appear to be voluntary in order for the (money meme) mind control to effectively work.

I understand that this explanation of our ‘willing’ involvement will irk many who read this and rightfully so. It is never easy to face yourself naked in the mirror for the first, second or third time. But in a closed loop socioeconomic system there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. This fact just makes it that much more important that we be brutally honest with ourselves and that we proactively practice personal sovereignty beginning with eliminating our comforting and disabling self deceptions.

We so want to believe and are hurt when we can’t

If the economic math doesn’t fit the reality then slowly change the mathematical equations in order to create additional plausibility. This effectively extends and fortifies the severely weakened economic reality, essentially providing additional or renewed reasons to continue to believe. If nothing else this buys the system controllers more time which is then used by those who abuse and control to loot, pillage and batten down the hatches while further turning the screws of oppression on the willing wage slaves.

As I have said before we really do want to believe, even those who claim they want the entire stinking mess to collapse. They see no alternative to the current state of affairs, so they champion scrapping the present system only because they wish to create a new, more fair and equitable (money meme) system upon which they can once again ‘willingly’ bestow their full faith and belief.

The far more common apathetic response is actually still willing participation without exhibiting explicit agreement or resistance to the unacknowledged symbiotic bargain. An emotional escape route (apathy) is preloaded to relieve the pent up frustration and anger that comes from being (self) trapped with nowhere to hide. Long term caged wild (human) animals often demonstrate this behavior, a sign of deep neurosis and emotional paralysis. They still wish to believe, but are unwilling to invest the emotional energy to actually believe for fear of once again being bitterly disappointed.

In the case of the more thoroughly captured minds, the thought of living without the present day money meme is so disorientating and frightening that they will plead with their abusers to do whatever it takes to continue the existing system. From the perspective of the mind control meme there really is no other way to describe all these mindsets other than ‘willing’ regardless of whether it is coerced, manipulated, passive or desperately offered.

As simplistic as the above descriptions might sound they pass the smell test quite well. The mind control method of slow incremental changes to our perceived reality has actually been used repeatedly for hundreds (thousands) of years. The rules, particularly the unwritten ones, have been repeatedly changed and the outer boundaries continuously pushed further and further back.

And yet even though the system appears to be ever more unstable, the music plays on and the puppets continue to dance. This in turn leads the clueless and asleep, as well as the doubting Thomases among the financial professionals, to think that things must be somewhat OK since the entire global economic contraption manages to creak along. It certainly helps to assuage the growing fear within the professional financial community that maybe she might just blow.

Don’t look now but…..

When the international Gold standard was found to be too constrictive, ‘they’ changed the rules and parameters of the then present day paradigm and created a new reality of ‘safe’ un-backed leveraged fiat (the petrodollar was the eagerly accepted cover story) simply by gaining an overwhelming buy in first from the international high priests, then by the lower level local/regional faith and belief leaders (the financial professionals) who in turn induced the acceptance of the changed conditions within the true power base, the compliant and complicit public.

Any new economic reality can be created as long as there is sufficient buy in by those who manage the active ingredient, our faith and belief. That means you and me folks. Ultimately this is a top down process, leaving the actual reality creation in the control of the elite essentially by default since we long ago abdicated our responsibility to do so.

I would suggest that within the present day madness any socioeconomic construct is doomed to fail from the moment it is birthed simply because it is almost always based upon some type of widely believed mathematical parameters that have strongly perceived inviolable boundaries. These are initially set in stone to instill faith and belief in the new economic system, and are designed to engender confidence in a new non-real reality.

Often this was done because the ‘new’ currency/economic system is replacing one which just failed to retain widespread faith and belief and thus was abandoned by the population, usually because it was used and abused by the elite minority to enslave and control and loot the majority to the point of utter disbelief.

While a quick Internet search will disclose certain ideal traits that many claim are needed to create a fully functioning and long lived currency, and by extension a (re)new(ed) economic system, in fact the only critical characteristic needed is confidence in the currency, essentially faith and belief that it will serve the needs of the participants with a minimum of risk and a maximum of utility. Or at least that the pain inflicted upon the population by those who control the system is perceived to be tolerable in exchange for certain valuable considerations.

