Idea Bomb
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h6>Eddison Flame</h6>
Photo by NASA on Unsplash
I want to set off an idea bomb. I’ve been trying to set one off for some time now, but so far I haven’t had any success. Don’t worry though, I haven’t given up yet, and I don’t intend to give up any time soon.
Thinking about my idea bomb problem, I wondered if maybe just talking about what an idea bomb is, and how one might work, could itself be an idea bomb. Anyway, maybe just talking about it would inspire someone else to set one off, which would be just as good an outcome to me.
So an idea bomb is an idea that precipitates sudden and major social change. It is an idea that explodes into the public consciousness and immediately gets people to start doing something new. An idea bomb, to my mind, is not just a mind expanding idea, but it also includes an activity. An idea bomb is like an algorithm, a set of instructions, that people can start doing to instantly improve, adapt to, or otherwise change their life’s circumstances.
To rulers, the idea bomb is the stuff of nightmares. Especially in this age, when an idea can spread around the world in hours or minutes, an idea bomb is truly an existential threat. If some idea were to spread around the world that sparked a global movement, the elites could instantly find themselves in a heap of trouble.
So, in order to be successful, the idea has to be appealing to people. Perhaps this is obvious, but just to be clear, if the idea does not appeal to people, then nobody will try it; it will not explode into the public consciousness. I would also argue that in order to be successful the idea should be simple. It should be simple enough that, with minimal effort, people can understand how the idea is beneficial. This feature, I believe, is what would cause the idea to spread quickly.
With these thoughts in mind, let me propose a sample idea bomb. Obviously, I don’t know that this will actually work, but hopefully it will be enough to get the idea across. Hopefully it is enough to inspire others to start designing their own idea bombs.
So, I was thinking about a particular problem we are facing, definitely in the United States, but possibly throughout the western world too. The problem is that it is very hard to wake people up to the truth that the government, really the whole capitalist system, is the cause of most of the problems we are facing here on planet earth.
People, the majority of people in the U.S. anyway, are very well insulated from these kinds of ideas. The reasons for this are many. Most of us have been indoctrinated from a very young age to love capitalism and to fear and loath anything remotely associated with socialism. This indoctrination is reenforced in our adult lives by what we see on the television. And finally, the icing on the cake, these days the majority us spend our days in well sealed echo chambers. If we don’t go looking for the information ourselves, we are rarely if ever exposed to the truth.
This is a hard problem to solve. Although there does appear to be a steady trickle of people finding their way to our movement, it still seems like we do a good deal of ‘talking to ourselves’. It seems that we have been somewhat isolated from the main stream. So the question becomes, how can we penetrate that bubble? How can we turn that trickle into a flood?
Well, I want to suggest we start holding Saturday meetings. Just imagine, what if, every Saturday, we all started going to our local parks to discuss these ideas? If we just got together in groups and took turns speaking, other people nearby would naturally come around to listen. People are generally attracted by a crowd. They wonder, “What’s going on over there? Why are all those people listening to that guy speak?”, and then they wander over to find out. Wouldn’t this expand our influence?
Imagine the effect this could have over time. Over time, as more and more people started engaging in these Saturday meetings, word would start to spread about them. Eventually it could be spreading quite fast. Eventually our ideas could really take fire, and the trickle could turn into a flood.
So, in order to do this, first the idea has to get out. There will have to be a concerted effort, especially by members of our movement who have a platform and an audience, to spread this idea around, because we will need a solid base of people who are willing to try this out before we start doing it.
Once the word has spread, then we can just start doing it. Of course, if you live in a small town, maybe nobody else shows up to your local park. In that case, you would have to find a park in the nearest large city.
Of course, we could also use social media to arrange these meetings, and this might be a good idea in the beginning. When the movement is still small, it would probably be helpful to publicize meeting places online, just to help people find each other. The goal, however, is to develop a decentralized movement that is taking place in towns and cities all over the world. A movement like that truly is the stuff of nightmares for the elites.
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Please don’t say socialism, how long has that idea been around? Ideas, real ideas come from the place where thoughts are born, in silence. The idea you are talking about is not a reply to other ideas, it can’t come from recombining words already spoken. It certainly won’t come from the intellect. Practice not thinking as well as thinking. Then it will turn up unexpectedly,it may well have done so already but we are all so busy thinking that we haven’t noticed it. As a new idea it can not resemble any other idea so you won’t know it. Just express your ideas and someone may recognise it, even if they don’t it’ll catch on if it’s THE idea. You may not know that you had it!
Some actual ideas would be a start. It’s pointless having assemblies of people ‘discussing’ or ‘debating’ if they’re not animated by actual ideas that begin to address the major problems facing humanity. And there’s no need to waste too much time ‘defining’ the problems because these now are pretty manifest to many: increasing poverty along with wealth and income disparities; the trashing of democratic rights and escalation of state-sponsored surveillance, repression and terror; the increased oppression of religious, racial, ethnic, gender and sexual-preference minorities; emasculation of workers’ power through the smashing of trade unions and hamstringing of workers’ struggles against employer and state attacks; ecoside and a near-universal refusal to tackle global warming; all the other social pathologies that signify the dissolution of a social system and a failure to replace it; and above all, the crisis of a lack of leadership to effectively oppose and otherwise stop all this.
However, ideas aren’t dropped like ‘bombs’, let alone good ideas that work. The notion of a ‘bomb’ implies that everyone gets affected in the same way at the same time, since a bomb blows up everyone in its vicinity simultaneously. Except ideas don’t blow up everyone up at once. Instead they (the good ones at least) seep into mass consciousness beginning with the most influential opinion leaders who take these up and then promulgate them. This is because they must conquer the historical and monumental garbage heap of lies imposed upon to us by the ‘education’ system, organised religion, the mass media, the political infrastructure, etc. Real ideas bombs come with major social upheavals where mass consciousness can change overnight.
In the absence of an upheaval, think of the campagne des banquets before the 1848 French Revolution, or Bernays, or more to the point VI Lenin. The latter always stressed that a revolution needs a revolutionary party and that such a party is built from the top down, not the bottom up. Given that both Bernays and Lenin succeeded in their efforts to change mass consciousness, behaviour and actions, it behoves those seeking solutions to our current predicament to understand this.
