The Chapel of Baby Rose
Let the night begin there's a pop of skin and the sudden rush of scarlet
There's a little boy riding on a goat's head and a little girl playing the harlot
There's a sacrifice in an empty church of sweet li'l baby Rose
And a man in a mask from Mexico is peeling off my clothes - Joan Baez
I'll return to the subject of Friday's post shortly, but first I thought this judgement from Ireland needed attention, and little commentary.
From The Belfast Telegraph:
Inquest jury agree Cynthia Owen gave birth to baby
The jury at the Dun Laoghaire baby inquest has found that the infant girl, found in a plastic bag in a laneway over thirty years ago, was Noleen Murphy, the daughter of Cynthia Owen. When the verdict was read out at Dublin County Coroners Court today, there were loud cheers from Cynthia Owen and her family.
Following three and a half days of evidence and four hours of deliberation, the jury in this inquest returned a unanimous verdict. All twelve members agreed that Cynthia Owen gave birth to the baby girl that was found dead in a plastic bag in Lees Lane in Dun Laoghaire.
They agreed that she was born on the fourth of April 1973 at Whites Villas in Dalkey. The cause of death was haemorrhaging from stab wounds.
Cynthia Owen was 11 at the time of her baby's birth. The fact of her childhood pregnancy was hotly denied by her father, brother and now-deceased mother, whom she claims abused her and killed her baby. The fact of grave abuse in the home was attested to by her niece, who has since killed herself.
Possible broader implications of the case were broached in this report from last week:
Psychologists convinced witness was raped
Two psychologists today told Dublin County Coroner Dr Kieran Geraghty that they were in no doubt that Cynthia Owen had been raped and gave birth to a baby that had been murdered.
The inquest heard the 45-year-old told Dr Dawn Henderson that she had been the victim of satanic abuse and also mentioned a paedophile ring, details of which she did not want disclosed at the hearing.
Dr Henderson raised concerns over legal proceedings in relation to the case, and said she feared for other children in the family who were in contact with A, B, C and D.
"Cindy is not mentally ill," said Dr Henderson, clinical psychologist with the North West Wales NHS Trust. "In my opinion she is reacting in a normal way to a very abnormal and horrific childhood experience."
Cynthia Owen is now calling for a public inquiry into the handling of her case, and Ireland's Minister of Justice Michael McDowell is demanding a full report into the conduct of the 33-year old murder investigation. "It is profoundly disturbing but the truth is that some of the allegations made in it are really profoundly disturbing," said McDowell.
There's a brief post from a couple of years ago, based upon an email I received, entitled "She was always surprised they never found those bodies." Here's the story of a baby found in an alleyway wrapped in bloody newspapers with more than 40 stab wounds on her body, and it still took more than 30 years to hear something like the truth spoken in court. When people really don't want to know, even knowing where the bodies are doesn't appear to mean very much.
I'll stand before your altar and tell everything I know
I've come to claim my childhood at the chapel of baby Rose
The comment section is open, but for the time being it is restricted to registered blogger users.
posted by Jeff Wells at 2/19/2007 02:34:00 PM
54 Comments:
This is very similar to what's going on with the Butte County (California) case with our friends. For over forty years this was happening, and still was less than a year ago when we got that couple out of there. It may be winding up now.
It's true, that if people don't want to know, even knowing where the bodies are doesn't help someone who's trying to get an investigation going.
It should be looked at as a cure for what ails you. This blog reminds me of "I never promised you a rose garden" and I've already started to giggle thinking about how the poseurs are going to do their one hand clapping routine without the anonymous factor. Should be good for everyone.
Jeff..I have a great deal of respect for your writing and your courage. I remember corresponding with one of the members in the "Tranformation of America" core group several years ago. It wasn't Cathie or her daughter but another of the many victims that were attrated to her. Once you get over the initial shock of the evil these children had to contend with, you do get a perspective on the "system" and the PTB and how they got there and stay there that is "out of this world". As one of your posters and victim authors has pointed out, they have the ritual of the "grays" where smallish children pretend to be aliens. Some were wasted and others wished they had been. I have a feeling that these victims would not be comfortable loosing the "anonymous" factor. My response would be that the evidence has been served up here and elsewhere and in great detail. At the same time I'm not suggesting that we are going to do anything about it. I'm suggesting that we recognize the "beast" for what it is and heal each other.
The question that always comes to mind with these horrific blood rituals is why?
What is driving these terrible actions?
Is there something powerful & compelling behind the scenes (or veils) that makes receptive people do this?
The above question has always bugged me - to what dark end are these horrific acts committed? If they are part of some sort of worship, why? They hardly seem to gain earthly riches (see Ponchatoula) and the damage done to the children seems antithetical to keeping the "traditions" alive. Are these acts handed down from generation to generation as part of some ancient ritual whose true meaning is lost to time? Do their gods demand it? And if so, what gods?
people asked why these acts are committed. I remember reading somewhere Crowley writing about a ritual that involved the sacrifice of a child, supposed to give great power.
Magick is conducted in the space between the subconcious and superconcious below, and it reflects both. So the meaning of child sacrifice, I believe, is best explored mythos and psychology...And trite as it may sound, I think it its about the "inner child" or child self, from Isaac to Oedipus. Recall in the story of Oedipus that his parents attempted to kill him but he was saved, and came back to kill his father and marry his mother.
Wow. Restrict your thread to actual blogger users and it's like, boom boom, out go the lights!
I did a post on last night's Heroes episode, and it's pretty funny, if anyone wants a break from all the existential despair.
I've also done a fabulous Rigorous Intuition style post on where exactly the real Evil Empireis, too, if anyone wants to take a look at that. It's way more depressing than the previously mentioned HEROES post, though.
I’m going to once again climb out on one of those limbs of which I seem to be so fond and disagree with the prevailing thought on the meaning of these occurrences. The only area in which my thinking has ever really flat-out contradicted Jeff’s has to do with this killing-kids-for-supra-natural-power meme and here’s why. Just as with 9/11, I think the greatest significance is not to be found in the act but in what use was made of it. In fact, I believe that in tracking those devilish details concerning the who and the how, we are in danger of falling into a clever trap that precludes considering with an open mind the full range of the why behind these events.
There is one other topic on which Jeff and I have differing views, that of R.A. Wilson, and he figures in this story in a number of odd ways. First off, he was living in Ireland during the kangaroo court proceedings stemming from the Owens case. He witnessed firsthand the wave of hysteria that the case produced, as well as the cynical manipulation of both the legal system and the general hysteria. He wrote about it in some depth in one of the Cosmic Trigger books (I can’t remember which). In any case, the only thing that was absolutely clear in the whole sordid business, aside from murder most foul, serial abuse (ritual and “normal”) was that powerful entities were using the case to further their various ends.
As I recall, the Catholic Church, fearful of losing its grip on that most Catholic of countries, was asserting its authority to block rising calls for change on the illegal status of abortion while simultaneously evading suspicions of many unpriestly behaviors. The Church was in trouble; Ireland was finally coming into the 20th century for the first time in many ways, the story of the unfortunate girls forced to live in that weird laundry/concentration camp/convent was just coming out, etc—it needed a distraction which would quiet the grumbling masses by providing a shocking story with which to divert their attention.
The police investigation was patently unlawful—they coerced witnesses (brutally), withheld information & testimony and operated under blatant conflict of interest in many areas of the case. The fact that justice was not carried out is in no way surprising, but the new twist in the story is—despite every effort at burying this thing, the case will now be revisited and some closer version of the truth will come out. In the end, however, we’re still left with the disquieting question of why the most vulnerable humans—children—are being so horribly used. My contention is that it is not for the supposed power granted the hooded ones at the “ritual”—it’s for the effect on the living. It’s all part of what Wilson called Operation Mindfuck.
Let’s apply just a little bit of logic here: If they really did gain some sort of power from these disgusting rituals, and if they’re powerful enough to run whole countries, economies, shadow governments, etc, then why do we know about the ritual nature of these abuses? I am not saying that ritual abuse doesn’t happen—I’m only putting forth the proposition that the real reason for it is to scare the shit out of us.
It’s a complicated operation that we see parts of from time to time, and I would venture to say that most of what we know has been purposely “leaked.” As to why they would want us to be aware of MK-ULTRA and all those “secret” mind control programs, it gets a bit more complex but still follows the same basic subtext: they want us to know just how all-powerful they are (or pretend to be.) Just take a look at some of the stuff floating around out there on this topic.
Over at Dream’s End, we find this, under MKULTRA: Not Just for Paranoids Anymore
Here’s another example, again taken directly from MKULTRA files, in this case called “Hypnotic Experimentation and Research, 10 February, 1954.”
Miss ___________ was then instructed (having previously expressed a fear of firearms in any fashion) that she would use every method at her disposal to awaken Miss _____________ (now in a deep hypnotic sleep) and failing this, she would pick up a pistol nearby and fire it at Miss ___________. She was instructed that her rage would be so great taht she would not hesitate to “kill” ____________ for failing to awaken. Miss _______ carried out these suggestions to the letter including firing the (unloaded pneumatic pistol) gun at ________ and then proceeding to fall into a deep sleep. After proper suggestions were made, both were awakened and expressed complete amnesia for the entire sequence. Miss __________ was again handed the gun, which she refused (in an awakened state) to pick up or accept from the operator. She expressed absolute denial that the foregoing sequence had happened. (Ross p. 37)
If you are starting to think that this sort of hypnotic technique is being utilized in many ways beyond “alien abductions” I’m inclined to agree with you. The recent DC sniper case comes to mind. The sheriff was sent a letter which demanded that he publicly say a nonsense phrase (”We have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose.”). Soon after, both snipers were found sleeping soundly in their car. In fact, I am now convinced that this sort of technique is in fairly widespread use…
At Cremation of Care they run this thing called PROBLEM > REACTION > SOLUTION: NEW WORLD ORDER OUT OF CHAOS, which seeks to explain the methodology behind all the fake and real terror that’s being engineered and is supported by documentation like this quote from Henry Kissinger, one of the real architects of dystopia (or at least one of its public faces):
"Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government." --Henry Kissinger, speaking at Evian, France, May 21, 1992 Bilderberg meeting. Unbeknownst to Kissinger, his speech was taped by a Swiss delegate to the meeting.
Only an extreme cynic like myself might wonder whether the taping of Kissinger’s speech was really “unbeknownst to him,” but wonder I do, because of the effect it has on those who’ve grown so bold as to not trust their leaders. If we believe that they can pull these sorts of real-time ops with such ease, then we’ve just been sucked into a fearful state that is the goal of their psy-ops. It’s not a question of which thing is true—both are!
