The term “Illuminati” has gained a large amount of attention and popularity within the past few years and as a result it has also attracted a lot of disinformation, propaganda and distraction. Fingers are often pointed towards Hollywood movie stars, music artists and entertainers who are seen throwing up specific signs or music videos constantly containing significant ancient art/symbolism. Not to say that these observations have no truth behind them, but we have to think critically. We have to dive deeper into the world of high strangeness instead of being distracted with rumours and hearsay.
Truth is, pointing towards these observations in order to demonstrate that the concept of the Illuminati in various industries is real can sometimes do more harm than good, and in the bigger scope of things it’s not as important or fearful as we are so often made to believe.
It’s also a great example of how the masses can latch on to a concept instantly, with blind faith, not ever questioning sources or digging deeper to see if there is a reality behind all of the claims that are floating around out there. A lot of the time, much of what has been deemed a ‘conspiracy theory’ actually has some sort of truth behind it. It’s unfortunate that, while many have the intent to create awareness, doing so in certain fashions can illicit more harm than good, and more ridicule than serious attention. As a result, concepts like Illuminati seem to have become nothing but propaganda, a distraction, taking our attention away from what is really important.
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” – Socrates
Ultimately at any time we as one human race can change the world if we come together to do so, we are in control whether you believe in a “secret society” that’s controlling the world or not. It’s not about the small group of people and the corporations they run at the top of the pyramid, it’s about the seven billion strong army of people who are complying to a system which no longer resonates with their soul.
Separating Fact From Fiction
If we want the planet to change, we have to identify the problems in order to come up with a solution, and we seem to be making more progress in that regard. I’m talking about what was mentioned earlier in the article, that there is no problem of “them” versus “us.” Sure, there is no denying the fact that corporations dictate major government policy, and that a handful of corporations and the people who run them seem to have control over major resources and industries that currently govern our world, but without us they are powerless.
This is no conspiracy. Within the past couple of years multiple studies have examined the allocation of global resources and wealth. They’ve found that the richest 1 percent on the planet own the majority of global wealth. On top of this, our health care industry, food industry, energy industry, entertainment industry, education and the world of finance are all owned and operated by a handful of corporations and the people that run them. (source) You might be saying “yeah, so what?” The point is, all of these industries continue to participate in activities that destroy the planet, our health and overall well being. Meanwhile, we all go to school, work and live our lives while continuing to remain blind to what is happening in the world.
“I want a nation of workers, not thinkers.” – John D. Rockefeller
So does a small group of corporations and the people that run them have a large influence as to what happens on our planet? Of course, that can’t really be denied. Are they “Illuminati” involved in some sort of secret keeping of knowledge, as well as occult rituals? That’s another question.
There is no doubt that ‘cliques’ or groups in places of ‘high power’ exist and confide amongst themselves confidentially, some of the biggest hitters in the game of politics (and more) have alluded to this time and time again. We’ve also seen it over the past few years with the disclosure of the Bilderberg group, or elitist gatherings that take place at locations like Bohemian grove, among others. We’ve also seen it with the recent disclosure of the ‘black budget’ by Edward Snowden, where Washington Post investigators once determined that the world of secrecy has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work – you can read more about that here. Today, it seems they’ve taken secrecy to a completely new level, and we were warned about this.
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for a disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.” – Former President and 5 star General Dwight Eisenhower (source)
It does indeed seem that the “very grave danger than an announced need for an increased need for security, will be seized upon by those anxious to expand it’s meaning to the very limits of censorship and concealment” (source)JFK spoke of, did indeed occur, even if the speech he gave was in context with regards to the Cold War.
Keep in mind that this is modern secrecy we are talking about here. But it’s important to note that occult groups (not all bad) have existed throughout human history for thousands of years. It’s also important to note that all who are interested in the occult are not bad, negative, evil or wish to use these concepts from a place of negativity and hatred. Some might use it with the intention to do good.
So when it comes to fact, we do have a small percentage of people who control the world’s resources and wealth, and we do have evidence pointing to the fact that there is clearly a world of secrecy, and groups that exist within that world who hold a tremendous amount of power.
When it comes to Hollywood, we’ve recently seen major entertainers bring up the subject in a confusing manner. Recently, Jim Carrey made an appearance on national television speaking about the Illuminati. It seemed to confuse people as to whether he was being serious or not. You can view that video here.
A more serious quote, however, recently came from the actor/director Shawn Stone, son of Oliver Stone, a major film director. When he was asked about the Illuminati and if he has ever ran into them he said, very seriously that:
“I’m very close to some people that are involved at some level. This is a long exploration and it would take time to elaborate but basically the “Eyes Wide Shut” sex parties are real, they do take place and they do have these crystal skull type things, like the Indiana Jones film, they have these types of skulls at the party and feed the energy into the these skulls.” (source)
He also went on to talk about symbolism, like the 5 star pentagram which is used to conjure up different entities to make deals with which he says is the essence of the “black magic Illuminati.” He also spoke of pedophilia among elitist groups like these, which is no secret any more as many elitist rings of pedophiles are now being exposed. To view a great clip of one of the most popular childhood actors of all time speak about it, click here.
This is one of many examples where the ritualistic nature of these groups becomes more of a possibility.
“If they want to control the middle east, or the music industry they have to make a sacrifice to these “demons.” Whether it’s children or soldiers at war. They always respond to signs and symbols, for example the pyramid shape, the five sided star, the six sided star, they congregate around these signs. This is why major corporate symbols are full of “Illuminati” symbols. That’s why when you wear those clothes, or buy those products you are giving power to that entity, you are giving energy to it, you are giving it power over you” (source)
Magic and provoking and using “other worldly” entities has been practiced by various prominent people throughout human history. This dates back thousands of years. If you want more information about this I suggest you start off with Manly P Hall’s book, “The Secret Teachings of All Ages.” Lots of good information in there.
So, as you can see from a few (of many) quotes and one example of secrecy with regards to the black budget, it is indeed real and a small group of people seem to be in charge. It seems to go far beyond entertainers like Jay Z and Beyonce. In my opinion these artists are used by the corporation to sell an image, as well as various other products. If you go even farther, Universal Music Group has Royal blood lines, belonging to the corporation Vevendi, which was created by Napolean the third. The point I’m trying to make is that we must stop looking towards entertainers, and if we are going to examine these things seriously we must move up the ladder towards the corporations that govern and dictate their lives. Even if you are not sold on the idea of the Illuminati, it’s hard to deny that something strange is going on in the world.
Bottom line, the way these corporations are destroying our planet is all that is needed to see the “psychopathic” tendencies of these groups that are starting to make many wonder, “what are they thinking?”
So What?
An elite group of people in powerful positions may indeed “run” everything we currently see on planet Earth. We need to let go of the judgement, the “us versus them” game, and realize that all the activity they participate in is completely powerless without us, we are the key and what is currently taking place on our planet can only happen with our consent.
When we all choose to opt out and create something new for ourselves is when we will begin to change our own lives and the lives of everyone on the planet.
This article does not get into ancient philosophy, history or mysticism. This is a subject that would take thousands of pages to expand upon. The purpose of this article was to basically show others that these concepts do hold a great deal of validity to them, but the mainstream idea of “the Illuminati” and the idea that’s now commonly used as propaganda is very different. It should not be ridiculed, but if taken seriously it should be presented properly with information that shows people a connection.
The very popular subject, especially amongst our youth today needs to be turned around and used to help youngsters see where our food is coming from, our education is coming from, what’s going on in the world of health and more, why we do the things we do, why we consume the things we consume, why we are destroying our planet when we don’t have too. At the same time, these concepts and ideas should not be simply tossed away into the realm of conspiracy.
It’s time to look within, identify the problem and move on. We are both the problem and the solution. At the end of the day it is the human race waking up to its infinite potential and ability to create an entirely new experience for everyone and all living things on the planet. An experience where everybody can thrive. We are starting to realize that yes, it’s very possible and we have the resources to do so, they just have to be allocated properly. It’s time to share, care and love instead of compete against each other and remain divided by illusionary boundaries.
If we want change, we all have to look at ourselves in the mirror. Billions are falling out of their sleep, beginning to wake up to the idea that we are more than just “worker bees,” that we are capable of things beyond our wildest of dreams. Although there is still much resistance to global change, there is no doubting that it’s time to stop resisting it, and embrace the idea that change needs to take place.
It’s time to get knocked out of our comfort zones into a new experience where everybody can thrive.
“If you wish to keep slaves, you must have all kinds of guards. The cheapest way to have guards is to have the slaves pay taxes to finance their own guards. To fool the slaves, you tell them that they are not slaves and that they have Freedom. You tell them they need Law and Order to protect them against bad slaves. Then you tell them to elect a Government. Give them Freedom to vote and they will vote for their own guards and pay their salary. They will then believe they are Free persons. Then give them money to earn, count and spend and they will be too busy to notice the slavery they are in.”
How I Manage My Slaves; Slaves need electricity so that they can stay up later to work and study to be able to pay their electric bills and pay for all of their fine labor saving machines which enable them to finish their work in time to get some recreation which will help them feel more like going back to their jobs to earn money to live their wonderful lives as slaves.
They are lucky to be allowed to buy all of the wonderful things which make work and play so much easier. If they didn t buy these fine things they would have no reason to work for money.
The poor people who take their food from the land and who sleep where ever they can, deprive themselves of the need to work for money. This further deprives them of a need to buy and store fine labor saving devices. They don’t seem to realize the fact that they are holding back progress. If they could be forced to consume more and work, we could increase our gross national production which is useful to keep this excellent system going for us. Consumption can be increased by making welfare and government grant money more available.
It is becoming necessary to provide better working conditions to stop slaves from dropping out. As more drop out and provide for their own needs and direct their own lives it leaves less people to control them. It is necessary to keep them dependent on jobs or government money to maintain our control.
We must find ways to keep them from dropping out of our schools too. Here we mainly teach them to obey orders, respect our laws and love their country, coincidently, we teach them a trade or profession with which they will minister to our needs and whims or to the needs of our other servants. We could teach them on-the-job much faster and better but it takes more time to complete their obedience training.
Those who take care of their own needs are difficult to enslave. We must encourage people to become dependent in every area that it is possible to do so.
Do you feel left out? Perhaps it’s because you refuse to succumb to the competition, envy and fear neoliberalism breeds.
To be at peace with a troubled world: this is not a reasonable aim. It can be achieved only through a disavowal of what surrounds you. To be at peace with yourself within a troubled world: that, by contrast, is an honourable aspiration. This column is for those who feel at odds with life. It calls on you not to be ashamed.
I was prompted to write it by a remarkable book, just published in English, by a Belgian professor of psychoanalysis, Paul Verhaeghe(1). What About Me?: The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society is one of those books that, by making connections between apparently distinct phenomena, permits sudden new insights into what is happening to us and why.
We are social animals, Verhaeghe argues, and our identity is shaped by the norms and values we absorb from other people. Every society defines and shapes its own normality – and its own abnormality – according to dominant narratives, and seeks either to make people comply or to exclude them if they don’t.
Today the dominant narrative is that of market fundamentalism, widely known in Europe as neoliberalism. The story it tells is that the market can resolve almost all social, economic and political problems. The less the state regulates and taxes us, the better off we will be. Public services should be privatised, public spending should be cut and business should be freed from social control. In countries such as the UK and the US, this story has shaped our norms and values for around 35 years: since Thatcher and Reagan came to power(2). It’s rapidly colonising the rest of the world.
Verhaeghe points out that neoliberalism draws on the ancient Greek idea that our ethics are innate (and governed by a state of nature it calls the market) and on the Christian idea that humankind is inherently selfish and acquisitive. Rather than seeking to suppress these characteristics, neoliberalism celebrates them: it claims that unrestricted competition, driven by self-interest, leads to innovation and economic growth, enhancing the welfare of all.
At the heart of this story is the notion of merit. Untrammelled competition rewards people who have talent, who work hard and who innovate. It breaks down hierarchies and creates a world of opportunity and mobility. The reality is rather different. Even at the beginning of the process, when markets are first deregulated, we do not start with equal opportunities. Some people are a long way down the track before the starting gun is fired. This is how the Russian oligarchs managed to acquire such wealth when the Soviet Union broke up. They weren’t, on the whole, the most talented, hard-working or innovative people, but those with the fewest scruples, the most thugs and the best contacts, often in the KGB.
Even when outcomes are based on talent and hard work, they don’t stay that way for long. Once the first generation of liberated entrepreneurs has made its money, the initial meritocracy is replaced by a new elite, which insulates its children from competition by inheritance and the best education money can buy. Where market fundamentalism has been most fiercely applied – in countries like the US and UK – social mobility has greatly declined(3).
If neoliberalism were anything other than a self-serving con, whose gurus and think tanks were financed from the beginning by some of the richest people on earth (the American tycoons Coors, Olin, Scaife, Pew and others)(4), its apostles would have demanded, as a precondition for a society based on merit, that no one should start life with the unfair advantage of inherited wealth or economically-determined education. But they never believed in their own doctrine. Enterprise, as a result, quickly gave way to rent.
All this is ignored, and success or failure in the market economy are ascribed solely to the efforts of the individual. The rich are the new righteous, the poor are the new deviants, who have failed both economically and morally, and are now classified as social parasites.
The market was meant to emancipate us, offering autonomy and freedom. Instead it has delivered atomisation and loneliness. The workplace has been overwhelmed by a mad, Kafka-esque infrastructure of assessments, monitoring, measuring, surveillance and audits, centrally directed and rigidly planned, whose purpose is to reward the winners and punish the losers. It destroys autonomy, enterprise, innovation and loyalty and breeds frustration, envy and fear. Through a magnificent paradox, it has led to the revival of a grand old Soviet tradition, known in Russian as tufta. It means the falsification of statistics to meet the diktats of unaccountable power.
The same forces afflict those who can’t find work. They must now contend, alongside the other humiliations of unemployment, with a whole new level of snooping and monitoring. All this, Verhaeghe points out, is fundamental to the neoliberal model, which everywhere insists on comparison, evaluation and quantification. We find ourselves technically free but powerless. Whether in work or out of work, we must live by the same rules or perish. All the major political parties promote them, so we have no political power either. In the name of autonomy and freedom we have ended up controlled by a grinding, faceless bureaucracy.
These shifts have been accompanied, Verhaeghe writes, by a spectacular rise in certain psychiatric conditions: self-harm, eating disorders, depression and personality disorders. Of the personality disorders, the most common are performance anxiety and social phobia; both of which reflect a fear of other people, who are perceived as both evaluators and competitors, the only roles for society that market fundamentalism admits. Depression and loneliness plague us. The infantilising diktats of the workplace destroy our self-respect. Those who end up at the bottom of the pile are assailed by guilt and shame. The self-attribution fallacy cuts both ways(5): just as we congratulate ourselves for our successes,we blame ourselves for our failures, even if we had little to do with it.
So if you don’t fit in; if you feel at odds with the world; if your identity is troubled and frayed; if you feel lost and ashamed, it could be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud.
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of THINKING. It keeps us busy debating thesis and anti-thesis (a concept of Hegelian Dialectic), without realizing the fact that reality lies beyond our illusions and assumptions.
What you believe to be true, is it true? Or do you just believe that it is true because you were taught that it was true and you never looked any further?
People are unable to get themselves out of the paradox created by the social engineers. They cannot see beyond these “isms” because they have lost the ability to think. All we see is fake intellectualism and absurd theories. Left, right, capitalism, communism, political parties, political figures … that’s our mental limit.
So many thinkers have criticized the system based on greed and self interest. Many experts from various schools of thought have pointed out the flaws of the system, but people having no knowledge of their own are more inclined towards the common opinion created through social engineering and indoctrination. This system is simply a game, and in a game, there are winners and there are losers. Not everyone can be the winner, however the media, the society and the social engineers have given everyone a dream and hope of winning.
Individuals like Naom Chomsky, Jean Jacques Rousseau, William Blum, Arundhati Roy, Elizabeth Warren, Margrit Kennedy and many others have been criticizing the system on the basis of logic and reason but people are more interested in discussing political figures, trying to justify greed, self interest and a false illusion of becoming rich, using dictators as symbols of any possible alternate, avoiding logical debate limited to the system itself.
A clear example of conventional view:
A lot of people use the terms like “Demand and Supply“, “profit”, “economic growth” etc. and they fully support the idea of getting rich through talent. For them, profit is not bad, but the same individuals enjoy criticizing corporations and banks when they use strategies like “leverage” to create monopolies, multiply profit and use it to increase their assets including land and resources, in order to maintain a constant growth or in other words “growth on top of growth”.
If an individual can think about owing properties, earning profit or becoming rich, then what’s wrong if a corporation or a bank uses the same thinking to create profit using all available privileges? The corporations are owned and managed by humans after all. If competition, profit, property ownership and economic growth are seen as legitimate goals, then these apply to both individuals and corporations, since they both are a part of the same market and no one should protest. If self interest is the main motive behind our economic activities (as stated by Adam Smith) then this concept applies to the governments, the politicians and the bureaucrats too. They too have the right to follow their own interests in form of getting favors from corporate entities and providing undue favors in return. The truth is that we are all are following the idea of being “Too smart for own good” which not only exemplifies our ignorance but is clarification of the cause to humanity’s destruction.
As a matter of fact, “Demand and supply”, “profit and growth” are merely theories created in economics to justify absurdities. Such hypothesis has got nothing to do with the ground realities, rather it represents a small percentage of global population that has access to the resources, while completely ignoring the vast majority of “have not’s”, suffering from hunger, poverty and starvation. We have been desensitized and living in a state of “commodity fetishism” whereby our social relations have been transformed into objectified economic relationships such as producers and consumers, buyers and sellers, service providers, while those who does not fit into this framework are completely ignored.
There was no demand for iPhones and iPads until they were invented and marketed using PR. The fact is that only a small percentage of global population is participating in consumerism, which is being used as a scale to determine economic growth. Perhaps even smaller percentage of people are able to even think about buying things like iPhones, laptops and other expensive things. Owing cars is perhaps a privilege restricted to even fewer people. Majority of population is struggling to meet the very basic requirements of life such as proper food, shelter and healthcare.
According to the statistics provided by WHO, more than 6 million children die from starvation each year and over a billion people suffer from malnutrition. Where do these people fit in the theories of “Demand and supply”, “consumption and production”, “profit and growth”? What have we achieved as a society and what’s the use of all the technological advancements, when such a huge fraction of humans are living miserable lives?
Restricting access to basic necessities like food, shelter and healthcare, naming it as “demand” and then leaving masses to suffer the scarcity at the expense of abundance for few who see it as profit. This is the real picture. If it was possible, humans would have restricted the air and sunlight too, naming it as “demand” and supplying it to those who are willing to conform, obey and work.
Who was the first person to claim a piece of land on earth as his personal property, who assigned him the right to do so and when did it happen?
A major cause behind all the miseries and misfortunes, a total fraud, yet completely denied. We are living in a state of denial and a sincere ignorance towards the fact that division of properties has already taken place centuries ago when imperial forces claimed ownerships over the lands and natural resources, defining rules to protect their rights of ownership. The same properties were later on gifted by the so called “landlords” and the royal families as token of appreciation for subservience, adding up more names in the list.
Assigning monetary value to land and resources and then measuring it on the scale of fiat money, has created a whole new paradigm, where those having power to create money out of thin air can own as much of the property as they want and there is no law, no rule to prevent this.
One doesn’t need to be a genius to become rich. It only requires a person to be lucky being born in a rich family. Getting rich is more like a game of chance and the cases of individuals becoming rich through talent are very rare.
Look at the case of Nicola Tesla a Serbian scientist. His invention, the AC or alternating current system was associated not with his name but with that of George Westinghouse, who funded his research. Both Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse were ruthless businessmen who took credit for Tesla’s work. In the end, Tesla was living in poverty, while royalties for his life’s work went to Edison and Westinghouse. He accepted small sums as buy-outs for his work. Even Marconi made use of a patent filed by Tesla in 1897. Tesla was the real “father of radio” but received no money or credit for this invention.
The truth is that no one can get rich on his own. One can come up with ideas but cannot produce anything in bulk all alone. One cannot fulfill the demand of masses without the help of many others investing their efforts to make it possible. Mass production requires skilled labor which is not the property of that person, rather it is provided by others. Likewise in a society, everything needs protection. Tangible assets cannot be left open and unprotected, or else they will be gone. The person needs many others to provide protection and security. More importantly means of transportation, roads and infrastructure is required to get the goods to consumers. A single individual does not own the infrastructure therefore cannot manage all that. In short, a lot of efforts from various people are involved behind every new idea that brings fortune for few, but they somehow manages to get away with the big chunk. If the output is shared according to the efforts invested by various people, no one would be able to get extra ordinarily rich.
What we need to understand is that self-interest, competition and gaining profit at the expense of others is not a stable paradigm at all. We must try and see things out of the box instead of circling around the paradoxes created for specific purposes and getting involved in Hegelian dialectics, discussing left-right politics, capitalism and socialism. We must stop following blindly the ideas originating from the research which is sponsored by foundations and think tank, funded by the top 0.1%.
Corporations are there to do business, earn profit and maintain growth. Worrying about societies, people and their problems is not their concern. Non-profit Organizations that pay no Taxes, serves as stores of wealth for the businesses, receives unlimited funds to manipulate public opinion and enforce specific agendas as demanded by the financers (the top 0.1%s) who sponsor both the opposing sides in a conflict.
Take the example of the mainstream view regarding “climate change”. It’s being sponsored by various think tank and NPOs, funded by the elites, the top 0.1%. On the other hand the opposing view that is “denial of climate change” is also being sponsored and funded by NPOs, corporations and businesses owned by elites. Same applies to the “leftist” VS “rightist” agendas or “government control” VS “Freedom and Liberty movements” or let’s say “Capitalism” VS “Communism”, where both the sides are being supported by NPOs and think tank representing various corporations and elite businessmen (once again the top 0.1%).
What’s the point in leading from two opposite ideologies or let’s say “thesis” and “anti-thesis” and why are the 01% spending all their money on that?
Here is a quote from Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (a Russian communist revolutionary, politician and political theorist) who said; “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” The quote provides a complete understanding regarding the political objective behind creating two opposite ideologies and then leading both sides of the conflict.
If one is in the top 0.1% and has the power and privilege to make the rules, rig the game in one’s favor, and handsomely reward the priestly ministerial caste to devise dubious, self-serving economic theories, models, and policies or to control both sides of the conflict, to keep the game rigged, there is absolutely nothing “wrong with this picture” for the top 0.1%. It’s designed to be right for the top 0.1% and the next 0.9%, but “wrong” for the bottom 99%.
As stated earlier, games are for winners and losers. In a winner-take-all game, the top 0.1% winners rig the game so that the 99.9% are losers, while sharing enough of the plunder with the next 0.9% so that they think they are winners when compared to the bottom 99%.
A system that rewards only the top 0.1-1% winners ensures that everyone else loses, including being incapable of subsistence at a socially acceptable level of material consumption and psycho-emotional well-being.
But again, if one is a winner and can rig the game, who cares about the bottom 99% losers; after all, they’re losers. Let them eat “austerity” and excrete hope.
How long will it take us to get out of this illusion created by the self proclaimed “owners” of the society?
For how long we will keep acting as pawns on this game of chess being played?
For how long we will keep debating and fighting on non-issues created merely to divert our attention from real issues and keep us busy fighting for survival according to the terms and conditions defined by those who are on top of the pyramid?
If we continue to follow the same implanted programs through conditioning and indoctrination fortifying the old broken paradigm, then we will continue to get the same results over and over again. What we do not learn from is what we shall repeat, shown in our own individual experiences, history, and lives.
It is so important to peer beyond the various levels of illusion programmed into the mind in order to break these very cycles, for all experience is necessary to show us the symptom of our problems. There have been many tools used to program the conditioned into a fixed and limiting mindset to keep perception range at a minimal, while using these very tools to keep us in the illusionary state of fragmentation.
There may be a whole new world, a whole new thought process waiting for us if we somehow manage to get ourselves out of this box and start thinking on our own, instead of following the status-quo and living a shallow escapism without confronting the bigger picture.
This reminds me of a Buckminister Fuller who said;
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
The Matrix is one of the greatest metaphors ever. ‘Machines invented to make life easier end up enslaving humanity‘. This is the most dystopian theory in science-fiction. Why is this fear so universal, so compelling? Is it because we really believe our toaster and our notebook will end up as our mechanical overlords? Of course not. This is not a future that we fear but a past that we are already living.
Supposedly governments were meant to make human life easier and safer. But governments always end up enslaving humanity. That which we create to “serve us” ends up “ruling us.” The US government by and for the people now imprisons millions. It takes half the income by force, over-regulates, punishes, tortures, slaughters foreigners, invades countries; overthrows governments, imposes seven hundred imperialistic bases overseas and crushes future generations with massive debts. That which we create to serve us ends up ruling us.
The problem with the state as servant thesis is that it is historically completely false; both empirically and logically. The idea that states were invented by citizens to enhance their own security is utterly untrue. Before governments in tribal times, human beings could only produce what they consumed; there was no excess production of food or other resources: Thus there was no point in owning slaves because the slaves could not produce any excess that could be stolen by the master.
If a horse pulling a plow can only produce enough additional food to feed the horse there is no point hunting, capturing and breaking in a horse. However when agriculture improvements allowed for the creation of excess crops, suddenly it became highly advantageous to own human beings. When cows began to provide excess milk and meat, owning cows became worthwhile.
The earliest governments and empires were in fact a ruling class of slave hunters who understood that because human beings could produce more than they consumed they were worth hunting, capturing breaking-in, and owning. The earliest Egyptian and Chinese Empires were in reality, human farms: Where people were hunted, captured, domesticated and owned like any other form of livestock. Due to methodological and technological improvements the slaves produced enough excess that the labor involved in capturing and keeping them represented only a small sub-set of their total productivity.
The ruling class farmers kept a large portion of that excess, while handing out gifts and payments to the brutalizing class; the police, slave hunters and general sadists, and the propagandizing class, the priests, intellectuals and artists. This situation continued for thousands of years until the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries; when again massive improvements in agricultural organization and technology created the second-wave of excess productivity.
The enclosure movement reorganized and consolidated farm land resulting in five to ten times more crops, creating a new class of industrial workers displaced from the country and huddling in the new cities. This enormous agricultural excess was the basis of the capital that drove the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial revolution did not arise because the ruling class wanted to free their serfs; but rather because they realized how additional “liberties” could make their livestock astoundingly more productive.
When cows are placed in very confining stalls they beat their heads against the walls, resulting in injuries and infections. Thus farmers now give them more room, not because they want to set their cows free but because they want greater productivity and lower costs.
The next stop after free-range is not freedom.
The rise of state capitalism in the nineteenth century was actually the rise of free-range serfdom. Additional liberties were granted to the human-livestock, not with the goal offsetting them free; but rather with the goal of increasing their productivity. Of course Intellectuals, Artists and Priests were and are well paid, to conceal this reality. The great problem of modern human-livestock ownership is the great challenge of enthusiasm. State Capitalism only works when the Entrepreneurial Spirit drives creativity and productivity in the economy.
However excess productivity always creates a larger state and swells the ruling classes, and their dependents; which eats into the motivation for additional productivity. Taxes and regulations rise, state debt and future farming increases, and living standards slow and decay. Depression and despair begin to spread: As the reality of being owned sets in for the general population. The solution to this is additional propaganda, anti-depressant medications, superstition, wars, moral campaigns of every kind. The creation of “enemies,” the inculcation of Patriotism, collective fears: Paranoia about outsiders and immigrants and so on.
