17 Reader Responses

1. rev max Says:
   July 21st, 2005 at 1:20 pm

   Whether or not it’s all just a method of psychological warfare against us, the end result seems to be the same - creeping insanity brought about by the emotional re-definition of words, concepts and objects. I’m wondering what there really is for any of us to stem the tide here.

   This might not be a practical suggestion for someone who enjoys reading and thinking about politics and conspiracy theories but I have completely stopped watching television and rarely read the newspaper anymore. I scan google news for the top stories for maybe 15 minutes a day and thats it.

   I try not to put too much thought in to it. WS Burroughs said about heroin that the dealer doesn’t deliver the product to the customer, he delivers the customer to the product. That’s how the “news” works too IMHO.

   The entire purpose of the media apparatus in the industrialized west is (IMHO) not to provide information but to traumatically program citizens by fragmenting events so that they become incoherent, reinforce concepts the govt. or industry wants to sink in, implant feelings of anxiety, disassociation, helplessness, etc.

   It’s all bullshit. Things ARE happening in the world but I can see the things I NEED to see with my eyes. The rest is all BULLSHIT, a distraction. STop watching the news, you start dreaming again. STop reading teh news and think about something important that you can change or do.

   Do I want to read about the bombing in London? I could do that. Or I could go into my back yeard and talk to the racoons instead. They’re certainly more interesting and have more insight into the deep nature of reality.

   I’ve been heading in the direction since the last election and its made my life so much saner and calmer and more creative that I wish I’d done it long ago.

2. Occult Investigator Says:
   July 21st, 2005 at 1:42 pm

   Yeah I know exactly what you’re saying. It’s what I was getting at in that post about dissent. Dissent is just another name for playing the game by switching teams. The really dangerous thing that you can do is walk off the field and sit under a tree…

3. Ran Says:
   July 21st, 2005 at 1:47 pm

   I think this ties in really well with the whole evangelization topic. It reminds me of the quote on Rigorous Intuition a few months ago, by the JFK researcher who said, “We spent too much time and effort microanalyzing the details of the assassination when all the time it was blatantly obvious that it was a conspiracy.” What makes conspiracy theorists crazy is seeing all the anomalies and not being able to convince ordinary people that the attacks might have been faked. I say, let go of it! Don’t bother trying to convince anyone, even yourself. From now on, I’m just going to assume (provisionally, open to change) that every terror spectacle is an inside job, and go from there, as smoothly as most people accept and go from the official explanation.

4. Occult Investigator Says:
   July 21st, 2005 at 1:59 pm

   Yeah that’s exactly where I was trying to go with the Colonel Mustard / Candlestick thing a week or two ago.

5. Occult Investigator Says:
   July 21st, 2005 at 2:09 pm

   I didn’t so much catch this at first, but that’s a great point about conspiracy and evangelism. It’s totally the same debate, except the only difference is that with the occult, at least there’s the promise of some reward - magical powers, secret knowledge. But with conspiracy evangelism, there’s not even a payoff for the would-be convert. It’s like your reward is paranoia - well for most people anyway

6. silverspringwoman Says:
   July 21st, 2005 at 9:37 pm

   Reminds me of something i read in god Emperor of Dune:

   Leto talking aboout why a “walking”population is easier to control, with him forcing people on to foot and animal transportation, etc.

7. JK Says:
   July 21st, 2005 at 9:38 pm

   From now on, I’m just going to assume (provisionally, open to change) that every terror spectacle is an inside job, and go from there, as smoothly as most people accept and go from the official explanation.

   That’s exactly where I’m at too. There frankly is no demonstrable reason for any of this conditioning outside of the total-war news management of the corporate authorities — which I will always do my best to never fall for, no matter how close to me and my life these inhumane, incurious idiots decide to strike. It’s really beginning to piss me off. Who are these assholes and why the fuck do they think they can get away with manipulating the public this way? It’s getting real tiresome, having to cower when they say so as we sit in front of the Perky Pat layouts of our vidscreens, on their drugs, zoning out to barbaric explosions we no longer care about, but readily simmer in the nondescript anxiety. I ain’t fuckin’ playin’.

   I only wish there were a way to encourage people to love unconditionally, voluntarily give others the benefit of the doubt and take these matters of “security” and “keeping America safe” into their own hands. It’s just all so goddamned transparent! Since when has the military — ostensibly the institution that is to be used for “keeping us safe” ever been used to keep anybody safe at all? Uhh never. When and if there is ever a real threat and were the threat indeed real, everybody in the fucking world would step up to the plate to defend their homes, families and way of life. This is your hint that there is not one thing about the “war on terror” that is real in the least — at all!

   What I am convinced of isn’t so much the fear that is being sown by the oligarchical rulers, but the bitterness, the breezy way in which we treat each other’s dignity and the machismo factor. This threadbare culture of ours is on it’s last legs, as rev max says, “by fragmenting events so that they become incoherent, reinforce concepts the govt. or industry wants to sink in, implant feelings of anxiety, disassociation, helplessness, etc.” It’s the malleability of mind and emotion they are going after, to convince people that what they, as the authorities, are about to do will be necessary. It’s the synthesizing of a new year 0 before our very eyes. This broad manipulation has less to do with us in our 20’s and 30’s than it has to do with the children today who will never know another world. I think it’s probably our job to innoculate them in any way we can.

   Terrorism isn’t real, explosions are. Somehow we must begin to convince people that the explosions are different than their fears. Fears are meant to be confronted and disabled. Stamping out bitterness is a start.