Ideas are transmitted through effective propaganda, and the basis of effective propaganda is truth telling. ‘Propaganda’ shouldn’t to be equated to lies, as it’s commonly portrayed today. As Lenin put it, propaganda is many ideas for a few people, and agitation is a few ideas for many people.
So, by all means have ‘Saturday assemblies’ (campagne de banquets would be nice), etc, but have an agenda of issues and ideas that at least attracts those who already have notions of a solution to perceived needs and burning issues.
Here are some ideas/issues for discussion and debate:
1. ‘There is no such thing as an incremental solution to a catastrophic situation’ (to misquote comedian Ron Placone)
2. A social revolution that: replaces the capitalist state with a state based on organs of power that emerge from the revolution itself (eg, workers soviets); expropriates the capitalist class without compensation; socialises the means of production and distribution, and subjects the economy to rational, democratic planning; re-purposes production for the benefit of the population with the preservation of our species at the forefront — is the only way forward. Is there any other solution to our predicament?
3. That a revolution against the most entrenched and bloodthirsty ruling class in history will fail without a revolutionary program and leadership (ie, an instrument of revolutionary leadership, a party of the Bolshevik type), and ultimately will fail if capitalism is not replaced globally. No social revolution is peaceful, and anyone who thinks the next one will be is harbouring dangerously fatal illusions.
4. The working class alone, as politically backward as it might be now, as degraded, browbeaten and ‘deplorable’ as it may be, nevertheless has the social power to bring about a real social change because it has its hands on the levers of production. The capitalist class and its helpers know this, but the working class doesn’t, and its consciousness is kept that way with ‘soft power’, principally by the trade union bureaucracy, the Labour Party and social democratic reformism in general. Changing the consciousness of the working class as to its social power and the key role it will play in a successful revolution is key. But because of the working class’ position, particularly not having the benefits of education, spare time, etc, that our latter day campagne de banquets participants might have, a disciplined revolutionary party which has in its DNA a materialist, Marxist understanding of history’s lessons is also crucially necessary.
5. A thought experiment: if the human race were urgently forced to colonise Mars tomorrow and could muster the resources to take, say, 20,000, who would be needed? How many stockbrokers? Lawyers? Real estate agents? Cops? Businessmen? Now apply this ‘clean slate’ thinking to our planet and think of the social layers and structures, the laws and institutions, that are impediments to human survival and development — our historical baggage as it were — that prevent humanity from junking its backward social development to finally match its technological development. What should never be transplanted to Mars and therefore no longer exist here?
I prefer ‘true witness’ to ‘propaganda’ – which to me is an intention to plant ideas by which then to capitalise later. A study of the last century (at least) shows that the intent to engineer society is taken very seriously, invested with immense resource and carried out patiently and inexorably over generations.
It may be that an invested establishment sees what ideas are ‘necessary’ to the conservation of (their) power over feared pain or loss, and are therefore promoted as ‘true’. As a hierarchy made from the avoidance of feared loss, that ultimately demands any sacrifice to maintain itself. (‘Too big to fail’ – is the insinuation and belief that NOT giving sacrifice to maintain the status quo will result in greater evil than good).
New ideas that arise are not owned or controlled by their namesakes once they are taken up as corporate investment and officially accepted narrative. The operating principle being to weaponise and marketise everything – but hidden or masked in a facade of cultural validity by association. New idea and perspective that are not accepted are suppressed – but when later brought in may sanctify the ‘hero’ who in their life may have been denied or vilified.
This is no less true now than most times past.
PR captures, buys or nurtures key opinion leaders, as well as those who first set out the idea in novels, films, art, leaks or ideas that are given publicity so as to precondition the mind to acceptance.
A difference between truth and illusion is that truth needs nothing to be itself, but illusion requires propping up and persistent protection against the truth to seem true or be plausibly defended against denial or challenge.
This is more like to GM seeds that fail to recreate.
Or like the radio-chemo toxicity that ‘kills the cancer’ but loses the patient.
Perhaps the insane overuse of propaganda will kill the goose that lays the golden egg?
Fragmentation and over specialisation re-enact the tower of Babel.
The ‘victory’ over truth can only be illusory, temporary and at cost of all that is true.
But from its outset, is patently absurd, and allegiance to it, insane – excepting within the frame of thought and behaviours that reflect it as the normalised ‘reality’ of our life and world.
I still think getting rid of the MSM is an indispensable first step. For people to get out to discuss the serious things, they’d have to know what’s going on in the world and it’s not going to happen while they rely on the MSM. All we can do in our own humble way is share non-MSM articles and try to gently persuade people onto sites like O-G.
I do wonder if people really want to be awoken in the sense that we may be in this OG Forum and other alternative social spaces, away from the fourth estate parroting, most accept as their version of truth. Maybe it’s about joining the dots of like minded souls and spaces both in the real world and the virtual one first?
This could be the way we could band together, instead of being in isolation, shouting our truths collectively with credible evidence to back this up. We should try to convey the things we can, without being called tin foil hat conspiracy loons, the label of choice flung at those who are not stuck on group speak mode, but with factual, logic based thought processes backed up by evidence.
I just think if we tried to bombard people, globally with half the truths of both the past and present, and perhaps also the future, it would just be too much for people to process and some people are just as happy not knowing the real machinations going on in the world.
We have to choose some of the subject matters that people will resonant with quickly, which will enable them to throw off the blinkers of the 4th estate/film/celebrity and how governments manipulate narratives by using these tools.
I think with the UK’s first white paper on Online Harm, the government is seeking to shut down ‘alternative’ news as dis-information. It is afraid the MSM along with politicians and broadly governmental systems, trust in them do to the right thing has evaporated.
The GJ movement seems to be on the face of it, a people lead, grass roots driven phenomena. 5 months in and still a force to be reckoned with, even when faced with a militarised police not concerned with using extreme violence to quell dissent. When I saw the stuffing knocked out of the citizens over Notre Dame, my first thought was, oh god, what a terrible shame, everyone is so subdued and traumatised. My second thought was that was incredibly useful, being Macrons popularity was through the floor and he was about to address the nation about tax cuts to appease them..I’m glad the GJ saw through it when rich sorts raised 1 bill in a matter of hours for a Church, but did not address the social problems and poverty, it back fired spectacularly.
