The Echoes of the Guns of August

The First World War began 100 years ago this year. Due to the communications and transportation technologies of the time, there remained a significant lag time between the heads of state declaring war in the aftermath of Archduke Ferdinand's assassination and the commencement of hostilities. Procedures had to be followed, public support garnered by hook or by crook, and the militaries had to mobilize. First by train, and then by ship, Allied and Central Powers deployed their forces in Europe and elsewhere around the globe (though, to be fair, this was primarily a European affair). Hostilities--i.e. people shooting at each other--commenced on August of 1914, hence the meme referred to in the title (and the title of Barbara Tuchman's famous book on this moment in history).

That war changed everything. According to some, the First World War was the true end of the 19th Century, as the social paradigm that existed before the war did not survive it. The chaos that the war wreaked upon the world, especially in the West, did not end with the 1918 armistice; the changes in female social status, the shifts in political and philosophical paradigms, the economic upheavals (both the boom of the '20s and the bust of the '30s) were all foreseeable consequences of the costs incurred prosecuting the war. The common man, by and large, profited little or not at all from it- and the Versailes Treaty ensured that peace could not last, but instead that the war would resume within the lifetimes of those men who survived this round. The real beneficiaries, as usual, were the elites.

As Smedley Butler said, war is a racket. That war was one, and so has every war since then. (Arguably, every war from the 18th Century in Europe forward, but that gets into Crazytown turf.) Since then, the nature of war as a racket has become increasingly clear, and the propaganda required to manufacture consent (and therefore support) for war has had to become increasingly sophisticated to obscure the truth. More advanced manipulations, at higher levels of operation (more economic and less diplomatic in their schemes; this would become formalized and systamatized after the Second World War in the corporate-centric trans-national system that John Perkins would reveal in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

Perkins revealed that war, in this system, was the final failsafe when the system's ordinary operations could not be sustained due to the toxic effects of its operations. What is not clear in that book, or in the follow-up (A Game as Old as Empire: the Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption), is that this system existed in familiar--but less company-centric--iterations before Perkins' time. Butler's testimony of his military operations, by way of the United States' government, does make clear that military operations--including formal, declared wars--are (as Sun Tzu, Machievelli, and Clauswitz all teach) nothing but politics by other means, and that means war is a tool of Empire.

So, why the echoes? August, especially in Europe, remains a time for many to take Summer vacations (holidays, for you folks on the other side of the pond)- and the establishments of the world are very keen on those vacations. Therefore, political events that make significant shifts in the world increasingly trend towards beginning (if not also ending) in August, with precursors or catalysts put in place in the months before; long before the backroom deals that spawned the phrase "October Surprise", we had this become a thing- World War I was just the first prominent expression.

Now we see a lot of similar things going on. Massive international alliances, each on hair-triggers, manuevering for advantage in a struggle for dominance are again a thing. An increasingly unstable global economy, threatening total collapse, is in the air and with it increasing political destablization that opens the door to radicalization and fractionalization (and therefore to infilltration by hostile interests seeking to shape events to their advantage). Attempted and successful assassinations of major figures are accelerating in frequency. Sooner or later, if this goes on, the conditions for a repeat of World War I will manifest- and soon thereafter, those conditions will produce that war. This is why I say "echoes"; history doesn't necessarily repeat, as such, but it often rhymes.

Empire knows this, and seeks to ensure its survival now that one host seems too week to continue and another host seems ready for the taking by leaping from one to another by way of war and the chaos that comes of it. This is the long game of Empire, that toxic meme that's ruined Mankind for so long, and now that more and more of us are aware of it we have a chance to kill it; all we need to do is deny it the chance to swap hosts. Let the current one die, quarantined and isolated, and scour its remains to be certain; don't let the emerging response become infected. Not easy, not painless, and not without sacrifice- but the opportunity exists, here and now, to stop Empire from extending its unnatural existence any further, to make Empire fall.

Billy Deily on Anarchism

There are times when I come across something that so encapsulates what I'm thinking that I find it a better use of this space to share that those words than to reinvent the wheel. Today, that happened again. Here are those words.

