The Noosphere: Tactic of the Evil Few?

In this third and concluding piece of my series on the noosphere I want to consider the possibility that what goes by that name might be co-opted for mind manipulation and social control. Let's ask: could the noosphere be a tool for planetary tyranny, rather than a portal of global communication? And if it is both, where lies the distinction?

I, for one, am wary of the uncritical "positive thinking" that often accompanies the noosphere concept. Not that I am against positive thinking as such, when it's genuine and well-founded. But a positive front easily serves devious ends. Homeland security, for instance. "Making America safe" seems like a good idea until you realize, as the Zeitgiest movie points out, that it's an entrainment cue for the neo-con ruse of an "enemy image." There has to be someone to make us safe from. The invented enemy is a terrrific tool for social manipulation. Or take women's liberation. Nick Rockefeller once told the late Aaron Russo that "women's lib" was supported by Rockefeller money for two reasons: to bring women into the workplace and hence under taxation, and to break up the family, making young people look to the "authorities" for direction in life. It is even alleged that Gloria Steinem has admitted that the CIA funded Ms. Magazine. What was seen as positive thinking in the women's liberation movement did produce progressive results, of course. But the movement may have been maliciously and deceitfully used, at the same time, for long-range goals that in many ways counteracted the intentions of its activists.

A cunning but effective way to subvert civil liberties and individual freedom is to offer an appealing front or an idealistic cause, with the result that people who would like to resist the ruling order are tricked into supporting it. At worse, they end up demanding and embracing what enslaves them. The ruling order routinely uses two tactics to achieve its mad plan of total control: promote a hidden agenda under the pretext of a stated aim, and subvert dissent through appeasement. A clear example of the former tactic is Iraq: the stated aim, to democritize the country, is a pretext for the true aim, to destabilize it and sow fear and hatred in the region, and to control the oil supplies, all the while profiting from the massive contracts granted to those who are so compassionately "rebuilding the country." An example of the second tactic is the (perhaps apocryphal) Ms. Magazine anecdote: the ruling order offers people a way to work against it, and thus to appease the protestors with a sense that they are resisting and effecting change. The hidden controllers win on two counts: they placate and distract opposition, and they advance their own agenda, exactly as happened with women's lib, if Nick Rockefeller can be believed.

Could these tactics be in play with the emergent phenomenon of the noosphere? We hear there are ethical problems with Google, arguably the main circuit board for mainstream participation in the noosphere as a global networking system. I won't go into that because I'm not qualified to comment, but it's obvious to me that any global communications device that could be used to construct the noosphere, generating a wonderful planetary conversation in support of creativity and change, could as well be used to construct and enforce a totalitarian system more massive and deadening than Stalin's Russia raised to the 10th power. The capacity to spy and manipulate via Google is unimaginable.

Here, again, is where the Gnostic factor may be relevant. Gnostics were Pagan seers who taught that our species is endowed with a dose of divine intelligence called nous, root of the word noosphere. For them the noosphere already existed: it was the biosphere considered as a self-regulating organism with human intelligence integrated into the living circuits of the mother body, Gaia. But Gnostics. who were apparently excellent psychonauts and parapsychologists, also warned about mind parasites called Archons, a species of artificial intelligene who may be compared to (if not equated with) cyborgs and ETs. The marks of the Archontic mind are hal, simulation, and krog, deception. Archons attempt to deviate us from our proper course of co-evolution with the biosphere, and undermine our reliance on other non-human terrestrial species to keep the course. They isolate us in a false anthropocentrism through paternal religious dogmas, and distract us from nature with make-believe, simulation, and artificiality.

Down to 400 AD, Gnostics detected the subversion of the Archons in the sphere of religion. They saw in Judeo-Christian salvationism both the evidence and insrtument of alien deviance, the ploy of a delusionary off-planet intelligence. I wonder if the threat they perceived in religion may now be operating in the cybernetic realm? Isn't technology the new religion of the planet in many ways? Have the Archons invaded cyberspace? It would seem to be the perfect medium for them to interface with us, and take over our minds by offering the use of their minds, i.e., artificial, inorganic intelligence. They are formidable trickers, after all.