Other movements which have had some influence is the way Anonymous has engaged with people all over the globe, whether or not we agree with their tactics, they do get a message across to those that deceive, murder in our names, commit atrocities and how power corrupts at all levels. Reminds of the hacker series Mr Robot with Rami Malik and how they wanted to take down the financial institutions to reset the debt clock. What it actually brought about was financial and economic breakdown, followed by societal breakdown, the ramifications were not considered and people actually hated them for setting them back centuries – sometimes we have to think about what we wish for I guess !
It’s even as simple as me deciding not to buy into Philips Greens brand and how those sorts of memes garner traction across the world for others to take the same action. Wikileaks and Assange has been another way to get your hands on governmental documents which back you up when you tackle some tricky truths also. Reading the MKUltra reports was eye opening, what these people do to others in their pursuit of world power.
Another movement, whether imagined psych op or real deal is the QAnon movement, the amount of Autists (they describe themselves as this) are a focussed analyst research based group, gathering information of enormous proportions, hoping they can piece together their own ‘Truth to Power’ in order to hold these people to account for their actions. Again we may or may not agree with their tactics. But the info they are collecting on all the nefarious things that the elite in their eyes are getting away with in plain sight.
My go to theory on the Skipral case and working back on the timeline right back to the Steele dossier and the five eyes involvement (because it is a recent case in the British domain) usually gets people thinking about on balance what the MSM and government told you and what they actually didn’t tell you. The same with the White Helmets who pays for them, the fake sarin videos and how to debunk them alongside the Hollyweird Oscar, again a quick and easy way to show how peoples emotional responses are garnered to gather manufactured consent to carry on with impunity and people walk away thinking hmmm..
I guess we could start by collating a list of virtual meeting spaces and non virtual (like the meetings UKColumn runs alongside sites like 21st Century Wire and Northern Approaches, so we can break out of the echo-chambers. The many alternative commentators, like Prof Peterson and Douglas Murray – We don’t all have to align perfectly with each other’s ideas or philosophies, but we do need a united front to be able to protect free speech and bring about a new way of both fighting back with reason and validity and the fact we are all humans and we deserve to thrive globe wide, just not under their imagined new world order of things.
Keep chipping away OffGuardian and its members, we may only be the vanguard at the moment, but I feel we are more people than we anticipate. We just need to find a way to converge.
I had a brief conversation with my brother in law yesterday in which he expressed the opinion that the accusations of antisemitism against Jeremy Corbyn were false. My brother in law so far as I can tell is not aware of sites such as this one or alternative media. So if even he can recognise the a-s lie for what it is then there is hope.
I don’t think you are describing anything new here. “Idea bomb”? You mean advertising? Have an idea then tell people about it so they change their behaviours eg go out and buy the product and drink it.
If you want to vote for a Socialist party, go and vote for them.
Simple as.
By the way, the internet doesn’t reach everybody and can be turned off at a switch by Govt. so don’t rely on it 100%.
‘Idea as bomb’ – that is the current paradigm.
That You are an Idea in the Mind of God and as such are wholly beyond corruption or change. is not available or conceivable to the conviction and defence of an idea-bombing doublethink, and so the Idea of Healing is the undoing or if you like – the ‘defusing’ of the mind of the idea-bomb or attack on Life. What else could an illusion ‘do’ given power?
Idea as perfect communication or One in All and All in the One.
Giving and receiving as one – because they are the extension of idea to its creations.
OR idea as possession and control – or marketisation and weaponisation.
That is the choice on which all else depends – because each is a world that undermines and denies the other.
A mind cannot serve two mutually opposing belief systems that both centre on You.
Jesus served an awakening into the Human Psyche – but as a Wayshower, not as a sacrifice by which to terrorise or demand conformity in life-denial by zombie compliance – OR ELSE!
Could it be that the Mindbomb is already undone?
But that like a cartoon character running off the cliff edge and continuing to run by NOT LOOKING DOWN!
The idea of waking up or impacting and changing everyone ELSE is the belief we must war and wake others – but without truly awakening ourselves we become Chicken-Lickens for Foxy-Loxy to use as proxies because we are teaching fear under the belief or wish to overcome or escape it.
I don’t hold with Big Bang Cosmology, but I recognize it in Mythology as our psychic-emotional architecture.
The New Paradigm will be from the uncovering of resonance as the basis of communication – sometimes we discover via the negative outcomes that drive research that uncovers and shifts to a positive expansion of our shared reality – because there is no blocking of the Perfectly shared – excepting to insistence in a private mind or agenda of self-specialness – but this is a local, temporary condition – no matter how many align in agreeing it a settled consensus – or for how long they can bear to persist and repeat it.
The Revealing of truth to Itself is the very Nature of being – and the only thing that can seem to get in the way is the attempt of the mind to usurp its own nature. So part of this is the illuminating of the false nature – but not as a hate object to crucify in ourself or others – but as a reversal in thinking that calls for correction – regardless its presentation in masking persona.
“Everything is BACKWARDS; everything is upside down! Doctors destroy health, Lawyers destroy justice, Universities destroy knowledge, Governments destroy freedom, Major media destroys information, And religions destroy spirituality”. (Michael Ellner).
But of course this is to indicate that we have it backwards and therefore are out of sync with our true being. I can not make your choices for you nor in my right mind would I want to – but I can accept and align truly in myself – through growing willingness by living it.
Because a mind is set by its own conviction as to the ‘Problem’, it feel attacked by any answer that conflicts with its invested identity and defends against hearing and seeing.
War against reality of self, others and Universe is an escalator to destruction and generates its own ‘wake up’ crisis in the prompts to listen within instead of persisting a defended sense of isolation. But in your own timing is the release and support of others because no one exists ‘alone’ apart and isolated. But a fragmentation under terror effects such a belief.
The idea of awakening responsibility for consciousness is not ‘popular’ but it is the basis of a truly democratic or shared communication in place of the manipulative abuse of the forms of communication. And I am not talking of ‘votes’ but of a way of arriving at outcomes and decisions through a genuine process of communication. Our current concept of ‘communication’ is almost a loss of consciousness to systemic programming. It tells you that you are free by rebellion against fear of extinction – that is assigned to evil consequence while keeping the cause hidden.