"The answer is to govern YOURSELF, and allow me to do the same. If I harm you, or you harm me, we each have a right to defend ourselves from that. But what NO ONE has the right to do is say "There are things in this world that might, possibly, under certain circumstances, in some nondescript point in the future, perhaps cause harm or offense to you or someone else. So, because of this, myself and a small group of others hereby declare that we have the right to rule over all the rest of you for your own protection. We also declare the right to demand regular payment from you to cover the cost of enforcing said rule and protection. This is NOT optional...we've drafted a very official looking piece of paper (it's written in calligraphy, so you know to take it seriously!) as a contract establishing all of this...a contract to which you will be automatically considered beholden to from birth, regardless of whether you actually consent or not. If you resist our services or refuse to pay us for them, we will send our blue-suited winged monkeys to arrest and imprison you. If you resist imprisonment, our blue-suited winged monkeys have been given the ok to kill you. Again, this is all for your own protection and totally NOT a scam to allow the ruling class to funnel taxes into their own pockets and create monopolistic market structures for the filthy rich to avoid free market competition . - Yours truly, Every government ever in the history of forever-ever " ---Billy Deily

TL/DR: Government is a scam. All we need is to control ourselves, and stop being dicks to each other.

It Can't Rain All The Time: The Day of the Doctor and Why "Doctor Who" Is Such a Great Ally Against Empire

I do have my things that I enjoy, and by and large they have a theme running through them: the choice to embrace, whatever the cost, the hope for better tomorrows and the rejection of cynicism and defeat. Today, one that my father introduced to me when I was a child--Doctor Who--aired its 50th Anniversary Special: The Day of the Doctor. Sure, there's going to be people whining about this bit, picking nits over that bit and so on, but the thing that encourages me is that many fellow Whovians actually grok what this episode is about (not that it's subtle about it, but still many do miss the key elements until well after the fact) that very core ethos.

Culture matters. This is a struggle of ideas, and therefore of ideals, and this means that the core of the struggle against Empire is to kill the ideas that are at the core of this toxic meme. Doctor Who's core ethos, to quote the excellent Craig Ferguson cold open about the show, is about the triumph of intellect and romance (in the literary or artistic sense) over brute force (violence, as Mark Passio recently defined it) and cynicism. When at its best--and, having seen this special, it was at its best--this is what elevates the human mind and spirit above the clouds of Empire's pollution of thought and belief, granting it the clarity and perspective necessary to see reality for what it truly is: far more abundant, merciful and forgiving than we're led to believe that it is by Empire- all we need to do is cooperate with it and we can do and be truly great things.

We should never ignore our emotions, anymore than we should ignore our logical minds. Emotion fills in the spaces that logical, linear thought cannot fill itself; this is what Passio's talking about in his presentations, and when Doctor Who is on point it says the same thing in different terms. To win this struggle, we must embrace the power that emotion possesses and use it in its lawful purpose as a compliment to our logic; to bring Left and Right Brain function back into harmony and striving together towards common purpose is what a healthy culture must do to survive and thrive wherever it may exist. Doctor Who is one expression of that healthy culture's crying out for examples to inspire us, to make fiction into reality, to bring sanity where none exists, and remember hope where it is scrubbed so viciously out of a people.

So all you writers, musicians, photographers, painters, inkers, pencilers, singers, editors, sound engineers, dancers, choreographers- you too have a real and vital purpose, one that is necessary and not trivial- not expendable nor a luxury. You are the memory, the archive, the right brain function of your nation and your species- you exist to remember Care, to force forth feelings necessary and proper when and where needed, and through Care revive and bring purpose to Right Action (to use Passio's terms), and thus healthy function to individuals and communities alike.

Below I'm embedding Ferguson's cold open, for those who've not seen it, because it's awesome in its own right as well as a succinct summary of why this show is such a great ally in the cultural front against Empire. (Note: This occurred early in Matt Smith's run as The Doctor.)