It is essential to understand the reality of the world. When you look at a map of the world, you are not looking at countries, but farms. You are allowed certain liberties, limited property ownership, movement rights, freedom of association and occupation; not because your government approves of these rights in principle, since it constantly violates them, but rather because free-range-livestock is so much cheaper to own and is so much more productive. It is important to understand the reality of ideologies. State Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, Fascism, Democracy; these are all livestock management approaches. Some work well for long periods of State Capitalism and some work very badly: Communism. They all fail because it is immoral and irrational to treat human-beings as livestock.
The recent growth of Freedom in China, India and Asia is occurring because the local state farmers have upgraded their livestock-management-practices. They have recognized that putting the cows in a larger stall will provide the rulers with more milk and meat. Rulers have also recognized that if they prevent you from fleeing the farm you will become depressed, inert and unproductive. A serf is the most productive when he imagines he is free. Thus your rulers must provide the illusion-of-freedom, in order to harvest you most effectively. Thus you are allowed to leave but never to real freedom, only to another farm, because the whole world is a farm. They will prevent you from taking a lot of money they will bury you in endless-paperwork. They will restrict your right-to-work, but you are of course free to leave. Due to these difficulties very few people do leave but the illusion of mobility is maintained.
If only one out of a thousand cows escapes, the illusion of escaping significantly raises the productivity of the remaining 999, it remains a net gain for the farmer. You are also kept on the farm through licensing. The most productive livestock are the professionals. So the rulers fit them with an electronic dog-collar called ‘a license.’ Which only allows them to practice their trade on their own farm. To further create the illusion of freedom in certain farms the livestock are allowed to choose between a few farmers that the investors present, at best they are given minor choices in how they are managed. They are never given the choice to shut down the farm and be truly free.
Government schools are indoctrination pens for livestock. They train children to “love the farm” and to fear true freedom and independence: And to attack anyone who questions the brutal reality of human ownership. Furthermore they create jobs for the intellectuals that State propaganda so relies on. The ridiculous contradictions of Statism like religion can only be sustained through endless propaganda inflicted upon helpless children. The idea that Democracy and some sort of social contract justifies the brutal exercise of violent power over billions is patently ridiculous.
If you say to a slave that his ancestors “chose” and therefore he is bound by their decisions, he will simply say “If slavery is a choice then I chose not to be a slave.” This is the most frightening statement for the ruling classes, which is why they trained their slaves to attack anyone who dares speak it.
Statism is not a philosophy.
Statism does not originate from historical evidence or rationale principles.
Statism is an ex-post-facto justification for human-ownership.
Statism is an excuse for violence.
Statism is an ideology and all ideologies are variations on human-livestock management-practices.
Religion is pimped-out superstition, designed to drug children with fears that they will endlessly pay to have alleviated. Nationalism is pimped-out bigotry, designed to provoke a Stockholm Syndrome in the livestock. The opposite of superstition is not another superstition, but the truth. The opposite of ideology is not a different ideology, but clear evidence and rational principles. The opposite of superstition and ideology of statism is philosophy.
PRIVATE CARS WERE RELATIVELY SCARCE in 1919 and horse-drawn conveyances were still common. In residential districts, electric streetlights had not yet replaced many of the old gaslights. And within the home, electricity remained largely a luxury item for the wealthy.
Just ten years later things looked very different. Cars dominated the streets and most urban homes had electric lights, electric flat irons, and vacuum cleaners. In upper-middle-class houses, washing machines, refrigerators, toasters, curling irons, percolators, heating pads, and popcorn poppers were becoming commonplace. And although the first commercial radio station didn’t begin broadcasting until 1920, the American public, with an adult population of about 122 million people, bought 4,438,000 radios in the year 1929 alone.
But despite the apparent tidal wave of new consumer goods and what appeared to be a healthy appetite for their consumption among the well-to-do, industrialists were worried. They feared that the frugal habits maintained by most American families would be difficult to break. Perhaps even more threatening was the fact that the industrial capacity for turning out goods seemed to be increasing at a pace greater than people’s sense that they needed them.
It was this latter concern that led Charles Kettering, director of General Motors Research, to write a 1929 magazine article called “Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied.” He wasn’t suggesting that manufacturers produce shoddy products. Along with many of his corporate cohorts, he was defining a strategic shift for American industry—from fulfilling basic human needs to creating new ones.
In a 1927 interview with the magazine Nation’s Business, Secretary of Labor James J. Davis provided some numbers to illustrate a problem that the New York Times called “need saturation.” Davis noted that “the textile mills of this country can produce all the cloth needed in six months’ operation each year” and that 14 percent of the American shoe factories could produce a year’s supply of footwear. The magazine went on to suggest, “It may be that the world’s needs ultimately will be produced by three days’ work a week.”
Business leaders were less than enthusiastic about the prospect of a society no longer centered on the production of goods. For them, the new “labor-saving” machinery presented not a vision of liberation but a threat to their position at the center of power. John E. Edgerton, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, typified their response when he declared: “I am for everything that will make work happier but against everything that will further subordinate its importance. The emphasis should be put on work—more work and better work.” “Nothing,” he claimed, “breeds radicalism more than unhappiness unless it is leisure.”
By the late 1920s, America’s business and political elite had found a way to defuse the dual threat of stagnating economic growth and a radicalized working class in what one industrial consultant called “the gospel of consumption”—the notion that people could be convinced that however much they have, it isn’t enough. President Herbert Hoover’s 1929 Committee on Recent Economic Changes observed in glowing terms the results: “By advertising and other promotional devices . . . a measurable pull on production has been created which releases capital otherwise tied up.” They celebrated the conceptual breakthrough: “Economically we have a boundless field before us; that there are new wants which will make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied.”
Today “work and more work” is the accepted way of doing things. If anything, improvements to the labor-saving machinery since the 1920s have intensified the trend. Machines can save labor, but only if they go idle when we possess enough of what they can produce. In other words, the machinery offers us an opportunity to work less, an opportunity that as a society we have chosen not to take. Instead, we have allowed the owners of those machines to define their purpose: not reduction of labor, but “higher productivity”—and with it the imperative to consume virtually everything that the machinery can possibly produce.
FROM THE EARLIEST DAYS of the Age of Consumerism there were critics. One of the most influential was Arthur Dahlberg, whose 1932 book Jobs, Machines, and Capitalism was well known to policymakers and elected officials in Washington. Dahlberg declared that “failure to shorten the length of the working day . . . is the primary cause of our rationing of opportunity, our excess industrial plant, our enormous wastes of competition, our high pressure advertising, [and] our economic imperialism.” Since much of what industry produced was no longer aimed at satisfying human physical needs, a four-hour workday, he claimed, was necessary to prevent society from becoming disastrously materialistic. “By not shortening the working day when all the wood is in,” he suggested, the profit motive becomes “both the creator and satisfier of spiritual needs.” For when the profit motive can turn nowhere else, “it wraps our soap in pretty boxes and tries to convince us that that is solace to our souls.”
There was, for a time, a visionary alternative. In 1930 Kellogg Company, the world’s leading producer of ready-to-eat cereal, announced that all of its nearly fifteen hundred workers would move from an eight-hour to a six-hour workday. Company president Lewis Brown and owner W. K. Kellogg noted that if the company ran “four six-hour shifts . . . instead of three eight-hour shifts, this will give work and paychecks to the heads of three hundred more families in Battle Creek.”
This was welcome news to workers at a time when the country was rapidly descending into the Great Depression. But as Benjamin Hunnicutt explains in his book Kellogg’s Six-Hour Day, Brown and Kellogg wanted to do more than save jobs. They hoped to show that the “free exchange of goods, services, and labor in the free market would not have to mean mindless consumerism or eternal exploitation of people and natural resources.” Instead “workers would be liberated by increasingly higher wages and shorter hours for the final freedom promised by the Declaration of Independence—the pursuit of happiness.”
To be sure, Kellogg did not intend to stop making a profit. But the company leaders argued that men and women would work more efficiently on shorter shifts, and with more people employed, the overall purchasing power of the community would increase, thus allowing for more purchases of goods, including cereals.
A shorter workday did entail a cut in overall pay for workers. But Kellogg raised the hourly rate to partially offset the loss and provided for production bonuses to encourage people to work hard. The company eliminated time off for lunch, assuming that workers would rather work their shorter shift and leave as soon as possible. In a “personal letter” to employees, Brown pointed to the “mental income” of “the enjoyment of the surroundings of your home, the place you work, your neighbors, the other pleasures you have [that are] harder to translate into dollars and cents.” Greater leisure, he hoped, would lead to “higher standards in school and civic . . . life” that would benefit the company by allowing it to “draw its workers from a community where good homes predominate.”
It was an attractive vision, and it worked. Not only did Kellogg prosper, but journalists from magazines such as Forbes andBusinessWeek reported that the great majority of company employees embraced the shorter workday. One reporter described “a lot of gardening and community beautification, athletics and hobbies . . . libraries well patronized and the mental background of these fortunate workers . . . becoming richer.”
A U.S. Department of Labor survey taken at the time, as well as interviews Hunnicutt conducted with former workers, confirm this picture. The government interviewers noted that “little dissatisfaction with lower earnings resulting from the decrease in hours was expressed, although in the majority of cases very real decreases had resulted.” One man spoke of “more time at home with the family.” Another remembered: “I could go home and have time to work in my garden.” A woman noted that the six-hour shift allowed her husband to “be with 4 boys at ages it was important.”
Those extra hours away from work also enabled some people to accomplish things that they might never have been able to do otherwise. Hunnicutt describes how at the end of her interview an eighty-year-old woman began talking about ping-pong. “We’d get together. We had a ping-pong table and all my relatives would come for dinner and things and we’d all play ping-pong by the hour.” Eventually she went on to win the state championship.
Many women used the extra time for housework. But even then, they often chose work that drew in the entire family, such as canning. One recalled how canning food at home became “a family project” that “we all enjoyed,” including her sons, who “opened up to talk freely.” As Hunnicutt puts it, canning became the “medium for something more important than preserving food. Stories, jokes, teasing, quarreling, practical instruction, songs, griefs, and problems were shared. The modern discipline of alienated work was left behind for an older . . . more convivial kind of working together.”
This was the stuff of a human ecology in which thousands of small, almost invisible, interactions between family members, friends, and neighbors create an intricate structure that supports social life in much the same way as topsoil supports our biological existence. When we allow either one to become impoverished, whether out of greed or intemperance, we put our long-term survival at risk.
Our modern predicament is a case in point. By 2005 per capita household spending (in inflation-adjusted dollars) was twelve times what it had been in 1929, while per capita spending for durable goods—the big stuff such as cars and appliances—was thirty-two times higher. Meanwhile, by 2000 the average married couple with children was working almost five hundred hours a year more than in 1979. And according to reports by the Federal Reserve Bank in 2004 and 2005, over 40 percent of American families spend more than they earn. The average household carries $18,654 in debt, not including home-mortgage debt, and the ratio of household debt to income is at record levels, having roughly doubled over the last two decades. We are quite literally working ourselves into a frenzy just so we can consume all that our machines can produce.
Yet we could work and spend a lot less and still live quite comfortably. By 1991 the amount of goods and services produced for each hour of labor was double what it had been in 1948. By 2006 that figure had risen another 30 percent. In other words, if as a society we made a collective decision to get by on the amount we produced and consumed seventeen years ago, we could cut back from the standard forty-hour week to 5.3 hours per day—or 2.7 hours if we were willing to return to the 1948 level. We were already the richest country on the planet in 1948 and most of the world has not yet caught up to where we were then.
Rather than realizing the enriched social life that Kellogg’s vision offered us, we have impoverished our human communities with a form of materialism that leaves us in relative isolation from family, friends, and neighbors. We simply don’t have time for them. Unlike our great-grandparents who passed the time, we spend it. An outside observer might conclude that we are in the grip of some strange curse, like a modern-day King Midas whose touch turns everything into a product built around a microchip.
Of course not everybody has been able to take part in the buying spree on equal terms. Millions of Americans work long hours at poverty wages while many others can find no work at all. However, as advertisers well know, poverty does not render one immune to the gospel of consumption.
Meanwhile, the influence of the gospel has spread far beyond the land of its origin. Most of the clothes, video players, furniture, toys, and other goods Americans buy today are made in distant countries, often by underpaid people working in sweatshop conditions. The raw material for many of those products comes from clearcutting or strip mining or other disastrous means of extraction. Here at home, business activity is centered on designing those products, financing their manufacture, marketing them—and counting the profits.
KELLOGG’S VISION, DESPITE ITS POPULARITY with his employees, had little support among his fellow business leaders. But Dahlberg’s book had a major influence on Senator (and future Supreme Court justice) Hugo Black who, in 1933, introduced legislation requiring a thirty-hour workweek. Although Roosevelt at first appeared to support Black’s bill, he soon sided with the majority of businessmen who opposed it. Instead, Roosevelt went on to launch a series of policy initiatives that led to the forty-hour standard that we more or less observe today.
By the time the Black bill came before Congress, the prophets of the gospel of consumption had been developing their tactics and techniques for at least a decade. However, as the Great Depression deepened, the public mood was uncertain, at best, about the proper role of the large corporation. Labor unions were gaining in both public support and legal legitimacy, and the Roosevelt administration, under its New Deal program, was implementing government regulation of industry on an unprecedented scale. Many corporate leaders saw the New Deal as a serious threat. James A. Emery, general counsel for the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), issued a “call to arms” against the “shackles of irrational regulation” and the “back-breaking burdens of taxation,” characterizing the New Deal doctrines as “alien invaders of our national thought.”
In response, the industrial elite represented by NAM, including General Motors, the big steel companies, General Foods, DuPont, and others, decided to create their own propaganda. An internal NAM memo called for “re-selling all of the individual Joe Doakes on the advantages and benefits he enjoys under a competitive economy.” NAM launched a massive public relations campaign it called the “American Way.” As the minutes of a NAM meeting described it, the purpose of the campaign was to link “free enterprise in the public consciousness with free speech, free press and free religion as integral parts of democracy.”
Consumption was not only the linchpin of the campaign; it was also recast in political terms. A campaign booklet put out by the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency told readers that under “private capitalism, the Consumer, the Citizen is boss,” and “he doesn’t have to wait for election day to vote or for the Court to convene before handing down his verdict. The consumer ‘votes’ each time he buys one article and rejects another.”
According to Edward Bernays, one of the founders of the field of public relations and a principal architect of the American Way, the choices available in the polling booth are akin to those at the department store; both should consist of a limited set of offerings that are carefully determined by what Bernays called an “invisible government” of public-relations experts and advertisers working on behalf of business leaders. Bernays claimed that in a “democratic society” we are and should be “governed, our minds . . . molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”
NAM formed a national network of groups to ensure that the booklet from J. Walter Thompson and similar material appeared in libraries and school curricula across the country. The campaign also placed favorable articles in newspapers (often citing “independent” scholars who were paid secretly) and created popular magazines and film shorts directed to children and adults with such titles as “Building Better Americans,” “The Business of America’s People Is Selling,” and “America Marching On.”
Perhaps the biggest public relations success for the American Way campaign was the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The fair’s director of public relations called it “the greatest public relations program in industrial history,” one that would battle what he called the “New Deal propaganda.” The fair’s motto was “Building the World of Tomorrow,” and it was indeed a forum in which American corporations literally modeled the future they were determined to create. The most famous of the exhibits was General Motors’ 35,000-square-foot Futurama, where visitors toured Democracity, a metropolis of multilane highways that took its citizens from their countryside homes to their jobs in the skyscraper-packed central city.
For all of its intensity and spectacle, the campaign for the American Way did not create immediate, widespread, enthusiastic support for American corporations or the corporate vision of the future. But it did lay the ideological groundwork for changes that came after the Second World War, changes that established what is still commonly called our post-war society.
The war had put people back to work in numbers that the New Deal had never approached, and there was considerable fear that unemployment would return when the war ended. Kellogg workers had been working forty-eight-hour weeks during the war and the majority of them were ready to return to a six-hour day and thirty-hour week. Most of them were able to do so, for a while. But W. K. Kellogg and Lewis Brown had turned the company over to new managers in 1937.
The new managers saw only costs and no benefits to the six-hour day, and almost immediately after the end of the war they began a campaign to undermine shorter hours. Management offered workers a tempting set of financial incentives if they would accept an eight-hour day. Yet in a vote taken in 1946, 77 percent of the men and 87 percent of the women wanted to return to a thirty-hour week rather than a forty-hour one. In making that choice, they also chose a fairly dramatic drop in earnings from artificially high wartime levels.
The company responded with a strategy of attrition, offering special deals on a department-by-department basis where eight hours had pockets of support, typically among highly skilled male workers. In the culture of a post-war, post-Depression U.S., that strategy was largely successful. But not everyone went along. Within Kellogg there was a substantial, albeit slowly dwindling group of people Hunnicutt calls the “mavericks,” who resisted longer work hours. They clustered in a few departments that had managed to preserve the six-hour day until the company eliminated it once and for all in 1985.
The mavericks rejected the claims made by the company, the union, and many of their co-workers that the extra money they could earn on an eight-hour shift was worth it. Despite the enormous difference in societal wealth between the 1930s and the 1980s, the language the mavericks used to explain their preference for a six-hour workday was almost identical to that used by Kellogg workers fifty years earlier. One woman, worried about the long hours worked by her son, said, “He has no time to live, to visit and spend time with his family, and to do the other things he really loves to do.”
Several people commented on the link between longer work hours and consumerism. One man said, “I was getting along real good, so there was no use in me working any more time than I had to.” He added, “Everybody thought they were going to get rich when they got that eight-hour deal and it really didn’t make a big difference. . . . Some went out and bought automobiles right quick and they didn’t gain much on that because the car took the extra money they had.”
The mavericks, well aware that longer work hours meant fewer jobs, called those who wanted eight-hour shifts plus overtime “work hogs.” “Kellogg’s was laying off people,” one woman commented, “while some of the men were working really fantastic amounts of overtime—that’s just not fair.” Another quoted the historian Arnold Toynbee, who said, “We will either share the work, or take care of people who don’t have work.”
PEOPLE IN THE DEPRESSION-WRACKED 1930s, with what seems to us today to be a very low level of material goods, readily chose fewer work hours for the same reasons as some of their children and grandchildren did in the 1980s: to have more time for themselves and their families. We could, as a society, make a similar choice today.
But we cannot do it as individuals. The mavericks at Kellogg held out against company and social pressure for years, but in the end the marketplace didn’t offer them a choice to work less and consume less. The reason is simple: that choice is at odds with the foundations of the marketplace itself—at least as it is currently constructed. The men and women who masterminded the creation of the consumerist society understood that theirs was a political undertaking, and it will take a powerful political movement to change course today.
Bernays’s version of a “democratic society,” in which political decisions are marketed to consumers, has many modern proponents. Consider a comment by Andrew Card, George W. Bush’s former chief of staff. When asked why the administration waited several months before making its case for war against Iraq, Card replied, “You don’t roll out a new product in August.” And in 2004, one of the leading legal theorists in the United States, federal judge Richard Posner, declared that “representative democracy . . . involves a division between rulers and ruled,” with the former being “a governing class,” and the rest of us exercising a form of “consumer sovereignty” in the political sphere with “the power not to buy a particular product, a power to choose though not to create.”
Sometimes an even more blatant antidemocratic stance appears in the working papers of elite think tanks. One such example is the prominent Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington’s 1975 contribution to a Trilateral Commission report on “The Crisis of Democracy.” Huntington warns against an “excess of democracy,” declaring that “a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups.” Huntington notes that “marginal social groups, as in the case of the blacks, are now becoming full participants in the political system” and thus present the “danger of overloading the political system” and undermining its authority.
According to this elite view, the people are too unstable and ignorant for self-rule. “Commoners,” who are viewed as factors of production at work and as consumers at home, must adhere to their proper roles in order to maintain social stability. Posner, for example, disparaged a proposal for a national day of deliberation as “a small but not trivial reduction in the amount of productive work.” Thus he appears to be an ideological descendant of the business leader who warned that relaxing the imperative for “more work and better work” breeds “radicalism.”
As far back as 1835, Boston workingmen striking for shorter hours declared that they needed time away from work to be good citizens: “We have rights, and we have duties to perform as American citizens and members of society.” As those workers well understood, any meaningful democracy requires citizens who are empowered to create and re-create their government, rather than a mass of marginalized voters who merely choose from what is offered by an “invisible” government. Citizenship requires a commitment of time and attention, a commitment people cannot make if they are lost to themselves in an ever-accelerating cycle of work and consumption.
We can break that cycle by turning off our machines when they have created enough of what we need. Doing so will give us an opportunity to re-create the kind of healthy communities that were beginning to emerge with Kellogg’s six-hour day, communities in which human welfare is the overriding concern rather than subservience to machines and those who own them. We can create a society where people have time to play together as well as work together, time to act politically in their common interests, and time even to argue over what those common interests might be. That fertile mix of human relationships is necessary for healthy human societies, which in turn are necessary for sustaining a healthy planet.
If we want to save the Earth, we must also save ourselves from ourselves. We can start by sharing the work and the wealth. We may just find that there is plenty of both to go around.
Human beings are the only species on earth equipped with highly developed brain and are capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving. A species which is uniquely adept at utilizing systems of communication for self-expression, the exchange of ideas, and organization, having all the features that provides ideal ground to make use of higher-level thought processes, such as self-awareness and rationality to comprehend nature and realize the importance of sustaining ecosystems as well as a sense of connection with other non-human life forms. However it is very unfortunate that despite having all these qualities and abilities, we have no conception of the importance of life, natural world and the ecosystems. Thinking in terms of power and profit, instead of ethics and compassion, we have adopted a life style based entirely on self-interest, therefore we see ourselves as conquerors of nature rather than the citizens of vast bio community. As a result, we have become a species that is technologically sophisticated but morally retarded, having no reverence for life, following a system of disregard and abuse and driving full speed into an evolutionary dead-end, yet overwhelmed by a constant state of denial.
Whether it’s food, whether education or whether healthcare, every aspect of our life has turned into commerce and consumerism. If you don’t have money to pay, you have no right to eat or to learn and you cannot expect to have a shelter or proper healthcare,however our cognitive dissonance never allows us to accept this reality. This conflicting cognition is one of the main reason behind the Normalcy bias as well as the optimism bias causing us to underestimate the possibility and effects of the disaster we are facing in form of an unjust society, where few are thriving while the majority is suffering. Living in a fantasy world of distraction, whereby we focus more on entertainment rather than the great challenges our species is facing in form of hunger, poverty and war. Using multiple justifications to disconnect ourselves and not to feel any guilt or remorse for the pain and suffering of many by the hands of the system we are supporting and nurturing. This attitude or this mental condition is also known as SEP (Somebody Else’s Problem) OR Diffusion of responsibility.
Of course the rich tell the poor that the system works … it works well for them …. unfortunately the poor just happen to be the big majority… and their hungers, injustices and pains are unethical ….
A concept of Utilitarianism (maximization of overall happiness by all means) whereby everyone is enjoying a shallow escapism and least bothered to look out of the window to see, that while billions are being spent on entertainment, sports, celebrities, movies, fashion, arts and religious rituals, six million children are dying each year from starvation. Everyone is looking for happiness, no matter how fake it is, and no one is interested to talk about the bitter realities. A deliberate act of dehumanization being carried out by the few against many, where large number of people are being deprived of basic human rights (e.g., physical autonomy, food, water, opportunities for self-sufficiency), but we are busy with our Bread and Circuses.
The logic is simple, albeit denied. An unjust system that envisions life as nothing but competition and constant fear for survival, has given rise to a mentality which revolves around self interest, where everything is being looked at as “mine and yours”. It is an undeniable fact that a competitive system will always create “winners” and “losers”, yet everyone is deluded into thinking and believing that they will be the winners. The concept of personal savings, properties, wealth or possessions, personal family, personal interests etc. combined with the idea of accepting and obeying authority of few, ignoring the fact that those few are also motivated with self-interest and fear for survival, has created a sense of insecurity among people who are living their lives end to end, looking for short term gains and ignoring long term consequences. Every relationship is based on vested interests and every concept revolves around maximization of personal happiness by all means, while happiness itself has lost all the meanings and has been replaced by images being advertised through media, promoting fear of inadequacy among the masses.
The images being bombarded by the media on our subconscious minds are all lies, yet we deceive ourselves and feel inadequate. The dreams and hope created in the minds with advertisement of luxury goods, jewelry, fast cars, etc. are capable of consuming a person to the point where they feel the desire to acquire these items in order to feel fulfilled or to have achieved something and if they don’t have the monetary means to acquire these goods in a ‘legal’ way, then they will take the illegal route. Likewise the status symbols created by the society are all fake, yet we deceive ourselves to judge people on what they own, what they wear, how they look like, what music they listen, who they hang around with and practically every other personal trait while any imperfection any inferiority is ridiculed and a person is made fun of, for being who he is.
The result is quite obvious. This system of disregard and abuse has converted us into a selfish, ignorant and careless species, constructing a culture and defining the purpose of life, which is summed up in these words by Dylan Charles;
“Hypnotic and entranced, following orders and obeying ridiculous rules, laws and regulations (forcing upon us a punitive system where all infractions are punishable by fines, imprisonment, death, or worse) getting deprived of all explicitly human qualities such as compassion, logic, awareness, self-preservation etc. The prison population balloons with non-violent ‘criminals’ while the wars, ‘collateral damage’ and ‘civilian casualties’ continue unabated, which clearly means that masses don’t seem to really care what happens to their fellowmen.”
“Individuality is being erased, as more and more people succumb to the hypnotic indulgences of a poisoned, consumer-driven, media-controlled way of life. Group think is at all time high and watching people cheer and whinny by the thousands over a political campaign or a sporting match is like nervously watching the advance of a drooling Zombie army. Perhaps we are all becoming zombies i.e. soulless animated human cadavers inhabited only by some of our lowest capacities and cravings, walking into peril with absolute disregard, willingly turning a blind eye to the injustices perpetrated by the system and least bothered to confront the big picture.”
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Why can’t we realize a simple fact that it is the same fear of survival, the same sense of inadequacy and insecurity, the same dreams of luxury goods, jewelry, fast cars, etc., that are making us to compete with others and win, are also forcing some of us towards theft, prostitution, fraud and murder?
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Why can’t we see that all these crimes are nothing as compared to the crimes that has been committed in the name of colonialism and imperialism?
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Why can’t we see that these crimes are nothing as compared to mass murders being committed in the name of foreign policy?
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Why can’t we see that the damages resulting from petty crimes are nothing as compared to the collateral damage occurring from wars?
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Ask these people;
why the world is more unjust, if goodness exist?
why more people are poor and few are rich, or why few haves and many have-nots?
why few are thriving, while more are starving and suffering?
why wealth is circulating in few hands while majority is deprived?
why there is more miseries than happiness?
Why everyone tries to see goodness and happiness, while turning blind eye towards miseries and misfortunes?
why education, healthcare and justice is only available for those who have money?
why the corrupt people sitting in the seats of authority are untouched while common man stealing for survival gets punished?
why those banks robbing most of our earning and hard-work through inflation, price hikes, bailouts always gets away with it?
why gambling is crime but derivatives, options and speculation is legal?
why there is death penalty for killing one person, but no punishment for killing thousands in the name of foreign policy?
Why these big criminals are not even seen as criminals, while jails are full of petty thieves?
why no one feels uncomfortable with this extreme level of inequality and injustice?
why everything revolves around production and consumption when resources on this planet are finite?
what will happen when these resources will eventually get depleted?
Ask them and they’ll say it’s not our responsibility… Ask them again and they’ll say we are blessed so we should be grateful… Ask them once again and they’ll say be positive… Ask them yet again and they’ll say don’t be negative… Ask them again and they’ll change the topic… Ask them one more time and they’ll walk away…
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All we see today is a fake intellectualism, where the so called “intellectuals” are involved in Hegelian dialectic, making simple things look complicated, discussing issues without disturbing the status quo and without confronting the big picture. It’s because of the same fake intellectualism that we blame individuals and groups instead of the system on the whole. What we fail to understand is, that it’s us who have set the conditions, the rules, the laws for the system to work. Why individuals or groups are constantly overstepping or violating these rules and conditions? Because either there are loopholes that makes these conditions void and ineffective OR the conditions are totally invalid and entirely illogical. As a matter of fact, these rules, laws and conditions needs to be re-visited, or else nothing will change, and these violations will continue. A system where power, wealth and authority are bound to be corrupted and misused, yet we blame individuals or groups, and not the system itself.