Deceit is the basis of a world of lies – but to see it ONLY in the ‘Other’ is to WANT hate out there where it can be killed – and so ‘escaped’. Blame is ‘popular’ – when directed away from self and upon an ‘Other’ set up as scapegoat.
And for the ‘would be journalists’ to be seen to NOT join in hate would be cast in the same frame; “If you are not with us, you are against us – and attract penalty as one of them”.
That no one dares step out of line is the indication of the level of fear that has been induced.
But regardless of all judgements of others, we are each in our own life in terms of our willingness. It is easier to accuse another what we are unable to face or own within our self – until the act of self-betrayal cannot be masked over or hidden. Many choose to die while alive rather than face their own conflicts as the recognition of a need for help and not more weapons or shielding. But because they ARE alive, the choice remains within them in the last place they would look.
More verbal effluent…
Bibra aka BigB aka Brian?
Three cheeks on the same ar*e.
I’ve got an IDEA: BOMB the houses of parliament.
(Only joking, of course).
;o)
No need; it’s collapsing anyway, though that might just be accellerated by the Notre Dame effect.
The problem is that no-one seems to focus on the idea bomb disposal units, which constantly do a good job when people think they’ve invented the ultimate idea bomb. I’ve been saying for years that the thing that breaks through in waking the public up will be something completely unexpected. That’s because it will be just as big a surprise to the idea bomb disposal unit as it is to the rest of us. The idea bomb that has now hit the UK is Brexit, in that suddenly ordinary people are saying they are disillusioned with Parliament, and many are saying they won’t vote again. Then they arrested Julian Assange, which is the worst thing they could have done if they are trying to keep the public from subversive thoughts.
The public couldn’t see through the fallacy in the story of a hijacked passenger aircraft plunging into the ground in Pennsylvania and disappearing without trace, with no subsequent attempts to dig out the black box. So far the public has not seen the relevance of that story. It means that we do not have democratic government.
Gwyn Fawkes?
Gwyn Fawkes, indeed. Although I’m still lacking one of those bullet-proof codpieces which you mentioned.
For years, and I mean years, I thought that we celebrated Bonfire Night because someone tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament………..
Me too, He was The Guy.
Totally understandable, Mikalina.
The basic problem has been termed “incommensurability” by Kuhn. The old evolutionary redundant paradigm and the new evolutionary paradigm have little or no interface; and are totally incommunicable to each other. The core example is that the new paradigm is nondual and whole (Dynamic Systems Ecology) – the old capitalised Cartesian Error Protocols are relentlessly dualising and mechanically reductive to the parthood nihilation of holism. Mars and Venus.
Transitional forms – green capitalism and social-individuality – are merely extensions of the old, transferring and internalising the new. Gramsci put it best: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Those “morbid symptoms” are the old logic trying to recuperate the new logic. Dualism cannot axiomatise and describe nondualism without dualising it. This is the cultural aporia.
Hybrid forms will extend to the egotisation of nodualism. The ‘One Mind’; the nondual self; the nondual mind. These are micro-fascisms and colonisation of the new by the old …morbid hybrid symptoms.
So we can perhaps idea bomb “reality is nondual”; “there can be no infinite growth in a finite world”; “there is no planet B” …the last one was a deliberate introduction to show how these axioms can be parroted by the unbelievers who seek only to recuperate and capitalise any authentic social change.
So we are individuated beyond our consent – in a relentlessly dichotomising and hostile sectarian world. The state logic will never be our logic. The state stands for the status quo – and will defend the status quo by resorting to its monopoly of violence …if we try to alter the state logic. Whoever we are to each other – we are infantilised wards of the state and the democratic free market to the state. That is as it always shall be. Appeals to the state are farts in a bean tin: for all the power they have left under a depolitic neoliberalism.
So, humanity has contained this core predicament, well, forever. The nondual v the dual; the eco v the ego; the state v the neo-state automatic subject (i.e you don’t get the choice or the say in who you are – as a legal subject – the state defines you to the state). I hold out for an honest transition, and keep that hope alive (my limit-state should not be the socio-cultural limit state) …but I cannot deny: it looks kinda sketchy for here. Sorry Eddison, but we do meet up (pub not park); and we do network (Transition Towns Initiative) – yet here we are. Reality is nondual is an idea bomb – but then we must try working through the entailments of that axiom. Time and space are internal and not independent of consciousness; there is no internal or external division; reality is processual and not fixed objectively; past and present are conceptual constructions that have no real independent existence; see that object over there, it is consciousness only; all concepts are ultimately incoherent; capitalism is cognitive, not an external mind-independent economic system; capitalism is a colonised state of mind that is constantly affirmed on a moment by moment basis ….
The list goes on. Idea bombs – like Buddhist propaganda grenades – are a brilliant idea. But when it comes to the entailment and development stage – you might as well switch to Sanskrit, Tibetan, or Martian.
Capitalism is killing us. Humanity cannot begin until capitalism ends. These are axiomatic idea bombs. Capitalism is the internalised and colonised mind of humanity – it has no mind-independent existence. Nothing does. And if we want to get into the real antimonies and aporia of realism – neither is it ‘mind-only’. All dualised word descriptions are ultimately unreal.
We live in a culturally exciting time: when hybrid theories and morbid, moribund symptoms abound – attempting to ossify the new into the old. The best we can do is be the new, and yes, pass it on. Those who recognise this are probably already doing that. Expect quizzical faces.
Off topic i know. But has anyone seen this?
LATEST CIA Director and NYT Accidentally Expose Skripal Poisoning Hoax – DUCKGATE
https://theduran.com/cia-director-and-nyt-accidentally-expose-skripal-poisoning-hoax-duckgate-video/
Our masters don’t even bother to keep their stories straight, or even believable anymore. When you control the media that the vast majority of humanity obtain their information from, why bother – since you literally control the narrative? Suddenly we have dead ducks and sick children as part of the Skripnal plot according to no less an authority than the CIA – who knew?
“Our masters don’t even bother to keep their stories straight, or even believable anymore. When you control the media that the vast majority of humanity obtain their information from, why bother – since you literally control the narrative? Suddenly we have dead ducks and sick children as part of the Skripnal plot according to no less an authority than the CIA – who knew?”
For much of this sort of stuff, you don’t need to control the spawling media complex, you just need to control the White House briefings schedule. Who didn’t know?