We’ve had some glimpses behind the curtain that are, I think, obvious attempts to flaunt their presumed omnipotence. Why else, for example, would Kissinger’s infamous remarks about Chile have been released? ("The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves" and "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people.") Logic would dictate that such admissions would hurt their credibility, while cynicism suggests the possibility that they’re setting up “extreme” and “fringe” elements to spout the truth in order to discredit the truth-speakers and the truth of what’s left out there hanging in that patented limited-hang-out-way they have of fucking with us.
Then there are the “lighter” stories which demonstrate their casual indifference to our (the “extreme” and “fringe” elements) knowing what they’re up to. Take this one, from Newsweek of all places!):
I Have Had My Differences With Members of the Press. But it's Nothing That Burying them Under Tons of Earth Won't Solve (Contributed by Holly Bailey - Posted: January 30, 2007 2:10:10 PM)
Does President Bush have it in for the press corps? Touring a Caterpillar factory in Peoria, Ill., the Commander in Chief got behind the wheel of a giant tractor and played chicken with a few wayward reporters. Wearing a pair of stylish safety glasses--at least more stylish than most safety glasses--Bush got a mini-tour of the factory before delivering remarks on the economy. "I would suggest moving back," Bush said as he climbed into the cab of a massive D-10 tractor. "I'm about to crank this sucker up." As the engine roared to life, White House staffers tried to steer the press corps to safety, but when the tractor lurched forward, they too were forced to scramble for safety."Get out of the way!" a news photographer yelled. "I think he might run us over!" said another.
White House aides tried to herd the reporters the right way without getting run over themselves. Even the Secret Service got involved, as one agent began yelling at reporters to get clear of the tractor. Watching the chaos below, Bush looked out the tractor's window and laughed, steering the massive machine into the spot where most of the press corps had been positioned. The episode lasted about a minute, and Bush was still laughing when he pulled to a stop. He gave reporters a thumbs-up. "If you've never driven a D-10, it's the coolest experience," Bush said afterward. Yeah, almost as much fun as seeing your life flash before your eyes.
Our lives are flashing before our eyes, but that’s no reason to give in to the fear that they wish to instill in us. Yes, they run the world, yes, they’re slaughtering innocents, sometimes wearing suits, sometimes in black hoods, but they are a tiny percentage of us. As Jim said, “They got the guns, but we’ve got the numbers.” (At least until they’ve got us so divided that our numbers are hopelessly fragmented.) And let’s please not forget the ultimate truth that FDR let slip once upon a time: “There’s nothing to fear but fear itself,” ‘cuz Love is the strongest emotion of all.
Mr./Ms. Cutlefish:
You commented, "I believe that in tracking those devilish details concerning the who and the how, we are in danger of falling into a clever trap that precludes considering with an open mind the full range of the why behind these events."
Are you really saying that to try to uncover the actors or agents behind various nefarious deeds is to fall into a clever trap set by the malefactors themselves?
Are you really saying that?
Because, if you are, then I am having a hard time believing my ears. That is one of the silliest ideas I have ever heard in all my born days.
Yes, of course, bank robbers rob banks as a clever ruse to suck gullible police officers into trying to track them down and nab them, while the really, truly, important and salient question that the police should be asking is:
Why did they rob the bank?
The answer is hardly any mystery:
In order to steal the money.
To take your prescription of focusing solely on the why of it, one would have to be some kind of wet-behind-the-ears nincompoop.
So, by analogy, I hardly think it rigorously intuitive to think that Henry Kissinger winked at the covert audio taping of his remarks at the Bilderberg meeting so someone could later leak them, just in order to scare people.
For that theory to hold water, then the remarks should have been blared across a banner headline in the New York Times.
But it wasn't. It was quietly ignored.
Just like the remarks of Larry Silverstein about "pulling the building" have been edited out of the NOVA tapes as rebroadcast this weekend on the BBC.
Just as they were ignored by the 9/11 Omission.
Just as they were completely ignored by all the commercial broadcast networks and cable. And the newspapers.
Your theory doesn't wash.
Not at all.
No, the real answer is that even these guys make mistakes.
They are not infallible.
They are human.
Of a sort.
Kind of.
And engagement by some people in child abuse, and satanic ritual abuse, is certainly not so the occasional story can be leaked out to scare the masses.
If that were so, the typically Herculean efforts to cover it up would not be made. Nor would the debunking efforts have so much steam, as they do in the mainstream media.
When was the last time you read a story about Ponchatoula?
Not lately.
How many newspapers picked up the story in the entire United States?
One, maybe two, local papers in Louisiana.
That's it.
You theory is full of holes.
Just to be fair, you are certainly right on another level about a couple of things you wrote:
“They got the guns, but we’ve got the numbers.”
and
“'There’s nothing to fear but fear itself,' because Love is the strongest emotion of all."
Not merely the strongest emotion, but one of the most powerful forces in the known Universe.
Indeed, AMOR VINCIT OMNIA.
Sam Hill,
Well, you could also argue that "blaring Kissinger's remarks across a banner headline in the New York Times" would have made the discovery of the nefarious intent of those PTB somewhat suspicious. It's a matter of appearances & plausibility. The more it looks like someone had to dig to find something, the more "authentic" it looks.
As to investigating the how instead of the why, look at 9/11. How much time has been spent arguing over pods, holographs, and shaped charges, compared with how little has been discussed as to the bigger picture of how this operation fits into the pattern of American Exceptionalism & Manifest Destiny? I don't know about you, but I get the distinct impression listening to the Truthers that if only these perps were put behind bars, democracy would magically be restored.
Please.
I didn't mean to say that doubting the official story or engaging in good old-fashioned investigative journalism weren't worthwhile pursuits; it's just that, yes, confining our inquiry to how those buildings were brought down is not going to stop our slide off the cliff.
The die was cast centuries ago, when the engine of science (feuled by an inaccurate worldview that maintained that the universe was an inert heap of matter) was first harnessed to the wagon of social Darwinism. Unhitching that wagon is going to take a deal more examination than watching those tapes over and over again.
M./M. Cutlefish,
It seems to me to be an ironically reductionist point of view to think that the real problem facing us all today stems from a post-Uroboran, I mean post-European (so-called) "Enlightenment" (and I use the term loosely) metaphysical malaise stemming from the disease of creeping materialist reductionism.
While I would readily concur with you that reductionism, and particularly materialist reductionism constitutes more than a malaise, and is a distinct spiritual illness infecting much or most of the "modern" world, I hardly think this either accounts for, explains, or indeed even accurately describes the various goings on of the oft nefarious PTB.
It seems quite clear that significant numbers of individuals, one might even say large swaths of people, who might be counted among the PTB, adhere to all manner of estoreric, "spiritual", or more accurately spiritistic beliefs and practices, not least among them "illuminism," and its handmaidens Cabbala, Luciferianism and even outright Satanism.
The symbols of such "schools of thought" and occult practice have permeated our culture via brand logos, film, television, the press, pick your poison.
I really don't think this is all just to "scare us." I think the high-ranking wingnuts really belief this stuff, and that it guides their plans and decision-making.
Sure, scaring us gives them a thrill and helps consolidate the "spell" they would wish to cast over people's hearts and minds.
But I think it beyond reason and logic to suggest that that is all it is about.
That seems to be playing the bit of the ostrich with his head buried deeply in the sand, claiming that everything can be known about the clouds and the weather, the sun, moon, and stars, from his subterranean vantage point.
You can certainly construct some kind of theory to support this thesis. But as I said, to me it is unreasonably simplistic, and hardly begins to explain the bulk of the data to the contrary.
It's not Ockham's razor, more like his dull butter knife.
And, once again, if SRA exists only to scare the masses, then why do the media completely bury the stories and consistently attempt to debunk it?
Boy, am I glad Mr. Wells finally blocked anonymous comments. I stopped reading them (mostly) around 6 months ago and ceased posting.
I was thinking about the motivation for evil acts as opposed to my own motivation for good acts. As a result of personal psychology, I pursued philosophy in college and desire to eventually become an ethicist. I was wondering why I have this drive in one direction while the "evil" person has the drive to cause pain to others and control or destroy them.
I started thinking about Martha Stout's book The Sociopath Next Door, and her argument that those who are incapable of deep emotion for reason of upbringing, genetics, or neural damage feel only the simpler short-term thrills of instant gratification, that of the primitive "reptilian brain." It's easier to achieve an adrenaline rush by hurting a bystander or instigating a conflict than by helping elderly women cross the street. If you need a "quick fix" to feel pleasure, and you feel pleasure in a simple, undeveloped way, there may be little psychological motive to connect with others or form in-depth relationships. Sociopaths are more likely to use illegal drugs or abuse legal ones, she writes.
Sociopaths develop strategies that allow them access to people when they are vulnerable so that they can gain power trips by manipulating emotions. They can imitate emotions very well to enter relationships but the emotional center that most people take for granted is hollow. I recommend the book.
On my own, I considered that I seek to lose myself in positive, constructive relationships with others. I can forget myself and my troubles when working for the good of others or to offer counsel and earn trust. I enjoy hooking my ego to my actions and the relationships I develop. My sense of self grows stronger. I do not feel the need to pursue power, the assertion and validation of my ego over others.
What if I despised myself, had low emotionality, and perceived others as fundamentally different from myself; perhaps valueless, like cattle? Committing cruel and destructive acts would seem rational. I could make them feel my emptiness and my rage. I would gain a sense of power by hurting people, and might value this "power," as in Nietszche's "will to power" in asserting one's individuality over others. I might seek to increase my "power" to hurt others by inserting myself in a position of authority, where ego is important.
When participating in a form of worship, ideally people lose themselves and their ego in the group emotional state, or gain energy by exposure to the social situation of the worship. Again, the emotional payoff is a great motive for being part of a religious group--I say this as a dedicated agnostic with a religious affiliation. If you are incapable of experiencing complex emotion, you will see little value in the religious activity except perhaps as a means of controlling people for personal ends, like the religious leader who molests children, or for increased ego-sense. If you must have either a power trip to value yourself or lose your sense of self-hate in the instant payoff of controlling another, maybe by causing them pain, there's your motive for a "Satanic" ritual--Religious group ecstasy of like-minded people who thrive on primitive emotion instead of higher emotion.
The psychological foundation for my course of action might determine my moral orientation. Plus, of course, whether I held any particular theory of morality or not. There is no reason to suspect they are granted any supernatural "power" to control others--Many students of the occult [and readers of this blog] believe that esoteric practices are all about achieving the discipline to exercise your own will, but they vary on the role of ego depending on the system of practice.
The greater the motivation to pursue a discipline, the more a person will do it and the more adept she will become. As a result, the concentration of "power" over others may appear so strong as to be supernatural when instead it is simply a matter of dedication and practice.
