New World Drama: State v. Golden Age v. Noble Savage

[hoi.polloi]

I have attempted to post this a number of times, and stopped just short of posting it to expand or refine a bit here or there. I am sorry if all that effort doesn't, ultimately, add up to much. Somewhat off topic: I am also sorry if this winds up feeling like it doesn't belong entirely on CluesForum according to present moderators. I sort of stopped following CF for a bit when people started discussing the possibility that people with non-white skin color are variations of savage monsters, which was feeling too "God Like Productions" for me to even believe it was on this forum. I am immensely grateful that such a "phase" seems to have faded a little bit, though it has inspired me to bat around the idea of starting another site so I can personally manage bigoted/fearful remarks in discussions about science and fakery according to my own "tolerant" preferences as "deluded" as some may think those are. But I thought about posting here in case this progressive attitude still has a chance of "taking" as well as I wish it would in the hearts of intelligent, compassionate, humanity- and life-loving readers that aren't so sympathetic with the beliefs of the genocidal inane. If, however, I am further missing the point of any general attitude change while I've been away — related to tolerance or not — and this essay or portions of it need to go in the DERAILING ROOM or what-have-you, moderators feel free!)

Introduction/Disclaimer

This is a work in progress, so I may re-order the text to address something I missed now and again. I take responsibility for my writing, and I am happy to refine it to be more clear and accurate until it “hardens” into the crumbling obsolescence that all old things become. I am trying very hard to be right about all this, but an unfortunate consequence of being wrong is that it first comes with the delusional belief that one might be right.

The safe and wise consider everything, know only what is important to their own survival, and believe nothing. I don't know what contributes best to our survival but hope it is in the discovery of wisdom easily shared. I admit I sometimes act as though I believe nothing, when in fact I really am in a process of bouncing ideas off of people to determine what I believe. If I'm too hard about ideas I wish to believe or too soft about ideas I wish to dismiss, those mistakes are my own to make and I'm sorry if I'm at all misleading in my writings. Though it's hardly an excuse, this is a popular one I choose to believe is relevant to me: I am caught in a particular body, time and space and with that comes a particular perspective, as inaccurate or flawed as it may be.

[hoi.polloi]

The New World Drama: The State versus the Golden Age versus the Noble Savage
3 MYTHS HOLDING HUMANITY in a DRAMATIC LOCK and HOW to ESCAPE THEM

What is an “indigenous” person? Where does an ethnicity or nation or tribe or people start within an indigeneity? Please don't dismiss this question at first by assuming you know that only “primitive” or “unevolved” people have indigenousness, since the real existence of your own indigenousness is an important consideration for the rest of this post. In case you are confused, I am not referring to being White or Black, though those identities may be a part of your culture or a culture important to you and/or near you (such as someone who needs those identifiers to feel safe).

In order to read my text, I would ask you to please consider your definitions without resorting to the classic '“chicken and egg” scenario' as a final answer. We often cite the “chicken and egg” problem without consciously recognizing its near inseparability from the concept of evolution. Maybe a non-chicken changed into a chicken in the middle of its life, epigenetic-style. Maybe the whole question is being asked wrong. For example, if chickens have always had eggs and chicken-eggs have always hatched chickens, the answer is that neither came first. Or both. Or which came first is as deep as the moment you can see back to, at which point you can chalk up all previous life as a total mystery. At that point, when we start our “history”, did you start on a chicken or did you start on an egg? Or did you start at the moment the chicken and egg became separate beings? And where does that begin? A historian must deal with similar problems when trying to separate myth and legend from likely facts.

To eliminate endless re-divisions of terms, I hope you will forgive a few definitions of things over the course of this text to help explain the world view I'm critiquing. My hope is that it will empower you to find a better course and avoid the trap of the present myths. My world view necessitates a perspective of the inherent respectability and sacredness of life, but it does not necessarily disclude an antithesis.

For the purposes of my argument, I am defining things like this:

Ethnicity is the characteristics of a group which cause them to share a language, a series of traditions or (quite often) a religion or culture or series of values (often accompanied by a conscious or unconscious “vision statement” and its accompanying “principles” or “mission goals”). Not to make an ethnicity sound so much like a corporation that it robs us of respect for the phenomenon, but we should understand that these ideas, which are often worthy of respect, are also the very things which cause so many human conflicts when two “visions” or “mission goals” collide at cross-purposes. They are often important to how an ethnicity describes itself and as such, the people involved have internal terms for these things codified with particular names. “Laws” and “Morals” are a few of the names we hear translated to the imperial tongue of English. I do not argue that these things are sacred, even if I sense that they are, because the very argument that an ethnicity is sacred becomes a physical position of being sacrosanct. In other words, I am trying not to “take sides” with my own values, even though I acknowledge this is an important part of actually living with the tangible concepts I am presenting. I also argue that people who are not aware of their own ethnicity nonetheless have something like one, unless they live as a hermit or have become sociopathic.

I identify World View as a set of values that individuals have, which ethnicities can share. It's like the “ethnicity of the individual”. As an example to distinguish them, for many Eastern people, a personal World View is tied to ethnicity and identifying ethnic beliefs as inherently valuable; whereas in Western countries, a World View is typically something we openly enjoy distinguishing from our ethnicity, when we even acknowledge an ethnicity at all.

Nation is the concept that you can refer to people with shared common ethnicity as a whole, even where there is room for multiple ethnicities — and thus, should be used carefully and with respect. It is not, as used by speech writers of politicians working for the State governments of “The United States of America”, meant to refer to a State government of any kind; at worst, though, it could be used as a description of the people who are united by the oppressions they feel under a State, common or not.

Indigenous does not just mean originating from and characteristic to a region of the world, though it definitely means those things. It especially refers in my text to those who actively oppose colonial efforts (from without) imposing values and ethnicities (consciously or not) upon the existing ethnicity of the subject group. In our world, this frequently refers to a group of people that have not spent the majority of their existence displacing other groups. This is to distinguish them from colonists.

Colonialism I am defining as the process whereby a people (ethnicity, nation or other group) governs the actions of another, with the intent of making that group dependent and/or subservient to that governorship.

A State is the government which colonialism imposes.

Culture and Sub-culture are what we might call sections of an ethnicity that live together. It is both the people and the physical connection an ethnicity or section of an ethnicity has in a physical place or environment. A culture is disrupted and damaged more easily that an ethnicity when cultures collide. A sub-culture is not independent from its super-culture, but it is distinct. None of these words are meant to refer to the artificial cultures created and designed by the State, which overwhelms individual ethnicities, and which we sometimes also call 'culture'. What that is, and what myths are necessary to impose that artificial 'culture' is the subject of this writing.

A Tribe is a group of people who adhere to a common leadership, who come from common ancestors, about which there is a current story highly relevant to their ethnicity.

A Band is a division of that tribe which physically lives together in a community.

Community is the phenomenon of living with others.

[hoi.polloi]

1. The Myths and The Species That Makes Them

To put the myths most simply, let's examine what it is we face as we try to look “back in time” through pages of history and oral storytelling.

One of the first things we should take note of is that myths, legends and vast unknowns swirl around what each historian deems the most likely scenarios for both the “earliest known time” and the point in time being examined. Trying to find these points — especially the “earliest known time” — is a bit like using binoculars to try to uncover the details of a fading world as we sail away from it. But each person on our “ship” is looking from a different perspective, and the visions do not coalesce as well as a distant object does in visual terms. We might focus on a distant mountain, or events significant to a large group of humanity, because it seems easier to see and make agreements about. If we try to focus on more detail than the most obvious peaks, it gets harder and harder to come to consensus. The further the time period from our “vessel”, the more the memories, myths, legends and mnemonic devices become what we supplement and eventually replace the murky picture with.

As we focus our eyes on what is near to us, we see greater detail. We learn what might be in the distance based on what we can see clearly, even if we must make assumptions about that. We learn how to peer into far distances. But one thing we cannot do is turn around and face where we are going. The binoculars are not as useful for things happening at this very moment, because the picture is too narrow, and we drop the binoculars so that we can use our immediate “present” senses to try to determine what's happening now and what's coming. We can only look to either side, to what is happening to us (or more often, what has just happened) at this very moment, as it passes us, and that is already with a great deal of effort and strain on our metaphorically limited gaze. In this model, it is easier to be distracted by the past than to contort one's body to make out the future. It's as if we only experience “half” of the dimension of time thanks to memories, since the other “half” would require future-memories that are not possible (or extremely rare, when they are even acknowledged at all, and we won't go into such ideas).

This is a totally imperfect metaphor, because it implies we can “hear” the future or “sense” it in some way equivalent to how we experience what we call “the past” but we generally do not. However, the main idea I want to focus on is the notion that consensus (especially about the past) is difficult to reach and takes time, and it is easily disrupted by personal world view that is already hard enough as it is to grasp with a firm grip. History, and living memory of it, are a bit like an untraceable “chicken and egg” scenario resting beyond the horizon, just over the mountain, or just on the edge of our vision. Lately, when operating in a system we call “dysfunctional”, we have still failed to ask adequate questions of those that remember further back than we have seen, and we have been too eager to find a past that belongs to the power structure of today — in order to somehow wrest control from it. At some point, as we try to find out the real past, as it was seen then, history becomes legend. Now we must live with a huge amount of sciences, religions and world views scrambling for the most powerful “public relations” tools to broadcast their particular interpretations of where a “legendary egg” hatched into a “historically real chick”.

These sciences, religions and world views construct ethnicities which are variously capable or incapable of accepting one another's existence. Each one accepts a selection of the wide bandwidth of direct interpretations of the world streaming into billions of Earth inhabitants. Those interpretations come from observation of that which is passing our easy-going vessel, the vessel that largely blinds us to what comes next as it patiently, inevitably reveals what is right here with us. Because all possibilities seem to spring from the miracle of a fantastic barely-existing rumor of an egg hatching a real-life, walking, breathing and clucking chicken, a huge amount of our arguments on this world focus on the difference or the exact space and time that we can separate the two.

Of those not entirely lost to their own minds, those who are taking direct observation of our experiences, some of us focus on the distant horizon, some of us focus on the furthest fringe edges our eyes can turn to the side, and others focus on the murky ocean or sky or anything in between. The mysterious is everywhere. In our distraction with this enormous question, we have sometimes collectively forgotten about the charlatans on our ship, that we live with here and now, who are entirely focused on playing “god” by pretending they can reproduce that miracle. And in so doing, these magicians may:

• not tell the difference between fantasy and reality
• not desire to tell the difference
• dismiss the question of what is fake and what is real as irrelevant or a waste of time
• not recognize or acknowledge that other human beings are real
• not acknowledge that they themselves are real
• excuse the lies that come to them as “coming from mysterious places” — since we do not know the mystery of thought and consciousness itself, and they prefer to conflate any distinction anyway
• feel little or no sense of responsibility, refuse it when it's apparent
• excuse all lies because they refuse responsibility for their own lives, let alone good care of other people
• believe this is divine because they can tell themselves only “God” has responsibility, therefore helping themselves, helping others or being a good steward of life is delusional
• make up fantasy stories, lies, balderdash and tricks, and excuse them all in countless ways
• do all of this without being conscious of it; that is, in a psychopathic nature, not feel for others
• feel closer to deifying themselves because they tell lies that people believe
• only sometimes realize they don't have any special magic powers at all; because they can get lost in the fact that people believe them and the fact that they have wealth and privilege as a result of their command of lying

Who, exactly, in our contemporary world, acts like this? Are these people philosophers? Are they wizards? I would argue that they are simply humans, and there is a scale of human beings that exist from the psychopathic (lack of feeling for others) to the empathic (feeling for others). But these words are based on the latin “path” for suffering. We might characterize them better if we focus on the true issue — which is not how much they suffer for others, but how much they generally feel for the world they are in, which includes themselves and all life around them. In that case, a better term to distinguish those who experience the world from those who do not may be to call the former “sensers” (using their senses) and the latter “inane” (blind, avoiding the world).