So very obviously NOT accidental, as weren’t the pre-announcement of WTC-7’s collapse, the terrorists popping up alive, the popping out of the second plane’s nose cone and Silverstein’s “pull it” – among so many things.
The problem is as old as humanity. The part-problem is that there are no new ideas. Eddison critiqued his own idea bomb idea – those who are likely to choose freedom – ‘outside’ the current death-system – have already made the choice and move. And we are networked, to and extent already. I met a few more like-minded folk earlier this week …and so networks can extend.
Deleuze and Guattarri had a name for what Eddison is proposing – the rhizome. Rhizomatic forms are horizontal (transverse) operating through – but more eloquently in between stratified statist colonised forms of ‘govermantality’ …in the “interstices of the intermezzo”. State forms are seen as “arborescent” – ‘tree-like’ and hierarchical. I introduce this terminology only to make the point that there is a pushback against introducing ‘new’ ideas even on this site. I post this only to say that it has ALL been considered, critiqued, and theorised over for 150 years of anti-state, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and colonialist logic. And still we have capitalism. And still we are dying.
On a more spiritual plane: the wholist versus dualist logic has no beginning. It seems there have always been two types of people – sharing the same biological form – but totally different. And the ‘wholists’ of the perennial philosophy (ecosophy) have always been the minoritarian and oft persecuted group. Indeed, the dualists – or the ego-logicians (as opposed to the eco-logicians) – have made it a historic precedent to eradicate more underdeveloped, savage, indigenous, familial, communitarian forms of living. I have no need of a developmental archaeology: but it is not too much of a stretch to say that it is the historical narrative of the world history …written up by the ego-logicians to make capitalism seem the organic and natural principle. Which it never was.
Quietly, away from the mass hysterical temperament – the eco-logicians, or ecosophers, have been gaining the upper hand …even scientifically – biologically, psychologically, and ecologically. Which is critical for a supposedly scientific empiric (essentialist, positivist) ego-logistic paradigm. No one can find a physicalised material ‘ego’; a ‘self’; or even an individuated ‘mind’. Or a fixed ‘Being’. So we just transition to the new paradigm? Hang on, what about all the oil?
So, process ecosophers are from the earth; and progress and prosperity philosophers are from …? I dunno, but hey sure have effectively colonised the earth over the last few hundred years. And modern man is a recent capitalised invention and artefact of oil.
Climate change and Peak Oil elicit entrenched fear-first responses and capitalised anti-solutions. The only thing that will shake techno-theological modernity man to the core is a healing crisis – either a eco-metabolic or psychological rift. That is the brute fact of existence. We do not know who we are. We do not know where we came from, much less where we are going. We do not know what we do, or why we do it. We are unconsciously unchoosing omnicide: algorithmically habitually pre-programmed to follow the coercive illogic of capital accumulation …no matter what.
So how do we tell the unconscious state and neo-state automatic subjects that they are asleep at the wheel, and no one is driving the dreambus. Oh, and there is a net energy cliff that we are just on the verge of. Those who want to hear have heard. Those who want to see have seen. Education and communication is important: but won’t become relevant until the bus starts to teeter. Have you seen the final scene of the original ‘Italian Job’? That’s us.
It’s not just the same-old same-old . We are in an era of mass surveillance unlike anything previously seen and public morality has been severely eroded. At least there was no public ambiguity with Genghis Khan. Leaders don’t even pretend to be honest and forthright now and some exult in fooling the masses, and are chosen by their parties for that very perceived virtue. The public are termed muppets by the amoral thieves at Goldman Sachs who brazenly bribe the Clintons, falsify applications to EU membership so they can then sell the euro short, but then supply infestations of cabinet ministers to the US government.
It will take leadership for reform. Someone who is unafraid of AIPAC and similar lobby groups, to take advantage of advances in communication, someone who is prepared to play the long game, so he/she is not assassinated. Mistrusting the MSM is a great place to start, flourishing of alternate media next. We are getting there?
George
Why would we want to replicate the power structures – well known, even by Jimmy Carter, to be the least democratic the world has ever known – that have reproduced the greatest death cult known to humanity, and projected it through history? Genocide after genocide. Which was corrupted and compromised long before AIPAC was even constituted in 1951. Those power structures of liberal democracy deserve to be in the dustbin of history …for all our sakes.
Leadership is a strange attractor: who would want to lead? Only someone who already sees themselves as superior or dominant: a cognitive elitist. As soon as you commit to dominant leadership: you already have the subordinate, inferiorised led. Organised into hierarchies of autocratic rule: projected through time, from theocracy to the secular theocracy of modern neolib/neocon Americanism – the world’s fourth religion – you have produced the infantilised automatic subjects of despotic depolitic authoritarianism. An inverted totalitarianism of authoritarian-fed personalities of the Milgram experiments. Educated in war.
Hierarchical rule is not natural or normal: it was invented. Invented, normalised, and violently imposed: not by the led. Reimposing dominant/subordinated systems of rule can only lead to future exceptionalist and indispensable death cults. God knows how we get ‘there’: but if we drag the current regimes of power and violence with us …it won’t be worth it.
Big B, The existing power structure is appallingly bad for the common man. But you have to start somewhere and listing reasons why it won’t work seems self-defeating. I think that the framework of a democracy can still be utilized, and votes can still count. It took a long time for this mess to develop and it will take a long time for it to b cleaned up. Leadership can come from those who have personally suffered from the flagrant abuses, it usually does.
I take your point about how everything should be restructured but a reexamination of how we got here is best done after the “here” is upended. There are lessons to learn and implement in face of desperate opposition. Can this be bloodless? Probably not, history tells us, over and over.
I take your point, George. I am well aware that we cannot just end capitalism, or dismantle the current power structures overnight. The resulting anarchy would be anarchy, if you get my drift …especially with all the guns on the street. So we have a contradiction: when is a transition a transition …and not just a perpetuation of the existing disastrous power structures?