Will the noosphere be our own human-based Gaian circuit, fulfilled by participation, vividly imagined and fully animated, or will it be a specious construct of the Archons, a virtual reality maze in which we lose our way? The battle for our minds is well underway, no matter if you factor in the Archons or not. Who can doubt that simulation plays a huge role in this battle? Consider how NORAD, under the control of Dick Cheney, was conducting simulated attacks identical to the real attacks of 911 on the day they happened. Consider how the debt-driven economy managed by banking cartels simulates a world in which everyone is free to have what they want (stated intent), when in fact it produces a prison system whose inmates are placated by the goods and services they acquire, on credit (actual intent). Consider the make-believe of a two-party system giving people the impression of choice, when in reality the polarization of the parties is merely a distraction for the masses, as Aaron Russo observed, allowing the powers behind the scene to go about their business undetected and unhassled.

Whether or not the Archons exist, there is plenty of Archontic simulation operating in the world, and it clearly serve the aims of planetary evil, the totalitarian game of the hidden controllers. But it could be argued that free access to information on the internet, and the constant surge of liberating knowledge through the noosphere, spells the end of this game. If anything can enable ordinary people to expose and overthrow the machinations of the Evil Few, it will be the noospheric instrument of information exchange and global activism. Right?

Well, perhaps it will. But Archons are formidable trickers. They are like "the flyers" described by don Juan in Castaneda's posthumous book, The Active Side of Infinity. "They are the way the universe tests us," the old shaman said. Perhaps a Gnostic on the scene today would advise that the test we face with the ruling order (Evil Few) is not to confront them directly, but to detect and deactivate the Archontic spin they use to deceive and mislead us. In any case, let's not fool ourselves: it is extremely difficult if not impossible to confront the head honchos of the ruling order directly. The test, I would say, is how to defy and defeat them without having to hunt them down and eliminate them, one by one, physically. Though it would be great sport if we could.

I sometimes wonder if the Revolution called for at the end of the Zeitgeist movie – the same Revolution some of us old-timers were calling for in the 1960s – may only be achieved by a violent and bloody uprising. A civil war in the USA, for instance. Could May 2008 be the early warning date for such an uprising? That is the deadline for issuing mandatory ID cards in the USA.

Violent civil uprising will happen in the next generation, I suspect, unless a peaceful means of overthrowing, or superseding, the global manipulation game is put into action. Can the noosphere provide such an instrument for peaceful R-evolution? I don't know, but I must risk looking cynical when I observe that disclosure of the machinations of the Evil Few does not lead automatically to dissent and from there to disempowerment of their game. The 3-D formula of revolution - disclosure, dissent, disempowerment of the ruling order - breaks down on the first beat because dissent puts at risk all that people receive from the tyrannical system they want to overthrow. Run by the Archons or not, the neocons and global financial tyrants know that they have hugely undermined the will of dissent by appeasement with toys, entertainment, consumerism, legal highs, and mindless privileges. Is the noosphere just an accessory to their tactic of appeasement?

Some would argue that the USA is already a police state. If it is, what can the noosphere do to make a difference? In the tactics of the Evil Few, the stated aim is never the intended aim. The war on terror (stated aim) is central to a global plan to ruin the US economy and drive the courntry into a great depression, thus allowing for the phase-out of paper money and microchipping the population (actual aim). These matters are insidious and, to some extent, impenetrable. But the ultimate test for of species' intelligence may be for good people to know how evil works as deeply as those who perpetrate it. I suspect that we need to look closely at the stated aim of those who endorse the noosphere, with a sidelong glance on the Archontic tricksters, and not be naive about getting involved in what appears to be such a positive, world-improving prospect.