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The question is, why are we in a state of (partial or total) denial regarding the real issues? Why we have turned a blind eye towards constantly rising hunger and poverty? Why we are ignoring all acts of oppression, suppression, aggression and why we are unable to see the deprivation of many by the hands of few? Why are we hiding behind self created distractions, instead of facing the hazards that are dragging us to an evolutionary dead-end? In fact why at first place, we are not even realizing that we are actually moving towards a dead end?
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The answer, perhaps is not that simple. It requires a complete analysis of human psyche, personality trait as well as psychoanalysis of personality development, forming a collective approach (also known as crowd psychology and Herd Behavior) in order to identify the true factors behind this persistent ignorance, a constant state of denial (or in technical language SEP and Diffusion of Responsibility).
The human mind is a system within the human body (which itself is a system). These systems work according to certain predictable, pre-set rules, neurological pathways, chemical responses of which the origins/source is able to be traced back to either a genetic hereditary code and/or an expression/experience that is copied from the environment. The whole point of the Study of Psychology is to map out and investigate just how the Human SYSTEM of the Mind as thoughts, feelings and emotions works, and thus not simply take thoughts, feelings and emotional experiences for granted.
The concept of psychoanalysis was conceived by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud who identified that Human mind is equipped with a built in defense mechanism based on unconscious psychological strategies to cope with reality, to maintain self-image and to form a collective mentality.
Freud proposed three structures of the psyche or personality:
Id: a selfish, childish, pleasure-oriented part of the personality with no ability to delay gratification.
Superego: internalized societal and parental standards of “good” and “bad”, “right” and “wrong” behaviour.
Ego: the moderator between the id and superego which seeks compromises to pacify both. It can be viewed as our “sense of time and place”,
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The structural Id can be seen in a behavior of a two year old child, discovering the sense of “I“. It all becomes “me” and even to the detriment of other people if not kept in check by the parents. Apparently the personality traits are more inclined towards Id and a sort of malevolence by default, whereas morality needs to be taught to humans, just like taming a wild animal. As a matter of fact, the early childhood provides a complete picture of all the positive and negative emotions, existing within the human mind. Negative emotions such as ego, envy, anger, selfishness etc. Positive emotions such as empathy, compassion, helpfulness, cooperation etc. and it’s the environment or the surroundings in which the human child is being brought up, that builds the overall character. Unfortunately most of us miss out on this unpleasant fact, allowing Id to go unchecked, empathy and compassion unnoticed, leaving ourselves to get shaped up according to the social and cultural norms.
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Denial as a defense mechanism is also called abnegation, reflecting a condition in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.
The subject may use:
simple denial: deny the reality of the unpleasant fact altogether
minimization: admit the fact but deny its seriousness (a combination of denial and rationalization)
projection: admit both the fact and seriousness but deny responsibility.
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Denial can also be a part of coping techniques i.e. “constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing” OR “exceeding the resources of the person”. Coping is thus expending conscious effort to solve personal and interpersonal problems, and seeking to master, minimize or tolerate stress or conflict.
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There are various internal and external factors that effect the human psyche, personality traits and personality development. In simple words, these external and internal factors, shape up our minds and convert us into what we are;
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INTERNAL FACTORS
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Framing
A frame in social theory consists of a schema of interpretation, a collection of anecdotes and stereotypes, that individuals rely on to understand and respond to events. In other words, people build a series of mental filters through biological and cultural influences. They use these filters to make sense of the world. The choices they then make are influenced by their creation of a frame. Framing effect can also be seen as a sort of cognitive bias which is evident when presenting the same option in different formats alters people’s decisions. Specifically, individuals have a tendency to select inconsistent choices, depending on whether the question is framed to concentrate on losses or gains. On collective level, framing refers to the construction of a social phenomenon by mass media sources or specific political or social movements or organizations. It is an inevitable process of selective influence over the individual’s perception of the meanings attributed to words or phrases. A frame defines the packaging of an element of rhetoric in such a way as to encourage certain interpretations and to discourage others.
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Narcissism
The foremost concept in terms of personality trait as well as psychoanalytic theory is narcissism, which denotes egoism, vanity, conceit or selfishness and when applied to a social group, it is used to denote elitism. Narcissism plays an important role in how people relate to the world by acquiring and using things (assimilation) and by relating to self and others (socialization). At times narcissism is used to describe some kind of problem in a person or group’s relationships with self and others.
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Cognitive bias
Cognitive bias is a pattern of deviation in judgment that occurs in particular situations, leading to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality. Cognitive biases are instances of evolved mental behavior. Some are presumably adaptive, for example, because they lead to more effective actions in given contexts or enable faster decisions when faster decisions are of greater value (heuristics). Others presumably result from a lack of appropriate mental mechanisms (bounded rationality), or simply from mental noise and distortions.
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Cognitive Dissonance
A discomfort caused by holding conflicting cognition (ideas, beliefs, values, emotional reactions) and social cognition. The set of beliefs and ideas are so strong that a conflict always causes discomfort, resulting in a condition known as cognitive dissonance , where people try to rationalize, ignore or even deny anything that doesn’t fit with their core belief. The same theory when applied to collective level, forms an approach (crowd psychology or social psychology) based on motivational drive to reduce dissonance by altering existing cognitions, adding new ones to create a consistent belief system, or alternatively by reducing the importance of any one of the dissonant elements. (In this particular case, the motivational drive of self-interest such as profit, growth, consumerism, entertainment, along with a fake image of goodness and positiveness for example social/cultural/religious rituals, charity/philanthropy and social/community services are the distractions being used to turn a blind eye towards real issues leading us towards a dead end).
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Optimism bias
An unrealistic or comparative optimism, a self serving bias that causes a person to believe that they are less at risk of experiencing a negative event compared to others. There are four factors that cause a person to be optimistically biased: their desired end state, their cognitive mechanisms, the information they have about themselves versus others, and overall mood.The optimistic bias is seen in a number of situations, including people believing that they are less at risk of being a crime victim, smokers believing that they are less likely to contract lung cancer or disease than other smokers, and first-time bungee jumpers believing that they are less at risk of an injury than other jumpers. The factors leading to the optimistic bias can be categorized into four different groups i.e. desired end states of comparative judgment, cognitive mechanisms, information about the self versus a target, and underlying affect.
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Normalcy bias
The normalcy bias, or normality bias, refers to a mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects. This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster. The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred then it never will occur. It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.
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Somebody Else’s Problem (SEP)
It is a condition where individuals/populations of individuals choose to decentralize themselves from an issue that may be in critical need of recognition. Such issues may be of large concern to the population as a whole but can easily be a choice of ignorance at an individualistic level. In terms of psychology and philosophy of perception, SEP can be seen as a condition where multiple individuals simultaneously experience the same stimulus, diffusion of responsibility and/or the bystander effect may release individuals from the need to act, and if no-one from the group is seen to act, each individual may be further inhibited by conformity.
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Diffusion of responsibility
Diffusion of responsibility is a sociopsychological phenomenon whereby a person is less likely to take responsibility for an action or inaction when others are present. Considered a form of attribution, the individual assumes that either others are responsible for taking action or have already done so. The phenomenon tends to occur in groups of people above a certain critical size and when responsibility is not explicitly assigned. It rarely occurs when the person is alone and diffusion increases with groups of three or more.
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Bystander effect
The bystander effect or Genovese syndrome is a social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases where individuals do not offer any means of help in an emergency situation to the victim when other people are present. The probability of help has often appeared to be inversely related to the number of bystanders; in other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help. The mere presence of other bystanders greatly decreases intervention. In general, this is believed to happen because as the number of bystanders increases, any given bystander is less likely to notice the situation, interpret the incident as a problem, and less likely to assume responsibility for taking action.
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Moral disengagement
Moral disengagement is a term from social psychology for the process of convincing the self that ethical standards do not apply to oneself in a particular context, by separating moral reactions from inhumane conduct by disabling the mechanism of self-condemnation. Moral disengagement can be classified into four different categories:
Reconstructing conduct:
Portraying inhumane behavior as though ithas a moral purpose in order to make it socially acceptable. For example, torture, in order to obtain information necessary to protect the nation’s citizens, may be seen as acceptable
Displacing or diffusing responsibility:
Displacement of responsibility, operates by distorting the relationship between actions and the effects they cause. People behave in ways they would normally oppose if a legitimate authority accepts responsibility for the consequences of that behavior. Under conditions of displaced responsibility, people view their actions as the dictates of authorities rather than their own actions.
Disregarding or misrepresenting injurious consequences:
Disengagement through disregard or misrepresentation of the consequences of action. When someone pursues an activity harmful to others for personal gain they generally either minimize the harm they have caused or attempt to avoid facing it. Instead, they will recall prior information given to them about the potential benefits of the behavior. People are especially prone to minimize harmful effects when they act alone. It is relatively easy to hurt others when the detrimental results of one’s conduct are ignored.
Dehumanization:
Dehumanization, is applied to the targets of violent acts and depends on how the perpetrator views the people toward whom the harmful behavior is directed. Once dehumanized, divested of human qualities, people are no longer viewed as persons with feelings, hopes, and concerns but as subhuman objects which do not evoke feelings of empathy from the perpetrator and can be subjected to horrendous treatment.
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Group think
This is a psychological phenomenon within groups or people. It is the mode of thinking that happens when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative ideas or viewpoints. The primary socially negative cost of groupthink is the loss of individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking.
Social control refers generally to societal and political mechanisms or processes that regulate individual and group behavior, leading to conformity and compliance to the rules of a given society, state, or social group. Social control can be internal of external. Internal Control means Internalisation of norms and values through socialization i.e. the process by which an individual, born with behavioral potentialities of enormously wide range, is led to develop actual behavior which is confined to the narrower range of what is acceptable for him by the group standards. External Control or external sanctions, which can be either positive (rewards) or negative (punishment). These sanctions come from either formal or informal control.
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Indoctrination
Cognition can also be developed artificially through indoctrination, a process whereby ideas, attitudes and cognitive strategies are asserted, while the individuals or groups are expected not to question or critically examine a particular doctrine being taught to them. A simple example of Indoctrination could be the religious ideologies, built on the foundations of myths and superstitions, promoting the concept of reward and punishment for every act or deed and gradually eliminating the sense of personal responsibility in individuals or groups. Such ideologies also provide motivational drives in form of rituals, family or community service, charity etc. as alternate means of maintaining self image of goodness and positiveness, reducing emotional strains while ignoring real issues such as poverty, aggression, suppression, injustice and inequality. Another example of indoctrination is military indoctrination.
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Paternalism
Paternalism (or parentalism) most typically refers to behavior, by a person, organization or state, which limits some person’s liberty or autonomy for their good, or the liberty or autonomy of some group of people for their good. Some definitions of paternalism require in addition that the behavior is against the will of this person or persons, or that it is undertaken regardless of that will. Paternalism is sometimes thought appropriate towards children and paternalism towards adults is sometimes thought to treat them as if they were children. Examples of paternalism include laws requiring the use of motorcycle helmets, a parent forbidding their children to engage in dangerous activities, and a psychiatrist confiscating sharp objects from someone who is suicidally depressed.
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Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. Propaganda is usually repeated and dispersed over a wide variety of media in order to create the chosen result in audience attitudes.
As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda, in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus possibly lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda. Propaganda can be used as a form of political warfare.
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Persuasion
Persuasion is the influence of beliefs, attitudes, intentions, motivations, or behaviors. A process aimed at changing a person’s or a group’s attitude or behavior toward some event, idea, object, or people, by using written or spoken words to convey information, feelings, or reasoning, or a combination of them
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Behavior modification
Use of empirically demonstrated behavior change techniques to increase or decrease the frequency of behaviors, such as altering an individual’s behaviors and reactions to stimuli through positive and negative reinforcement of adaptive behavior and/or the reduction of behavior through its extinction, punishment and/or satiation. The primary example of Behavior modification can be seen in schools where the adaptive behavior is reinforced in children. Military andcorporations, use this technique toalter individual and collective behaviors, for example the corporate managerial employees who are required to practice a style of decision making that “does not let feelings get in the way”, which applies as much to firing employees as it does to dealing with the consequences of corporate behavior in the environment or the community OR the soldiers who are are required to follow orders without questioning, fighting as mercenaries, devoid of any feeling, killing people ruthlessly.
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Disinformation
In the modern era of internet, the art of social engineering has evolved further. Disinformation has been introduced as an additional component into the existing set of tools i.e. propaganda and persuasion. Unlike traditional propaganda techniques designed to engage emotional support, disinformation is designed to manipulate the audience at the rational level by either discrediting conflicting information or supporting false conclusions. A common disinformation tactic is to mix some truth and observation with false conclusions and lies, or to reveal part of the truth while presenting it as the whole (a limited hangout).
Modern Social engineers are master of altering perceptions through disinformation, revealing part of truth and misguiding public to false conclusions, providing a bit of true information, while mixing it with fiction, directing public anger towards invisible, secret societies, fictitious covert satanic organizations or shifting all the blame towards entities. These individuals or groups operate mostly as so called “truthers”, while they are actually working for various foundations and think tank, trying to gain public attention through claims that cannot be proven. A successful attempt to prevent people from seeing or realizing that each and every single person living in the society and following social, cultural, economic norms, is equally responsible for nurturing the system based on injustice and inequality.
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Social engineering
This concept reflects efforts to influence popular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale, whether by governments or private groups. In the political arena, the counterpart of social engineering is political engineering. Law and governance has the effect of seeking to change behavior and could be considered “social engineering” to some extent. In most societies, changing public attitudes about a behaviour is accepted as one of the key functions of laws prohibiting it. Governments also influence behavior more subtly through incentives and disincentives built into economic policy and tax policy, for instance, and have done so for centuries.
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Public Relations
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing the flow of information between an individual or an organization and the public. Public relations is the deliberate, planned, and sustained effort to establish and maintain a preferred point of view. Public relations provides an organization or individual exposure to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that do not require direct payment. The aim of public relations by a company often is to persuade the public, investors, partners, employees, and other stakeholders to maintain a certain point of view about it, its leadership, products, or of political decisions. Common activities include speaking at conferences, winning industry awards, working with the press, and employee communication. Edward Louis Bernays, who is considered the founding father of modern public relations along with Ivy Lee, in the early 1900s defined public relations as “a management function which tabulates public attitudes, defines the policies, procedures, and interests of an organization… followed by executing a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance.”
Edward Barneys named his scientific technique of opinion-molding “the engineering of consent” and this art has successfully been adopted by primary agencies of power i.e. the state, the banking system, corporations, universities, foundations and think tank.
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FOUNDATIONS AND THINK TANK
The idea of control through foundations and think tank dates back to Greek and Roman times, however from the early 20th century, with the founding of the Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and later on the Ford Foundation (among several others), these foundations have acted as “engines of social engineering.” Their purpose is firstly to establish consensus among the elite and their subordinate classes (through the construction and dissemination of ideology), and secondly, their purpose is to create consent among the governed. This is referred to as the “engineering of consent,” and it is achieved through several ways ways:
shaping the educational system and the construction of knowledge itself, so that the true nature of the system remains largely elusive from the ‘educated’ class.
the development and dissemination of the consumer society ideology which altered the population from that of citizen to consumer;
the funding and development of social alleviation programs and services, designed in fashion with the missionary system of the formal colonial period, whereby ‘missions’ (or in the case of foundations, Non-governmental organizations – NGOs) seek to alleviate the symptoms of the brutality of the global system (promoting human rights, poverty reduction, educational services, health care) without challenging the system itself, thereby having the effect of quelling and stifling dissent and resistance against the system by making the most needy complacent and dependent upon it for the very minimal basic means of survival.
through the co-optation and patronage of social movements and activism, whereby foundations fund different movements and activists (from civil rights, to anti-apartheid, environmental, feminist, anti-globalization, etc. organizations) so that the movements are steered into avenues safe for the ruling elite.
Why have we forgotten theLudlow Massacre? Wasn’t it the same Rockefeller family, that was behind the murder of innocent workers (including women and children), who were burned to death in 1914? How ridiculous is the fact that a person who orders a hired militia to kill innocent workers demanding safety, protection, healthcare etc. gets the title of “Philanthropist”? How can we even think for a moment that such people could care about education, healthcare and poverty reduction? Isn’t it the height of ignorance?
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Here are some global foundations, think tank and Non-Profit Organizations, directly influencing and controlling the social, cultural, educational, professional and economic affairs world wide;
According to the statistics there are 1.6 million so-called ‘nonprofit’ 501(c)3 organizations or better say TAX EXEMPT organizations, which are involved in influencing global affairs through creating constituency groups or supporters, lobbying, buying off politicians through “donations” and campaign contributions, providing grants to schools and colleges and in return placing their representatives on the school Board of Directors to influence curriculum and many other such activities.
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Question;
What exactly are these institutions and tax exempt organizations doing in the name of “poverty reduction” and “Economic stability”, when poverty, deprivation and poverty is increasing each passing day?
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What are these institutions and Tax exempt foundations are doing in the name of “Human rights” and “peace keeping” when nations are involved in dehumanization, exporting freedom and democracy through bombing other nations?
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Where exactly the donations of these so called “philanthropists” are going, since last 100 years, since nothing is changing or improving and the condition is constantly deteriorating?
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Something is surely wrong here but people are living in a state of denial and normalcy bias as usual.
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People who are interested in finding out more about foundations and NPOs may obtain a free membership for independent researchers at GuideStar.org to investigate tax exempt entities’ IRS 990 tax forms which provides information about how much money they have, and may include the names of grant recipients, the names of the donors and a list of companies with whom they invest. OpenSecrets.org is also a good source for finding information on political and lobbying contributions.
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THE MEDIA
Like every other aspect of our life, media too is seen as commercial entity, meant to generate profit at all costs. Probably that is the reason why it has been used in the past to legitimize aggression, suppression and exploitation committed in the name of imperialism and colonialism, creating an image of our world as a place where everyone has to compete with each other in order to survive. A concept of “winners and losers” in a competitive environment, where the winners had all the rights to define rules and regulations regarding how the game should be played. These so called winners used this weapon in the most effective way, turning into a medium of social control, convincing people through propaganda, persuasion and PR, making them to accept all the rules, to obey the authorities and to pass on these rules to their next generations.
In the current era of mass communication and global information processing, media plays the most significant role in shaping our minds. Form print media, television and radio to cable and internet, a parallel virtual world has been created where the images are being bombarded on subconscious minds, turning people into zombies, chasing dreams and hopes, competing with each other in an attempt to win. A generation already convinced with the idea of “winner takes it all” is now completely devoid of any hope to find a better alternate, therefore not interested to hear or talk about the so called losers. This virtual world has got all the weapons of distraction, for example entertainment, sports, fashion, celebrities etc. to keep the masses busy and not letting them focus on the miseries and misfortunes being faced by the majority.
A very interesting point to be noted here that the whole global media is now owned by very few major corporations, expressing the ideological viewpoints of their owners or the companies that literally spend billions on advertising. These gigantic media corporations do not exist to objectively tell the truth to the people, rather the primary purpose of their existence is to make money.
People who are interested in finding out who owns what in global media industry, please click HERE.
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“The maniacal lunatics in control of our society know exactly how human beings tick and they are masters at manipulation.” – Bruce McDonald
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This was an attempt to identify the amount of influence on our thoughts and perceptions, as well as the extent of programming, our minds are going through, in the current world of 21st century. However it is necessary to understand that these scientific practices of influencing thoughts and minds are quite recent, whereas the process of regulating individual and group behavior, leading to conformity and compliance to the rules of a given society, state, or social group, has been a part of human life throughout the history in one form or another. The idea of the Control of Many by the Few is nothing new for humanity, rather it’s a common concept in almost every era and every civilization, while our ignorance and apathy has played the most important role in it’s success. The origin of Democracy as well as communism goes back to Ancient Greece, whereas the concepts of diversion, distraction such as Bread and Circuses goes back to Ancient Rome. These social, political and economic ideas emerged into a completely different shape after the emergence of mercantilism and the colonial period (an era from the 1550s to, arguably, the 1990s) when several European powers (Spain, Portugal, Britain, and France especially) established colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. At first the countries followed mercantilist policies designed to strengthen the home economy at the expense of rivals, so the colonies were usually allowed to trade only with the mother country. By the mid-19th century, however, the powerful British Empire gave up mercantilism and trade restrictions and introduced the principle of free trade, with few restrictions or tariffs.
A very important point to be noted here is, that people and nations have accepted the political and economic ideas of Colonialism, as if these concepts were set in stone, without questioning or arguing.
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Lets see what this ridiculous ideas stands for;
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony, and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by colonizers from the metropole. Colonialism is a set of unequal relationships between the metropole and the colony and between the colonists and the indigenous population.
Likewise the masses have accepted the post 2001 neomercantilism and the economic policies that has been enforced by IMF, World Bank and the bank’s 51% owner, the US treasury, i.e. stripping away the national assets and destroying the economies in the name of privatization,liberalization and free trade, along with the political concept of spreading democracy and freedom through bombing.
What next?
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Fear of Survival
The way our world works, has been defined, enforced, accepted and passed on through by generations. Our history (which has been corrupted purposely and distorted intentionally) shows us the same pattern throughout, whereby the system is based on fear of survival that has been programmed as the Prominent Point of Life on Earth. An image that has been accepted and transferred from parents to their children, generations after generations.
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Parenting
Parentinghas played an important role in programming children’s minds. We normally see our children as a personal commodity to be conditioned and controlled, to reproduce exactly as told. A conditioning that starts at home and later on enhanced by various other agencies of social control such as family, neighborhood, church, religion, the school, Law, Administration, public opinion, use of force, propaganda and persuasion.
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Schooling
A concept of sophism i.e. The practice of charging money for education and providing wisdom only to those who could pay. This concept reflects the exact idea of current education which has turned into a business, having money as the sole motive. The children are taught meaningless things, no one wants to learn, no one needs to know , what seldom apply to the practical life, and all is done to earn money. The most significant aspect of schooling is erasure of individuality by judging every child at the same level while enforcing of obedience to authoritative figures. The schools are mostly run as businesses owned by few rich so called “philanthropists”, or as institutions owned by the governments, while the policies and curriculum, in either case reflects the view point of the owners. In short, schooling is a huge waste of time, energy, talent and creativity. Schools are nothing but the centers of teaching servitude and conformity, conditioning children to accept ridiculous rules of the system and to obey authorities.
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Here is a video in which John Tylor Gatto speaks about the current education system. Please note that John Gatto is a retired American school teacher with nearly 30 years experience in the classroom, and author of several books on education.
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Alienation
The most important tool of social control and one of the most important factor behind our current state of denial is alienation. A kind of estrangement (quite prominent in our behavior now) which has been created by distancing people from what is important or meaningful to them. In terms of objectivity, alienation reflects a state of social isolation, for denying conformity or opposing common opinion. In normal situation, an individual faces mild opposition such as getting ridiculed by masses, while in extreme situations an individual ends up getting diagnosed as psycho or insane.
In subjective terms, alienation means distancing an individual from his own self, turning him hostile and unsympathetic, a kind of desensitization diminishing emotional responsiveness to negative or aversive stimulus after repeated exposure to it. The best way to suppress feelings and emotions through repetitive exposure is TV and movies where sad, emotional and aggressive scenes are repeatedly fed to our brains, repressing our emotional responsiveness in real life.
The same objective of repressing emotional responsiveness was achieved through news papers in the past, while in ancient times, the objective was achieved though inducing myths and stories, making them a subject of public and social discussions.
A state of denial, a fear to face the reality, enforced upon us through alienation and desensitization, prevents us to think, investigate or question the norms governing our lives, rather we normally surrender to public opinion or views expressed and enforced by some authority which is normally nothing but sophism, creating double think.
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An excellent video showing how we conform to a common yet baseless pattern:
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No one is interested to know why he is not allowed to grab the banana and no one seems to be interested to stop and think, why he is beating the crap out of the person climbing the ladder. That’s us, the humans, the members of a so called civilized society, living in a state of conformity to the society and unthinking obedience to the authority without realizing that the masses are following nothing but hearsay while those sitting on the seats of authority have reached there through impression management, Propaganda and Persuasion. These people were selected and not elected, while public had no real choice rather they were given an illusion of choice, allowing them to chose the lessor of two evils.
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Due to a programmed state of denial, no one dares to question some very basic dogmas and quite prominent flaws in our social as well as economic activities.
Who was the first person to claim a piece of land on earth as his personal property , who assigned him the right to do so and when did it happen?
Who was the first person to exploit the fruits of other’s labor? Who was the first person to enslave other human? Who assigned him the right to do so and when?
Who was the first individual to have claimed the right to subjugate and rule other human beings? When did this happen?
Who were the first people to define the invisible boundaries on earth, declaring a certain region on the planet as their personal state/country? When did this happen?
Who were the first people to have claimed themselves as a nation formed on the basis of religious, social or political ideologies, declaring others as aliens or infidels due to difference of faith or ideologies and when?
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Instead of focusing on these questions, we are blindly following the same patterns, generations after generations, claiming personal rights on land, assigned by fictitious entities such as governments, fighting other human beings in the name of national, social, religious and political ideologies, without realizing that these are the biggest factors behind exploitation, crimes, wars and murders, horrors and misfortunes on earth.
An important point to be noted here is, that no religious, political or social ideology ever challenged the very basic act of transgression committed by man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying “This is mine”, rather this act was encouraged by giving those men the right to keep what they “claimed as their”, declaring it as God’s will. Another act of transgression where a man claims another man to be his slave, his property, declaring himself as master and the owner. What a ridiculous claim, but unfortunately no social or religious doctrine in the past, has condemned this act or challenged this mindset. Rather Slavery has been mentioned in almost every religious doctrine as an authentic concept accepted and regularized through God’s will. Most of these ideologies also encourages the followers to fight against those who differ and do not comply, again declaring it as God’s will. The reason why we see so many examples of State-organized dehumanization that has historically been directed against perceived racial, ethnic, national, or religious “Others”.
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OUR ECONOMIC SYSTEM
Our Economic System is clear example of a state of constant denial and normalcy bias. A system, based on production, which is the act of creating output, a good or service having value and contributes to the utility of individuals (consumption). These two factors i.e. production and consumption calculated for a specific period, refers to the GDP and GNP, which in turn determine the economic growth of a country or nation. It is quite obvious that when economic growth depends on of production, it requires constant extraction of natural resources, converting them into consumer goods or utilities measured in terms of price through the mechanism of exchange determined as monetary value.
Money having no intrinsic value of it’s own, is created as debt through fractional reserve banking using money multiplier, a process whereby private banks LEGALLY create money out of thin air expanding broad money supply. This unlimited money supply in form of interest based debt (including government debt as well as treasury bills, treasury bonds, deficit spending etc.) is bound to create inflation which is considered as an important factor on economic growth. What exactly is this money multiplier? How the multiplication works? Does it really makes sense? Perhaps people don’t have time to think about it!
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This video explains the process of money creation in simple words; Disclaimer: This video has been made by Positive Money UK and the writer has no affiliation with this campaign. The video has been selected only because it explains everything in simple and easy words.
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Here is a LINK that will provide some useful information regarding money creation for those who are interested in a deeper understanding.
Disclaimer: This Information has been provided by Chris Martenson and the writer has no affiliation with him or his website.
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These scales of determining economic growth automatically creates a competitive environment, where people and entities compete with each other to earn more profit through reduction of costs, while nations compete in order to produce more goods, therefore raising their GDP/GNP. In this competitive environment, greed has become the most dominant factor.
