An American Fascism?
The following is a slightly edited version of the afterword to my new book, Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen, to be published by Quest in November 2008. Sadly, this will be a tad late to actually profit much from the election fever, but with any luck it's close enough for people to still have an interest in the theme.
Starting with the mysterious appearance of the Rosicrucian manifestoes in Germany in the early 1600s, and ending, as the afterword shows, with some recent developments in the US, I look at some examples of occult or "illuminated" politics in the modern world. Some areas covered include Rosicrucian utopianism and its collapse in the Thirty Years War; the esoteric sexual politics of 18th century London and its influence on Emanuel Swedenborg; Freemasonry and Mesmerism's impact on radicalism in England, as well as on the French and American Revolutions; the rise of "popular occultism" in the work of the cabalistic socialist, Eliphas Levi; spiritualism and its links to the early Women's Movement; Theosophy and Indian self-government; the 'progressive' occultism of the fin-de-siecle; the Great Game and the search for Shambhala; the birth of the counterculture in the early 1900s; matriarchy, myth and the rise of Nazism; Rene Schwaller du Lubicz and anti-Semitism; Rene Guenon, Traditionalism, and the retreat from the modern world; the magical fascism of Julius Evola; and Mircea Eliade's links to the far-right politics of the Legion of the Archangel Michael.
One of the central themes of the book is the idea that, contrary to popular belief, occult politics does not always mean far-right or fascist politics, and I devote some time to dispelling the myths surrounding the "occult roots" of National Socialism. I argue that there has been a "progressive," enlightened occult politics too, perhaps most clearly seen in Annie Besant's key role in Indian independence, but also in the efforts of figures like Rudolf Steiner to introduce a more spiritually oriented current into early 20th century European politics.
Nevertheless, following WWI, occult politics takes a decidedly right turn, with important figures like du Lubicz and Evola espousing an outright fascist sensibility, and Guenon and Eliade joining in. Modernity itself becomes the central issue, and in this, far-right occultists, and far-left neo-Marxists become comrades in arms, both deriding the irredeemable wasteland of the modern world. This theme, of the retreat from modernity, seems to me a central challenge of our time.
* * *
Recently a disturbing book came to my attention, and as I read it, it became clear to me that perhaps the most significant development in what we may call “illuminated politics” in the twenty-first century is happening now in the United States. The fact that Americans will soon be electing a new president only adds a certain urgency and immediacy to this concern. Some believe that with the end of the Bush administration, the influence of the Christian Right on American politics will wane. Yet the Nazis dropped below the radar after Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923; a decade later they were in power.
If I’m beating a dead horse here, I ask the reader’s indulgence. The book in question is American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (Free Press, 2007). In it, Chris Hedges, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, paints a troubling picture of the rise of what he argues may be a form of American-Christian fascism. This isn’t the kind of neo-Nazi “white power” sensibility that has been on the fringes of American society for some time. There are no swastikas, no Hitler salutes, no armbands or kitschy brown shirts associated with this group, although its appeal to an increasingly disenfranchised sector of American society is similar to the appeal National Socialism had to disenfranchised Germans in the early 1930s. The “American fascists” Hedges speaks of belong to a huge, well-organized, well-funded, and disturbingly politically well-placed movement dedicated to dismantling the secular state and replacing it with a kind of authoritarian theocracy, based on a numbingly literal reading (or misreading) of the Bible. Through schools, the media, pressure groups, and lobbyists, and through its growing presence in the American halls of political power, the Christian Right, Hedges argues, is gearing up to fundamentally (the pun would be inexcusable if the concern wasn’t so real) alter the American way of life, and through this, ultimately, the way of life for the rest of the world as well.
Like many encountered in this book, Hedges’ American fascists are unhappy with the modern world, especially the American modern world, which they see as decadent, depraved, and heading for disaster. Sexual license, homosexuality, feminism, liberalism, popular culture, the welfare state, foreigners, and a host of other ills are pulling what was once, in their eyes, a Christian nation down the tube. Although I hesitate to point out the parallels too strongly, as in the years leading up to National Socialism in Germany, there is among the followers of this belief a sense of some impending doom, some unavoidable cataclysm. Historians have argued that works like Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West and others of a similar tone, which appeared in Germany in the years following World War I, helped prime the German psyche to accept the idea of some vast, irrevocable alteration in the shape of things and the need for strong leaders to find a way through the chaos. Hedges argues that the horror of September 11 created a similar sensibility in many Americans, and that the Christian Right is playing on the understandable fears that it and other terrorist attacks have generated. That the minds behind September 1l and other terrorist attacks, in the United States and elsewhere, are as narrow, fanatical, and oblivious to human suffering as those informing the Christian Right (at least according to Hedges) only adds to the sense that the affairs of the West in the early twenty-first century have reached, or are about to reach, a crisis point. A cliché, I know, but having looked in this book at a number of similar flashpoints in the last few centuries, it’s difficult not to recognize this.
I will leave readers of Hedges’ book to discover—if they are not already aware of it—the worryingly sophisticated network of media, educational, social, and political control that his American fascists already have in place and which, in the event of another September 1l or similar catastrophe, they will speedily use to offer and assume a beneficent leadership of the nation. But these “illuminated” totalitarians aren’t dependent on a terrorist attack, economic meltdown, or increasingly likely natural disaster (probably stemming from global warming) in order to come forth and take their rightful place as rulers of the land, although the downturn in the U.S. economy at the time of writing is the sort of thing they’re banking on. The central myth motivating their actions is the imminent end of the world as we know it, a version of the last days patched together from a selective reading of the Book of Revelation. At the heart of this is what they call the Rapture, when Jesus returns to earth and all his “true believers” are whisked up to heaven, while the rest of humanity is “left behind” to face an unimaginable ordeal of bloodcurdling torture and horror, the “time of tribulation.”
I say “unimaginable,” but this is incorrect, as a series of Christian Right bestsellers, collected under the title Left Behind, goes to some lengths to do just that. Reading the descriptions of the righteous violence meted out to those who refuse to let Jesus “into their hearts,” or to those who are not quite Christian enough, with bodies bursting, heads exploding, torsos slashed in two—all in very graphic detail—I couldn’t escape the feeling that this was a form of religious or apocalyptic pornography, a kind of sick spiritual sadism. Children have a front row seat in heaven while they watch their parents, who didn’t make the grade, receive the swift retribution of the Lord. Even Dante in his worst moments didn’t depict the punishments of hell with such obscene relish, but then Dante is a much better writer than the authors of these holy gore fests.
The books, which rival Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code in sales, have been made into films, featuring downgraded ex-Hollywood stars, and are big hits on the several highly popular Christian broadcasting networks. There are even video games based on them, with the righteous warriors of the Lord laying into the evil cohorts of the Antichrist.
That such books are written isn’t surprising. Similar works entertain the followers of “esoteric Hitlerism,” although in those, noble Aryan supermen defeat the repellent hordes of—well, you can fill in the blank. It’s saddening that such books are written, but it’s a free country, at least so far. What’s troubling is that so many Americans read them, and for all I know there are foreign translations too. As I point out earlier in this book, popular culture is often a better indication of a society’s beliefs than its “official” sources. If this is true, then a substantial segment of the American consciousness is anticipating an imminent holy crusade against all those that it believes are not “one of us.” Candidates for this bill are the usual suspects: homosexuals, feminists, Jews, “people of color,” liberals, socialists, Muslims (adherents of a “Satanic” religion), and so on. That America is currently not right with God is the Christian Right’s complaint, but come the Rapture, that will change. The belief in the “cleansing” power of religious violence as a means of political action, as if some holy “white tornado” will come and blow away all the social “dirt,” has recurred throughout Western civilization. Sadly, it’s an option that many, confronted with the complexities of modern life, find attractive. If the sales of the Left Behind fantasies are any indication, millions of Americans do. Violence as a means of ushering in some putative new age is, of course, not limited to the right. Marx fantasized about the bourgeoisie hanging from lampposts. But I don’t think an imminent Marxist upheaval is on the books just now. On a less violent but equally millennial note, many New Age advocates are anticipating some kind of radical change circa 2012. I haven’t done the math, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the prophets behind the Left Behind novels and those of Quetzalcoatl’s return find themselves jockeying for position come the last days.
One of the main targets of the Christian Right, Hedges argues, are what they call “secular humanists,” which basically means people who don’t accept Jesus in the way they do and who more or less accept modern life as it is, based on science and materialism, and, sadly, motivated for the most part by consumerism. Secular humanists are in the bad books of the Traditionalist followers of René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon, and as Mark Sedgwick points out in his book Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2004), some Traditionalist thought has informed some elements of Islamic fundamentalism. This isn’t surprising, as the Traditionalists and Islamic fundamentalists share a virulent disdain for the modern West.
Clearly, for anyone who thinks life should be about something more than reality TV, celebrity gossip, and having the F word misspelled on your clothes, the secular Western world leaves much to be desired. I include myself in this group. Like many people, there is much about the modern world I find unappealing. It’s for this reason that I find critics of it such as Guénon, Julius Evola (the esoteric doyen of the European far Right), and others of their sensibilities disturbing—not because of Evola’s obvious fascist sympathies or Guénon’s elitist ethos, but because many of their criticisms hit the mark. Unless a more moderate rethinking of modernity comes up with something soon, the more extreme alternatives offered by Guénon and others like him will seem appealing.
Notwithstanding Evola’s repellent racist views, it’s not surprising that some of his readers appreciated his belief that the only thing left was to “blow up” everything. Thankfully, the majority take this as a metaphor, and I’d bet that many of us feel something similar at times, although, again thankfully, we have the presence of mind not to succumb to this “purifying” release. To want to knock everything down and start anew has been a part of the human psyche for ages, probably from the beginning. It’s a form of metaphysical impatience, and most spiritual practices are aimed at learning how to curb it. But no society or nation can practice Zen or any other discipline; only people can. So it’s up to us to refrain from indulging in the delightful and stimulating exercise of smashing everything up.