Or there may be other powers at work. The point is that the desires are dictated by the mind, and psychology can explain a good deal of whether people choose benevolent or malevolent goals.
"I’m only putting forth the proposition that the real reason for it is to scare the shit out of us."
I don't know IC, I gotta side with Sam on this one.
The shit that's happened in the last 50 years, just to make us scared? They have enough money, power, prestige, what more could they want besides a cosmic guarantee that they'll continue in power?
Indeed, why would anyone go through rituals if not because of the ritual itself? If they believe in it-that is all that matters. I might suggest that giving their success-especially lately- in keeping the economic and political score boards in their lead suggests it's working.
Counter to that we have 'miracles' from "Righteous" people on the other end that cannot be explained with logic alone.
Starroute would offer an explanation more colorful than mine, but the reality is that both belief systems work.Which one is more powerful than the other is open for polite discussion while the "why" is not so polite.The "concentration" of power, 23s suggests, might become a form of a light or dark force ethereal phenomenon.
Either way, I do not believe it's solely materialistic in nature.
my2cents.
I would have to agree with Sam Hill and 23skidoo on this point, IC.
IC said:
Let’s apply just a little bit of logic here: If they really did gain some sort of power from these disgusting rituals, and if they’re powerful enough to run whole countries, economies, shadow governments, etc, then why do we know about the ritual nature of these abuses? I am not saying that ritual abuse doesn’t happen—I’m only putting forth the proposition that the real reason for it is to scare the shit out of us."
I doubt you can ever limit such actions to having only 'one purpose' like you imply: this social "let's scare the hell out of them on the sly" purpose.
The same action can have many different purposes, I would argue.
The one IC talks of is only one.
A second purpose would be that they most certainly are intergenerational sociopaths and psychopaths (as noted in Martha Stout's The Sociopath Next Door, mentioned above) who "need" ritualized abuses of others. The Nazis intentionally went out of their way to study mind control by simply observing the social psychology of the addictions of some dysfunctional families to that behavior. So, I think you leave out the psychological requirements of some to perpetrate such activities--as the way they understand and affirm themselves (if "affirm" is the word). It's a personal issue to some.
Another third purpose would most definitely be ongoing attempts to 'perfect techniques' of MKULTRA creations--or as Kathy O'Brien implies (if that is a source), the rituals are a useful triple way to do all three points at once. Fourth point I guess is that sometimes as O'Brien relates, it could be a piggybacking way to murder and get rid of 'broken' MKULTRAs as well, smoothly as part of the whole training process.
So merely scaring the bejebus out of someone may INDEED be a social effect when people hear about it, though other purposes are hardly reducible to that one and it has to (yes, Sam Hill) ignore all the evidence of systematic attempts to hide it.
And Jeff may want to check out the Wordpress version of blogger: it supports open source software and doesn't have (so far to me!) the known CIA infiltration in administrative personnel (and seed money support) that went to the Google project (as reported by Prison Planet).
"National security" is one thing. A surveillance society is another, because it is a framework that will only cover up its own criminality from being exposed, instead of protect anyone when it comes down to it.
Wow. There is genuine thinking and consideration and discussion of the possibilities of what may lie behind what is actually going on in the world.
23, your analysis of the different natures of possible sociopathic motivations versus your experience with altruism was very nuanced. I think, on a psychological level, you have described very well the psychological underpinnings of much of today's power elite. Especially if we think of it in terms of a multi-generational process.
And I think it is very useful to look at occult practices as a reinforcement tool, more useful for "scaring the shit" out of the young elites, keeping them in line and teaching them how to become abusive controllers themselves, and also as Mark said for creating, controlling and disposing of people who have undergone some sort of MK Ultra type of programming, then as a primary tool for controlling the masses via leaked press reports.
I think the points about the internal "emptiness" of sociopaths, or the even more damaged psychopaths, the quick fix thrill of sadism and violence, and the will to power are all highly descriptive of the people who rise to positions of control in our societies.
And how reassuring for them to have a self-justifying rationale for their psychopathy and sociopathic behavior such as a so-called "illuministic" doctrine which (falsely) assures them that such sadism and violence and exploitation are all really for the greater good? It would certainly take the edge of of any niggling little bit of conscience left that might interfere with exercising economic power and social control for the benefit of the few, without leaving any cause for doubt or remorse.
Like AJ, I'm still open to question whether or not the participation in the occult gives the participants any additional, more ethereal, results other than intensifying their conviction and strengthening their ability to exercise their own wills remorselessly. That is something that, for me, remains in the realm of speculation. But it may. Or it may not.
If one believes in some form of moral causation, then even the temporal advantage would at some point disappear into the karmic sinkhole as the fruits of ignorance or evil intent.
At that point the nature of the discussion boils down to one's religious beliefs or metaphysics.
But as far as motivation for their heinous acts, whether we are talking about toppling towers with false flag terrorism, SRA, or MK, I think the ends sought include many factors, among them:
Power, in the form of controlling individuals and groups of people, up to great population masses, via
manipulating people's world views to justify war via retribution or fear, or economic sanctions or exploitation by instilling hatred and fear ofother groups of people in order to diminish any public or private crises of conscience about doing these things,
Wealth in the form of the massive profits of war, or taking the gold out of the Federal Reserve in the twin towers, international weapons and drug trade generally,
Sowing death which I actually believe is one of the PTB's goals, whether creating assassins and patsy's to knock off people from JFK, RFK, & MLK, to Ronald Reagan (almost), to Olaf Palme, and to cover up for the motivation and people behind the acts,
all the way to
large population culls via war, disease, structural famine, and so on, as part of the long term strategic goals by the corporate fascist power structure that is nothing if not actuarial in its approach to the value of human life.
And I've written acutuarial computer programs for large companies, so I know to some extent the degree to which such data is collected, manipulated mathematically, and then used to increase profits by setting all kinds of parameters in financial decision making, from questions of the ultimate costs of product liability suits in the conscious design amd manufacturing of products bound to injure, maim or kill certain numbers of users to descision making about cost of work environment modifications versus health care payouts, you name it. It's just the tip of the iceberg.
But I don't want to keep rambling on.
Sorry for having done so.
Didn't mean to drone.
Wow is right—this is, by far, the most productive discussion we’ve had here in a long time. I’m still a little uncomfortable with the idea of keeping all the riff-raff out to do this, but I understand Jeff’s decision and won’t second guess it any further. Back to the matter at hand; I knew that my proposition was going to be controversial, but the overwhelming negation of my argument has more to do (I hope) with my not having made my position clear enough than with it being a nutty idea. I’ll try to clarify the argument and see if that doesn’t change its reception among you thoughtful persons.
First, back to Sam Hill. I would agree that my point would be “ironically reductionist” if what I meant was that “the real problem facing us all today stems from a post-Uroboran, I mean post-European (so-called) “Enlightenment” (and I use the term loosely) metaphysical malaise stemming from the disease of creeping materialist reductionism.”
When you say that you would “readily concur with you that reductionism, and particularly materialist reductionism constitutes more than a malaise, and is a distinct spiritual illness infecting much or most of the "modern" world, I hardly think this either accounts for, explains, or indeed even accurately describes the various goings on of the oft nefarious PTB,” you’ve focused our disagreement precisely where it lies.
The materialist reductionism that is the underpinning of our common worldview is very much more than some kind of vague malaise—it is the reason, ultimately, that our world is dying.
We have been so fundamentally cut off from the life of the earth, out of synch with its rhythms, dislocated from its harmonies, unable to perceive the reality in which we (sort of) live, that even if those PTB who run the show and against whom we rail were to suddenly disappear, we’d still be at a loss for how to fix things.
Please don’t infer from these Gaia-sounding sentiments that I advocate some neo-Luddite position or, worse, that I believe that a massive die-off of several billions is necessary for the survival of the planet—that is actually the position of the elite, those PTB who refer to folks like us as “useless feeders.” My contention about worldviews is that ours, the dominant, mechanistic model with which we’re stuck, not only “accounts for, explains,” and “accurately describes the various goings on of the oft nefarious PTB,” but actually illustrates how this situation in which we find oursleves is an inevitable outgrowth of that worldview.
If you accept Darwin’s survival of the fittest as the motor that drives natural selection (not to mention Malthus’ similarly wrong-headed notions about population growth with regard to availability of food & resources), then the development of a ruling elite is entirely to be expected. The point here is not whether these things are true but, as AJ says, “If they believe in it-that is all that matters.” Except that they’ve got an awful lot of us believing it, too.
All those Wild Kingdom “nature” programs where the great beasts fight it out, tooth, nail & claw--how many people know that it was all staged, that the producers forced animals together that wouldn’t normally fight in order to spread the propaganda that nature (animal and human) is based on competition rather than cooperation? How better to prepare us to accept the role in society of the titans of industry, and before them the divine right of kings? It’s self-serving, supremacist bullshit and it permeates so much of our cultural horizon that it’s difficult to see beyond it.
In fact, this “seeing beyond” our cultural horizons is itself made nearly impossible because of certain features of that damned worldview I keep talking about. We’re even limited in our perception of the world because of linguistic filters of which we’re almost completely unaware. Science, and the understanding of the world it provides, is deeply influenced by Western European languages, especially English, and is extremely defensive and territorial when it encounters something "foreign." Consider Dan Alford’s explanation for this:
Underlying this perhaps unintendedly deceptive scholarship and public reporting is a deep fear that the logic of Western European languages doesn't really match the logic of reality after all, or that it's only one of many that are equally true -- a bitter pill to swallow for those raised on the 'natural' superiority of Western European thinking over that of less 'civilized' indigenous peoples. I hesitate to call this 'racist,' since I really can't get behind a term less than a hundred years old with this meaning which has done nothing but needlessly further divide humanity (religion and place of origin have always been enough to pit people against each other sufficiently), but it can at the very least be called colonializing -- part of the 'superior' colonialistic mindset which has been wreaking havoc on the Americas for over 500 years: beginning with a sad history of physical slavery for this continent's original inhabitants, moving on to 'civilized' economic slavery in a reservation system, culminating in cognitive imperialism, the last stage of cultural imperialism, with Indian children being kidnapped by the federal government and sent to 'English-only' boarding schools thousands of miles away from their families in order to destroy Native culture, knowledge and languages. Many or most Native Americans of 'baby-boomer' age and older -- people you may know! -- were actual victims of this barbaric bureaucratic carrying out of the will of the descendants of the Invaders which tried to wipe out the 'differences' between Native Americans and Europeans.
