–from H.P. Lovecraft’s “Celephais”

[via Coilhouse]

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Post tags: imagination

Life Inc. by Douglas Rushkoff (2009, Random House)

Those who control history control the future and in Life Inc. Douglas Rushkoff makes his mark on our future by detailing the history of Corporate Capitalism as the political and economic reality of the modern world. After evolving over hundreds of years into its current form, Corporate Capitalism is now taken so thoroughly for granted that few even question the basic mythology behind it. Rushkoff was jarred into this revelation after being mugged outside his home and being told by neighbors to keep quiet because it might hurt property values. His fellow homo sapiens were becoming dispassionate economic actors instead of human beings. The unquestioning behavior towards the value system of Corporate Capitalism is compared to waking up with Microsoft Windows on every computer, and every computer you’ve ever known.While nations and economies thrived using alternate models of economic transaction, the course of history has resulted in our particular economic arrangement. Rushkoff succeeds in tracing a clear and coherent history uncovering how arbitrary the  rules of the modern economic game truly are.

As corporations gained power in the Colonial era they changed places into ‘territories’ and people into ‘labor’, solidifying the power of the state to grant monopoly power to the corporations. Ultimately, everything and everyone could be colonized for profit, fueling European colonialism and establishing  corporatism as the basis for a new continent. This new classification of human interaction created a value system that extended to every aspect of human life. Rushkoff draws a distinction between the division of labor and specialization of labor, in doing so he reveals a major flaw in our valuation of specialization. We would think a society of trained merchants, managers and laborers are more specialized than one of self-taught artisans and inherently entrepreneurial shop-owners but managers didn’t want to hire highly skilled labor which could demand higher wages. The managerial classes standardized processes as to hire the least qualified and most replaceable laborers around. This activity favored generalization instead of specialization: the basis for the modern education system. A modern education system designed by people like Stanford professor Ellwood P. Cubberly created a curriculum to produce “mediocre intellects” for a docile citizenry. The model for this education was one of the factory where, “the raw product (of children) are to be shaped and fashioned according to the specifications laid down.” My own thought is that by creating a population of generalists, we create individuals that have no specific knowledge, no actual ability to create a tangible good or to experience the inherent pleasure of such creation. This is an insecure individual and one with an inherent fear of survival imposed on them by the scarcity in a compounding interest based monetary system.

Even the original American Revolution was one against corporatism, as the Tea Party slogan of “No Taxation without Representation” was primarily about Britian’s tax laws which removed barriers to trade and allowed the East India Company to destroy the colonial economy. The irony is that our modern Tea Party movement shares the same angst as the original one but without the clarity of understanding the connection between Corporatism and their frustration. In the United States, corporatism was held mostly in check until the landmark 1886 decision of Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad Company. This case established the ability for corporations to claim all the rights of personhood granted under the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, a law ratified to ensure the rights for former slaves. Over the next 25 years 307 14th Amendment cases went before the US Supreme Court and 288 of them were brought by corporations. With this as a precedent, money became equivalent to speech, so corporations could obtain their 1st Amendment right to free speech by spending money. Since 1944 when the US set the rules of the global economic game with the Bretton-Woods agreement which established the US Dollar as the global reserve currency, the policy of Corporatism has been international. We’ve dragged the rest of the world along, yielding a race to the bottom as municipalities and then nations competed to offer corporate handouts for attracting major companies. We’ve demolished local economies and land with the scorched earth policy of Wal-Marts and other big boxes.

The corporation has built a mythology so transcendent it has disconnected us from the world of true science, technology, ecology and thought. As Rushkoff notes, “Corporatism depends first on our disconnection. The less local, immediate, and interpersonal our experience of the world and each other, the more likely we are to adopt self-interested behaviors that erode community and relationships.” We become the rational dispassionate economic man the corporations need us to be for their survival, and in doing so we become ever more dependent on their services, confirming in our own minds a subconscious subscription to the ideals of the system. We were told the perfect society is one we could own a stake in, through owning a home and a car and our own piece of suburban perfection. As Walt Whitman wrote, “A man is not a whole or complete man unless he owns a house and the ground it stands on.”  This was a directed goal because it was the burden of home ownership which, “chained a man to the factory where he worked.” A focus on home ownership drove a seperation of classes and produced much of the wealth disparity in the US today.