Until recently I didn’t think of myself as particularly political, or at least as no more so than the next person who has to deal with a certain amount of politics in everyday life. I’m still not one to join marches, hit the barricades, or call for a revolution, and I believe that the best contribution that I, and people like me, can make is to try to understand things with as much clarity and insight as possible. Whether I manage to do that or not is another story. Now I think I can articulate to myself somewhat more clearly what I can call my political stance. Politics deals with the possible, not the ideal; it inhabits the messy world of becoming, not the stable world of being. Ideas from the world of being can inform the politics of becoming, but they cannot take its place, which means that as long as the world is the world, there will always be change. Attempts to force some ideal, whether right or left, into existence will fail, or their success will come at such a cost that failure would have been preferable. Watching the collapse of his beloved Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky had deep insight into what he called “the impossibility of violence...the uselessness of violent means to attain no matter what.” “I saw with undoubted clarity,” Ouspensky wrote, “that violent means and methods in anything whatever would unfailingly produce negative results, that is to say, results opposed to those aims for which they were applied.” This, Ouspensky said, wasn’t an ethical insight but a practical one. Violence simply doesn’t work. History, I think, bears Ouspensky out. If humankind and society are going to become “better,” it’s not going to happen overnight. As the I Ching counsels, “Perseverance furthers.” And that, as I say, takes patience.
Given that the political world isn’t an ideal one, if I were asked which I preferred, the modern world, which allows for shopping malls, dumbed-down culture, and consumer consciousness or a variant of the spiritual authoritarian theocracies proffered throughout the years, I’d have to come down on the side of modernity. With Leszek Kolakowski, I’m conservative because I believe that there is much to conserve and that the new is not always better than the old. But with Ernst Bloch I’m a radical, because I believe in the promise of the new, the potential for something that doesn’t yet exist to arrive. The challenge, of course, is how to combine the two until we find the Goldilocks-like state of having things “just right.” Needless to say, this isn’t easy, and if ever achieved, is only temporary. When I think of the kind of spiritual society envisioned by René Schwaller de Lubicz and others, I can appreciate its appeal. I need only enter a shopping mall to do that. But it does seem to me an example of what the philosopher Karl Popper called a “closed society.” More than likely, I’m too much of a modern to desire a theocracy, however spiritual. I grew up on television, comic books, movies, and pop music, and my introduction to the Western esoteric tradition came through cheap paperbacks, not through meeting some mysterious emissary of an initiated elite. I also realized while writing this book that in my own life I exemplify the “rootless cosmopolitanism” that so many anti-modern thinkers find reprehensible. And not only the scary ones; C.G. Jung didn’t have much good to say about cities, and it wouldn’t be difficult to find in Jung’s remarks an echo of the Nazi “blood and soil” rhetoric. I’ve lived in three vast metropolises—New York, Los Angeles, and London —in two different countries on two different continents and have little, if any, connection to the soil or land outside of what can be found in the city. (When people ask about my “roots,” I explain that I don’t have them and think of myself as more of a spore.) I’m not arguing in favor of this and against the more rural life many antimodern critics celebrate. It’s simply turned out this way.
The modern secular world, for all its drawbacks, has in its favor its very messiness. It allows for all the things that antimodern critics and others, like myself, dislike. But its very messiness also allows for other things. If we’re going to have freedom—a loaded word, I know—we’re going to have to put up with some things we don’t care for. But we’ll also be free to pursue the things we do care for. Even though much popular culture is at a numbingly stupefying level, I’m still able to turn off the television and pick up Dostoyevsky or Nietzsche or even Julius Evola. I’m not sure if in a world fashioned under Evolian principles I could do that. Chris Hedges argues that it is precisely the absence of community, meaningful popular culture, and an appreciable level of intelligence and integrity in modern American society that draws many people who feel “left out” into the ethos of Left Behind. But he doesn’t argue for some means of forcing these desirable goods onto society, of compelling us to be more intelligent and meaningful for our own sake. As Ouspensky saw, such compulsion wouldn’t work anyway. All that is left for people who care about these things is to do what they can to make them part of their lives. There’s no formula for this, no recipe, no things to put on your “to do” list. For all its emptiness and echoes of a wasteland, we’re still free in the modern world to “become who we are.” How we do this is up to us. If I have to put up with the messy stuff in order to do it, it seems a fair trade.
Photo collage by Commandante Agi, courtesy of Creative Commons license.
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Gary Lachman
have you read Monica Sjoo's book The Return of the Dark Light Mother, where she exposes the patriarchal occultism in the 'New Age'.
It is a MUST read if your interested in this! checkout her site: http://www.monicasjoo.org/artic/challengingpatriarch.htm
word of advice
Very Good Read
Propaganda Anonymous
Great piece Gary.
The questions raised from the tenuous balance between dumbed-down aspects of our modern culture and a desire for something that seems more attune with living in a harmonious state, seems like a pivotal question for many of us who visit this site.
I do find it interesting to see the similarities in thought found with Christian and Islamic Fundamentalists.
Adam Curtis made a good documentary outlining some of these similarities entitled, 'The Power of Nightmares'
My own personal sociological proclivities, however, do lead me to think about how the way many of our Modern Metropolis' are pretty messed. I am not a huge fan of the way metropolitan areas like New York City (which I pretty much am from and live in) are set up. It's an ok place when you have some doe, but when you are living paycheck to paycheck then the city seems like some Abstracted Golem that feeds on the blood, sweat, and tears of the serfs who work their lives away for something that doesn't seem to care if they live or die.
For that, I see many modern cities, like NYC, as fundamentally flawed and cruel.
Colin Wilson wrote an interesting book called 'The Criminal History of Mankind' where his thesis, as far as I interpreted it, was to show how our City systems are what drove many to criminal behavior. (This, of course, coincides with my own pet theories about our current situation)
In my songs and 'fictional' writings I also speak about watching the 'city burn down' but that is more like an emotional metaphor than a literal directive.
I agree with Karl Popper's view that a piecemeal progress towards a hopeful form of utopia is in order. As opposed to the Historicism view point that the Marxists he was criticizing in his 'Open Society and its Enemies.' You mentioned Popper in your piece, in his writing about closed socieites.
My one quasi-criticism of your article is that you seem to have failed to mention Popper's view that Once a Society 'opens up,' so to speak, this acts as a self-generating force to not only stay open, but to open even more. I think this is vital to state.
Yes, there seem to be some messed up movements by all those weird freaks who like to wear white sheets, but let's also state the continually resistance to this stupidity!
We are not powerless.
We can face this stuff and keep the cool things alive. Be it a Grant Morrison comic or 'Pineapple Express' We can be both couch potatoes on Tuesday and chillin and drinking Ayahuasca with some shamans on Saturday. But one must seem to want to strive for more desire for what Richard M. Bucke termed Cosmic Consciousness.
Which seems self-perpertuating in and of itself. Once one gets a taste of that, there appears to be a desire for more. At least, this is what I've found in my personal life and from those around me, as well as from the writings of Stan Grof.
I think this is part of the process of our Society 'Opening' more. As well as the form of Cultural Evolution that Richard Wright speaks about in his book 'Nonzero'
I do greatly appreciate the vigilance represented in articles like these, and works of a similar sort.
Cheers Gary
PEACE
Prop
my work as straw man
Hi Gary,
I am very happy to have you contribute to this forum – I think your book on the history of consciousness was a wonderful contribution. You introduced me to Jean Gebser and many other thinkers. We have some disagreements, as we were already getting into via emails. I hope that these can be productive disagreements. I agree with you that the messiness of politics is its essence – Hannah Arendt wrote about this really well in “The Promise of Politics”, that politics comes from ‘polis’, the Grek city center where free and equal citizens gathered to make decisions that would affect the world they shared. I see the Internet – perhaps particularly this site – as potentially developing into a “virtual polis,” where ideas and opinions can be refined over time. After all, we truly have amazing resources at our fingertips now. Discussion forums can leave a wonderful trail of discourse.
In your piece, you wrote: “On a less violent but equally millennial note, many New Age advocates are anticipating some kind of radical change circa 2012. I haven’t done the math, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the prophets behind the Left Behind novels and those of Quetzalcoatl’s return find themselves jockeying for position come the last days.”
I was a bit disappointed by this, as I felt my work was set up as a kind of “straw man.” Surely, it makes little sense to compare peacenik progressive types with the armed-to-the-teeth denizens of Jesus Camp? Isn’t it possible to propose that we are in a period of rapid and inevitable transformation without being dismissed or put in the same category as a fundamentalist wingnut?
When I review the best information I am able to glean about our current situation on this earth, it seems to me that massive change is going to happen soon – I do not pretend to know this, but it is the best hypothesis I can make from the data that confronts me.
25% of all mammalian species are estimated to go extinct within 30 years or less. The tropical forests will be gone within 40 years. The oceans are 90% fished out of large fish. Climate change is accelerating beyond predictions of a few years ago, and this is being registered in local ecosystems across the planet – the UK, for instance, no longer seems to have a summer, as the Jet Stream has moved south. With massive droughts in Australia and floods in the MidWest, agricultural tables are changing, and there were hunger riots in several countries around the world this year.
As predicted by many geologists, we appear to have reached Peak Oil, the point where fossil fuel production declines, despite ever-increasing demand. In 2005, the Department of Energy commissioned the report “Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management,” which noted, “The peaking of world oil production presents the US and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and without timely mitigation, the economic, social and political costs will be unprecedented.” In an interview following the release of the report, its author, Robert Hirsch, declared the problem is “much worse than the worst that we could think of. … The risk to our economies and our civilization are enormous, and people don’t want to hear that.” Our industrial system of agriculture is dependent on fossil fuel inputs, producing, according to some estimates, one calorie of food per ten calories of fossil fuel energy.
Confronted with this data – and there is much more I could present – doesn’t it seem theoretically possible that we will undergo a traumatic change in our social and natural environment quite soon, leading to a different experience of life on earth?
I see “2012” as a useful meme for transmitting this information to people, so they can get ready for the changes that are upon us – if not by then, certainly within a few years.
And also – since you are a student of the occult – why is it so out of the question that the Maya actually possessed some knowledge about the time when planetary transformation would occur? They certainly seem to have been very advanced, and perhaps scientifically dedicated to exploring ways of accessing knowledge that our modern world does not understand in the slightest.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
futurists and systems theorists
Other surprising voices are contributing to the 2012 debate these days. My friend John Peterson is a futurist who runs the Arlington Institute. His new book is "A Vision of 2012", and his purely materialist studies of future trends led him to accept there was an unforeseen transition on the way, and to link this with 2012 as a meme.
The systems theorist and Club of Rome founder Erwin Laszlo also believes we are rapidly approaching what he terms “the chaos point”: “It is very likely that, when you look at climate change, when you look at air, water and soil pollution, when you look at the polarization of the rich and poor, and the stress and frustration between cultures, you would conclude that if you do not adapt, if you do not make changes, by 2012, there could be a serious problem, a serious breakdown which is then like a point of no return. I call this “the chaos point” or “the bifurcation point.””