We support these sorts of extirminations because we don't see what's being killed. Even those of us who do not condone the savage behavior of the Empire don't really see what dies when the rain forest is killed because we don't have a mental framework that allows us to sense the interconnectedness of life. We can strive to understand such a concept, but the very "nouniness" of our language and our worldview severely limit how deeply we can appreciate this reality. And that is among those of us who are sympathetic to the plight of the planet, unlike so many of those who suffer (again from Alford) from:
Noun-habituation which focuses our attention on objects rather than processes and relationships, thus hindering systems thinking. A spotted owl is a bird, an old-growth forest is a bunch of trees, a marshland is underutilized real estate--instead of fragile, interrelated ecosystems on which our lives ultimately depend. Although we certainly cannot change the structure of our language, it is not too much to ask that we become aware of our nouns--aware of the multitude of processes lurking inside the nouns we are forced by our grammar to use.
When 'time' is culturally imagined as a straight line stretching from infinity past to infinity future, we feel we can always move away from an unpleasant past and toward a brighter future, with no fear or anticipation that our mistakes will cycle and recycle back on us. Perhaps we are envisioning 'time' as a thing rather than a process, and a change of perspective might allow the line to return to being a circle in our thinking.
Those of us who reject the mechanistic worldview by replacing it with a participatory model are out there on the fringes of this monstrous globalization of the planet. But even among those herd members closer to the center, there's a rising level of discomfort with the old lies. When the old Sergeant York/John Wayne/what's good-for-GM propaganda doesn't cut it anymore, it's time to bring out the new whips. Hence the scary black hood shit.
Sam, you have to realize that this is different from what we were fed in the past: this psychological warfare. You ask: if SRA exists only to scare the masses, then why do the media completely bury the stories and consistently attempt to debunk it? How else would they market it? "Blare it in the headlines," as you suggested with Kissinger's "secret" admissions? This is how limited hang out works--if you don't have to dig for "secret knowledge that they want suppressed," then why would you believe it to be closely guarded?
Again, I am not saying it doesn't exist. It does. But believing it gives them supernatural power helps them, not us. And where is the mountain of evidence that it confers this "power" on them? Just as the oil industry was, in part, behind Peak Oil, I have a strong suspicion that those NWO wannabees are very carefully leaking some of this stuff. (For the same purpose, more or less.)
Everyone has a piece of the "puzzle"; perhaps "story" is a better word. It would be interesting to compile a collection of stories (or myths, in the positive sense of the word) that represent these points of view.
My sense is that each story is incomplete and has parts that contradict each other. For instance, logical/mechanical thinking in and of itself isn't bad or good. It's useful where it applies, and at one time in history, it served as a corrective to certain superstitious forms of religious thought. This thinking has over-ripened since then, and now is the hammer that sees all problems as nails.
Cutlefish, Interesting response (if a bit wordy, pardon me for saying so). I think you misunderstood where my disagreement with your thesis lies, and that is my fault for not making it clear. Sometimes you (I should say "I") think things while you are writing, and only later upon re-reading what you wrote does one have that d'oh moment where you realize you never actually said what you were thinking?
Yeah, well that "you" is "I".
D'oh!
Here's what I was thinking, but never got around to saying:
I agree that social Darwinism is an addled-brain materialist philosophy, but I do not for one second believe that it is the dominant philosophy of the powers that be.
Yes, I will agree that one can certainly interpret their actions in light of such simplistic and raptor-like a modus operandi, but I think that it is just the carnivorous window dressing for the masses. It is that philosophy which, exactly because it is so easy, cheap, and seductive (hmm, what does that sound like?), very much appeals to the masses and readily serves to corrupt their/our behavior. It is a down and dirty, dog eat dog, or fish eat fish replacement for the formerly religious morals, or even just social ethics like honoring one's word, that used to be considered part of at least our overt, rather than covert, Western traditions and heritage.
But I think the PTB clearly have some pretty abstruse and convoluted ways of thinking and doing things, that make mere social Darwinism look like infant's pablum by comparison.
I just re-read the JFC Fuller material that was posted under the last string. It's pretty compelling, and harrowing, reading.
This is closer to the mark of what I think many, certainly not all, of the so-called "elites" hew to.
In fact, I think we may be seeing the beginnings of a major rift forming between those elites who follow such stuff, and those who just went along with that stuff for the power and money ride.
I think the social Darwinists among the elites may in fact be our best hope for survival in the present circumstances.
That is because they want to survive, and they want the world to survive.
The occultist nut jobs among the elite, who I personally believe actually hold more of the reins of power on this run amok elephant of the post-modern world, don't really care if it survives. In fact, they are counting on its destruction to magically recreate their version of utopia, probably your and my idea of a dystopia, phoenix-like, out of the ashes of our lovely little world once they have succeeded in destroying it.
So, personally, I'd rather take my chances with the social Darwinists who want this physical world we inhabit to survive along with them, and their offspring.
And yes, as you say, the modern world has brought us further and further away from the physical reality of the beautiful earth, and what it takes to survive on it, and what it will take for the earth to survive as a viable habitat for the diversity of life forms, human included.
But it ain't Darwinism that has taken us away from that reality.
It is the occult mumbo jumbo of "illuminism" that inverts good and evil, and the Cabbalist mythos that humans create Reality and direct the cosmos that has put our 'civilization', such as it is, in a near agonal crisis.
As far as such dogmas go, in my assessment anyway, nothing else could be further from the truth.
To borrow from Bentham and Foucault, the PTB don't need to do EVERY dispicable act that they sometimes get accused of, even though I am sure they do much if not most of those acts. Essentially all they need to do is project that power and make you feel it, as if it pervades you always. As long as you are in fear of being watched, there doesn't necessarily have to be anyone behind that power, like the panopticon. Essentially we all just become a surveilance society, our own stassi so to speak. I am not claiming that there isn't some depraved shit going down beneath the surface of the everyday facade, but don't believe everything that comes down the hole, as I am sure everyone here already knows. Just wanted to put out the friendly reminder to be vigilant but not paranoid. I'm glad to see this place back to normal in a way.
23skidoo and Sam Hill, one could say, excellent use of IC as a ‘backboard’, except you guys hit all net. The co-opting of categories started long before material reductionism.
Skidoo, are you familiar with the material of Paul Levi? It seems you would appreciate his analysis.
Good observations Hal
The ego driven mind likes to consider that the categories within ones conscious model are well ordered. If you come to see that expressions of social chaos are proof that our categories are not well ordered, then the right brain can re-open to help you adjust your relations to external events.
Being socially accepted involves treating categories in a way similar to the treatment given by your social superiors. Being socially useful involves effort spent trying to refine categories, so as to expose greater substance, or creating new correspondences and categories that more correctly describe our relationships to reality. The second ‘useful’ option is seldom taken because of social danger and the inhibiting effects of ego consciousness.
My impression is that currently repressed elements of our sub-conscious recognition’s; things with no place within our conscious models, will soon find means for their expression. Let us pray that we may make armageddon metaphorical by doing the internal work necessary, so that we may avoid the external chaos produced by sick egoic actors.
Thank God this board has gone back to reasoned debate and enlightenment and not religous rhetoric that swamped this space like insideous spam.
That said I now find no time to react to the original post or the comments therin..... I shall return!!
my apologies to the materialists out there, but it is my firm conviction that Evil is a real, "breathing" Other that has its own agenda, thoughts, deeds--even personality of sorts--that can in no way be reduced to merely something that human beings "do". there is evil we do, and Evil that IS. when we do evil, in my opinion, we enter into a bond with Evil that aggressively begins to encroach over our own thoughts, our own deeds, our own personality. the powers that engage in acts of paedophilia or worse are only aping the Powers that have always been with us, and, if the collective wisdom of the world's religions is any guide, these lesser, human powers can in-deed derive some measure of control, influence, or dominance over others through these acts.
unfortunately, we are conditioned to seek scientific answers to spiritual questions, as if the advent of the age of aspirin and space travel has completely rendered thousands of years of human experience irrelevant, a human experience has always tended to see Evil as living, separate being than man.
The medium is the message and parenthood is the medium of fear sometimes out of love always. The laundry girls were prisoners of war. The victims were all outside the wall. I think the term engram would be appropriate if it weren't so offensive. Love your neighbour vs. be home before the street lights come on.
Race, religion, politics divide and conquer. The black market or victimless crime versus state crime real or perceived. It is perpetuated by the economics of the productive workers and the non production of their minders.
Thanks for the heads up Mark..
"we are conditioned to seek scientific answers to spiritual questions, as if the advent of the age of aspirin and space travel has completely rendered thousands of years of human experience irrelevant, a human experience has always tended to see Evil as living, separate being than man"
Alzafar--you are largely right except "evil" has not always been such a separate notion--but I don't want to quibble. I view the "spiritual" world as very, very deep and varied with all kinds of entities and deep (to us) paradoxes. I think we need to cultivate humility in the face of all this. The rationalists among us have to do incredible gyrations to make sense out of things. I refer you all to look at the simplest examination of strange happenings by reading Abbot's Flatland and perusing the writings of Charles Fort--and even Frazer's The Golden Bough and Grimms Fairy Tales. Alternate realities have always been around and all kinds of strange events, cruelties, pervesions, have buzzed around. Because of our poor education we believe that singular laws run the universe and deliberately ignore anomolies in order to assert othodoxy. I'm iterested in why it is so crucial that we have orthodoxy. Why do we refuse to see what's right in front of us? How is it possible that people believe the government's 9/11 story (reminds me of the Monty Python parrot routine except Clesse wasn't buying it--but the fact is most people would be convinced that what is clearly true is in fact false as in Solomon's Asch's famous experiment. And people are willing to do all kinds of strange and "bad" actions if someone appoints them as jailor and endure and inhabit victimhood if someone appoints them as prisoner (see Zimbardo et.al's Stanford Prison Experiment).
It doesn't take much to make us do strange things or believe one thing today and another tomorrow--"There's something happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?"
Alzafar, does that mean that "Evil" is a separate entity? It can't be absolutely separate, since people can interact with it. What is its origin?
Rather than dualism, I suggest the idea of polarity, where the poles are part of a unitary continuum. We can distinguish between the poles, but they are not separate in an absolute way.
"I'm iterested in why it is so crucial that we have orthodoxy. Why do we refuse to see what's right in front of us?"
christopher, i appreciate your post. if i could i would rewrite what i said about humans *always* tending to see Evil as an Other, dropping the 'always', because i agree that orthodoxy can be a hindrance if scrupulously adhered to. like you suggested (i think), some kind of orthodoxy might be used as a guide but not a straightjacket.
i remember talking to some christians once about UFOs--they couldn't/wouldn't believe anything other than a.) UFOs were demons or 'nephilim' prototypes, or b.) UFOs were a gov't project we aren't privy to. considering that they actually might be something *else* entirely forced them into all sorts of theological calisthenics that disrupted the spiritually geocentric universe they believed they inhabited.
on the other hand, i also become frustrated with 'non-believers' after they ask "why" but roll their eyes at the non-scientific answers they sometimes get. if the priest, the mullah, the rabbi, the swami or the medicine man can contribute to answering the collective, human cry of "why?!", then i think they should be heard, that's all. it doesn't mean that we have to take everything said to heart.