Predictive Programming: The Tool of a Desperate Dominator

Being out here in the frontier means that you will encounter phenomena that defies the dismissive explanations of the mainstream. One of them is the one known as "predictive programming", and--summarized--it is the idea that certain individuals or groups within the media world (fiction and non-fiction alike, across all media) know what's really going on and communicate possible future events allegorically or literally by way of symbolism, simile and metaphor in their media products, thereby shaping public perception so that when an event occurs their reactions will already be known as they will act on the prior programming. (Hint: Any language by observers--especially by news media--like "it seemed like a movie" is a flag that the event is programmed, and thus staged.)

Should you dare to do so, a search in Google for that term will bring up a lot of blather on conspiracy theory fora as well as dismissive articles like the one at Wikipedia. Go into videos, however, and all of a sudden you get a lot of people making videos about how Person A used Symbol B in this movie to signify that Gozer the Gozarian is actually Cthulhu and when the Stars Are Right you will be eaten last- or some such thing or another. (These sorts of videos, on the other hand, are better taken as good stuff to review when looking for a hook on your own fiction or game design projects; Crazytown is great for that.) As is usually the case, most of the claims of this sort of thing are lacking in substantive evidence or other support that would work in that manner; this does not mean that there isn't something going on.

The reason that I don't dismiss predictive programming altogether comes from the history of Public Relations. It is well known that the best way to predict the future is to create it, just as the best way to handle the opposition is to control it yourself, so it is no surprise to find that before a major event occurs there is often signs of mass psychological preparation prior to the fact. This is intended to shape the public's conception of the event, narrowing the range of discourse for the purpose of channeling it towards a desired conclusion- one that conforms to the actual goal intended. This is part of the process of "manufacturing consent" that Noam Chomsky and Bernard Herman described in their book of the same name, and it encompasses what those two described.

Now, while there are plenty of people who get into the aliens and the demons and all of that, we need none of this to comprehend why predictive programming is a plausible concept. We know that psychology is a thing. We know that applied psychology, in the form of propaganda, is also a thing and that both public and private actors employ propaganda to increase support for their actions and decrease support for unwanted alternatives. We have the example of the Gulf of Tonkin incident as a known historical example of in-the-moment propaganda that worked. All that predictive programming contends is that this exact same applied psychology is applied on a longer time-scale, and targets the sub-conscious mind far more often through using mental processes that bypass conscious thought and therefore critical analysis (i.e. defeats mental self-defense habits) through the exploitation of what happens when the mind of an individual shifts modes during the viewing of a film or television program.

The symbolism matter is very simple to comprehend. Symbols are short-hand within a culture, which is why culture matters (and why some symbols produce different reactions in various places). A symbol can instantaneously communicate a very dense and complex idea, assuming that both sender and recipient share a common comprehension of that symbol's meaning. That communication can happen without being consciously aware of it, which is why the makers of videos talking about predictive programming spend so much time emphasizing symbols that the film and TV makers chose not to direct a viewer's conscious attention to but instead let it slide by in the background or hide in plain sight by incorporating into a costume or backdrop. Don't think so? Then why is Darth Vader presented as a Black Knight with a skull-shaped helm wielding a blood-red sword? Because Western culture associates all of those symbols--individually and collectively--with death, brutality, evil and tyranny; you know as soon as he enters the scene in the original Star Wars film--before he says a word, before you even know his name (another symbol, by the way)--what he is about. That symbolism does in less than a second what otherwise would take up to a minute of precious screentime to establish.

The flipside, as mentioned above, is that the power is dependent upon the culture. Miscommunication can and does occur when the parties interpret the same symbol differently, which is why the more credible claims rely less on symbols that are specific to a culture or sub-culture and instead rely on symbols that are dominant world-wide if not universal or on claims that the intended audience is smaller than what the media product actually reaches. (e.g. all of the claims of 9/11 programming also claim that the intended audience is strictly American, and not the much larger audience that the media products cited actually reached).