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
The Great Fork
We are on track to either evolve or die. Your piece was very accurate in describing the messiness of politics. After being a life-long left-winger, I've found it better to be "retired from the puppet show." We're at a time where dualistic thinking, Left vs. Right, Good vs. Evil, etc. must be transcended. Religions have had their day. Humanists have had their day. It's time we fuse the two into something new to move past duality. There are cues available to us to help in the process, and the internet is definitely one of these tools. The internet isn't the only aid, however, as there are cues in the broader, natural environment, that are also available to those who know where to look. We're at a great fork now where those who use the tools will thrive while those who stay glued to them won't even survive. This situation is actually good, as both sides will get what they want.
With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another. - Jorge Luis Borges, The Circular Ruins
Duelling dualists
Nodding acknowledgements to your recognition of the tired binary semantic oppostions that are so heavily embedded in our cultures parsings and as such, confound our efforts to move forward intellectually. The deconstruction of such ossified thought patterns is a focus of one of my reitterating-rants, mainly because i consider that these habitual neuro-linguistic ruses are utilised insidiously by the unsavory and therefore effectively maintained, in defiance of actuality, long after such notions should have been discarded. I suppose our susceptibilty to them has something to do with the obvious symmetry inherent in our bodies, and needless to say over 2000 years of uninterupted manichean monotheism. Lets hope to move from oppositions to spectrums to a continuum.
breathe easy
http://decontaminated-continuum.blogspot.com/
A weed in the narcissist's garden
This is excellent.
Gary, it really is great to see you contributing to Reality Sandwich. About three years ago someone recommended your "Secret History of Consciousness" to me, and, since then, I have not been able to put down books written by Steiner, Gebser, Ouspenski, Gurdjieff, and the list goes on. You turned me onto a whole new way of thinking, and gave me a great bibliography to start learning about this new world that I live in.
Interestingly enough, at the same time, I was also given Daniel's "2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl". I was blown away by Daniel's work, just as much as yours, and found in it even more routes on which to take my burgeoning curiosities. I guess, in that, I find it almost strangely ironic that you would group Daniel's work, a very well documented, argued, and reason piece of literature, and put it in the same basket as some of the right-wing theocratic fear mongers. I found that the two book complimented each other in a wonderful fashion and have since recommended them to many who have benefited in the same way from their words.
I think your post was excellent, and I'm indebted to your intellectual adventures and knowledge sharing, but I think you underestimate the power of some of the things Daniel has written about. Certainly none of us knows what really will happen in 2012, but one thing is for certain, the world will be much, much different than it is today.
There is no other way.
Another period of confluence --this time with very big bombs
Left Behind in 2012
First off let me say that I'm very happy to be contributing to Reality Sandwich. I first heard about the site some time ago when Daniel and Ken were in London and had gathered an impromptu forum on the idea at a pub; my friend Mark Pilkington from Strange Attractor invited me along and I was happy to go. It was a lively crowd of individuals, all with much to add to the eclectic mix that gathers around ideas of this sort. I am just about to leave London with my sons for a much needed holiday, after a year straight of writing - Politics and the Occult, a new, updated and revised edition of Turn Off Your Mind coming out in the UK as The Dedalus Book of the 1960s, several articles and reviews and a booklet for the British Film Institute for a new DVD set of Kenneth Anger's films. I mention all this to excuse myself for cheating a bit on this forum. As Daniel mentioned, he and I have already had a bit of an email exchange, and to address the misunderstanding that I lump the 2012 sensibility in with Hedges American fascists, I don't think I can do better than to copy in my slightly edited email to him on this. Looking at it again, it expresses, I think, a basic difference between a millenarian consciousness and one prone to a bit more cautious approach.
Daniel, I wouldn't say I'm presenting the 2012/Quetzalcoatl idea as a form of left-wing apocalypticism, nor do I equate it with the Left Behind mindset. But it certainly is a very popular millenarian vision at work in the cultural brew, and in my brief and sole reference to it - this is the only place in the book where I mention it - I half-jokingly suggest that as the date is fast approaching, there may be some 'competition' between it and a more troubling form of millenarian thought - if you can call the Left Behind ideology thinking. I certainly don't suggest that it is in anyway violent. As you know, I have my reservations about all forms of millenarianism, not because of the aims or ideals it sometimes embodies, but because it too often arrives at something very different than what it desires, a point I make in the book. Of course, your work is strongly linked to the 2012 idea, but I've been aware of and thinking about it since 1987 and the Harmonic Convergence, when Arguelles etc. was very big. Then, as now, I do think that many people become intoxicated with this kind of thought, anticipating some fundamental shift, and disregard the more immediate and less spectacular efforts that over time work (one hopes) toward an incremental advance in society's evolution. Sadly, when I worked at the Bodhi Tree Bookshop in LA during the Harmonic Convergence, I had many encounters with people who were totally committed to the idea, but who were rather sorry examples of simple human civility. I suspect that the idealist expectation and desire for some sudden, radical change for the better is an inherent part of the human psyche, just as the 'realist', conservative suspicion of this is. (I'd even hazard that the tension between these two drives modern history and may even be rooted in the right brain/left brain dynamic.) I agree that we are facing tremendous challenges, unprecedented ones in some cases (climate change), and that there is no place for complacency. But I am also concerned about the possible negative consequences of a too urgent appreciation of our situation. I am just as concerned about some forms of the 'saving the planet' sensibility as I am about the dangers we need to address. For example, do we 'force' people to be green, deciding that the global challenge is more important than individual freedom? (The other side of this, of course, is the awareness than 'individual freedom' is often an excuse for laziness, selfishness, and stupidity.) I'm reminded of the old 60s maxim, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem," which seems a version of the even older "If you're not with me, you're against me." Given the seriousness of the challeneges we face, anxiety, fear, and a genuine desire to help may produce some retrograde results. Not necessarily, but I don't think we can ignore the possibility. In general I'm more prone to agree with Gebser when he says that "the world will not become much better, merely a little different, and perhaps more appreciative of the things that really matter," rather than with the idea that at some point in history, there'll be a new Golden Age. History just doesn't seem to support the idea, and failed expectations often result in a negative reaction, that is equally extreme - we all know people who become very cynical about love after a failed romance. (Again, I'm thinking of the violent turn 60s idealism took at the end of the decade and how this moved into the rather cynical 70s.) I can't recall where he says it, but Goethe somewhere says something about being able to do good without having to change the world. This is less exciting than anticipating some coming 'singularity', but it may achieve more lasting results.
desire to help
Hi Gary,
Here’s a quote from David Korten in The Great Turning: “People will say that ‘Korten wants to change everything.’ They miss the point. Everything is going to change. The question is whether we let the changes play out in increasingly destructive ways or embrace the deepening crisis as our time of opportunity. … It is the greatest creative challenge the species has ever faced.’”
I don’t think you can evaluate the merits of a line of thinking based on a few “sorry examples of simple human civility,” as you find them in every area. I am not sure if you got around to reading “2012”, but in it I critique Arguelles’ theories very carefully, finding some of his ideas brilliant and some verging on ego-mania. I agree that people get “intoxicated” with the wilder notions of some type of total phase transition in 2012 – however that is not my position. On the other hand, I won’t dismiss it as a possibility – it could be that there is some magnetic shift leading to a mass pineal gland activation at that point, I just don’t see how such a claim can really be evaluated. I also feel that many of those who make these claims have a psychological investment / ego-projection in this worldview.
I see that you are “concerned about the possible negative consequences of a too urgent appreciation of our situation.” I admit that I am far more concerned about the opposite, as it seems to me that there is a massive culture of distraction that keeps people comfortably numb as an ecological catastrophe consumes our world. When you write, “Given the seriousness of the challenges we face, anxiety, fear, and a genuine desire to help may produce some retrograde results,” I feel that you have created an intellectual cul-de-sac. You think anything is going to work out unless people have “a genuine desire to help”? We can see what is happening across the world right now because of the lack of that desire. Your perspective reinforces my sense of why humanity is pushing itself into an initiatory crisis: to force the opening of the individual and collective heart chakra.
You write, “For example, do we 'force' people to be green, deciding that the global challenge is more important than individual freedom?” We are going to have to compel a large-scale shift in behavior patterns in a short period of time if we want to continue on this planet. As I mentioned in a previous email, I feel much more of our social behavior is already “forced,” such as going to work to avoid losing our homes, sending our kids to socially proscribed institutions known as schools. So yes, unfortunately, I do feel we will have to “force” people to be green. We will have to restrict the amount of meat they can eat, the cars they drive, and the number of children they can have – sorry but the survival of the planet and the species takes precedence. I think we can create more freedom in other areas, such as consciousness exploration and sexuality and also more direct avenues of political participation, to make up some of the self-satisfying “freedoms” we will have to give up. It doesn’t make me feel comfortable to say this, but there it is.
You write, “I'm reminded of the old 60s maxim, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem," which seems a version of the even older "If you're not with me, you're against me."” I feel you overshoot in your critique of the 1960s (especially in “Turn Off Your Mind”, which we have discussed before). I think as we hit the meltdown of the environment and species extinction, as the “secret government” continues its work of devasation, those 60s counterculture ideas are starting to look pretty good once again. The idealism that turned violent at the end of the 1960s may also have been a result of infiltration and intentional distortion by intelligence agencies. This is discussed in “Storming Heaven” and elsewhere. We have seen it more recently, in Seattle for instance, where secret police agents dressed up as radicals and threw rocks etc to incite a riot. This type of behavior is now commonplace.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
What if we declared an apocalypse and nobody came?
Daniel,
I have to say I am surprised at the commotion my brief and wholely tangential reference to 2012 has made. In an extract of some 2000+ words, I mention 2012 once. In a book of some 90,000+ words I mention it once. It seems to have triggered an inordinate response, as if even the slightest whisper that there might be anything a tad doubtful about the idea can't be allowed to pass without bludgeoning it into submission. (And I don't even make that point in the reference.) The prophet doth protest too much, I am tempted to say (damn, given in again.) The idea that I made you and your work a 'straw man' by merely alluding to it - I don't name you, you know - is pretty sorry stuff to start a debate with. Its put me in the position of defending a stance I haven't taken, and given you a nice podium from which to address the choir. Not one mention of any of the actual ideas or points in the piece, but what seems to me an attempt to convince me of the rightest of your purpose. If anyone's a straw man here, its me.