My hypothesis is that the leadership of this personality type, in tone and in practice, herd people just as nations do. They do so just as those on this world with an opposite perspective do — and those with perspectives on the enormous spectrum which each extreme of the scale (the sensers and the inane) try to win favor from. They do this because that is what people in general do. Humans have motivation to defend themselves from others and they like to hide in masses in order to do so. It is undeniable that there is power in numbers. We witness the horrendous things people do to each other and we side with those that will find positive meaning in it. We experience the wonderful things people can do for one another in a culture. This is a very old story. Herding people is in the interest of both the sensers and the inane.

There are several people that enjoy/suffer the inane experience:

• General psychopaths or inane
• People trained in inanity by an aggressive culture, such as Jews who are trained to lie to others (“gentiles”) because they are convinced they must act as a “superior race of men” or Catholics who forgive entirely everything immoral their forbearers have done because they do not have to suffer the consequences.
• Accidentally inane, who learn through the corrupt system that suppressing their natural resistance to psychopathy will get them more rewards from the inane and psychopathic. They might not suffer from “compassion fatigue” due to overwhelming world problems
• Innocently inane — people who avoid others, do not flaunt their nihilism or those who genuinely and passionately hate or resent the world

There are also several people that enjoy (or “suffer” depending on how you look at it) the senser experience:

• Generally empathic personality types
• Generally sensitive people (with no good or bad connotations specifically implied)
• People who have experienced suffering and do not wish to experience further suffering
• Iconoclasts and rebellious types
• Innocent sensers — people who wander around bouncing from comfort to comfort, trying to simply find a place where they won't be bothered

The “innocents” I refer to at the end of each list frequently cross over with one another, and they might be accurately described as those who experience the world in moderation rather than at an extreme of numbness or dutifulness. Where someone on the spectrum is a personality-type, sometimes inherited “by blood” or by culture, rather than actually being a culture or nation. It is essentially a world view rather than an ethnicity. Yet, in our globalized society, it is a personality type that has more easily coalesced and strengthened with like views, as a whole, transcending cultures and nationalities — a kind of ethnicity that permeates tradition.

The inane people talk frequently of a “New World Order”, I sense (though I could very well be wrong), less because of an actual plan (though they may occasionally allude to their behavior as plans or intentions) but because of the sense of comfort it gives them. It comforts them to control their world and to direct people in a way that benefits their greed. It could be that those with actual creativity, who have been convinced that a “New World Order” is the right way to organize the world, are sensers with stunted empathy that the inane have largely convinced them to adopt.

At CluesForum, we have only “herded” people in order to tell people to be cautious of herders. And as such, we don't precisely fit into an “opinion leadership” model. Our main goal from the inception of the forum has been to ask people to please take note of the world, to be sensers if it is at all possible for readers to be, and to then help us compare our notes with other sensers. This is frequently with the express purpose of taking an interest in the world we sense and to help make it a place that is more comfortable to sense realistically rather than delusionally.

This is why, on the surface, it appears as though the inane are more greedy and the sensers are more humanitarian. And perhaps they are by the normative definitions. But if you read what I am saying carefully, you may notice that I am describing a universal human trait: to be comfortable.

We as humans almost universally balk at the notion of another's comfort that we find imperfect. So we may describe sensers as having a very large “family” (ranging generally from the entire system of all life to immediate blood relatives) and we may compare this to the inane by saying they have a family the size of themselves, if they even sense themselves at all — yet, that is not as universal a perspective as to recognize that each human senses her/his/their/zer/its own comfort level.

Myths are used to sway people and to help people make decisions on ambiguous topics, such as the meaning of historical events, what actually occurred and what has been deliberately crafted and insinuated into our ethnicity. The experience of having myths to fight cultural battles for us is sometimes preferable to duking it out over facts, which are so few and far between — especially when our more inane aspects try to make statements as if they have been paying attention to the world.

When an observed fact is disputed or denied, the first offense to drive an offending opinion off or offline is to conjure the myths held sacred or sacrosanct by one's world view and/or ethnicity. It is unclear why humans tend to do this, but it seems to be because there is an assumption in nature that says if people cannot agree on the facts, they can at least invent a plausible fantasy to find beauty in together. At that point, if a generally positive statement can be agreed upon, things can move on. But people often have different aesthetics. And when ethnicities hold different visions it can, and does, lead to intellectual impasses. Thankfully, we do have a physical world to retreat to and experience when we are tired of warring over opinions; but if physical encounters with the consequences of intellectual differences manifest too often, it leads to physical breakdowns, cultural clashes and wars.

But patient discussion with one another to determine the likelihood or unlikelihood of facts that transcend ethnicities and heritages is hard work. It means incorporating other people's views into your own, even views you do not yourself share; it involves listening and confidence. You must feel trusting of your host when you are a guest; you must feel trusting of your guest when you are a host. The ancient Greeks held this agreement so sacred that they wrote myths about wars stopping to honor the sacred guest-host relationship. But in our cynicism, our species even takes advantage of this situation — between parents and children, between friends, every kind of betrayal can and does happen in our species. So in lieu of spending the difficult hours understanding our own trust, risking betrayal, giving to others at what we can consider our own expense to test the waters and continually reach out for trusting relationships — instead of bridging cultural divides, we often invent plausible fantasy that multiple cultures can agree on and save us the trouble of actual understanding.

One of those fantasies in recent years, as ironic as it may seem, has been the myth of the “politician as ambassador”. The political ambassador is meant to forsake his or her duties to the State, get out of a “comfort zone” and visit other cultures with a presumed “good will” (that is rarely explained) and presumed “concerns” (ineffectually addressed). This political ambassador is actually fairly ignorant and out of touch with the concerns of his or her people, but they are meant to democratically represent the extension of the individual's trust-building activities and somehow transfer an understanding (s)he is not achieving — through faith and smiles and “media reporting” alone — to the individuals supposedly gaining from the charade. This politician, when home, cannot keep promises, frequently tells the vocal what they presumably want to hear and play-acts concern with other disingenuous politicians in order to simulate the experience of patient listening with foreigners. What an absolutely absurd premise.

Who designs the myths, the beautiful lies, that people can agree on when patient inter-cultural storytelling fails? It is the people who can most convince us that they are helping us determine who is or is not worthy of trust with flagrant stereotyping, cartooning and/or the most subtle lies of all: study text books that try to give us a final dead truth about any living debate. There are study texts which keep debate alive, however, and those are often key texts in our time. These are often written by cultural creatives or artists.

The artist archetype describes the personality type of a person who is born with an innate sense of what information is or isn't important compared with what we have inherited from present day myths. There are creative artists who largely point to the inane and there are creative artists who largely point to the observations of sensers, if the artist is not a senser themselves and contributes their own raw information to their art.

For most people, it is difficult to distinguish between an “artist” and someone who senses the world on a deeper level, however we must acknowledge that it is an important distinction. There are many artists who make a career or living out of merely rehashing and remixing the worlds of fantasy we use to explain the world, and are perfectly content to be seen as successful for doing so. These people deal almost entirely in stereotypes and tropes, for the sake of being close enough to delusion that it makes people thankful they don't have to spend “trustbuilding time” of their own.

But there is another way to handle stereotypes and fantastic myths of our era — and that is to reinvent them deliberately in order to more closely align them with observation of the world. To make stories less inane and more accurate and useful. Presently, in our culture, we seem to have equal patience for art which is based on reality, totally inane art and a third “transition” kind of art that merely makes people aware of the fact that their assumptions need work (but which does not very deeply address the difficult topic of reality itself). It seems to me that the artificial culture of the State is so deeply invested in pushing stereotypes and fantasy, that the best “alternative” art offered is the latter kind, while the majority is inane. As such, most art we see seems to deal consistently with the murky and problematic struggle between the comfort of the lies we have come to love (“inane art”) and a slight discomfort with them (“transitional art”), whereas art based on reality (“sensed art”) is relegated to the small forgotten galleries that the State simply allows without endorsing.

We all make myths and use them. The question is how close we can get to reality while tolerating the myths closest to it, which people refuse to believe because it makes them uncomfortable. Discomforting people may seem like a simple “short cut” to the truth, until you recognize that making people uncomfortable is a universally reviled antithesis to humanity.

Even those of us investigating the truth and distinguishing it from lies have found comfort in those discoveries, so it's hypocritical to say our purpose is purely because we care about the truth, no matter how it makes us feel. In fact, we care about the truth because we find it makes us fascinated and happy and it improves our sense of well being. This isn't to accuse the human race of being selfish. On the contrary, we are a very social species. And that is why shedding broken stereotypes is so scary for us to do.

[hoi.polloi]

2. The Stereotypes

The late writer Vine Deloria, Jr. is a slightly controversial figure in Western literature, but I suspect he prefers it that way. Citing all sorts of problems with Western civilization from the perspective of his ethnicity and world view, Mr. Deloria rightfully mocks the errors that European settlers and their colonist masters made while they attempted to describe their new home in the “New World” accurately. He borrows from many perspectives, while subscribing to few, including that of various astronomers, literary iconoclast Anatoly Fomenko and characters we at CluesForum would find refreshingly “off beat”. Yet, Vine Deloria is just whom we might look at superciliously if offered “partnership” with, since he fits the profile of so many attention-seeking artists we've encountered on our travels through the “unrequested public service” industry. I'd prefer if we did not question whether our definition of “profiles” has lesser merit than we'd like, but suffice to say there is a kind of huckster anxiousness to the man.

Now, I am going to do something a bit annoying to readers who prefer distance from an author's personal curiosity and — for the sake of argument only — go ahead and endorse Vine Deloria in the following way: he is no purposeful ally of the colonists that devastated the culture of his people. He is not a huckster I feel that I would dislike, though I've never met him. Instead, I feel that his questions and his persistence in them are evidence that he is a senser — not of the inane type. He is a bit tricky to “read” from more than his words.

In his oft-cited book God Is Red, Deloria cheekily explains a key cultural difference between European settlers (and their descendents) who have even known about the American continents for a scant handful of millenia at best and the “First Nations” or “Indian” people that are said to have lived there for many tens of thousands of years prior (not including those Asians which only arrived on the “Western” continents ten thousand years ago, and whose genes Europeans may mistakenly attribute to the ancestry of the much older civilizations, pending any better research that can always nullify any obsolete “facts”). The difference is somewhat summarized like this: “Near Eastern” peoples (Europeans) tend to use history as the main mode of their existence, whereas “Red” peoples tend to orient their cultures around a sense of place.