Okay, we have plausible explanations regarding why it's possible to exist and how symbolism plays into it. The really bothersome part of predictive programming is the "why" aspect. The common claims are that--and, for purely illustrative purposes, I will refer to "they" as the Illuminati; don't take this as me claiming that this is the party responsible, because I'm not--the Illuminati do have some ethics that constrain their behavior and thus their operations. With respect to predictive programming, the ethic is that of obtaining consent from the party they seek to do unto; the idea is that we must be told what they intend to do before they do it, and if we do not state our objections then they must abstain until either they give up or they get consent- but how they tell us is up to them, and using predictive programming to get it amounts to a mass gaslighting of the population into going along with their scheme. The Illuminati, therefore, technically obtains consent and therefore skirts by Natural Law (so it's claimed) since we subconsciously receive their message and thereafter remain silent; silence is consent, so they proceed.

Like I said, this is bothersome. It's a claim that is hard to verify because it's a claim that relies itself on esoteric knowledge of legal theory as well as how symbolism works and (contrary to the claim) expects us to accept a fraudulent claim that deliberately manipulating what information another receives and must act upon before they decide whether or not to consent to something is not itself a violation of that individual's sovereignty. (Why is is fraudulent? Because the party that materially benefits from the consent is ensuring that the consenting party cannot possibly deny it by denying the fullest possible extension of information; it is as if this were a trial, and one party deliberately manipulated the discovery process to get the desired judgement by crippling the opposing party's ability to act on the full extent of knowledge about the facts of the case- you can, and lawyers do, go to prison for that.) "If we knew that beforehand, we would never have gone along with it." is the test to apply; why do you think that information manipulation is properly classifed as "warfare"? Because that is what it truly is; an act of war upon a targeted enemy.

There is a more sensible way to see it. Most of the governments, and corporations, comprehend that if they don't have some popular support that they'll lose what power and influence that they have and become vulnerable to being depose or destroyed. Those in power want to stay there, and they are on record as conspiring to manipulate public opinion in grotesque and inhuman ways to make this happen. (Operation: Northwoods almost happened, and that was just to fake a Cuban threat so that the U.S. could undo Castro's revolution; as it is, elements of that plan have been recycled into the schemes that created the American police state of permanent warfare against terrorists that are largely self-created.) Since--as noted above--the best way to handle opposition as well as an unpredictable future is to control the former and create the latter, using the former to achieve the latter is a short hop to make, and that is the most reasonable way to see what predictive programming is (said means to said end), how it's done and why it's done. In short, predictive programming is used to create the desired public opinion about events that are yet to occur in the same way that gerrymandering creates the voters for a politician's success years before that election happens; it's a perversion of a known process for corrupt ends, and once you know that it exists it ceases to work upon you. This is why it is getting harder and harder for authoritarian schemes to get through, and thus more and more open corruption is employed instead; a lot of us are indeed seeing through this bullshit and calling them on it.

Let's bring this home now.

Predictive Programming...

• ...totally is a real thing that happens.
• ...an example of propaganda applied in a long-form format.
• ...a psychological process, using known techniques from advertising, marketing and public relations.
• ...intended to shape mass perception of an event well before the fact.
• ...intended to channel popular opinion of that event towards an end decided upon well before the fact.
• ...relies on the use of symbolism--including language--to efficiently communicate on a sub-conscious level what the sender wants the recipient to think about the event, with language such as "...it seemed like a movie" to trigger that programming.
• ...has bothersome ethics involved, reflecting the corrupt culture of an oligarchy afraid of losing its place in the world and thus should be seen as the method of a desperate dominator group shoring up their base.
• ...is, like all illusions, fragile and shatters once you apply the power of a properly-developed consciousness to it; once you see it, you cannot unsee it and future applications fail against you.
• ...can be used against them in turn, and some in the media world have done just that- and have for many years. The effects are now manifesting.

How to Deal With a Non-Standard Claim of Knowledge

Good morning!

Today we're going to weave some threads together, as an example of how to arrive at a non-standard claim of knowledge and why these things are so damned difficult.

By now you should have finished Mark Passio's presentation, posted two days ago. If you haven't, go catch up now; you need to grok what he's talking about for this post to do you a damn bit of good. You also should have read my post about non-standard knowledge claims; back up and read that if you haven't. This post will be here when you're done.

