Caller: Ronni In Oregon
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome. Lark In Texas with you… on this Saturday – October 15th, 2011 – for the next hour.
Republic Broadcasting exists to bring forth real news and information… you’d be hard-pressed to find… anywhere else.
As are you, I’m Justa Numerican… concerned about the same things you’re concerned about… the separating of facts… from fiction… and the best investment value… for our time… spent together.
This is why… YOU too… are as reliable… a news medium – in what’s left of America – without a doubt.
And besides all else… you’ve tuned into RBN… because you can handle the truth!
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that’s KHFX out of Cleburne, north central Texas, and points beyond –
we’d especially like to hear from YOU!
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For detailed program notes of this broadcast – or any of those previous – refer to the internet address http://larkintexas.blogspot.com … and find the web log… Justa Numerican.
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My program notes today…are tentatively titled… Summary Judgment
And last Saturday… we spoke of Taboo. Prior to that… we spoke of Seduction… where I alluded to religio-philosophy… and invited an examination of – and a comparison between – inductive… and deductive… reasoning. Again… I reiterate… the need exists… to appreciate this distinction… as it relates to how easily one can be misled by controlled and guided thought – oftentimes because we unthinkingly, or unwittingly, fall into the trap… of limiting… Hegelian dialectal… thought process – which nearly always leads one… into error. If you were unable to listen-in… you can always subscribe to the RBN archives… for a paltry $1.33 a month… and download those podcasts… to your heart’s content. If you like what you hear on this network… why not lend us a hand… and contribute in some meaningful way… to its support?
Many thousands of devoted RBN listeners already attest to this network’s relevance and staying power. In a marketplace of shopworn ideas and deliberate obfuscation… not focused on the truth… here you will learn what it still means… to speak truth… to power. Thus, simply listening to RBN… is a far more worthy pursuit… than most others I can think of.
So start by turning off that idiot-box… your TV… and stop reading those glossy news magazines… those inky newspapers… that you know are a waste of your time. With the television switched off… you can discontinue paying your oppressor… to fill your head... full of lies.
Remember that… your mind… is a terrible thing to waste!
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[This broadcast aims for clarity… and concision – as much as... is humanly possible. I speak to my young niece and nephews – college graduates, mind you – who’d been subjected to the same brainwashing and social engineering that I and my late younger brother and sister were subjected. That my late parents were also subjected. And that you and yours were subjected.]
And never think that I am knowledgeable… or an expert… about anything. I_am_not!
The words you hear are just that – mere words. With this… my best hope is that your voice [and my own voice]… is never drowned out. Also that… our adult years… are not misspent in ignore-ance – or misguided toward [the collectivist communitarian’s idea of] bliss… either real or imagined… and very real-life… enslavement. As it’s been said… of misspent youth.
Consider familiarizing yourself with the differences… between the signs, symbols… feelings, perceptions… words, ideas, and memes… which form the bases of your inner voice… and those things… which are hardwired, then written… upon your heart.
Such an examination… of reflection and introspection… builds strength of character.
While yielding the necessary courage of one’s conviction… in the face of it all… these exercises will simultaneously arm each one of us… with the necessary tools… from which to arrive at the truth
Two quick asides…
Firstly, have you contrasted the two video shorts yet – with the YouTube search terms, Pink Floyd: Us and Them (With Lyrics) and A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: The Fabian Society, Communitarianism, and the New World Order? Whether you have or you haven’t… recall_these_words… as they relate to both video shorts – both of which feature the same popular tune:
From the lyrics… the slow, deliberate pacing… and dream-like tempo of the song’s 3 frames of familiar human conflict… juxtaposed against its 3 choruses… force you to re-consider these words – especially when they are thoughtfully contrasted with the topical message… contained in… A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.
“Us… and them… And after all, we’re only ordinary men…
“Me… and you… God only knows it’s not what we would choose… to do…
“’Forward’ he cried… from the rear… and the first rank died…”
“The general sat, and the lines on the map… moved from side to side…”
“Black… and blue… And who knows which is which… and who is who…”
“Up… and down… And in the end… it’s only… round and round… and round…”
“’Haven’t you heard – it’s a battle of words?’… The poster bearer cried…”
“’Listen son’ said the man… with the gun. There’s room for… you inside…’”
“Down… and out… It can’t be helped that… there’s a lot of it about…”
“With… without… And who’ll deny it’s what the fighting’s all about.”
“Out of the way – it’s a busy day… I’ve got things on my mind.”
“For the want of the price… of tea and a slice… The old man died.”
Secondly, have you been exposed yet to political documentarian Adam Curtis’ work?
All of his documentaries are compelling, but you might want to check out…
Adam Curtis – The Trap (documentary film)
The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom
This series consists of three one-hour programmes which explore the concept and definition of freedom, specifically, "how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today's idea of freedom."
I’d also recommend “The Mayfair Set”… but a link to a bio and complete listing of his films… will be provided in today’s program notes… at the Justa Numerican website.
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Adam Curtis
British Documentarian/Writer | Listing of Works
Summary Judgment
Sensorium
Axial Age
Karl Jaspers
Interregnum
"The Axial Age and its Consequences for Subsequent History and the Present"
The John Templeton Foundation
In Cooperation with
Robert N. Bellah (Habits of the Heart; communitarian proponent, and a UC-Berkeley professor of sociology) & Hans Joas
Individualism versus Collectivism: The True Debate of Our Time
THE GIRL WHO SILENCED THE WORLD AT THE UNITED NATIONS
Memorandum of Understanding
Memorandum of Agreement
Favorite Stories of the Left
Silent Spring
Tragedy of the Commons
Silent Spring
Tragedy of the Commons
End of Suburbia
Bowling Alone (Robert Putnam)
The Story of Stuff
Veil of Ignorance (John Rawls)
The veil of ignorance is part of the long tradition of thinking in terms of a social contract. See Immanuel Kant, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson for examples of this tradition.
Jerry Kirk, of The Gathering Offering – airing Saturday nights from 9 to 11 Central… here on RBN – is especially eloquent about this issue… of social contract… I mean. I recommend a listen.
A Theory of Justice (John Rawls)
Leo Strauss
Neo-Conservativism
Will to Power
Friedrich Nietzsche
The Gospel According to Fred: The World’s Most Misunderstood Philosopher
The aforementioned Nietzsche quotes were extracted from "The Vision of Nietzsche," introduced and edited by Philip Novak, Vega Books Spirit of Philosophy Series: London 2001 which begins with this quote from Meister Eckhart:
"Man's last and highest parting is when, for God's sake, he takes leave of God."