This hit home for me in a number of ways, but one of which was the realization that while the indigenous of my home region (“Minnesota”, for lack of a better term — the great Northern plains that glaciers recently retreated from, geologically speaking) tend to start their myths from vast experience, the colonialist culture of the imperial mindset tends to start their myths from a place of extremely mixed knowledge. Tens of thousands of years in a physical place, making observations from that place and drawing up theories and behaviors based on the constant awareness of where one is seems a bit less inane than a displaced, mobile experience of squabbling Europeans trying to justify their existence based on the various, spotty interpretations of history mixed with pure legend or lovely but silly fabrications fighting for dominance. You can try to compare the skirmishing tribes of North America to the warring constantly-displaced civilizations of Europe, but you will probably fail, because the comparison is not as apt as the stark difference. Europeans have been living under colonialism for as long as most of their (surviving) histories reach back in time. As such, they have had to wage war differently — systematically — and are more readily prone to genocidal tendencies. Colonialist phenomena of the North American continent were introduced mostly by Europeans in recent years (though various Native American tribes have been settling their own cultural differences as conceivably long as European tribes). Therefore, Native Americans or First Nations theories of the land and about themselves have developed more out of the senses — true experience — and are less inane than European theories and speculations.

In “Savage Anxieties: The Invention of Western Civilization”, author Robert A. Williams Jr. traces a contour of our civilization in its most problematic form for indigenous people. As a Native American (or “Indian” — a word that the indigenous to the American continents surely find some humor in, and partially because of the enigmatic picture it paints of European intelligence) Mr. Williams uses his own perspective to approach the study of the clash of civilizations that befell the American continents about six centuries ago.

He starts from the very place where European (Near East) legend and history meet, based on the epic poems of Homer and Odysseus. The separation of history from legend during this period (from roughly 1500 to 1300 B.C.(E.) or over 3 millenia ago) is the very debate that scholars of many world views try to determine. And if they find agreement, it is more over beautiful guesses than over the sparse facts we can make out from our present day.

Yet, when focusing more on those generally agreed facts, Mr. Williams points out that a kind of Greek myth emerges from the time period when the epic poems are said to have been written. In the poems, it is possible to read the subtext and the assumptions of the mythmakers of the time. In its most basic form, the stereotypes are:

• The noble savage, a naked being without agriculture or war, living without complex society, without complex relationships to other noble savages, being “chosen” by deities or by the world to exist in peace and tranquil simplicity in a golden age that is ended by an advanced contemporary force that is flawed but undeniable
• The epic hero, who shares some better qualities of the noble savage, but who is endlessly thankful for the imperial contemporary, flawed but undeniable, force; and who actively engages in the “untamed” wilderness to bring the noble savage the irrepressible civilization it is lacking

There are many ways in which this deadly dichotomy manifests in European culture. And Mr. Williams traces a history of the evolution from the savage as “dragon” or “wild cyclops” through its ostensible enjoyment as a rare but obsolete “native” nobility to its modern manifestations as an excuse for any empire to invade the “backwards” territories it wishes to claim for its own.

One such example that came to mind as I read Williams' work was the quintessentially American example of The Wizard of Oz series, which I'd had the privilege to read from (and be vaguely dissatisfied with) just before investigating the real world more deeply. The author of the books, Lyman Frank Baum, was a Scotch-German born into a faithful New York Christian household (“Methodist” if you are a collector of denominations) and actively praised the traditions of his time and his culture before expiring, appropriately enough, in Hollywood. He was known to regularly celebrate the State holidays with rigor and to show little compassion for those suffering under the genocidal expansion of the empire after the Civil War, which he experienced some part of at a young age. (At the time, the displacement had been tempered by President Ulysses Grant's less horrendous and overt program, using treaties and purchases, but the failure of that program is for another writing.) As a growing celebrity, Baum did not use his art to draw people's attentions to the calamity of war, but encouraged it by (rather bluntly) calling for the genocide to be completed once and for all. Even if we could attempt to suggest that Baum was riding on some particular awareness that his writings ineffectually rally colonists to commit genocide, it would be a truly disgusting “YouTube comment-section” worthy comment of his day:

The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings, and speak, in latter ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that Cooper loved to heroize.

In the movie of his first 'Oz' book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, we are treated to a fantastic dreamlike rendering of imperial expansion, as it might be experienced by the completely inane. The sense of home itself (“innocent Dorothy, country girl”) walks the plains (“yellow brick road”) encountering overpowered and mystical beings (“savages”, both nobly innocent like Munchkins and wickedly obtuse and monstrous like Flying Monkeys) finding in her innate goodness and fortune the power (“courage, wisdom and compassion”) to destroy the evil in the West (“wicked witch”) with help from a con artist (“wizard”) who understandably wishes the evil destroyed, because the con artist is actually good natured and shares much of her world view.

Compare this artwork to the more overt myth of Greek civilization, which felt compelled to excuse its colonialist expansion into other civilizations:

[from Savage Anxieties, Introduction, pp. 3-4]
Long before we possess the cognitive ability to decide whether this way of talking and thinking about others is rational or personally acceptable, a good number of ethnic and racial stereotypes [strongly 'engraved' mental images] and caricatured, clichéd images still prevalent in our society have become nearly ineradicable features of the way we see the world. Through this absorptive, insidious process, these identifying markers of strangeness and divergence from what we are used to seeing and experiencing become embedded as essential truths deep within the recesses of our developing cognitive worldview as we grow older and mature. Told and retold, repackaged and rebooted in innumerable stories, books, movies, video games, and other modes of expression, they become a kind of habitual response to certain events and chance encounters we have every day with those we regard as being different or strange.
[...]
[In] her groundbreaking research published in 1976, more than two decades after Brown v. Board of Education [... Phyllis] Katz tells the story of observing a three-year-old white child who, seeing a black infant for the first time, says to her mother, "Look, Mom, a baby maid."
[...]
Much as today's social science literature teaches, [...] stereotyping behavior toward foreigners was not something the Greeks thought much about. They called all foreigners "barbarians," without distinction. "Barbarian" was an onomatopoeic term that basically translated as "babblers." It was used generically to refer to people who could not speak the Greek language or who could not speak it very well.

[from Savage Anxieties, 'Homer and the Idea of the Savage', pp. 28-29]
Note how the Odyssey's warrior-hero-meets-and-defeats-the-drunken-savage tale is similar in form and tone to the drunken-savage story of the Centauromachy. [...] According to the Homeric scheme of moral values reflected in the epics, the warrior-hero earns his immortal fame and honor by justly punishing the savage's violation of a superior civilization's higher law by getting him drunk and then disabling him for life, setting an example for the West in its treatment of indigenous tribal peoples for the next three thousand years.
[...]
That only great mythic warrior-heroes like Odysseus, Theseus, or Herakles had the arête to take on such monstrous beings could not help but make this dark-sided version of the savage all the more threatening and anxiety-producing for the Greeks as they carried their Homer with them on their colonizing voyages to distant lands inhabited by strange and alien, primitive tribal peoples.

[from Savage Anxieties, 'The Legend of the Golden Age ...', pp. 32-35]
The Greeks of the Renaissance centuries were in fact developing into what Professor Perry Anderson has called the Western world's first "inherently colonial" form of civilization.[1] Focused on acquiring new territories and lands for settlement of excess populations and expanding their trading networks, the Greeks set up scores of new colonies throughout the Mediterranean world.
[...]
At the time of the appearance in writing of Homer's poems, the ruling elites who claimed these ancient rights of hereditary succession still largely controlled the petty kingdoms and baronies that dotted the mainland and Peleponnese. These dynastic family groups [My bolds -hp] were typically the primary sponsors and advocates for overseas colonization, seeing it as a convenient device for ridding the kingdom of excess population and troublemakers.
[...]
In this dynamic and highly unstable system of independent, expansion-minded Greek trading settlements, successful colonizing ventures begat the need and desire for new colonizing endeavors. As people were drawn to the most prosperous towns and trading centers, new pressures were imposed on the limited agricultural land base outside the city walls. When the Greeks could no longer feed themselves in their city-states, they went out and founded new ones, in foreign, distant lands.
[...]
The wealthy noble families were able to preserve their country estates outside the city walls by arranged marriages and favorable laws designed for the privileged classes. Such laws carefully regulated inheritance, heiresses, and dowry, and helped maintain the wealth and influence of the family dynasties. But the poorer families with too many sons or undowried daughters were forced to subdivide their plots into smaller and smaller units, inadequate for efficient farming. Eventually, the land-hungry elites would gobble up and reconsolidate these unsustainable family plots through mounting debt, foreclosures and abandonment. The poor peasants would be evicted from the land, and they would migrate into the city or be told to sail off to some distant overseas colony.
[...]
This noble class of robber barons and marauding warlords picked up plunder, tribute, and slaves along the way as integral parts of the colonizing enterprise. As many as fifteen hundred Greek settlements were established during this second great age of the Greek civilization.
[...]
It was a highly successful model for the ruling families and elites who received the great bulk of the economic and social benefits of Greek colonial expansion during the Renaissance. For this group, Homer's tales of aristrocratic warrior-heroes advancing civilization's higher law along with the benefits of trade and commerce to distant, savage lands was a lived reality. Or so they liked to imagine.

The third The Wizard of Oz movie (in fact, the most famous one with Judy Garland was the third time Hollywood was captivated by Baum's vision of America) brings us from the boring world of grayscale 'reality' to a fantastic and visually stunning world of colorful fantasy, further emphasizing the beauty of the lie. Directed by the stunningly pro-Nazi anti-British Victor Lonzo Fleming but produced by the Jewish Mervyn LeRoy, it might just be a classic example of troubled world ethnicities getting along over a generic lie (the superiority of Near East civilizations) while dodging more uncomfortable truths.

Dipping into the history of Hollywood and its military connections is just about all the education you could ever need about how and why the industry exists in its present form today and/or why liberal values are allowed to flourish beneath and contrary to its unchallenged (until September Clues) military uses. The movie company MGM had been founded by a Jewish-Lithuanian-American, Levi Shubert, who had overcome and resisted the more diverse “Theatrical Syndicate” that monopolized control of the entertainment industry for the better part of the turn of the 20th century. However, the Jewish control didn't stop at overturning the monopoly (which had been comprised of a mix of Jewish and non-Jewish barons in the first place). After the Syndicate saw Jewish competition in the Shuberts, Charles Frohman of the Syndicate is said to have died on the RMS Lusitania — another World War era PsyOp worthy of CluesForum investigations! Meanwhile “Samuel Frederic Nirdlinger (born Sam Nixon)” and “John Frederick Zimmerman” of the same Syndicate, at least one of which was of German-Jewish heritage, bear an uncanny resemblance to one another. Did one “real” member invent the other? This carnival of control may reveal why so many artists, actors and even directors working in Hollywood have resented (and still resent) Jewish influence in the media from the very foundation of its beginnings. The producers have typically been of vaguely Jewish, German and German-Jewish descent, even since the 1800's.