However, it is not just greed that is the only problem with the global financial system. The other problem is the mentality of investment derived from a particular logic and language. Both of these aspects operate in a market system that perceives consumption as limitless. The nature of economics demands positive growth i.e. growth on top of growth. This means that businesses are expected to not just make a profit, but to make a larger profit every period. If a company makes lessprofit than before, it is perceived as a loss. It is this mentality of investment that gives modern economics this nature of having an insatiable thirst for growth.
The first aspect of investment is the logic held by investors. For most people, it is fair to say that they want to do the least amount of work for the maximum amount of return. This means investment of Capital to gain maximum return using all means i.e. If the capital is going to be in the market anyways, why not have it in a more profitable venture? This has created an environment where companies are striving to make themselves as profitable as possible in order to attract and maintain investors. If a company becomes less profitable, investors are likely to engage in “capital flight” and move to a more profitable venture.
Now think for a moment! We have accepted this system of production, consumption and growth as a sort of divine concept, carved in stone. The question is, when thirst for growth is unlimited, when there is no limit on money supply, when money is created as interest based debt, when inflation denotes economic growth, which itself depends on constant production of goods, therefore requiring constant extraction of natural resources, which are being exploited through commodity speculation and other artificial means of wealth expansion, where will it all end?
A point to be noted here is, that our economic system works in such a way that each and every activity depends on money which is being supplied by the banks, having power to create money out of thin air and charging interest against it. A clear indication that the principal that is used for investment, business activities or government spending, can be paid back but the interest being charged, requires further lending, since aggregate amount of money in an economy (owed by government, corporations and businesses) in a given period is always equal to the money created by the banks.
This means that the banks need to print more money, lending it out to settle the previously owed interest and the cycle goes on. Keeping in mind that all these banks are linked with each other through central bank system (within the country) whereas through BIS (worldwide), the interest amount owed to these banks (or the few shareholders who own these banks) is getting bigger and bigger every passing day, what is the limit of this expansion?
How the global economies are going to pay all the interest owed to these banks and where will the funds come from?
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Limited Resources What we completely fail to realize is that Earth’s resources such as oil, forests, water, minerals etc., are finite. They do not exist in infinite quantities. Of course, many of Earth’s resources can be either regenerated or recycled, but that only happens over time (usually a long time). In the case of oil, it’s hundreds of thousands of years. For fossil water it’s much the same. The rate at which modern human civilization is using up these resources is much faster than the rate at which they can be naturally regenerated. This holds true for oil, water, topsoil, forests and more.
It is quite obvious that Each person living in modern civilization consumes some amount of the Earth’s limited resources. When we drive our car, we are obviously consuming limited natural resources. When we buy a car, we are consuming many other natural resources (all the elements that went into making a car), too. This is true even when we buy a solar panel. Every time we turn on a light switch, or open a package of food, or swallow a piece of food, we are consuming some amount of the Earth’s limited resources.
The sum of our consumption is called our “ecological footprint,” which is getting bigger and bigger every passing day. What will happen eventually? Here comes the Normalcy biasinto play. A state of denial where we are least concerned about self-evident facts, and hiding behind self created distractions.
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HUMAN HAND IN ALTERING ENVIRONMENT Another example of normalcy bias is the denial to accept the fact that humans are altering the environment. We can’t argue with this (although some people ridiculously try) that human activity is altering our environment in a huge way, from the massive deforestation of the planet to the release of gases into the atmosphere. We have poisoned the rivers, destroyed natural habitat, polluted the oceans and altered the chemical composition of the atmosphere. These are undeniable scientific truths and no sane person can reasonably argue that human beings have not radically altered the environment of our planet over the last 200 years.
Most important factor that is causing a huge change in our environment is population growth. Before this so called Industrial revolution, human population on earth was a bit less than 1 billion, which multiplied rapidly and has crossed 7 billion today. This enormous growth in population reflects a clear flaw in the system we have adopted, and has caused much damage to the environment.
With the transition away from an agricultural-based economy and towards machine-based manufacturing came a great influx of population from the countryside and into the towns and cities, which swelled in population. This resulted in massive expansion of cities, causing huge deforestation, while toxic materials and gases as byproduct of manufacturing resulted in contamination of waters, destruction of natural habitat and altering chemical composition of atmosphere.
As mentioned earlier that the concept of current economics is based on unlimited production and unlimited growth. A competitive environment, having profit as the ultimate goal, is bound to produce an unjust system of exploitation where entrepreneurs and corporations try to minimize the production cost in order to maximize profits. As a result, labor is forced to work on bare minimum wages and despite putting in enormous amount of hard-work, they usually fail to improve their financial conditions.
This scenario is quite apparent in third world countries, where working class living in urban industrial regions, being unable to meet their financial requirements, sees procreation as a means to add up helping hands in order to increase the income and to maintain the family budget. There is a common misconception that in third world countries people are irresponsible and full of sexual desires, which is the reason behind population growth. In fact a lot of people, having no idea regarding ground realities, come up with such ridiculous statements. Actually there is a simple logic behind population growth. Working class, earning minimum wages needs more helping hands, therefore they prefer to have more children, and this is the main reason behind two serious problems i.e. population growth and child labor.
Please stop and think for a moment. Who is responsible for the problems we are facing in form of population growth and child labor? Is it the poor people? OR is it the system based on the concept of maximizing profit through reducing wages?
History tells us that the economic system being followed today, is a direct result of colonialism when several European powers (Spain, Portugal, Britain, and France especially) established colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, adopting mercantilist policies designed to strengthen the home economy at the expense of rivals. The basic idea behind setting up these policies was to gain maximum advantage through maximum exploitation of the colonies which were to trade only with the mother country. Later on the British Empire introduced a new concept of free trade (commonly known as Opium Wars era). This policy was designed to open up the markets for third world countries, forcing them to import more goods while barricading their own markets, for products being produced by those countries. Please note that the natural resources in these countries and colonies were already owned by the British corporations. The same policy is now being enforced through IMF and World bank in such a way that Europeans and Americans today are kicking down barriers to sales in Asia, Latin American and Africa while barricading their own markets against the Third World ‘s agriculture.
It is self evident that the system being followed today, is a continuation of imperialism, while the British empire has been replaced by IMF, World Bank and their 51% shareholder, the US treasury. In this particular system, the poor and deprived population of third world countries is seen as cheap human resources required to produce goods at minimum cost. These poor people, having been pushed to the limits, finding no other means to increase their income, are bound to use the only available option i.e. procreation, in order to improve their financial conditions. However this idea of using natural reproduction to earn more money doesn’t seems to be working either. Despite many children are being born and forced into child labor, the constantly rising inflation and price hikes in third world countries is keeping the families under the bare minimum income limit.
In short, the problems we are facing in form of population growth, child labor, domestic violence, frustration etc. are all direct outputs of our economic system. Unfortunately the modern social engineers are using disinformation to divert our attention from the profit based system, transferring blames to ordinary people, declaring them irresponsible, while on the other hand they are keeping us busy discussing the non-issues such as secret activities by elites regarding depopulation. In fact the Foundations and think tank are also spending their funds to promote usage of contraceptives and birth control, which is indeed a total wastage of time as well as money. These people living in third world do not need contraceptive and birth control, they only need more wages. Increase their wages and they wont see procreation as added means of income. This will automatically slow down the birth rate and child labor will be reduced too.
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Modern social engineers
The modern social engineers are playing a very significant role in diverting our attentions, shifting the blame towards invisible, unknown groups, secret societies, hidden entities etc. These people or groups operate in the name of so called “truthers” OR “skeptics”, who normally gain public attention on internet through claims that cannot be proven. Mostly these individuals or groups are either directly working for the foundations and think tank or they operate for promoting their personal agendas.
What they are actually doing is, that they are creating a sort of mental discomfort or Cognitive dissonance, for example by making us think that there are some evil worshiping eugenistics on the planet, trying to kill people through various means . An attempt to confuse masses who starts seeing population growth, not as a problem, rather a conspiracy of few elites who majority to die. By diverting our attention and our anger towards invisible, unknown, unreachable entities, they are not letting us understand that we are living in a consumption, production, competition and profit based economic paradigm and that the whole humanity is responsible for this situation. Everyone is taking part in this competition. Those who can afford, are using leverage to earn more profit in order to increase what they already have. Those who cannot afford leverage, are using all possible means (including hoarding, cheating, fraud, exploitation, adulteration etc.) to increase their income. Finally those who are poor and cannot afford to invest capital, are producing more children (as helping hands), forcing them into child labor in order to survive or exist in this system. In such an environment, what difference could some hidden Satan worshipers make? The global economic and social paradigm would remain the same, even if we somehow manage to find these hidden, unknown individuals and eradicate them.
Another example of disinformation is quite common these days. These “truthers” are constantly trying to tell us that these rich, invisible, unknown Satan worshipers want a One world Government. Just think for a moment and look at the facts. Think about an ordinary businessman who is aiming to get profit in order to exist in the market. That ordinary businessman is bound to to things that do not fit into the scales of morality and it’s nothing strange when we talk in terms of competition.We are living in a competition based consumer economy which is moving towards globalization. In such environment, where everyone is competing for profit, the corporations have all the right to move their manufacturing business, wherever they could find cheap labor. This is nothing special and globalization itself is not some secret sort of agenda, rather it’s an outcome of our social and economic paradigm. With advancement of technology, the world was bound to move towards such thing. These individuals or groups of “truthers” are not letting us to critically examine the fact that in a competitive economic paradigm, which is entirely based on unlimited consumption, production and growth, everyone (including the giant corporations) has the right to find suitable means of reducing costs in order to increase profit. Likewise when everyone is competing with each other, only few could win, therefore it’s bound to produce a huge number of losers.
What we need to understand is that all of us indulging in a poisoned, consumer-driven, media-controlled way of life, competing with each other, following orders and obeying ridiculous rules, laws and regulations are actually nurturing the system of disregard and abuse through our participation.
It is quite easy to understand that if some secret societies or elites inclined towards Antinatalism, are working on depopulation agenda, they have failed miserably to achieve the desired results (at least the current population stats says so). Also we can use our common sense to understand that if corporations, banks and governments are the only entities responsible for perpetrating greed and thirst for growth, then why the common individuals, as employers and entrepreneurs are behaving exactly in the same way? … Why the common individuals, as employees are pushing each other downwards to climb up the ladder? … Why the common individuals, as investors are going after maximum returns? … Why the common individuals, as doctors or lawyers, working to protect and promote the interests of wealthy, while completely ignoring the poor? … Why the common individuals, as criminals are committing cheating, frauds and deceptions? … Isn’t it clearly evident that all who are participating in these dogmas are contributing to promote the system and least bothered to change?
It is to remind once again that we are living in a competitive economic paradigm, where everyone is following dreams and hopes, fighting their own war, using all the possible means to earn profit, even to the detriment of others, in order to survive or to maintain the status-quo. It’s all of us as a society, as a civilization who have accepted and adopted the idea of unlimited growth using fictitious entities known as limited liability corporations. Now if these corporations are doing what we all are doing, i.e. trying to compete, using all available means, we just can’t simply shift all the blame towards them and walk away. More importantly it is us who have surrendered our rights to politicians and bureaucrats, running establishments and governments, giving them unlimited powers. It is the same politicians and bureaucrats that are happily accepting favors in form of bribes from these corporations and in return defining rules and regulations to protect their activities. The same politicians we vote for, in every election!
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How long can we stay away from the reality?
How long can we stay in a state of denial?
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The fact is that we all are so injured, so hopelessly dependent on the system that we are fighting unintentionally to protect it.
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We serve no one by withholding information. We do not serve ourselves by refusing to investigate. Lack of information never assisted anyone. Accurate information allows us options; we can choose to take action based upon it or choose to ignore it, but not knowing does not assist us. So put aside your preconceived notions, your psychological defence mechanisms, and your prejudices. Take a chance on remembering what could well grant you complete economic, emotional, and spiritual freedom. Any “Logics” course will teach that we can have a completely logical system which reaches a logical conclusion yet it is not true because it is based upon a false premise. The mind seems not to care if it reacts from something that is untrue as long as it feels certainty. So, the best position from which to learn is from ‘uncertainty’ – ‘being in the question’.
Can we afford to be so arrogant as to pretend we know something we don’t know the knowing of which could transform our lives – Werner Erhard
IMF: An organization that claims to to promote international economic cooperation, international trade, employment, and exchange rate stability.
World Bank: An international financial institution stating poverty reduction through foreign investment, international trade and facilitating capital investment, as it’s goal
An organization and a financial institution, created under the disguise of helping the poor nations, while in reality, these entities are causing nothing but crisis, failures and suffering, stripping away the national assets and destroying the economies in the name of privatization and liberalization.
The information provided in this article, is based on investigation conducted by Gregory Palast ( a renowned journalist and a top investigator who obtained documents marked, ‘confidential’ and ‘restricted’ from an unidentified World bank employee), and a shocking inside story revealed by Joseph Stiglitz (Winner of Nobel prize in Economics) ex-chief economist of the World Bank. Joseph Stiglitz was an insider, a whistle blower who was fired from World Bank in 1999. He was not allowed quiet retirement, while US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers demanded a public excommunication for Stiglitz’ having expressed his first mild dissent from globalization World Bank style.
Please remember that Stiglitz cannot simply be dismissed as a conspiracy nutter. The man was inside the game – a member of Bill Clinton’s cabinet, chairman of the President’s council of economic advisers. In April 2001, Greg conducted an exclusive interview of Stiglitz and it was published as an article “The IMF’s Four Steps to Damnation” in The Observer (London) and another version in The Big Issue – that’s the magazine that the homeless flog on platforms in the London Underground.
Big Issue offered equal space to the IMF, whose “deputy chief media officer” wrote:
“… I find it impossible to respond given the depth and breadth of hearsay and misinformation in [Palast’s] report.”
Of course it was difficult for the Deputy Chief to respond. The information (and documents) came from the unhappy lot inside his agency and the World Bank.
The inside workings of the IMF, the World Bank, and the bank’s 51% owner, the US Treasury.
There’s an assistance strategy for every poorer nation, designed, says the World Bank, after careful in-country investigation. But according to insider Stiglitz, the Bank’s ‘investigation’ involves little more than close inspection of five-star hotels. It concludes with a meeting with a begging finance minister, who is handed a ‘restructuring agreement’ pre-drafted for ‘voluntary’ signature.
Each nation’s economy is analysed, then the Bank hands every minister the same four-step programme.
Step One is privatization. Instead of objecting to the sell-offs of state industries, some politicians, using the World Bank’s demands to silence local critics, happily floggs their electricity and water companies, because of the possibility of receiving heavy commissions for shaving a few billion off the sale price. Carefully selected individuals are promoted through impression management with the help of media campaigns and money to influence to change voter’s perception. The same faces keep on rotating, with no alternate choices for public to chose their Representatives. This happened in the case of the biggest privatisation of all, the 1995 Russian sell-off. The US-backed oligarchs stripped Russia’s industrial assets, with the effect that national output was cut nearly in half. ‘The US Treasury view was: “This was great, as we wanted Yeltsin re-elected. We DON’T CARE if it’s a corrupt election.”
After privatization, Step Two is capital market liberalization. In theory this is a ‘hot money’ cycle that allows investment capital to flow in and out. Cash comes in for speculation in real estate and currency, then flees at the first whiff of trouble. A nation’s reserves can drain in days. A selective group, mainly the shareholders of major corporations and banks, controls the broad money supply, while chosen individuals are appointed for key positions at central banks. These individuals play key role in facilitating cash flow, following the specific guidelines dictated by IMF. For example in case of Indonesia and Brazil, the money simply flew out. And when that happens, to seduce speculators into returning a nation’s own capital funds, the IMF demands these nations raise interest rates to 30%, 50% and 80%. The result is predictable; Higher interest rates demolish property values, savage industrial production and drain national treasuries.
At this point, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step Three: market-based pricing – a fancy term for raising prices on food, water, oil, electricity and cooking gas. This leads, predictably, to Step-Three-and-a-Half ‘the IMF riot’. The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is, ‘down and out, [the IMF] squeezes the last drop of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up,’ – as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998. Indonesia exploded into riots. There are other examples – the Bolivian riots over water prices and the riots in Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World Bank. These riots were totally expected.
According to several documents obtained from inside the World Bank, based on Interim Country Assistance Strategy for Ecuador, the Bank several times suggests – with cold accuracy – that the plans could be expected to spark ‘social unrest’. That’s not surprising. The secret report notes that the plan to make the US dollar Ecuador’s currency has pushed 51% of the population below the poverty line.
The IMF riots (means peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and tear gas) cause new flights of capital and government bankruptcies This economic arson has its bright side – for foreigners, who can then pick off remaining assets at fire sale prices. A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers but the clear winners seem to be the western banks and US Treasury.
Finally arrives step four – free trade. This is free trade by the rules of the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank, like the Opium Wars in nineteenth century which too was about “opening markets”. As in the nineteenth century, Europeans and Americans today are kicking down barriers to sales in Asia, Latin American and Africa while barricading their own markets against the Third World ‘s agriculture. In the Opium Wars, the West used military blockades. Today, the World Bank can order a financial blockade, which is just as effective and sometimes just as deadly.
The two major concerns about IMF and World Bank plans;
Because the plans are devised in secrecy and driven by an absolutist ideology, never open for discourse or dissent, they ‘undermine democracy’
These plans usually don’t work. For example, under the guiding hand of IMF structural ‘assistance’ Africa’s income dropped by 23%.
Did any nation avoid this fate? Yes, Botswana, by telling IMF to go packing. This information was provided by Joseph Stiglitz who proposes radical land reform: an attack on the 50% crop rents charged by the propertied oligarchies worldwide.
Why didn’t the World Bank and IMF follow his advice?
Because if you challenge [land ownership], that would be a change in the power of the elites. That’s not high on their agenda.
What drove Joseph Stiglitz to put his job on the line was the failure of the banks and US Treasury to change course when confronted with the crises, failures, and suffering perpetrated by their four-step monetarist mambo.
‘It’s a little like the Middle Ages,’ says the economist, ‘When the patient died they would say well, we stopped the bloodletting too soon, he still had a little blood in him.’
Rotten American Banking System (let me coin a name and call it “RABS syndrome”
I have tried to present this article in pure but simple English that way it benefits anyone who reads it. This is an attempt to lay a picture of how rotten the American Banking system is and mainly how dysfunctional its governing bodies are. This mismanagement will have a significant adverse impact on the financial stability of this country and essentially the rest of the world. When will it happen? No person/organization can predict but the current practice cannot sustain. RABS, I can say is the mother of all financial problems this county has faced and will face for the foreseeable future, the mortgage crisis is just a drop of water when compared to this RABS ocean.
My trading knowledge in derivatives segment (option trading) has helped me understand this mess. I accidentally started this research when I first read about the Countrywide-Bank of America merger, the deeper I got into this the scarier it became. Again, this is just my understanding of what I saw, I am neither an economist nor a Finance guy, this gives me a ‘comfort’ that I could be wrong (considering the implications of RABS based on my findings, will be more than happy to be wrong).
Let me put forth a few definitions before I can start using these terms in the article;
Comptroller : A comptroller or controller is a person who supervises accounting and financial reporting within an organization.
Derivatives : A Financial instrument/contract, whose value is, derived from the value of something else (usually an underlying asset). Some common examples of derivatives are: Option trading(Calls and Puts), Futures, Commodity Contracts and Interest Rate contracts etc.
The US treasury/Government/Fed is the Comptroller of all US National banks – called as the Office of the Comptroller of the currency (OCC), they have an official website, with a proud statement at the top which says “Ensuring Safe and Sound National Banking System for all Americans”. (please visit this site before you read the rest of this article, even if it is just a click to read their statement, it is fine). They give a ‘Quarterly Report‘ on the Bank’s Derivative activities and have all their reports since the fourth quarter of 1995 published for everyone to see (for free), perhaps because of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The biggest advantages of derivatives trading is: Leverage.
Those who have traded options, they are well aware of how it works, however for people who are new to derivative trading, here is a brief explanation of options;
There are two types of options:
Call Option: you buy them when you anticipate that the underlying asset will appreciate
Put Option: you buy them when you anticipate that the underlying asset will depreciate
Every option has an expiry date, which means your anticipation is tied not only to price movement but also price movement within certain period of time. Then there is a the price which is called Strike price, the price that you think is appropriate for your strategy.
Here is a small example:
Lets say you anticipate Gold to close above $1000 by June 2008 and assume today (April 03 2008) it is trading around $900. You would buy a call option (say for $10) at for a strike price of $1000 that expires in the month of June and if the price of gold goes to $1050 before the expiry of the option, you gain $40. This is because you paid a premium of $10 for that option and that premium means anything above $1000 is yours to keep , now you are suppose to get $50 because the asset has appreciated to $1050 but you have paid a premium of $10, so your net profit is $40. The more the asset appreciates the more the gain you make. Now what happens if the asset falls down below $1000, all you loose is your premium – the $10. This is exactly how options trading can give you leverage. For detailed explanation, please refer to Options Basics an Introduction at Investopedia.
With respect to the banking system a derivative or options is a “financial contract” between various financial/banking institutions. The contract usually has an underlying asset, the asset can be anything in this world, it can be peanuts (literally), it can be oil, it can be stocks, it can be mortgage backed securities, it can be anything, except you and me (might change soon). These contracts move based on the price movement of the underlying assets. What US investment banks (for various reasons, do not have the same restrictions that of the consumer banks have) do is control these assets by owning a fraction of them in the form of options, they do this just for their own leverage/profit. The Fed has to go by the terms dictated by them, if not these investment banks will fail and so will the economy and Bear Stearns is just one of them.
Rest of the article is a decent attempt to explain how it works and what is bound to happen.
Let us discuss the report of ‘OCC’ The third quarter 2007 report – This is an official government report, so it is not prepared by just you or me or any third party organization.
Read the whole report at your leisure, if you need quick info navigate to the 21 st page of the report you will see a very scary reading. The table says that the top 25 National banks put together just own around 4% of their assets that they trade. Plus they are NOT trading in Millions or Billions, they are trading in Trillions, yes trillions. In simple terms the top 25 national banks have a total asset of 6 Trillion dollars while they trade around 172 TRILLION dollars (Remember the US GDP is around 12 Trillion). These banks are trading around 14 times worth of the US GDP, and it is reported by OCC. Isn’t it atrocious ?
Plus if you narrow down it to the top three banks (JP Morgan + Citi + Bank of America) they trade around 157 Trillion – around 91 % of the top 25 banks but they own around 3.7 Trillion of assets. Look at how much these banks are leveraged.
What happens when these underlying asset change in value (on the negative side) say by 2-5%, the hit that these banks take is unimaginable. They will not have the money to pay the loss that they will incur, and that will eventually cause them bankruptcy, exactly what happened with Bear and Stearns. So the Fed has to go in the direction of where these banks have placed their bets, since the economy cannot survive if these banks do not survive. The fed will even be willing to dump the dollar for these banks to survive (like it is doing now by lowering the interest rates).
Do you want to make any guess what these banks have been trading or what have they placed their money on ?
85% of these bets (I am sorry options) as per the above OCC report is on the “direction of the interest rates”.
THE FED HAS TO (IT HAS NO CHOICE) CHANGE THE INTEREST RATE WHERE THESE BIG BULLIES HAVE PLACED THEIR BETS. If not, they will fail and if they fail (like Bear Stearns did) the FED has to rescue. Alan Greenspan did it for Long Term Capital in the late 98 and Bernanke did it to Bear Stearns in 2008. Remember that these are peanut companies, dealing around 200-500 Billion (is 500 B small? of course relatively). Imagine what would happen if the giants like JP Morgan, who trade around 92 Trillions fail ? Who can bail them out ? What happens to the economy of this country ?
As a small scale investor, the best thing is to diversify your holdings to different types of assets: Gold, Oil, Swiss Francs, Euro and any other tangible asset that you can ….. in short run for the cover. In the meantime, this country is a very wonderful and blessed country, it has gone through a lot of hardships and fought through it bravely and has come out of it successfully, that is my only hope !
We no longer live in a society, we live in an economy, where right and wrong is determined not by fairness, but by profitability — and where the law no longer dictates corporate behavior, but corporate behavior dictates the law.
Large transnational corporations are clearly the dominant institution of our time. They’re preeminent throughout the world but especially in the Global North and its epicenter in the US. They control or greatly influence what we eat and drink, where we live, what we wear, how we get most of our essential services like health care and even what we’re taught in schools up to the highest levels. They create and control our sources of information and greatly influence how we think and our view of the world and them. They even now own patents on our genetic code, the most basic elements of human life, and are likely planning to manipulate and control them as just another commodity to exploit for profit in their brave new world that should concern everyone. They also carefully craft their image and use catchy slogans to convince us of their benefit to society and the world, like: “better things for better living through chemistry” (if you don’t mind toxic air, water and soil), “we bring good things to life” (for them, not us), and “all the news that’s fit to print” (only if you love state and corporate friendly disinformation and propaganda). The slogans are clever, but the truth is ugly.
Corporations also decide who will govern and how. We may think we do, but it’s not so and never was. Those national elections, especially the last two, only looked legitimate to most people, but not to those who know and understand how the system works. Here’s how it really works. The “power elite” or privileged class C. Wright Mills wrote about 50 years ago in his classic book by that title are the real king and decision makers. He wrote how corporate, government and military elites formed a trinity of power after WW II and that the “power elite” were those “who decide whatever is decided” of importance. The holy trinity Mills wrote about still exists but today in the shape of a triangle with the transnational giants clearly on top and government, the military and all other institutions of importance there to serve their interests. These corporations have become so large and dominant they run our lives and the world, and in a zero sum world and the chips that count most in their stack, they do it for their continuing gain and at our increasing expense. Something is way out of whack, and in this essay I’ll try to explain what it is and why we better understand it.
The Power of Transnational Corporations and the Harm They Cause
As corporations have grown in size they’ve gained in power and influence. And so has the harm they cause – to communities, nations, the great majority of the public and the planet. Today corporate giants decide who governs and how, who serves on our courts, what laws are enacted and even whether and when wars are fought, against whom and for what purpose or gain. It’s for their gain, who else’s, certainly not ours. Once we start one, they can even make profit projections from it like on any other business venture. For them, that’s all it is – another way to make a buck, lots of them.
The central thesis of this essay is that giant transnational corporations today have become so dominant they now control our lives and the world, and they exploit both fully and ruthlessly. While they claim to be serving us and bringing us the fruits of the so-called “free market,” in fact, they just use us for their gain. They’ve deceived us and highjacked the government to serve them as subservient proxies in their unending pursuit to dominate the world’s markets, resources, cheap labor abroad and our own right here. And they’ve done it much like what happens in the marketplace when a predator company attempts to take control of another one that prefers to remain independent. They launch a hostile takeover, going around or over the heads of the target’s management, their employees and the communities they operate in. They go right to the target’s shareholders and promise them a better deal, meaning a premium price on the stock they hold.
They do this, as in a friendly merger, for a variety of financial and strategic reasons, but essentially it’s to achieve any possible immediate gain as well as over the longer term greater market dominance that will build future profits. But what happens in the wake of a takeover. Assets get stripped, spun-off and/or sold-off. Plants are closed. Jobs are lost. And all this is done for the primary bottom line goal – “the bottom line,” higher profits, whatever the cost to people, communities or society.
Think of it this way. Large corporations today everywhere, but especially the largest ones in the Global North, are a destructive force, hostile to people, societies and the environment. They’re nothing less than legal private tyrannies operating freely with virtually no restraint. Everything for them, animal, vegetable or mineral, is viewed as a production input to be commodified and consumed for profit and then discarded when no longer of use. And to achieve maximum profits, costs must be rigidly controlled. That means the lowest prices paid for goods and services, the lowest wages paid to workers (below privileged higher management who reward themselves richly), as little as possible spent on essential benefits like health care and pensions, and increasingly little or no concern about the long-term cost of exploiting, plundering or even destroying the natural environment and the future ability of the planet to sustain life. These issues, however recognized and grave, are for someone else to deal with later.