I do have to say that 'species extinction and 'meltdown of the environment' and other cliches strike me as more like Applause signs at a new age jamboree than real subjects for debate. What am I going to say? I'm for species extinction? I don't think so. We have very different views on a number of things. I don't believe for a minute that the 60s children crusade collapsed because of some kind of infiltration. That seems like crank paranoia and an inability to recognize that what drove a great deal of the sixties was good intentions but muddled thinking. Of course we all know about the CIA and so on - that's one of the great ironies: LSD, the wonder drug that was supposed to mutate the world - Leary thought 1969 was the year that homo psychedelia would turn up (or on) - was supported by Uncle Sam. Well, we know what happened that year: Manson and Altamont. This is really warmed over stuff.
Again, I think you use words very loosely in order to have a rhetorical effect. 'Forced' for example. Are we 'forced' by nature or life to eat, breathe, and live? I have less say in those than I do in how I earn the food nature forces me to eat. And who is the 'we' that is going to force me (I suppose) to be 2012ly correct? Who will liberate us from the liberators? I mean, think about how you're reacting to a simple brief namecheck in a book of almost 100,000 words. It almost feels like censorhip, as if I am one of those problematic characters who won't let the Reich get rolling.
Cheers,
Gary
"Some areas covered include
rhetoric
Hi Gary,
I do intend to address the ideas of your piece more directly, but I also have a sensitivity to rhetoric, which can be a very potent tool (when anyone is bothering to listen to the rhetorician). You may have only mentioned 2012 once, but the way you use it is, I feel, quite significant and revealing. I don't know what about this dialogue resembles "censorship." I wanted to open up these areas for discussion, not close down any avenues.
I feel there is some way that you and I act as mirrors for each other's perspectives, and I feel there is something important here - for us probably, and perhaps for others as well. Hence I am dedicating some of my valuable time to dig deeper. I agree with edutainment's comment which flags your use of the term, "Reich," as a somewhat dangerous rhetorical strategy to use to critique my comments. It seems like a very poor idea to raise that type of critique without very careful thought - to do it in an offhand way is a dangerous rhetorical ploy, one that is frequently used, in fact, by Right Wing pundits. I truly say this with sadness, as I feel use of such rhetorical flourishes should be beneath you. I also don't have a "choir" here, as people argue against me all the time.
I certainly didn't suggest, in any way, that you are "for species extinction." I feel you are kind of neglecting my points here, which is that we are on the verge of experiencing enormous changes to our world, and we therefore need to interrogate our own sense of complacency. My hope is that intellectual types like you and I could work together to confront the changes that are coming, so that there is some meaningful articulatedcounter-force against the authoritarianism that is rising across the world right now. This means accepting a certain level of humility, pliability, and resilience. I am willing to be proved wrong about my ideas, to accept a more judiciously reasoned point of view, and to move on. I hope that you feel the same. If we both share this willingness, we might find that there is a median point where our interests coincide (which is politics, by the way). My uneasy sense is that if fellow occult-fascinated "rootless cosmopolitan" writers like you and I can't figure out how to recognize mutual interests and even politically organize around those interests, we will be making it very easy for those "American Fascists" that Hedges documents to come to power.
When I propose that one major reason the radical movements of the late 1960s collapsed is infiltration, I do not think that can be dismissed as "crank paranoia." Once again, this is a quick rhetorical putdown that adds nothing substantive but seems to have the purpose of trying to make me feel awkward and almost ashamed to have said what I said, rather than honoring my point of view. I have read many books on the subject and discussed it in depth with people who lived through it, and from this study, I think it is a reasonable perspective to have.
I wonder if you will also immediately dismiss it as "crank paranoia" if I say that, after studying the matter for a long time in which I really didn't want to make a serious commitment to any position, my current hypothesis is that "9-11" was engineered by elements within the US government. I have been reading a book of essays from Seven Stories Press, "The Hidden History of 9-11", and also considering the evidence presented on "Zeitgeist" and "Loose Change" and elsewhere. I find the evidence presented in these sources to be more compelling than any rebuttal I have discovered. One article from the essay anthology, David MacGregor's "9-11 as Machiavellian State Terror", can be found on-line. This interesting article also discusses why there has been blanket suppression of any dialogue about 9-11 conspiracy in Leftist and progressive news forums such as "The Nation".
I haven't read your new book yet - and look forward to checking it out. I am interested in your perspective on Nazi occultism, as I feel this may be germane to the political problems we face today. I have recently been reading a new book, "The Secret History of the World" by Mark Booth, which is pretty interesting (maybe you know him?). He discusses how "The Illuminati" were actually an entirely anti-mystical secret society with a fundamental belief in power, and that "the means justify the ends." They made use of Free Mason hocus-pocus to spread this materialist doctrine of social control. This seemed extremely clarifying to me, as this (Ahrimanic) viewpoint seems to be the mindset of the ruling group.
One thing that seems difficult to establish is whether Bush and Co subscribe to Evangelical doomsday ideas, or use Christianity cynically to appeal to their base - or perhaps they aren't sure for themselves? When you were writing your book, did you look into Leo Strauss at all? He seems to be a very Macchiavellian figure, in that he proposed using patriotism and religion to sell conservative policies.
I am curious in your thoughts on Strauss, and also I would ask about this line: "... the best contribution that I, and people like me, can make is to try to understand things with as much clarity and insight as possible." Is it enough to "understand"? or should a time come when ideas are put into practice? And if so, what might that look like? I ask this not just for you but for myself as well. Weren't people like Gurdjieff and Steiner trying to create a "formula" or "recipe"? What do you think of those efforts?
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Honourable
I respect the way you always state your position and understanding with reasonableness and a sensitive, refined tolerance, with one eye on detail and the other on didactic expansion and hope; for this i salute you.
On that note, and thinking of my previous post, it's a shame that the word 'arguement' seems so often to raise so many negative and discomforting connotations and associations. It seems to me that the prevalence of the anachronistic, binary-oppositional paradigm in our semantical space, is at least a partial source of antagonism. One can only be right or wrong in this model and unfortunately, an arguement becomes a confrontation rather than an exercise in elucidation, where discourse leads to the re-enforcment of ego and dogma, rather than deeper understanding, and because of this communication is obfuscated. The notion of dissent has been softly engineered, utilising this 'incontrovertible' binary oppositon, to be percieved as wrong by those who wish to claim the authority of right.
A weed in the narcissist's garden
http://decontaminated-continuum.blogspot.com/
BRAVO, Mr. Pinchbeck!
Daniel Pinchbeck wrote:
"When I propose that one major reason the radical movements of the late 1960s collapsed is infiltration, I do not think that can be dismissed as "crank paranoia."
&
"I wonder if you will also immediately dismiss it as "crank paranoia" if I say that, after studying the matter for a long time in which I really didn't want to make a serious commitment to any position, my current hypothesis is that "9-11" was engineered by elements within the US government. I have been reading a book of essays from Seven Stories Press, "The Hidden History of 9-11", and also considering the evidence presented on "Zeitgeist" and "Loose Change" and elsewhere." - SNIP -
"I KNEW from reading “2012” well over a year ago that you were an intelligent man. But was dismayed when you seemingly refused to acknowledge that it was very likely – given all the available evidence and scientific facts about it – that 9/11 was indeed OTHER than what the “official story” claims it to be.
And to now “hear you” say what you do about 9/11 in this thread – about both its occult (as in supernatural) as well as “hidden” (as in conspiratorial) Reality, in all honesty, have given me HOPE that intelligent and good hearted people such as yourself (at least you always seemed this way to me) *will* ultimately be able to See and distinguish Truth from lies. Especially the BIG September 11th lie.
I am almost moved to tears, if I may be so candid, sir.
BRAVO!
:::::::::::::::::
Mr. Lanchman, since you and Mr. Pinchbeck are having a back and forth on this thread, I will make a brief comment to you on this same post, if I may.
Now, I assure you that I mean NO disrespect by what I’m going to say. Okay?
You say, "I don't see a 'cabal' in control of things, insuring that the 'counterculture' doesn't become powerful enough to topple it. My mind just won't accept the idea, and I find conspiracy theories a distraction from my real work."At this point in the game, it does not serve you at all to hold the position you do regarding 9/11 (I presume you go with the "official story" given the stance depicted on your posts) or the “conspirational” nature of politics, economics, and even religion, as more and more people begin to awaken to their realities (see Zeitgeist, 911 Mysteries.com and 911Revisited.com. these also available on google and youtube).
Indeed. Many of us cannot hold “thinkers” such as you in a positive light, or even an intelligent one any longer, you see, when something so BASIC as simple Newtonian physics and immutable laws of Nature (and even logic and reason!) are VIOLATED by the “official story.” (Similar to 2 + 2 = 5!)
Believe you me there are many - and more and more each day - that are awakening and “seeing beyond the (9/11) illusion/lie." So my hope is that given your intelligence, as so portrayed in your writing, that you will transcend these erroneous beliefs you currently hold, which do not serve you, nor serve those that look to you and the like for answers in these troubled times, in favor of the available evidence which clearly and objectively shows this Mr. Pinchbeck (and millions of folks out there) are pointing out: there are conspiracies at work (perhaps always have been) and 9/11 was a "white rich men in suits job" not some cave dwelling, rag tag "terrarists."
Peace.
"Will the transformation!" - Rilke
You might be interested in this
www.endgamethemovie.com I love the passion of Alex Jones. Alex really likes to stir things up! What do you know about the Bohemian Club or Bohemian Grove? Your a shamanistic man, what do you think the Cremation of Care is all about?
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion.
Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP Keynote Address
Goethe & The Green Regime
Dearest Gary,
Thank you for the lovely, lively & learned blogging. Seems we’re kindred spirits on the virtual page. Eight years ago the idea of the good was reduced to conservative, Christian, meat eating, oil mongers. As of late, liberal, spiritual, vegan, green mongers. It is as if a revolution were won with passive aggressive warfare, trading one dictatorship for another. Siding with Kant, I want out of the antinomy! Wonderful reference to Goethe. Incidentally, Goethe said that when he read a page in Kant, he always felt as though he were entering a lighted room. While perhaps great fodder for jokes, both Goethe and Kant were learned in the art of judgment. When applied to green issues, sound judgment reveals that historically the most ecologically friendly political party was the Nazi party. The vegan diet is unhealthy. There is much evidence that ethanol will damage the environment on par with oil — a swap that shall not organically grow peace on earth. Termite emissions and rice fields contribute far more methane and carbon dioxide than all of the human smokestacks. Still, the grey cloud sitting above Los Angeles is human made, toxic and ought to be eliminated. If not to save the universe or the human race, perhaps for the sake of aesthetics and all the coughs, sneezes and watery eyes it elicits in the moment. There are truths that are not mere opinion and a good that is not merely fashion.