The key problem with non-standard claims of knowledge is that the source for the claim is internal to the claimant, so the audience cannot readily seek out that source and verify independently that the claimant's statement is correct. That does not mean that the audience cannot investigate the claim, but rather that the claimant must understand what the nature of the process for his claim of knowledge actually is and how this process works before relying upon such things when making an argument. Using a recent example, I shall illustrate what's going on.

Why am I insisting upon your familiarity with Passio's presentation? Because the points that he makes in his presentation are going to be thrust before you in the video embedded below, and they're going to come at you hard and fast because the video is less than five minutes long from start to finish, so you need to pay close attention when you watch it- and you will watch it.

Now, the meat of this matter:

• Non-Linear Expressions of Ideas: The use of the Fine Arts, as extensions of the Liberal Arts, allows competent users to efficiently communicate very complex ideas with very little effort. We acknowledge this as true through the saying "A picture is worth a thousand words." Each medium of Fine Art has particular and unique qualities--strengths and weaknesses--that favor some forms of expression over others, such that the same subject matter can communicate significantly different complex ideas merely by changing the medium wherein that subject matter is used. When used in concert, the synergy between them is so powerful that ideas that otherwise take years to communicate by way of standard academic practices can be had in minutes. The mechanics for this phenomenon stems in the ability to think in non-linear ways, taking otherwise disconnected thoughts and thought patterns and weave them together into a cohesive and coherent whole. This is what "great art", of any kind, is meant--and intended--to do.
  
• Emotionally-Powered Cognition: The mechanics of non-linear cognition comes from intuition, and intuition roots itself in emotion. It is the melding of Thinking and Feeling, each informing and guiding the other, covering each other's gaps and reinforcing each other's strengths. Non-standard knowledge claims, therefore, have a root in the emotions of the claimant at the time of discovery and are therefore specific to the individual that has such a claim. This does not make the claim false, or disallow transmission. What it does do is require that the recepient experience the same emotional state that the claimant had, or--in other words--the former individual must replicate the experience wherein that non-linear expression event occurred. This is, by the way, is what an Initiation Rite--properly comprehended and executed--is and does; by extension, we are talking about claims of knowledge that stem from an individual's ecstatic encounters with the vast portion of the universe that is beyond Mankind's sense-perception.
  
• Symbolism as Shortcut: The mechanics of this method for claiming knowledge rely greatly on symbolism for its efficiency. This is not just the visual symbol, but also the symbolism found in sound--music especially--as well as in the means of their use by the transmitter. For example, the video embedded below uses clips from a variety of recent major motion pictures over which one tune from one soundtrack plays. The transmitter--in this example, the individual that arranged the clips and matched them to the music--chosen with great care and deliberation what clips to use, when to use them in the sequence and how to match them to the time of the music employed. That not only transforms the components--symbols themselves, all of them--into something with different (sometimes very different) symbolic representations than originally presented, but also allows the creation of an entirely new symbol in the aggregate.
  
• Culture as Language: It is no accident that a vast array of Man's literature rests upon the narratives of individuals (themselves symbols) who undergo initiatory rites in pursuit of some goal, however great or small, and are transformed into what they must become to achieve those objectives. This is the basis for the formation and transference of culture across generations, of the assimilation of cultures when encountered, and adjustment of cultures as they adapt to pressures put upon them by other forces. It is also no accident that the decline of a culture coincides with the abandonment or usurpation of initiatory rites and the disdain of their power for discovery and transmission of knowledge by those now unfamiliar with them. Whatever else may be said of Joseph Campbell, this element--the power of myth as a means of initiation--and his recognition of its power as an element of Natural Law (for it is not created by Man; Man merely discovered it, and it is both universal and immutable) is sufficient to put him up as a great hero for generations to come- and he got from here to there through experiencing that initiation himself via his studies.
  
  The effect of this method for non-standard knowledge claims increases as the culture connecting transmitter to recipient strengthens. Even a period of short-term preparation, as I have ask of you above, can greatly increase the efficiency of the process. By using multiple media, and multiple events, a transmitter can prepare the recipient for the ecstatic experience that the transmitter encountered previously; the recipient already comprehends the component symbols in the experience, becomes familiar with the circumstances wherein the encounter occurs (vital to achieving the emotional state that is necessary for successful transmission), and therefore has the vocabulary necessary to properly comprehend the experience. This is why preservation of a nation's--a people's culture--is something worth fighting for, literally so, and if necessary worth killing and dying for.
  