I mean, being British (whatever that means these days) – I’m not an expert on America. But from reading the likes of Chris Hedges: I’m not expecting a sudden breakout of democracy. If I wanted to be cynical: if AOC weighed 400 lbs and was a cross-dresser called ‘Terence’ – I don’t think she would be anywhere near Congress. And that is no disrespect of AOC – it’s the rest of them
My understanding, is that post Citizens United relaxed the campaign finance laws – the floor is so awash with ‘dark money’ and payoffs – truly representative politics is impossible. As AOC herself has said. And since you mentioned it: how do you deal with AIPAC – and all the other PACS and superPACS? It’s going to take more than a couple of token newbies – like AOC and Ilhan Omar – to reform a compromised unrepresentative system and 100 year out of date Electoral College. And the corruption, the electoral fraud, the dirty tricks. That is going to need some leadership to reform a system that does not want to be reformed – or represent the People. Who is going to crowdfund all those new reps?
“We do not know who we are. We do not know where we came from, much less where we are going.”
The above is an example of an inept “Cancel reply”.
If NOT KNOWING is truly accepted, then something alive can move through the space made clear.
Because the sense of a LACK of identity is covered over or stuffed with fig-leaved pretences and asserted grievance based power in defence and vengeance – we – human beings – as become as those who know not what they do.
Where we come from is our true Author-ity. Mythic creation stories provide support for an identity, that is then justified or sanctified as the authority from a past made in anger.
That we do NOT come from the past is hidden by making it as our god, source or narrative support.
That we carry the burden of a grievous past is the filtering mind through which we ‘see’ through a glass darkly.
Undoing and redeeming the past is releasing the present to extend as our future.
When you know wholeness of being, you are in the movement of life as one – and not in conflicted division. Wholeness arises spontaneously and unselfconsciously to an open and unobstructed mind. We have no words or concepts that really describe or convey living – because the mind of division made our thinking as a tool to maintain it – but to align in a recognised integrity of being and live from that is to know your purpose.
Ultimately – or truly – we always arrive in the recognition and fulfilment of where we are coming from. Hence a conflicted goal can only and always arrive at conflicted outcomes – no matter how ingeniously packaged and sold.
A lot of blocks are re-opened by the recognition that life communicates and expresses through forms – through bodies, and through the shared reflective and interactive experience of ‘world’. Where the LIFE is – always is where the Life is. It does not leave its Author to become a stringless puppet in search of becoming a ‘real boy’.
But the wish for a separated sense of self-autonomy DOES such and investment in illusion at cost of awareness of true support and guidance – to eventually recognize illusions do not become real – but give way to reveal what was is and shall be Real.
How does anything of ‘spiritual awakening’ fit the dream or nightmare of power struggle, subjection to tyrannical intent seen and unseen, and the desire to regain the true qualities of our right and our being? It illuminates the obstructive and futile or self-defeating in our current thinking – and integrates to a more consciously unified purpose in whatever we are drawn, moved or engaged in doing, becoming more open to wholeness or joy in life and less willing to tolerate or turn a blind eye to deceits or disintegrity in ourself and others.
The idea bomb is doublethink – or self-contradictory thought and phrase (self-conflicting meanings) that maintains separation while purporting to solve it). The root of conflict is attack. Can your mind truly be conflicted against itself – or is that a state of indecision from which a world of fear and lies MUST arise – to prevent DECISION or a true choice – by the interjection and overlay of a matrix of falsely framed choices.
A mind in connected or expression of wholeness cannot accept or run false thinking but that it experiences a stab of pain, a violation and sense of self betrayal and the loss of peace and connection for a fear or hate agenda.
Cultivating ‘don’t know mind’ as a beginner’s willingness – but as an active desire to know, allows THAT WHICH IS KNOWING – to communicate or move through us and by reflection and response of others and world – TO us.
In this we give completion – or bring wholeness to relationships instead of seeking to use them (and thus seeing them) as a means to GET something we believe we LACK – such as power, love, or validity.
While we are ‘coming from’ a hidden agenda or ignorance by design, we have it all backwards and are as those who have not, and are seeing more being taken – even the little that we have. A LACK based mind seeks to prove itself in the body and resolve itself ON the body. The victory over ‘evils’ projected upon the body and the world is of course DEATH.
Not so different from the Night King in the latest GoT – but GoT hasn’t illuminated the connection between denial and powerlessness. Whenever we reject and deny part of ourself – we give it our power. the Order that would subdue the ‘Chaos Monster’, is unaware of the flip to insanity of enacting the very things it was founded in hate and fear – and denial of.
An insane world is predicated on seeing its own hated shadow in the OTHER.
Here is a much simpler idea bomb.
Only ever vote for an independent political representative.
Political parties only exist to enable the 1% to exert their influence. It is easier to control the powerful few that control the party than it is to control each and every independent politician. ZTruly competent individuals will not tolerate having their interests conflicted in the process of doing their job, and the 1% influence on political parties certainly conflicts with the interests of those being democratically represented by the party member masquerading as representative.
No meetings, no organisation to corrupt or threaten. Just a dead simple action any voting adult can implement all by themselves. As more people do it it will encourage more and better independents to stand for election.
If voting ever changed anything it would be forbidden.
Not sure that I quote correctly nor whom I quote but that’s the gist.
It is an illusion that politicians rule, they administer for the benefit of whom? – 3 guesses.
And how many politicians are there, independent or not, who cannot be bought or bribed and survive, not just politically?
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mark-twain-voting-quote/
How would we know, if all that ever get elected are party politicians? It is a relatively painless act, withdraws support from “business as usual” and encourages those who find the party system repugnant.
The alternatives involve far riskier tactics. I am not a coward, but I prefer to exhaust lower risk options first.
Public meetings, free flow of ideas and so forth. Well there is a place in London, in Hyde Park, next to Marble Arch to be exact, called ‘Speakers Corner’. You can go there every Sunday and listen to all manner of political, social and religious views from guys standing on soap boxes and various other home made plinths. I used to go there as a lad every Sunday afternoon to listen, it was quite educative. However most of the audience treated it as a form of entertainment – a bit of a laugh at the expense of the cranks. American tourists were completely bemused by the whole show. But in essence that is what it was. Predictably, It didn’t seem to have changed the world.
However, that was in a more becalmed era. Hope springs eternal.
“…‘Speakers Corner’. You can go there every Sunday and listen to all manner of political, social and religious views from guys standing on soap boxes and various other home made plinths.”