"[Evil] can't be absolutely separate, since people can interact with it."
but aren't we then back at the ptolemaic concept of the universe, Hal? i tend to think that there are things that existed, now exist, and will continue to exist whether humans interact with them/him/her/it or not. i don't find it particularly useful to ask questions like the one about the tree falling in the forrest without someone witnessing the event, because i think it philosophically tautological.
"What is [Evil's] origin?"
i really don't believe humans are the measure of all things, Hal. maybe i could paraphrase gandalf: there are older and fouler things in the deep places of the world than us. likewise, there are other forces at work in this world besides the will of evil. forces for good. that we even discuss these things and become outraged at people doing evil deeds should be an indicator, i think, that we can recognize the very real distinction between Good and Evil. i like the judiastic concept of an "Absolute Good"--a Good that is, in and of itself, Good. in Schindler's List, the character of Isaac Stern called the list an Absolute Good. he might have been leaning towards hyperbole, but the idea's the same, i think.
having said all of that, i find your idea of polarities really interesting: except that, perhaps like atoms, we bump into "others", can bond with "others", but remain distinct from "others"... i'll be the first to say i really don't know which it might be
If I may be so bold, why does it have to be "either" "or"?
Evil exists both "out there" and also "in here."
That is to say that we each have a shadowy aspect to our nature that we deny or ignore to our own extreme peril. If we can not perceive the "evil that lurks within" then we can not do anything to wrangle it into submission. And we also fall into the pit of Pride, imagining ourselves to be better or more pure than others. From such a falsely lofty perch, all manner of bad things fall and flow.
Similarly, if we deny that evil can exist in the "other", and we blind ourselves with the mask of naivete, then we become willing dupes.
So I don't think you need to take a Manichean view of the universe to acknowledge that evil lurks in the hearts of men, and in other places as well.
And I don't subscribe to the theory that "cosmic consciousness" is the best or only antidote to evil. I would like to suggest that common sense works quite well to counter evil.
In the absence of a reply from Cutlefish, I would like to offer some words of encouragement and clarification. I think you are an obviously intelligent human being, and someone who ponders deeply on our human predicament. And while I wholeheartedly agree with most of your premises, particularly vis a vis the boon of expanded consciousness, and the lie of the scarcity of natural resources, I think you have been misled into a terribly erroneous conclusion about the solution to the problem of human survival, and just what it will take for our species to flourish in a saner, and a more humane and just world at some point in the future.
No argument that cosmic consciousness is a good thing. The experiential insights of the oneness of all and the inescapability of moral consequences either in the form of instant karma in the here and now, or in some other, subtle, less readily apparent form, I take to be self-evident truths, based on a lifetime of experiences. These have come in many ways: spontaneously, by grace alone, while doing everyday things from walking to sweeping to driving; in mandala or portalling states while simply sitting or quietly laying on my side; in the form of unsought lucid dreams; as the result of strenuous ascetic disciplines; through repeated prayer: and, yes, also on occasion via the ingestion of psychedelic substances.
So I do not hesitate to endorse the value of the even higher insights offered to us by far better men and women than I, and such as Richard Bucke wrote about, or might have written about, like Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, Jalalu’ddin Rumi, Sister Niguma (Milarepa’s teacher), Muhammad, Jesus, or Buddha.
And although the teachings of people such as these represent some of the noblest achievements of our species, they are not, strictly speaking, necessary to our survival. Integrating these essential truths that such people have helped to reveal, however, will make this a far more just, sane, and fruitful world in which to live, but, counter-intuitive as it may seem, the lack of the application of these timeless truths is NOT at the root of our current dilemma.
Here’s why I think so: The only orders of higher life forms on this planet which seem to organize themselves along some of the principles of cosmic consciousness, as least insofar as we can project our limited understanding onto them, is Order Cetacea: dolphins and whales.
Dolphins and whales have not been observed to kill one another to any regular extent. They compete peacefully and playfully in a sea, thus far at least, with natural resources abundant to their needs. They have not destroyed it. They are in ecological balance with their surroundings and they band together to fend off their natural predators. Quite significantly, they exhibit altruism within their own species, and also across species, even to the point of their own individual deaths. Accounts of dolphins’ “lifting behavior” for distressed individuals are not limited to other dolphins. Tales of drowning sailors having been carried to shore by exhausted dolphins, which then die, exist in the literature as far back as the ancient Greeks. This latter degree of conscious altruism is found elsewhere only in Homo sapiens. So there is something for us to aspire to.
But humans have made it this far in evolution without cosmic consciousness being necessitated as a universal state or trait. It has been restricted, whether by design, chance, or what have you, to a limited number of extraordinary individuals. And its relative lack of abundance has not prevented the human race from surviving and expanding, nor does it threaten our survival now. What does?
Why the lesser and most base human traits, of course: Greed, Gluttony, Envy, Hatred, Sloth, Lust, and Pride. And where are these Deadly Sins most evident? In those lives most preoccupied with and emblematic of conspicuous consumption, wealthy first-worlders and even more particularly in those of the elite and super-elite.
But we, the masses, are not blameless in this. We have also fallen for the sucker’s ploy of “aspiring” to be like that, of coveting the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Mesmerized by People magazine, or Entertainment Tonight, or American Idol, or the 15 minutes of fame or infame from contrived psyops like Survivor or Big Brother, et alii ad nauseum, we have been sucked into the devilish maelstrom of a fabricated worldview based on the most base human failings. These very big lies go against our more natural, most basic, truly survival-oriented, human behavioral tendencies. We have, as you say, been mind-fucked into acting like ‘barbarians’ rather then human beings.
This barbarity is NOT our essential nature, anymore than we are all born to be Jesus or Buddha or Muhammad.
But at least we can aspire to the latter, while in the meantime we remember simply how to act like human beings.
And, yes, you are almost certainly correct that the myth of scarcity, the lie of earth’s purportedly limited “carrying capacity”, is one of the prime tools of fear used to cow the masses, along with the phony “war on terror”.
But it is not some fault of our basic human nature which is behind this dilemma. I believe we are basically born good. Our essential natures are harmonious and attuned to life and survival. If this is not the case, then we would have never made it this far, since we began standing upright about 40,000 years ago.
So what went wrong?
Well, somewhere along the line there developed a tendency among elites to conscript the labor and wealth of the mass of men and women not for the greater common good, but for the greater glory, wealth, and power of the ruling elite. And, as 23skidoo laid it out, this form of psychopathy has bred itself generation after generation to stay in power, and uses all manner of techniques, from the mundanely mechanical to the ritualized and mythological, to crush and control the greater mass of humanity, both physically and spiritually, in order to serve only its own pathological ends.
But we as a human race, taken together, are much better than that. At the moment, it is not cosmic consciousness that we need to survive: it is COMMON SENSE, the awareness of our inextricably shared destiny. Our failure, if we were to succumb to the mindfuck, would not be from a lack of enlightenment, but rather from a lack of basic, evolutionarily honed survival tendencies. We have to remember that we are members of the same species, even before we aspire to yet higher states of being.
We need a good dose of species consciousness before we can benefit from cosmic consciousness. And surely as the day flows from the night, intelligent species consciousness will lead to earth consciousness. And from there, it’s a few more steps to cosmic consciousness.
But we have to start where we are.
As you rightly said, we do need the wisdom of the earth and to revive our own wisdom of the body. That is to say we need to give up those anti-survival habits which we have allowed to be foisted upon us by our sedentary lives of consumption and media indoctrination. We need to wise up fast, and give up gluttony, hatred, sloth, greed, envy, lust, and pride. These are the enemies of survival.
These things do not constitute our basic nature, they represent our failings. We are better than that. And we must be. We don’t have to develop cosmic, or even cetacean consciousness to survive, though it would certainly be a boon. We first need to reclaim our human birthright as intelligent, evolutionary beings and stop allowing ourselves to be abased by other members of our group who exploit us by pushing us headlong towards an abyss we have allowed ourselves to be enslaved into digging out of our own lesser traits.
So I will throw my lot in with those, merely evolutionarily guided, folks who are struggling decently for survival in the general, intra-species manner of live and let live, rather than with psychopathic elite occultists who believe in the meme of a nuclear forest fire to wipe the slate clean, that they might scribble their own unnatural designs madly on it, after they emerge from their bunkers.
No thank you very much.
Just a thought.
Why does the question of evil have to boil down to "either" "or"?
Why can't evil exist both "out there" as well as "in here"?
If we ignore the shadowy aspects of our own nature then surely we can do nothing to wrangle them into submission. And we also run the risk of falling into the abyss of Pride, of thinking we are somehow better or more pure than others.
That is a falsely lofty perch from which all manner of bad consequences fall and flow.
So I would put it that evil lurks in the hearts of men, and also in other places where men, or other beings, lurk. We do not have to take a Manichean view to see evil as a pervasive problem.
But what is the antidote?
I would like to suggest that the best or only antidote to evil is not necessarily cosmic consciousness, but more simply common sense, that vaunted bastion of avowed fools such as myself.
In the absence of a reply from Cutlefish, I would like to offer some words of encouragement and clarification on his thesis. Cut, I think you are an obviously intelligent human being, and someone who ponders deeply on our human predicament. And while I wholeheartedly agree with most of your premises, particularly vis a vis the boon of expanded consciousness, and the lie of the scarcity of natural resources, I think you have been misled into a terribly erroneous conclusion about the solution to the problem of human survival, and just what it will take for our species to flourish in a saner, and a more humane and just world at some point in the future.
No argument that cosmic consciousness is a good thing. The experiential insights of the oneness of all and the inescapability of moral consequences either in the form of instant karma in the here and now, or in some other, subtle, less readily apparent form, I take to be self-evident truths, based on a lifetime of experiences. These have come in many ways: spontaneously, by grace alone, while doing everyday things from walking to sweeping to driving; in mandala or portalling states while simply sitting or quietly laying on my side; in the form of unsought lucid dreams; as the result of strenuous ascetic disciplines; through repeated prayer: and, yes, also on occasion via the ingestion of psychedelic substances.
So I do not hesitate to endorse the value of the even higher insights offered to us by far better men and women than I, and such as Richard Bucke wrote about, or might have written about, like Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, Jalalu’ddin Rumi, Sister Niguma (Milarepa’s teacher), Muhammad, Jesus, or Buddha.