Think of it this way. Large corporations today everywhere, but especially the largest ones in the Global North, are a destructive force, hostile to people, societies and the environment. They’re nothing less than legal private tyrannies operating freely with virtually no restraint. Everything for them, animal, vegetable or mineral, is viewed as a production input to be commodified and consumed for profit and then discarded when no longer of use. And to achieve maximum profits, costs must be rigidly controlled. That means the lowest prices paid for goods and services, the lowest wages paid to workers (below privileged higher management who reward themselves richly), as little as possible spent on essential benefits like health care and pensions, and increasingly little or no concern about the long-term cost of exploiting, plundering or even destroying the natural environment and the future ability of the planet to sustain life. These issues, however recognized and grave, are for someone else to deal with later.
For now all that matters is today, the next quarter’s earnings and keeping the stockholders and Wall Street happy. They only understand numbers on financial statements and are blind, unconcerned and even hostile to human and societal welfare or a safe environment that will protect and sustain all life forms. They call it “free market capitalism.” It’s really the law of the jungle. They’re the predators, we’re the prey, and every day they eat us alive.
Does all this make sense? And do corporate chieftains who live in a community, love their wives and children, contribute to charities, attend church and believe in its teachings really go to work every day and think – “who and what can I exploit today?” They sure do because they have no other choice. No more so than breathing in and breathing out.
How the Law Affects Corporate Behavior
Publicly owned corporations are mandated by law to serve only the interests of their shareholders and do it by working to maximize the value of their equity holdings by increasing profits. That’s it. Case closed. Think of these businesses as gated communities of owners (large and small), the welfare of whom is all that matters and the world outside the gates is to be used and exploited for that one purpose only. Forget about any social responsibility or safeguarding the environment. The idea is to grow sales, keep costs low, increase profits, and if you do it well, shareholder value will rise, the owners and Wall Street will be happy, and you as a CEO or senior executive will probably get a raise, good bonus and keep your job. Try being worker-friendly, a nice guy, a good citizen or a friend of the earth and fail to achieve the above objectives and you’ll likely face dismissal and even possible shareholder lawsuit for not pursuing your fiduciary responsibility. Anyone choosing this line of work has no other choice. To do the job well, you have to think only of the care and feeding of your shareholders and the investment community, ignore the law if that’s what it takes to do it, and obey the only law that counts – the one that helps you grow the “bottom line.”
There’s nothing in the Constitution, which is public law, that gives corporations the rights they’ve gotten. It never mattered to them. They just crafted their own private law, piece by piece, over many years with the help of corporate-friendly lawyers, legislators and the courts. And today it’s easier than ever with both major parties strongly pro-business and the courts stacked with business-friendly judges ready to do their bidding. The result is big business is now the paymaster, or puppetmaster, with government and the halls of justice their faithful servants. There’s no government of, for and by the people, no public sovereignty, no democratic rights or any choices but to accept their authority and bow to their will. It’s a democracy for the few alone – the privileged elite. Our only choice is to go along to get along or get out of their way.
How Corporate Behavior Affects the Public Interest
Big corporations have almost always thrived in the US. But a crucial, defining moment happened in 1886 when the Supreme Court granted corporations the legal status of personhood in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railway – a simple tax dispute case unrelated to the issue of corporate personhood. Incredibly it wasn’t the Justices who decided corporations are persons, but the Court’s reporter (J.C. Bancroft Davis) who after the decision was rendered wrote it in his “headnotes.” The Court did nothing to refute them, likely by intent, and the result was corporations got what they had long coveted.
That decision granted corporations the same constitutional rights as people, but because of their limited liability status, protected shareholders from the obligations of their debts, other obligations, and many of the responsibilities individuals legally have. Armed with this new legal status corporations were able to win many additional favorable court decisions up to the present. They also gained much regulatory relief and favorable legislation while, at the same time, being protected by their limited liability status. As a result, corporations have been able to increase their power and grow to their present size and dominance.
Although corporations aren’t human, they can live forever, change their identity, reside in many places simultaneously in many countries, can’t be imprisoned for wrongdoing and can change themselves into new persons at will for any reason. They have the same rights and protections as people under the Bill of Rights but not the responsibilities. From that right, corporations became unbound, free to grow and gain immense power and be able to become the dominant institution that now runs the country, the world and all our lives. Most important, they got an unwritten license from all three branches of the government to operate freely for their own benefit and others of their privileged class and do it at the public expense everywhere. They’ve exploited it fully as they’re grown in size and dominance, and the result has been lives destroyed, the environment harmed and needless wars fought on their behalf because they open markets and grow profits. It’s no exaggeration to say these institutions today are real “weapons of mass destruction.”
In the early days of the republic it all might have been different had Thomas Jefferson and James Madison prevailed over Federalists John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson and Madison believed the Bill of Rights should include “freedom from monopolies in commerce” (what are now giant corporations) and “freedom from a permanent military” or standing armies. Adams and Hamilton felt otherwise, and the final compromise was the first 10 Bill of Rights amendments that are now the law but not the other two Jefferson and Madison wanted included. Try to imagine what this country might be like today had we gotten them all.
We didn’t, of course, so the result, as they say, is history. It allowed small corporations to grow into giants and so-called “free market capitalism” to become the dominant state religion of this country and the West. We may say it’s free, but it only is for those own and control it, and notice we never hear the system called “fair.” That’s because in most key industries a handful of corporate giants dominate and now work in cartel-like alliance with their “friendly” competitors here and abroad to control (read: exploit) the markets they serve. They’re also able to co-opt the leaders and business elites of countries in the developing world, or work in partnership with them in the larger ones like China, India and Brazil, to allow them market entry. As an inducement, they offer to invest their capital and offer their technology in return for a business-friendly climate and access to the host country’s cheap labor. It’s an alliance based on pure exploitation for profit at the expense of people who are used, abused and discarded when they have no further value.
This essay is mainly about how these same corporate giants dominate and exploit here in the US. They can’t get away with the flagrant abuses commonplace in sweatshop labor countries, but they’re moving in that direction. It’s no longer like the past in this country when I was young and beginning my working life (a distant memory of better times) when manufacturing was strong, jobs paid well and had good benefits, and workers were protected by strong unions that served their interests even while partnering with management and willing to do the bidding of government.
I still remember well an incident early in my working life when as a newly minted MBA I worked as a marketing research analyst for several large corporations prior to joining a small family business. At one of those companies in the early 60s, my boss called me into his office on my first day on the job. He jokingly told me he was so happy with my work he was giving me a raise. We both chuckled, and he then explained on that day everyone in the company got an inflation-based increase. It was automatic from the lowliest worker to top management because the unions (then strong) got it written into their labor contract. In that company, everyone got the same benefits as union members. Try finding anything like that today even for union members alone. It’s almost unheard of.
Today, the country is primarily dominated by service industries many of which require little formal education, only pay low wages and few if any benefits, and offer few chances for advancement. The US Department of Labor projects that job categories with the greatest expected future growth are cashiers, waiters and waitresses, janitors and retail clerks. These and other low wage, low benefit jobs are what many young people entering the workforce can look forward to today. You don’t need a Harvard degree for them or even one from a junior college – and for the ones listed above, no degree is needed, not even a high school one.
The continuing decline of good job opportunities is a key reason why the quality of education in urban schools has deteriorated so much in recent years and school dropout rates are so high. In my city of Chicago, half of all students entering high school never graduate and of those who do 74% of them must take remedial English and 94% remedial math at the Chicago City Colleges according to a report published in the Chicago Sun Times. The situation isn’t much better in inner cities throughout the country, nor is the level of racial segregation that’s grown to levels last seen in the 1960s according to Jonathan Kozol in his new book The Shame of the Nation. Again in Chicago, a shocking 87% of public school enrollment was black or Hispanic, and the situation is about as bad or even worse in most other big cities.
The lack of good job opportunities for a growing population of ill-prepared young people is also a major reason for the growth of our prison population that now exceeds 2.1 million, is the largest in the world even ahead of China with over four times our population, and is incarcerating about 900 new prisoners every week.
A Rigid Class Society
The US has always been what the “power elite” never admit or discuss – a rigid class society. But once there was a thriving middle class along with a small minority of rich and well-off and a large segment of low paid workers and the poor. That majority in the middle could afford their own homes, send their kids to college and afford many amenities like new cars, some travel, convenience appliances and decent health care. I can still remember buying a health insurance plan while finishing my graduate work in 1959 that cost about $100 and change total for respectable coverage for a full year. Honest, I’m not kidding.
Fewer people each year can afford these “luxuries” now, including decent health care coverage, because of the hollowing out of the economy, stagnant wage growth (to be discussed below) and skyrocketing costs of essentials like health insurance, prescription drugs and college tuition for those wanting a higher education. Services now account for nearly 80% of all business while manufacturing has declined to about 14%, and total manufacturing employment is half the percentage of total employment it was 40 years ago and falling. Also, financial services of all types now comprise the largest single sector of the economy at 21% of it. But most of it involves investment and speculation running into the hundreds of trillions of dollars annually worldwide (and the US is the epicenter of it all) just for transactions involving currencies and so-called over-the-counter and exchange-traded financial derivatives. It’s not the purpose of this essay to explain the nuts and bolts of this kind of trading except to say they produce nothing anyone can go in a store and buy or that enhance the well-being of the majority public that doesn’t even know, let alone understand, that this kind of activity goes on or what the inherent dangers from it may be.
The dismantling of our manufacturing base, however, is a subject that should make daily headlines but is seldom discussed in the mainstream. It’s crucially important because one has to wonder how any nation can avoid eventual decline when it allows its manufacturing to be done abroad, reduces its need for a highly trained work force and ends up destroying its middle class that made it prosper in the first place. There are distinguished thinkers who believe as I do that the US has seen its better days and is now in a downward trajectory economically. Unless a way is found to reverse this destructive trend, the US will be Number One only in military spending and waging wars. And no nation in history based on militarism and conquest has ever not failed ultimately to destroy itself.
I’d like to quote two distinguished thinkers who’ve addressed the issue of growing inequality in the US. On most social matters they’d likely disagree, but not on this one. One was former liberal Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis who explained: “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of the few, but we can’t have both.” The other was distinguished “free market” economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman. In his view: “The greatest problem facing our country is the breaking down into two classes, those who have and those who have not. The growing differences between the incomes of the skilled and the less skilled, the educated and the uneducated, pose a very real danger. If that widening rift continues, we’re going to be in terrible trouble…..We cannot remain a democratic, open society that is divided into two classes.”
The Downward Trajectory of Workers
Over the past generation working people have seen an unprecedented fall in their standard of living. In the past (except for periods of economic downturn), workers saw their wages and benefits grow each year and their living standards improve. Today it’s just the opposite. Adjusted for inflation, the average working person in the US earns less than 30 years ago, and even with modest annual increases is not keeping up with inflation. In addition, the federal minimum wage is a paltry $5.15 an hour and was last increased in 1997. That rate is now at the lowest point it’s been relative to average wages since 1949. It’s incentivized individual states to raise their own which they have the right to do, and, as of mid-year 2005, 17 of them and the District of Columbia have done it covering nearly half the US population. That helps, but not enough.
Some of the world data is especially shocking, appalling and indicative of the economic trend in the US. According to the UN 2002 Human Development Report, the richest 1% in 1999-2000 received as much income as the bottom 57% combined, over 45% of the world’s population lived then on less than $2 a day, about 40% had no sanitation services and about 840 million people were malnourished. In addition, 1 in 6 grade school children were not in school, and half the global nonagricultural labor force was either unemployed or underemployed. Most shocking and disturbing of all is that many millions (likely tens of millions) of people in the less developed world die each year from starvation and treatable diseases because of abuse and/or neglect by rich nations that could prevent it. And these numbers reflect the state of things at the end of a decade of overall impressive economic growth. But it shows how those gains went mainly to a privileged upper class who got them at the expense of the majority below them, especially the most desperate and needy.
The same trend is evident in the US although not as stark as in the less developed world. Except for the mild recession in 2001-2002, overall US economic growth for the past 15 years has been strong and worker productivity high. But the gains from it went to the privileged at the top and were gotten at the expense of working people who saw their wages fail to keep up with inflation and their essential benefits decline. In 2004 the average CEO earned 431 times the income of the average working person. That was up from 85 times in 1990 and 42 times in 1980. It’s hard to believe and even harder with the real life example below.
I’d like to nominate a “poster executive” who for me symbolizes classic gross corporate excess and greed. He’s the chairman and CEO of Capital One Financial, the giant credit card company that’s awaiting the finalizing of its acquisition of North Fork Bancorp. At completion of this deal, the Wall Street Journal reported on March 24 this lucky fellow will realize a gain of $249.3 million from stock options he exercised last year. That’s in addition to the $56 million he earned in 2004. What on earth will he spend it on, and how many less fortunate ones will have to ante up to pay for this in the de rigueur job cuts that always follow big acquisitions.
And what will all those other lucky CEOs and top executives spend theirs on as well. If you’re not already gagging, let me make you choke. According to a study just released by two Ivy League academics based on interviews with CEOs and top managers of the largest 1,500 public US companies, the top five executives collectively at those companies pocketed $122 billion in compensation from 1999-2003 plus at least $60 billion more in supplemental benefits from SERPs (Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans). Also, other data show average annual CEO pay rose from about $1 million a year in 1980 to an estimated $14.4 million in 2001 and rising – plus all those juicy benefits. I repeat – what on earth can they spend it on. They could never even count it.
Corporate Gain at the Cost of Worker Loss
Not coincidentally, as workers have seen their living standards decline, transnational corporations have experienced unprecedented growth and dominance. And that trend continues unabated. How and why is this happening? Begin with the most business-friendly governments the country has had over the last 25 years since the “roaring” 1920s when President Calvin Coolidge explained that “the business of America is business.” He, and two other Republican presidents then did everything they could to help their business friends. But they were small-timers compared to today, and the size, dominance and global reach of big business then was a small fraction of what it is now. And back then, job “outsourcing”, GATT and WTO type trade agreements, and the concept of globalization weren’t in the vocabulary. Now they’re central to the problem as they’ve put working people in corporate straightjackets and created a severe class divide in the country (not to mention the developing world where it’s far worse) that keeps widening.
How World Trade Agreements Destroy Good Jobs
World trade between nations is nothing new, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) has been around since it was formed in Havana, Cuba in 1948. But with the signing of NAFTA that went into effect on January 1, 1994, the notion of so-called globalization emerged big time. NAFTA brought Mexico into the 1989 Canada-US Free Trade Agreement as part of a radical experiment to merge three disparate economies into a binding one-size-fits-all set of rules all three had to abide by regardless of the effect on their people. To sell it to each country’s legislators and people, NAFTA’s backers made lofty pie-in-the-sky predictions of new jobs that “free trade” would create. They never were nor was this a plan to do it. It was a scam to outsource jobs and thus eliminate many others, enrich the transnationals and make working people pick up the tab and take the pain.
NAFTA was just the beginning. It was planned as a stalking horse and template for the World Trade Organization (WTO), that replaced the GATT one year after NAFTA went into effect. The WTO along with an alphabet soup of trade agreements (passed and wished for) like GATS (covering all kinds of services), TRIPS (for intellectual property), MAI (on investments and most all-encompassisng and dangerous one of all if it ever passes even in separate pieces) and all the regional agreements like CAFTA and FTAA are intended to establish a supranational economic “constitution.” It’s to be based on the rules of trade the Global North nations want to craft that would override the sovereignty of all WTO member nations. In other words, the plan was and still is for the US primarily, along with the EU, Japan and other dominant Global North countries to establish a binding set of trade rules (a global constitution) they would write for their benefit for an integrated world economy and then force all other nations to abide by them. NAFTA, and what was to follow, were and are not intended to create jobs and raise living standards in the participating countries, despite all the hype saying they would and will. These agreements are solely plans to benefit big corporations, legally allowing them the right to dominate world markets, override national sovereignty to do it, and exploit people everywhere for their gain. Bottom line – these “agreements” mean big corporations win and people everywhere lose.
So far the jury is very much out on whether the grand plan will succeed as key countries in the Global South have caught on to the scam and aren’t buying it – Brazil, India, Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia and others. And China is big enough to be a club member, agree to the rules, and then bend them at times to protect its own interests.
But if NAFTA was a template to disguise a WTO attempted world “hostile takeover,” look at all the carnage it’s created so far. Instead of creating jobs in all three countries, it destroyed hundreds of thousands of them. In the US alone it’s responsible for the loss each year of many thousands of high paying, good benefit manufacturing jobs now exported to low wage countries like Mexico, China, India and many others. And most of the workers losing them only are able to find lower paying ones with fewer or no benefits if they can find any job at all. This is an ongoing problem in good as well as poor economic times and gets worse every year. It’s also led many older workers, who wish to work but can’t find jobs, to drop out of the work force or take lower paying part-time ones when they can find full-time ones.
The result has been a huge shift upward in income, wealth and power in the US (and in Canada, Mexico and all other WTO member countries) benefitting the business elites and corrupted politicians. And it’s cost working people billions of dollars, many thousands of good jobs and a permanent drop in the average American worker’s standard of living. It’s also created an enormous migration problem all over the world comprised of desperate people looking for work because there’s none at home. I wrote at length about this in the US in my recent article called The War on Immigrants. The problem gets worse every year including in the US. And here a low unemployment rate hides the fact that many workers have dropped out of the work force or must take whatever part-time jobs they can find because they can’t get full-time ones as mentioned above.
I’m now working on a new article in which I discuss the view of some US economists who explain that if the unemployment rate today was calculated the same way it was during The Great Depression when it rose to a peak of 25% of the working population, the true current figure would be about 12% instead of the reported 4.7%. The current calculation method includes part-time workers who work as little as one hour during the reporting period. It also excludes discouraged workers who wish to work but who’ve stopped looking because they can’t find jobs.
One might logically wonder why big US corporations run by smart people wouldn’t be trying to ameliorate this problem to build rather than weaken the purchasing power of people in their home country – the ones they need to buy their products and services. It’s not just for their obvious need to control or reduce costs to enhance profits. It’s because these companies are only nominally US ones. They may be headquartered here, but they could as easily be home based anywhere. The US may be their biggest market and most important source of revenue and profit, but their operations and markets span the globe. If they desired, they could pick up and leave and set up shop in Timbuktu or Kathmandu. That’s why they’re called “transnationals.”
The Balance Sheet Documenting Corporate Gains
Worker loss has been corporations’ gain – big time. In 2004 the world’s largest 500 corporations posted their highest ever revenues and profits – an astonishing $14.9 trillion in revenue and $731.2 billion in profits. And top corporate officials, mainly in the US, are raking it in, rewarding themselves with obscene amounts of salaries, bonuses in the multi-millions and lucrative stock options worth even more for many of them. That level of largesse is only possible at the expense of working people here and everywhere. Oliver Stone may have been thinking of them when he made his 1980s film, Wall Street. In it was the memorable line spoken by the character portraying the manipulative investor/deal-maker when he explained that “greed is good.”
Except for two brief and mild recessions, corporations in the US have prospered since the 1980s in a very business-friendly environment under both Democrats and Republicans. The result has been rising profits to record levels, enhanced even more by generous corporate tax cuts (and personal ones as well mostly for the rich), especially after the election of George Bush. Under this president, one of their own in the White House, US corporations have never had it better. It’s been so good that 82 of the largest 275 companies paid no federal income tax in at least one year from 2001-2003 or got a refund; 28 of them got tax rebates in all 3 of those years even though their combined profits totaled $44.9 billion; 46 of them, earning $42.6 billion in profits, paid no tax in 2003 and got $4.9 billion back in tax rebates. And the average CEO pay for these 46 companies in 2004 was $12.6 million.
Along with big tax cuts and generous rebates, big corporations are on the government dole big time in the form of subsidies, otherwise known as “corporate welfare.” It’s also known as socialism for the rich (and capitalism for the rest of us). In 1997 the Fortune 500 companies got $75 billion in “public aid” even though they earned record profits of $325 billion. They got it in many forms – grants, contracts, loans and loan guarantees and lots more. Today there are about 125 business subsidy programs in the federal budget benefitting all major areas of business.
Some examples of Government largesse for Corporations
Selling the rights to billions of dollars of oil, gas, coal and other mineral reserves at a small fraction of their market value.
The giveaway of the entire broadcast spectrum to the corporate media, valued at $37 billion in 1989 dollars.
Charging mostly corporate ranchers (including big oil and insurance companies) dirt cheap grazing rates on over 20 million acres of public land.
Spending many billions of dollars on R & D and handing over the results to corporations free of charge. “Big Pharma” is notorious for letting government do their expensive research and then cashing in on the results by soaking us with sky-high prices and rigging the game with through WTO rules that get them exclusive patent rights for 20 years or longer when they’re able to extend them through the courts.
Giving the nuclear industry over $100 billion in handouts since its inception and guaranteeing government protection to pick up the cost in case of any serious accidents that otherwise might cost the company affected billions and possibly bankrupt it.
Giving corporate agribusiness producers many billions in annual subsidies.
The individual taxpayers, pay the bill for this generosity. But they actually pay these corporations twice – first through their taxes and then for the cost of the products and services.
The Biggest Recipient of Government Handouts
In the old game of “guns vs. butter”, guess who wins? Clue – they have shareholders, and their chiefs are called CEOs. Guess who loses? You know that answer chapter and verse by now.
The Wall Street film character who explained that greed is good might have added war is even better. Call it greed made easy or without even trying. Since WW II the Pentagon and military-industrial complex have always been at the head of the handout queue to get their king-sized pound of flesh in appropriations. The amounts gotten varied in times of war and peace or with the whims or chutzpah of a sitting president, but they’re always big. The Pentagon, defense contractors and all the other many and varied thousands of parasitical corporations servicing the defense industry are umbilically linked. All these corporations profit handsomely in our military-industrialized society that takes our tax dollars and hands them over to them by the hundreds of billions annually. Their gain is the public’s loss. If the process were audible we’d be able to hear a “giant sucking sound” of public resources wooshing from our pockets to theirs. It’s also the sound of our lifeblood being sucked away as we have to pick up the tab and give up our social benefits as well.
Once the cold war ended after the Berlin wall came down and the Soviet Union became 15 independent republics, there was some hope for a peace dividend – meaning less for the military and more social spending. That wasn’t what the first Bush administration and Pentagon had in mind as they frantically searched for and easily found new potential enemies as a way to make the case for continued militarized state capitalism. Our language manipulation experts came up with and sold to the Congress and public the threat of “growing technological sophistication of Third World conflicts” which “will place serious demands on our forces” and “continue to threaten US interests,” even without “the backdrop of superpower competition.” Our defense strategy would thus be based on maintaining global “stability” (more code language meaning assuring obedience to US dominance).
In the 1990 National Security Strategy, the Pentagon presented its defense budget to the Congress using the above stated pretext to justify what they wanted. It called for strengthening “the defense industrial base” (code language for the high-tech industry in all its forms) through generous subsidies as incentives “to invest in new facilities and equipment as well as in research and development.” They got what they wanted, and it set off the high tech stock market boom that lasted until the speculative bubble burst in March, 2000 when the economy slowed and slipped into recession. Three years later in a post 9/11 environment, the economy was again growing as was annual defense spending, and the stock market began another ascent that’s so far continuing.
The many corporations now benefitting from Pentagon largesse are so addicted to it that they become the main promoters of and cheerleaders for conflicts or preparations for them because they guarantee bigger handouts that are so good for business. It’s a dirty business, but isn’t that the fundamental predatory nature of large-scale capitalism that relies on a state policy of imperialism to thrive and prosper. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge explained it in 1895, in an unguarded moment, when he said “commerce follows the flag.” He might have added that the flag also follows commerce. The great political economist Harry Magdoff, who died this year on New Year’s day, also explained it well in his 1969 book The Age of Imperialism when he wrote: “Imperialism is not a matter of choice for a capitalist society; it is the way of life of such a society.” And historian Henry Steele Commager wrote about how a national security police state and its bureaucracy lends its great talents and resources “not to devising ways of reducing tensions and avoiding war, but to ways of exacerbating tensions and preparing for war.” I guess the conclusion is that in a capitalist society dominated by big business this “bad seed” must be in our DNA and we can’t help ourselves as a result. In another article I’m working on I refer to our addiction to war. So far we haven’t found an effective antidote.
The reason, of course, is because war is so good for business. In the last 6 years alone, and especially since 9/11, along with all their other largesse and waste, the Pentagon outsourced on average $150 billion a year in work to corporations. Almost half of it was in no-bid contracts and three fourths of that was to the five largest defense contractors headed by Lockheed Martin and Boing. L-M is the undisputed king of contractors. They literally run the enterprise of empire from the inside and out. They’re not only its biggest beneficiary, they also help shape the policy guaranteeing it – to the tune of $65 million every day (from our pockets into theirs). And they collect their loot even when their killing machines don’t work right.
Then, of course, there’s Halliburton and Bechtel. They’re always big time winners in the handout sweepstakes. These two well-connected companies have been at the head of the queue in the looting of Iraq and the US Treasury. They’ve gotten huge no-bid contracts worth many billions which they then freely supplemented with gross (read: criminal) overcharges and gotten away with most of it. And we can’t ignore the notorious Carlyle Group, the nation’s largest privately held defense contractor with the tightest of ties right to the Oval Office. They practically sit in the traditional Kittinger chair there, or whatever other brand George Bush may prefer. His father, and former president, of course, is on their team (and payroll), and they use him as needed as their main “door-opener” and “wheel-greaser” (especially in the lucrative Middle East). And the old man reportedly earns a hefty half million dollars for every speech he makes on behalf of his generous employer. At that pay scale he must be hard-pressed to keep his mouth shut.
Funding corporations in the name of National Defense
The Center for Defense Information reported that since 1945 over $21 trillion in constant dollars has been spent on the military. And it’s been done largely to benefit US corporations even though the country had no real enemies all through those years – except for the ones we attacked with no provocation or invented to scare the public so they’d buy into the scam that we needed industrial strength military spending for national security. Ronald Reagan was very adept at scare tactics and duping the public. He fathered the Contra wars in the 80s in Nicaragua and scared half the public into believing the ruling Sandinista government was a threat to invade Texas and threaten the whole country. He tried and failed to get Mexican president Miguel de la Madrid to go along with him. The Mexican president said if he did 70 million Mexicans would die laughing. It’s hard to believe the US public could ever fall for a threat about as great as I’d be (all 120 lbs. of me) in the ring against Mike Tyson in his prime. But although there was none and the nation was at peace during his tenure, Reagan expanded the military budget by 43% over what it was at the height of the Vietnam war (and ran up huge budget deficits doing it). The public suffered for it with the loss of social benefits, but business loved it and him, and the stock market took off on an 18 year bull run.
But after the 9/11 attack, the floodgates really opened wide. In fiscal year 2000 the military budget was $289 billion, but up it went steadily after that reaching $442 billion in 2006 and currently is requested to increase to $463 or higher in 2007. Add to that over $41 billion for Homeland Security in 2006 (another public rip-off as part of a move toward a full-blown national security police state) and annual multi-billions in funding off the books for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that in fiscal 2006 alone amounts to about $120 billion now and may increase. Add it up and the current budget for the military, 2 wars off the books and Homeland Security, and it comes to over $600 billion this year. That kind of spending, with billions more available at the drop of an add-on presidential emergency request gives a whole new meaning to the term “war profiteer.” And while the big defense contractors reap the biggest benefits, many thousands of US corporations are in on the take as the Pentagon is a big buyer of everything from expensive R & D and high tech weapons to breakfast cereals and toilet paper. Using the false Bush slogan about leaving no child behind for his failed education program, the Pentagon for sure leaves no corporation behind in its generosity. Corporations wanting a piece of the action need only remember and abide by the scriptural message from John 16:24: “ask and you shall receive.” And probably a lot as the Pentagon is notorious about being sloppy, “spilling” more than many good sized corporations earn.