Ideally, with the proper amount of externally applied propaganda and conditioning (cough, cough….mind control….cough) we might even be convinced to believe that the pain is desirable, such as the fiction that inflation (legal institutionalized theft if you really want to properly describe it) is good for you and me.

I’m not saying that the old economechanical rules can be repeatedly violated with impunity or that there will be no blowback. Not in the least. But we are all affected by our continuity and normalcy bias (aka egoic denial techniques) which in turn help to reinforce the present day false paradigm. Taken as a whole, this counteracts some of our fading faith and belief, allowing the socioeconomic system to perpetuate far beyond the point of no return.

Remember that Wile E Coyote does not actually fall once he has ventured past the cliff edge until he looks down and recognizes, then emotionally accepts, that there is no more support underneath. It is only when he emotionally internalizes his certain fate by way of a ‘help’ sign or just his pitiful knowing eyes that he actually begins to fall.

Since we really don’t want to look anyway, any plausible excuse (and a few that defy the imagination) will do in a cognitive pinch because it is not the actual hearing or seeing of the lie that is so comforting, but the emotional relief we feel when we are offered the lie that will not force us to contradict what we want to believe is the truth. We all do this folks. The only questions are how often and how well do we hide it from ourselves.

False hope chains us to impossible conditions

As much as we, the contrary observers, wish for it to be otherwise, for now at least we are a very small (but growing) minority. And within the present day consensus reality where faith and belief are the reality creators, or at the very least the reality enablers and the active force behind and the bedrock support of the current socioeconomic paradigm, to ignore or to down play the power of this phenomenon is to ignore the true reason why the present economic system has managed to last this long, and may last even longer than we can possibly imagine.

I wish to emphasize that this is not to say that the system isn’t degrading rapidly, even exponentially. Nor that there will not be sudden and widespread economic dislocations or even outright failures (read that as stock market panics and runs on the banks) as the rot progresses and subsystems become ever more fragile. But contrary to perceived common sense even these obvious public signs of pending system failure will not initially be fully believed and accepted as truly threatening by the general population (because unlike the impossibility of being a little bit pregnant, one can be a little bit in denial) and will most likely be more or less denied precisely because they are so detrimental to all.

There is no doubt that there will be more and more people trying to run for the exits as their faith and belief wane. But once they realize that the exit doors are too small or too crowded for them to get out (or worse that the exit just leads them directly back into the burning building) a great hue and cry will rise from the flames demanding that those who are destroying the system better damn well fix the system. Once again the prey will demand that the predators be put in charge of leading the prey to (another) slaughter.

When our world view is directly threatened, most of us will reject that which contradicts our beliefs or threatens our perceived livelihood and economic safety. The more threatened we feel and/or the closer we believe the danger to be, the greater the tendency there is to remain in denial or even to vigorously support that which we are dependent upon. Those who don’t wish to see (and the worse it gets the more who will fit this description) the more they will seek the comforting lie and the emotional crutches authored by public authorities. Child like, many will ask for the lie (and the scapegoat) so that we may self deceive.

Because society’s tremendous momentum of prior belief and willingness to be lied to will be combined with deliberate fear mongering and outright official denial (and don’t forget the all important scapegoating) even when the system reaches critical failure points, the entire financial structure will most likely not collapse in one fell swoop. Instead what will likely happen is that large and small pieces will break loose and fall off, only to be quickly hammered back into place in whatever sloppy way they can manage.

If the emergency carpentry fails to ‘fix’ the problem, and it will not, then the failures will be replaced with even more fantastical economic creations and financial manipulations that defy wavering believers to look too close for fear of glimpsing the ugly truth. This includes political and economic machinations that would boggle the mind if presented today, but will most likely be welcomed with open arms when the frightened truly become desperate and panicked.

Like a person navigating a descending set of irregular, uneven and crooked steps, the financial system will probably bumble and stumble on down into oblivion, with each step possessing a different drop and duration, some very large and some small. There will even be occasional rises and short lived landings before the next section of the barn begins to crumble.

It is impossible to say exactly how this will all work out simply because the world’s elites have never been to this point before and neither have we. But we would be fools to think that such a complex living organism with so many moving parts and such emotional energy (I would argue that denial is the strongest emotion, surpassing love and hate by a country mile) will act like a complex mechanical machine and simply stop one day, though parts of it most certainly will.

