Consensus reality has outlived its evolutionary usefulness
Catte
The nature of reality used to be a philosophical, metaphysical contemplation. But now it’s political. There’s a struggle going to to take ownership of what defines it. And our most instinctive ideas about what it is need to re-evaluated.
Reality beyond our immediate awareness is constructed from information received via personal anecdote to some extent, and beyond that, by information streaming services such as news outlets, blogs, independent journalists.
A process of reality-modification is ongoing, continuously updated, on a personal and a collective level. On the collective level reality is constructed through assimilation. Daily announcements are made – usually via mainstream or social media – that certain events have occurred or that a trend is being observed somewhere. These events/trends will be analysed, debated, compared to other similar or contrasting events/trends, and gradually synthesised into the ever-evolving thing we call “the real world.”
Interpretations of those events will differ, often splitting along quite predictable political or cultural lines. Crime statistics will be seen differently by supporters of the status quo than by those who oppose it. The same with other “controversial” topics such as immigration, poverty, war, gender rights etc etc.
The vast majority of these differences occur within an acceptance of the alleged event/trend. It’s rare that these differences extend to questioning whether or not the event/trend is even real.
There’s a good reason for this. In evolutionary terms, accepting collective narrative testimony as being broadly true is a rational thing to do. If you’re a tiny australopithecus in a huge and dangerous world, ignoring the fact the other australopithecines are screaming there’s a predator in that tree over there is unlikely to produce a good result. You go with the majority verdict on such things. Stay away from the tree and survive to evolve.
It’s equally rational, on this basic human level, to think that the larger the number of individuals telling you something, the greater the likelihood this something will be true. In a world view dominated by direct observation and – at most – second hand testimony, such multiple certitude is very very likely to be broadly grounded in fact.
If you’re a neolithic person and thirty of your relatives and friends are telling you those bushes over there have the best berries, and only one person – weird cousin Groot – is saying no, it’s those bushes over there, you’re probably wisest to go with the majority view, simply because the likelihood of thirty of your relatives lying to you or being mistaken about the berry situation is probably close to zero. These thirty people have been to the bushes themselves individually. They’ve seen the fruit. Their collective testimony is undeniably worth more than that of Og, the single outlier, whose observations could be confused or motivated by a spiteful desire for you to waste your time.
So our innate tendency to believe “majority” statements that are authenticated by collective observation is actually very sound and grounded in our evolution as a societal creature.
Where it begins to fail us is when increasing civilisation removes the proximity between the reporters of events/trends and the events/trends themselves.
From the moment the information about where to find the best berries comes, not from personal observation, but from an announcement on a clay tablet hung on the wall of the meeting house, the potential for confusion and/or disinformation increases dramatically. And at this point our instinct to trust the majority view becomes more of a hindrance than a help. Because when our thirty relatives come and tell us where the best berries are they are no longer offering you thirty individual firsthand testimonies. They are offering you the same, unverified, testimony thirty different times.
At this point, if weird cousin Groot comes and says he’s checked it out and the clay tablet is lying – it’s those bushes over there that have the best berries, he’s actually more likely, rationally speaking, to be correct, given he’s bothered to investigate and the thirty other people haven’t checked anything at all.
But if we were there, would we, as individuals, act on this likelihood? Would we even process it? Or would we just go with the flow and head off to the bushes the “majority” seem to be recommending? Would we likely point and laugh at Groot, trudging off to his silly old minority-endorsed berry patch. And would we likely continue laughing even when he comes back with huge amounts of luscious fruit, while we have almost none?
A strange truth about humanity is, once enough people have read something or heard something, and passed it on, our hardwired instinct to trust what our trusted people tell us begins to reinforce that information irresistibly, even in the face of refutation or evidence to the contrary, even in the face of clear proof it isn’t, and never was true.
Our consensus reality is stuffed with such anomalies. Relic “truths” that aren’t true. Relic “events” that never happened as recounted or never happened at all. Because collective, consensus “knowledge” trumps individual observation. It needed to for eons while we evolved. And now we can’t turn it off, even though it no longer makes any sense.
I’m not even discussing here the question of who controls the information on which our realities are built. This is discussed a great deal, and it’s vital. But there’s another question – viz how much does anyone control it – even those who like to think they do? To what extent has the invention of collective “truth” reached a point beyond control? Become self-pepetuating, impervious? Like a space probe in a vacuum, moving irresistibly in the direction it was propelled, simply because there’s nothing to stop it or slow it down?
Look at this one small example from recent “news.” The Guardian today has an article on “moped enabled crime“. It’s a problem. It’s increased by nearly 2,000% in four years (from around 1,000 in 2014 to over 19,000 in the year to last September). There are statistics. A solution is badly needed. More money for the police maybe. Or – possibly – an immunity for police officers who run over people or damage property while chasing mopeds in their squad cars (you can see why this would help keep us all safe).
Problem. Reaction. Solution. We know it well. But check it out. Look at the source. A press release of nine months ago from the Mayor of London’s office, that simply says “in the last year there were more than 19,385 moped enabled crimes in London – an average of 53 a day – including thefts and robberies.”
Ok. Well, “moped enabled crime” is a pretty vague definition. What’s included? Getting away on a moped after robbing someone? Attacking someone with a moped? Stealing a moped? Acccidentally running over someone on a moped while drunk? The question seems to be begged – isn’t “moped enabled crime” just crime with incidental moped quite a lot of the time?
And what about those vague statistics? Who compiled them? Under what direction? With what agenda? Where did they get their facts? And where did that source get the info from?