Types of Law – An Ongoing List
Inferno
Maurice Joly
(John S. Waggoner, ed. and translator)
The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu: Humanitarian Despotism and the Conditions of Modern Tyranny
Reviewed by Daniel A. Doneson
The Right of Conquest: The Acquisition of Territory by Force in International Law and Practice
Sharon Korman
Editorial Reviews
DC Memorials: The Authority of Law & The Contemplation of Justice Sculptures
Megacities on the move - Planned-opolis
Slave!
Heretic Productions present CNI Centre for the National Interest... Slave! http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org/costs.html
Council for the National Interest
Polls: Americans Want Our Liberties Restored, Our Troops Brought Home and the Federal Reserve Reined In
The Founding Fathers Tried to Warn Us about the Threat from a Two-Party System
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[See Bev’s comments advocating for the NEED Act, sponsored by http://monetary.org Dennis Kucinich, and the social credit people]
The babysitting co-op
Crises of confidence
The Missing Link: What No-one Will Tell You
The Power of Energy
“The Force is what gives the Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.”
- Obi-Wan Kenobi
Government’s new science minister raises eyebrows with ‘sixth sense’ claim
BY DAILY MAIL REPORTER
The Government’s new science minister has raised eyebrows after he says he believes he has a ‘sixth sense’ to predict the future, it was revealed today.
Lord Drayson said he was one of the humans with a ‘capability’ that experts did not fully understand.
Although the peer does not claim his powers of foresight are paranormal, the comments may raise a few eyebrows among the community he represents.
Extra-sensory abilities are not commonly accepted to exist by scientists.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Lord Drayson said: ‘In my life there have been some things I have known, and I don’t know why.
‘I think there is a lot we don’t understand about human capability.’
Pursuing his point, the peer cites Blink, the best-selling American book about human instinct by Malcolm Gladwell. The tome identified cases of individuals with the apparent power to foretell events.
‘It’s a really fascinating book,’ said Lord Drayson. ‘He gives lots of examples of people who have demonstrated very clearly that they have good instinct in their lives.
‘One particular fireman in America had this amazing instinct… This guy (knew) when something bad was going to happen, when you need to leave the building.
‘Gladwell’s book is about the ability of the human being to know something, but not to know why they know it. This struck a chord with me.’
Lord Drayson described his ability as ‘like a sixth sense’ and said it could be linked to the way humans have evolved.
Lord Drayson, a multi-millionaire former businessman, returned to government last month, becoming the first science minister with a seat in the Cabinet.
A colourful character, he previously stood down as defence minister in order to spend more time on his hobby of motor racing.
The peer also said he believed in God, and saw no conflict between faith and science.
‘I think faith is a very strange thing. You don’t necessarily believe in something just because you have the evidence to prove it,’ he said.
Brain vs. Mind: The Enlightened Mind
The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations
The Science of Anarchism
By David D'Amato
Columbia University professor of journalism Todd Gitlin writes ("The Left Declares Its Independence," New York Times, October 8th) that "the core of the [Occupy] movement ... consists of what right-wing critics call anarchists." Rather than taking the same snide, dismissive approach to anarchism typical of the news media and academia, he goes on to observe that "[t]he culture of anarchy is right," that the interests of "[t]he corporate rich" largely control both major American political parties.
Gitlin describes contemporary anarchism accurately (if generally) as "a theory of self-organization," one opposed to a plutocracy of elites who have "artfully arranged a mutual back-scratching society to enrich themselves." For my life, I can't think of a better way to describe the way that the state and capital work together against the common man and genuine free markets.
Gitlin is surprisingly genial toward anarchism, or at least toward his own image of it, but anarchists are still widely regarded as agents of chaos. The question: Why?
Science Is Subversive
I've always been of the general opinion that the project of science itself is inherently subversive, dangerous to established ways and their guardians. Science, the quest for truth with its empirical and rational methods, explodes our preconceptions and offers us glimpses of the workings of a reality that still seems little understood and out of reach.
If the subatomic particle did not spring into being when human beings discovered it, but was always there, then we must wonder what kinds of marvels ‒ today only the subjects of science fiction ‒ will soon be revealed as truths. Of today's ideas, we must wonder too which of them that are now the province of the eccentric or the kook are in fact the wave of the future.
Throughout the history of the idea, and even before there was a name to designate it, anarchism's adherents came to it through a range of paths. Nineteenth century American anarchist Benjamin Tucker labeled his ideas "scientific anarchism," the natural and inevitable result of consistently recognizing the "Sovereignty of the Individual."
Albert R. Parsons, another American anarchist, similarly called anarchism "the usher of science," setting it in opposition to schools of thought that "considered [some ideas] too sacred to be disturbed by a close investigation."
"The natural instinct in favor of freedom that I believe humans possess has been meticulously trained out of us from the time we enter the total state's K-12 propaganda mills."
I offer these examples not to show that all anarchists share the same view of their doctrine's relationship with the scientific method, but rather to gainsay what I suppose is an assumption held in common by many who read this. None of the standard prevailing caricatures about anarchists are any more accurate in characterizing them than are similarly uninformed Reader's Digest versions of other philosophical persuasions. There are, to be sure, anomalous and unrepresentative nutcases and genuine criminals circulating among the ranks of all the various "-isms," yet special derision is reserved for anarchists.
But again, why? Market anarchists simply believe that relationships between people ought to be consensual and based upon a foundation of mutual respect, that a true free market means that no person or group has special privileges fashioned by coercion and violence. Details vary among anarchists ‒ and are as fiercely and thoughtfully debated as in other circles ‒ but all harbor a conscientious objection (if I may borrow the phrase) to the state's actual, physical domination and displacement of voluntary society.
Flat Earth Politics
The state is merely an idea; one way of thinking about given social questions, and one that would appear to be as true and as unavoidable today as, for instance, the geocentric model in astronomy. But while history has vindicated the likes of Copernicus and Galileo with respect to their judgments of that model, we nevertheless think it impossible that anarchists could be correct in their criticisms of the current system.
The anarchists I know, quite contrary to the conventional wisdom, do not oppose the state out of some erratic, unformed reflex reaction against authority. Indeed, the natural instinct in favor of freedom that I believe humans possess has been meticulously trained out of us from the time we enter the total state's K-12 propaganda mills.