For example: Donald, Lord Soper (a.k.a. Lord Soapbox), Baron Soper of Kingsway in the London Borough of Camden, the first “Nonconformist” minister of religion to sit as a life peer in the British House of Lords (which he claimed to be earthly proof of the reality of life after death), President of the Methodist Conference 1953–54, pacifist (banned from broadcasting on the BBC during World War II because of the power of his arguments), socialist, opponent of nuclear arms, blood sports and gambling, active protector of the weak, underprivileged and social rejects–addicts, law breakers, the homeless– at the West London Methodist Mission, outspoken opponent of Thatcherism and Reganism.
Perhaps a song/poem/ditty/anthem/meme that encapsulates the lightning revolution that we need Eddison.
I have no idea how one could go about bringing enlightenment to americans. This is primarily because the US is just too damn big. The population is so large in the US that few can possibly feel close to any ideals based movement, simply because whatever the movement is, by the time it is large enough to exert leverage its leaders would be remote from the bulk of supporters.
I flatly refuse to live in societies that large because of this and many other reasons connected to the centralisation of power structures in large nations.
If I lived somewhere like the US my first interest would be devoted to splitting the joint up into many small communities run by leaders much closer to the citizens because even socialism struggles to achieve its aims within this type of huge and seemingly soulless structure.
I think it’s primarily because they’re too damn stupid.
I enclose an excerpt form a Book written by a quite famous Man .
Can You identify him ?
And IF You can .. doesnt that raise some Questions and Thoughts ..in Your Mind ?
“ For the first time in my life I heard a discussion which dealt with the principles of stock exchange capital and capital which was used for loan activities.
After hearing the first lecture delivered by the Speaker the idea immediately came into my head that I had found a way to one of the most essential prerequisites for the founding of a new party.
To my mind, the merit of the Speaker consisted in the ruthless and trenchant way in which he described the double character of the capital engaged in stock exchange and loan transactions, laying bare the fact that this capital is ever and always dependent on the payment of interest.
In fundamental questions his statements were so full of common sense that those who criticized him did not deny that au fond his ideas were sound, but they doubted whether it be possible to put these ideas into practice. To me this seemed the strongest point in his teaching, though others considered it a weak point.
And again,
…I understood immediately that here was a truth of transcendental importance for the future of the people.
The absolute separation of stock exchange capital from the economic life of the nation would make it possible to oppose the process of internationalization in our nations business without at the same time attacking capital at such, for to do this would be to jeopardize the foundations of our national independence.
I clearly saw what was developing in our Country, and I realized then that the stiffest fight we would have to wage would not be against the enemy nations but against international capital.
In his speech I found an effective rallying-cry for our coming struggle.”
Further, he wrote,
“The struggle against international finance capital and loan capital has become one of the most important points in the program on which our nation has based its fight for economic freedom and independence.”
The common Interest before Self is the Spirit of the Program – .
Abolition of the Thralldom of Interest is the Core of Political Programme
“Once these two points are achieved, it means a victory of their approaching universalist ordering of society in the true state over the present-day separation of state, nation and economics under the corrupting influence of the individualist theory of society as now constructed.
The sham state of today, oppressing the working classes and protecting the pirated gains of bankers and stock exchange speculators, is the area for reckless private enrichment and for the lowest political profiteering; it gives no thought to its people, and provides no high moral bond of union.
The power of money, most ruthless of all powers, holds absolute control, and exercises corrupting, destroying influence on state, nation, society, morals, drama, literature and on all matters of morality, less easy to estimate.
“Break down the thralldom of interest” is our war cry.
What do we mean by thralldom of interest?
The landowner is under this thralldom, who has to raise loans to finance his farming operations, loans at such high interest as almost to eat up the results of his labor, or who is forced to make debts and to drag the mortgages after him like so much weight of lead.
So is the worker, producing in shops and factories for a pittance, whilst the shareholder draws dividends and bonuses which he has not worked for. So is the earning middle class, whose work goes almost entirely to pay the interest on bank overdrafts.
Thralldom of interest is the real expression for the antagonisms, capital versus labor, blood versus money, creative work versus exploitation.
The necessity of breaking this thralldom is of such vast importance for our nation that on it alone depends our nation’s hope of rising up from its shame and slavery; in fact, the hope of recovering happiness, prosperity and civilization throughout the world.
It is the pivot on which everything turns; it is far more than a mere necessity of financial policy.
Whilst its principles and consequences bite deep into political and economic life, it is a leading question for economic study, and thus affects every single individual and demands a decision from each one:
Service to the nation or unlimited private enrichment. It means a solution of the Social Question.
Our financial principle:
Finance shall exist for the benefit of the state; the financial magnates shall not form a state within the state. Hence our aim to break the thralldom of interest.
Relief of the state, and hence of the nation, from its indebtedness to the great financial houses, which lend on interest.
Nationalization of the Federal Banks and the issuing houses, which lend on interest.
Provision of money for all great public objects (waterpower, railroads etc), not by means of loans, but by granting non-interest bearing state bonds or without using ready money.
Introduction of a fixed standard of currency on a secured basis.
Creation of a national bank of business development (currency reform) for granting non-interest bearing loans.
Fundamental remodeling of the system of taxation on social-economic principles. Relief of the consumer from the burden of indirect taxation, and of the producer from crippling taxation (fiscal reform and relief from taxation).
Wanton printing of bank notes, without creating new values, means inflation. We all lived through it. But the correct conclusion is that an issue of non-interest bearing bonds by the state cannot produce inflation if new values are at the same time created.
The fact that today great economic enterprises cannot be set on foot without recourse to loans is sheer lunacy. Here is where reasonable use of the state’s right to produce money which might produce most beneficial results.”
Dont we agree ? Dont YOU agree ? ….
The Person speaking realized in practical Life what he envisioned and raised his ruined .bancrupt country to the very pinnacle of prosperous , financially sound , happy countries.
Ofc the International Banksters destroyed that country … utterly . They had to ..in order to Survive !
I haven’t read it all but phrases immediately jump out that make it sound like the programme of the Nazis.
Spot on. It’s from Mein Kampf.
So Hitler invented MMT? 😀
I think the Gillet Jaunes are already doing this?
The right to free association is a basic human one – and very productive. That is why it is so much hated by our rulers. Also why capitalists try to control this productive process and extract their profit from it. From small companies to large multi-nationals.