Measuring weakness by our strength

In my opinion it is the absolute conviction of our basic belief systems that is keeping the system supported and in place, at least for the moment. I’m not just talking about the socioeconomic system, but our unquestioning and absolute faith and belief in the larger generally prevailing worldview of how things work. This includes our fundamental belief in math, science, technology, religion, matter, energy and so on. I’ll cover this in greater detail in a future article, but our worldview spans so much more than just a belief in the surface functionality and utility.

It is not the Federal Reserve or the banksters or the various dependent-upon-unlimited-fiat-creation governments that are supporting the present day socioeconomic system. I would argue that the ultimate strength of any complex economic organism is the faith and belief the dependent participants have in that very same system. That faith comes from you and me and the guy down the street, not from the Fed, the government nor the banksters. They do not create our faith and belief, but rather they are the recipients, manipulators and abusers of our faith and belief.

So when we measure the fragility of any socioeconomic system we must actually measure the strength of those who support it, particularly their faith and belief. After several generations of rote education and reflexive conditioning combined with an ever increasing dependence upon the very system we now claim will collapse quickly and completely, may I suggest that our faith and belief, and ultimately the false hope that it engenders, will die a long, hard and very painful death. Thus any economic system supported by our captured minds will also die a long, hard and painful death.

While I will not argue with the belief that the dozens upon dozens of economic and cultural death spasms will be sudden, violent and most certainly unpredictable, the faithfully desperate believers, facing the black abyss of self sufficiency and self reliance after dozens and dozens of years of dependency conditioning, will beg to be saved from themselves, thus supporting a doomed system long past its perceived expiration date. False hope chains us to our own self delusions. This truism cannot be over stated. At one time or another we have all clung to impossible situations way too long for our own good when we were emotionally dependent, regardless of the ‘facts’ of the situation. ‘We the herd’ will undoubtedly do so as well.

Long live denial.

02-06-2013

Cognitive Dissonance

Originally published 02-03-2013

Abandonment and collapse

For 25 minutes twice a day I travel back and forth to my office, a labor of love if I must confess. I enjoy the pleasure of traveling a scenic blue highway consisting mostly of wooded forest and rolling (former tobacco) farm land. All in all a very relaxing commute conductive to solitude and reflection with very little traffic to contend with and a heavy trooper presence to keep the speed down to a more sane and leisurely pace. One can find inspiration wherever one looks, but I find some places more inspiring than others.

None of the farms I pass continues to grow tobacco, an expected outcome of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement which precipitated various ‘tobacco state’ buyout programs. But a very visible remnant of this once thriving economic activity are scores of abandoned tobacco barns, most previously used to air cure harvested tobacco leaves before bringing them to market.

While I imagine the locals pay little attention to these hulking sentinels of a past life until suddenly they disappear from the travelers’ line of sight, crumpled into a haphazard pile of rotting debris, for several years now I’ve been witnessing the relentless and ongoing disintegration of these structures. And I see their inevitable destruction as just one small part of a long and convoluted process that is very similar to the coming end of the developed world’s global fiat empire.

Even the eventual (some might say inevitable) failure of both the decaying barns and the global fiat empire do not represent the end, but rather the beginning of the end of this cycle, to be closely followed by the rebirth and renewal (but not necessarily the duplication) of the next. This has led me to think about the widely used term ‘collapse’ when discussing the future of the present day socioeconomic system. Collapse infers that there is an end point, a firm and definite finality, a full stop which in my opinion doesn’t properly sync with the fact that life will carry on, even though the music and dance steps have (radically) changed. Thus the word ‘crumble’ seems more representative of the actual process underway.

To the casual eye very little appears to be happening to these decaying barns for years at a stretch. But if one watches closely and looks for incremental change, very soon one notices some newly deformed or detached wall boards here, additional missing roof shakes there, a barn door ajar and swinging in the breeze or maybe a window sill sagging, the window glazing gone and the panes of glass long since fallen from their sash. Depending upon the pace of the decay and possibly a sense of wasted investment or unrealized potential, the absentee owner might feel compelled to perform some rudimentary repairs in order to stave off what appears to the casual observer to be a case of imminent collapse.