Anarchism is for its advocates, in the words of Edward Abbey, "not a romantic fable but [a] hard-headed realization," an embrace of empirical reality rather than an avoidance of it. The protesters of the Occupy movement are yearning for an alternative; anarchism is the scientific one, the substantive argument against politics and economics based on violence and oppression. The death of the state is no scarier or more dangerous than the death of the idea that the earth is flat.
Free Range Humans
A Note on those who try to debunk these [25] Strategies
The Jewish Utopia, by Michael Higger; compared with Plato's Utopia as described in The Laws - Peter Myers, January 3, 2004; update April 2, 2004
Conspiracism
Conspiracy Theory
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Summary Judgment
In law, a summary judgment is a determination made by a court without a full trial. Such a judgment may be issued as to the merits of an entire case, or of specific issues in that case.
In common law systems, the interpretation of that law, that is to say, any question as to what the law actually is in a particular case, are decided by the judge; in rare cases jury nullification of the law may act to contravene or complement the instructions or orders of the judge, or other officers of the court. A factfinder has to decide what the facts are and apply the law. In traditional common law the factfinder was a jury, but in many jurisdictions the judge now acts as the factfinder as well. It is the factfinder who decides "what really happened," and it is the judge who applies the law to the facts as determined by the factfinder, whether directly or by giving instructions to the jury.
Absent an award of summary judgment (or some other type of pretrial dismissal), a lawsuit will ordinarily proceed to trial, which is an opportunity for each party to present evidence in an attempt to persuade the fact finder that such party is saying "what really happened," and that, under the judge's view of applicable law, such party should prevail.
The necessary steps before a case can get to trial include disclosing documents to the opponent by discovery, showing the other side the evidence, often in the form of witness statements. This process is lengthy, and can be difficult and costly.
A party moving (applying) for summary judgment is attempting to avoid the time and expense of a trial when the outcome is obvious. A party may also move for summary judgment in order to eliminate its risk of losing at trial, and possibly avoid having to go through discovery, by demonstrating to the judge, by sworn statements and documentary evidence, that there are no material issues of fact remaining to be tried. If there's nothing for the jury to decide, then, the moving party asks rhetorically, why have a trial? The moving party will also attempt to persuade the court that the undisputed material facts require judgment to be entered in favor of the moving party. In many jurisdictions, a party moving for summary judgment takes the risk that, although the judge may agree there are no material issues of fact remaining for trial, the judge may also find that it is the non-moving party who is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
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Sensorium
The term sensorium (plural: sensoria) refers to the sum of an organism's perception, the "seat of sensation" where it experiences and interprets the environments within which it lives. The term originally enters English from the Late Latin in the mid-17th century, from the stem sens- (see: sense). In earlier use it referred, in a broader sense, to the brain as the mind's organ (Oxford English Dictionary 1989). In medical, psychological, and physiological discourse it has come to refer to the total character of the unique and changing sensory environments perceived by individuals. These include the sensation, perception, and interpretation of information about the world around us by using faculties of the mind such as senses, phenomenal and psychological perception, cognition and intelligence.
Ratios of sensation
In the 20th-century the sensorium became a key part of the theories of Marshall McLuhan, Edmund Carpenter and Walter J. Ong (Carpenter and McLuhan 1960; Ong 1991).
McLuhan, like his mentor Harold Innis, believed that media [the plural form of the word medium] were biased according to time and space. He paid particular attention to what he called the sensorium, or the effects of media on our senses, positing that media affect us by manipulating the ratio of our senses. For example, the alphabet stresses the sense of sight, which in turn causes us to think in linear, objective terms: the medium of the alphabet thus has the effect of reshaping the way in which we, collectively and individually, perceive and understand our environment.
Focusing on variations in the sensorium across social contexts, these theorists collectively suggest that the world is explained and experienced differently depending on the specific "ratios of sense" that members of a culture share in the sensoria they learn to inhabit (Howes 1991, p. 8). More recent work has demonstrated that individuals may include in their unique sensoria perceptual proclivities that exceed their cultural norms; even when, as in the history of smell in the West, the sense in question is suppressed or mostly ignored (Classen, Howes and Synnott 1994).
This interplay of various ways of conceiving the world could be compared to the experience of synesthesia, where stimulus of one sense causes a perception by another, seemingly unrelated sense, as in musicians who can taste the intervals between notes they hear (Beeli et al., 2005), or artists who can smell colours. Many individuals who have one or more senses restricted or lost develop a sensorium with a ratio of sense which favours those they possess more fully. Frequently the blind or deaf speak of a compensating effect, whereby their touch or smell become more acute, changing the ways they perceive and reason about the world; especially telling examples are found in the cases of 'wild children,' whose early childhoods were spent in abusive, neglected or non-human environments, both intensifying and minimizing perceptual abilities (Classen 1991).
Development of unique sensoria in cultures and individuals
Although some consider these modalities abnormal, it is more likely that these examples demonstrate the contextual and socially learned nature of sensation. A 'normal' sensorium and a 'synesthetic' one differ based on the division, connection, and interplay of the body's manifold sensory apparatus. A synesthete has simply developed a different set of relationships, including cognitive or interpretive skills which deliver unique abilities and understanding of the world (Beeli et al., 2005). The sensorium is a creation of the physical, biological, social and cultural environments of the individual organism and its relationships while being in the world.
What is considered a strange blurring of sensation from one perspective is a normal and 'natural' way of perception of the world in another; and indeed many individuals and their cultures develop sensoria fundamentally different from the vision-centric modality of most Western science and culture. One revealing contrast is the thought of a former Russian on the matter:
The dictionary of the Russian language...defines the sense of touch as follows: "In reality all five senses can be reduced to one---the sense of touch. The tongue and palate sense the food; the ear, sound waves; the nose, emanations; the eyes, rays of light." That is why in all textbooks the sense of touch is always mentioned first. It means to ascertain, to perceive, by body, hand or fingers (Anonymous 1953).
As David Howes explains:
The reference to Russian textbooks treating touch first, in contrast to American psychology textbooks which always begin with sight, is confirmed by other observers (Simon 1957) and serves to highlight how the hierarchization of the senses can vary significantly even between cultures belonging to the same general tradition (here, that of "the West") (2003, pp. 12-13).
Sensory ecology and anthropology
These sorts of insights were the impetus for the development of the burgeoning field of sensory anthropology, which seeks to understand other cultures from within their own unique sensoria. Anthropologists such as Paul Stoller (1989) and Michael Jackson (1983, 1989) have focused on a critique of the hegemony of vision and textuality in the social sciences. They argue persuasively for an understanding and analysis that is embodied, one sensitive to the unique context of sensation of those one wishes to understand. They believe that a thorough awareness and adoption of other sensoria is a key requirement if ethnography is to approach true understanding.