The press release doesn’t develop or explain and the Guardian, of course, didn’t ask. We just get the headline. Which of course has the effect of endorsing “moped enabled crime” as a piece of commonly understood reality ever after. Where in this echo chamber of chinese whispers is the actual, hard, cold truth? Have you ever seen anything you thought of terming a “moped enabled crime”? I haven’t. I don’t know anyone who has. If, as is entirely possible from my current POV, no one in 7 billion of us have ever seen or conceptualised such a thing or been victim to such a thing, how would this disparate but actual reality ever be asserted in the face of the apparent, but illusory consensus “truth” created simply by putting that term in a newspaper?
And to what extent will defining it and publicising it be involved in actually creating it? Even if the claim of “increasing moped enabled crime” is a deliberate/accidental lie at the time of utterance, will it become true simply by being uttered?
And will we ever know the difference?
Have to say at this point – This isn’t an article about moped-related crime. I don’t own a moped and can claim no experience of ,or expertise in, anything moped-related, criminal or not. It may indeed be a crucial aspect of the current underworld, and there may be places in London where the sound of a 50cc two-stroke in the distance brings cold fear into a thousand hearts. But that’s not what this article is about. So, I hope we don’t get umpteen comments telling us it’s ABSOLUTELY A MAJOR PROBLEM and Catte should be flayed for making light of INNOCENT VICTIMS of moped-based HATE.
The point is, we human beings, as collectors and disseminators of “reality” will never know if it’s true or not. None of us. Despite the most simplistic kinds of “presstitute” memes, the journos who wrote the piece don’t know any more than we do how real it is. The Mayor’s office doesn’t know. Even the compilers of statistics don’t know, unless they were on the streets personally documenting every case of moped criminality in the greater London area in the past two years.
It’s less that we are being intentionally deceived and more that the system itself has lost its grasp on what is real, and doesn’t much care. Real is now nothing more or less than what someone says it is. The right someone in the right place at the right time. Maybe in pursuit of an agenda. Maybe just because it’s easier or cheaper. Maybe because they really think it’s true. It doesn’t matter. No one ends up knowing the difference.
The point is our ancient concept of consensus reality isn’t working any more, and probably hasn’t been for longer than we are comfortable contemplating. Can we even tell the moment it began to diverge from veridical reality, let alone see how far its path has now diverged? All we know is our histories are assemblies of anecdote taken on trust. Few to none of us were there when the events allegedly happened. If we go back further than ninety years none of us were even alive to hear about them third or fourth hand. Everything beyond our own first awareness is an assembly of communal trust.An act of faith in our own human narrative.
Our culture is still basically the neolithic one of collective understanding, but lost in cognitive trauma. Collective experience has moulded us to be what we are. We owe it everything. Without it we are nothing. Yet collective experience is blatantly not telling us the truth any more. Guy Fawkes was likely a patsy set up by Robert Cecil. The Gulf of Tonkin was a lie. The “gas attack” at Douma didn’t happen. Babchenko wasn’t dead.
There are NO berries where we are being told to find them. We need to find the courage to evolve to the point we can finally admit this and move on to a different form of understanding in which “consensus” is interrogated as a matter of course.
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Catte, I enjoyed the article. We are working on this very issue at Trive.news
No disrespect intended, but there’s way too much overthinking in this article and many of the replies. It’s a very simple situation really. Evolution may gave something to do with it, but is the right place for a paper on human psychology, so now down to the crux of the matter: a) Society and politics and the media in our NATO and 5 Eye countries has / is being deliberately financialised and corporatised. b) This machine has decided to go to economic and probably physical war with Russia, the country with the largest natural and varied assets in the world. c) Public opinion has to be controlled then softened up in order to “legitimise” it. d) all the propaganda organs are whipped into shape and are blaring out the same message. Deviation is not allowed. e) Two Minutes Hate occurs across the media every day with the face of Emmanuel… Read more »
Trusting others continues until by doing so you cross whatever line causes your brain to shout ‘help,’ I had a financially secure childhood and school was years of sitting in classrooms learning from books. I learned the hard way aged 23 what advice from seniors gave me. It was then that trust was replaced by skepticism. It took me going down to 10 stone 7 in weight, cheeks collapsed inward and a realisation that schools, teachers and parents had played me as a statistic to make me what I still am today, an irascible skeptic who could not care if you are the US President, you could still be a liar until proven trustworthy. I learned that most get on by not rocking the boat, not by always doing the right thing, always taking the tough decisions. People generally trust if they are not educated to compare words with actions.… Read more »
But who inspects the inspectors…? Fixing an election is no more difficult than finding a way of selecting like-minded people to be your inspectors, or – even better – getting a voting machine to inspect the other voting machines…
One eternal truth about blackberry picking is that the best brambles are only the best for a few years before ecological evolution changes the game. They emerge when the time is ripe and die back again later on.
This article displays an epistemological pessimism so radical as to deny the very possibility of objective knowledge. This is not just obviously wrong, but politically (and economically, socially, culturally, morally and intellectually) dangerous. Whilst it may be difficult to find out what actually happened, it is not impossible. If it were, science would not be possible, history would be nothing but fiction and myth, and law courts would be mere lotteries.
Nowhere do I deny it’s possible to know what is objectively true. I simply point out we currently DON’T, and that acknowledging this fact is becoming essential.