But once the roof and sides are punctured in several places and fundamental structures are exposed to the elements, the decay accelerates exponentially. More and more roof shakes go missing, rafters fall away and the ridge begins to sag while entire walls bulge and ripple. If you’re lucky to be passing by at the particular moment of rescue you might catch a glimpse of the owner, pickup truck backed up to the long unsecured opening, removing any salvageable property that remains within the structure.

This is the sign, the ‘tell’ if you will, that the end is truly near……at least in the mind of the owner. And yet the barn still stands for months, years even; leaning precariously to one side or another, large sections of the roof long since fallen in, half its wall boards missing, heavily overgrown with vines and brush and inhabited by wildlife who’ve taken refuge from the elements.

Then one day you notice something missing from your routine passage. Not sure at first exactly what it is that you sense is wrong, suddenly you realize that what was once there is now gone. Or at least what appears to be missing is actually still there, only no longer in the shape and form you remember. Overnight it has been reduced in size and shape to a far smaller, more compact pile of wood and assorted detritus. Was it a gust of wind, a breaking timber or a landing bird? One can only guess in what form the straw came that broke the barn’s back.

Actually, it would be far more accurate to say that where once a severely degraded shell of a formerly vibrant and productive asset existed (its supporting structures and various subsystems degraded far beyond any semblance of productive utility or structural integrity) now there is a weathered skeleton no longer able to support what little remained of itself and quickly subsided. Not exactly a collapse in my book, but most people would disagree and over simplify it by calling it one.

The anatomy of an economic crumble by the removal of structural faith and belief

Of course the reader might also accuse me of an oversimplification as well and s/he would also be correct. In my defense though I just wish to examine collapse in its simplest physical form and work from there. In reality, unlike the old unused tobacco barns our economic system is not abandoned, at least not yet.

Rather, while ruthlessly used and severely abused by the elite, the present socioeconomic consensus reality contains one active ingredient the abandoned barns do not……in spite of what is clearly a rapidly decomposing financial and political system, you and I (and increasingly the general public) still maintain a somewhat desperate faith and belief in its past success and future functionality if only the rot could be exorcized and the structure rebuilt.

However, unlike a complicated mechanical device where breakdowns can and will occur with increasing frequency as complexity and age increases, hope, faith and belief are powerful emotional engines not constrained by physical limitations. And equally important they are fueled by a seemingly unlimited energy source, thus they can and will continue to operate long past their seemingly obvious fail date.

Or to put it another way, unlike the abandoned tobacco barns, our socioeconomic culture (into which all of us are seamlessly embedded) embodies tremendous momentum of prior belief which in turn propels, energizes and validates (oftentimes false) hope, faith and belief in the present and future of our obviously failed economic structure. We want to believe, even if we claim we don’t presently believe, and this emotional energy alone is enough to support the structure, if only for a while longer and despite (seemingly) vital components and subsystems falling off or rotting away.

This helps explain why we exuberantly overshoot to the irrational upside, then quickly chase it all back down with an emotional hangover. Modern day markets, currencies and economies may be manipulated and moved by external forces, but they also appear to be moved by (among other things) the rise and fall of the herd’s faith and belief. The question appears to be a chicken or egg query, though it really isn’t. Does social mood move the economy or does the economy move social mood? It seems to me that it is neither, but rather both. There is an ebb and flow back and forth in a positive feedback loop. One cannot exist without the other, with both dependent upon one another.

This interrelated dynamic is constantly dismissed or simply ignored as not relevant or immaterial by the mainstream propagandizing economists and by much of the contrary crew primarily because our socioeconomic culture is considered an ‘economechanical’ (economy mechanical) machine rather than a ‘living’ organism. The economechanical economists claim that our socioeconomic system is a mathematically driven financial machine that influences (some say controls) we humans rather than seeing it as complex organisms in a symbiotic but extremely dysfunctional relationship.

The tobacco barns are physical structures and thus subject to the physical ‘laws’ of the present day consensus reality universe. (Many of the natural ‘laws’ of our current worldview are actually well established and widely believed assumptions and beliefs, a subject I will expand upon in a future article.) Presently those physical laws as we know and believe them do not require faith and belief as structural components in order for the physical barns to remain standing, at least not within the scope of this article’s discussion. The same cannot be said of our culture and its economy.