A related area of study is sensory (or perceptual) ecology. This field aims at understanding the unique sensory and interpretive systems all organisms develop, based on the specific ecological environments they live in, experience and adapt to. A key researcher in this field has been psychologist James J. Gibson, who has written numerous seminal volumes considering the senses in terms of holistic, self-contained perceptual systems. These exhibit their own mindful, interpretive behaviour, rather than acting simply as conduits delivering information for cognitive processing, as in more representational philosophies of perception or theories of psychology (1966, 1979). Perceptual systems detect affordances in objects in the world, directing attention towards information about an object in terms of the possible uses it affords an organism.
The individual sensory systems of the body are only parts of these broader perceptual ecologies, which include the physical apparatus of sensation, the environment being sensed, as well as both learned and innate systems for directing attention and interpreting the results. These systems represent and enact the information (as an influence which leads to a transformation) required to perceive, identify or reason about the world, and are distributed across the very design and structures of the body, in relation to the physical environment, as well as in the concepts and interpretations of the mind. This information varies according to species, physical environment, and the context of information in the social and cultural systems of perception, which also change over time and space, and as an individual learns through living. Any single perceptual modality may include or overlap multiple sensory structures, as well as other modes of perception, and the sum of their relations and the ratio of mixture and importance comprise a sensorium. The perception, understanding, and reasoning of an organism is dependent on the particular experience of the world delivered by changing ratios of sense.
Clouded Sensorium
A "clouded sensorium" is a medical term used to describe an inability to think clearly or concentrate. It is associated with a huge variety of underlying causes from drug induced states to pathogenic states induced by disease or mineral deficiency.
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Axial Age
German philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the term the axial age or axial period (Ger. Achsenzeit, "axis time") to describe the period from 800 to 200 BC, during which, according to Jaspers, similar revolutionary thinking appeared in India, China and the Occident. The period is also sometimes referred to as the axis age.
Jaspers, in his Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (The Origin and Goal of History), identified a number of key axial age thinkers as having had a profound influence on future philosophies and religions, and identified characteristics common to each area from which those thinkers emerged. (See: theory and philosophy of history) Jaspers saw in these developments in religion and philosophy a striking parallel without any obvious direct transmission of ideas from one region to the other, having found no recorded proof of any extensive intercommunication between Ancient Greece, the Middle East, India, and China. Jaspers held up this age as unique, and one to which the rest of the history of human thought might be compared. Jaspers' approach to the culture of the middle of the first millennium BC has been adopted by other scholars and academics, and has become a point of discussion in the history of religion.
Karl Jaspers
The German philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) wrote important works on psychopathology, systematic philosophy, and historical interpretation.
(born Feb. 23, 1883, Oldenburg, Ger. — died Feb. 26, 1969, Basel, Switz.) German-Swiss philosopher and psychiatrist. As a research psychiatrist, he helped establish psychopathology on a rigorous, scientifically descriptive basis, especially in his General Psychopathology (1913). He taught philosophy at the University of Heidelberg from 1921 until 1937, when the Nazi regime forbade him to work. From 1948 he lived in Switzerland, teaching at the University of Basel. In his magnum opus, Philosophy (3 vol., 1969), he argued that the aim of philosophy is practical; its purpose is the fulfillment of human existence (Existenz). For Jaspers, philosophical illumination is achieved in the experience of limit situations, such as conflict, guilt, and suffering that define the human condition. In its confrontation with these extremes mankind achieves its existential humanity. He is one of the most important figures of existentialism.
Jaspers, Karl (Oldenburg, 1883-1969, Basel), was a professor of psychiatry at Heidelberg University from 1916, turned to philosophy, and held the chair of philosophy from 1921 until 1937 when he was dismissed for political reasons. In 1948 he accepted a chair at Basel. Jaspers is noted for his conception of Existentialism, which he views in terms of transcendence and communication. Reality reveals itself when man's existence enters a final phase of consciousness in which time and eternity coincide. This he calls the Grenzsituation (border-situation) in which the experience of guilt, suffering, and a sense of failure (Scheitern) merges with that of death. Existence is analogous to time, and eternity to transcendence, which reveals itself in ciphers (symbols). Man can only transcend (transzendieren) the barriers of communication in the spheres of temporality and spirituality by means of reason. Thought should manifest itself in action for the sake of both self-revelation and self-discipline. Jaspers was a resigned empiricist and tolerant towards men of different views and institutions. He was nevertheless outspoken in his criticism of totalitarian systems of government and of the development of nuclear arms.
Jaspers, Karl (1883-1969) German existentialist theologian. Born in Oldenberg in Germany, Jaspers began his career as a medical student. From 1921 to 1937 he was professor of philosophy at Heidelberg, but was removed by the Nazis, and although reinstated in 1945 he eventually settled in Basel. Jaspers was centrally a psychologist and theologian, concentrating upon the psychological nature of encounters with God, and deriving from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche a sense of philosophy not as a rational investigation of the world, but as a private, lived-out struggle.
Although sharing the existentialist preoccupation with moments of death, guilt, and Angst, Jaspers was somewhat more optimistic about the possibilities for human existence than some of his contemporaries. His numerous works include the three-volume Philosophie (1932, translated as Philosophy, 1967-71).
In 1909 Jaspers received the degree of doctor of medicine and began to specialize in psychiatry. For 7 years thereafter he worked in the psychiatric clinic attached to the university hospital in Heidelberg. It was here that Jaspers began to work out a classification of basic personality types. This work, influenced further by discussions with his friend Max Weber and by the latter's theory of ideal types, culminated in Jaspers's first major work, General Psychopathology (1913). With this work Jaspers acquired a position on the psychology faculty at Heidelberg.
In this first major work Jaspers discovered one of the essential themes of his thought: "Man is always more than what he knows, or can know, about himself." From Immanuel Kant, Jaspers learned that man, the source of all objective inquiries, cannot himself be known - in his entirety - through objective inquiry. All scientific views on man are limited and partial. But, following SØren Kierkegaard, Jaspers began to develop a way of describing what lies behind these objective inquiries - the unique individual, or, as he called it, Existenz.