Jewish immigrant Marcus Loew saved both Shubert's company and the struggling picture company of Samuel Goldwyn (Szmuel Gelbfisz a.k.a. “Goldfish” — alluded to by the 9|11 propaganda movie's production company “Goldfish Pictures”) and brought them together to form the MGM company. Those that weren't Jewish or Germans, in this picture of turn-of-the-century filmmaking, were often high ranking Masons or served in U.S. military (sometimes specifically for military purposes) if not all of the above.

We can imagine what the “beautiful lie” that this odd mixture could agree on to cover the “ugly facts”. It would have to do with Jewish sanctity, U.S. military sanctity and superiority, Anglo superiority, and illicit at every available opportunity the inferiority (but nobility) of the savage — which henceforth would be all sorts of people with dark skin and/or indigenous systems that did not embrace the Jewish-U.S. military-U.K. Anglo task force of expanding its imperial claims of foreign cultures, foreign lands and foreign mindsets.

Meanwhile, the less collaborative in each group of inane players would develop its own goals. The Jewish groups would try to psychologically strongarm the U.S. and U.K. for use of their military (which it achieved with mutually beneficial actions taken during World War I, communist revolutions and World War II, the embodiment of Israel and so on), as well as attempting to deny alliance with U.S.-U.K. military actions against Ireland, China, Germany, Japan, Italy, various Spanish imperial ambitions, South American nations, various Middle Eastern nations and other groups stubbornly resistant to change or in competition with the Hollywood alliance of inanity.

The U.S. military force, though not Jewish, would employ Jews and use their style of propaganda in order to continually make them subservient and obedient to the arrangement. The U.S. would continue to use the idealistic morals of its founding fathers (in fact, taken from the Iriquois Confederacy that had been organized by Native Americans before the Near East invasion) to lure supporters for its own imperial way of life. It would continue expansion beyond the Western borders of the North American continent and begin claims on islands as far as Hawaii and Marshall and the South Pacific.

Meanwhile, the U.K. would casually support these efforts with the sense that its Anglo empire heritage was being preserved — militarily, psychologically, royally — while feigning disinterest, and without re-examining or reconciling its initial crimes in enacting the imperial expansion program on countries around the world. It would act as willful “intelligence” for the imperial apparatus, expanding and inflating spying on its own citizens to dramatic new “Big Brother” levels. The London Masons benefit from the right to practice their meetings and exert control from the position of “freedom” rather than owning up to its true nature as a despicably surreptitious colonialism. After all, if the U.S. and Jewish tribe, along with the U.K. and fraternal orders around the world can benefit from a myth, why not explore it in enclosed rooms, free from the revelations of actual senses?

The question of whether or not they do actually believe what they tell is a bit moot. Not having connections to the creation of the myth does not make us safe from its dangers and the terrible risk that collaborators and believers take by adopting it. They might hurt their brothers and sisters and allies in this world by constantly believing the stereotypes of inane art, but as you will see, it is presently difficult for us to escape the “super myths” that make up the world drama we are encountering.

A convincing and compelling drama can be comprised of just three roles: the victim (or persecuted), the rescuer (or hero) and the villain (or monster). This “drama triangle” is especially compelling because human behaviors tend to have predefined actions fitting with one's world view. A grand drama will have sub-versions of these three roles within each major role, as well, which allows for some minor movement within while preserving the over-arching mythos. I believe we can notice at least three dramas being played out in the following “super drama” that has captured our imagination and limited our observations.

The Noble Savage
AS VICTIM : It is a dramatic fact that indigenous people have been destroyed, displaced and damaged by the experimental, artificial culture of the State. It can be dangerous to constantly say they have been victimized when the truth may be more subtle; for example, they are often survivors under colonialist States, which stand strong in comparison to the displaced people who rely on artificial State-created forms of identity.

AS HERO : For empathic people, the Nobility of the “primitive” man traps us in a feeling that a Savage wild untamed people can “rise up”, overcome the “evils” of a “corrupt” civilization and restore our world to a technology-free Golden Age or some variation thereof.

AS PERSECUTOR : We should be very familiar with this one, since the world was unfortunately exposed to inane “Western” pictures of Indians nonsensically “circling the wagons”, whooping and firing arrows at the innocent allies of vast cultural genocides.

The State
AS VICTIM : Typically seen as persecuted by the Noble Savage, or others who refuse to benefit from State penitentiaries and laws. 9/11 was a major drama of the State, first taking on the role of “hapless victim” of attacks by the Savage.

AS HERO : On 9/11, of course, we saw the ways in which the State transmogrified from a Victim into a Hero, and CluesForum researchers are aware (sometimes painfully aware) just how that fake “hero” drama was explained. For many people, however, it is not a myth; it is a fact that America and its allies will “destroy corruption” and “save the world” from horrible brown people in the Middle East.

AS PERSECUTOR : In the mythology of this essay, I have a hard time escaping the idea that the State is playing a villain role. But, is it? There has been a tenuous peace created by forcing various ethnicities to cooperate. In any case, it is a position that many Statists happily take because it also implies their might and power.

The Golden Age
AS VICTIM : We should all be pretty familiar with this one. The Golden Age was an ideal time that existed before our stereotypes, where everything was wonderful and nothing bad ever happened. The Golden Age is a victim of either “time” (sometimes played by the contemporary State) or “humanity” (sometimes played by a universal corruption, as espoused by Catholics for example). It may also be a potential future or even present that is undergoing too much change.

AS HERO : Again, a very familiar archetype — sometimes, nature itself is the super hero, persecuted by all evil humans (Noble Savages or Citizens of a Police State alike) and other times it was a particular time and place where the ethnicity of the myth's author once saw the so-called peak of its civilization. Cults often worship a past and future version, in the form of “cycles” that will come around (always soon, of course) and supplant the present “Dark Age”.

AS PERSECUTOR : Not exactly well understood, but for many skeptical people among Libertarians, Anarchists, extreme conservatives or others, the “Golden Age” may also have a kind of dark side — be it “unevolved”, the source of evil itself (see: the Bible) or some other problematic quality that leads to the other dramas. It may also be a “future Golden Age” that comes at too high a price.

I personally find myself repulsed by the concept of a “Noble Savage” even though I grew up inundated with its myths and variations. I must be still subconsciously convinced by “the State” because of that myth's ability to convince men to take arms against those who disbelieve it. I don't think I am too terribly focused on a past “Golden Age” but the whole premise of my essay looks to a vision of a future that is free of Statist, technofascist wars, which may be an inevitability that I am unprepared to acknowledge. If you've noticed your own ways of seeing these types of myths play out, or you've noticed yourself change from one kind of sub-drama to another under the “super drama” described, is there a way to get away from these myths? I think it has to do with changing consciousness of various eras of human societies.

If we eliminated these stereotypes and replaced with less inane descriptions of reality: a strong, surviving indigenous population living as third-class citizens and freedom fighters under imperial rule in lieu of “the savage”; an out-of-control unofficial NGO corporate alliance between USA-UK-Israel interests, in some loose competition with German, Russian, Chinese and some other versions in lieu of “the unstoppable mega State”; all collaborating for a global money system that naively attempts to unite every value system under a single charter connected to the way in which we define, create and use money; an optimism balanced with pragmatism in lieu of “The Golden Age” — might we really be better off? If it is less inane and more accurate, then I think we might.

[hoi.polloi]

3. The Historical Precedent of Today's Clash of Civilizations

Richard Kotlarz is a money expert trained at the Monetary Institute, with a background in Steinian Athnroposophy. I have encountered, interviewed and conversed with Richard in both activist and personal contexts and though we have some departures in our own world views, I find him to warrant the great attention paid to him by various persons in contemporary money discussions. In a draft of an open, anti-war letter entitled, “The Iraq War & The Rest of the American Revolution” (November, 2014), given to me by the author for review, he spends over 100 pages summarizing the state of money in order to get around to his argument about why a modern day clash of civilizations in the Middle East is so very misguided.

Richard writes frequently on a hypothesis that the particular and specific control and use of money has the potential to not only change the dynamics of our civilization but is the very source of the multitudinous scams and wars we are forced to face as a species; I suspect the consequence of which may be the transformation of a great number of creative, bright world-sensers into uselessly fear-ridden, inane people overwhelmed by the problems of survival that these wars, scams and disturbances provoke.

Clues about the conclusion of his theory can be found throughout the entire piece, which is patiently structured as one structures an argument meant to change the practices of civilization itself. And he suggests, like many creative people do, that taking in only the entire thing can be useful. I do suggest that people concerned about today's world at least read the entirety of some sample of Richard Kotlarz's works. However, particular passages segue well into a larger point I would like to make in this section of my essay.

A division of “good” practices — proven by the various glories and technological developments of a given civilization — from the “bad” practices of money, can be found in these passages.

Mr. Kotlarz writes, on page 9,

There is a recurring historical cycle rooted in a perverse practice of money that can be illustrated by going back to ancient Iraq, otherwise known as Babylon. The priests of Baal controlled not only the religious observances, but also the monetary system. They would readily issue enough credit to the farmers in the spring to plant their crops, but through the charging of “interest” on their loans they would also insure that come harvest time (however copious or sparse the harvest), there would not be enough money in circulation in the aggregate to retire all the debt incurred during the planting season. Some farmers would do better than others, of course, but it was a mathematical certainty that a portion of them would have to come back hat-in-hand to the priests and ask for a loan to tide them over … [such that] those who were productive eventually lost everything and became indentured servants to the priests who produced nothing, and their civilization collapsed.

This pattern is not exceptional. As stated in the Acres, U.S.A. newspaper, a major alternative economics forum:
”This business of borrowing money into circulation, then withholding more money creation to make payment and debt service impossible, haunted Persia, cursed Greece and Rome, annihilated the defense of Carthage, and presided over death and wars between Deuteronomy and the even of the 1948 presidential election.”

… Between approximately 1500 and 1000 BC the monetary practice of the Mediterranean societies evolved from a cattle-based to a gold-by-weight standard. This was facilitated by that fact that there were great temple cults that possessed gold hoards large enough to control the value of yellow metal. They, in turn, became effectively the bankers of the era (which explains why banks and bankers' houses have traditionally imitated the pillared architectural style of ancient temples). With the secular control of money to augment their divinely appointed status as the representatives of the gods, these temples wielded a pervasive influence over all facets of society.

After explaining historical instances of money's “theory of evolution” (first, in the gold-by-weight standard; second, in separation of Church and State in Greek wars of attrition between currencies of the civil authorities and currencies of the internationally-minded temple cults; third, in the 8th century BC with Lycurgus creating a fiat currency separated from precious metals; and so on) we reach the story of Athens in 600 BC.

In a reform campaign, largely aimed at revitalizing a kind of Greek citizenship, the ruler Solon simply eliminated debt and returned land and sovereignty to those who lost it (or even had become slaves) in debt contracts. Then, as a conciliatory move against the dangers of metal-based currency, coinage was adopted in which the material of the coin was of less value than the stamp. Using fiat currency, established by law, Kotlarz argues that Athens rose to its zenith “as a civilization”.

Over the course of the introduction to money's bizarre history, Richard continues to develop his argument closer to the concept of a development of civilization tied to the treatment of money. It gradually grows into view that cultures which greatly succeeded in cultural, artistic, scientific and ostensibly spiritual “maturation” did so with the help of a currency enacted by some secular law (be it democratic or the will of a great leader), made of near worthless materials so freed from the bond to “real value” (and therefore freed of the natural differences in values between various schools/temples/cults/nations/realms of thought), attached to a legal framework with a legally ruled value system (enforced by a sort of police State), and the ban of usury (charges of interest upon itself, which undermines the faith in the law).