Yours,
Micah
micah daily
lecturer in philosophy
www.tripartitewisdom.com
I read mention of September 11
If you're to mention Karl
history ending
At the same time, we can't say that history will go on forever. History is, in itself, a historical concept - myth-based civilizations didn't have linear "history" in the same way that we do. They had dynasties, cycles. Aboriginals living in "the ever-present origin" certainly did not have history. Therefore, history appears to be a form of thinking that is linked to a certain conception of time, space, and being. We could, theoretically, swing back from a historical conception to a mythic conception of reality, for instance, or perhaps the presentiments of quantum physics will lead us into a different way of conceiving spacetime cycles altogether.
As for third world farmers, I am not sure if it has been a choice between "modern agriculture" and "bare survival." All over the world, societies and poor people have been sold the modern world and its apparatus - like the "Green Revolution" - which has often been forced on them economically, using structural adjustment programs and the like. Many discovered that it did not help them. Check out Vandana Shiva's "Monocultures of the Mind": The Green Revolution in India led to farmer s replacing ancient patterns of integrated agriculture with mono-crops supported by pesticides that killed off all other plants in their fields. This led to serious consequences including epidemics of blindness when plants and aquatic life containing Vitamin A (if memory serves) where wiped out by the pesticides. There have been mass suicides of farmers in India because of the effects of the Green Revolution.
Modern industrial agriculture is turning into a global disaster. It is very fossil fuel and pesticide intensive, and kills everything else in the soil. Apparently the US corn belt soil is devoid of life and our agriculture is now based entirely on mass inputs of fossil fuels. As we reach peak oil, this may have extreme negative consequences - food prices are already skyrocketing.
The modern system of agriculture is a bit like everything else in our steroidal hypertrophied culture - based on a "pump and dump" philosophy that has now led to ovepopulation and resource depletion on a global scale.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
I wish this
Passionate Edumacation
Force/Compel people to be Green
Propaganda Anonymous
Daniel states, "We are going to have to compel a large-scale shift in behavior patterns in a short period of time if we want to continue on this planet. As I mentioned in a previous email, I feel much more of our social behavior is already 'forced,' such as going to work to avoid losing our homes, sending our kids to socially proscribed institutions known as schools. So yes, unfortunately, I do feel we will have to 'force' people to be green."
I find this statement off-putting.
On an individual, one-on-one, level of interaction, I personally find nothing more annoying than the cat who is standing over me and whining while I am eating a bacon cheeseburger with fries and sipping on my Dr. Pepper. Yammering on about how long he or she has been vegan for and how great they feel. I know what the differences are.
We are all moving at our own pace here. Some faster than others in different areas of 'enlightened self-interest' (which I use to define actions that benefit both the individual and the world)
I think the key to this transition is NOT to FORCE anyone to do anything. That seems to defeat the whole purpose. That's on an individual level.
I do understand that we live in a world where institutions compel and coerce individuals all the time. Doug Rushkoff's 'Coercion' is a great book that details this. The key is not to fall into that trap. To take this position leaves one open to too many temptations to start preaching and dictating to people. Which is never cool (in my book)
Rather, it seems Education is still a major step forward. Become the change you seek. Lead by example, and not by words alone.
As Rick Doblin speaks about in his Postmodern Times piece, PATIENCE is essential. "PAtience is the Fastest Way" Listen to the guy!
And if we are living in a material and spiritual world, would you sacrifice essential spiritual principles to save strictly material phenomenon? That's the old Fundamentalist Marxist trap.
I don't see that as very wise.
Todd Gitlin, the SDS cat, once mentioned that one of the biggest mistakes he saw happen amongst his very active, and mostly very cool friends, was that they became TOO Righteous. Meaning they put themselves on a moral pedestal and starting speaking down to the people they were trying to save.
The 70's Punk Rock scene seemed to be a reaction to that. "You wanna Tell me what to do?..Well Fuck You!" (an enduring message in nearly all punk music from that era. And despite the nihilistic tendencies and self-destructiveness of those like Sid Vicious, there will always be cats like Joe Strummer)
Bottomline, on an individual level the idea of forcing anything on anyone just does not work. There are numerous examples of this.
Take Alcoholics and major drug addicts. They have to be ready to change. And any forced change nearly always leads to relapse.
Daniel you continue, "We will have to restrict the amount of meat they can eat, the cars they drive, and the number of children they can have – sorry but the survival of the planet and the species takes precedence. I think we can create more freedom in other areas, such as consciousness exploration and sexuality and also more direct avenues of political participation, to make up some of the self-satisfying 'freedoms' we will have to give up. It doesn’t make me feel comfortable to say this, but there it is."
This statement I find interesting. And I agree with most of it, but maybe you write 'they' instead of 'we'. Maybe I'm getting hung up on semantics here, but WE are THEY.
As stated, we do live in a world of continual coercive tactics hurled at us continually. One reason I stopped being Vegetarian was that I moved back State-side, and everywhere I went all that seemed to fit my budget and schedule was meat-products. When I was in Thailand and Hawaii, I got myself great cheap vege-food all the time. Back in NY, all the vegetarian restaurants were out of my spending range, and shit man I was hungry.
I can't wait till I have a little bit of extra cash so I can start eating healthy again. haha (That said, I do have some friends who cook good cheap vege-food, but I am not much of a cooker, but am down to hang with friends and cook healthy stuff)
My point being that there are institutions that could perhaps 'be forced' to change in accordance with the will of the collective. And I am not completely opposed to that idea.
If the decisions are made and enacted in as much a democratic way as possible. Meaning, we reach consensus, everyone is listened to and we minimize the amount of back-office politics.
I am put off by the statement "Sorry, but the survival of the planet takes precedence"To me that teeters near the sentiment in the bumper-sticker that says, 'Save a Tree, Kill Yourself" This statement may almost fall into the 'Greater Good' trap that so many Militant Marxists of old used, and repeated to themselves, when they were killing other people. I am not with that at all.
My personal opinion is that if we get the message out there that the planet is in trouble. If we engage enough minds on the matter. If people can actually FEEL what it means. Then we might be able to get some positive action towards the task at hand.
We won't even need to force anyone to do anything. That seems to me to be part of this new revolution.
And to lose sight of that is a mistake.
PEACE
Prop
no pedestal
whose anonymous propaganda got us eating all this beef, the manufacture of which causes putrefaction in our guts; requires insane amounts of grain, fossil fuels, and water; and requires the murder of friendly cows? I never stand on a pedestal of purity - i have eaten this stuff for most of my life.
As for forcing: I think it has to be a decision of a greater community to evolve our habitual patterns together - "we" force ourselves to do it, for everyone's benefit. But this requires a bit of transcendence of the individual ego perspective, which makes most of us uncomfortable, until it happens. Burning Man was a big lesson for me in this: Simply set up some different societal "game rules" and not only does everyone conform to them, they feel much happier because the rules are actually sane and make sense.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
I like this response better
Propaganda Anonymous
Hi Daniel,
The Anonymous Propaganda is the coercive tactics put in motion by institutions which have lost sight of the human and humane.
Your explication about your pervious statement towards Gary(in which you did write 'force people to go green') I find a bit more satisfactory.
Perhaps I am just sensitive to words, and plans, of Force. But I do see a difference in approach from your first statements and your explanation of them.
Which is good...cause you were kinda scaring me there for a second D.
What I like about you invoking Burning Man is this.
Burning Man is a voluntary association of people, inhabiting a specific territorial space for a certain amount of time.
It is like ritual space, and the terms are clear. (For the most part) In a place like this, I'd imagine a certain 'governance' and non-'government' takes hold.
If this is a somewhat sufficient description of Burning Man, then I say that there have been many experiments like it done in the past. (And that I wish I was going this year)
The thing with BM is that people knowingly enter into this form of association with others. Which I think is cool. One other thing that seems cool about BM is the FUN aspect involved.
So much of our instutional frameworks seem to be geared towards Zero-Sum (No Fun) ways of interacting. In the Non-Zero Sum form, where it's not so much about Winning, per se, as it is about keeping the ball rolling, then the FUN increases.
So the trick seems to be how exactly we get that going outside of places like BM and not resorting to coecrive tactics that fuck shit up.
I just wanna save the world and have Fun doing it.
P
Right On
Propaganda Anonymous
I have not thought too deeply on the beauty industries coercive tactics, but what you're saying makes sense to me.
Just thinking about the Western world's fascination with diamonds. And the truth about how most diamonds get to selling block is out there, yet there are still tons of ads selling the luxury of the diamond.
P
Extreme Cosmetics
Really?
Propaganda Anonymous
Hi Edutainment,
I've seen some fashion mag pictures of emaciated looking models, with running mascara, and, yeah, super red lips, and on that level I can see where your statement may be justified.
I just ask, please be careful of generalizations,
" It's as if men want to see women freshly beaten"
Some but not all men may want to see that. But I can speak fairly confidently that not all men want to see that at all.
Eggshells and bombshells
I think I understand your concern with blanket statements. Like there's no need to cut a stick of butter with a chainsaw? I'm sure we agree that it's good to confront an abuser, and with care, it's best to confront them though. Just not with too much care, like using too much disregard. This can get complicated.... Peace
Nice!
Propaganda Anonymous
"Eggshells and Bombshells!"
That is such a dope phrase. I like that.
I hear you on the confrontation tip.
For me, I find myself most often opposing the situation normal all fucked up scenerio's when I hear people around me making racist remarks.
This usually occurs when I am working. One of my jobs is as a bartender in a towny bar.
I try to be cool with their humanity, but firm in stating that what they are saying sounds stupid and ignorant.
----------------------------------------------------------
Feminist thought I find interesting and engaging, for the most part. I know that there are different strands of such, as there are many different types of women.
In my life, I want to be honest in saying that I'm a work in progress and strving to better learn the language and perspectives and world-views of others.
It does get complicated though, but for the most part, I've found such discussions very fulfilling.