Reality creators rather than reality consumers

Interestingly while the mainstream economists view the socioeconomic system as mostly economechanical, they do publicly acknowledge the critical hope and belief component of the structure. Thus they dare not say with their out loud voices that the emperor has no clothes, for then the evident will truly become patently obvious and the plausible lie will no longer appear functionally believable.

Still, while they recognize the power of our faith and belief, they say that this emotional force is created by the system and not the reverse. We are seen as just one of several mechanical components of their economic engine, subject to incentives and stimulus, herded and corralled by interest rates and taxes, as reality consumers rather than the all powerful reality creators we truly are.

But make no mistake about one irrefutable fact. The top of the elite, the true puppet masters, know full well who and what we are and how dangerous we are to them if we were to recognize our full potential and take our leave. This is why we are manipulated and enslaved, bottled up like a nuclear reactor. While safely contained we produce consistent and manageable power to run their machines of commerce and consumerism. But released from our restraints and freed to create reality unhindered by our self limitations we are all powerful and no longer controllable.

The manipulating force that distorts our socioeconomic system and its ultimate binding force, the super glue that holds it all together and enables our collective self enslavement, is self evident and entirely esoteric. I am, of course, speaking of the fear based mind control system of the contrived scarcity money meme, the central vehicle used to compel our ‘willing’ participation within the socioeconomic system.

Ultimately currency, widely seen as ‘money’ by the herd and vice versa (thus both words will be used interchangeably in this discussion though there is a distinct difference) is entirely esoteric in nature, without true form or physical structure other than those fancy colored paper symbols in our wallets and electronic one’s and zero’s on our statements that are used to represent a non physical psychological and emotional construct.

The same can also be said about Gold and Silver which are commanding and enduring symbols of the money meme. While Gold and Silver may present in physical form as opposed to un-backed fiat, which is mostly accounted for by numerical journal entries with only a small percentage of the total actually represented as paper currency, Gold and Silver are still just symbols. However, unlike fiat, which comes and goes every few generations, for thousands of years the precious metals have consistently been powerful attractors upon which we focus our energizing faith and belief.

Their physical form, their luster and glow, their primeval allure can for many people be absolutely mesmerizing and speaks to an unknown energy, power and even spiritual magic that the economechanical magicians have trouble publicly acknowledging, let alone modeling. But they do recognize this primeval power and they are desperate to capture it by redirecting that power towards their flaccid fiat.

In my opinion this is why the fiat fakers will often use Gold and Silver to initially back their latest fiat creation, and then strip it away in order to extort the greatest amount of leverage from their wage slaves. Only when they have no choice will they reinstitute a precious metal backing to their worthless fiat, and then only to reset the meme and start it up all over again. One may not be able to totally control the wild (human) beast, but one most certainly can cage it.

Real or not, it is still just a symbol

The length and degree to which the fiat mongers attempt to demean and dishonor Gold during the latter stages of their currency debasement says all that needs to be said about Gold’s base power, meaning our base power. That said, and regardless of whether or not we believe Gold and Silver to be honest money and the basis for sound money policy (remember in Chapter One my discussion about ‘good’ money meme components many wish to resurrect or maintain while ignoring the overall debilitating effects of the money meme itself?) the monetary precious metals are still just (significant) symbols of the overall money meme. They are not washed clean of their money meme mind control function simply because they are considered beneficial to humanity overall and to us as individuals. They remain symbols, powerful though they may be, of the money meme.

Without fully realizing it we are all guilty of conflating money and/or currency, the primary symbols of the mind control money meme, with what money is used to create, enable or activate, meaning residential and commercial buildings, road and bridges, couches and cameras, intellectual property and all the other ‘real’ things that are formed from mind and matter.

The total and seamless integration of the money meme into our culture is designed to confirm and leverage the faith and belief we bestow upon the esoteric concept of ‘money’ by conflating it with the ‘real’ solid reality we use money to create. This is very deliberately done through propaganda and conditioning via education, beginning with our parents and extending through all levels of primary, secondary and graduate school, as well as through predictive programming and meme affirmation by way of movies, television and advertising and so on.