There’s lots of stuff we may not know but there’s an awful we can work out by use of logic and reason. It drives me to distraction the way people, many of whom are much more knowledgeable than I am, are reticent about expressing a firm opinion on something because they believe that there isn’t enough evidence to justify it when there is, in fact, more than sufficient. I believe it’s often logic and reason that can provide information to us more than data per se. With regard to our ancestors I remember reading a book on natural pharmacy where the author stated that people must have intuitively been drawn to particular herbs and other plants for their healing properties – that the amount known simply couldn’t have been worked out by trial and error. That might be something we’ve lost from ancient times too, being in tune with our… Read more »
I don’t use the same terms as I feel living the true of our convictions is not an opinion but qualities of life drawn in all honesty to stand in, live from and be the experience of. That does not mean it is a fixed belief – because by living from trust and honesty we open awareness to what was not recognized before and grow. There are many facets to why we inhibit, distrust or deny our own knowing and instead give way to the rules set under past learning to escape the feared outcomes that the past taught us to expect from breaking the rules. I put it to the reader – do you know your existence with certainty? Not silly mind games that gloss over in search of witty diversion or pompous pronouncement in obfuscation of the lack of substance. But can you – will you – open… Read more »
Knowing about is defacto subjective. Seeking to eradicate all traces of vitalism, psychism’ or spirit is to effectively initiate the transhuman AI/robot agenda. The conviction of the ‘elites’ tends to align in the manipulation of human units as an energy system – that is their ‘objective’ as the perfection of control to full spectrum dominance. But knowing about is a set of definitions and associations that may or may not serve purpose – the key word being purpose. If ‘command and control’ can use ideas to extend its agenda then they are made ‘true’ or real – and once a huge corporate investment follows along they become structurally reinforced as ‘too big to fail’. But knowing is not at the verbal mental level of thinking about or associating and identifying with – it is the very nature of your being – or perhaps the being of you , because it… Read more »
stevehayes13: my friend, have you just woken from a coma from the early days of the post-Enlightenment humanist project? For better and worse, the world has moved on since then. Logical certainty and pure objectivity are now the unholy relics of a Judeo-Christian Absolutist and essentialist structure and value system that lies at the root cause of humanities subjugation and eternalised moral pubescence. We live in a subjectivised phenomenological world of perceiver and perceived (Dasein; Being and being; Lifeworld); where the vainglorious attempts of intellectuals to banish metaphysics have essentialised metaphysics within the very structure of thought, speech, and language. No thought can escape its structure: as it becomes self-reflexive. We cannot escape our thoughts: as we become self-reflective (insularised). Welcome to the postmodern, post-truth world of dictatorial relativism, Here, you will find that science is NOT possible: it has become the recursion into confusionism and the apodictic confirmation of… Read more »
Big B, your tongue may be firmly in your cheek, but your “text” reads exactly like the nonsense produced by the pseudo-intellectual postmodernists, whose epistemology denies the very possibility of epistemology.
That is exactly what I was parodying: but not just the postmodernists …the whole Western canon of thought is confusional. I recently re-read Husserl: he does not even know what his own Hyle is. And I am not he first person to notice this: his own student, Merleau Ponty, tried to correct his mistakes. The question is: how did Kant, Nietsche, Heidegger, Husserl, Sartre, Russell get it so wrong? The ontology of reality and human nature that is? I do think that Barthes, Derrida, and Baudrillard have a lot of merit: and Sausurre/Pierce/Levi Strauss et al were on the right tracks with Structuralism/Semiotics/Post-Structuralism. But that broke down in the interpretation, as Derrida more or less said it would. Now we have the micro-politics of identity, third wave feminism, etc and our understanding of ourselves is at an impasse. A recursion to Absolute Enlightenment Project values is a return to where… Read more »
The sophists have been much maligned: first by Plato and by classical scholars and philosophers ever since.
I feel so cheated, you not ma guru no more.
@candide .. LMSO , i could even hear the intonation in that comment: you made me laff’ n’ laff’ so much, I just had to let you know how much I love yer’ sense of humour: in difficult heavy times all over the planet , and after much heavy conversation,
Great humour always saves the day .. 😉
tears streaming down,
What a hoot,
I thank you 🙂
Bless you
balky
Law courts are mere lotteries.
Oh well that’s that then Mulga. Whose up for cannibalism as the ‘new fad diet’?
Come on, you can say more than a mere cynical throwaway line.
Of course justice is often corrupt – but there is more to law than you are letting on or else why would the technocracy push these secretly drafted ‘trade’ deals to bind nations under law of contract?
Giving all the focus to the disease serves contagion.
The Common Law is invented by judges. They say one thing in a lower court, the opposite in a higher court. What the highest courts determine today, a new court in ten or twenty years will utterly refute and overturn. Judges are carefully selected for their ideological reliability, which is well known among their peers. They nearly all come from a narrow, privileged, stratum, went to the same schools and universities, live in the same elite enclaves and hold the same opinions. The law in the Anglosphere is a lottery- a rigged lottery.
Is there law in life or a rigged lottery? Underneath our perception is the measuring stick of judgement. As you judge so are you judged is a statement of a just law. But in a world made by judgement, the evasion of responsibility is hidden in fig leaf thinking that thinks to have escaped or outsourced its debts to be paid in pain and death by others. The development, shape-shifting, evolution of a lies is always an allow of love and hate in the world where the many love to hate and find vindication for their self evasion in vengeance upon the pharmakoi. It isn’t that you don’t witness a truth – but that you assign it as The truth – and scapegoat it to the Anglosphere. The corruption of power hollows out and works through any host and works its destruction after propagating itself to new forms. True disillusion… Read more »
N.B. M.B. Mulga bro. fair & great comment that should be qualified, if you’ll permit me .. “Law courts are mere lotteries…” unless you attend WITHOUT a Lawyer, but with an official fully Cognisant independent Legally Certified Translator and demand an immediate copy of all the recordings of the proceedings: from both the MICROPHONES and the INVALUABLE work of the Court Recorder , sitting furtively typing away in the corner .. (best ALL courts be videoed imho ! With a copy also for the defendant if they feel that tampering within and by the Legal establishment is likely .. ) ONLY then is the JUDGE paying MAXIMUM attention to detail and the letter of the Law, with a qualified witness for the defendant that counts … >> The most important person in courts today is not the Judge it is the court recorder and it is only with microphones that… Read more »
As with most Guardian Opinion articles, the article on moped-enabled crime isn’t clear on what it’s actually all about. I presume it’s actually a plea for more money to go into policing.
But I suspect though that most Fraudian articles are deliberately written to confuse readers into thinking they are about one thing when they are really about another, so as to get more approving clicks.