Here’s the 2 key questions to ask. Does anyone feel safer, and who’ll pick up the tab? If you hadn’t noticed, you, the average worker, didn’t share in those big tax cuts, your income is losing the war to inflation, your benefits are eroding, and someone some day has to pay that $8.275 trillion national debt that keeps rising $2.2 billion every day. And along with that burden, we’ve never been less safe, and we, the public, have to pay the bill because corporate America never does. They’re in another queue for more tax cuts, and we’ll see more social benefits cut to pay for them too. In the political game of musical chairs, corporations get them all every time, and John Q. Public is always left standing (out in the cold).
Problem and the solution
I’ve already explained what happened. As to how, it’s because we let them. They delivered the message, and we bought it like lambs led to the slaughter or believing the “foxes” were really “guarding” us. Back in school we all learned and sang those lovely lyrics that began “Oh beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain.” We believed it and most of us in our stupor still do. It’s long past time we realized it was just a song intended to lull us into complacency to accept the message and go along with it. It was a false message, although there is an America the Beautiful, but only for the privileged few and no one else. And every year it gets worse – a race to the bottom with no end in sight until we either get there or wake up in time and do something about it. Unless we act to cauterize our collective wounds we’ll never begin the healing process; in fact, we’ll bleed to death. We have to find a way to reclaim the democracy we’re always being reminded we have, but don’t. If we really had it, they’d never have to remind us about it.
It’s not too late to turn it around – yet. And it’s simple to know what we need to do but always hard knowing how to go about it – take to the streets, throw the bums out (we’ve tried that one before and only put in new bums). Anyone have some good suggestions? I don’t have sure-fire ones, but I’ve got a piece of good wisdom based on the past and the present. History shows that when things get bad enough people first stir and then react. If nothing changes and the pain gets bad enough, then at some point down go the barricades, and people power steps into the breach. The many always win out over the few when they’re fully committed to do it. I”ve quoted famed Chicago community activist Sol Linowitz before who understood it and once said “the way to beat organized money is with organized people.” Three recent and current examples make the point and show us how.
All over France for two months up until April, millions of angry young people and union members mainly engaged in strikes, sit-ins and mass street protests to demand the revocation of the new First Employment Contract (CPE) for workers under 26 years of age. French youth refused to become what they called “a Kleenex generation” – to be used and thrown away at the whim of employers who want the “flexibility” to do it. The law was based on the insane notion that indiscriminate firing was a way to create more jobs and reduce unemployment. If it had gone into affect, it would have given employers the right to hire young workers on a two year trial basis and fire them at will at any time during that period. The protesters understood the sham and how it would hurt them and stayed out long enough to get the Chirac government to back down and effectively cancel this outrageous law.
A second example is now happening on the streets in Nepal as many thousands of people from all walks of life including professionals have been protesting since early April in a mass civil uprising against King Gyanendra demanding an end to autocratic monarchal rule and the restoration of democracy. At this writing they still don’t have it, but the king had to go on national television and promise to meet their demands. The protests continued after his first public statement forcing the king to go further and agree to the major demands of the main seven-party alliance including reinstating the lower house of parliament and giving power back to elected officials. Doing that would then clear the way to create a new constitution, hopefully a more democratic process and an end to the mass protests. At this writing it remains to be seen whether resolution has now been reached, but it appears a major step has been taken toward it.
The third example has been happening here in the US as millions of immigrants and working people of all races have taken to the streets in cities all over the country. They’ve seen their rights denied or threatened, their jobs exported, unions weakened or destroyed, wages stagnated and essential benefits reduced, lost or never gotten. Their protests are continuing, and they demand equity and justice. Congress has already taken note and softened some of their hostile anti-immigrant rhetoric. But it remains to be seen how this will turn out. The Congress will resume its immigration legislation debate in its post Easter break session with a final resolution now unclear. What is clear is that if a final bill emerges it will be less harsh than the original House version that passed and the Senate one still being debated prior to and during the mass protests.
The lesson is clear. Mass people actions, if large and strong enough, get results. Lots of great thinkers through the years knew this and said it many different ways. I quote some of them often for inspiration, and I’ll end by doing it again – 2 jewels from one of my favorites – the Mahatma. Ghandi wisely observed that “even the most powerful cannot rule without the cooperation of the ruled.” He proved it. He also famously said – “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” He proved that too.
Anyone ready for a fight? I hope you are, and if so, you and we too can win. And just in case I need to remind you what you’re fighting for, it’s for your future, the kind your parents hopefully had, the kind you want for your children, the kind where you know you live in a country with a real democratically elected government that works for all the people and one where there’s equity and justice for everyone, not just for the privileged the way it is today. It’s also to save the republic and reverse the present course we’re now on that may destroy it. Think about it, and start fighting for it. Your future depends on it.
Breaking through the past by taking a more ‘open minded’ stance in societies where money dictates the trends of the world, has become humanity’s drive to ‘get rid of the past’ through consuming, transcending ‘morals’ and what is usually considered as ‘politically incorrect,’ which has become the usual way of human beings to shout out to the world: we’re not alright, yet we can ‘handle’ the truth and numb our reactions to acknowledge what is actually going on in this world through neglecting anything that goes on here and see it just as another picture shown on TV, newspapers or magazines.
Desensitizing is then from the perspective of losing all common sense as the sensual-physical reality that is here – this is done through building a nice niche for ourselves through spirituality/ god, entertainment, jobs, sports, virtually anything and all that can allow us to escape from our reality. It seems that it doesn’t really matter what images we get to see in the media, we will simply continue digesting them like any other piece of cake, losing all sense of realizing that such war images, poverty, abuse and chaos on the streets of some other place is still part of the same Earth that we all live in = it is ourselves in fact.
With just a few seconds after I turned on the TV this evening, I got to see a mother crying because of her one and half month old baby that died in one of the ongoing 17 days of continuous attacks in the city of Homs in Syria – another mother carries her baby that is crying, the expression in the child’s eyes was that of fear and obvious discomfort – the fact that basic requirements are running out such as water and medicines for such cases is indeed alarming, and there is no sign of this coming to and end. “What is everyone waiting in the world? she sobs ‘Waiting for all of us to die?’ – and through watching this I can only breathe realizing that I am a spectator of such suffering in front of a screen wondering ‘how could I not react to this?’ – however, this is our reality and manifestation and we can only get to face it by daring to just place ourselves for a moment in such shoes – would we still ‘not care’?
The great majority of the world don’t really want to SEE and REALIZE what is going on, because that would entail having to stop the ongoing ‘live to the fullest’ type of experience wherein everyone is rather busy trying to come up with the next greatest thing that can bring some form of fortune, 15 minutes of fame and hype in a world wherein everything that shines catches our attention. Self Honesty is required within each one of us to take off the blindfold. We hide the reality that is here with light, love and gold while seeing images at the same time on TV of war, death, destruction, famine, abuse, protests, riots, cities being burnt down, political reality shows and a plethora of news can only give us the idea of there being no hope. This has become our ‘everyday news’ and our ‘everyday living’ – it seems almost elusive to think that we could someday have an hour of news wherein not a single abusive or violent event is reported, and this is definitely a ‘utopia’ at the moment – however we know it’s possible if we step out of our accepted and allowed human misery and start realizing that the solution exists within each one of us.
We form a thick layer of skin on top of ourselves in order to cope with what we have now become ‘so used’ to – unfortunately – to see, which is violence, abuse, blood, tears, screams, images of deformed bodies in order to fit in our current ‘aesthetical standards,’ people with their brains blown out by bombs, yet having news of people making or poverty another profitable fashion game that adds on to the transformation of symbols in humanity from reality into just another trend of the year.
There is a point here wherein in this ‘drive/ desire’ to ‘evolve’ and ‘break the old patterns,’ we have lost all perspective of any value/ principle in life. Within this rule of ‘anything goes’ according to only seeing a panorama of the end times – and believing that ‘it is too fucking late now’ – people get desensitized to just accept everything that is placed in the mainstream media that rings our bells toward escapism. We then indulge into just absorbing & digesting everything that can be labeled as culture, trends, fashion, new attitudes, adopting ‘new ways of living’ that can apparently make us ‘forget the past’ in one way or another.
“We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us” is a quote I just remembered from a movie, but actually got to know belongs to Bergen Evans now that I looked it up. This is to acknowledge that as much as we build layers upon ourselves to not be affected by what’s here, we cannot cover up what we are shoving under the rug at the moment. Reality is catching up on us and it’s fascinating that many people are so into the entire rollercoaster ride that haven’t given themselves the opportunity to stop for a moment, and step ‘outside’ of it to see what is it that we are in fact accepting and allowing to exist in this world.
All our effort is channeled to live as an image, as a character, as an idea that ‘gives a message’ to the world based on what the media is providing in order to create new shit to sell – that’s the point with all trends, for example, how to make stuff obsolete within any fashion realm which not only includes clothes, but also gadgets, cars and anything that is able to have any form of ‘improvement’ in order to sell it as an upgrade. This is also applied to any positive-vibrational-love-and-lighter type of scene wherein the reality that is as raw as can be is neglected in fear of being indulging into the negative. ‘Project an image of success’ is what keeps the masks in place, while any form of foundation that once held such lies is now virtually non-existent – and by that I mean God as Money, as this entire system that is giving its lasts breaths and is only being kept with more lies. The system is ourselves, neglecting how it functions/ how its currently existing is the same as neglecting our own lives.
Is this what we want to be living as humanity? Definitely not – and this ‘carelessness’ in terms of not giving a shit anymore is becoming ‘the trend’ wherein being stupid, being shallow, being absolutely deranged is what’s ‘in.’ What I see is like the ultimate form of spitefulness toward ‘the world,’ but also to each other as a form of pointing out how – for example – kids are currently inheriting a world sunk in debt, destruction and a general crisis wherein all that is being implanted as a message through all of these marketing trends is a ‘hopelessness,’ a ‘anything goes’ or ‘who really gives a fuck’ message that eventually becomes a ‘state of being’ within young people at the moment.
This is already palpable in society – and the more we accept and allow ourselves to be alienated within it by allowing ourselves to be affected by all the messages we are consuming, the more it will become an accepted ‘state of being’ which only propagates the same BS that will make anyone seek for and remain in a sedative position – either through drugs, food, sex, entertainment, sports or ‘anything of the likes’ – which is very convenient by anyone benefiting from it ( $ )
Any form of awareness about the actuality of what is going on in this world is pointed at, crucified or ridiculed – no one really wants to hear the ‘awful truth’ – Why? because of indulging in the comfortable thoughts of ‘Oh well, what difference will it make anyways?’ – ‘Why should I do it? It’s not my fault!’ which makes it a lot easier to walk through reality, not having to stop for a moment to see how come that this system is the way it is, how come there are people lying on the streets asking for money, why is there such an imperative need to steal money to survive?’ There are no relevant sites/ media that are ‘popular’ enough to debunk the reality that we are co-creating at all levels; this is simply because no capitalist will support anything that is debunking the very foundation that perpetuates and allows its profit to be generated.
So, the importance of exposing our popular/ mainstream reality is a cool and necessary way of getting our reality check about what we are still accepting and allowing to exist in this world – and within that, get to see who and what we have become toward these images that we see on a daily basis and have become part of our ‘culture,’ part of our ‘nature.’ Is it really so?
Ask yourself: Who and what am I in relation to the news that I get to see everyday on TV/ internet? Where do I stand toward it? Do I care? Do I see it as ‘outside of myself?’ – Is there anything I can do toward it? And if your answer to this last question is No, I suggest you investigate in Self Honesty: what is it that I am actually not willing to accept that is in my hands to stop within myself, such as the carelessness and general apathy while ‘not giving a fuck’ about anything. We have to begin by getting to care about ourselves first, to re-establish that ‘sensitivity’ as the tactile physical ability to see what is HERE as this reality.
This world has given us everything we require and even more than that – what have we done in exchange? Nothing, simply augment the consumption, abuse and disregard of anything that is here as being equally alive.
The ultimate question is not only ‘do you care?’ but: Are You Willing to be the example of what is possible to become as an actual living being that takes responsibility for what is here?
For that, we already have a place to educate yourself, we’re already walking the process of stepping out of this general sedated and jaded state of mind and have begun opening our eyes to what is really going on, which is certainly not glamorous, not pretty, not nice – yet that is exactly what we have to acknowledge as ourselves, as the points that are HERE behind the bright lights and fuzzy loving-feelings awaiting for something marvelous to just ‘change the world’ – Nothing will come and save us, nothing will change the world and we can only turn a blind eye as long as we are apparently ‘not affected.’
Let this not be a ‘it’s too late’ excuse for you to stand up and will yourself to see reality and walk the necessary process to educate yourself, to see what you are currently existing as and make a decision to Live, to consider what living in Equality can be like if we all place ourselves to establish this principle as a living reality on Earth.
This won’t be easy – we have an entire past chain of ‘original sins’ to stop – each one of us has to do this – and the more we wait, the longer it will take to wake each other up to see what is it that we are in fact doing to ourselves while only living as disposable motion pictures seeking for a purpose in life.
It is Time to Live, I once felt lost and blind – yet I dared to open up my eyes to see that I have always been here, as myself, just immersed in a built up mind reality that was too comfortable to leave behind – yet I realized I could not hide any longer – this is it.
There are certain phrases which tend to increase the intellectual credibility of the speaker. “Consumer culture” is one such phrase. It is tossed around intellectual circles with little regard to the actual meaning or implication of the phrase. It is used as an accessory to dignify a speaker’s point; but rarely, if ever, is the phrase appropriately digested by the speaker or the audience.
Every culture throughout human history has had a defined purpose for its existence. This purpose brings meaning to the lives of its members. It is the force behind their presence and the ultimate goal of their existence. The life purpose of many indigenous cultures was spiritual fulfillment. Life’s energy, prana, god/s was the driving force behind existence, and it was this force that governed the culture.
In our modern culture, consumption has become our purpose for existence. Materialism has become our spirituality. We exist to consume. This is not a judgment, but a practical observation. Our daily lives are driven by the desire to consume and we find fulfillment in material items. How many choose the less desirable job which offers greater pay? What is the reason for doing this, when the more desirable job would supply more than enough to support one’s basic needs? With higher paying jobs we can afford designer jeans, status cars, and McMansions. We buy these things because they bring us joy. However, the joy generated by consumption is shallow and fleeting. It is inevitably followed by a sense of despair once the novelty of the item has worn off. This creates a void which feeds the desire for an even greater level of consumption.
Religion may be the opiate of the masses, but consumerism is the religion of modern America.
And like any drug, the illusion of happiness will eventually give way to discontent when the consumer is faced with the drug’s destructive reality. We’re at the tipping point right now. We’re beginning to experience the personal and environmental repercussions of our destructive habits. Poverty and crime continue to rise, our water and air is becoming increasingly polluted, and personal satisfaction is decreasing exponentially; but the question remains, what do we do about it? It’s easy to point fingers at the government or corporations, but unfortunately consumer culture can not be isolated to a single manipulative force. The reality is that we all are this culture. Our culture has emerged from a multitude of influences and each one of us actively contributes to maintaining it. The consumer works in unison with the producer to ensure the continuation of this culture. Conservative, liberals, and progressives alike speak of this “consumer culture” as if they are somehow removed from it. But we have all been born into this culture. The second we enter the world we become consumers. It is a part of us. The planet is being stripped of resources and we are working overtime to afford the new iPhone; but… the iPhone is really cool, and we have been conditioned to think that we need it. Education and sustainable living are important and commendable first steps in combating environmental destruction, but they do not change our culture’s purpose—which is to consume.
So the problem I am faced with is this:
The endless and excessive consumerism that defines our modern culture is destructive to both the planet and to human societies. It has lead to the creation of a culture that is founded on false joys and dissatisfaction. Programs do little more than create a façade of hope, because our destructive actions are only the manifestation of a problem that is rooted in our culture’s purpose for existence. How do we free ourselves of the confines of consumer culture while still existing in it? Is it even possible? It would require a complete rewiring. We would have to reset our hard-drives.
Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things.” – Philip Slater
I’ve always thought I’ve had a problem with authority the whole of my life, and it’s not until fairly recently I fully understood this issue.
I no longer look at it as me having a problem with authority, I now see it for what it is, a deep dislike for inequality and injustice.
This realisation came when I examined parts of my life other than authority, namely I remembered the time I went to my first gig, to see David Bowie in Manchester at the tender age of 16.
Hero worshipping
I was really excited about attending my first concert, more so because it was David Bowie, and I had loved listening to his albums for two years prior, and his music really struck a chord with me.
So the venue was filling up and it was nearly time for the man himself to appear on stage, I started to notice people whipping themselves into a frenzy and becoming, what I would describe as, over-excited.
David Bowie then appeared 40ft above the stage attached to a cable, and was lowered as he started to sing the first few words of his opening song. A great entrance I thought, but my attention was taken away from this theatrical opening by a large portion of the crowd who were going completely crazy!
They were screaming, holding their arms out in a vain attempt to touch the singer, jumping up and down and some were even crying! At the time I thought “Wow… Is this how you are supposed to act at a gig”?
Whether this was how you were supposed to act at a gig or not, I didn’t like it and it made me wholly uncomfortable and I didn’t understand this hero worshipping.
He’s just a normal guy
Sure David Bowie was, and still is, a big deal in the music business, and I appreciate his music just as much now as I did back then, but it seemed these people were putting him on some metaphorical pedestal and saw him as a ‘god-like’ figure, way above the normal expectations of a man.
I really didn’t understand the behaviour of the crowd, and as I was one of very few not acting in this frenzied way, I thought at the time that maybe I didn’t fully understand the dynamics of a huge arena music concert.
Over the years I have thought back to that experience and now have a better understanding of it. I didn’t act in the same way as everyone else because I didn’t see David Bowie in the same way as the crowded majority on that day. Yes he was a huge ‘star’ and in my opinion made some great music, but I didn’t feel he was any better than me as a human being, and therefore didn’t feel the need to hero worship him.
I’ve bumped into a few ‘famous’ people over the years and I’ve never experienced what others describe as ‘star struck’. And it’s the same when I am in the presence of people who are considered to be figures of authority.
We’re all the same
A job title is just that, and far too many people who are given these positions of authority develop a misguided sense of power, power which can and has been misused. I’ve been witness to and personally experienced this misuse of power on many occasions.
I have seen police officers exploiting their misguided sense of power in ways which are inexcusable, and I have also been on the receiving end of misuse of power within the workplace. Don’t misunderstand me, I have also met police officers who are aware of the bigger picture and don’t misuse the authority given to them by the state.
I have also met people in positions of authority in the workplace who wouldn’t dream of exploiting their position, and that’s my point, the people I have met who are in positions of authority who deserve respect, due to the way they conduct themselves, would get it regardless of their position.
Always question authority
I have a firm belief in always questioning authority, and that’s the reason I previously thought I had an issue with it. It’s also the reason I have in the past been given labels such as rebellious, because I have always questioned authority for as long as I can remember.
I questioned authority at school and was given the title of disruptive or trouble maker. Is questioning authority a bad thing? I don’t think so, especially with so much mistreatment and corruption. I also don’t like using the word power when describing authority, as I don’t believe these authority figures have any real power, other than the power we all have within us.
I really believe I have a healthy disregard for authority, and I also believe more people should question it. What I really have an issue with is inequality and injustice in whatever form that takes.
So what do I mean by questioning authority: For example, I live in the UK and should I ever meet the head of state (currently the queen) I would be expected to bow my head when meeting her. My first response to this is, why?
Why would I bow my head to another human being? Well I wouldn’t, but the concept and expectation astounds me! I’ve never actually met the queen (believe it or not) so I have no opinion about her as a person, although I don’t agree with the concept of a ruling elite.
As far as I know she might be a very nice and warm human being, and that’s fine, but I still wouldn’t bow my head in subservience to her, to me that’s just crazy!
It’s the same in a court of law, everyone is expected to bow to the judge when entering or leaving a courtroom, and stand when the judge enters the courtroom. Again for me, I just don’t understand why there is an expectation for people to do this just because ‘the judge’ has this job and the title.
If the judge bowed his head at me when entering the courtroom, I might feel a little more inclined to do the same in response, out of courtesy, similar to the greetings in the Far East, as this may be a mutually respective act. But until I meet a judge who first takes the time to bow his head to the people in a courtroom, they won’t be getting any bow from me. Not that I attend court much anymore, but I did in a previous job.
Appreciation Vs Hero Worship
So briefly going back to the beginning of the article, I also didn’t understand why all those people were hero worshipping David Bowie when he came on stage to perform. Sure, show appreciation for his work by all means, enjoy seeing him perform live but screaming, crying and reaching out to touch him, give me a break!
David Bowie, the queen of England or the judge in a courtroom are just PEOPLE, people like you and me, no better no worse. They are as deserving of respect as the next person, they’re no more or less deserving of respect purely because of their titles or job roles.
Hierarchy
I don’t agree with hierarchies’ full stop, I believe they create an imbalance in humanity which discriminates against the many. Couple this with the fact that the people in these positions of authority are usually the ones with the majority of the wealth and influence, and you can begin to see how the injustice and inequality that exists in the world today is perceived.
I also believe that by questioning authority I’m doing my bit for humanity, to prise it away from the draconian outdated establishment which still has a hold on the 21st century. Humanity is moving consciously in the right direction, whereby we are beginning to understand ourselves on a personal and collective level.
You are powerful
We no longer have to go through life believing we’re not good enough or powerful enough to make autonomous decisions about our own lives or the world at large. We no longer need to be babysat by a governing elite who have only their own best interests at heart.
We are strong and powerful human beings who deserve more than a life of servitude to the state, and unquestioning obedience. Long gone are the days when the establishment could instil fear in us by telling us we would go to hell and burn for eternity if we didn’t follow the rules and do as we were told.
Evolution of consciousness
Luckily we are now much more evolved and educated, but still the fight for control and power goes on. As we evolve, so do the methods of control, so we need to be perceptive to anyone who would use their position of authority for their own good, rather than the good of others.
We should be ready to unveil the abuse of authority and how better to do that than to question it. If something doesn’t feel right would you still go ahead and do it if a person in authority told you to? I’m hoping not!
It’s our duty to question what we feel is wrong in the world, even if it does come from someone considered to be a person in authority. So I no longer feel I have a problem with authority, I just believe authority has to prove itself before I walk blindly down its path.
We live in a time when technologies and ideas (often the same thing) are adopted in response not to need but to advertising, salesmanship, and fashion. Salesmen and saleswomen now hover about us as persistently as angels, intent on “doing us good” according to instructions set forth by persons educated at great public expense in the arts of greed and prevarication. These salespeople are now with most of us, apparently, even in our dreams.
I am more and more impressed by the generality of the assumption that human lives are properly to be invented by an academic-corporate-governmental elite and then either sold to their passive and choiceless recipients or doled out to them in the manner of welfare payments. Any necessary thinking—so the assumption goes—will be done by certified smart people in offices, laboratories, boardrooms, and other high places and then will be handed down to supposedly unsmart people in low places—who will also be expected to do whatever actual work cannot be done cheaper by machines.
Such a society, whose members are expected to think, do or provide nothing for themselves, will necessarily give a high place to salesmanship. For such a society cannot help but encourage the growth of a kind of priesthood of men and women who know exactly what you need and who just happen to have it for you, attractively packaged and at a price no competitor can beat. If you wish to be among the beautiful, then you must buy the right fashions (there are no cheap fashions) and the right automobile (not cheap either). if you want to be counted as one of the intelligent, then you must shop for the right education (not cheap but also not difficult).
Actually, as we know, the new commercial education is fun for everybody. All you have to do in order to have or to provide such an education is to pay your money (in advance) and master a few simple truths:
Educated people are more valuable than other people because education is a value-adding industry.
Educated people are better than other people because education improves people and makes them good.
The purpose of education is to make people able to earn more and more money.
The place where education is to be used is called “your career.”
Anything that cannot be weighed, measured, or counted does not exist.
The so-called humanities probably do not exist. But if they do, they are useless. But whether they exist or not or are useful or not, they can sometimes be made to support a career.
Literacy does not involve knowing the meanings of words, or learning grammar, or reading books.
The sign of exceptionally smart people is that they speak a language that is intelligible only to other people in their “field” or only to themselves. This is very impressive and is known as “professionalism.”
The smartest and most educated people are the scientists, for they have already found solutions to all our problems and will soon find solutions to all the problems resulting from their solutions to all the problems we used to have.
The mark of a good teacher is that he or she spends most of his or her time doing research and writes many books and articles.
The mark of a good researcher is the same as that of a good teacher.
A great university has many computers, a lot of government and corporation research contracts, a winning team, and more administrators than teachers.
Computers make people even better and smarter than they were made by previous thingamabobs Or if some people prove incorrigibly wicked or stupid or both, computers will at least speed them up.
The main thing is, don’t let education get in the way of being nice to children. Children are our Future. Spend plenty of money on them but don’t stay home with them and get in their way. Don’t give them work to do; they are smart and can think up things to do on their own. Don’t teach them any of that awful, stultifying, repressive, old-fashioned morality. Provide plenty of TV, microwave dinners, day care, computers, computer games, cars. For all this, they will love and respect us and be glad to grow up and pay our debts.
A good school is a big school.
Disarm the children before you let them in.
Of course, education is for the Future, and the Future is one of our better-packaged items and attracts many buyers. (The past, on the other hand, is hard to sell; it is, after all, past.) The Future is where we’ll all be fulfilled, happy, healthy, and perhaps will live and consume forever. It may have some bad things in it, like storms or floods or earthquakes or plagues or volcanic eruptions or stray meteors, but soon we will learn to predict and prevent such things before they happen. In the Future, many scientists will be employed in figuring out how to prevent the unpredictable consequences of the remaining unpreventable bad things. There will always be work for scientists.
The Future, as everybody knows, is a subject of extreme importance to politicians, and we have several political packages that are almost irresistible—expensive, of course, but rare:
Tolerance and Multiculturalism: Quit talking bad about women, homosexuals, and preferred social minorities, and you can say anything you want about people who haven’t been to college, manual workers, country people, peasants, religious people, unmodern people, old people, and so on. Tolerant and multicultural persons hyphenate their land of origin and their nationality. I, for example, am a Kentuckian-American.
Preservation of Human Resources: Despite world-record advances in automation, robotification, and other “labor-saving” technologies, it is assumed that almost every human being may, at least in the Future, turn out to be useful for something, just like the members of other endangered species. Sometimes, after all, the Economy still requires a “human component.” At such times, human resources are called “human components,” and are highly esteemed in that capacity as long as their usefulness lasts. Therefore, don’t quit taking care of human resources yet. See that the schools are run as ideal orphanages or, as ideal jails. Provide preschool and pre-preschool. Also postschool. Keep the children in institutions and away from home as much as possible—remember that their parents wanted children only because other people have them, and are much too busy to raise them. Only the government cares. Move the children around a lot while they’re young, for this provides many opportunities for socialization. Show them a lot of TV, for TV is educational. Teach them about computers, for computers still require a “human component.” Teach them the three Ss: Sex can be Scientific and Safe. When the children grow up, try to keep them busy. Try to see that they become addicted only to legal substances. That’s about it.
Reduce the Government: The government should only be big enough to annihilate any country and (if necessary) every country, to spy on its citizens and on other governments, to keep big secrets, and to see to the health and happiness of large corporations. A government thus reduced will be almost too small to notice and will require almost no taxes and spend almost no money.