One of the leading figures in contemporary philosophy, he is generally placed within the orbit of existentialism. Jaspers, however, rejected this classification, as it tends to place him within a school. Nevertheless his basic philosophic concern was with the concrete individual, and he believed that genuine philosophy must spring from one's individual existence and address itself to other individuals to help them gain a true understanding of their existence. The basic concept of his philosophy is the "encompassing," an essentially religious concept, intended to suggest the all-embracing transcendent reality within which human existence is enclosed. Although this idea is not in the realm of scientific thought, it is not an irrational concept, since Jaspers believed that the study of science is a necessary preparatory stage to grasping the "encompassing." Thus, while maintaining the value of science, Jaspers was profoundly aware of its limitations and believed that abstract sociological and psychological theories cause the individual to lose sight of his freedom and concrete situation.
A pivotal age
Jaspers argued that during the axial age "the spiritual foundations of humanity were laid simultaneously and independently in China, India, Persia, Palestine, and Greece. And these are the foundations upon which humanity still subsists today." These foundations were laid by individual thinkers within a framework of a changing social environment.
Thinkers and movements
Jaspers' axial shifts included the rise of Platonism, which would later become a major influence on the Western world through both Christianity and secular thought throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. Parsva (23rd Tirthankara in 9th century BCE) and Mahavira, (24th Tirthankara in 6th century BCE), known as the fordmakers of Jainism lived during this age. They propagated the religion of sramanas (previous Tirthankaras) and influenced Indian philosophy by propounding the principles of ahimsa (non-violence), karma, samsara and asceticism. Buddhism, also of the sramana tradition of India, was another of the world's most influential philosophies, founded by Siddhartha Gautama, or the Buddha, who lived during this period; its spread was aided by Ashoka, who lived late in the period. In China, Confucianism arose during this era, where it remains a profound influence on social and religious life. Zoroastrianism, another of Jaspers' examples, is crucial to the development of monotheism -- although Jaspers uses the Seleucid-era estimate for the founding of Zoroastrianism, which is actually the date of Cyrus' unification of Persia. The exact date of Zarathustra's life is debated by scholars with some, such as Mary Boyce, arguing that Zoroastrianism itself is significantly older. Others, such as William W. Malandra and R.C. Zaehner suggest that he may indeed have been an early contemporary of Cyrus living around 600 BC.
Jaspers also included the authors of the Upanishads, Lao Tzu, Homer, Socrates, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Thucydides, Archimedes, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Deutero-Isaiah as axial figures. Jaspers held Socrates, Confucius and Siddhartha Gautama in especially high regard, describing each of them as an exemplary human being and paradigmatic personality.
In addition to Jaspers, the philosopher Eric Voegelin referred to this age as The Great Leap of Being, constituting a new spiritual awakening and a shift of perception from societal to individual values. Thinkers and teachers like the Buddha, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Anaxagoras contributed to such awakenings which Plato would later call anamnesis, or a remembering of things forgotten.
Characteristics of the axial age
Jaspers argued that the axial age gave birth to philosophy as a discipline.
Jaspers described the axial age as "an interregnum between two ages of great empire, a pause for liberty, a deep breath bringing the most lucid consciousness".
Interregnum
(ĭn'tər-rĕg'nəm)
n., pl., -nums, or -na (-nə). 1. The interval of time between the end of a sovereign's reign and the accession of a successor.
2. A period of temporary suspension of the usual functions of government or control.
3. A gap in continuity.
Jaspers was particularly interested in the similarities in circumstance and thought of the Age's figures. These similarities included an engagement in the quest for human meaning and the rise of a new elite class of religious leaders and thinkers in China, India and the Occident. The three regions all gave birth to, and then institutionalized, a tradition of travelling sch scholars, who roamed from city to city to exchange ideas. These scholars were largely from extant religious traditions; in China, Confucianism and Taoism; in India, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism; in Persia, the religion of Zoroaster; in Canaan, Judaism; and in Greece, sophism and other classical philosophy.
Jaspers argues that these characteristics appeared under similar political circumstances: China, India and the Occident each comprised multiple small states engaged in internal and external struggles.
The term and the theory
The word axial in the phrase axial age means pivotal. The name comes from Jaspers' use of the German word Achse, which means both "axis" and "pivot".
German sociologist Max Weber played an important role in Jaspers' thinking. Shmuel Eisenstadt argues in the introduction to The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations that Max Weber's work in his The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism and Ancient Judaism provided a background for the importance of the period, and notes parallels with Eric Voegelin's Order and History. Wider acknowledgement of Jaspers' work came after it was presented at a conference and published in Dædalus in 1975, and Jaspers' suggestion that the period was uniquely transformative generated important discussion amongst other scholars, such as Johann Arnason. In literature, Gore Vidal in his novel Creation covers much of this Axial Age through the fictional perspective of a Persian adventurer.
Religious historian Karen Armstrong explored the period in her The Great Transformation, and the theory has been the focus of academic conferences. Usage of the term has expanded beyond Jaspers' original formulation. Armstrong argues that the Enlightenment was a "Second Axial Age", including thinkers such as Isaac Newton, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein, and that religion today needs to return to the transformative Axial insights. In contrast, it has been suggested that the modern era is a new axial age, wherein traditional relationships between religion, secularity, and traditional thought are changing.
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"The Axial Age and its Consequences for Subsequent History and the Present"
Conference July, 3-5 2008 in Erfurt
Supported by
The John Templeton Foundation
In Cooperation with
Robert N. Bellah & Hans Joas
Robert N. Bellah is Elliott Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the University of
California, Berkeley. He was educated at Harvard University, receiving the B.A. in 1950 and the Ph.D. in 1955. He began... more. Hans Joas, born 1948 in Munich (Germany), is the Max Weber Professor at the University of Erfurt and director of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies there
Individualism versus Collectivism: The True Debate of Our Time
The tensions of today arise from a contest of ideas and historical precedent. If there has been one constant in all of Man’s history… this one is it.
You’re right; this is touted as the exclusion of collectivism... IT IS. But you then claim this is pure garbage without even a hint at substance or logic. Yours is a purely reactionary stance, without thought to back it. You’re a hypocrite by your own mouth, because when it comes to be your time to be 'sacrificed' for the greater good, your voice will be loudest in denouncing the very premise of collectivism: That individuals be sacrificed for their neighbors good, willing or not...
In 1850 French economist/political scientist Bastiat said that socialists confuse government with society. If we object to a thing being done by government, they say that we object to it being done at all...if we object to government schools, they say that we are objecting to education...etc. etc.
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THE GIRL WHO SILENCED THE WORLD AT THE UNITED NATIONS
An address delivered by 12-year-old Severn Suzuki, Davis Suzuki’s daughter, at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, that was organized by the likes of Maurice Strong and Mikhail Gorbachev… under UN auspices. This seminal event in world history produced the Earth Charter document – a so-called Memorandum of Agreement - that ushered in the slave-masters’ justification for the communitarian takeover of everything on the planet – including YOU.