What is true is important, but it’s not the Truth.
What is true may put ones mind at ease, but it won’t make one happy.
Truth, in the full sense of the word, gives Love and equanimity.
Everything else is entertainment for our busy, busy minds.
‘Headless’ via the heart: http://www.headless.org/english-welcome.htm
Your mind will find a hundred excuses, but not ONE logical reason, to dismiss it.
I think you have a point. It’s shameful but I do find an entertainment factor in looking at the bullshit we’re fed and trying to sort it out … and having a chortle over it too just like the people feeding it to us which also feels shameful. This morning as I was getting ready for work, a random YouTube video started playing – William Rodriguez, the big hero Twin Tower janitor of 9/11 who rescued “hundreds and hundreds” was speaking at some function. I’d vaguely heard he was a “disinfo agent” but I don’t like the way everyone accuses each other of being that – I believe that in so many cases we just have different opinions – so I didn’t pay much attention. However, it hit me as I half-watched the video, he was obviously employed by the power elite. He was the hero (they always have one… Read more »
What we saw on TV was two planes crash into two buildings.
And the buildings didn’t fall down. They didn’t topple. The tops didn’t fall off.
Then one building exploded into dust and fell straight down. It looked strange. Is that what big buildings do?
Then the second building exploded into dust and fell straight down. It looked very strange. Unbelievable.
Then building 7 “fell down” within its own footprint.
2 planes cannot cause 3 perfectly controlled demolitions.
The BBC reported building 7’s fall 23 minutes before it happened.
How’s that for swift news service?
John Doran.
GHW Bush, WTC-1993 and 9/11 : ( and a possible attack on Christendom ? ) 3119 is the 444 th Prime Number P444 * GHW Bush DCIA on 30 January 1976 Setting the scene and to get the WTC blueprints : WTC-1993 on 26 February 1993 The planned denoument : 9/11 on 11 September 2001 * GHW Bush DCIA on 30 January 1976 to WTC-1993 = 3119 + 3119 days = P444 + P444 days * WTC-1993 on 26 February 1993 to 9/11 on 11 September 2001 = 3119 days = P444 days * GHW Bush DCIA on 30 January 1976 to 9/11 on 11 September 2001 = 3119 + 3119 + 3119 days = P444 + P444 + P444 days * President GHW Bush Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Cessation of the Persian Gulf Conflict on March 6, 1991 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=19364 “The time has come… Read more »
Correction : March 6, 1991 to 9/11 on 11 September 2001 = 666 + 666 + 666 days 11 September 2001 is incorrect and should have read : * President GHW Bush Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Cessation of the Persian Gulf Conflict on March 6, 1991 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=19364 “The time has come to put an end to Arab-Israeli conflict.” March 6, 1991 to the Jihad on 23 August 1996 = 666 + 666 + 666 days https://www.timeanddate.com/date/durationresult.html?d1=6&m1=3&y1=1991&d2=23&m2=8&y2=1996&ti=on * The 1st Fatwa : “Osama bin Laden’s” reported Declaration of Jihad on 23 August 1996 https://1997-2001.state.gov/regions/sa/bin_laden_charges.html August 23, 1996 — Bin Laden declares a holy war against U.S. forces. He signs and issues a Declaration of jihad from Afghanistan entitled, “Message from Osama bin Laden to his Muslim Brothers in the Whole World and Especially in the Arabian Peninsula: Declaration of Jihad Against the Americans Occupying the… Read more »
rilme : “What we saw on TV was two planes crash into two buildings.” Well not quite, nobody saw the alleged “first hit” live, apart from GW Bush it seems … The first “blob”, allegedly Flight 11, crashing into WTC1 the North Tower, was, luckily, filmed by the Naudet brothers as part of their “coincidental filming of the Firehouse on Duane St …” NAUDETS = DUANE ST Geddit now ? ( As in the “Manchester Arena event” and it’s alleged perp : Salman Abedi = A Bad Lies Man ) The alleged “seond hit”, allegedly Flight 175 crashing into WTC2 the South Tower has been shown to be TV fakery. The alleged Shankesville “crash site”, allegedly UA93 being overcome with the “Let’s Roll” Mark Bingham nonsense, is nothing of the sort and has been proven to be fake. As for AA77 at the Pentagon, well, nuff said really… No planes… Read more »
Correction : * … the “Let’s Roll” Todd Beamer nonsense.
Mark Bingham was the chap who was reported to have said :
“Hi Mom This is Mark Bingham …”
During a reported ( impossible ) cell phone call from UA93, erm, to his own mother …
MG
In the affluent society of John Kenneth Galbraith is a chapter on conventional wisdom, a concept that relates with Catte’s article, See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_wisdom Parts ‘Because social phenomena (e.g. mh17/Skripals) are so forbidding, or at least so seem, and because they yield few hard tests of what exists and what not (thanks to the MSM), they afford the individual a luxury not given by physical phenomena. Within a considerable range, he is permitted to believe what he pleases. He may hold whatever view of this world he finds most agreeable or otherwise to his taste. … In this competition, while a strategic advantage lies in what exists, all tactical advantage is with the acceptable (where PR comes in: to make BS or untruth to acceptable truth) … To a very large extent we associate truth with convenience (it is more convenient to think that the Russians poisoned the Skripals than… Read more »
“To a very large extent we associate truth with convenience (it is more convenient to think that the Russians poisoned the Skripals than to think that the the British did it) ” … or that no one did.
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” — Neocon Karl Rove.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/karl-roves-prophecy-were-an-empire-now-and-when-we-act-we-create-our-own-reality/5572533
Karl Rove tries on Plato for size …
So, we should take Rove’s advice should we not ?
Study what they do ?
I am curious as to the interpretations of the “we are an empire now” statement.
To whom was the “we” referring ?