The Free Market: The free market sees to it that everything ends up in the right place—that is, it makes sure that only the worthy get rich. All millionaires and billionaires have worked hard for their money, and they deserve the rewards of their work. They need all the help they can get from the government and the universities. Having money stimulates the rich to further economic activity that ultimately benefits the rest of us. Needing money stimulates the rest of us to further economic activity that ultimately benefits the rich. The cardinal principle of the free market is unrestrained competition, which is a kind of tournament that will decide which is the world’s champion corporation. Ultimately, thanks to this principle, there will be only one corporation, which will be wonderfully simplifying. After that, we will rest in peace.
Unlimited Economic Growth: This is the pet idea of the Party of Hardheaded Realists. That unlimited economic growth can be accomplished within limited space, with limited materials and limited intelligence, only shows the unlimited courage and self-confidence of these Great Minds. That unlimited economic growth implies unlimited consumption, which in turn implies unlimited pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth, only makes the prospect even more unlimited.
The Food System: The Food System is firmly grounded on the following principles;
Food is important mainly as an article of international trade.
It doesn’t matter what happens to farmers.
It doesn’t matter what happens to the land.
Agriculture has nothing to do with “the environment.”
There will always be plenty of food, for if farmers don’t grow it from the soil, then scientists will invent it.
There is no connection between food and health. People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are healed by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.
It follows that there is no connection between healing and health. Hospitals customarily feed their patients poor-quality, awful-tasting, factory-made expensive food and keep them awake all night with various expensive attentions. There is a connection between money and health.
But however much I may change my mind, I will never agree with those saleswomen and salesmen who suggest that if I will only do as they say, all will be fine. All is not going to be fine. Even if we all agreed with all the saints and prophets, all would not be fine. For we would still be mortal, partial, suffering poor creatures, not very intelligent and never the authors of our best hope.
P.S. Last summer, for example, I read a newspaper article announcing, in the awestricken voice of the science journalist, “a new generation of technological inventions—most of them involving some variation on the home computer.” The two inventions specifically described in the article were electronic newspapers and something called “hypertext.”
The benefits of the electronic newspaper apparently all have to do with convenience: “These screens will display a front page with an index. The user can tap a pen to the screen to call up a story, flip a page, turn a still photograph into a TV news scene, or even make a dinner or theatre reservation from an ad.”
Hypertext “makes it possible to create all sorts of linkages and short circuits within a text.” And this “is extremely useful in organizing technical material so that the reader can efficiently select which parts of a text to read.” The reason for this, according to a “consultant,” is that “usually you don’t want to read everything— you only want to read what you don’t know . ” Hypertext “is reader-friendly and makes it easy to chart a path to the desired parts.” Thanks also to this invention, “creative writing professors are teaching courses about how to write hypertext novels that literally go in all directions.” These novels are “interactive”:
In reading a hypertext novel You may follow the point of view of a chosen character, or you may chose the outcome you like best, or you may wander off into subtleties beyond anything James Joyce could have imagined. The possibilities —and the stories—may be endless.
This opens up new realms of choice and creativity. In some ways it frees the reader from being merely a passive receptacle of the ” author’s genius (or lack of same)
I hope you will understand at least somewhat the disgust, the contempt, and the joy with which I have received this news.
It disgusts me because I know there is no need for such products, which will put a lot of money into the pockets of people who don’t care how they earn it and will bring another downward turn in the effort of gullible people to become better and smarter by way of machinery. This is a perfect example of modern salesmanship and modern technology—yet another way to make people pay dearly for what they already have (the ability to turn the pages of a newspaper or respond to an ad; the ability to read and write, to choose what to read, and to read “actively”).
I read about these things with contempt because of the nonsense and the falsehood involved. For example, no real comparison is made in this article between paper newspapers and electronic ones. The stated difference is simply that one is newer and somehow easier than the other. And what exactly is implied by the use of a machine that makes it possible to read only “what you don’t know”? is this perhaps what we call “skimming”? But how do you know, without reading or at least skimming, whether you know or do not know what is in a text? And what of the pleasure of reading again what you already know? The assumption here is that reading is an ordeal, of which the less said the better. And don’t we remember that television was once expected to produce a new era of general enlightenment? And now will we believe that the electronically stupefied will turn from their soap operas to “hypertext” and indulge themselves in “subtleties and complexities” beyond the powers of James Joyce? And are we to suppose that readers of, say, James Joyce have hitherto been mere passive receptacles of his genius? And haven’t we known all along that the stories are endless?
My joy comes from my instantaneous knowledge that I am not going to buy either piece of equipment. When the inevitable saleswoman comes to tell me that I cannot be up-to-date, or intelligent, or creative, or handsome, or young, or eligible for the sexual favors of so fair a creature as herself unless I buy these products, I am not going to do it.
Somewhere is better than anywhere. – Flannery O’Connor
Poverty means a state of constant stress, a feeling of being powerless, helpless, a kind of hopelessness causing life expectancy to drop for many who struggle throughout their lives, to access basic needs which although were provided free by nature, were made inaccessible by those who defined and enforced the way the world works, while this way has been accepted and passed on through generations, by parents to children.
A holocaust that happens every year, not by the hands of a dictator, rather by the hands of starvation that kills more than 6 million children every year. Six million children die each year yet no one even notices? Is that apathy or is it desensitization?
We have collectively agreed upon and accepted an economic paradigm, constructed upon predatory values, having a clear basic flaw which restricts the system to support only a small sector of the world’s population, keeping the majority deprived and struggling. A monetary system, which fluctuates according to market forces and controlled by few who are obsessed by unlimited growth, unlimited greed, is bound to produce transgression and exploitation. We have attached numbers as price tags to natural resources for our own benefit, deliberately effecting all have not’s those who are unable to keep up with they system. Unfortunately these have not’s have always been the majority, living in a constant state of deprivation, struggling to get access to the basic necessities of life.
The children are taught at school that goodness still exists in the world and the adults still believe it, BUT, if goodness is there, then why the world is getting more unjust each passing day? Why there are more miseries than happiness? Why there is no limit for greed? Why everyone tries to see goodness and happiness, while turning blind eye towards miseries and misfortunes?
More painful is that fact that no one actually seems to have time to think about all this. People are too busy and everyone is in a hurry. When will they be able to spare some time and think about it? When will they realize that this extreme level of inequality is leading us to a dead-end? Why everything revolves around production and consumption when the resources on our planet are finite? What will happen when these resources will eventually get depleted? How the rich and wealthy will segregate themselves from poor and deprived?
A system that recognizes wealth as the sole measure of integrity, is bound to produce the concept of “Haves” and “Have-nots“. Unfortunately the system justifies the existence of haves and have-nots, completely ignoring the fact that nature has provided us earth and all the natural resources totally free. It is us, the humans who have accepted a system totally dependent on production, consumption and money, giving it the power to define the scales of wealth and poverty. Those who have money often claim that they worked for their money and that poor must find jobs. How ridiculous is this statement, when there are no jobs available and how dishonest are those people who earned their wealth through the labor invested by poor?
Of course the rich tell the poor that the system works … it works well for them …. unfortunately the poor just happen to be the big majority… and their hungers, injustices and pains are unethical ….
In a system which requires capital to create opportunities, those who do not posses it, are unable to help themselves, therefore bound to be exploited by those who do have it. A concept where fear of poverty makes people to hoard money and find reasons to justify the existence of poverty. Normally people and the society transfers poverty to God’s account, declaring it as will of God, instead of will of man. A destructive phenomenon transformed to good and justified, while everyone is happy to turn a blind eye towards the misery and pain being suffered by many at the cost of pleasure for few. Those who have money and are hoarding it to protect themselves against poverty, are actually creating it and this fear of poverty is their own creation. Capital is just a way used to exclude the many for the benefit of the few, to make enormous profits and live in gluttony.
Our economic system is a manifestation of a spiritually bereft people. We seek to fill the gaping hole in our souls with the gratification of our senses through ownership of novel pieces of property, for which we are gladly willing to trade our lives, our morality, our freedom, in fact our humanity, selling it to employers hour by hour, year by year, like dehumanized zombies, losing all senses of realizing that we are stepping on the shoulders of others, pushing them down, in the name of so called “competition”.
This system of money representing our lives [through] time in exchange for objects we don’t really need to survive is bad enough without considering that we also must trade our time for the things that we do need to survive, things that have been bestowed on us by nature, things that exist to be free to all life, the fruits of our earth, like nourishing milk from our mother’s body.
Consider how outrageous it is that you must pay to live on your own planet! And in the off time, the time when we are away from our mundane and menial jobs, we are subjected to torrents of mind numbing bombardment of advertisements telling us that we must Buy! Buy! Buy! To be worthy! To be cool! To be sexy! The subjection to all of this, added to the total inhumanity of most of our lives, creates a very vicious cycle of consumption to satiate our already eroded and damaged sense. The more we are subjected to, the more we need to consume to feel gratified, exactly like junkies chasing their first high, until we are hollow, pathetic husks, shells of what god or nature or the universe intended our species to be.
The money spent on entertaining the rich i.e. the huge amount being spent in the name of sports, fashion, arts, entertainment, movies etc. is sufficient enough to provide food, healthcare and shelter for every living being on the planet, but people are too busy trying to find new ways to entertain themselves through the money they posses. Likewise the money spent on wars can feed all the hungry people, but unfortunately wars are seen as avenues to generate money through conquering new lands, accessing resources and creating economic activities in the name of reconstruction. Poverty too has become a business these days. Numerous entities and organizations that pretend to help the poor are run and managed by the rich, only to protect their self-interest.
We allow our vitality to be leached out to sustain a system that exists to perpetuate the comfort and wealth of a very small group of people on the planet. And this is the purposeful destruction of our souls. This is why 11 year olds shoot each other for their shoes. WE are crying out at the pain and numbness in our souls, and the reverberations of our cries are shaking our civilizations to pieces! And we are infecting the whole planet with our sickness. We need to smash this culture! We need to travel backward down the pathology of the creation of our egos and plant a bomb at their source, for the sake of everything!
Nature doesn’t demand anything and doesn’t charge anything from living beings to access air, water, sunlight etc. Nature provides equal and invariable nurturing to all the babies in their mother’s womb and it is free of all the man-made distinctions of being rich and poor. However, as the baby steps out of his mother’s womb and steps into this world being operated by man-made rules and distinctions, he/she earns the title of being “rich” or “poor”. A title that defines the fate and decides what the baby has to do in order to survive.
We, the human species, have been singled out by nature to be the bearers of the creative life force, we have been given the power to make the most breathtaking of dreams come to gasping life. We must realize that in order to achieve these, dreams, we must destroy the most potent adversary we will ever face: our own egos and our own fears. Will we let the nightmares of a few old, scared men hold back the birthright of our people?
Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome, and eradicated by the actions of human beings.
Does poverty have functions to explain its persistence?
The answer is YES, because The poor pay for all.
Poverty makes possible the existence or expansion of respectable professions and occupations (e.g., penology, criminology, social work, public health). Poverty provides jobs for social scientists, social workers, journalists, and other ‘poverty warriors.’
1. Functions of poverty
benefits non-poor by making a class of low-skill workers available who can and will perform tasks, the society’s ‘dirty work’ that others do not want to do
schools help to create and perpetuate a class of poor people who make up the low skill workers society needs (unintended)
benefits non-poor by keeping prices down, effectively subsidizing the consumption activities of the more affluent, i.e. lifestyle of middle/upper classes is dependent on the existence of low-paid work force
poverty benefits non-poor by creating jobs and income for persons who would regulate, serve, or exploit those who are less fortunate, e.g. justice system
existence of trickle-up effect associated with public assistance, assistance funds received ends up going back to non-poor
benefits non-poor because destitute persons purchase goods and services more affluent people do not, i.e. exploited more and have less protection
poor absorb costs of economic policies, e.g. reducing inflation is at a cost of throwing people out of work
2. Myths about poverty
refusal to work
welfare dependency
welfare is a black program
poor people don’t plan ahead, i.e. idea of instant gratification
there are enough jobs around, anyone can get a job if they want one
3. Causes of poverty: Deserving to undeserving spectrum, cause or consequence
innate inferiority reasons – biological factors
cultural inferiority reasons – cultural factors, deviant value system
Structural reasons – reproduction of the class structure: essentially structure is stable over time – vicious circle of poverty: rules of eligibility reflect policy choices made by non-poor, can easily get trapped but majority escape – macroeconomic policy: trade off between inflation or unemployment, latter hurts poor more than inflation, former hurts more the middle class and wealthy; it is a political issue – structure of elections: election days on working days, registration requirements so lower classes vote less – structure of the economy: wage rates and availability of jobs, part-time or intermittent jobs, decline of well-paying blue collar jobs – institutional discrimination, e.g. lack of education, poor health, racial, women and elderly are disadvantaged
4. Impact of poverty
hunger
homelessness
violence
5. Categories of people who are poor
unemployed poor
working poor: people who are working but are earning enough to be considered above the poverty line
near poor: people who do earn enough money to be considered above the poverty line normally but just barely, but with a non-regular life expense, e.g. medical situation, person falls into poverty since the expense cannot be met
homeless people
“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society”. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” – Jean Jacques Rousseau, (On the Origin of the Inequality of Mankind)
The following list is an attempt to articulate the obligatory rules by which corporations operate. Some of the rules overlap, but taken together they help reveal why corporations behave as they do and how they have come to dominate their environment and the human beings within it. Excerpted from: IN THE ABSENCE OF THE SACRED: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations, Sierra Club Books, 730 Polk St.. San Francisco, CA 94109
1. The Profit Imperative: Profit is the ultimate measure of all corporate decisions. It takes precedence over community well-being, worker health, public health, peace, environmental preservation or national security. Corporations will even find ways to trade with national “enemies”—Libya, Iran, the former Soviet Union, Cuba—when public policy abhors it. The profit imperative and the growth imperative are the most fundamental corporate drives; together they represent the corporation’s instinct to “live.”
2. The Growth Imperative: Corporations live or die by whether they can sustain growth. On this depends relationships to investors, to the stock market, to banks and to public perception. The growth imperative also fuels the corporate desire to find and develop scarce resources in obscure parts of the world.
This effect is now clearly visible, as the world’s few remaining pristine places are sacrificed to corporate production. The peoples who inhabit these resource-rich regions are similarly pressured to give up their traditional ways and climb on the wheel of production-consumption. Corporate planners consciously attempt to bring “less developed societies into the modem world” to create infrastructures for development, as well as new workers and new consumers. Corporations claim that they do this for altruistic reasons to raise the living standard—but corporations have no altruism.
Theoretically, privately held corporations—those owned by individuals or families—do not have the imperative to expand. In practice, however, their behavior is the same. Such privately held giants as Bechtel Corporation have shown no propensity to moderate growth.
3. Competition and Aggression: Corporations place every person in management in fierce competition with each other. Anyone interested in a corporate career must hone his or her ability to seize the moment. This applies to gaining an edge over another company or over a colleague within the company. As an employee, you are expected to be part of the “team,” but you also must be ready to climb over your own colleagues.
Corporate ideology holds that competition improves worker incentive and corporate performances and therefore benefits society. Our society has accepted this premise utterly. Unfortunately, however, it also surfaces in personal relationships. Living by standards of competition and aggression on the job, human beings have few avenues to express softer, more personal feelings. (In politics, non-aggressive behavior is interpreted as weakness).
4. Amorality: Not being human, corporations do not have morals or altruistic goals. So decisions that maybe antithetical to community goals or environmental health are made without misgivings. In fact, corporate executives praise “non-emotionality” as a basis for “objective” decision-making.
Corporations, however, seek to hide their amorality and attempt to act as if they were altruistic. Lately, there has been a concerted effort by American industry to appear concerned with environmental cleanup, community arts or drug programs. Corporate efforts that seem altruistic are really Public relations ploys or directly self-serving projects.
There has recently been a spurt of corporate advertising about how corporations work to clean the environment. A company that installs offshore oil rigs will run ads about how fish are thriving under the rigs. Logging companies known for their clearcutting practices will run millions of dollars’ worth of ads about their “tree farms.”
It is a fair rule of thumb that corporations tend to advertise the very qualities they do not have in order to allay negative public perceptions. When corporations say “we care,” it is almost always in response to the widespread perception that they do not have feelings or morals.
If the benefits do not accrue, the altruistic pose is dropped. When Exxon realized that its cleanup of Alaskan shores was not easing the public rage about the oil spill, it simply dropped all pretense of altruism and ceased working.
5. Hierarchy: Corporate laws require that corporations be structured into classes of superiors and subordinated within a centralized pyramidal structure: chairman, directors, chief executive officer, vice presidents, division managers and so on. The efficiency of this hierarchical form (which also characterizes the military, the government and most institutions in our society) is rarely questioned.
The effect on society from adopting the hierarchical form is to make it seem natural that we have all been placed within a national pecking order. Some jobs are better than others, some lifestyles are better than others, some neighborhoods, some races, some kinds of knowledge. Men over women. Westerners over non-Westerners. Humans over nature.
That effective, non-hierarchical modes of organization exist on the planet, and have been successful for millennia, is barely known by most Americans.
6. Quantification, Linearity, Segmentation: Corporations require that subjective information be translated into objective form, i.e. numbers. The subjective or spiritual aspects of forests, for example, cannot be translated, and so do not enter corporate equations. Forests are evaluated only as “board feet.”
When corporations are asked to clean up their smokestack emissions, they lobby to relax the new standards in order to contain costs. The result is that a predictable number of people are expected to become sick and die.
The operative corporate standard is not “as safe as humanly possible,” but rather, “as safe as possible commensurate with maintaining acceptable profit.”
7. Dehumanization: In the great majority of corporations, employees are viewed as ciphers, as non-managerial cogs in the wheel, replaceable by others or by machines.
As for management employees, not subject to quite the same indignities, they nonetheless must practice a style of decision making that “does not let feelings get in the way.” This applies as much to firing employees as it does to dealing with the consequences of corporate behavior in the environment or the community.
8. Exploitation: All corporate profit is obtained by a simple formula: Profit equals the difference between the amount paid to an employee and the economic value of the employee’s output, and/or the difference between the amount paid for raw materials used in production (including costs of processing), and the ultimate sales price of processed raw materials. Karl Marx was right: a worker is not compensated for full value of his or her labor—neither is the raw material supplier. The owners of capital skim off part of the value as profit. Profit is based on underpayment.
Capitalists argue that this is a fair deal, since both workers and the people who mine or farm the resources (usually in Third World environments) get paid. But this arrangement is inherently imbalanced. The owner of the capital—the corporation or the bank always obtains additional benefit. While the worker makes a wage, the owner of capital gets the benefit of the worker’s labor, plus the surplus profit the worker produces, which is then reinvested to produce yet more surplus.
9. Ephemerality: Corporations exist beyond time and space: they are legal creations that only exist on paper. They do not die a natural death; they outlive their own creators. They have no commitment to locale, employees or neighbors. Having no morality, no commitment to place and no physical nature (a factory, while being a physical entity, is not the corporation). A corporation can relocate all of its operations at the first sign of inconvenience—demanding employees, high taxes and restrictive environmental laws. The traditional ideal of community engagement is antithetical to corporation behavior.
10. Opposition to Nature: Though individuals who work for corporations may personally love nature, corporations themselves, and corporate societies, are intrinsically committed to intervening in, altering and transforming nature. For corporations engaged in commodity manufacturing, profit comes from transmogrifying raw materials into saleable forms. Metals from the ground are converted into cars.
Trees are converted into boards, houses, furniture and paper products. Oil is converted into energy. In all such energy, a piece of nature is taken from where it belongs and processed into a new form. All manufacturing depends upon intervention and reorganization of nature. After natural resources are used up in one part of the globe, the corporation moves on to another part.
This transformation of nature occurs in all societies where manufacturing takes place. But in capitalist, corporate societies, the process is accelerated because capitalist societies and corporations must grow by extracting resources from nature and reprocessing them at an ever-quickening pace. Meanwhile, the consumption end of the cycle is also accelerated by corporations that have an interest in convincing people that commodities bring material satisfaction. Inner satisfaction, self-sufficiency, contentment in nature or a lack of a desire to acquire wealth are subversive to corporate goals.
Banks finance the conversion of nature insurance companies help reduce the financial risks involved. On a finite planet, the process cannot continue indefinitely.
11. Homogenization: American rhetoric claims that commodity society delivers greater choice and diversity than other societies. “Choice” in this context means product choice in the marketplace: many brands to choose from and diverse features on otherwise identical products. Actually, corporations have a stake in all of us living our lives in a similar manner, achieving our pleasures from things that we buy in a world where each family lives isolated in a single family home and has the same machines as every other family on the block. The “singles” phenomenon has proved even more productive than the nuclear family, since each person duplicates the consumption patterns of every other person.
Lifestyles and economic systems that emphasize sharing commodities and work, that do not encourage commodity accumulation or that celebrate non-material values, are not good for business. People living collectively, sharing such “hard” goods as washing machines, cars and appliances (or worse, getting along without them) are outrageous to corporate commodity society.
Native societies—which celebrate an utterly non-material relationship to life, the planet and the spirit—are regarded as backward, inferior and unenlightened. We are told that they envy the choices we have. To the degree these societies continue to exist, they represent a threat to the homogenization of worldwide markets and culture. Corporate society works hard to retrain such people in attitudes and values appropriate to corporate goals.
In undeveloped parts of the world, satellite communication introduces Western television and advertising, while improvements in the technical infrastructure speed up the pace of development. Most of this activity is funded by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as well as agencies such as the US Agency for International Development, the Inter-American Bank and the Asian-American Bank, all of which serve multinational corporate enterprise.
The ultimate goal of corporate multinationals was expressed in a revealing quote by the president of Nabisco Corporation: “One world of homogeneous consumption. . . [I am] looking forward to the day when Arabs and Americans, Latinos and Scandinavians, will be munching Ritz crackers as enthusiastically as they already drink Coke or brush their teeth with Colgate.” (Page 31)
In the book, Trilateralism, editor Holly Sklar wrote: “Corporations not only advertise products, they promote lifestyles rooted in consumption, patterned largely after the United States…. [They] look forward to a post-national age in which [Western] social, economic and political values are transformed into universal values… a world economy in which all national economies beat to the rhythm of transnational corporate capitalism…. The Western way is the good way; national culture is inferior.”
Corporations are inherently bold, aggressive and competitive. Though they exist in a society that claims to operate by moral principles, they are structurally amoral. It is inevitable that they will dehumanize people who work for them and the overall society as well. They are disloyal to workers, including their own managers. Corporations can be disloyal to the communities they have been part of for many years. Corporations do not care about nations; they live beyond boundaries. They are intrinsically committed to destroying nature. And they have an inexorable, unabatable, voracious need to grow and to expand. In dominating other cultures, in digging up the Earth, corporations blindly follow the codes that have been built into them as if they were genes.
We must abandon the idea that corporations can reform themselves. To ask corporate executives to behave in a morally defensible manner is absurd. Corporations, and the people within them, are following a system of logic that leads inexorably toward dominant behaviors. To ask corporations to behave otherwise is like asking an army to adopt pacifism.
Corporation: n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.—Ambrose Bierce, 1842-1914..
What civilization is, is 6 billion people trying to make themselves happy by standing on each other’s shoulders and kicking each other’s teeth in. It’s not a pleasant situation. And yet, you can stand back and look at this planet and see that we have the money, the power, the medical understanding, the scientific know-how, the love and the community to produce a kind of human paradise. But we are led by the least among us- the least intelligent, the least noble, the least visionary and we do not fight back against the dehumanizing values that are handed down as control icons.
The culture is a perversion. It fetishes objects, creates consumer mania, it preaches endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding in the form of squirrelly religions and silly cults. It invites people to diminish themselves and dehumanize themselves by behaving like machines meme processors of memes passed down from Madison Avenue and Hollywood and what have you.
Man was not put on this planet to toil in the mud. Or the god who put us on this planet to toil in the mud is no god I ever want to have any part of. It’s some kind of Gnostic demon. It’s some kind of cannibalistic demiurge that should be thoroughly renounced and rejected. By putting the art pedal to the metal, we really, I think, maximize our humanness by becoming much more necessary and incomprehensible to the machine. We’re playing with half a deck as long as we tolerate that the cardinals of government and science should dictate where human curiosity can legitimately send its attention and where it can not.
It’s an essentially preposterous situation. It is essentially a civil rights issue, because what we’re talking about here is the repression of a religious sensibility. Not built on some con game spun out by eunuchs, but based on the symbiotic relationship that was in place for our species for fifty thousand years before the advent of history, writing, priestcraft and propaganda. So it’s a clarion call to recover a birthright. The syntactical nature of reality, the real secret of magic, is that the world is made of words. And if you know the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you wish.
We have to create culture, don’t watch TV, don’t read magazines, don’t even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you’re worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you’re giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears.
And we are told ‘no’, we’re unimportant, we’re peripheral. ‘Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.’ And then you’re a player, you don’t even want to play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world. You don’t have to be the victim of your culture. Its not like your eye color, or your height, or your gender. Its fragile. It can be remade if you wish it to be.
Television is by nature the dominator drug par excellence. Control of content, uniformity of content, repeatability of content make it inevitably a tool of coercion, brainwashing, and manipulation. Chaos is what we’ve lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control. If the words ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ don’t include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn’t worth the hemp it was written on.
Culture and language tend to become traps, and yet they can be the platforms for enormous freedom if you understand what it’s all about. And what it’s all about is you. You are the center of the mandala. You are not marginalized in any way. And the message that the culture gives us is that we are marginal. It’s really yourself that is the final arbiter. And if you keep yourself as the final arbiter, you will be less susceptible to infection by cultural illusion.
The apocalypse is not something which is coming. The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet and it’s only because we live within a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse. If you go to Bosnia or Somalia or Peru or much of the third-world then it appears that the apocalypse has already arrived.
Many “philanthropic” foundations have been used in America as a tax dodge to protect family fortunes, to polish tarnished images of robber barons and worst of all, to make the public fund depopulation and other detrimental policies that benefit the controlling elite. Some tax-funded depopulation programs include vaccines, genetically modified (GM) crops and “reproductive rights” which is a euphemism for abortion, birth control and sterilization under the elites’ eugenics programs. Incredibly, the public is paying for its own demise! This brings a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘death and taxes’.
What is a Foundation?
There are 1.6 million so-called ‘nonprofit’ 501(c)3 organizations in the US. Nonprofits are misnamed and are anything but not-for-profit; a more accurate description is that they are TAX EXEMPT organizations. The two two major types of tax exempt organizations are:
Foundations- these are the grantors and they are required to donate 5% of their assets each year to charitable organizations. They enjoy enormous tax breaks from the federal government and pay no income tax, no corporate tax and no capital gains tax. States and local governments may also exempt them from property and sales taxation. Some powerful foundations are extremely influential in setting political policies and making laws that benefit their enterprises and pass the cost onto taxpayers.
Nonprofit Organizations or NPOs also enjoy the same tax exemptions as foundations (no income, corporate or capital gains taxes). NPOs are structured like a business and seek grants from foundations, government subsidies and corporate and private donations. They do pursue profits.
Foundations make grants to NPO “charities”. Assets within foundations are not owned by individuals, but individuals control the assets. Because they are allowed to continually re-invest assets without taxation, foundations are used to protect family wealth through estate planning; this scheme is now expanding into business development which means that some businesses are seeking to cut their taxes by pretending to be charitable organizations.
Foundations date back to Greek and Roman times. They became popular with the elites in the U.S. when they created the fraudulent Federal Reserve System and the income tax.
How the Public Pays for its Own Demise
The formula for coercing the public to pick up the bill for destructive programs begins with foundations creating a constituency, buying off politicians, and convincing Congress that an issue should be regulated by the government. Once the issue is government controlled, it becomes taxpayer funded.