As for the truth being hidden from us’ this is an old, old thing going right back though antiquity. The truth lies buried and we have to dig to find it. There is nothing truer than truth and that is why the forth estate – the media – has been so much infiltrated and owned over the centuries.
They pretend to purvey the real truth, but of course we know they rarely do.
The GJ are partially responsible for this idea. Clearly they’re having meeting every Saturday. They have proved that something like this is possible.
The reason I am calling for meetings and not protests is because I don’t think protests are very effective. If we want to effectively protest, I believe we need to start organizing a mass exodus from the system. We need to get organized into independent sustainable groups, and then we need to, all together, stop interacting with the system to the greatest extent possible.
This will require an entirely altruistic mindset. Everyone will have to come together in complete support of each other. We will have to share everything. We will have to be willing to give everything we have to make this work. We will have to be able to sustain each other until this whole thing is over. It will take a great effort, that’s true, but the only alternative is the status quo. The alternative is to go willingly into the authoritarian system growing up around us.
Some might say this is a false dialectic, that there are other alternatives. I disagree. I believe we will have to escape the system at some point. I believe there will be a sharp transition to an openly and brutally authoritarian system in the relatively near future. The surveillance capabilities of this system will make it practically inescapable and entirely invulnerable from attack from within.
Because of this we will absolutely have to escape the system if we want to mount any kind of defense in the future.
Listen. Seriously, just listen to the public discussion. For the past quarter-century, Democrats and liberals have been calling on us join a “revolution” to protect the status quo of the better-off, the middle class (reframed as “working class” in 2016), within our capitalist system. That’s the problem. There remains a powerful resistance against acknowledging it. If enough people begin comprehending the problem, there might be a solution. But to date, such efforts have proved futile.
There are many who try to bring this to light, to expose the crimes of the few against the many.. and many who are willing.. satisfied.. (?) to display their knowledge and education by writing reams about all this.. stuff..
But.
Nothing changes. At all.
Does it?
Still, it all goes on, across Africa, the South Americas, the middle east, and now down under too..
latest example: https://153news.net/watch_video.php?v=5NH44NNWADB – so, back to the question,
What are we going to actually do about it? Or you? Any of you?
Keep writing, and reading, and arguing.. hold meetings.. spark up another discussion group..
about how very terribly wrong and unjust it all is?
Right?
The infamous scene of debate about ‘what are we going to do about the Romans’
from the great ‘Life of Brian’ springs to mind..
oh the irony..
to quote my only favourite amokianism.. ‘well whaddya gonna do?’
“Video does not exist”
https://153news.net/watch_video.php?v=5NH44NNWADB
is it about ‘The CIA Takeover of America in the 1960s is the Story of Our Times’?
https://off-guardian.org/2019/04/07/the-cia-takeover-of-america-in-the-1960s-is-the-story-of-our-times/
I like it. Paid trolls from the NSA would attend in a flash. They would know all about you in a flash. They would then send in actors and actresses to pull the usual stunts. The key would be to outnumber them by the number of sites.
Ah, but that’s the problem. Which “we?” The US is rich vs. middle class vs. poor, workers vs. those left jobless, further split by race and political ideology.
Fortunately in this case the numbers overwhelmingly favour the people. The rich are few, and they like it that way.
I’d prefer without a meeting place. Ideas can be spread without a meeting place. The latest I have heard is:
Make a list of all the countries to whom US is either irrelevant or with whom the US has a ‘difference’ of opinion. Quite a list, growing by the day – take it from there.
‘… NSA … would know all about you in a flash.’ They already know all about you so wouldn’t gain any additional info from your attendance.
Perhaps – but the Idea Bomb of the Establishment effectively subverts, marketised and weaponises any Movement of being – hence the need for something that cannot be turned against Life -(ourself). Hence the idea of the Undoing rather than the persistence of the idea of the ‘doer’ or separated controller – set over life – that must then fear and fight subjection (under its own rules – or in receiving the measure that it set for others).
In terms of the world it may seem that no matter what peace is established, it can be subverted to division by fear and deceit – but we are each in our own lives and in specific sets of relations that may ripple out – but do not ‘control’ by means of ‘impact’.
So regardless of any of the forms of evils in the world I hold that fear and deceit are at the bottom of them – in both the subjecting and subjection roles – which reinforce each other.
To understand the mind from which we act – in thought, word and deed, is to witness, notice or discern its fruits or results FROM a willingness that it be mistaken – instead of an insistence and defence of its ‘right’.
Given a sense of opposition, the mind can and does oppose. Discerning the nature of this opposition by direct noticing may yield new information – such as misinterpreting of help as coercive, or recognising the defence is blinded by a set of conditions it was unaware of setting and of unwillingness to honestly acknowledging of the current suffering or fruits of the current set of mind and act – and therefore the opening of a willingness to be wrong in the context of a movement of desire to find a better way.
Deceit hijacks, usurps and operates what seems like legitimate authority.
Honesty of being can of course shift from deceit to a true willingness of relation and communication in an instant. There is no necessity for an intellectual ‘understanding to then be ‘applied’ by a ‘doer’. But an existing framework of beliefs operates as the current justification or support of an establishment of identity that can be illuminated without undue provocation or struggle to willingly change in the light of seeing or opening a greater appreciation of the situation.
Persisting through or despite sometimes considerable UNwillingness is part of the reclaiming of the mind from a false allegiance. If you want the fantasy of destroying enemies as if to be free of them, you will act so as to have it – but fantasy can only be had at the cost of true – and only as passing moments that leave hollow – as a lack that draws in a hatred of life for not meeting the set of your terms and conditions. So if you are paying attention, you see that the setting of conditions is a key to misery or happiness.
If happiness is only permitted when specific conditions are met – WHO denies happiness? The conditions of life or the setting of the mind.
Those who know not what they do – must suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune even as they take up arms against a sea of troubles, in by opposing them, to die…
To be or not to be is NOT the question. Being is GIVEN you – how then or of WHAT shall you be the expression and extension of?
Africans have a monkey trap. They put nuts in a coconut shell with a small hole and the monkeys after grabbing the nuts cannot remove their hand. Even when they see the hunter approaching and their impending doom, they do not let go of the nuts. Humans are the same as monkeys.
They’ve got us by the nuts, John.
:o)
Speak for yourself, I wear a bullet-proof codpiece.