And although the teachings of people such as these represent some of the noblest achievements of our species, they are not, strictly speaking, necessary to our survival. Integrating these essential truths that such people have helped to reveal, however, will make this a far more just, sane, and fruitful world in which to live, but, counter-intuitive as it may seem, the lack of the application of these timeless truths is NOT at the root of our current dilemma.
Here’s why I think so: The only orders of higher life forms on this planet which seem to organize themselves along some of the principles of cosmic consciousness, as least insofar as we can project our limited understanding onto them, is Order Cetacea: dolphins and whales.
Dolphins and whales have not been observed to kill one another to any regular extent. They compete peacefully and playfully in a sea, thus far at least, with natural resources abundant to their needs. They have not destroyed it. They are in ecological balance with their surroundings and they band together to fend off their natural predators. Quite significantly, they exhibit altruism within their own species, and also across species, even to the point of their own individual deaths. Accounts of dolphins’ “lifting behavior” for distressed individuals are not limited to other dolphins. Tales of drowning sailors having been carried to shore by exhausted dolphins, which then die, exist in the literature as far back as the ancient Greeks. This latter degree of conscious altruism is found elsewhere only in Homo sapiens. So there is something for us to aspire to.
But humans have made it this far in evolution without cosmic consciousness being necessitated as a universal state or trait. It has been restricted, whether by design, chance, or what have you, to a limited number of extraordinary individuals. And its relative lack of abundance has not prevented the human race from surviving and expanding, nor does it threaten our survival now. What does?
Why the lesser and most base human traits, of course: Greed, Gluttony, Envy, Hatred, Sloth, Lust, and Pride. And where are these Deadly Sins most evident? In those lives most preoccupied with and emblematic of conspicuous consumption, wealthy first-worlders and even more particularly in those of the elite and super-elite.
But we, the masses, are not blameless in this. We have also fallen for the sucker’s ploy of “aspiring” to be like that, of coveting the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Mesmerized by People magazine, or Entertainment Tonight, or American Idol, or the 15 minutes of fame or infame from contrived psyops like Survivor or Big Brother, et alii ad nauseum, we have been sucked into the devilish maelstrom of a fabricated worldview based on the most base human failings. These very big lies go against our more natural, most basic, truly survival-oriented, human behavioral tendencies. We have, as you say, been mind-fucked into acting like ‘barbarians’ rather then human beings.
This barbarity is NOT our essential nature, anymore than we are all born to be Jesus or Buddha or Muhammad.
But at least we can aspire to the latter, while in the meantime we remember simply how to act like human beings.
And, yes, you are almost certainly correct that the myth of scarcity, the lie of earth’s purportedly limited “carrying capacity”, is one of the prime tools of fear used to cow the masses, along with the phony “war on terror”.
But it is not some fault of our basic human nature which is behind this dilemma. I believe we are basically born good. Our essential natures are harmonious and attuned to life and survival. If this is not the case, then we would have never made it this far, since we began standing upright about 40,000 years ago.
So what went wrong?
Well, somewhere along the line there developed a tendency among elites to conscript the labor and wealth of the mass of men and women not for the greater common good, but for the greater glory, wealth, and power of the ruling elite. And, as 23skidoo laid it out, this form of psychopathy has bred itself generation after generation to stay in power, and uses all manner of techniques, from the mundanely mechanical to the ritualized and mythological, to crush and control the greater mass of humanity, both physically and spiritually, in order to serve only its own pathological ends.
But we as a human race, taken together, are much better than that. At the moment, it is not cosmic consciousness that we need to survive: it is COMMON SENSE, the awareness of our inextricably shared destiny. Our failure, if we were to succumb to the mindfuck, would not be from a lack of enlightenment, but rather from a lack of basic, evolutionarily honed survival tendencies. We have to remember that we are members of the same species, even before we aspire to yet higher states of being.
We need a good dose of species consciousness before we can benefit from cosmic consciousness. And surely as the day flows from the night, intelligent species consciousness will lead to earth consciousness. And from there, it’s a few more steps to cosmic consciousness.
But we have to start where we are.
As you rightly said, we do need the wisdom of the earth and to revive our own wisdom of the body. That is to say we need to give up those anti-survival habits which we have allowed to be foisted upon us by our sedentary lives of consumption and media indoctrination. We need to wise up fast, and give up gluttony, hatred, sloth, greed, envy, lust, and pride. These are the enemies of survival.
These things do not constitute our basic nature, they represent our failings. We are better than that. And we must be. We don’t have to develop cosmic, or even cetacean consciousness to survive, though it would certainly be a boon. We first need to reclaim our human birthright as intelligent, evolutionary beings and stop allowing ourselves to be abased by other members of our group who exploit us by pushing us headlong towards an abyss we have allowed ourselves to be enslaved into digging out of our own lesser traits.
So I will throw my lot in with those, merely evolutionarily guided, folks who are struggling decently for survival in the general, intra-species manner of live and let live, rather than with psychopathic elite occultists who believe in the meme of a nuclear forest fire to wipe the slate clean, that they might scribble their own unnatural designs madly on it, after they emerge from their bunkers.
No thank you very much.
Just a thought.
Sorry about the duplication. The first time I got an error message.
Sam,
Thanks. You’re right about that “doh” moment and about my excessive wordiness, for which I apologize—it was just that my argument was not an exercise in reductionism, in fact, it was the opposite, but I couldn’t seem to express the whole thing very clearly. I’m thinking now about your preference for the social Darwinists over the Armageddonists, but I can’t imagine that you’re happy with either choice. It’s not just that the SD camp might appear to be the lesser of the two evils, either. They’re both locked into the Death Spiral, with the only essential difference being that the more starkly barking-mad lunatics currently in control will get us there faster.
The evil ones of whom we speak and the path they take (Wade Frazier's "dark path") are an extreme distillation of an element which, in its proper relegation, is but a natural part of the whole. I don't speak here of any sort of dualism, Good vs. Evil, for example, since dualism is part of that faulty worldview I've so much criticized, but of a terrible imbalance, the source of our out-of-kilter-ness.
That crazy patch-work genius, Bucky Fuller, himself a strangely Cartesian amalgam of spirituality (his very influential aunt was a roaring theosophist) and materialism (Bucky's faith in science & technology can be unnerving at times) spoke of the greater whole of reality as in these terms:
" ......Whereas reality is eternally now, human apprehending demonstrates a large assortment of lags in rates of cognitions whose myriadly multivaried frequencies of myriadly multivaried, positive-negative, omnidirectional aberrations, in multivaried degrees, produce such elusively off-center effects as possibly to result in an illusionary awareness of an approximately unlimited number of individually different awareness patterns, all of whose relative imperfections induce the illusion of a reality in which "life" is terminal, because physically imperfect; as contrasted to mind's discovery of an omni- interaccommodative complex of a variety of different a priori, cosmic, and eternal principles, which can only be intellectually discovered, have no weight, and apparently manifest a perfect, abstract, eternal design, the metaphysical utterly transcendent of the physical."
There are (at least) two salient points for our purposes in that quote from FusionAnomaly. One is the point that our skewed view of reality is a growing danger and the other is that reality is a very complex thing indeed. Despite the caution from another commenter here against the delusion that we can affect reality, I think it obvious enough that reality is much more than a one-way street. The twisting and tormenting of the fabric of reality by the elite, with their incessant fear- and war-mongering is as pervasive as it is wrong. Bucky's great hope, that we would come to our senses by rearranging our senses in the Great Shift from the Business of Death (into which so much time, money, and energy are spent) to the Business of Life (which we've only just begun to explore in our halting steps toward sustainability) is the mission on which all our hopes hang.
One source of Bucky's unbounded optimism that was not based on some inherent faith in technological solutions was the very nature of that complex reality he talked about. If you follow that Realities link in the quote above, it'll take you to another Fusion page where more on the subject (including some helpful clues) can be found:
In Part Two of The Holographic Universe, "Mind and Body," Michael Talbot discusses the psychological aspects of the holographic model. According to Bohm, "In a universe in which all things are infinitely interconnected, all consciousnesses are also interconnected. Despite appearances, we are beings without borders. Deep down the consciousness of mankind is one." (p. 60) The holographic theory, according to the author, can explain many psychological phenomena. Some of these include psychic phenomena, the ability to see "auras", psychosis, the power of the mind to heal using visualization techniques, effects of placebos on healing, lucid dreaming and altered states of consciousness. The power of the mind is awesome and remains untapped. The author believes that by understanding the holographic model we can learn to access these powers. "In the implicate order, as in the brain itself, imagination and reality are ultimately indistinguishable, and it should therefore come as no surprise to us that images in the mind can ultimately manifest as realities in the physical body." (p. 84)
The "simple" truth of our present predicament is that these awesome powers of the mind cannot much longer remain untapped. Some maps are already being drawn...
Sam (again!)
Sorry not to have responded earlier--I've got a sick kid home today. This last one was a brilliant comment. Are you familiar with Frans de Waal's concept of reciprocal altruism?
Cut wrote: According to Bohm, "In a universe in which all things are infinitely interconnected, all consciousnesses are also interconnected. Despite appearances, we are beings without borders. Deep down the consciousness of mankind is one."
I completely agree with you and Bohm on this point.
All I'm saying is that we're so far from there as a human race, and we are in desperate straits now. We have found ourselves in an ever deepening hole and we need to stop digging, right now.
We need to climb out of the hole we are in with the means readily at hand.
Then we can think about scaling the mountain.
If you tell a man in a ditch that he needs to climb a mountain he can't even see, he'll either call you crazy, or curse you and give up.
That won't help.
Let's get out of the ditch first.
In the meantime I'll check out de Waal's.
Then, once we're all on up on the surface, I'll go join you on that mountain.
"In a universe in which all things are infinitely interconnected, all consciousnesses are also interconnected. Despite appearances, we are beings without borders. Deep down the consciousness of mankind is one."
then why do we wring our hands over the evil done to others, that is, why does it perplex us at all? i'm not saying that i am incapable of great evil--like you said, it would be foolish to think so; it would just take (i would hope) a lot of some 'factor X' to get me to such a place. currently, i find the idea of raping a child so foreign to me that, if on some cosmic level i am in tune (or even "one"?) with the bonafide child molesters of this world, i can't for the life of me figure out why it should be foreign to me at all. am i not looking hard enough for the paedophile in me?
Of course, there are degrees of evil. To most of us, myself certainly included, pedophilia is a complete abomination. But that doesn't mean we aren't each capable of other forms of evil, given circumstances conducive to it. To assert otherwise seems to me to be placing oneself smack dab on the slippery slope of absolute moral superiority, on which it is a fast slide straight down to perdition.