When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.
- Jimi Hendrix
Memorandum of Understanding
Memorandum of Agreement
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Types of Law – An Ongoing List
English Common Law
Jewish Law of Shetar
Lex Mercatoria (Law Merchant)
(European Commercial Law)
Law of Nations (International Law)
Talmudic Law
Admiralty Law
Maritime Law
Communitarian (International) Law
Laws of Physics
Natural Law
Constitutional Law
Equity Law
Universal Law
Spiritual Law
Law of Discovery
Right of Conquest
Property (Territorial) Law
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Golden Rule
(The one Rule the communitarians want erased from all memory…)
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“Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law” – Aleister Crowley (The Law)
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Inferno
Maurice Joly
(John S. Waggoner, ed. and translator)
The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu: Humanitarian Despotism and the Conditions of Modern Tyranny
Lexington Books, 2002, 392 pages.
Reviewed by Daniel A. Doneson
Few books are more famous for what subsequent forgers do with them than for their original contents. Maurice Joly’s The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, first published in Brussels in 1864, is indeed a very strange book. And its strangeness is multiple. The history of its genesis and multiple fates is bizarre-and its content no less so.
Who was Maurice Joly? By best guess he was born in Lons-le-Saunier, France in 1821 to a French father and an Italian mother. An unreformable truant, he successfully completed his legal studies and was finally admitted to the Paris bar in 1859.
In Joly’s day, open criticism of the rule of Napoleon III was strictly forbidden; Joly’s solution was to hide behind his characters, to place his understanding of the motives, aims, and methods of the emperor in the mouth of the notorious Machiavelli in order to expose his tyranny. But he was too clever by half: The Dialogue in Hell, printed in Belgium and smuggled into France for distribution, was seized by the police immediately upon crossing the border. The police swiftly tracked down its author, and Joly was arrested; on April 25, 1865, he was sentenced to fifteen months’ imprisonment. His Dialogue met a similar fate: Confiscated and banned, it was to remain unread for quite some time. Fortune did not smile upon Joly, whose life was a series of disappointments, ending in his suicide in 1879.
In his 1870 Autobiography, Joly relates how, one evening by the Seine, he was suddenly struck with the idea of writing a dialogue between Montesquieu and Machiavelli. The noble baron Montesquieu would make the case for liberalism; the Florentine wizard Machiavelli would present the case for cynical despotism. In this manner, Joly would communicate the secret ways in which liberalism may spawn a despot like Napoleon III.
It was the strange fate of Joly’s Dialogue in Hell, however, to serve also as a basis of hell on earth. One of the few editions to survive the confiscation of Napoleon III’s secret police found its way to Switzerland, where it was picked up by the Russian secret police. Forgoing suppression, the Russians instead turned to forgery; they rewrote its twenty-five dialogues and interspersed them with plagiarized snippets of anti-Semitic drivel. The result was an instant classic: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a book that to this day competes with the Bible as the world’s best-seller.
According to scholars, the Protocols, which ostensibly reveals the secret behind the Zionist Congress convened by Theodor Herzl in Basel, Switzerland in 1897, was hurriedly pieced together in Russia to exert pressure on Czar Nicholas II. Alfred Rosenberg brought the Protocols to Hitler in 1923. Hannah Arendt famously observed in her classic The Origins of Totalitarianism that the Protocols was "a model for the future organization of the German masses for ‘world empire.’" In her eyes, "the delusion of an already existing Jewish world domination formed the basis for the illusion of future German domination." Fate works in mysterious ways: Whenever the smoke cleared from the twentieth century’s bloodiest and most cataclysmic events, this ne plus ultra of conspiratorial texts is somewhere, somehow at hand.
Nor did its pernicious influence end with the Third Reich. Egyptian state-run television recently aired a forty-one-part miniseries which dramatized the Protocols. In the new Alexandria library, there rests in a display case of the holy books of monotheistic, Abrahamic faiths a copy of the first Arabic translation of the Protocols along with several Tora scrolls. Yousef Ziedan explains his curating thus:
Although the [Protocols] is not a monotheistic holy book, it has become one of the sacred [texts] of the Jews, next to their first constitution, their religious law, [and] their way of life.
It is an irony worthy of such ironists as Machiavelli and Montesquieu that a brilliant, long-forgotten defense of liberalism was to serve as the foundation for an appalling, graceless tract whose popularity sees no signs of abating anytime soon. [More…]
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The Right of Conquest: The Acquisition of Territory by Force in International Law and Practice
[Hardcover]
Sharon Korman
Editorial Reviews
Review
"This is a very well done book in a familiar... genre... Korman's book is particularly good of its type."--The American Journal of International Law
Review
'[T]he book won the affection of this reviewer for the elegance of its style and the lightness with which Dr. Korman wears her learning. There can be few more important issues than that addressed by Dr. Korman in this elegant and erudite book; and it is hard to imagine a better written analysis of it.'
(French Yearbook of International Law)
'[A] brilliant study…’
A work of sweeping scope... balanced and judicious. The thinking is lucid yet refined...
Korman's work is the most up-to-date study of seizure of territories, and the only one that charts the progress of both the ideology and the application of the right of conquest and the political events and legal practices that gradually undermined and finally dismantled it.
Review
Written in a lucid style that sets it apart from many works on international law, the work combines meticulous scholarship in international law with forward-looking International Relations thinking.
Review
'Written in a lucid style that sets it apart from many works on international law, the work combines meticulous scholarship in international law with forward-looking International Relations thinking.'
[A] brilliant study...
Book Description
An excellent doctrinal history... Korman's intense passion for her subject is clear.
Source: (International and Comparative Law Quarterly)
<Review>:
An impressive and deeply analytical book
(British Year Book of International Law)
Review
...immensely stimulating.
Product Description
This is an enquiry into the place of the right of conquest in international relations since the early sixteenth century, and the causes and consequences of its demise in the twentieth century. It was a recognized principle of international law until the early years of this century that a state that emerges victorious in a war is entitled to claim sovereignty over territory which it has taken possession.
Sharon Korman shows how the First World War--which led to the rise of self-determination and to calls for the prohibition of way--prompted the reconstruction of international law and the consequent abolition of the title by conquest. her conclusion, which highlights the merits and defects of the modern law as a vehicle for discouraging war by denying the title to the conqueror, challenges many of the assumptions that have come to constitute part of the conventional wisdom of our times.