Mr. Kotlarz warns on the deliberate attachment of value and/or avarice to gold in the decline of successful States, even as large as ancient Rome (Open Letter, page 14) :

After having himself deified at the Temple of Jupiter Amon in Libya he [Pontifex Maximus ne Julius Caesar (100-44BC)] returned to Rome … as a “god”. [...] The Empire officially converted to a gold standard in 45 BC and the gold/silver ratio was decreed to be 12-to-1 … a legal formula that remained in force until the fall of Constantinople in 1204 AD.

As soon as gold had been established as the basis for Roman money, Rome's money supply began draining away to the orient. This was driven by a number of factors, including the importation of luxury goods, religious tithes sent to Jerusalem, and the usury charges on loans from Middle East lenders.

The most relentless force behind the phenomenon, however, was a “secret” that was protected from public scrutiny. Julius Caesar had fixed the gold/silver ratio for the empire by decree at 12-to-1, but in the orient, for reasons not wholly understood, it had long been pegged at about 6 or 7-to-1. This meant that a trader from one market could buy goods with whatever metal currency was cheaper, and sell them in the other in exchange for coinage that was worth roughly twice as much. This was in addition to his normal profit [from the metal exchange itself]. For trade that met in the middle, the ample spread could be split. Brokers in the Middle East could pocket huge fortunes by exploiting the differential.

The so-called “Dark Ages” that followed after Byzantium established its religious authority over the “West” may have actually been — aside from plagues and general cultural stagnation (supposedly in the form of various shamanisms, cults and “retreats” to pagan beliefs) — a fairly stable place to live under a vassal or gang, while Muslim populations grew in might and maturity.
However, this time is shrouded by the victors of later civilizations, and our understanding may forever be cursed by the story of the “yellow metal that drives white people crazy”. I personally suspect that much lost information about this time (perhaps recorded but perhaps omitted by the fanatical monks credited with “preserving” civilization) might have given us precious understandings of lifestyles during this time to teach us about navigating anarchistic life. On the other hand, it may be true that “culture” more or less abandoned the old Western Empire for flourishing Islam. It seems a slightly superstitious understanding of what is or is not considered true culture.

What we can tie together is that one fanatical group interested in chasing after the dream of the Golden Age was a certain Knights Templar, who made a kind of early “wire transfer”, which Richard explains as:

a pilgrim could deposit his funds with the Templars back home, and reclaim them at a Templar agency when they arrived in the Holy Land, thereby protecting him and his money from the hazards of robbery en route.

The infamous destruction (and wholesale slaughter) of the Templars' banking system on Friday 13th, October of 1307, ostensibly inspired survivors of this banking “technology” to flee to Scotland, where Scottish Freemasonry might have settled — only to reemerge as significant players in the Magna Carta, and various revolutions against “Holy” banking institutions. This would result in French and American revolutions.

Meanwhile, as Muslims protected a kind of alchemical “gold” (perhaps nothing more than the transference of human values from one physical thing to another more ephemeral thing), Venice grew as a merchant capital that could house negotiations between the civilizations. Jews as gold-shapers and jewelers could attempt their own more “primitive” banking system based on reliance on moneylending through certificates of the gold they regularly handled. The Venetians would be instrumental drivers of the Crusades — as attempts to bloodily conquer the “Eastern” world continued fighting the latest form of empire. The British arose out of some serious combat over their islands between wave after wave of invaders, rulers and plebs, continually honing their own layered history of tragedy and lost indigeneity. In a big bid for a world order that favored them, the “they” of the second AD millenium would form instrumental new banking systems in London, impose bloodily-enforced colonial order on anything their navy would touch, and attempt a toehold in the Middle East with their creation of the terrorist State of “Israel”. As Kotlarz comments,

The present military foray into Iraq and Afghanistan is only the latest chapter in the ongoing litany.

All because of different value systems, imposed by combating legal frameworks — and constantly undermined by a tendency for people to “revert” to damaged, colonized societies that could not survive a money-less state, because it had lost its own self-knowledge in the skirmishes of its past.

As a result of the constant striving for the Golden Age, the desperate belief that cultural maturity was in a single inaccessible State far away, the people filled with genetic and cultural memories of abuse, hate, slavery and displacement sought money as a solution for their ills. Perhaps things that might have been solutions — things like barter systems, “energy anatomies” (as studied by African, Native American, Chinese and Indian civilizations to name just a few long-lasting cousin ethnicities) and access to dietary options — could not be due to artificial scarcity caused by various ineffectual leaders striving for former glory. Perhaps stuck in “scarcity”, there could only be a society where taxes are enforced rather than being unnecessary supplements to a fair social order, where taxes are created and protected by violence. Perhaps the desperation of Europe is so deeply seeded in a past we only dream about in jumbled fantasy, that its people are still suffering the effects today.

[hoi.polloi]

4. The Benefits of Propaganda and the Struggle of the Artist

Countless cultures are guilty of having their own enchantment with and endorsements of the myths created by the colonialist phenomenon. Hungary had recently been an example of imperial colonialism, even as German-Jewish Hollywood was forming as a counterpoint. Spain too, as it made, imported and exported slaves with the worst of them. Things have not been very pretty since the Greek and Persian tribes battled over the subject of colonialist expansion in Persian territory. The Romans displaced the Celts who displaced the descendants of Beakers who displaced the original tribes who displaced the first indigenous people of the British Islands, who themselves may have fled there because of wars on the mainland.

It seems that every where you turn, an indigenous group has been attacked by a nearby tribe or a colonialist State, constantly confusing the question of indigenousness. Especially in Europe, the question and trouble of it has become so lost, that imperial destruction of all indigenous people — in the form of expanding globalism — is talked about as an inevitability rather than a symptom of a sickness we are collectively curing.

The trouble of maintaining peace for a long period of time in Europe has been overturned by so many invasions and counter-invasions and claims of “right” or “wrong” because of the deliberate confusion of history by nefarious forces, that the importance of discussing it has been supplanted entirely by the television's responsibility in preventing it being discussed. Discussing the wrongs, peacefully, if awkwardly at first, may be the only way to make a non-imperial peace viable in Europe, and inspire Anglo colonies like Israel, Australia, South Africa and even the United States to reconciling differences with original inhabitants. We might all benefit from getting in touch with each so-called State's citizens' own indigenousness.

The danger, I think, of doing that online, is about as clear as the effectiveness of YouTube or Facebook at resolving deep interpersonal conflicts. That is to say, it is more likely that we will start problems with huge misunderstandings and differences of opinion online until we learn to use these tools without conjuring inner insanity and feelings of scarcity. It would be best for each group that truly wants to free itself of the grasp of the imperial State to come to its true senses, awaken to real life, and arrange real agreements with nearby groups about how to “disarm” States as rapidly as possible, all while keeping an eye on the most powerful States at the time and constantly attempting to gain cooperation with them.

It won't be that easy. We've had so little practice under all the empires we've faced, many cultures have developed a victim-focused core and some of our only training in peace talks have come from the fake negotiations between disingenuous “ambassadors” on wide broadcast public display. We need to send in and meet with people who are actually empathic rather than those who pretend to be. We need to send in the best representatives of our culture rather than the most inane. We must strive to earn true, worthy and well placed trust from our neighbors rather than a forced arrangement to mutually benefit from the rape and destruction of others. We must work to mutually “disarm” our cultures, but not by force or before we feel safe in doing so. We must build a genuine and real safety rather than a technofascist imposition of such, controlled by a super State that willfully treads through sovereign and indigenous people bearing the false name of “peace”. And it starts with people in The United States, Russia, Israel, England, Australia, China, Japan and others that have recently been the most active in “globalizing” (destroying) other cultures. Those of us living under these governments should do our best to reach out to our neighbor and talk about ways we can build real trust between real people instead of an inane trust between fake leaders. We must also look very deeply at each other and ourselves, with love and forgiveness, without resorting to a pride based solely on the feeling of “superiority” that characterizes the traumatized races.

I understand that this is a certainly naïve position, given the lessons of history and how absurdly people destroy the hard work of national trust over common, timeless disagreements. But if we don't try, our option is to continue living under the propaganda that best dominates our imagination with excuses of why we don't.

This brings us to the subject of artists — creative types of all kinds, be it musically, linguistically, kinetically, visually, even untraditionally, compassionately and/or virtually any other way that humans have expressed their existence in a naturally gifted way — with compulsion to create. Our artists have various ways of answering the questions they pose to themselves when they are conscious of their own drive: Why must I create? What must I create? How can I create it? Who will experience it?

Some of these questions naturally develop answers over time, simply by the artist gaining feedback from audiences both critical and receptive to the work. Some of the answers remain ambiguous for long periods of time, and some of the answers elude the artist and drive them to depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. People that have not experienced any negative consequences of their wonderful talent do not understand that artists can have special needs, which constantly demand of the artist particular values as seemingly essential to their life as eating, breathing or sleeping.

As we have explored in the last section, we have created money as a buffer against, result of and solution to cultural trauma. Money is defined by values promoted by laws or agreements, which people abide for the purposes of survival. The values can either be controlled arbitrarily (even by a church or State or other social force that has no business in dictating universal values) or democratically according to natural discussions and arrangements of the people utilizing the currency.

But because artists have vulnerabilities to value systems they cannot or must abide, they are especially critical in determining a society's behavior. An artist can be bribed on some level if they believe that their needs are satisfied, and an artistic proclivity does not preclude psychopathy from their character. An artist who is desperate may (unconsciously or not) notice their value or sense of importance, and attach special meaning to the values whose source they cannot identify — and this may even distract them from their own measure of empathic connection to other beings. The classic comparison between “artist” and “crazed lunatic” may be apt for most people because the needs of the artists are as obscure (if not as frightening) as the whim of someone who cannot relate to the average person when acting out.

Artists are not just crazy, even if some are, and their purpose can even be observed and measured in the cultural impact of their work. Perhaps one “value” I cannot help but have as an artist and thinker is to feel that much of the “Golden Age” phenomenon can be attributed to people longing for a deeper connection to the art — or mythmaking process — in their society. It is a longing to not just be the hero in one's own story, but to be recognized as such, which validates the feeling. It is also possible from my perspective, based on this point, that much of the “culture” we praise as the hallmark of a “successful” or “mature” civilization has to do with the depth of connection between the myth of the culture and the people's investment in that myth.

We might think that we can cheat this system by choosing to believe in a dominant myth, but it does not escape the role that artists play in the creation of that myth. And depending on the artists in the feedback loop that charges the myth, the myth will take on different shapes. So it might be that if the myth is dissatisfying to the people, the wrong artists are being used to describe their culture. Are we being trained to be psychopathic, traumatized, bitter and otherwise kept in an ineffective paradigm because it has been the profitable motive for a small cadre for hundreds of years, thousands of years, or more?