• And This Relates How?: Long before the academic world arose and imposed the now-standard criteria for claims of knowledge, this is the way it was done. Your elders, your teachers, etc. guided you through a process of preparation leading to a culmination that was an initiatory rite, past which you were expected to take on a new role and become a wholly different individual within the community. We still have remnants in the Western of this in our marriage traditions, but other elements that together comprised a very efficient system that guided newborns through the process that would create young adults have steadily been snatched out of our hands or cut away altogether- and we've suffered for it. This is Empire in action, abusing lawful systems where it can and cutting off access (but not destroying them; Empire cannot circumvent Natural Law anymore than Mankind can) where it can't; we see this in a more comprehensible manner through religious and political cults of all sorts, through the practices of culture-shaping seen in totalitarian regimes of all sorts, and in the influence of centralized media over the population.
  
  We need to make use of this method once more, and if we don't know how to deal with it then we can't--and won't--benefit from sources of knowledge that don't come from centralized institutions that are easily corralled by powerful interests (Thralls of Empire) and suborned to their will. Part of what we have to do to save ourselves is to learn how to directly discover knowledge by way of encountering it directly, and then transmitting it through the means we once took as standard practice. This is not to discount critical thought; that way lies cults and all the madness therein. Rather, what I'm saying is that we must reclaim this as a valid basis for knowledge to be used as a full and equal partner to the externally-focused standards of academia- and that includes full and equal subjectivity to interrogation by means of the Trivium and Quadrivium. Logic and Intuition are partners, not enemies, and should be treated as such.

So, now that you've spent 15-20 minutes reading all of that, take another five to watch this music video. Can you see how it efficiently communicates all of Passio's points in a fraction of the time, but only if you already have the language to comprehend what's been said here? If so, then you grok what non-standard knowledge claims are, how they work, and why they are not inherently invalid- but instead fully and equally valid ways to knowing the universe. With this dimension restored, making Empire fall will come much faster.

It Can't Rain All The Time: Stay Connected

Keeping your perspective means not spending every waking moment (and as many sleeping ones as you can) dealing with Empire. Even the best machines need downtime, preventative maintenance and periodic overhauls; even the best racers, pilots, fighters, and other athletes need to pace themselves and watch for over-extension. You're not a machine, and chances are pretty good that you're not a top-tier athlete either, so you certainly are NOT exempt from all of this stuff. You need to eat properly, sleep well, get around and mind your balance- not just for this matter, but for all of them. You're no good if you're run-down, ill, injured, distracted or otherwise unable to get that energy up and give it the focus it needs to let you get what you need to do done.

If you stay in the trenches 24/7/365, you'll end up overwhelmed by fatigue and burn yourself out (and no, cheeky chum, taking Leap Day off doesn't count) and that makes you useless to yourself as well as everyone else. Do the smart thing and rotate out on a regular basis, get away and recover someplace far from the line of battle. I mean this metaphorically as much as literally, because you will need the former (and be able to achieve the former) far more than the latter; being able to keep your head straight is a big deal, and being able to do it away from the holiday destinations most people resort to in order to get their head straight makes you a far stronger individual than most right there.

So find something that brings you joy, makes you laugh, or otherwise reconnect with reality in a way that reminds you why you're doing this: play with the kids, read some good fiction, date night with your special one, get your records on and dive deep into the music (or go attend a concert), head out to the museum and get lost in the best damn art you can find, paint, draw, shoot, meditate, write some music of your own, pick up an instrument and play, sing your heart out, run until you can't, cook a meal that people will talk about for years afterwords, whatever. Find that thing (or things) and get into them when you need to go recharge, rest and recuperate. This is work, and it will take a lot out of you (as if your day job didn't, of course), and if you let yourself become obsessed then you're going to have a bad time and end up in a bad way.

Love is why you're here. Don't for get that. It can't rain all the time, so make the time to get out and stay connected to what you love and that will keep you going until Empire falls.