A good example of this man-made global warming, one of the cornerstones of UN Agenda 21, the overarching blueprint for total control and depopulation. Fear and hysteria were created (based on flawed science from the UN) using NPOs in order to usher in government regulations funded by taxpayers.
Here is a more detailed explanation of the process:
1. Foundations create constituency groups or supporters.
Education- foundations provide grants to schools and colleges; they often place one of their representatives on the school Board of Directors to influence curriculum.
Media- foundations spend a lot of money to make a splash in the news, sponsor media events and generate publicity.
Activism- foundations and their officers “donate” to NPOs and may then direct them.
2. Politicians may bought or receive funding that influences them. They may receive “donations” and campaign contributions from foundations, corporations and individuals. OpenSecrets.org is a good source for finding information on political and lobbying contributions.
3. The most critical step is for representatives of foundations argue in Congress that their issue should be regulated or acted upon by the government. Once government policies are created, costs are passed on to the public through taxes, permit fees and other governmental charges. David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer prize winner and author, said that this can be proven by investigating legislative back history, but it is very laborious process.
Foundation-inspired laws and regulations are not limited to the federal government, as state and local governments are targeted, too.
4. Foundations may write the actual laws and regulations and administer them.
5. Foundations may also lobby for for tax breaks and subsidies that benefit their interests.
6. In some cases this entire process can be bypassed if there is enough money and power involved. For example, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates met with Obama recently to discuss “fixing” the U.S. economy- who knows what deals were struck behind closed doors.
Another example is the prince of the UAE who pledged $50 million to Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for vaccines; ultimately, the prince’s money is derived from the citizens.
7. Foundations can bolster their image or the image of their members at a discount rate by employing the ‘Pillsbury Formula’; this method is when the foundation puts up half the money (or some percentage) and demands matching funds from another source. The finished project is created in their name and generates positive publicity at a bargain rate.
Conclusion:
Malthusian overpopulation myths are lies perpetrated by the controllers who seem to fear losing power and command over resources. In fact, The UN’s owndocuments are a direct contradiction to their lies; world population is expected to reach 9 billion people by 2050 and is projected to remain at that level through 2300. Many large foundations are dedicated to depopulation, especially those controlled by Rockefeller, Buffett and Gates.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s ‘Giving Pledge’ is a not a foundation; it is merely a promise by wealthy elites to donate over half of their fortunes to “philanthropy” upon their death. The Giving Pledge currently has over 50 members; the goal is to accumulate $600 billion in pledges from 400 billionaires. The donors may choose any foundation or “charitable” foundation that they woud like to support. Many are likely to choose a foundation that will take their donations and invest it in markets to make money, with an annual payout of only 5%. Therefore, generating more wealth and influencing political policy to be funded by taxpayers (and destructive to the public in many cases) is a plausible result. This is hardly admirable.
People who are interested in finding out more about foundations and NPOs may obtain a free membership for independent researchers at GuideStar.org to investigate tax exempt entities’ IRS 990 tax forms which provides information about how much money they have, and may include the names of grant recipients, the names of the donors and a list of companies with whom they invest. Not all foundations are corrupt, but the large ones that influence public policy deserve close scrutiny.
Michael Shaw, President of FreedomAdvocates.org, lawyer and former tax expert says;
“Foundations, Non Governmental Organizations and non-profits are generally exempt from income taxes. They have been arranged from the beginning to promote globalism and today this is accomplished through the implementation of Agenda 21. The creation of the Federal Reserve coupled with the adoption of the income tax in 1913 provided the one world elite opportunity to avoid taxes throughout the formation of Foundations and other tax exempts. This was key to creating the financing system that has promoted globalism and which now threatens us all with world tyranny.”
“Charity consoles but does not question. ‘When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint, and when i ask why they have no food, they call me a communist.’ Unlike solidarity, which is horizontal and takes place between equals, charity is top-down, humiliating those who receive it and never challenging the implicit power relations. In the best of cases, there will be justice someday, high in heaven. Here on earth, charity doesn’t worry injustice, it just tries to hide it.” – Eduardo Galeano
As far as I know the Roman empire didn’t have state police like the Gestapo or the KGB, nor even the FBI or CIA. Maybe that’s why Spartacus was able to instigate his uprising. Rome had its working formula: bread and circuses, and the civus romanus kept quiet while the Legions abroad did whatever the caesars wanted. The NWO seems to have rediscovered Rome’s formula: today we have Bread — so far so good — and Circuses, like the media and disneylands. As long as those two ‘mamelles’ of society function, the rest of the world can go to hell. And that’s what happens: on the ruins of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, soon Iraq and-who’s-next, the bread and infernal duo of circuses and conquest endorsed by the new empire will go on. The revolts of the future will not try to kill through terror or war. Loss of life doesn’t impress the empire and the masses become accustomed to living under the virtual menace of death. The new revolts will strike mostly the sources of economy and circuses.
We know that History advances in rocambolesque knots, not in a linear way. Compared to Athens, Rome regressed in many ways. Then the Middle Ages more or less regressed compared to Rome, to rise up toward the Renaissance which gave birth to our modern society. Now we regress again in the fight between terror and a world empire with its enigmatic face but well-known appetites.
History which ought to be a source of knowledge is tainted with the P.R. assassination of History. Even after passions and interests cool, honest historians will continue their detective work, trying to pierce the carapace of lies.
We don’t have a clear demarcation between terrorists and freedom fighters. We don’t know why the Czechs who killed Gauleiter Heidrich are called patriots, and Gavrilo Princip, who thirty years earlier killed the Archduke Ferdinand, is today called a terrorist. We don’t know why the Hapsburg Empire and the Ottoman Empire, known for centuries as a graveyard of nations are now called models of tolerant coexistence. Turks impaled their adversaries, while Habsburgs destroyed the Croatian family of Frankopans and put their castle in ruins just because of their drive for autonomy. The twentieth century saw the development of caricatural messianic radicalism, from left to right. They engendered many changes, though indirectly, but of course didn’t change the basic darwinist bent of human nature. So, paradoxes are taken for granted: Comrade Stalin in full Communism and without blushing could become Generalissimus Stalin. Franco became Generalissimo, I don’t know who was the first. China became a Capitalistic society under Communist dictatorship and nobody knows nor cares what that means. In our democracy the same abyss may coexist between credo and fact, particularly in the contrast between internal and external policies. In the latter, the most totalitarian and mafiosi ways, chaperoned by media, can be adopted while the dominant power remains officially a democracy. All this without the need of any state police; only bread and circuses will ensure public peace.
“…the State ‘has the supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the State… for the right of the world spirit is above all special privileges.'” Author/historian William Shirer, quoting Georg Hegel in his The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959, page 144)
In 1847 the London Communist League (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels) used Hegel’s theory of the dialectic to back up their economic theory of communism. Now, in the 21st century, Hegelian-Marxist thinking affects our entire social and political structure. The Hegelian dialectic is the framework for guiding our thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead us to a predetermined solution. If we do not understand how the Hegelian dialectic shapes our perceptions of the world, then we do not know how we are helping to implement the vision. When we remain locked into dialectical thinking, we cannot see out of the box.
Hegel’s dialectic is the tool which manipulates us into a frenzied circular pattern of thought and action. Every time we fight for or defend against an ideology we are playing a necessary role in Marx and Engels’ grand design to advance humanity into a dictatorship of the proletariat. The synthetic Hegelian solution to all these conflicts can’t be introduced unless we all take a side that will advance the agenda. The Marxist’s globalagenda is moving along at breakneck speed. The only way to completely stop the privacy invasions, expanding domestic police powers, land grabs, insane wars against inanimate objects (and transient verbs), covert actions, and outright assaults on individual liberty, is to step outside the dialectic. This releases us from the limitations of controlled and guided thought.
When we understand what motivated Hegel, we can see his influence on all of our destinies. … Hegelian conflicts steer every political arena on the planet, from the United Nations to the major American political parties, all the way down to local school boards and community councils. Dialogues and consensus-building are primary tools of the dialectic, and terror and intimidation are also acceptable formats for obtaining the goal. The ultimate Third Way agenda is world government. Once we get what’s really going on, we can cut the strings and move our lives in original directions outside the confines of the dialectical madness. Focusing on Hegel’s and Engel’s ultimate agenda, and avoiding getting caught up in their impenetrable theories of social evolution, gives us the opportunity to think and act our way toward freedom, justice, and genuine liberty for all.
Today the dialectic is active in every political issue that encourages taking sides. We can see it in environmentalists instigating conflicts against private property owners, in democrats against republicans, in greens against libertarians, in communists against socialists, in neo-cons against traditional conservatives, in community activists against individuals, in pro-choice versus pro-life, in Christians against Muslims, in isolationists versus interventionists, in peace activists against war hawks. No matter what the issue, the invisible dialectic aims to control both the conflict and the resolution of differences, and leads everyone involved into a new cycle of conflicts.
We’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.
Definitions:
Merriam-Webster:
“Dialectic ….the Hegelian process of change in which a concept or its realization passes over into and is preserved and fulfilled by its opposite… development through the stages of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis in accordance with the laws of dialectical materialism ….any systematic reasoning, exposition, or argument that juxtaposes opposed or contradictory ideas and usually seeks to resolve their conflict …
….the dialectical tension or opposition between two interacting forces or elements.”
“Dialectical Materialism …1 : the Marxist theory that maintains the material basis of a reality constantly changing in a dialectical process and the priority of matter over mind.”
“Hegel’s dialectic often appears broken up for convenience into three moments called “thesis” (in the French historical example, the revolution), “antithesis” (the terror which followed), and “synthesis” (the constitutional state of free citizens). … Much Hegel scholarship does not recognize the usefulness of this triadic classification for shedding light on Hegel’s thought. Although Hegel refers to “the two elemental considerations: first, the idea of freedom as the absolute and final aim; secondly, the means for realising it, i.e. the subjective side of knowledge and will, with its life, movement, and activity” (thesis and antithesis) he doesn’t use “synthesis” but instead speaks of the “Whole”: “We then recognised the State as the moral Whole and the Reality of Freedom, and consequently as the objective unity of these two elements.” …
“Hegel used this system of dialectics to explain the whole of the history of philosophy, science, art, politics and religion, but many modern critics point out that Hegel often seems to gloss over the realities of history in order to fit it into his dialectical mold….
In the 20th century, Hegel’s philosophy underwent a major renaissance. This was due partly to the rediscovery and reevaluation of him as the philosophical progenitor of Marxism by philosophically oriented Marxists, partly through a resurgence of the historical perspective that Hegel brought to everything, and partly through increasing recognition of the importance of his dialectical method. The book that did the most to reintroduce Hegel into the Marxist canon was perhaps Georg Lukacs’s History and Class Consciousness. This sparked a renewed interest in Hegel reflected in the work of Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch….
The Hegelian dialectical formula: A (thesis) versus B (anti-thesis) equals C (synthesis).
For example: If (A) my idea of freedom conflicts with (B) your idea of freedom then (C) neither of us can be free until everyone agrees to be a slave.
The Soviet Union was based on the Hegelian dialectic, as is all Marxist writing. The Soviets didn’t give up their Hegelian reasoning when they supposedly stopped being a communist country. They merely changed the dialectical language to fit into the modern version of Marxist thinking called communitarianism. American author Steve Montgomery explores Moscow’s adept use of the Hegelian dialectic in Glasnost-Perestroika: A Model Potemkin Village.
How is it possible to consider a Hegelian argument?
If the ideas, interpretations of experiences, and the sources are all wrong, can a conclusion based on all these wrong premises be sound? The answer is no. Two false premises do not make a sound conclusion even if the argument follows the formula. Three, four, five, or six false premises do not all combine to make a conclusion sound. You must have at least one sound premise to reach a sound conclusion. Logical mathematical formulas are only the basis for deductive reasoning. Equally important is knowledge of semantics, or considering the meanings of the words used in the argument. Just because an argument fits the formula, it does not necessarily make the conclusion sound. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel knew this when he designed his dialectic.
Hegel is an imperialist con artist who established the principles of dialectical “no-reason.” Hegel’s dialectic has allowed globalists to lead simple, capable, freeborn men and women back into the superstitious, racist and unreasonable age of imperial global dominance. National governments represent people who are free from imperial controls over private property, trade and production. National governments protect their workers from imperial slavery by protecting the worker’s markets. But if you use Hegel’s logical Marxism, the only way to protect people from slavery is to become the slave trader, just for a while. Twisted logic is why cons are so successful, and Hegel twisted it in such a way as to be “impenetrable.” Like Hegel and Marx, the best street con knows his spiel has to use logic to bend and distort the story, and good cons weave their lies on logical mathematical progression. The fallacy is in the language, not in the math. Detective Phillip Worts’ 2001 article Communist Oriented Policing is a nice explanation of Dialectical Materialism’s influence on America.
The communitarian purpose for the Hegelian dialectic
Hegel’s theory is basically that mankind is merely a series of constant philosophical conflicts. Hegel was an idealist who believed that the highest state of mankind can only be attained through constant ideological conflict and resolution. The rules of the dialectic means mankind can only reach its highest spiritual consciousness through endless self-perpetuating struggle between ideals, and the eventual synthesizing of all opposites. Hegel’s dialectic taught all conflict takes man to the next spiritual level. But in the final analysis, this ideology simply justifies conflict and endless war. It is also the reasoning behind using military power to export an illogical version of freedom and false democratic ideals.
The reason we can call it the justification for modern conflicts and war, with impunity, is because no one can prove Hegel’s theory is true. No matter how many new words they make up to define it, or how many new theories they come up with to give it validity, we can prove beyond a doubt that it is all false. And, we can show the final equation in Hegels’ Dialectic is:
A: The [your nation goes here] System of Political Economy (List 1841)
B: state controlled world communism
C: state controlled global communitarianism.
The Hegelian dialectic is the ridiculous idea that constant conflict and continual merging of opposite ideologies, as established by extreme right or left belief systems, will lead spiritual mankind into final perfection. (Americans understood man’s spiritual quests to be outside the realm of government control). Hegel’s brilliance rests in his ability to confuse and obfuscate the true motives of the planners, and millions of people world-wide have been trying to make sense of why it doesn’t work for over 150 years. But like the AA definition of insanity, the world keeps trying it over and over expecting different results. …
When Frederick Engels and Karl Marx based their communist theory on Hegel’s theory of spiritual advancement via constant resolution of differences, they based the theory of communism on an unproven theory.
While Darwin’s theory of evolution is still being debated, there’s absolutely no proof that societies are continually evolving. When Engels and Marx later based their communist theory on Lewis Henry Morgan’s theory of anthropology in 1877, they again based the theory of communism on an unprovable theory.
And when Amitai Etzioni used Hegelian reasoning to base the Communitarian Network on a “balance” between (A) Rights and (B) Responsibilities, he built the entire theory of (C) communitarianism on nothing but disproven and unprovable unscientific theories….
Already gaining substantial ground against the Americans, British Marxism was bolstered when Charles Darwin published his theory of human evolution in 1859. Engels, according to modern day scholars, seized upon Darwin’s theory to substantiate communism:
“When Marx read The Origin of Species he wrote to Engels that, ‘although it is developed in the crude English style, this is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view.’ They turned against what they saw as the social, as opposed to the biological, implications of Darwinism when they realised that it contained no support for their shibboleth of class oppression. Since they were slippery customers rather than scientists, they were not likely to relinquish their views just because something did not fit.” (see: Marxism and Darwinism by Anton Pannekoek, 1912.)
In 1877 Lewis Henry Morgan published Ancient Society, or Researches in Life, Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, through Barbarism, to Civilization. Then the “slippery” Engels seized upon Morgan’s work as the constantly “evolving” basis for the totally unsubstantiated theory of natural social evolution into utopian world communism….
Hegel’s formula has been so successful that in 2003 all U.S. domestic and foreign policy is dominated by “communitarian thinking,” the whole country is living under the new laws, and yet Americans most affected by “impenetrable” Hegelian laws have never once heard the term used.
Conclusion:
The Hegelian dialectic presupposes the factual basis for the theory of social evolutionary principles, which coincidentally backed up Marx. Marx’s Darwinian theory of the “social evolution of the species,” (even though it has been used for a century to create a vast new scientific community, including eugenics and socio-economics), does not adhere to the basis for all good scientific research, and appears to exist mainly to advance itself, and all its sub-socio-scientific arms, as the more moral human science. To the ACL this means the entire basis for the communitarian solution is based on a false premise, because there is no FACTUAL basis that “social evolution of the species” exists, based as it is only on Darwinian and Marxist ideology of man’s “natural” evolution towards a British version of utopia.
The London-Marxist platform in 1847 was “to abolish private property.” The American Revolution was based in private property rights. Marxist societies confiscate wealth and promise to “re-distribute it equally.” America promised everyone they could keep and control what was the product of their own labor. Modern Marxist adherents openly claim they will “rebuild the world,” and they train activist “change agents” to openly support overthrowing the legitimate governments of the world. Since their inception, Marxist agent provocateurs can be linked to every anarchist assassination and student uprising that caused chaos to the established European civilization throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Modern Americans have succumbed to the conspiracy theory label and will only listen to what the propaganda machines tell them. Now our people don’t believe anyone other than maybe the Arab world “hates our freedom.” Most modern Americans will never know what went wrong with their “great experiment in democracy.”
While the Marxist-communitarian argument has not provided a shred of evidence to prove their utopian vision, and their synthesis does not match their own projected conclusions of world justice, we are convinced their argument does in fact substantiate our conclusion, that the entire philosophical dialectical argument is nothing but a brilliant ruse. We used to call it “a cheap parlor trick” until a responder to this page wondered how we could call it “cheap” when it’s been so successful. And he was right. The dialectical arguments for human rights, social equity, and world peace and justice are a perfectly designed diversion in the defeated British Empire’s Hegelian-Fabian-Metaphysical-Theosophical Monopoly game. It’s the most successful con job in the history of the modern world. (For a well presented Christian overview of the con, see American Babylon: Part Five-the Triumph of the Merchants by Peter Goodgame.)
The communitarian synthesis is the final silent move in a well-designed, quietly implemented plot to re-make the world into colonies. To us it doesn’t matter if there is some form of ancient religion that propels the plotters, nor does it really matter if it turns out they’re aliens (as some suggest). The bottom line is the Hegelian dialectic sets up the scene for state intervention, confiscation, and redistribution in the U.S., and this is against our ENTIRE constitutional based society. The Hegelian dialectic is not a conspiracy theory because the Conspiracy Theory is a fraud. We’ve all been duped by global elitists who plan to take totalitarian control of all nation’s people, property, and produce. Communitarian Plans exist in every corner of the world, and nobody at the local level will explain why there’s no national legal avenue to withdraw from the U.N.’s “community” development plans.
This world is in reality a global enslavement machine that programs people to THINK that they are free in order for them to cope with their servitude, and conditions people to WANT it as well. The truth is, we are all slaves to the economic system and programmed with illusions that help us bear our enslavement.
The system treats us as economic resources and defines us by our economic functions (e.g. workers, tax payers, consumers, voters, etc.) rather than as human or spiritual beings. In short, we are simply a commodity to the system and groomed as such. And of course, we are programmed to want to thrive as “economic resources”, not to complain about it or be critical of it. No freethought, in other words. You are supposed to “love the system”.
Freedom, for the most part, is just a word, not an actual state of existence. The reason people believe that they have freedom is simply because their minds are programmed to think that they do. You see, your slavemasters need you to be satisfied with your enslavement to keep you controlled. In order to do that, they give you choices in consumerism and in selecting your occupation. You are “free” to choose your form of slavery and vote for your puppet dictators.
Right when you step into grade school, you lose all your freedoms as you are totally controlled and given rules to abide by. You are taught to regurgitate information and to be obedient, as you are honed and groomed to become a slave in servitude to the system. You are told it’s for your own good, and punished for disobedience. Public school is where your conditioning to become a robot begins.
This video explains how schools are nothing more than prisons designed to train and condition slaves:
First, you are programmed to WANT to become enslaved by being conditioned to WANT a job/career, which is essentially giving over control of your daily life to others. In doing so, you give up your freedom without knowing it cause you are told that you are “free to work”, which implies that it is YOU who wants it, not the system – a psychological sleight of hand indeed. Furthermore, you are convinced that “the purpose of your life is to work” and that’s what you were born for, thus ingraining you with the “live to work” mentality. You are also conditioned to feel empty and incomplete without it. As a result, work becomes synonymous with freedom to you.
If you think about it though, unless you are at the executive level, most jobs are technically positions of slavery, because you are giving over a large portion of your day in servitude to a corporate body, organization or business that is structured in a hierarchical fashion. Technically, that is slavery. There’s no way around it. But of course, the system tries to convince you that it’s not by getting you to think that YOU are the one that wants it. But even if you don’t, you have to anyway cause you need the money to pay your bills. Hence, whether you want it or not, the employment enslavement is “forced” upon you by the system.
Overall, the system tries its best to make you a “happy slave” by repackaging slavery as freedom. This is a form of spin illusion that reverses the meaning of “slavery” and “freedom”. For example, freedom in America means “the freedom to work and make money” which in other words means “the freedom to choose your form of enslavement”. And being free of this enslavement is to be a “miserable unemployed person who is seeking a job”, as defined by the system. This basically means that it is a bad thing not be a slave.
It’s a play on words that turns truth into its opposite. And it’s no different than preachers telling Christians who have submitted to the fundamentalist laws of the Bible that they have been “set free from sin”, or fascist dictators telling their populace that they’ve been “set free from chaos and disorder”, etc. So in this case, when you turn into a corporate slave, you are “set free from unemployment”.
Essentially, the system’s false logic is that slavery = being “set free” from freedom. This is nonsensical of course, but you aren’t meant to see it the way it really is. Instead you are meant to see the inverse of the way it really is. That’s the scam and brainwashing. It’s a classic form of propaganda where you divert attention from something by declaring it to be its opposite. And it has been used time and time again throughout history in all areas of life where mass control is needed. Thus it’s no wonder that Michael Ellner stated:
“Just look at us. Everything is backwards. Everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information, and religion destroys spirituality.”
Moreover, the system uses a barrage of methods to keep us in an internal state of fear and insecurity that causes us to crave structure and routine, due to our psychological insecurities, which enslavement to the system provides of course. Thus we are raised to want to be “tied down” to something (e.g. a job, house, marriage, single geographic location) on a long term basis. This is why most people do not seek adventure, new experiences or true freedom of expression, and only a minority do.
One major outlet that the system uses to keep us in this internal state is the media of course, which constantly feeds us stories of terror, tragedy and crises. Their excuse is that “bad news sells” but that is just a cover. You are never told the real reason for the rampant fearmongering. Society also convinces you that being in a state of fear and paranoia is good for your protection. But in reality, the majority of our fears are baseless, unfounded or greatly exaggerated. (e.g. terrorists everywhere, psycho killers everywhere, swine flu scares, etc.)
Another major method the system uses is the other people around us, who are trained to keep us in line and in a state of conformity. This is effective because given a choice between the truth vs. conformity to the group, most will choose the latter even if it means parroting a lie they know to be untrue. And of course, our internal state of fear and weakness make it much more likely that we will conform as well. Thus, each of these controls are designed to reinforce each other.
Conformity is the fallacious belief that the views of the majority must always be right and the minority or dissenters always wrong. Therefore, it assumes one should adopt the beliefs of the majority in order to be “right”. It is a mindless characteristic that most adopt and are conditioned to live by. However, many of the greatest thinkers, writers and intellectuals of the world have seen through the madness of such a belief.
Additionally, society is set up with all sorts of stress, anxiety and worry to keep you in a constant state of “survival mode”, which reinforces your fear state. And of course, money itself, which enslaves the world for obvious reasons and is totally artificial, is the lifeblood of the global enslavement system. There is no question that we are all slaves to money. But as conspiracy lecturer Alex Collier asks in his lectures, “Why do I have to ‘pay’ to be in a world I was born into?”
David Icke, a popular conspiracy researcher and author, came to the same conclusion. In his book “Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More” he writes “the truth – that the world is a global enslavement machine and reality suppressor”.
Though there are variations, essentially most people only have two choices – either become a robot… or a bum. Not very inspiring. To find alternatives requires innovation and thinking outside the box, but most cannot cause the system doesn’t teach you to think for yourself.
Most people believe what they are told, and they are not told that the world is an enslavement system. Instead they are told that they were born to work, which is a virtue, and that if they study hard and work hard, they will make a lot of money and have a good life. But in reality, they end up slaving away their whole lives for money with some “pie in the sky” dream in their heads with little or no time to enjoy any “good life”. They never live fully or experience any true freedom or discover themselves. Instead they live in fear, worry and pressure their whole lives just to keep up an illusory facade under the programming of the system. In the end, it falls flat and they wonder what went wrong after they’ve lost most of their precious life years serving the system. By the time they realize it, it’s too late. Such is the sad scam the system puts on you.
Now I am not trying to be negative here. The system is what it is. And no amount of white washing or word plays will change the core nature of it.
Employment in reality is a form of binding enslavement in which you give up your life and freedom over to others. But you are made to WANT and NEED it. You are made to WANT a job that ties you to one geographic location and puts your schedule under control of a managerial entity, which no sane awakened person would want. But you are programmed to define all that as “freedom”.
An awakened person realizes the folly of all this, sees that what everyone wants (like the will of a hive mind) makes no sense, and realizes that all of this is the total antithesis of what it means to be free. But an unawakened person believes the illusion and wants what they are programmed to want. To them, if society says so and everyone else is doing it, it must be good, normal and natural. Only the awakened person realizes it’s all a con full of lies, mind control, illusion, voluntary slavery and the giving up of one’s life and freedom.
True freedom means that you can do whatever you want (for the most part at least) as long as you don’t harm others, without the control and interference of others. But the commitment of employment and marriage take that away. There is no doubt about that. But we are NOT conditioned to want true freedom. Instead, we are conditioned to WANT enslavement by giving up control of our life, time and daily schedule to others. Yet we are TOLD that we have freedom, when in reality we do NOT have true freedom. It’s a total lie that makes no sense and contradicts reality.
Think about it. Most people who are enslaved by employment and bound by social control do NOT have true freedom because for the most part, since they CANNOT do whatever they want everyday without control and interference from others. In childhood, their life is controlled by their school system in the day and their parents at night. Then in adulthood, their work life is controlled by their bosses, managers and HRM, while their social life is controlled by popular culture, mass media, ideological divisions, fear and anger, etc. Yet they BELIEVE that they have freedom. Why? Because they are TOLD that they do! They are told that since no one named Adolf Hitler runs their government, that they can go to the voting booth, and that they have 20 flavors of bagels to choose from, etc. that they have freedom, even though their lives are controlled by others and they cannot do whatever they want everyday! It’s an insane hypocrisy and bizarro world. Yet most don’t see it cause the system programs their minds not to see it but to see the opposite by redefining everything and turning people into “happy slaves” who do not want true freedom.
Now if you agree with all this and want to know what you can do about it, my advice is this: Try to become self-employed. Or at least find ways to cut your expenses so that you can work part-time and at least have half the day to be truly free. This may sound hard, but if you remember that “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” you can find a way. Or you can join one of those self-sustaining eco-villages around the world, if you’re into that sort of thing. If you can’t do any of these things, at least be employed in something that you love, so that it does not feel like slavery.
Always remember, the quotes of the greatest thinkers, writers and intellectuals of the world;
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” – Frederich Nietzsche
“It takes far less effort to find and move to the society that has what you want than it does to try to reconstruct an existing society to match your standards.” – Harry Browne, (How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World )
“Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” – Frederich Nietzsche
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” – George Orwell
“Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools, and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.” – Thornton Wilder
“Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.” — Oscar Wilde
“Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.” – Ayn Rand
“Honesty is such a lonely word. Everyone is so untrue…” – Billy Joel, in his hit song “Honesty”
“The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation; in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society — and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic.” – Eric Fromm (The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness)
BITTER REALITIES 
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