Cheers
Prop
Yea yea
I worked in the nightlife myself for a while, what a whirlwind of humanity that gig can be man. Getting lost was an essential tool for me in those days to keep sane. Do you find being surrounded by oceans of sexual energy sort-of desensitizes you? I had a wicked problem with that. I was seeing humans as warm holes and stepping stones, seeing them as dollar signs and bed mates. Really fucked up time for me. The energy from those days still lingers within me, just a ton of experiences to absorb in such a short amount of time, a lot to process.
I'm glad you read my words as they were intended. I have huge holes in my ability to convey my message, and do appreciate your input. A work in progress myself, no doubt.
I really havent read any femenist literature myself, to be honest, but that particular thought seed's been kicking around in my mind for a while. While I'm sure it's not a new idea, I saw the opportunity and had hoped that someone might bite the bait and fill in some of the blanks. I'm sure there's a book somewhere addressing the notion.
Anyway, im gonna fire back a compliment cause I've been looking for a reason to tell ya you got the killer name man. Propaganda Anonymous, word. Peace
No Doubt
Propaganda Anonymous
Hola
I have noticed the amount of juice the bartender gets while working, yes. I am a bit taken aback by how easy it seems sometimes to just get the ball rolling.
At this point, however, I am not really complaining. I feel that it is good territory, at this time, to explore.
As far as the dollar sign thing. This is like a family business, so I've known lots of these people for many years. Honestly, I feel much love for the regulars. And I'm just grateful that most of these people tip nice.
All in all, there is much to be learned about human behavior in such places.
Lastly, Muchos Gracias for the compliment.
I think it's a pretty dope name too, haha!
PEACE Edu!
Prop
womanipulation
Burn the Man's Plan in Kazahkistan
I couldn't stand the fact that Burning Man was called "American Dream" and the streets were named after cars. Satire? Maybe- except it occurs to me as more hypocrisy than anything.
At the "Green Theme" Burn last year- the last BM I will ever attend- they blew up a huge oil rig which polluted the air- got all up in peoples' eyes- HOLY MOTHER! And yet peeing on the desert floor like a cat in a litter box and leaving feathers is illegal.
"Leave no trace-" except polluting the air is okay because they're making a statement. Paul Addis was making a statement. Oh but it's okay because everyone's so giving and no one's allowed to interfere with anyone's experience which has strangely given birth to less interactivity as squares infiltrate the event en masse and the patriarchal hierchical rule-making structures are enforced from on top.
Force is the over-masculinated illusion to freedom that will keep the righteous stuck in their rightness and the liberators pulling out the plugs from underneath. You want to talk about infiltration? You don't have to go back to the 60s. Social fascism doesn't have to wear the guise of the CIA in order to be real and life-negating.The oneness mission of BM I feel is lost with this kind of subtle fascism and hypocrisy.
Counter culture at best will give birth to counter counter culture instead of a backlash into fascism which is what you see happening at Burning Man. Every culturally transformative movement needs to die and give birth to something new with positive elements of the old if social transformation is to occur. Once it has hit a stagnancy, there is no amount of rule making that will bring back its social anarchy, and once the structures have been set and cemented as they have at BM, you can forget about real change.
Ovarian Out,
Joan of Art
I dont see
force yourself like water, kind of a koan
Anyways, this article just praises commodity culture. and says we are free to choose, and we are still free to read books too, how nice. and the occult is a genre, but, hey this is a big carnival- so enjoy, but if you can see what's going on behind the scenes, don't ruin the fun, move along, everyone around you has their credit cards in hand (in a trance), the games are set, the rules are here. do not disturb them, can't you read-"For all its emptiness and echoes of a wasteland, we’re still free in the modern world to “become who we are.” Free to be pushed along? I don't get this. Why is it important that we are not plants? Yes, we are not plants. Now what? We are moving. Who is that rich fat man sitting over there with greasy hands and a meat laden stomach thumbing through all those queer tomes and why are his henchmen coming after us? No, do not question him. We are just flaneurs, use the contraptions, play the game, reap the rewards. But again, why is it important that we are not plants (see: rose cross meditation)?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-cnizLDEE
On Not Becoming Monsters
Daniel, I'm not sure exactly where I am in this conversation - I mean I was trying to reply to one of your posts and found myself here. In any case, let me try to clarify a few points.
All of my remarks re: millenarianism in general and 2012 in particular are an unpacking of Nietzsche's sage advice that when battling monsters its important not to become a monster oneself. This to me is pretty clear and important. I have to emphasize that I haven't once said that 2012 'isn't true' or that we aren't facing tremendous challenges, and because I raise the possibility of some retrograde forces developing through a too eager attempt to save the world, I am not saying that you or anyone in particular is actually manifesting those forces. I am merely raising the possibility. That's part of my job of trying to understand these sorts of things as clearly and as intelligently as possible. If someone shows me a picture and then asks me what I see my intellectual honesty compells me to tell them. I see the danger the kind of 'you're either with us or against us' sensibility can produce and I feel it is my job to mention it when asked - and even when I'm not. That's all. I do feel in doing this the response has been disproportionate, which leads me to think that maybe I've touched a nerve. But let's leave that for now.
One of the problems progressive thought has always faced in wrestling with more conservative thinking, is that the progressives tend to bicker among themselves. This is both a blessing and a curse. Its a blessing in that it expresses the strong critical sense in a lot of progressive thinking; its a curse in that it tends to use up a lot of energy in arguing about the 'right' way to have a revolution (I use the term rhetorically). Let me reiterate that I'm very aware of the challenges we face. I have tried to address one aspect of them in some of my books - namely the stage at which western consciousness finds itself today. I think consciousness is the key and as Gebser has argued, the west seems to going through a shift in its 'consciousness structure'.
My interest in consciousness has led to an exploration and assessment of the work of people like Steiner and Gurdjieff - both of whom I've written on at length - but also people like Swedenborg, Jung, Gebser, Colin Wilson, Owen Barfield and many others. My work differs from yours I think in that I don't address issues of social change directly. You ask 'don't we need to act, rather than just understand'? There are two answers to that question. In my private life - which, anarcho-platonist that I am, I am fiercely defensive of - I think I do act in a way consistent with ideas on how to help minimize waste and excess. I hate the idea of reeling off my ecological brownie points, because it seems too much like trying to convince the local commissar or representative of the Committe for Public Safety or House UnAmerican Activities agent that I'm a good revolutinary or patriot. But as I mentioned in an email, I've been fairly green for more than twenty years, in two countries on two continents.
The other answer is that it strikes me as very important to understand the forces at work before acting. Of course I'm interested in Gurdjieff's and Steiner's efforts. I was involved in the Gurdjieff 'work' for some time and have been studying Steiner's ideas for decades. But both Steiner and Gurdjieff begin with individual consciousness. They aren't focussed on the 'system' - which to me is a handy abstraction on which people often hang quite a few personal shortcomings. I'm more focussed and more interested in how we can overcome our own limitations and flaws, than in how the system prevents me from doing this or that. One of the insights brought home to me in writing my book on politics is that for the last few centuries, there have been many instances in which people argued that 'if only' this or that part of the 'system' was different, everything would be wonderful. Well, they torn down the Bastille, executed kings and queens, confiscated the bourgeoise's property, smashed the papal idols, and so on. The power structure altered a little - as Bernard Shaw said a long time ago, revolutions merely shift power from one pair of hands to another - but the fundamental problem of the limitations of consciousness remained. So, while it is certainly true that the social structure is and has been rife with inequity, and that the interests of profit and power more or less control things, I don't think my contribution as a writer and thinker to helping western consciousness get through its crisis in one piece is best made through 'direct action'. There is always a need for thinkers to stand to one side and maintain the distance necessary to see as whole a picture as possible. Again, this isn't an excuse for complacency, but a call to recognize that the examined life, as Socrates said a long time ago, is the only one worth having.
I don't think there is some actual modern Illuminati, manipulating things behind the scenes, unless you want to use the term metaphorically, to apply to the power and money brokers, but I could be wrong. The actual Bavarian Illuminati, headed by Adam Weishaupt in the 1770s and 80s, were anti-monarchists motivated by Enlightenment ideals of universal brotherhood and were bascially interested in toppling the Jesuit control of Bavaria - I write about them in A Dark Muse. (Bavaria gave birth to National Socialism, by way, and funnily enough, I am heading there tomorrow morning.) I do believe that, as Steiner said, we seem to be moving deeper into an Ahrimanic - materialist - mentality, most worryingly manifested (to me at least) in the various attempts at 'explaining' consciousness in the last decade or so. This troubles me as it can lead to a situation in which individuals no longer matter as ends in themselves (the basic Christian, Buddhist, and humanist view) but only as 'functions' in society. One of the central challenges of the 21st century will be the re-defining of what it means to be human. I know there are 'positive' aspects of this, but my basic humanist sensibilities shiver at the idea. We seem to want to jettison our unique position in the chain of things, either wishing to become machines ('transhumanism') or animals ('biocentricism'). Personally, I'd like us to become fully human, which, as far as I can tell, we haven't yet. There have been glimpses of it in the great teachers of the past, and we all experience it occasionally when we're blessed with one of Maslow's 'peak experiences'. One point I've made in the past is that people who feel that humans are a blight on the planet and that it would be better off without them fail to recognize that they only feel this way because they are human. The only creatures to worry about the environment, species extinction, and saving the planet are humans. No other animal does. Our concern about the damage we've done is possible only because of our human values, so to argue that we should hit the road is an example of well-intentioned but muddled thinking. I am more in line with the cabalistic notion of tikkun, 'repair', and with the French mystical philosopher Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, who said that we are here in order to help clear up the mess God made when creating the universe.
I have a long term view and my hope is that we are gradually maturing. There have been a lot of Doomsdays in the past and many Cassandras warrant a good listening to. My part in this, at least so far, has been to understand the work of previous 'repairers', to communicate what I've grasped as best I can to others, and to apply these insights to my own life. I don't approach this from the point of view that the system or government or some other outside agency prevents me from doing this, although, as I feel I've made clear, I am aware of the forces of stupidity and greed, and as William Blake said, 'I shall not cease from mental fight' while grappling with these and other forms of ignorance. As for being 'forced' to do the right thing, of course we already are subject to laws and regulations that at one point in our lives we resist but at others recognize as necessary. I'm glad I was 'forced' to learn to read, write and do math. I find these skills very helpful in dealing with life. I'm also glad motorists are forced to stop at red lights and that agressive individuals are forced to forgo using violence to solve their problems. My objection is to the, to me, loose use of the word. I think 'persuade' would be more helpful, and as one post said, we teach best by example. The idea of some eco-spiritual-social elite coming round to make sure I've got with the program brings out the rebel in me. Dostoyevsky said that faced with a perfectly harmonious and rational society he would go insane on purpose in order to show he was a free human being. A bit extreme, perhaps, but I think the point is well taken. A long time ago B.F. Skinner argued that we should all give up our outmoded ideas about freedom and dignity and submit to behavioral modification in order to have a safe society. I think people should mature enough not to litter, not have a lobotomy that prevents them from doing so. Remember Alex in A Clockwork Orange?