Ultimately, the myth that we are all free to compete for the great prizes the free market has to offer prevents us from conferring about the value of the system itself. Divided and conquer, as a people but mostly as a mental environment. And so we are stuck with branding instead of the relationships we used to have with real people and their craftsmanship. We are piled in droves towards others with similar brand loyalties and the public discourse is standardized by using the media to speak to “individuals”. We’ve removed everything of value from its context and in doing so we’ve removed the sense of awe that is a product of its uniqueness. Even the quest to find our place in the world while recognizing the power of being human has been co-opted by a spirituality that is derived from corporate values. From L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz where Dorothy could have whatever she wanted as long as she believed, to the modern obsession with The Secret, we’ve developed the purist spiritual expression of consumerist culture: a disembodied other delivering whatever we want when we want it.

A questioning and curious mind is culled with the depravity of  modern intelligensia as dominated by the de-facto standards of a corporate value system. Surely there must be more to this world? Fear not, economists have explored it and found, as in Freakonomics, that maximized utility is surely the primary drive behind human actions. Malcom Gladwell offers spiritual and intellectual comfort for modern persuasion professionals with advice to classify our fellow humans for finding Tipping Points and harnessing snap judgements with Blinks. When we think Wal-Mart succeeds because it is efficient, it only does so because it has access to speculative markets beyond the reach of local shopkeepers. In reality, the Fortune 500 are just names on huge piles of debt. Adam Smith and his invisible hand were regulated by the pressures of neighbors and social values, not abstract speculation on derivatives and demolished trade barriers.

In the modern era corporations became giant externality generating machines, displacing liabilities as fast as possible to increase profits and our natural world suffers. Yet, the primary discourse regarding economies treat them as a natural system, ignoring that it is itself but a man-made system imposed on an ecosystem. Fiat currency has become the operating system which runs this game but has faded to the background so that we no longer think about. We can only think of one system of money despite the existence of many others throughout history. The most valuable piece of Life Inc. are the historical accounts of jealous monarchs which outlawed local currencies based on tangible grain stores in medieval towns to regain power through their coin of the realm.

As the Corporate Capitalist systems which have driven economic reality and moderated human life continue to break down, Life Inc. provides a guide to understanding that our species has survived and thrived in many alternative economic arrangements. This is a powerful book which dispels an unconscious acceptance of the corporate value structure and outlines a path towards returning to authentic human interactions once again.

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Post tags: corporations, economic game, economic growth, economy, history, human beings

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Post tags: quotations

Frankly, I think there isn’t enough energy available on the planet to support such a development unless a dramatic revision of physics occurs. Regardless it is an interesting concept to debate. Kurzweil pops a tremendous number of pills and is likely to suffer greatly as the comforts provided by technology evaporate to all but the super-rich in the decade ahead. I don’t spend much time on the Singularity because I think it is a highly unlikely path our future will take However, its not impossible and is certainly entertaining.

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Post tags: humanity, singularity, technology, video

Babylon's Banksters by Joseph P. Farrell (2010) Feral House

The global economic crisis that started in 2008 has summoned a deeper skepticism of the economic mainstream with its corresponding prognostications for endless growth and prosperity. Individuals are starting to question the need to play on the giant wheels of churning money that represented the retirement funds and investments of the past. While I’ve been reading extensively about alternative economies and monetary systems, nothing has provided a picture of finance as intriguing or as challenging as Joseph P. Farrell’s Babylon’s Banksters: The Alchemy of Deep Physics, High Finance and Ancient Religion.

Babylon’s Banksters serves as a comprehensive outline of the evidence for a group of international monetary elites that have attempted to control the destiny of human affairs throughout history with banking and physics. Even if you don’t buy into the historical monetary elite portion of the thesis, you’ll still find a lot of meat here.

Early on, Farrell draws a clear distinction between the two types of money a nation can create: money built on scarcity and money built on the state itself. Money can be created as a receipt for goods and services with no built-in principal of debt and scarcity. In this case, the money supply can be expanded based on the needs of the nation. For the other type of money, created by a private bank and issued to a nation, the principal is created and not the interest. Thus, the monetary supply must always expand at an exponential rate to continue repaying the interest. When the money supply can no longer expand to make interest payments, the currency falters and eventually collapses.

