![[tmbchr]™](/journal/popocculture-blog-logo.jpg){kind=logo}
Navigating the Noble Lie
One of the things I did actually like about Michael Tsarion’s video series was this part towards the end where he suggests that companies aren’t actually motivated by money. He suggests that the people pumping money into advertising don’t actually need more money, because they are the same families and groups who have ruled the world for the last several millenia. (It’s an idea I’ve put forth in other forms elsewhere myself.)
Anyway, if that’s really the case, then what is this all for? If companies are so rich that more money is basically meaningless to them, and there really is some other darker, more sinister occult purpose at work, what might that be?
I just finished Philip K. Dick’s 1964 novel, The Penultimate Truth, which deals with some of the same issues in a totally different way. The story revolves around a series of big lies engineered to control the population. Long ago, citizens of the earth were forced into underground shelters to survive a very real atomic war. What they don’t know is that the war ended shortly thereafter, and the earth became a paradise with military men ruling over huge tracts of virgin land, building villas out of ruined cities, commanding armies of loyal robots to do their bidding. Meanwhile the humans crammed into “ant tanks” underneath are regularly piped inspirational messages by the worldwide Protector, Talbot Yancy, urging them stay strong and to increase their production of robots to aid the “war effort” above.
The intricate lie begins to unravel when one ant tank leader makes his way to the surface on a humanitarian mission to gather medical supplies to save a dying comrade. He is shocked and outraged to find out the truth, but still continues on his all-too-human mission even still.
Other characters, meanwhile, are drawn from the ruling elites whose sole job is to maintain the enormous lie which keeps the underground dwellers scared and churning away on new robots. [Spoiler Alert] Without giving too much away, the novel ends as the old lie is unraveled and various characters struggle to come up with a convincing new lie which will allow the people underground to come up to the surface again, without waging bloody war against those who kept them below needlessly.
Nicholas St. James, meanwhile, believes that no lie at all is necessary, and that simple humanity will prevail - the common message of Philip K. Dick’s many works. Historically though, this has not proved to be a popular view. From Plato to Leo Strauss, political philosophy is often predicated (whether openly or not) on the concept of the noble lie - a falsehood which is told to the masses in order to keep them motivated and to maintain social order. Simply because leaders do not believe that regular people are able to manage on their own without some kind of guidance and coercion.
Whether they are right is a topic for much debate. But in Dick’s books, such as the Penultimate Truth, the thing that we see again and again is that while those in power obsess over plots and schemes for domination and debate the philosophical and moral necessity of control systems, the ordinary man just plugs away. Though he might be drawn inadvertently into their webs of intrigue, his simple kindness, love and work ethic is not tainted by the spiritual corruption of those who would put themselves above him.
I’ve always like this as an answer to all things paranoid and conspiratorial, and I think it provides an elegant “next step” to those exploring the work of people like Michael Tsarion. There may be some worth to dissecting the noble lies that are foisted upon us as a society, both politically and on a more esoteric level. But once you’ve been given “eyes to see,” what are you to do with them? When you see lies and propaganda and manipulation all around you, how are you supposed to be able to go on living your ordinary human life? The answer, in my experience, seems to be that you have no other choice. Life keeps on living whether or not you’re a willing participant. It’s a river, and if you choose to be a rock then it will flow around and past you without the slightest hesitation. Luckily, you also have the choice of being a boat though - or better yet a fish - and flowing along with it.
Whether that is going to effectively innoculate you against the noble lies that abound, I don’t know. But hopefully it will at least provide a bit of driftwood to cling to for those caught in the floodwaters. I know the tide is rising. I know there are more of us every day. But in our panic, let’s not forget that the human body naturally floats - if you relax and let it.
- Technocracy & The Noble Lie
- Road Rage Now “Intermittent explosive disorder”
- I’m just gonna keep quoting these passages until I’m done
- The Big Lie
- Ken Wilber Critique, Part 8
- Prev: Of ARCO & Archons
- Next: Virtual Border Patrol
June 7th, 2006 at 6:36 pm
another idea which i think is important here: is it better to live a life with no purpose or inside of somebody else’s lie?
obviously the better option would be to come up with your own purpose, but thats always easier said than done - especially maintaining it over the long run.
June 7th, 2006 at 7:16 pm
Tim, both you and Ran have turned me on to Dick’s work and though I haven’t read this one yet I have read a good deal of his stories. So, thanks for turning me on to his writings.
I am still, however, not beyond the stage of being amazed at his perception of the world and it’s future. This one you talk about today seems like a tantalizing and intriguing display of augury on phillip’s part. When I catch up on my reading (only one book left in the cue and one on deck) shortly I may have to pick this one up. I feel ready to augment my reading diet with some yummy sci-fi anyway.
June 7th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
Be forewarned though that it’s kind of badly written… and I don’t usually think that about his work. It doesn’t really pick up till half-way through.
June 7th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
The outer world seems to demand one thing.
The inner world sometimes demands something else.
The key could be making a “third world” where those two are reconciled.
I am expected to act one way at the office, at home, socially–but can I use those things to come into contact with who I really am, perhaps by deliberately ‘being in the world but not of it’? With my real will if I can actually have one?
“Noble lies” are not just told by the overlords. They’re also told by ourselves to ourselves. And those are much worse. Like “I’m special,” “I’m unique,” “I know a lot about a lot,” etc.