Maturation is a slow, tedious process, but it simply can't be forced. Forced maturation does occur in some forms of agriculture, but that's the kind of tampering with nature that seems questionable. Again, I'm not saying you or anyone is doing this, merely raising the possibility.
As for the 60s - well, I've written a book about how I see some aspects of that perennially fascinating decade. I don't think the 60s are something we need to 'get back to', nor should they been seen as an exemplar. We should, however, try to understand their mistakes, as we should with any previous historical period, so that we don't repeat them. And by mistakes I don't mean what 'prevented' 6os idealism from being successful, but what was wrong with that idealism itself, where it was juvenile, irresponsible, and muddled - which isn't to say we shouldn't appreciate what was 'good' about it. I suspect many people won't share this view, but again, my intellectual honesty leads me to take it. People like Leary, for me, were demogogues, who were basically interested in personal power. I think this is true of many of the 'radical' characters then. But that's another debate. LSD palpably wasn't a quick route to the millenium - while some drug experiences can help in understanding consciousness and can be valuable in themselves, I don't think they are a royal road to spirituality, and many psychedelic researchers working at the same time as Leary, felt this too and were troubled by his populism.
I do touch on Leo Strauss in my politics book, specifically on his ideas about 'esoteric writing' and the 'noble lie' and their relation to the Rosicrucian manifestos. (I also talk about Eric Vogelin, another important conservative thinker.) I should make clear that I'm not writing from the perspective of 'revealing' the truth about the 'secret societies' at work in high places. This is another area in which our efforts differ. I don't have a 'cause', or if I do, its the very basic one of trying to make sense of things and live the good life (in the Socratic, not the dolce vita sense). I don't see a 'cabal' in control of things, insuring that the 'counterculture' doesn't become powerful enough to topple it. My mind just won't accept the idea, and I find conspiracy theories a distraction from my real work. (This is one reason I never became more than mildly interested in UFOs.)
Social change, for me, is a by product of the efforts made by individuals to understand themselves and their world. Thinking is acting, as Owen Barfield argued, very persuasively too. Those efforts are demanding and must be made over a lifetime. Ouspensky saw states and nations as vast uni-cellular creatures, that wrestle with each other and absorb everything they come into contact with. The individual's task is to resist being absorbed, and at the same time, make his or her contribution to raising the general level of culture and consciousness. This is no picnic, but at the same time I have a great faith in the ability of intelligence to overcome the resistance of the unwieldy world in which it finds itself, and also its own illusions. By all means let us all work to help the forces of intelligence defeat the forces of stupidity. This is a cosmic battle that's been going on for a very long time and it won't end tomorrow. If hammering out the differences in our approaches helps, then hammer on. Its a big universe and there's room for many perspectives.
Gary
Great Exchange.
The reason I come to RS.com everyday is read great exchanges of ideas between bright people that are capable of having arguments that do not devolve into mud-slinging.
This back-and-fourth between Gary and Daniel has been absolutely fantastic, and I think we all learn more from dialogues/debates than we do from essays. (That's not to say that essays aren't incredibly valuable, because they most certainly are.) Discussions, arguments, and the confrontation of ideas are so essential to really teasing out the details of our pursuit of knowledge.
I would really love to see a few RS.com posts that are actually intentionally created in that form. Dialogues or trialogues, if you will, where two or more thinkers write back and fourth on a particular topic (with as little or as much structure as you like). I think that would be phenomenal.
Again though - Daniel and Gary - this little conversation the two of you have been having has been great to follow, regardless of the few verbal briars that have been present along the way.
I agree with most, but not all of what you're saying
Propaganda Anonymous
Hola Gary,
This being a 'forum' discussion, and not a real time debate, I don't feel like I'm butting in on a convo between you and Daniel here.
I just wanted to comment on your post here, specifically on two points. But first I'd like to say that you have just clarified and detailed some of the issues I raised with Daniel in such a concise way.
Conscerning the notion of persuading others as opposed to forcing others. This is an extremely important distinction in wording. The Dostoyevsky reference works very well for me, and it's something that I feel as well.
Daniel's response to me about Burning Man seems like a good clarification of what he possibly might have meant in the first place, (and from building with D on some other things I think it fits more with what I've seen displayed in his personal interactions with people) Still though, I think it's wise to not to throw the 'forcing' concept too liberally.
Gary, I want to address your statement about 'Conspiracy Theories.'
I find myself in strong disagreement with your statement, and possible view, towards this interesting area of sociological thought.
In my opionion this area is vital to understand in our ever-complex world. I think it is important for us to understand the inner workings of what entails a 'Conspiracy'
As you prolly know, the etymological root of the word 'Conspire' means to 'breathe together.'
And as Carl Olgesby, another former SDS cat, has stated in his great book 'The Yankee and Cowboy War,' Conspiracies are basically normal politics carried out by normal means.
To further explain, Whenever a group of people get together and strive to keep what they are doing a 'secret' from others within the larger group. They are conspiring. If they are attempting to make a mjor move, then it becomes a bigger conspiracy. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. It happens all the time. Open the paper and you'll see scandels of low level bureaucrats in hot water quite frequently.
By getting together, not making the terms clear to others around them, and then covering there tracks with Mis- and Dis-information they are, by definition taking part in a Conspiracy. Any DA will tell you that.
Presently, I am very unhappy with the termingology and ideas usually associated with 'Conspiracy Theory.'
It's an easy rug to sweep so much stuff under, and then never seek to examine after.
Now, more than ever, I think we need people lifting that rug and sussing through the dirt.
By not falling victim to Aristotelian Either/OR Logic and viewing all this upon a spectrum of possibility we can see what is more plausible, or fungible, and what is just straight up ridiculous. (Which a lot of conspiracies 'theories' seem to be)
For instance, I find the concepts put forth by Noam Chomsky a lot more convincing than David Icke when I am researching US Foreign Policy and the causes for this or that.
I also think that Robert Anton Wilson has provided the most comprehensive understanding of 'Conpiracy Theory' that I've come across thus far.
Check his 'Everything Is Under Control' for great explanations of what I'm getting at here.
Looking into 'Conspiracy Theories' with the tools of Logic and Discrenment is a great enterprise, I believe.
Because one learns the differences between say the Conspiracy involved in the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments of 1932 and the conspiracy theory Lyndon LaRouche put forth when he said that Queen Elizabeth II sent the philosophers Aldous Huxley and Alan Watts to America to corrupt us with drugs and Asian religions.
Let us all get out of the habit, and/or intellectual fad, of grouping ALL Conspiracy Theories in the same category and then brushing them aside.
I hope to maybe explain myself better in a future article.
Anyway, great exchange thus far
Kudos
Prop
responses
Hi Gary,
Thanks for your detailed responses. I think we both touch a nerve in each other or we wouldn’t be bothering to go through this exercise.
You write that “Gurdjieff and Steiner “aren't focussed on the 'system' - which to me is a handy abstraction on which people often hang quite a few personal shortcomings. I'm more focussed and more interested in how we can overcome our own limitations and flaws, than in how the system prevents me from doing this or that.”
In fact, Steiner wrote extensively on “the system” and proposed large-scale initiatives in reform through his “social three-folding” concept, which you probably know more about than me. He also created alternative systems of agriculture and education, which remain very popular today. He was very much a systems thinker, and what I find most remarkable about him is how he took his occult philosophy and realized it in systems that continue to have a tangible and transformative effect on the world. Gurdjieff, I believe, realized that humanity was soon to hit a massive cataclysm, and he was working to bring about a changed form of humanity that could make a new world.
I don’t think “system” is just “a handy abstraction.” That is as pat a response as the other extreme which says the “system” is the only problem. There are serious design flaws in our “system” that lead to tremendous inequities and create much of the dysfunction and neurosis we see around us. To take one example: As I have written about on RS, different analysts such as the Belgian currency trader Bernard Letaier have looked at our monetary “system” as destructive to the planet, requiring basic redesign. This “system” is based on creating ever-increasing debt and scarcity through artificial manipulation of the monetary supply. This creates a lot of “personal shortcomings” and “limitations” in those humans denied access to enough of the green stuff – the vast majority of the planet - while others are rolling in it and often suffer from paralyzing guilt as a result.
You write, “Well, they torn down the Bastille, executed kings and queens, confiscated the bourgeoise's property, smashed the papal idols, and so on. The power structure altered a little - as Bernard Shaw said a long time ago, revolutions merely shift power from one pair of hands to another - but the fundamental problem of the limitations of consciousness remained.” This seems to me a too-easy dismissal of revolutionary change – you shift into the traditionalist viewpoint here. I don’t think you need to be a Marxist to realize that the “limitations of consciousness” and material conditions – political forms as well as the modes of production – are intimately related.
As Arendt discusses in “On Revolution”, it is interesting that the French Revolution, which was a failure, is always pointed to as the example of revolution, rather than the American Revolution, which was a success in its time. They didn’t descend to beheading each other, and political power was shifted from autocratic control to a model that gave common people a legally guaranteed voice in the affairs of state – this was an evolutionary step forward in human consciousness, unprecedented in the modern world. I am compelled by the work of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt in “Multitude” and “Empire”. They point out that there has been a movement, over time, to greater participation by the people in their government. They theorize that this could lead to a system of direct democracy, at some point. Similarly, Arendt in her book looks at the progress of revolutions, and notes that every time there’s a revolution, a council or ward system spontaneously emerges, as local communities recover their agency and take initiative. In the past, the leaders of the revolutions have squelched these local initiatives as a challenge to centralized state control. Arendt’s work points to the possibility that a revolution might develop that would permanently empower local communities in their independence, creating a kind of fractal model of governance.
Taking a step back, one way to look at the history of revolutions is that it is akin to the process of creating design prototypes: A model of government is created, it eventually breaks down, and a new model is tried. Unfortunately, when this happens on the level of human societies, it often leads to destructive consequences at the time. I don’t see how else development could have taken place, up to this point. Nobody walks away from power, so ultimately a corrupt and stagnant form forces an insurrection. If the armed forces side with the people rather than the ruling elite, the revolutionaries will win.