We as artists must demand of ourselves integrity but also accept the indications of the character of the myth which grips the people. If people connect to the stories provided to them, en masse appropriate to the population in question, it could be that this particular nation “deserves” the myth it is processing as “real” — however faulty. Luckily, it seems we are finding that an increasing number of people are not happy with the myth being sponsored by the believers in our present money myth; more people deeply intuit that we must reconnect with our cultural heritage, process the sufferings and mistakes of the past to learn from them rather than to repeat or mirror them, and in so doing perhaps reconsider the entire process of “civilization building” with the old tools of conquering, suppressing and enviously destroying proud cultures that have what we are feeling too much of our legacy to overcome.

The good thing is that we do not have to, as artists, completely overthrow the entire thing — even though that has been our desperate method of drawing attention to the larger problem we haven't been able to grasp — and we can celebrate and choose which values feel the most “correct” to our particular values. And as we do so, the self-redundant “value” of money worship (or even its most dangerous zealous forms — usury and slavery), may even be reformed. But in order to get there, we must face our feelings and adjust to new understandings so that we can be our own heroes, and the only victims or monsters necessary to complete the new myth remain in the realm of our practices of keeping both at bay.

For nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples who invade and settle territories like the Huns, Tartars or the Chinese Hans, their military strength might have been built upon aspects of nomadism, but the philosophy of destroying occupants had to come from the myth of their culture. Peaceful nomadic cultures are weaved through time (and around the backwaters of empires) for as long as people have made makeshift shelters. For less nomadic peoples, who have developed a tradition (if not always had one) of settlements, agriculture and institutions to protect them, military strength has come from clever use of importing and exporting habits to build a defense stronger than the original land provided. The Japanese, the Crusaders and other politico-religious movements, the Nazis (and ironically or not the Zionists) had a method of simply forcing roots into an area based on a historical precedent, digging in ones heels and then subsequently invading one sovereign nation after another in the name of “self defense”, where simply staying put and sorting out their civilization's shortcomings in may do. All of the cases I have cited just now have to do with our most recent understandings of the mysterious story of human history. There is scant evidence to suggest we have ever been a totally peaceful species, immediately content, except for the fact that between ugly wars, there are long, extended, beautiful periods for various civilizations that can last even hundreds of years without outside disturbances. What goes on during that time? What do realities from such times look like, if we had to choose a close proxy from the meriad of available myths available to us? Could all stories, at some point, have experienced both success and failure — times of brutal occupancy and times of reliability? Propaganda, at its core, is a storytelling method meant to communicate to a broad population a hero drama; at times, one that self-elected guardians mean to self-perpetuate through the minds of the hoi polloi and protect from change by artists more in tune with realities. And indeed, at times, it is wise to criticize insensitive and inane artists from dominating the story.

We shift like bumper cars that can get tangled in gridlocks, smashed by pressures and upended in confusion, rather than a well coordinated, sensed, anticipated and honestly communicated discussion of needs as loving communication can do so well. I suspect, though I don't know, that the reason we have not been able to escape our dilemma is because the “common sense” of various ethnicities (not just the Europeans) has been damaged by the dilemma itself. Stuck as we are in a sort of anthropological “fight or flight mentality”, occasionally uprooted from our original soils, thrusting ourselves into nomadism despite generations of longing for homelands, forcing ourselves to settle when we most want to travel and find a stronger connection to the Earth, the attempts at solutions have been misguided and incomplete.

We mistake the need for clear, patient communication that resembles loving communication, as a trite and New Agey demand for everyone to “love” each other on indistinct terms. Instead, we might consider the idea that what is really being called for is patient attempts to understand each other. And the more we dodge this because of the really challenging problem of employing sympathy (or even pretended sympathy by war-minded psychopaths where empathy is necessary) the more we lose our responsibility for communication to a lazy brutality.

We think our leaders, when showing a form of close communication or even love for each other, automatically communicate our own needs. But democracy doesn't just happen like a “fire and forget” missile you can launch at disagreements. A leader of one people helps their people truly understand the situation and the position of the leaders of other peoples.

We continually think that wise warnings from genocidal racists like Thomas Jefferson (who owned hundreds of slaves and led the destruction of numerous civilizations across the North American continent) must somehow forgive his flaws or lead us to his particular solutions to the problems he identified. Instead, we could have used his advice to identify the problems, but recognizing his inability to translate the needs of the local nations seek knowledge from the far-sighted artists and mythmakers of the time, who would undoubtedly be a bridge between the transplants and the indigenous to the area.

We are scared of criticizing leaders because we have a cultural problem akin to the squabbling Orcs of Tolkien's writings, who represented to Tolkien a kind of “fallen state” of man deeper than the noble race of man that fought the Orcs: we are too eager to replace leaders that make mistakes, or help leaders in their difficult position. We see leadership as something that everyone wants and needs to do, which we can either steal by childlike presumption, even if possessing no qualities of actual leadership, or we search for a flawless kind of “godhead”-type leader that needs no advice or advisors, who cannot be modified but must simply be perfectly minted at the time of discovery — preferably pointed out to us by a beam of light from the heavens and a booming voice saying, “This person will lead you.” We are too eager in leadership positions to humble ourselves to the role, because there is a pervasive sickness, a kind of power-madness, that plagues the corners of our vision. We strike each other down, challenge each other for roles and fail to identify strengths in search of perfection. {Please do not take any reference to Tolkien as an endorsement of any problematic aspects of Tolkien or his writings — it is meant as a common cultural reference for avid readers and/or linguists, and is shared by pop-culture due to the various movies made of his work.}

Perfection is viewed as the antithesis to our failures in battle, in culture and in knowledge, for example the knowledge to get to know a piece of land and work for it and with it, rather than “subduing” it as one would an enemy. Thus, the drive for “perfection” actually transforms our behavior, however well-intended, into one resembling a lone, starving animal kicked from its herd and struggling on its own — even when the “dog eat dog” society is something we have the power to reexamine.

Our “common sense” is a kind of impatience with the constant communication necessary to maintain peace. It comes with assumptions with words like, “Well, they should just know by now ...” and “Why does Z do this? We don't have this problem with Q. Z and Q must be the same, or Q is inferior.”

So, since our “common sense” is hijacked by a lack of good leadership — a leadership that could clearly avoid needless wars as a good leader empathetic with their own people should do — and we are too afraid of deposing them or demanding things of them, our default replacement for good “common sense” is a collective anxiety that manifests in all other ways.

For those of you that haven't figured out I am speaking of the beauties of anarchy — or “no ruler” — you should know that I don't believe anarchy means there are no leaders. Instead, anarchy is about looking at, appreciating, understanding and seeking the various leadership qualities in everyone; a non-utopian sense of humor about the difficulty of that really helps in the actual practice of doing it. We love discussing flaws in others, and even judging sexual character (desirability, potency and other human magnetisms) in terms of their flaws. Yet we don't judge a positive character by much more than mass acceptance. Why is this? We could be as practical in our discussion habits about achievements of our society if we lost our fear of criticizing authority, and our authorities lost their fear of brusquely admitting mistakes and changing according to our critique. The success of a politician shouldn't be determined by bullheaded unchanging beliefs but by the manner in which they manage to filter the voices of stagnant advisors all around them into advices to fulfill the will of the people they ostensibly represent. Running through town and shaking hands shouldn't be the end of a campaign, but the beginning of constant visits with average people where grievances can be heard.

The striving and expectation for divine status in our leaders and ourselves in lieu of actually seeing adequate qualities and encouraging them, is a methodology driven by panic. It is a fear of “extinction” that causes our eyes to dart furtively and anxiously for a leader that will prevent the changes of our nations' fates. The fear of change in leadership also drives us to withdraw and pray for divine intervention — which may come in the form of nature's grants to a people the power that matches their will to strive — not for perfection or a disgust in nature, but for the best solution to all human issues: human solutions.

[hoi.polloi]

5. The Art of Inventing History

During the great dramas in Ancient Greece before the first AD millenium, as each “hoard” struggled for significance in the rich fertile crescent after the passing of Alexander the Great, the Middle Eastern systems must have been attractive to the largely Orthodox culture of the Greeks, existing in a sort of Byzantine shadow not quite unbound from the so-called problems of Europe. It is also no wonder then, that the Greeks should want a population as militarily strong as the Persians, as educated and so forth. Greco-Persian wars recorded by the “father of history” Herodotus could be interpreted as anything from creative fiction to “even-handed documentation”. The first paragraph in Wikipedia's entry on Herodotus' first Historiography says it:

is the study of the methodology of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians have studied that topic using particular sources, techniques, and theoretical approaches. Scholars discuss historiography by topic — the "historiography of the British Empire", the "historiography of early Islam", the "historiography of China — and different approaches and genres, such as political history and social history. Beginning in the nineteenth century, with the ascent of academic history, there developed a body of historiographic literature. The extent to which historians are influenced by their own groups and loyalties — such as to their nation state — is a debated question.

That “debated question” tacked onto the end of the description is indeed the crux of the entire theory of why we should or should not trust this method of recording history. As ambitious an Art as it is, we live in a system that automatically assumes the writings are a sort of first “real” history, discounting and condemning the oral histories of various other ethnicities to the oblivion void of past's great murky fog.

What is it, exactly, about Herodotus' writings that made them so compelling? And can the style be said to have been “in vogue” with various nations, as their “oldest histories” too come in around the first millenium BC? Specifically, the middle of it — 700 BC to 500 BC or thereabouts, with Buddhist writings closer to the turn of the millenium coming in at a late 5th century BC. The oldest “known” history (self-reflexively according to history itself) is from China around that time. The Old Testament emerged from the Greco-Persian timespace of the same era, when its discussions about Israel and mystical teachings of Egypt were compressed into the text-designed-to-inspire-religious-servitude known as the bible. It could be, and this is merely speculation and not meant to be upsetting to anyone with a religious belief, that the entire fiction known as “history” became born under the concept of something like: a reasonable facsimile of events, in word form, by a single author or number of authors working in tandem (though the inane comment would be a roll of the eyes and an abortive blurting of the word “Conspiracy!”), for the purposes of gaining hold of a people's mind in a more authoritative way than oral tradition can achieve.

Back before Orthodoxy, with temple cults to various Gods fulfilling their own social order in a character drama (Was it a pick-your-lifestyle and pick-your-God sort of situation?) there was a kind of unity. But how much stronger would that unity be if a single society could not only control a soap opera of deities but write that soap opera down in text form, so that everyone could learn it in exactly the same manner, word by word? Could something dry and repetitive be forced into people's heads, as a means of making all people absorb the same information — more or less uniformly? Could this lead to a single money? Monotheism, even in the background of a military-style education, is an incredibly powerful money-theism.

Learning by rote — that is to say, learning through strict repetitive mantra, readings and lesson plans — as a temple service, may teach the “call” of the crowd and the “answer” of an expert — without any need for true curiosity to take hold. This point may be lost on people who do not show curiosity about the world and I must interject here and point to my own and name it. The next few paragraphs are my attempt to do so.

Why should we be curious about a world that is filled with misleading information, information that can lead to death, which we fear and which we have immensely strong biological responses to? “Curiosity killed the cat” seems to be the mantra of the chip on our species' collective shoulders. What this attitude fails to recognize is that we are entering the world by being in it. Our bodies quite literally behave as though their goal is to have curiosity, collect information and then use it as a mapmaking system in order to navigate the world. We are born into ignorance about the meaning of that information and we die in ignorance of its meaning. Yet, it behooves our longevity and improves the purely physical experience of life to have information that prevents harm.