I didn’t really begin to discover my place in the world until I first of all realized my own nothingness. (How many people want to do that? That is, if they even begin to realize what that entails…)
All of these corporations, governments, churches…they’re all struggling against this nothingness too. With my sweat, dollars, and sometimes blood…but something of them is in me, not just me in them.
What illusion can I easily lose first to get to the refreshing waters of nothingness…well…how about the need to “change things” out there? Remember what you said Tim about opposing those in the game? How it just played into their hands again?
What can I keep that’s really mine while not falling into some pointless apathy trap?
June 7th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
Great point about the most ‘noble’ lies being the ones that we tell ourselves.
June 7th, 2006 at 8:09 pm
That doesn’t suprise me - a lot of his writing is, far and away, outclassed by his ideas. That is why I think it has taking me so long to read the PKD anthology. I like a little bit at a time and have not yet re-read any of his stories.
Still, it’s always nice to be chewing on what you think is some juicy if sloppy sci-fi fare and then suddenly realize your sandwich was made by a genius chef trapped in a local deli joint.
I am still comtemplating the idea that those in power no longer desire money and they no longer need it to maintain their control. A frightening and frighteninly camouflaged right in front of you concept.
June 7th, 2006 at 8:23 pm
David said:
I know whence you speak of and some call it by another name - ego destruction.
A handy and dangerous thing, to be sure. And something that makes “inner” noble lies more apparent.
But, hey, it’s turtles all the way down, of course.
June 7th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
[…] Talk about seeing through the lie, I mean this is just pure black comedy at this point - a farce of ridiculous proportions. And of course, once you have the disorder named and explained and studied, the next step is launching a chemical marketing campaign against it: Coccaro said the disorder involves inadequate production or functioning of serotonin, a mood-regulating and behavior-inhibiting brain chemical. Treatment with antidepressants, including those that target serotonin receptors in the brain, is often helpful, along with behavior therapy akin to anger management, Coccaro said. […]
June 8th, 2006 at 5:04 am
I don’t think “companies are so rich that more money is basically meaningless to them” at all. In fact, I think the opposite is the case: the huge and ever-consolidating corporate monoliths and the mega-investors are running dead scared of the trade and financial system that they wanted, made, and are now trapped in. Their margins are shrinking. They’re laying off staff and outsourcing because their competitors are and they don’t know how not to compete. They don’t just want to grow and seize ever higher market share because they want to - they need ever accelerating stock market returns just to survive. And the same with political elites. The richer and more powerful they become, the more terrified they become - not just because they have more to lose, but because the system is so instable that the slightest sneeze could rebound on them.
The more I look at economics and politics, the more I realise that the most apparently powerful actors in our world are in fact the most powerless. Products of a broken system, they’ve invested so much of their creative energy in gaming it that more and more their inner world is not driving the outer world, it’s driving them. The more embedded they are, the harder it will be to see beyond the rules of the game and find working solutions. It’s all falling apart, and the smarter ones of them can see it, and it scares them, but all they can see to do is make it worse. So they do that because, hey, rather do something than nothing, right? Captain of my soul, blackest night, and all that. Get back in that handbasket and let’s roll.
Jesus’ parable about the “widow’s mite” being worth more than the rich man’s charitable deduction suddenly makes actual, tangible sense to me. We have to do what we can with what we’ve got. The more power and investment in the system we have, it seems the more good we can do - but that good is also counterbalanced by the entropy loss due to our participation in a skewed system itself.
I guess the upside is that wherever we are, *whatever we can do to the best of our ability* is enough. Self-replicating patterns like vicious circles can be broken at any step in the loop. There is no ‘emperor node’ which has more social power than any other, when it comes to meaningful change.
The hard part is knowing how much is “our best”… there are people I know who have literally given up houses and jobs to go do charity work in the developing world, and I don’t think I have that kind of stamina or enterprise. But otoh, they can do good works because people like me are financially supporting them.
Somehow I wish I could do more though. Every day now, I feel another piece of the house of cards I’m living in falls away. Or rather, nothing changes in reality, but *I* see more clearly how fragile it all is.
June 8th, 2006 at 11:51 am
Nate, what it sounds to me like you are talking about is pure sociopathic behavior sublimated into economics.
Does anyone just want to use their capital after a certain point to just–I dunno–ENJOY life?
Sure they do.
But I guess when they’re caught up in that web of systematics aka a “corporation”–that facet of life is lost.
It seems like a synchronistically appropriate time for me to be watching the movie of The Corporation. And my awareness of corporate impact on my daily life has never been higher.
June 10th, 2006 at 10:33 am
The last couple of weeks their has been comercials making me go hummm.(almost Ickesh) Sirius satilite radio just seems like there satilites are watching us,yeah sure whatever. Believe Disney,ie…join us. Sprite with there subliminol not sumbliminol, eye of a hurricane,well thats what it looks like to me.And then theres the company that says comfort to us all,Mc Donalds,with the owl eye made up of a half moon ,sun,and 5 stars.
on a side note..Kucinich is working in Congress to ban using satilites for population mood control
June 10th, 2006 at 11:54 am
Yeh I doubt there are many fatcats feeling the crisis of *too much money*- corporate stakeholders and stockholders are always eyeing the “bottom line.”
I think guarding against self-deception is the best we can hope for, or allow ourselves, to truly experience personal freedom.
Row, row, row yer boat …..