You write, “I don't think there is some actual modern Illuminati, manipulating things behind the scenes, unless you want to use the term metaphorically, to apply to the power and money brokers, but I could be wrong.” Let me try to describe my personal theory, which is always in evolution. My experiences with shamanism convinced me that there are occult influences and lineages, as I had direct experience of this phenomenon. For instance, I suspect – I have little in the way of empirical proof – that I came under the protective sphere of the Bwiti and the Santo Daime, through my work with them, establishing a permanent relationship with the spiritual guardians who work through these traditions.
If there are “powers and principalities’ beyond the level of human intelligence, it seems likely to me that they have an effect on what happens in our world. If shamanism has legitimacy, then our world is a kind of battleground (and playground) of occult forces. It therefore seems to me quite reasonable that there are occult lineages and spheres of influence that operate in our political/economic hierarchies of power and control. It seems plausible that Skull and Bones has a lineage-connection to the Bavarian Illuminati, as Ron Rosenbaum may have sussed out in a 1977 piece for Esquire, and that the occult force behind this lineage resembles the power defined by Steiner as Ahriman. I do not necessarily think that those who are part of Skull and Bones have a conscious awareness of an occult lineage - some of them might, but it seems more likely to me that the influence operates subconsciously, for the most part.
The concept of tikkun olam, “reparation of the world”, is one that I find fascinating.
You write, “I don't see a 'cabal' in control of things… My mind just won't accept the idea, and I find conspiracy theories a distraction from my real work. (This is one reason I never became more than mildly interested in UFOs.)” This seems to me an intellectual blockage. Sometimes we do have to explore and even “accept” ideas that at first seem repugnant to us. I fel that part of the task of those “thinkers who have the rare opportunity to “stand to one side and maintain the distance necessary to see as whole a picture as possible” is precisely to enter into those spaces of darkness and obscurity for the sake of extending consciousness. Many of the occultists you write about had deep insights into the nature of occult conspiracism and secret cabals. What do you think of Steiner’s understanding of Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences for instance? Do you think the Nazis burnt down the original Goethaneum as many sources claim?
There is much evidence supporting the existence of unusual airships built according to futuristic technology. I am not sure we can have a proper understanding of what’s happening on the earth right now unless we work through what this might mean for us - the whole murky history of it. Please don’t reject the subject out of hand – give it a bit of thought. It definitely seems connected to the recent history or unfolding modern mythology of the occult in many ways.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
an intellectual crash course
i agree
i know with what you mean, here and in your comment above. "intellectualism" seems a kind of ritualized form or sterile artifact. still, it is a technique, like carpentry, that might help you build a house some day.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Hehe
Like a snail along a razors edge
"From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent."
H.P. Lovecraft
"The Shunned House"
Right on, Gary.
I read a book once
Let me try to clear a few things up for you guys:
As an atheist, I find all of you dangerous: the christian right, the green left, the newage (rhymes with sewage) the burners, and all the other "joiners" out there. The biggest problem I have, with all of you, is none of you can conceive of leaving me alone. I don't want Jesus, or to "save the planet," or "enlightenment," or to go out to "the playa" and drop acid to facilitate talking to the likes of you. You all bore me silly and, yes, sometimes I want you all dead, if only so I can have a bit of peace and quiet from your insistence that I have to listen to your nonsensical musings during my own precious short period. As MC 900 Foot Jesus once said, you think "truth is out of style" and, damn it, you won't stand for it.
I've seen women run to their bibles when they should've called 9-1-1. I've seen so-called "healers" kill people. I've read the New York Times article "recycling is garbage" and noticed many IPCC scientists are recanting. I lost one of my best friends after he went to Burning Man, fell in love with a heroin addict, and then left his very-sick wife and kids, decimating the wonderful circle of friends we had. I've never met anyone I'd consider enlightened and, truth be told, I'd merely settle for smart at this point. Hell, "normal" - or someone attempting to get there - would be refreshing. I mean, man, you guys use big words, and a lot of (racist) authors, to drop a lot of small-minded ideas.
And - oh yea - I've used violence, and had it used on my behalf - where everything turned out for the better. You've never noticed that in your own lives? In New York?
Listen to yourselves: you read occult lit (smooth move, that) and drop the "illuminati" without thinking to look over your shoulder to see who's giggling. You're actually scared of christians. Even more laughable, christian "literature." You've even picked out a year - 2012 - when everything will "change" (have we heard this thinking before? I think we have: didn't happen) and all without considering that change will probably be Americans like me driving you out to your "playa" with a shotgun - but, of course, without food or water. Why? Because y'all (Daniel Pinchbeck especially) adamantly refuse to even consider your own screwed up selves as the "narcissist's garden."
Speaking of narcissists, have any of you noticed the John Edwards affair? Big "moral" christian man meets "enlightened" newager and, by quietly fucking behind his cancer-stricken wife's back, they screw up the lives of everyone even remotely connected to them - even if that connection is only to read about it and feel stunned they'd do such a despicable thing? If not, then I don't imagine you've gathered at least one moral of the story which, in my estimation, is this: no matter where you are on the spiritual spectrum those two idiots represent, you're a loser, determined to follow in their paths and cause the rest of us unwarranted pain and anguish because, deep down, you have no respect, or gratitude, for our lives. It's all about you, and, as we say in my old neighborhood, "Who the fuck are you?"
Gary, I've always liked your music, man, and I hope you'll check out some of mine (I could use a bit of help there, chumpy) but, sincerely, I hope you don't release this book because - like the "Dixiecrat" (Democrat) "Stars and Bars" on that supposed-to-be Right-wing Republican in the accompanying photo - you guys have got it all wrong:
Like the christians that bother you so much, it's the fact the likes of you - let's call y'all the "sophisticated" folk - still choose to "believe" things that makes my each waking day the equivalent of running with the bulls.
Just stop. Take care,
CMC
"Rocks and lumps as big as marbles - no cut."
Like Whoa
Propaganda Anonymous
CMC,
I read a lot of interesting critiques in your post, and some I agree with to an extent.
First, I find an atheist viewpoint in this discussion stimulating to the convo. But I do think that most of the points appear to me as unfounded. (I noticed your later post to Richard, so I won't go too deep)
I read on 'Little White Radio' myspace, one description of your stage show as that of you being like a shaman.
Did you write that or did someone else? If it wasn't you, then being such an adament non-believer, why did you sign off on it? Seems like a mixed message to me. Unless, of course, you yourself, may at times, believe in some transcendent element to performence.
Second, when speaking about how you've seen violence squash situations. I've seen that. Quite a number of times.
But, you know what, nearly everytime, I've seen a retaliation and some form of escalation. Violence seems to work in the short term. But the old phrase 'Violence begets violence' appears damn true to me. Too damn true actually.
I'm not going to sit around and pray when someone is engaging me in fistacuffs, like any animal I will react. But I look to Akkido for some wisdom, and really try not to get into such confrontation in the first place. Which is difficult at times.
I could go on here, but perhaps it's not the time.
Third, Yo, for real, watch the generalizations man. In your post, you conviently grouped everyone here who comments on the site in the same category.
Generalizations do seem to work well in a rant, but in real life they hardly exist.
I tend to consider myself an Agnostic with some mystical leanings, but by no means consider myself a Christian, Buddhist, or an Atheist.
I perfer to consider myself blessed with the unique oppurtunity to explore mulitple belief systems that exist, and balence that with just being a good dude to the people around me.
And to extrapolate the images of John Edwards and the lady he messed around and project those two character types on so many other people, I consider faulty logic.
And Lastly, why would you go thru the trouble of writing such a long post just to tell people to go away. That seems strange to me. You obviously wished to communicate something and reach out, I mean you did post some links for your music pages, after all.
Anyway, the song 'Grease' on your 'Little White Radio' page is pretty tight.
PEACE
Prop
All of the Above
I hope the Crack Emcee will not count this as an instance of failing to let him alone -- which is certainly my wholehearted wish -- but are you trying to tell me that the people who are pushing the Stars 'n' Bars these days are all DEMOCRATS? Maybe in 1948 that was the case, but I highly doubt it is the case today.
Regarding the infamous Bavarian Illuminati: my impression is that the Illuminati fell apart and ceased to exist in the 1790s, a mere 20 years after their founding. Their persistence in the public imagination is largely due (initially) to the work of the Gold- und Rosenkreutz, a reactionary esoteric order of the era that counted among its members the King of Prussia, who used the Illuminati as a foil. That is, according to the reactionaries, the Illuminati were running around trying to blow up everything and you needed the king and the nobility to save you from them. Thus the Illuminati survived in the public imagination after that point chiefly because they served so usefully as a right-wing bugaboo.
As for Skull 'n' Bones, I strongly suspect that it is committed to one thing and one thing only: the success and advancement of its members.
Hi Richard, I would ask
Hi Richard,
I would ask you this:
Do you think there is an occult dimension to reality, and that the ideas of Steiner, Gurdjieff, St Paul (..."powers and principalities..."), Fortune, etc., have any validity whatsoever?
If you agree that it seems reasonable as a hypothesis that there is an occult dimension to our world that includes those "powers and principalities" Paul referred to, then how do you think those forces exert influence on our society?
It would seem most likely to me that the occult powers continue to function and exert influence through these secret societies, even if the members of the societies as well as thinkers like yourself and Gary give it no credence as an occult form. There are still rituals in play that would automatically create allegiances to ancient powers, whether or not conscious belief or awareness is involved. There may be lineages that exist through these groups and simply "touching" upon them is enough to implicate you in extremely ancient struggles - between those very forces of intelligence and ignorance that Gary mentions, above.
Steiner consciously saw his Anthroposophy as an effort to create a movement of "white occultism" that would be a counter-force to the "black occultism" that led to the Nazi regime. Do you consider this unimportant or not meaningful? After WWII, over 1,200 top-level Nazi and SS scientists were taken into the highest echelons of the US military industrial complex, given control of NASA, etc. The Bush dynasty actively supported the Nazi regime, backing them financially.
How did you enjoy the fraud 2004 presidential election between two Skull and Bonesmen?
If you and Gary find no validity in the occult perspective presented by esoteric Christianity, Steiner, Gurdjieff, etc., and don't see that their insights into these matters apply equally well to our contemporary world, I don't totally understand why you are interested in them enough to study them and write about them. But perhaps you have a different model of occultism and contemporary society that I don't yet understand.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Richard, I've got to hand it to you,...