Note : This cryptic “reality based community” piece was delivered on 17 October 2004.
The same day that the Iraq psyop entity, “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi”, was reported to have “pledged allegiance” to another psyop entity, “Osama bin Laden’s” Al Qaeda …
al-Zarqawi’s reported gangs were the forerunners to ISIL / IS/ ISI / ISIS …
MG
I believe ‘al-Zaqawi’ was mentioned by Colon Bowell, during his UNSC lie-fest, as an ‘al-Qaeda’ operative who had been in Iraq, for treatment for his amputated leg, if I recall correctly. Yet, when he re-emerged as a propaganda actor, he had, newt-like, grown the leg back.
The reason for including the “al-Zarqawi narrative node” in the above post was simply to illustrate that 17 October 2004 was a special date in the kabbalistic calendar. This “conjunction of events” is another important aspect of narrative analysis. When multiple “events” occur on a single day, or more usually over the course of up to 6 usually consecutive days, then it becomes very obvious that there must be some kabbalistic significance for those dates. Note : 6 days is the maximum number of result days that date arithmetic produces in the most “extreme” circumstances, ie: large date components always including months. The reason for asking the question : “I am curious as to the interpretations of the “we are an empire now” statement. To whom was the “we” referring ?” Was to provoke thought & discussion. When I first encountered Ron Suskind’s “reality based community” piece, I naturally assumed… Read more »
[[ Note : 6 days is the maximum number of result days that date arithmetic produces in the most “extreme” circumstances, ie: large date components always including months.]]
Leading to one of your ‘666’ results as usual?
Don’t forget to include 20th April 1889. will you?
I work with strings of numbers every day. I write them down. Type them out. Key them in. They are entirely random chains of numerals. And it never ceases to amaze me how my brain keeps seeing patterns in that randomness. Hence I am immediately sceptical of numerological inferences being drawn as above. Perhaps I have a certain bias being born on June 6th 66.
Numerology or date arithmetic ? Since a couple of posters have used the term “numerology” and because I have no clue as to what they might mean by “numerology”, would anyone be able to help with a definition please ? Wikipedia has this : Numerology Numerology is any belief in the divine or mystical relationship between a number and one or more coinciding events.[2] It is also the study of the numerical value of the letters in words, names and ideas. It is often associated with the paranormal, alongside astrology and similar divinatory arts.[3] * When you check your bank statement, do you think, “Oh no, not more numerology” ? When you check your change, do you sigh : “Oh no, not more numerology” ? When you add 4 days onto Monday and land on Friday, do you say to yourself :”Oh no, not more numerology” ? When your project… Read more »
Numerology can also be used to denote personality types as in the Enneagram or spiritual states, as shown by Kabbalah.
From my exposure to “numerology”, I would imagine that “numerology” can be used to produce anything one says it does …
All of which is irrelevant to this duscussion, which should be about date arithmetic.
An apple is placed on the table.
The guests have a discusion about an orange …
MG
What something is being used for is the revealing of what it is.
The form of a thing does not in its own meaning rest – but in that which purpose gives it.
First of all: Most people don’t want to know the Truth. Yes, Democracy means, “ruling of the people”, like as if every citizen was King/Queen. But as in the past there always had been lazy Kings, who only cared for hunting, love affairs and fun – and most citizens are of that type. They don’t care about their (political) duties. For the rest of us it is quite easy to find “truth”. You only have to apply two principles: 1) You must not try to realize truth on the “objective” or “positive” way. The example in the article above, finding the bush with those delicious berries in the big, big wood, is a “positive” way. Or a way of “grasping”. To find truth you must go the opposite way: The way of eliminating contradictions, the way of “not grasping”, but cutting away the false. Socrates is famous for his “Socratic… Read more »
Good advice Joerg.
“2.) You must train yourself to r e m e m b e r . ”
Or, use a database …
Then write some code …
Et voila, all becomes clear …
MG
I see Joerg’s good advice as linked with Vierotchka’s pertinent quote above, or rather as modulated by it. We must indeed remember, but also not be confused by too much data that reconfirms endlessly that which we have already established (e.g. via a nifty database as Mark suggests). I.e., beware the wild-goose chase leading nowhere. For example, the MSM lies, government lies, business lies, etc. These are now givens, the evidence is more than ample and continuously available. For my money, it’s now up to us to establish a new version of ‘reality’ founded on transparency and truth telling. In a different formulation: to be actively engaged in learning how to sustain that vector as we learn to establish it. Journey-not-destination sort of thing.
Argh, these living dynamic-balance systems thingies are hard to define without sounding overly convoluted. I hope my meaning is at least part-way clear!
@Toby (and @Mark Gobell) “it’s now up to us to establish a new version of ‘reality’ founded on transparency and truth telling“. Dear Toby, You can’t “establish a new version of ‘reality’ founded on transparency and truth telling“. That’s simply impossible – and it was that throughout human history. To go deeper in what I said: My point is, that the only way to improve this world is the INSIDE WAY. To understand the INSIDE WAY let’s look at the OUTSIDE WAY: It may be a year ago that I saw a video clip of an muslim immigrant in Italy, who went into a Catholic church and destroyed statues of Virgin Mary and other ‘holy’ persons (and his doing was caught by a surveillance camera). This guy wanted to do something good: Fight the ‘wrong way’ of the heathers and lead people to Allah/heaven – instead of to hell. Up… Read more »
I agree and disagree. My short suggestion, wholly lacking in any detail, is meant in total support of the inner way that you describe. However, I disagree that karma is to be avoided. I see the nature of reality differently to the traditional Buddhist position on this one point. We, as consciousness, are always evolving. There is no unchanging end point devoid of all challenge.