At a certain point, some people get to a kind of existential place and decide the entire process is faulty in some way. They start living in resentment of the same physiological processes (collecting information and applying it) that defined for them a home and gave them a way to survive in the world. The phrase, “they don't even care” may be used to describe these people, which I called at the start the inane. Yet, that's not fully appreciative of what they are doing. It starts as a very slight and very subtle self-resentment, self-doubt and/or insecurity which tells them it is uncomfortable to not have an opinion on the sheer flood of information that is available to the mind. It is a form of exhaustion and coasting.

You see, we cannot turn our brains off without extreme prejudice to do so – such as powerful meditation techniques that eschew knowledge, or otherwise diseases, malfunctions of the brain or outright physical harm. The brain's function is constantly to take in information and process it. So those who have made a spiritual – and ontological – decision to be inane because it is a comfortable and safe thing to do (as opposed to integrating increasingly obscure, ever new and possibly conflict-producing information at the incredible rate it comes in) will find a source – any source – of information that reiterates preconceived conclusions and makes it easier to make plans and succeed in a human-designed system.

Some call it “confirmation bias” but I would call it the cultural euthanasia of curiosity for the social benefits. Humanity, overly stimulated by itself – overwhelmed by all the pressure here and there to do “human” better than the human next door – chooses to find ways of being “top dog” at something or anything, as long as a great number of people can recognize it as such and confirm for them they are indeed the best at being who they are, and then resort to coolly calling it “relaxing” or “just being”. In fact, the opposite may be true; they are silently boycotting all information that separates them from the herd.

I don't want to create more pressure. I fear doing so in expressing that as a human being in this environment, and having a brain wanting to catalog and document and sort information, I consider theories and hypotheses that come into my head about what it all means constantly. My personal take, without getting too side-tracked, is that “people” (I) ought to be compassionate (because that is what my biology tells me to be) and curious about what one should be doing in the world with any privilege or blessing or mercy they were born into, which gives them longevity or protects them from abuses (because that is what my soul searching has been about as long as I can remember) and probably concluding that any privilege, blessing or mercy in excess of survival could stand to be shared with those that could use greater longevity or quality of life; and this exchange can and should be a joyous celebration of life. This is just one example of how a person may think, one which I can represent because it is how thoughts have come to me lately.

But not everyone is compassionate at this moment. Not everyone is curious about the world nor has similar wonderings about where they fit in it at this moment. Not everyone believes in hand outs or socialist processes at this moment. Not everyone wants a hand out, nor thinks it's dignified to give or receive one. (Not everyone would classify gifts, generosity or grace as a “hand out” process, but that's another matter – just trying to use common language). And I am not of the belief that people with different views are less deserving of basic respect. But how to show “basic” respect to people who ask not for it, nor show it for others who don't hold their precise views of the world (or ontology), is pretty much the crux of the clash of civilizations. It is the question of principles about which information we boycott and which information we are receptive to.

The truth is that if everyone were receptive to the same information, we would have more understanding in the world, and in all probability world peace. But we physically become exhausted and physically cannot integrate information which we are actively boycotting.

Mass education of the public, however it is funded, is not quite – at its basic core – about getting people information. It is about guiding them and herding them in such a way that organizes around agreed-upon principles of the State or educator organizers; those principles to “cap off” the curiosity loop with a solid feedback loop of which information is “worth” considering and which information is “not worth” considering. Entire social media conversations on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook (and the next networks to come!) are observable, readable disagreements about how people define what really matters.

Those “curiosity caps” (represented by a nice, orderly, square graduation hat, I wonder?) we give ourselves or “gift” to each other (yes, education is as often about giving someone permission to disregard a train of thought as it is focusing on another). Religion is a big old package deal, and each one prides itself on giving the most permission to disregard the most vexing information.

But information is not, as the space-raping rocket folks, dinosaur hoaxers and bushy-bearded crotch-bombing mythmakers seem to act, something that strictly belongs to them and can be kept from people. No, indeed, the only thing that they can do to separate us from that ultimate Creative force which produces all the information flowing through, in and around us, is to sever us from our own curiosity. At the moment we turn it back on, we are gathering information, organizing it, being creative with it and – with hope – feeling as thankful as I think we might feel for the blessing it is.

At that point, a world of real and true history opens itself up to our world. Not the history told by a few dispassionate politicians with privileged Public Relations positions, and not the myths and guesses of other peoples' ontologies. But the very matter and energy around your body – photographs that haven't been shared on Facebook, which nobody can truly appreciate the significance of but yourself; an article of clothing whose full story you know personally from the creation of its raw material to protecting and decorating you; a patch of ground, a way you walked, a land and a wilderness that you've experienced, touched, monitored or protected; a principle you hold dear to yourself without feeling the need to “check” it with others; a science you have alone asked about and measured and documented, if it has no context and is but an infinitesimal fraction of your or anyone's understanding, but it held your attention because it called to you in some way.

Claiming to share these actual sources of true information and boasting of their humanity and authenticity has become a new cult of the Unclear Atomic Science inquisition, despite the fact that it is only the surface of the thing transmogrified into a simulation, with nothing but the ambiguous inflection of an attention-addicted actor taking a paycheck of fictional, slave debt currency to demonstrate their support. This new cult is an evolution of an ancient tradition of information shitting that has no organization or place because it eschews formality and labels as strongly as information itself. It is simply a human trait to spout and organize nonsense regarding any topic that we are ignorant of, including – this is important to the subject of history – the subjects which we are boycotting new information on.

When we can channel nonsense into art, successfully, we have protected people from all responsibility to organize the information as factual history of our world. It is the conflation of art and history that has always produced the information gaps into which war can insert itself. Real history is hidden throughout the nonsense and inanity. But it must be found and protected on a private level, and no State or organization – nor rarely even another human being – can have this responsibility for you. We should all be our own historians. And that is very hard. But it can be helped with solid, reliable family. If a family gives nothing else to you, not even love, it can at least provide you with some historical, real knowledge of your locality and your body; be it in the form of a single family member with whom you have a connection. And we must remember, ultimately, we are all family and ask ourselves at every moment how “big” our family is on the various levels of history.

The trouble with the State even when the State does attempt to listen, on any level, to the views of the citizenry, is that nothing of its size could possibly be compared to hold the interests of a single human or the value of its identification of family. The State would act as family, even while holding a psychopathic distance from our true concerns. When people limit their view points to the fantastical inventions of NASA, the coordinated assumptions of sundry religions, and the musings of the privileged purveyors of law buffoonery, it is not always because they are purely inane. It may be because the totally innocent influence of our own minds – seeking curiosity – is satisfied by the slightly imaginative way in which questions unanswerable to humanity have guided us through behaviors of culture that leaders would have us take for reality itself. They would conflate art and history at any given opportunity and provide us with all convenient mental tools to boycott distinctions.

Scientists and historians who admit they don't know and provide context for the information they claim to have collected are at least acknowledging the problem of the psychopathic system of the inane. Since artists remind us to sense by showing us a way of sensing and connecting to the information flow, all of us who are sensers – creative people – should create with a similar generosity of spirit; we should do this in the hope that those who have “given up” – those who've boycotted a series of information sources that would help us understand one another – may be reinspired to connect. And if we are lucky and with enough grace of receiving the gift, to be shared with. The people in media, by conflating the gift, and shoving what they call “privileged information” down people's throats, must feel very disconnected indeed.

[hoi.polloi]

Note: I am not sure I am totally content with my writing on the connections being drawn from the subjects I am expressing curiosity about in this essay, and so this conclusion is subject to change; but hopefully this all in some way proves useful to its readers. For those with the patience to read such a dry work and get this far in it, I would do my best to thank you graciously for your attention on these subjects holding my interest.

CONCLUSION

Now to conclude with a term for what to call this myth. I have tried to spark discussion about it by alluding to it as propaganda, as a mistake, as a kind of “panic” or other idealistic put-downs. However, the true solution of the war-mongering State lately has been to spread psychopathy — through the media — in all its forms. The humor of hate, impatience and so on is a form of humor as old as our known civilization, and it may be what has helped us get through many tough eras. Indeed, “pop humor” may be a sort of lost art as the political correctness of the so-called “free market” commerce considerations of media companies prevents deep critique. I don't think we need to eschew politeness in favor of insensitive provocations. I suggest instead that the greatest issue of our time that the media fails to address is the lack of character identification we go through when choosing various leaders/artists. In short, the television seems to want to “split the difference” between sensers and the inane, rather than helping everyone understand the proper role of either.

We are told that psychopaths need to be locked up, put away, chased down and strung up. We are told they belong in jail, or executed or treated worse than we treat a block of meat at the butchers. At the same time, we are trained by many ostensibly comedic shows on TV to lose patience with people almost immediately, snipe at them and gain social status through a kind of sneering, barely tolerant demonstration of our hate and fear of new information. It is almost as though TV is programming for psychopathic people to gain the appearance of empathetic people, and for empathetic people to pick up the antisocial habits of psychopaths — to deliberately blur the line in our society and force us to accept the attitudes of psychopaths in order to prevent the chore of grimly hunting and killing them for some perceived betterment of society.

On some level, this constant introduction to the half-senser/half-inane art of the “sitcom” may cause us to become more tolerant of various ranges of human existence. Indeed, hermits should have every right to exist as much as the most communistic tribes. And nomads should have every right to exist as much as settlers. However, I wonder if these two dynamics (psycho versus empath and moving versus settled) are not being pitted against one another in a locked feedback loop, perpetuated by our broken myths about our own society — separated from reality by deliberate lies and propaganda. I also wonder if it hasn't been holding us back in terms of living in peace in a world where multiple societies could preserve and “forward” (as a verb) culture according to healthy communication between leaders that give measured repose to panicked military personnel calling for violent solutions to the information boycotts the media creates.

Media exists because artists exist, be they practiced in art forms as removed from so-called “fine art” as script writing, acting or producing (with genuine care for the integrity of the artists' piece, not just borrowing it to push a private agenda). It is, as all art is, an attempt to strike a chord with people, unify them for better or worse, and there are worse forms of communication still — such as snuff films, propaganda distortions and simulations of such, which come from creations of the psychopaths that do not make good leaders — the art of the inane.

Our media is an incredible hurricane of information. It is comprised both of aforementioned torture that hurts a witnessing empath's wellbeing and of uplifting optimism that makes the listening heart of an empath sing in relief — from incredible technological simulations and distortions to raw unedited camera intake without processing or commentary (as rare as the latter actually is). The myths emerging from this conflagration (I hesitate to say clusterfuck) of imagery, sound, words, symbols, light and experience are not exactly at war, as much as they are representative of the disjointed myth that has evolved out of having largely psychopathic leaders in league with religiously zealous producers and media owners still fighting medieval battles that we should have been talking about instead of screaming at each other about.

On the other hand, and even for all our griping about being forced to mix with psychopaths and people who just plain dislike us, we benefit from the encounters frequently, after the dust settles. The richness of an arrogant culture, especially in the “middle classes” of various empires (we can hope empires are a myth that either start improving communication faster than they destroy it or get dead quicker than other myths — can an Internet kept free and open be the key to a redemption?) does spill down, even into versions made new and better by the art of its slave classes — if they weren't stolen from the slave classes in the first place (and they often are).