You might disagree.
I'm intrigued by the discussion here. There was a comment about dolphins/whales vs. humans. But really, as has been said we are all connected--we can't really "blame" anyone or exonerate anyone even dolphins. For all we know the dolphins may be manipulating our weak minds. I once heard J. Krishnamurti speak not long before he died he said, in effect, we are each responsible for everything (that's a very holographic statement--he was very much involved with Bohm). Well, that's easy to say--but he said it in a way that I knew he meant it completely--it was a direct experience for him and he clearly felt great sorrow (I think he was referring to the "dirty war" in Argentina).
Perhaps the biggest change in my life in recent years has been to judge myself and others far less that I did. Judgment is inevitably wrong since we see so little of what is really there. Our task is to do whatever it takes refine, sharpen and deepen our perceptions and judgments just seem to gum up the works and set our mind spinning and weaving yet another false world. I think many of the weird events and anomalies that we know of have some connection to the mind spinning phenomena--to put it another way--our fantasies may well come true somewhere.
I've lurked around this blog for a year or so and have yet to have posted. So heres a question I hope might interest some of you:
What if these occultic rituals we either have read about, known to occur or maybe even have witnessed is just an observable effect or aberration of hundreds of years of inbreeding in and through the elitist bloodlines? This, to me, would be a karmic elastic-band response at it most simple and basic form. The amassing and control of so much wealth and power, spread out over generations, only bolsterd the desire to "keep it in the family" - thus the very essence of that motivation would be what drove this newly formed "sub-species" into, in part, a dark host of psychological abnormalities that we see manifest in this negative ritualistic behavior.
I wouldn't be negating the power of the ritual per say- as I see there is most defiantly a connection to the power of intent and its direct consequences in this dense world. I am merely postulating that maybe these things seem bizarre and strange to most of us is because we, for the most part, are "clean" of the effects of this intense mental degradation in comparison to the people who try so hard to keep the power in their own blood.
Just a question...
IC.. It might be a service to you and yours if you did explore the Gaian processes. Our metabology allows for us to be vegetarian. Our spiritual guides inform us that we are a higher being on this planet and will be held responsible for our actions. Those among us that "get it mixed up" and turn to the 7 deadly sins may be succoured into it for a time but forgiveness is cosmic trigger and healing is in through the out door.
" I remember reading somewhere Crowley writing about a ritual that involved the sacrifice of a child, supposed to give great power. "
Crowley was not talking about actual child sacrifice. He was joking about masturbation., and the "every sperm is sacred" attitude of the day.
Even the idea that something would "give great power" shows a complete lack of understanding of Crowley's philosophy. Crowley's magic was theurgic and had nothing to do with accumulating power.
Jennifer said:
"Even the idea that something would "give great power" shows a complete lack of understanding of Crowley's philosophy. Crowley's magic was theurgic and had nothing to do with accumulating power."
If there's actually tangible support for that assertion, please provide it because I would appreciate seeing it.
Otherwise, I suggest you read Craig Heimbichner's _Blood on the Altar_. It's about the OTO, which Crowley that 33rd degree Mason with British Intelligence connections headed.
It might be a service to you and yours if you did explore the Gaian processes...forgiveness is cosmic trigger and healing is in through the out door.
ericswan,
Right on. I didn't mean to belittle the many, many Gaian notions floating about, or even to distance myself from them, as I'm perfectly happy to swim in most of those waters. This is the biggest tent, after all. I only meant that I had already grown cynical about some of the empty rhetoric I heard the self-styled shamen spouting to impress hippie chicks at the last Grateful Dead concert/pilgrimage I attended twenty-some years ago (FZ's "psychedelic dungeons popping up on every street".)
We were wondering what possible connection there could be between ourselves and those bastards we love to hate, when it's our hate that ties us to them. Sure, on the most fundamental level, since human nature is infinitely malleable & adaptive, we too could have turned out like any of our brothers have (if not for the grace of God and/or the manifold chaos of the universe, not to mention the bloodline-scheming of those we would most hate to be.)
But defining ourselves in opposition to them ain't such a hot idea, either. As some-time RI poster, the vastly smart & funny Miraculix puts it, "looking at this dystopian isn't making us any healthier." Or, as Rob Brezhny (via CYNTHIA JOHNSTON's ANGELHEADED HIPSTERS) put it:
“When you obsess on your adversaries, you risk becoming like them. The more you shape your life through your responses to things you don't like, you invite them to define your destiny."
This does not mean that would should emulate the ostrich, either. It means that in addition to keeping a wary eye on their goings-on, we should make sure we have our own shit going on as well. You know, hands-on, doing stuff kind-of-shit. In a strange way, this also has to do with your very correct insistence on forgiveness, which is not only a necessary step in our personal and collective evolution, but also a way of disrupting the plans of the Empire by reaching out, across the barriers it has imposed, to make contact with our fellow humans who are similarly constricted. I just came across something my buddy Big Gav posted at his most awesome Peak Energy blog which illustrates this multi-layered idea.
I should back up to explain that I'm no fan of Peak Oil--I've dissed Mr. Ruppert loud & long many times here, and yet, I find this guy Big Gav to be far more than just another Peaker. I exchange the occasional long and (for me, at least) quite interesting e-mail with Gav, as well as very much enjoying what he writes on the broad topic of peak energy. Anyway, opening my mind to what this guy (ostensibly in another camp from my own--a flimsy and false division if ever there was one) reports has afforded me the opportunity to learn things I wouldn't otherwise. The story in question has to do with the sudden & unexpected greening of Niger. Seems that a modest, grassroots tree planting initiative (à la Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement) has demonstrated that climate change can also be mitigated without policy-driven solutions. Grassroots. It's time to break the grass out of jail, too.
The next level "up" is the realization that the old as above, so below works the other way around as well. Even though he is a politician, this fan of Frank Zappa was speaking more than just words when he addressed the 1997 Gaia Mind Project thusly:
"Consciousness precedes being, and not the other way around For this reason, the salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and in human responsibility. Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans, and the catastrophe toward which this world is headed - be it ecological, social, demographic or a general breakdown of civilization - will be unavoidable."
-- Vaclav Havel, Former President of the Czech Republic in a 1990 address to the U.S. Congress
Finally, on the importance of forgiveness (and many another theme with which we've wrestled on this thread) there's this from an unknown source in Scotland:
Maslow states that one characteristic of transcendence is the ability to integrate polarities. "To rise from dichotomies to superordinate wholes" (1971, p.274). The separate poles are no longer seen as opposites in conflict, but as parts of an entirety. It is "a higher viewpoint where one can see that these mutually exclusive differences in opposites can be coordinated into a unity which would be more realistic, more true, more in accord with actual reality" (Maslow, 1971, p.274). Wilber looks at pathologies in individuals or collective worldviews and notes that the cause of most of them is dissociation of one pair of opposites instead of the integration of the polarities. Speaking in cultural terms, Wilber describes the problem of polarities splitting groups of individuals apart:
Whenever someone wants to get us from a "bad" state to a "good" state, violence is not far behind. Of course you want to move from pollution to a clean environment, but don't pretend that God sits on one side and the devil on the other. No matter how peaceful you're trying to be, this split will always lead to aggression. (Matousek, 1998, p. 106)
The answer Wilber and Maslow suggest to this problem is inclusion. The reconciling of these opposites. "Ultimately, we have to arrive at a notion of spirit as the ground of all that arises, from toxic waste to prisitine clear water. And that experience . . . is not adverse to other tastes" (Matousek, 1998, p. 106).
To rise above dichotomized nationalism, patriotism, or ethnocentrism, in the sense of "them" against "us," or of we-they . . . My identification with nationalism, patriotism, or with my culture does not necessarily mitigate against my identification and more inclusive and higher patriotism with the human species. (Maslow, 1971, p.275)
This also has implication in therapy. A therapist begins to notice certain unreconciled poles and can work with the client to integrate them. This integration brings rise to a new worldview, one that includes the previous one. Nothing is lost or denied, it is evolved into a new perception or understanding.
Not that we're necessarily engaged in therapy here (although maybe we are, come to think of it). For more such therapy, and at ericswan's urging, I might add, try these Gaian dreams:
~~~the GaianMindProject
and
~~~Ralph Abraham's The Fundamentals of Being
Cut, I haven't even finished reading your whole post yet, but a couple of things you wrote already struck me. First, quoting someone who was quoting someone you wrote:
“When you obsess on your adversaries, you risk becoming like them. The more you shape your life through your responses to things you don't like, you invite them to define your destiny."
How true. While I don't know who said it, and even more succinct statement of that truism is:
Choose your enemies wisely, for you shal become like them.
On Earth being the "biggest tent there is": Have you looked at the sky, especially the night sky, lately?
Of course you have (unless you live in some hyper lit up city). I'm just kidding. I would turn your statement on its head a little and say that the earth is, perhaps, the smallest tent we should be looking at. Because we're all in it together. No argument with the general hypothesis however.
And I just want to give an endorsement in progress to Frans de Waals' work. I downloaded a hefty chunk of it and, while I haven't finished it, I think it's the most intelligent and best written stuff on biology and behavior across the spectrum that I have ever read. Having never encountered deWaals before, I wanted to thank you for putting up that link.
IC,
On NPR, the newsreader, quoting from Vaslav Havel's address to congress said; "The one thing we have learned from Communism, is that consciousness does indeed precede being".
I remember it well, because it seemed strange for the preeminent propaganda organ to choose this phrase to quote from, and because it came to serve as an effective 'hook' for ideas percolating in my head at the time.
I have tried to google Vaslav Havel’s address to congress, no luck. I am interested as I wonder if the NPR quote was even taken directly from his speech.
Hey IC, if you were to put your great links, maybe with short commentaries, on your site, you could become the unofficial RI-Woo-Woo clearinghouse.
I missed the Frans de Waals link for instance; and if Sam Hill recommends it, well now I got to find it.
Trouble with the notion of transcending opposites is that you still have an opposite--transcending and not-transcending. So how do I transcend the transcending/not-transcending dichotomy?
Here we have to go into another realm of consciousness to work out the answer to my question and that is what, it seems to me, all these bizarre situations we read about on this blog are telling us--our "normal" view where we demand settled binary answers forces us into a realm that is deeply paradoxical, i.e., that paradox (not either/or but either/and) itself becomes the new normal. All this, of course, demands a tremendous sense of humor.