Joerg: I did not see this comment before …I could not agree more: our experience of life is ‘representation only’ …vijnapti matra. A note about the Pali Canon. The sermons were not written down for two or three hundred years, if I remember correctly: but the Abhidhamma Pittaka was the categorisation and exegesis by later scholar-monks. This was the foundation for Asanga and Vasubandhu to expound Yogacara. The sub-tradition of Vasubandhu is characterised by his Twenty Verses, Thirty Verses, and Three Natures and represents a complete epistemic. So, as you say, there were those who understood what the Buddha taught, and the Dharma was not eliminated. Yogacara is where to look for liberation. A note about karma: anything beyond the Six Consciousnesses (Six Vijnanas) is, in itself, a karmic formation. It is the karmic realms that are ‘unchanging’: as they always have Self as a referent and operant. The incremental… Read more »
The Guardian up to their usual tricks – now censoring their own staff if they fail to adhere to neocon myths
https://prruk.org/the-guardian-censors-cartoon-in-memory-of-razan-al-najjar-cartoonist-steve-bell-responds/
Finally, the camel’s back has cracked. Stalwart Guardian staffers have found their work ‘does not meet the Community Standards policed by the Hasbara Kommentariat’, and their submissions have actually been bounced by the odious Likud shill Viner.
That’s just the Zionist control. Freedland, Cohen, or another of the Elect would have seen that cartoon, immediately recognised it as ‘antisemitism’, and demanded its removal.
This cartoon was removed by the newspaper’s editor because it didn’t abide by our community standards. Any other sympathy for Palestinians may also be deleted.. Watch your step, Bell – the Matzo Mafia don’t tolerate dissent in the ranks. For more information about our Community Standards, take a walk down Stamford Hill Broadway on a Saturday moning.
We all know which ‘community’ they are speaking of when they refer to their ‘Community Standards’.
Who’s afraid of the work of cartoonists ?
Who murders cartoonists ?
As ever, Israel has form …
https://forum.davidicke.com/showthread.php?p=1062658559#post1062658559
MG
‘Real is now nothing more or less than what someone says it is’ – most people can probably live with reasonable approximations of reality?
The bigger problem (as I see it) is not such much the nature of absolute reality rather the fact certain realities are manufactured, or at least heavily manipulated for geopolitical reasons across outlets that control the lions share of information gateways.
When the omnicidal Right find it easy to deny science, rationality and Enlightenment values in their campaigns to deny all the ecological catastrophes, starting with anthropogenic climate destabilisation, then you know that the jig is up, in the Anglosphere at least. But when supposed ‘Leftists’ also join the denialist Crusade to obliterate our species, on the spurious grounds that the elites are faking 200 years of science, a near universal consensus among scientists working in the field, and the facts of reality, then a certain farcical edge to our self-destruction is added.
For you, MM, I recommend a smashing little book: Human Caused Global Warming, The Biggest Deception In History, by climatologist & historian Dr. Tim Ball.
John Doran.
I recommend a return to high school, and re-acquaintance with basic science. How do you propose that ALL the Academies of Science and scientific societies on Earth and 99% of actively publishing climate scientists, get it wrong, or lie about the science, but your ‘scientist’ Tim Ball, gets it right? Use your brain.
High school! You need to break out of that one if you are going to lift up your eyes to see. I suggest – forget the claims to be a ‘consensus science’ (sic) and just sniff it for the signs of a psyop – or guilt and fear driven manipulation. Oh this is different. This is about real guilt and real fear based on real facts? So anyone who doesn’t conform is out of a real job and as a ‘denialist’ will really pay the penalty. They are in the business of inventing or distorting reality to manipulate outcomes to suit their agendas and you are their target. How to power a new tyranny – fund the environmental movement and grow a good crop – and then subvert its broad spectrum of concerns to demonize on butter – no sorry cholesterol – what’s up with my typing – carbon dioxide… Read more »
I read Yudkin’s ‘Pure White and Deadly’ when it was first published. That science was suppressed by the sugar industry in the USA, in EXACTLY the same manner in which anthropogenic climate destabilisation science has been suppressed and denied by the fossil fuel industry, the richest by far on Earth, the Right and a weird ‘Leftist’ tendency who have been conned into believing that the powers that be are faking 200 years of science, one of the greatest science consensuses ever reached, and MOUNTAINS of evidence from reality. Pray tell, how do ‘they’ fake the melting of montane glaciers around the world, the rapid decline of Arctic summer sea ice, the movement towards to poles of the line of permafrost, the rapid changes in animal behaviour and plant budding and fruiting times etc (I could go on ALL day)?You are correct, in my opinion, regarding Wakefield and Yudkin, but have… Read more »
Thanks for a civil reply. I don’t buy man made global warming climate change as suppressed science but see an insidious attack on humanity via the manipulation of fear and guilt under deceit of victimism from which moral justification to hate is then channelled by the handlers. Once one has awakened within oneself to the nature of victimism, one can discern the deceit regardless any truths into which it is woven. Not that there is not injustice or even insanity to address, but that hate masking as power wreaks misery and destruction while claiming to protect. While I have no sense that CO2 is anything but another demonisation of nature to divert from toxic ecocide and of course genocide I see the way a psyop is set up, carried out and executed – including the use of the corporate tobacco history as a cover story. There is no way to… Read more »
http://www.petitionproject.org/seitz_letter.php
Over 30,000 american scientists protested the fake news 97% consensus. These included over 9,000 PhDs. For the phont 97% meme to hold true there would have to be over 1,000,000 scientists holding to the ludicrous proposition that man’s CO2, Carbon Dioxide, plant food, drives our climate.
Man’s contribution to the CO2 in our atmosphere is less than 4%. 57% is given off by warming tropical oceans, daytimes.
Animals alone give off 25 times more CO2 than man.
If you want a book with more science in it try geology Prof. Ian Plimer’s Heaven and Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science
Over 2,000 ref’s to peer-reviewed papers etc.
In the meantime you just keep on sucking up & regurgitating that fake news.