This is a study, not of international law narrowly conceived, but of the place of a changing legal principle in international history and the contemporary world.
From the Inside Flap
Sharon Korman is a former Senior Associate Member of St Antony's College, Oxford. For the doctoral dissertation on which this book is based she won the 1992 British International Studies Association Prize for the best thesis on International Relations in the United Kingdom.
About the Author
Dr. Sharon Korman is a Rhodes Scholar and former Senior Associate Member of St Antony's College, Oxford. For the doctoral dissertation on which this book is based won the 1992 British International Studies Association Prize for the best thesis on International Relations in the United Kingdom.
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DC Memorials: The Authority of Law & The Contemplation of Justice Sculptures (SCOTUS)
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Megacities on the move - Planned-opolis
Sustained urban mobility? That is tightly planned and controlled? How lover-ly!
Slave!
Heretic Productions present CNI Centre for the National Interest... Slave! http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org/costs.html
Our uniquely massive support for Israel has cost trillions of dollars and multitudes of lives. It has diminished our moral standing in the world, lessened our domestic freedoms, and exposed us to unnecessary and growing peril.
The majority of Americans -- as well as our diplomatic and military experts -- oppose this unique relationship. Yet, the lobby for Israel continues to foment policies that are disastrous for our nation and tragic for the region.
If we are to have Middle East policies that serve the national interest, that represent the highest values of our founders and our citizens, and that work to sustain a nation of honor, decency, security, and prosperity, then it is essential that all Americans become active and informed. Below are the facts: [Amusing - yet angry - comments!]
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Polls: Americans Want Our Liberties Restored, Our Troops Brought Home and the Federal Reserve Reined In
The Founding Fathers Tried to Warn Us about the Threat from a Two-Party System
[See Bev’s comments advocating for the NEED Act, sponsored by http://monetary.org Dennis Kucinich, and the social credit people]
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The babysitting co-op
Crises of confidence
National economies are not, of course, directly analogous to the vastly simplified co-op system. But the current economic outlook in the United States and Europe is, similarly, being exacerbated by a crisis of confidence among consumers. That is correlated with the unpredictability of politicians, and perhaps caused by their politics, as my colleague G.I. noted a few days ago: "A global economy with decent cyclical fuel and no obvious imbalances is being betrayed by politics." Are there strategies by which politicians or people can encourage a more sanguine attitude? Some might say that if there was no chance for a small group of co-op members to resolve their differences through discussion, there is little chance for the rest of us. But keep in mind that 1) anyone who has any experience of a co-op can tell you that the explicitly communitarian ethos often obscures some darkly Hobbesian intuitions, and 2) per the Sweeneys, these people were "by and large Washington lawyers".
Looking at the United States, at least, we see a fraught mood among the people. Consumer confidence is low; polls show little optimism about politicians or the direction of the country, thousands of people are protesting on Wall Street. The Onion aptly satirizes the mood in a headline about the death of Steve Jobs: "Last American Who Knew What the Fuck He Was Doing Dies." But some of this is healthy enough. Large-scale protests are a sign of civic engagement. The president is a representative, not a ruler, and if the economy is bad then people should be telling pollsters they're frustrated. If the outlook is seen to be grim then we risk further grimmening. Let's keep in mind that people can influence events.<|>
The Power of Energy
“The Force is what gives the Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.”
- Obi-Wan Kenobi
Government’s new science minister raises eyebrows with ‘sixth sense’ claim
BY DAILY MAIL REPORTER
The Government’s new science minister has raised eyebrows after he says he believes he has a ‘sixth sense’ to predict the future, it was revealed today.
Lord Drayson said he was one of the humans with a ‘capability’ that experts did not fully understand.
Although the peer does not claim his powers of foresight are paranormal, the comments may raise a few eyebrows among the community he represents.
Extra-sensory abilities are not commonly accepted to exist by scientists.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Lord Drayson said: ‘In my life there have been some things I have known, and I don’t know why.
‘I think there is a lot we don’t understand about human capability.’
Pursuing his point, the peer cites Blink, the best-selling American book about human instinct by Malcolm Gladwell. The tome identified cases of individuals with the apparent power to foretell events.
‘It’s a really fascinating book,’ said Lord Drayson. ‘He gives lots of examples of people who have demonstrated very clearly that they have good instinct in their lives.
‘One particular fireman in America had this amazing instinct… This guy (knew) when something bad was going to happen, when you need to leave the building.
‘Gladwell’s book is about the ability of the human being to know something, but not to know why they know it. This struck a chord with me.’
Lord Drayson described his ability as ‘like a sixth sense’ and said it could be linked to the way humans have evolved.
Lord Drayson, a multi-millionaire former businessman, returned to government last month, becoming the first science minister with a seat in the Cabinet.
A colourful character, he previously stood down as defence minister in order to spend more time on his hobby of motor racing.
The peer also said he believed in God, and saw no conflict between faith and science.
‘I think faith is a very strange thing. You don’t necessarily believe in something just because you have the evidence to prove it,’ he said.
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The Missing Link: What No-one Will Tell You
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Brain vs. Mind: The Enlightened Mind
The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations
The authoritative expose of the greatest brainwashing organization to ever exist in the course of human history is now revealed in Dr. John Coleman's latest book, The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations: Shaping the Moral, Cultural, Political, and Economic Decline of the United States of America. The Tavistock Institute is located in the City of London and at Sussex University in England.
Dr. John Coleman, Dr. John Coleman, the author of 15 books, the best known of which is Conspirators Hierarchy, The Committee of 300, was one of the first writers to bring the world's attention to the existence of Tavistock, hitherto unknown to press and pundits alike, in a monograph published in 1969. Since his initial 1969 revelations concerning the pivotal role that Tavistock plays in shaping political, social, educational, and economic 'opinions', especially in the United States, more than a few writers of global conspiracy have attempted to place laurels upon their shoulders for revelations about Tavistock's key influence as the Mother of all Propaganda Ministries, while ignoring the fact that this pioneering work was first published by John Coleman. Dr. Coleman's new book, however, leaves no doubt as to who is the master and who are the students when it comes to the subject of Tavistock.
The book is stunning in the new knowledge that it reveals about the hidden role of British oligarchs to shape and control public opinion in order to manipulate the British public (and later the American public) into accepting the notion that war with Germany was necessary in order "to secure a lasting peace."