Since indigenous and native cultures take on and are influenced by the colonialism of the State, they become both enriched and troubled — for the lure and the addictive nature of its myths. Each community must determine for its own self when, where, and with whom the colonialism goes too far. It is their right, their privilege and perhaps even their duty to preserve themselves for future generations, to use the myths they find useful, to dispense with and openly critique the ones they don't, and to find a poise that helps birth a world without psychotic myths like “empire” into existence.

If we could separate the psychopathic tendencies of our species from the empathetic tendencies, through careful reasoning, thorough investigation, patient fact checking (as practiced even better than we have achieved at CluesForum, NukeLies and other bastions of pragmatic discussion of information boycotting) and then have the media actually reflect those differences as such rather than rating them as absurd and insulting “age ranges” (suggesting that as we grow older, we should find more and more entertainment in simulations of psychopathic behavior, that lovemaking should be considered on par with firing bullets and bombs at people, and other incredibly insulting distortions and conflations of the stupid TV/Hollywood producers) or “event types” (as if sexuality itself only exists on an absurd scale from “innocent touching” to “rape” or forms of violence can be pegged as being simply “present” or “not present”), then we might be on our way to a world where we can all collectively distinguish between the psychopaths and the empaths — the inane and the sensers. And create a world more accurate and understanding to our real situation rather than one built on the dreams of the inane.

The myth of empire is that there is a group of people all working in tandem toward some power that is equally shared by all its obedient members – including the citizens. Empire, it seems, may not exist as more than an ephemeral thing – an illusion that can be described like a rainbow but which only occurs under certain conditions of rampant greed, technological domination and “power over” rather than “power with” politics. Belief in empire is often synonymous with the idea that only a very distant person with immense power can adequately represent and act to benefit your beliefs.

The myth of the Golden Age boycotts information about responsibility in the present. It is about blaming others, finding a historical culprit and finding a lost hero. It is characterized by refusal to see that history is vague and hard for everyone to understand on a universal level. We can stop boycotting this information by opening ourselves to information about what exactly may be valuable about various points in history – not just the situation we are targeting and trying to reproduce. Seeing the value in now might help.

The noble savage is probably the hardest for some cultures to let go of. It is characterized by the belief that there is a kind of heroic way to behave which perfectly meshes with nature, reducing all forms of disease, social problems, and other things that are seen as “curable flaws” – it may also be the bane of a belief system that says we have necessary flaws or imposed flaws. But if we are less perfect than the noble savage, what hope do we have to use our own senses? Perhaps if an imperial system were to simply convert its principles to the most ideal Golden Age, we should all become perfect noble savages?

We want to be consistent and reliable in our values – if not just for our own comfort, for attracting and keeping people who need stability to get close and feel safe around us. For families. For mates. For trust. We are told about race, and blood ties and ethnicity; immutable unchangeable things like genes (even though those too change as we are finding out). But we are also told our thoughts or ability to process information (and tendencies in filtering it) are as attached to us as genes. That may be true for color blindness, disabilities and different ways of seeing or hearing. Rather than purely characterizing differences from people we are familiar with (those who agree with our chosen loops and information filters) we might benefit for paying attention to what other people think and compare their beliefs about themselves with the actual results of their beliefs, which we observe (consistent or not with their beliefs) rather than purely taking one (their thoughts about themselves) or the other (our thoughts about them) as fact. We might also share our beliefs with others and gain their reactions, whenever it's possible to gain honest insight from those we trust – should we wish at all to change the world from its present control of the dominant myths.

As hopefully you who are sensers can see, these three are very connected and give us a pretty clear guidance about what any of us with privilege could be considering in our writings, considerations, our gathering of personal understandings of history, and our art. A peaceful world is more possible, but it involves paying attention, and being tolerant of belief systems that are different from ours, if still allowing ourselves not to be sucked into a deep inanity, and helping people and rewarding people for becoming sensers, in a sensitive way, when they show a tendency or curiosity about the world around them.

One last meditation to come away from this essay without fear. For the mythical Empire, the myth of the coming "New Golden World" is forever around the bend, drawn from the past they control and fully paranoid about any beliefs to the contrary. For people firmly connected to reality, the "new world" is made by the great creative force that made and continues to make and remake the universe every moment. And that is something neither empire, religion nor art can earnestly claim credit for. Each of us is equally capable of seeing it and sharing in the sacred appreciation of it, or sacrificing that gift to the illusion of empire for the sake of a rest from the sometimes overwhelming truth.

[fbenario]

I sort of stopped following CF for a bit when people started discussing the possibility that people with non-white skin color are variations of savage monsters, which was feeling too "God Like Productions" for me to even believe it was on this forum. I am immensely grateful that such a "phase" seems to have faded a little bit, though it has inspired me to bat around the idea of starting another site so I can personally manage bigoted/fearful remarks in discussions about science and fakery according to my own "tolerant" preferences as "deluded" as some may think those are. But I thought about posting here in case this progressive attitude still has a chance of "taking" as well as I wish it would in the hearts of intelligent, compassionate, humanity- and life-loving readers that aren't so sympathetic with the beliefs of the genocidal inane.

I completely agree with you, and feel just as strongly. I despise racism, bigotry, and feelings of superiority to, and intolerance of, whole groups of people. I wish I had never read such things on our beloved forum.

Please don't leave and start another site, Hoi. Your wisdom, presence and moderation of the forum, and continuing intelligence in all you post have helped make the forum uniquely valuable, and so much worth the reader's time. Your progressiveness leads the way forward to a better world, whereas conservatism in any form leads ineluctably to the grave for those in disfavor.

[sharpstuff]

fbenario wrote in response to hoi polloi's post:

I completely agree with you, and feel just as strongly. I despise racism, bigotry, and feelings of superiority to, and intolerance of, whole groups of people. I wish I had never read such things on our beloved forum.

I agree, also.

To hoi;

A fantastic essay. I spent a good hour and a bit this morning reading it. Much to contemplate upon.

Accolades are due.

[hoi.polloi]

Thank you, folks. I am excited to update the essay.

I just received my copy of Savage Anxieties by Robert A. Williams, Jr. and will be updating that missing segment once I catch up to the early chapters that inspired some of the historical part of the essay.

In the mean time, if you'd like another perspective of how the State partners with the decision to start history at only certain historical documents/artifacts while ignoring the rest, please search on the topic "The Doctrine of Discovery".

This strange thing is what Spaniards quoted during their slaughter and domination of other people, superseding their own language about "the sovereignty of man" when mumbling something to the wind that is supposed to permit those people to be "legally" killed and otherwise subdued by their state.

To this day, The Doctrine of Discovery is cited in American law as the baseline justification for much of the ownership of the land upon which thousands of years of ancestry are buried, including the site of "SOUTHCOM", Florida. This is what I mean about the ignoring of history and the callous invention of history that the State has been using in lieu of actual historical, scientific or otherwise practical knowledge gathered by people invested in the sanctity and worth of life. It is quite equivalent to the pulling of justifications out of thin air. Gee, who's in the habit of that, that we are familiar with?

Bigote-- * er *, Statist * cough * haa-Banking * cough * military intellig-* ahem ...

Regardless of who or what you believe in or how you may reconcile history for yourself, it can be noted with some moderate optimism that a couple churches are finally separating themselves from this language by saying their goal is to actively dismantle some of the mumbo jumbo — one may note a few hundred years late, but at all. For those collectors of denominations, that would be the Presbyterians (I think) and the Methodists more recently. Not to be sectarian.

For those of us who are descendants of the original colonists of the "New World", and who are yet skeptical of religious extremism, but who find our friends and family or ourselves within or amongst religious groups (and how can one avoid this completely, really?), this can be a point of entry for new dialogue about elements of fakery within our world. So if you want to make this a very large discussion, I suggest you first take it up with those who are not even aware of its existence. If you are part of any church groups, you might consider introducing to them the concept that they are stuck in "Old World" thinking for at all acknowledging any legitimacy to the Doctrine. (But feel free to put it in your own non-cheeky language.) Thank you.

[hoi.polloi]

viewtopic.php?p=2399657#p2399657

^ Updated

[edgewaters]

"Ethnicity" and "nation" (nation in the sense of a peoples) are two terms people seem to have trouble with. I have a clear and simple understanding. An ethnicity is a group of people with a shared past; a nation is a group of people with a shared future.
A society is strongest when these things coincide. At this juncture, identities are at their strongest and most fulfilling.
The problem for Western society in this present century is the fact we are uncomfortable with our colonial past. Most of this discomfort centers on America, the highest expression of colonial success. To redeem it (so we can celebrate a success built on genocide) we try to turn its existing state into virtues - being a colonial state of diverse origins, and having practiced slavery on a huge scale, it happens to be diverse, so we simply decide diversity is one of the highest virtues, above honesty or goodwill even. This is just an effort to make our past a little easier to swallow, by having this super-virtue replace previous, homogenous cultures who lacked it. Then we can celebrate this genocidal success. But it's not really a virtue at all; we just made it up according to how the thing we wanted to celebrate happened to be. Homogenous societies - such as the ones America replaced - are more stable, less criminal, more cooperative. They are not chased by anomie into strange ideologies and behaviours as a result of lacking a fulfilling identity and shared past. Or at least, not until they are destroyed by waves of colonial diversity. This is no virtue, and it certainly isn't tolerant.

[hoi.polloi]

That's a really solid way to look at it! Concisely put, edgewaters. Thanks for your reflections.

The great thing about creativity and writing our own story is that we can frame it any way we choose. The "dark side" is that we can gloss over important information in our eagerness to be optimistic prematurely. There are many grim ways of writing our story, even considering as much data available to us, and that seems like one of them. But hopeful. It is necessary for us to look at grim prospects if it can give us a more accurate picture of the difficult topic of history.

[hoi.polloi]

I've had this note floating around my desk for a while, and I thought it might be appropriate somewhere on CluesForum but didn't really see an opportunity to bring it up again. As I'm cleaning up some files, I thought I'd just make it a small addendum to my theoretical paper. It doesn't just apply to Greek/Persian/Imperial settler civilizations vs. nomads. It doesn't just apply to "race". It's a basic way we value or devalue individuals with prejudice.

The note is called "The belief in superficiality vs. poetics". It has to do with how we, as art critics of the "culture creators", have a powerful tool to impart to anyone we value. I wrote it like this:

If a poem does a "simple trick" of some kind such as a word play, pun, rhyme or alliteration, it can be viewed as anything from divine (as scripture is often known for "cleverness"), artistry or a reference to traditions of artistry, the "use" of "genius", or a sardonic, sharp shredding of convention "within" convention.

But if another superficiality is employed, especially something we perhaps didn't expect or don't feel culturally "caught up" to, by someone whom we are set against by their belief, by their ethnicity, by their appearance, blood or behavior or habits, we tend to turn our hateful eye upon the same arts and see their contribution as mere mimicry, uninspired hackery, amusing or diverting nuance, or even the attack of an "outside" force against our more precious and favored critiques.

In conclusion, we all want the privilege to change and critique culture. But some we allow and some we don't.