Was that a straw-man argument?
We increased the population of one species of rather large mammal to 1 bn in 1896.
To 3 bn in 1960. To 7 bn in 2015.
That species enslaves at least 3,000,000,000 cattle, which, as you said, emit a lot of CO2 and methane.
We dug up billions of tons of coal and burnt it.
We dug up billions of tons of oil and burnt it.
We cut millions of hectares of forest and burnt it.
Can you see why there are “warming tropical oceans”?
Go and stand in a car park on a sunny day. Stay there until you figure it out.
You’re getting warmer.
I haven’t seen Ian Plimer quoted, save as a joke, for many years. The denialists are nothing if not fanatically ineducable. If the fate of humanity was not in the balance, you’d be amused.
You deride Geology Prof. Ian Plimer who has produced a work of considerable scholarship, 500 pages, 2,000 + references to peer-reviewed papers, etc, while you produce nothing but wild claims of coming doom. You claim the Oregon Petition has been debunked, but it can’t be debunked: it was an honest petition organised by INVITATION ONLY. You claim “Settled science for 200 years” as your constant mantra, which is utter nonsense: only for God is the science settled, the rest of us poor mortals are still trying to figure why our planet drops into & out of Ice Ages. One thing is certain: it sure as shooting ain’t man-made CO2. You claim huge percentages of consensus which don’t exist outside of your “reality” or the fake news MSM. I’ve read of labs full of sceptical scientists, scores of them, all privately knowing that the man-made-CO2-warming meme is utmost foolishness, but none… Read more »
There has been no statistically significant warming globally for 20 years, since 1998, which was an El Nino year. El Nino events are warmings of the Pacific ocean through undersea tectonic or volcanic activity, nothing to do with man’s CO2. There is a 40,000 mile chain of volcanoes along the mid-ocean ridges constantly erupting molten lava, fresh water (H2O) Carbon Dioxide (CO2) & much else. The ludicrous notion of controlling the climate by regulating man’s output of plant food CO2 is so farcical that it does not survive even the most cursory study. The Global Warming scare followed immediately upon the heels of the 1970s global cooling scare. It was started summer 1988 when NASA’s James Hansen & Sen. Tim Wirth made a presentation to Congress on the traditionally warmest day of the year. They were rewarded with a heatwave & the heat of many cameras, but just to be… Read more »
As you’re standing in that car park, notice how instantly the temperature drops when a cloud passes between you & the Sun. The Sun produces the heat, not CO2, & the clouds reflect the Sun’s heat back to space. Clouds are water, H2O, not CO2. A 1% difference in cloud cover could be responsible for all the approx 0.7 Deg C increase in temperature observed during the 20th century. In the last 2 years we have lost ~0.56 Deg C as the Earth cools, The weakening of the Sun’s magnetic field is shown by the lack of Sunspots during the present Sun Cycle 24. This will allow through more cosmic rays, upon which more clouds will form, reflecting away more of the Sun’s heat. A cooling effect. It is very likely we are entering a cool period akin to the ~ 500 year Little Ice Age, during which the river… Read more »
With the lives of all humanity at very grave risk from a greenhouse apocalypse of a type that we know was the cause of a number of Mass Extinctions in the past, like the End Permian ‘Great Dying’ (or are you going to deny that, too?)this sort of ludicrous, fossil fuel industry created, garbage, is more than pernicious. The ‘Oregon Petition’, of which you speak, has been so completely discredited that it takes some sort of real ideological or psychological fanaticism to STILL peddle it. Against this fake ‘petition’ and all the other fossil-fuel industry created disinformation, you have EVERY ie ALL, without ANY exception, national Academy of Science on Earth, EVERY learned scientific society and 99% or so of recently published climate scientists, plus the evidence from reality. Are you going to deny the over one degree Celsius increase in global average temperatures in the last 100 years, and… Read more »
What you are actually saying is a false flagged guilt by association with terror. (Greenhouse apocalypse – oh how useful is a deep psychic charge like a the persistent focus in fear of apocalypse – how might that be hacked and used as a proxy weapon? But apocalypse is an unveiling – so that’s my gift here to the willingness to see). False support for a false flag by calling up extinction events from the past – and insinuating that because it is verified, any criticism of your asserted meme is by definition ‘denial’. Your house of straw is blown away. ‘Deniers’ used pejoratively draws from association with Holocaust ‘deniers’ (who may actually include critics holding alternate views as a result of revisiting and uncovering more information about the official narrative, and sources ignored or distorted by that narrative – which has been set above history because of what is… Read more »
Yes, but the science is still the science. Add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and you add retained energy to the Earth system, and thereby destabilise the climate. When you do that as rapidly as we have done in the last 200 years, the destabilisation will, and that is as certain as science comes, destroy the ecological systems, or so severely derange them, that agricultural production will crash, floods unprecedented in human history will devastate, mega-fires will rage, and animal and plant species will go extinct. That will amount to a Holocaust of Life on Earth unseen since the comet impact that finished off the dinosaurs. None of that is, scientifically, in any way controversial, and we see the process beginning already, and science is the best method we have to predict future events in the Earth system.
‘Well a man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest’.
‘Science is science’ – did you write May’s “brexit is brexit” PR?
When is science not science? When it is pay for play.
Have you any idea of the nature of self interest in creating the Earth System?
Like Ghandi and western civilisation, I think science would be a very good idea.
Where do trojans hide to break in and lay waste?
Where you don’t look because you have an identity that automatically reacts as if it is not only fact but true foundation. Science is the willingness to challenge such a narrative.
Sorry, binra, but that, in my opinion, is just verbiage designed, for some reason, to obfuscate the fact that anthropogenic climate destabilisation science is as ‘settled’ as science comes, and concerns the greatest threat, ever, by far, to continued human habitation on Earth. As for ‘pay for play’, that applies the fossil fuel denialist industry created and financed by the greatest monetary power on Earth, the fossil fuel Moloch, not to climate science. By a factor of a couple of degrees of magnitude, at least.