The plan to 'create' public opinion began in 1913 as a propaganda factory centered at Wellington House in London. Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary at the time, installed Lord Northcliffe (Britain's most influential newspaper magnate) as its director. Lord Northcliffe's position was over sighted by Lord Rothmere on behalf of the British Crown. The operational staff of Wellington House consisted of Lord Northcliffe, Arnold Toynbee (future director of studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs), and the Americans, Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays (nephew to Sigmund Freud).
Funding was initially provided by the Royal family, but soon to include the Rothschilds (related to Lord Northcliffe by marriage) and the Rockefellers. Wellington House would grow into the Tavistock Institute in 1921 after the propaganda "victories" of the First World War and the Federal Reserve banking system (created in 1913) had been secured.
(The Forward to the book is re-printed below from Dr. Coleman's web site)
Click links above
Click links above
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The Science of Anarchism
By David D'Amato
Columbia University professor of journalism Todd Gitlin writes ("The Left Declares Its Independence," New York Times, October 8th) that "the core of the [Occupy] movement ... consists of what right-wing critics call anarchists." Rather than taking the same snide, dismissive approach to anarchism typical of the news media and academia, he goes on to observe that "[t]he culture of anarchy is right," that the interests of "[t]he corporate rich" largely control both major American political parties.
Gitlin describes contemporary anarchism accurately (if generally) as "a theory of self-organization," one opposed to a plutocracy of elites who have "artfully arranged a mutual back-scratching society to enrich themselves." For my life, I can't think of a better way to describe the way that the state and capital work together against the common man and genuine free markets.
Gitlin is surprisingly genial toward anarchism, or at least toward his own image of it, but anarchists are still widely regarded as agents of chaos. The question: Why?
Science Is Subversive
I've always been of the general opinion that the project of science itself is inherently subversive, dangerous to established ways and their guardians. Science, the quest for truth with its empirical and rational methods, explodes our preconceptions and offers us glimpses of the workings of a reality that still seems little understood and out of reach.
If the subatomic particle did not spring into being when human beings discovered it, but was always there, then we must wonder what kinds of marvels ‒ today only the subjects of science fiction ‒ will soon be revealed as truths. Of today's ideas, we must wonder too which of them that are now the province of the eccentric or the kook are in fact the wave of the future.
Throughout the history of the idea, and even before there was a name to designate it, anarchism's adherents came to it through a range of paths. Nineteenth century American anarchist Benjamin Tucker labeled his ideas "scientific anarchism," the natural and inevitable result of consistently recognizing the "Sovereignty of the Individual."
Albert R. Parsons, another American anarchist, similarly called anarchism "the usher of science," setting it in opposition to schools of thought that "considered [some ideas] too sacred to be disturbed by a close investigation."
"The natural instinct in favor of freedom that I believe humans possess has been meticulously trained out of us from the time we enter the total state's K-12 propaganda mills."
I offer these examples not to show that all anarchists share the same view of their doctrine's relationship with the scientific method, but rather to gainsay what I suppose is an assumption held in common by many who read this. None of the standard prevailing caricatures about anarchists are any more accurate in characterizing them than are similarly uninformed Reader's Digest versions of other philosophical persuasions. There are, to be sure, anomalous and unrepresentative nutcases and genuine criminals circulating among the ranks of all the various "-isms," yet special derision is reserved for anarchists.
But again, why? Market anarchists simply believe that relationships between people ought to be consensual and based upon a foundation of mutual respect, that a true free market means that no person or group has special privileges fashioned by coercion and violence. Details vary among anarchists ‒ and are as fiercely and thoughtfully debated as in other circles ‒ but all harbor a conscientious objection (if I may borrow the phrase) to the state's actual, physical domination and displacement of voluntary society.
Flat Earth Politics
The state is merely an idea; one way of thinking about given social questions, and one that would appear to be as true and as unavoidable today as, for instance, the geocentric model in astronomy. But while history has vindicated the likes of Copernicus and Galileo with respect to their judgments of that model, we nevertheless think it impossible that anarchists could be correct in their criticisms of the current system.
The anarchists I know, quite contrary to the conventional wisdom, do not oppose the state out of some erratic, unformed reflex reaction against authority. Indeed, the natural instinct in favor of freedom that I believe humans possess has been meticulously trained out of us from the time we enter the total state's K-12 propaganda mills.
Anarchism is for its advocates, in the words of Edward Abbey, "not a romantic fable but [a] hard-headed realization," an embrace of empirical reality rather than an avoidance of it. The protesters of the Occupy movement are yearning for an alternative; anarchism is the scientific one, the substantive argument against politics and economics based on violence and oppression. The death of the state is no scarier or more dangerous than the death of the idea that the earth is flat.
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Free Range Humans
A Note on those who try to debunk these Strategies
There have been numerous attempts to discredit the 25 Strategies documented in Carr's book, Pawns in the Game. But this is the genuine article.
First, some claim these are based upon the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Sion (Zion). However, the Protocols appeared nearly 100 years later, in 1864 "Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu." This was written as political satire and never intended to be taken verbatim. It is almost certain that The Protocols were based on the 1773 Strategies. It could not possibly be the other way around.
Second, Wikipedia discredits these strategies as being "historically inaccurate." I decided to dig a little deeper, utilizing Virgil's Wikipedia Scanner to track the actual edits to Wikipedia's page on the topic. I uncovered clear evidence of tampering through this shocking sequence of events:
1. A Wikipedia editor changed the "official" edition of Carr's book to one published after his death.
2. The new "official" version contained an inaccurate footnote, added after the author was no longer alive to put a stop to their wicked scheme.
3. Then, this new "official" version was declared to be false, because it was "historically inaccurate." It was ONLY inaccurate because someone PLANTED the inaccuracy. UNBELIEVABLE. They assassinated the character of this author and discredited his entire career with ONE FOOTNOTE. OUTRAGEOUS!
This is a prime example of how, for hundreds of years, these manipulating monsters have made a mockery of truth, honesty, and virtue of all kinds. They poisoned our minds with disinformation, then laughed at us because we were "stupid." They actually believe themselves superior, because they have gotten away with their deceit. But they are the inferior ones. They are so lacking, they cannot even perceive how deficient they are in the most important element of human existence. They have no souls with which to gauge the magnificence of creation and love for their fellow man. They cannot enjoy an afternoon in a meadow of wildflowers, without imagining how much money they could make from parceling the land and developing the real estate.
They are lesser beings than every human on earth who has a conscience and a soul.
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The Jewish Utopia, by Michael Higger; compared with Plato's Utopia as described in The Laws
- Peter Myers, January 3, 2004; update April 2, 2004
Conspiracism
Conspiracy Theory