By extension, we are also conditioned to bestow our faith and belief upon the high priests and puppet masters of the money meme through adulation, worship and subservience to authority and power, which in turn is conflated with money and wealth in an endless positive feedback loop of alchemical abomination creation.

In effect we are all turning mental lead into fiat Gold; only the fiat is Fool’s Gold for those who are left holding it when the bottom begins to fall out of the Fed’s misdirected faith and belief confidence racket. This speaks again to the ultimate power of physical Gold and Silver as vessels of our faith and belief and why those who wish to control us so desperately want to siphon off or redirect some of that power to energize their own controlling fiat.

If we are to be totally honest with ourselves we must accept that Gold and Silver are simply more perfect vessels into which we direct our faith and belief compared to the un-backed fiat currencies. It is still a fear based mind control contrived scarcity money meme even when precious metals are used to ground our faith within the meme. Using Gold and Silver simply means the meme cannot be as easily hijacked or leveraged by others (as opposed to fiat currencies) precisely because our faith and belief is so strong when using the precious metals.

By extension, a precious metal backed currency is an extremely powerful controlling meme in its own right. It is not ‘pure’ just because its backing is a highly pure and refined element. Recognizing and acknowledging this does not diminish our power. What it actually does is it disarms and delegitimizes the predators that prey upon us if we embody this knowledge and understanding.

Perception is reality, so manage the perception and the reality follows

Is it money/currency that makes all those real things ‘real’ or is it those real things that make money/currency appear to be real? Since we perceive currency for what it can be used for and not for what it really is, which in reality is just a concept, a mental construct, a meme, then its ultimate value (which is shorthand for form and function) is based entirely upon our faith and belief in ‘it’.

We intuitively know this to be the truth when we speak about the various central banks debasing their currency, which ultimately means that the central banks are destroying any of our remaining residual faith and belief in these particular money meme symbols (the dollar, euro etc.) which they have utilized to enslave us. Our innate and naturally occurring power energizes and activates their dead fiat currencies, and not the other way around. But the powers that be and their central bankers are loath to admit this to us because this true fact, if widely known and understood, would instantly delegitimize them in the eyes of nearly all but the most subservient.

We contrarians argue that the monetary system cannot last much longer in its present form because the numbers just don’t add up, that it is being artificially propped up, otherwise it would have collapsed long ago. Over and over again we present charts, graphs, statistics and historical testimony to ‘prove’ that the economic system’s days are numbered and that the end is near. And yet the system continues to persevere, to prosper even…..at least for some participants.

We declare that if only the slumbering minions would wake and recognize that they and their fellow codependent economic slaves are in deep doodoo, that the financial system would be exposed for what it really is……a corrupt system of extortion and slavery. (On a side note we must ask ourselves why anyone would possibly want to wake to the above described nightmare.) We understand that the status quo is maintained by the ignorance or apathy of those we claim to be asleep; otherwise we would not say this.

Doesn’t that declaration alone make the case that it is the (sometimes blind) faith and belief of the herd that perpetuates the present paradigm and not the desperate economechanical machinations of the controllers? That the economic numbers are manipulated in order to maintain the faith and belief of the herd in the system and not to maintain the actual system?

In our material culture complexity infers credibility and belief.

Maybe we need to see this from another point of view. We consistently fail to recognize that math and science are simply intricate (and at times deeply flawed) descriptions of our perceived realty, and not the actual reality itself. And that our perceived reality as described by math, physics and science forms the bedrock basis of our overall worldview and of our economic system.

Because we tend to confuse or conflate math and science with reality itself, or at least we believe that the sciences accurately describe reality, thus reality appears to reinforce the validity of the description in a self reinforcing perpetual motion meme, when an esoteric ‘reality’ (such as economics) is described, presented or explained in mathematical and/or scientific language, we tend to believe that the esoteric reality is real as well. We have been indoctrinated and conditioned for decades, for centuries really, to trust the offered descriptions as real, as a genuine reality, as a truth, rather than to trust our own experience, common sense and inner knowing.

In effect the economechanical magicians have convinced us (all of us to some degree or another) to alter our perception to match their description. This is how we are manipulated, by convincing us to disbelieve our lying eyes. This easily explains how the present day leveraged fiat socioeconomic system has been able to endure so much longer than many people thought possible based solely upon the obvious unsustainability of the present day financial reality.