You are welcome Mulga but I see the self destruction of the current paradigm – not least on the AGW as ‘engineered consensus’. The good news is that Science needs to be free of being used as an economic and political weapon for corporate and (captured) government agendas. However scientism is a religion or dogmatic provider of identity – as is anything that dresses in ‘authority’ so as to pass off as tested, true and trustworthy. I accept that you don’t see that such pervasive and systemic corruption is the case. I am not trying to change your mind, but I invite you to look at it before you run with what you are told as if it must be true and so it is.
http://www.biocab.org/Carbon_Dioxide_Geological_Timescale.html
A good essay & graph demonstrating there has NEVER EVER been any correlation, never mind causation, between CO2 & temperatures.
In particular you referenced the Permian.
This started as a glaciation, then temperatures shot up to tropical levels.
CO2 stayed at about 210 parts per million by volume, for millions of years.
Temperatures are completely independent of CO2 concentrations.
Somewhat embarrassing for those peddling your nonsense.
John Doran.
It’s hard to stop laughing.
“the lives of all humanity at very grave risk of a greenhouse apocalypse”
There are three main agendas behind the CO2/warming/climate con:
Depopulation, De-industrialisation & a Totalitarian World Govt.
Ted Turner, who pledged $1 Billion to the lie factory UN IPCC is on record as wanting a 95% global population reduction. Our lives are at risk from the 1%s pushing this nonsense.
http://www.c3headlines.com
Click on Quotes.
John Doran.
Dr Tim Ball makes this clear in his smashing little book.
One important part of education should be learning how to search and possibly find the truth in this political reality. However, teachers themselves provide a space where everything is open to discussion, every thing is questioned, no piece of information is accepted without research.
Merciful Heavens, Pooot, my teachers didn’t.
Can you spell kangaroo court?
Reality-experience is a subjective interpretation of ….. ? The development of subjectivity is also the development of modelling or imaged reality. The subjective seems to be apart from and defining of a reality outside itself. I suggest this is a psycho physical personification and not actually apart or separate at all. Fragmentation is a result of separation trauma, with the persona operating a masking role to mitigate, cope, manage, re-define and operate – if you will – a bubble reality seeking validation and reinforcement externally – as if to overcome a sense of lack and conflict internally. Divide and rule out is the way of not knowing who you are or what anything is, by means of persistent shifting conflicts, polarised and seemingly autonomous and yet the victim and victimizer share the same script. The idea of private creation is the distortion of the communication of presence to effect a… Read more »
So _that_ was why, when communities became large enough to need written tablets they included, Thou shalt not Lie about the berries in the bush.
Very good stuff. A point that very much needs to be made and discussed – explained plainly and simply.
Just one complaint, though: please don’t use the hideous neologism “societal”. The word is “social”. Otherwise eventually we will get “societetal” amd “societetetal”…
While I agree with the drift of this article there is a lot more that can be said about how it comes about that people do not “interrogate” the consensus and, indeed, why they may not notice that there is any point in doing so. I’ve covered some of these in a chapter of a book I wrote which is a critique of economics as a belief system. (In chapter 12 of my book “Credo” whose chapter title is “The attention seeking economy, information and the manufacture of ignorance” (The book can now be downloaded for free at http://www.credoeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/credo.pdf ) Here are some notes on reasons, taken from Chapter 12, on why people may not get beyond the “consensus trance”. Delusions and wishful thinking – errors in which you (and perhaps your group) have an emotional investment which are thus, difficult to shift Denials – things which are too painful… Read more »
Granfalloons! There’s a new one. Interesting (just looked it up)
Your post provides a clear set of examples of negative self interest operating the ‘hidden hand’ of a negative outcome that I expect we can all recognize in ourselves as well as others.
I’ll look at your book – thanks.
Cecil almost certainly set up Guy Fawkes. Cognitive trauma is a result of TMI. Populism is a result of distrust. Trump is the new saviour. Elizabeth 1st’s maxim was “trust no-one”. The KKK is dead or is it? Germany is back in charge. Has anything changed?
Catte, an excellent article and yet Tubularsock doesn’t even like berries!
However, all is not lost!
You have inspired Tubularsock to get a moped and go on a crime spree. It seem to be the “right” thing to do.
Group mind, group think and “reality” must be why ALL the movies and songs and TV and poems, and books continue to regurgitate the same old stories over and over again.
Would stay and pontificate more but Tubularsock’s moped awaits.
Thanks for making me laugh! Best of luck in your new career. I’ll watch out for your mug shot in the Graun.
Tubularsock provokes sleep deprivation after that comment: can’t stop laffin’ & visualising .. (Balky tried lying down to sleep by thinking of NASA’s S.T.E.V.E. “the Purple Streaker, Graun speak” but kept getting recurring imagery) Doubled up@Tubularsock flailing in the wind , draped & stretched over a purple helmet on Jasper’s Funky Moped , gassing down the road with Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement systems of dodgy weather manoeuvres, with Tempest force wind in yer’ back, chewing a Carrot & a purple tinged hot gas emission trailing behind, from yer’ tail gating ‘windslip’ overtaking shot, whilst grabbing (via open car window) Luke Harding’s latest perverse attempt at script writing for the Graun , with huge groans of societal displeasure at the youth of today and the realisation that his mobile phone battery was too flat to film yer’ Demon getaway .. 🙂 And cursing d’Purple “Tubularsock strikes again” , WTF !… Read more »
This piece by John Michael Greer – still warm from the keyboard! – speaks to your ideas, Catte:
https://www.ecosophia.net/bad-faith-and-worse-hairstyles/
Also ‘Shrinking The Technosphere’ by Dmitry Orlov, in a knight’s-move sort of way:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0865718385