Thanks, Sam. Frans de Waal is a very bright light indeed. I've got a link to an outstanding interview with him around here somewhere, if you're interested. It seems that I have more of a talent for stumbling across this sort of golden nugget of the etherscape than I do for expressing the haggis that is my thought process in a coherent fashion. (Not that this last one is exactly golden in hue.) Maybe I'll even comb through the vats of blather I've cooked up over the years and put together a list of my best finds.
I'm still thinking about your cetacean meme--having chosen this ridiculous cephalopoid moniker, I've probably got some ethical duty to investigate my more intelligent cousins. There are even some rather odd conspiracy theories surrounding our gentler, kinder kin out there. Way out there. Others present an antidote to Melville's symbolic bloodlust. O, diversity.
Sounder,
I didn't see your serendipitous comment until I got here this morning, but like minds do certainly cogitate in strange synchrony. That missing link was to Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved, where de Waal lays down the basic premise of his extraordinary claim. I am currently casting about for a way to organize the haggis of links...(no small task for an inveterate chaotic attractor like me.)
Christopher,
Couldn't agree more. Douglas Adams, the Pythons, FZ and most of my favorite influences were all pointing to higher truths with irreverent looniness. (Check out Christopher Moore, too. He might be the next reincarnation of the still-living Tom Robbins.)
On Order Cetacea: dolphins and whales. (also porpoises btw):
Orca, the largest type of dolphin, of the transient variety prey on other cetaceans, including their cousins whales. They also, in rare cases resort to canibalism. Other dolphins sometimes kill poprpoises and even their own young for no apparent reason.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they're evil creatures or anything. In fact, I'm a big fan of our watery brethren... I think it's even likely they are fully sentient creatures and we're probably just too stupid, arrogant and self-absorbed to understand when they try to communicate with us. I just wanted to point out that they are not the angelic, transcendant, peaceful creatures popular culture often paints them as. They're just ... well the way they are, and I don't think too much more can be read into it regarding any sort of cosmic plan or perfection of spirit.
On Blood Rituals - the WHY?:
This has always eaten at me. I find the notion that they want to somehow scare us to not fit. The only us to scare would be folks like us here on RI. The vast majority of the population doesn't even know there is a them and therefore wouldn't be any more afraid than they are of the usual urban violence which surrounds us every day. Other notions, such as a method of binding eachother together (participants) or ensuring loyalty by blackmail also I find to be "not enough" of a reason. Further, the idea that these rituals somehow impart special powers, besides perhaps in their own minds, I find stretches credulity to the limit for me personaly.
I think we here are a bit desensitized to just how aborrhent this type of behavior is. Besides for some rare individuals who have some bad wiring in their brain, I'd wager that it is extremely difficult to overcome both natural and social instinct enough to engage in these blood rituals - doubly so when they involve children.
Speaking of desensitazation, it has occurred to me that the dribs and drabs of information on this topic may be seen as a way to desensitize the public at large to the shock of such a thing. Similar to the loss of freedoms and liberties... people from the post revolutionary war era would be shocked and appalled at the state we are in now, yet little by little over time and the people are pretty complacent about it. This would be a fairly scary prospect because it would indicate that they are paving the way for a future which holds blood sacrifice as a 'normal' occurrance. Still, it does not answer the root question: WHY?
I have yet to see an answer to this which adequately addresses the whole issue thus far. I can only conclude that at this time, we don't have enough data to answer the question. There are missing pieces to this puzzle.
I'm a new reader of RI, and am pleasently suprised by the depth of the discussions going on in the Comments area. I'm almost intimidated to leave a comment myself, but I figure "what the hell?"
I have a few thoughts on this. Not firm convictions, just ideas and questions. First: could evil be a sort of inorganic type of energy force? Something that can infect or possess conscious beings? I know this is pretty obtuse, maybe a bit flaky sounding, but it's something to chew on nonetheless.
Second, the following Burroughs quote comes to mind after reading this post: "Is Control controlled by it's need to Control?" I think the answer is a most resounding: "Yes." I think this is a motivating force behind many of these abusive, brutal acts described in the post: a flat-out addiction to control. And if anyone here is familiar with addictions of other sorts, then this notion should jive with you.
My third point is just an extension of my second point on control and addiction. It seems to me that sexual fascism is quite the backbone of SRA. Sexual fascism is also widely seen in politicians and figures of authority.
So that's my $.02. Thanks for reading.
Tsoldrin: I love the question "why?" it is very healthy. In terms of blood-rituals I have never participated in them so I don't know but I have known people who were into "evil" because it was such a rush and created power. I would guess that hurting and dominating others creates a sense of space and liberation from contraints. I have done a little bit crossing boundaries in my life (never through violence) and it provides a strong feeling of potency and spaciousness--I would guess that the same is true of violence. Though he doesn't directly deal with the blood-rituals, Chris Hedges wrote very beautifully about war (which is like a blood-ritual on second thought) in his book War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. I think there is an addiction to the rush of danger--I've experienced that and I've known people who were addicted to danger and also war (a friend who rushed from covering one war to the next, somewhat like Hedges).
There is one book about evil that impressed me greatly and was written by M. Scott Peck called People of the Lie. Might be worth looking at in the context of your question.
Tsoldrin,
Overall, both a nice summation of our predicament and of the discussion at hand. The point with the ambiguous nature of the cetaceans (and our inability to appreciate them for what they are) is that they, too, reflect the all-encompassing nature of the One, just as we do. When you conclude that, because of their non-angelic nature, we shouldn’t “read into it regarding any sort of cosmic plan or perfection of spirit,” this does not necessarily mean that there hasn’t, or won’t emerge such a teleology. Those Goethe-inspired biologists and physicists—natural philosophers in an earlier age—all find a (still vague) sense of purpose in the patterns of emeregent form which they investigate. (de Waal, Hegge, Bax, Sheldrake and Rucker, among others.) As with our dimly-understood cetacean cousins, just because we can’t yet clearly see it doesn’t mean it ain’t there. I know about your insistence on rational discourse & method, but these folks I’ve mentioned are scientists, if of a slightly unusual stripe.
On the question of the why behind SRA, while it’s clear that we don’t possess all the puzzle pieces yet, maybe logic suggests that each of the segments, even if contradictory or counter-intuitive, might be parts of the whole explanation. Think about it. They get the herd used to the idea, cleverly building outrage among their bible-humping constituency for the very thing they’re behind (just like the support for the Drug War from which they profit so mightily, if indirectly), while simultaneously discrediting the outlandish claims of the conspiracy crowd who’ve unwittingly bought into that damned get-power-by-slaughtering-innocents meme, and in the process cast doubt on all our elite-watching conclusions.
The other connected idea is that the desensitization involved with the exposure to such ghastly stuff is very much part of the ongoing campaign to hide the great truth of the power of love, compassion, forgiveness & altruism behind the seeming mastery and ubiquitousness of violence as the means of survival. Is it any wonder that slasher flicks are so much more prevalent than stories which tell the story of authentic, life-affirming power? (Joyeux Noël is a nice example.)
Running the world obviously isn’t enough; they need to kill hope if they’re ultimately to succeed, which they won’t because we can and must transcend that part of us which feeds them, while they can’t transcend anything, but can only accumulate.
One last tip, and to bring us back to cetacea, there's this one, for anyone who might be interested in listening to an electronic guitar sound communicating with Dolphins: Ode to Dolphins - A Jam Between an electric guitarist and at least 300 Pacific white-sided dolphins. (From this unbelievable smörgåsbord of things cosmic, brainy, and hopeful.)
IC, Good stuff! That dolphin link is a gem. I'm glad someone is working on that type of communication as opposed to the usual 'mimic the human way' sort of stuff. I wish they'd hurry up and crack the code though, so I can head down to the docks and start my 'dead fish for sunken pirate treasure' exchange program! ;)
As a survivor, I think that the aim of ritual abuse is at least partly to cover up incest. This may sound very simple, but the means can be very complex indeed: 'covering up' doesn't just mean destorying the physical evidence (killing the eleven-year-old's baby) as in this case, but translates into terrorizing and controlling the victim's mind to such an extent that surrounding the basic fact of the incest are layered walls of silence and denial so thick as to be cryptic.
I noticed the prevalence of the number thirty-three in this case. Cynthia's sister committed suicide in 2005, aged 33 and leaving, the newspapers report, a 33-page suicide note. The inquest decision comes in the year that baby Noleen would have been 33 had she lived. Thirty-three is a spiritually contested number and therefore something they want to control, as they want to control our hearts and minds. Remember the film May 33rd?
Rest in peace baby Noleen, my inner children who saw other babies dead and all of us mourn for you.
BTW: For anyone wondering, yes, I do fear for my life in being so open about my experiences when justice has not been done. However, I feel that the truth has more power than silence ever will.
It seems to me through experience that all these occult black magic practices etc etc are the desire to attain powers "Siddies". its all very very fascinating, x ray vision, the power to transverse space/time instantaneously,create weather (read up on Milarepa) Many plants Datura,Mushrooms Peyote etc etc enable one to cross over into other worlds where the laws are different to this one.
Some shamans spend all their time in these worlds playing around,but if you listen to the ancient guides/teachings they say that all these realms are only as real as this one and all the worlds are just part of a greater samsara.
So the advice was always to keep going beyond the beyond because if you tarry in these worlds and obtain Siddies You may think you have finally made it but you had better watch out because you are still creating new Karmas for yourself in fact you are stuck there and the clock is still running on your life and will run out
then comes the great cosmic change of address.............................
There are many warnings about attempting to gain these powers eg the demons take over etc.
you could enter a quagmire of hate,envy,lust,murder leading to unbelievable evils and suffering,why ?
To obtain power the Agori Nagas in India for who there is only one, so there is no right / wrong,good/bad clean/dirty they hang out in graveyards and cremations waiting for the head to pop open and rush in to grab the brains to eat,so you can kill children anything the human mind/imagination can think up to be able to cook up some really crazy demonic forces to do your will ,but as the great God Shiva the lord of destruction says: "Your heads and tails exist for you alone"
demons from the brain angels from the heart.
This is illusion is deep and this world allows everthing.
So what have you attained
Dominion over this world or dominion over yourself
as i tell the children not to fear ghosts,dark spirits because here we dwell with the gods of light and Love (that is under suspicion in some quarters) so we really have nothing to fear......................
These poor humans sucked into all that like the new boy soldiers in Iraq who have now so much blood on their hands and can never wash it off, so what will you do? the day they kick the doors in to come and take us all I will fight like a tiger and just have to play out one of the outrageous paradoxes in this life,take a life to save a life!!
be courageous
On On
The home of the infamous european toxic clan, psycho urban fraggers that pawn the virtual return to castle wolfenstein enemy territory battlefields.
Just Pub, a dumb return to castle wolfenstein enemy territory comic strip by feuersturm.
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