The modern day financial system is entirely dependent upon our manipulated and deeply compromised faith and belief in order to function. By distorting our perception of (economic) reality, by pushing the boundary between believability and unbelievability further and further out, the socioeconomic system can endure long past its math and science based projected failure date. Add in our intense desire to believe, in part due to our raging co-dependency, and we can see how Wile E. Coyote can travel well past the cliff edge in flagrant violation of gravity.

Economic gravity doesn’t matter…….until it is consciously recognized and emotionally accepted as detrimental, then suddenly it matters a whole lot and comes roaring back with a vengeance. Ignorance truly is bliss, regardless of whether it comes in the form of a true lack of knowledge and understanding or as a part of our denial or as part of a manipulated and distorted perception.

The elite economechanical magicians (aka the top tier economists and central bank barons) use incomprehensible-to-the-layman (and to each other) math and science to describe why the system has indeed survived (aka the new normal) thus closing the faith and belief positive feedback loop. When only a few dozen individuals can successfully claim that they understand how a (faith and belief) socioeconomic system functions, and more importantly how to ‘fix’ the system, while the remaining 99.99% are told that all is well, that the system will be just fine if only we would do this or that, to just trust them, then we have fully crossed over from examining and describing a complex economic entity and into a religious socioeconomic cult based solely upon faith and belief.

I am constantly amazed, but not really surprised, by the degree of back peddling, amending, correcting and restating that occurs in all of the sciences, with economics leading the way these days. “Yes I know we once said that this (fill in the blank) was bad, but in the new normal this is now good. The proof that this change is good is that the system continues to operate and even prosper, so you should believe this now and not that.” I just love circular logic that feeds my confirmation bias and triggers those soothing endorphins.

Yet amazingly we as a society continue to believe in these seriously flawed descriptions primarily because they are promoted by so called experts and authorities and because we as a group and as individuals are so deeply compromised by our addictions and dependencies that we have become infantile pawns. Either we believe what we are told, regardless of how preposterous or ridiculous it may be, or we reject it and suddenly we are on our own, totally responsible for ourselves and, if we have family or close friends, several others.

This applies to all of us, particularly the educated professional class who are even more dependent upon the present day socioeconomic system to function so that their elevated status among the other wage slaves can be maintained. The house slaves are usually better fed and clothed if nothing else.

If the high priests of the various science and financial cults were to suddenly declare that they know not what they do, who is going to tell me what to think, say and most importantly do. In a culture that gloriously worships conformity of the individual and craves affirmation from our masters above, we shouldn’t be too surprised to discover the ugly underbelly of our hive mind.

Essentially we practice the abandonment of the self in pursuit of confirmation that ‘we’ are O-bee K-bee from authorities who author blatant fiction before changing their water into wine. Who really wants to walk waist deep into the cesspool our society has become and accept responsibility? Isn’t it so much easier to let those who (‘who’ else but the sociopaths?) say they can fix it to do so rather than to face it ourselves? Well………what a fine mess we have on our hands now that ‘they’ screwed things up so badly.

You can’t make this stuff up because it just wouldn’t be believable. But if the economechanical authority figures author up another alternative reality fiction and then present it as proven fact we blindly, begrudgingly or blissfully accept it until another palatable ‘proof’ proves otherwise. Especially if we wish to believe that our well being and safety depends upon believing their fiction is fact, a wonderful escape clause for those of us who outsourced our personal sovereignty long ago.

When we do not actively and continuously seek our inner knowing to vet externally perceived reality we are easily manipulated into accepting all sorts of nonsense that is passed off as ‘real’ reality. While as individuals we can at times be somewhat sane, as groups we are almost always maddeningly insane. The thing is that the madness of crowds always springs from within. It is our madness exponentially amplified, reflected and directed by the crowd that is the ‘madness of crowds’ we actually see.

We must stop pointing to the unsustainability of the math as proof of imminent collapse and recognize that our collective faith and belief, and the resilience of that faith and belief, is the true measure of the socioeconomic systems strength or weakness.

Chapter Three to follow soon.

02-03-2013

Cognitive Dissonance