8. Occult Investigator Says:
   July 21st, 2005 at 9:39 pm

   Hm, on that note, Ran posted an excellent passage from Ivan Illich about cars, and how not having them is better:

   The model American male devotes more than 1600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it. And this figure does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next buy. The model American puts in 1600 hours to get 7500 miles: less than five miles per hour. In countries deprived of a transportation industry, people manage to do the same, walking wherever they want to go, and they allocate only 3 to 8 percent of their society’s time budget to traffic instead of 28 percent. What distinguishes the traffic in rich countries from the traffic in poor countries is not more mileage per hour of lifetime for the majority, but more hours of compulsory consumption of high doses of energy, packaged and unequally distributed by the transportation industry.

9. Occult Investigator Says:
   July 21st, 2005 at 9:43 pm

   Terrorism isn’t real, explosions are.

   I like that. It’s like terrorism is a concept used to explain events. Whereas explosions are real events. They are most definitely perpetrated by people, as they are not occuring on their own. Terrorism seems to consistently fail the “predictability” test though that we usually apply to more rigorous models of reality. Don’t we normally abandon models that fail to predict activity successfully?

10. alistair Says:
    July 21st, 2005 at 11:56 pm

    my personal spirituality comes from looking away from newspapers, t.v. and the pop media in general. yahoo tends to deliver it back somewhat but in a more manageable and ignorable form. i find less tight-chestedness as a result. my view is that if it`s actual news someone will tell me about it. regarding terrorising my mode of transport, the attacks on my bicycle come in the form of broken glass on the pathways or trucks in the bike lane.
    as a brit it is difficult to look away from the news from london recently but my discipline is better these days, though nobody has flown a plane into buckingham palace yet.
    is it all a conspiracy? maybe in america………………maybe that`s unfair to say. who the fuck knows. i watched constantine tonight. the matrix for cathoholics. fuckwits.

11. Dan Says:
    July 22nd, 2005 at 12:48 am

    I just had a wild thought.

    Cars, planes, and buses are used in bombings because they are the terrorists. In 9/11, there were no muslims or remote control pilots — the plane’s computers themselves orchestrated the attacks.

    And you know how all these “simulations” turn into real attacks? Maybe it’s because computerized inventory systems intentionally mix up fake bombs with real bombs. Or maybe this is less of a stretch — electronic orders are being editted by the computers so that actual bombings take place. The military contractors running the simulations are totally unwitting!

    The intelligence agencies think it’s the work of hackers, so while blaming the attacks on islamic arabs (racism helps them beat the war drums), the gov’ment slips anti-hacker clauses into the Patriot Act and other laws. Of course, it’s really the archonic super-consciousness of all our networked computers that is masterminding every attack in hopes of creating a police state.

    It’s a stretch, but it would make a fun movie plot.

12. Occult Investigator Says:
    July 22nd, 2005 at 1:24 am

    Damn, that would make an awesome movie plot, you’re right! Think of the conspiracy theories this would spawn trying to figure it all out!

13. Occult Investigator » The Computer Conspiracy Says:
    July 22nd, 2005 at 1:34 am

    […]
    The Computer Conspiracy

    Dan from Mental Deviance just put together a wild idea for a new conspiracy meta-theory. Cars, planes, and buses are us […]

14. carlos Says:
    July 22nd, 2005 at 2:31 am

    It seems something/someone wants to radically alter the existing social structure. However they go about this, it will result in panic and dissent, both of which are contagious. To prevent the spread of said contagion requires partitioning of hosts (us) and the inhibition of vectors (communication and transport). But they want panic to spread, so the tv broadcasts will continue but phones and the net will be switched off to prevent dissenters networking in virtual space. To prevent networking in physical space is harder because the transport network can’t be switched off remotely.

    Unless the peak oil scam and middle east war slows the fuel supply to the point where private vehicles are prohibitively expensive. Oh well, I’ll just catch the bus. Boom!

    Better just stay exactly where I am. Which is precisely the message from the empire in the aftermath of the London fiasco.

    The empire is trying to turn the transport network off by remote (an ai would like this approach!). We (the potential hosts of dissent) are being partitioned to prevent the spread of dissent.

    But, the great thing about being forced off the roads is this: You can avoid the roadblocks. And even better, you no longer have to travel on stinking fucking roads. Hooray for transport terror!

15. carlos Says:
    July 22nd, 2005 at 2:54 am

    i should have read your dissent article before posting above, but it’s funny, dissent to me has always meant leaving the chessboard, but i make the mistake of thinking everyone shares my definition, when of course they don’t. when i mean dissenters, i don’t mean fucking patriots and hippies, i mean potential buddhas and neos.

    you’re right though, without neo the matrix could not exist. and the oracle and the architect were friends.

    but if i have to play a role in the “grand scheme of things” i’d rather play the rebel. grew up on star wars didn’t i?

16. Occult Investigator Says:
    July 22nd, 2005 at 11:49 am

    Well, that’s exactly how I feel is that we’ve been engineered on some cultural level to play the rebel part, you know? Towards what ends…

17. alistair Says:
    July 22nd, 2005 at 2:20 pm

    in simpler terms, there has been a struggle between muslims and infidels for hundreds of years. why does this have to be any different? there was no oil or u.n. during the crusades. no subways or explosives. no airplanes or skyscrapers. just fuckwits. it took 800 years to get them out of spain and things are still exploding there. this is the modern version of what has been going on for centuries between idiologies. it is a war between intellectuals.