This is where the connection between a physical system and a financial system begins. For nation-backed money, the system is open and the available amount of money can expand along with the economy, there can always be more money as long as available goods and services expand as well. For a private bank-backed money, the system is closed and there is never as much money as there is debt, inducing scarcity.

Farrell then posits that the first modern nation to discover a connection between open or debt-free economics and open energy systems was Nazi Germany. What Nazi Germany realized was that the Mark’s dramatic devaluation began soon after the Reichbank was privatized, driving the German monetary system into hyperinflation. When Hitler took command of Germany, he turned his back on the international private bankers that shorted the German Mark and created his own fiat money, embarking on a massive public works campaign using one billion non-inflationary bills called Labor Treasury Certificates. At this same time, Germany understood that they were subject to playing by global financial hegemony because they needed access to global oil supplies. And thus, Nazi Germany devoted many of its scientist to pursuing “free energy, i.e. the technologies that would allow Germany to engineer the physical medium and its energy directly…”. But Farrell does not apply heroics to the Nazi movement, he merely points out that they recognized an international malevolent influence in banking and sought to usurp it, all while committing horrible atrocities. Modern China has recognized this same influence, growing into a sophisticated world power by issuing state-created debt-free money, solidifying independence in doing so. Farrell’s overall point being that an international group has controlled money systems and has suppressed technologies and alternative physics in order to maintain this control. In doing so, this group has hidden the connections between alternative physics and alternative monetary economies.

What surprised me most about Babylon’s Banksters was how persuasively Farrell argued the connection between economics and an unpublicized system of physics. This is where the book shined. During the start of the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover sought a solution to the problem of the boom-bust economic cycle and commissioned Chief Economic Analyst of the US Commerce Department Edward R. Dewey to study how the business cycles occurred. What Dewey discovered was that cycles or waves of behavior appeared in nearly all aspects of human societies. In the 1947 book by Dewey and his collaborator Edwin Dakin, Cycles: The Science of Prediction, graphs and charts appeared of everything from railroad industry growth to the Atlantic salmon population. These compiled studies revealed repeating and predictable cycles in the form of discernible waves that were quantifiable as well as regular and predictable. Farrell makes the point that this is the secret a global financial elite is privy to, being able to manipulate these predictable boom-bust cycles for their own benefit. Further, a 54-year and 9-year economic cycle that proceeds at at regular intervals is depicted. Oddly enough, from the 1947 book, when the low-points of the 54 and 9 year cycles are overlaid they hit exactly on the date of our current crisis. While explanations for this phenomena can vary wildly, one way to look at is by imagining the effect a fourth dimension would have on our three dimensional perception. Consider a two dimensional being on a plane with a multi-colored wheel that passes through its plane on a regular basis. The two-dimensional being would perceive nothing but a predictable pattern of colored lines but would be unable to understand why the regular interval occurred because it was a higher dimensional object that was passing through. Perhaps a fourth dimensional object passes through our own world on a regular basis. In other words, Farrell is outlining a deeper physics behind the financial and economic transactions of the human race.

Even stranger, Farrell describes the work of an RCA company engineer, J.H. Nelson who published several articles on the bizarre anomalies that he encountered while working with trans-atlantic short-wave signals. Nelson discovered that the accuracy of long-range radio propagation could be forecasted on the basis of planetary relationships. Oddly enough, his signal degradation charts looked quite similar to astrological forecasts. After further exposition, the point Farrell makes is that modern astrology is a nearly worthless and degraded form of an ancient science that recognized and understood these planetary effects on a larger basis, even within human and social systems. Once again, the implications of a deeper physics behind human economic activity, a ‘paleophysics’ even.

So what energy sources were the Nazi’s researching? Most likely energy from an unknown source that resulted from rotating plasmas, like those described by Swedish physicist Hannes Alfvén. Starting in 1936, Alfvén outlined cosmic electrodynamics or the science of a plasma universe. If a conducting liquid is placed in a constant magnetic field, every motion of the liquid gives rise to an electromagnetic field which produces electric currents. These currents yield mechanical forces which change the state of motion of the liquid. A combined electromagnetic-hydrodynamic wave occurs which appears to transduce energy out of space-time itself, from an unknown source or maybe even the oft-discussed ‘zero-point field’. Also of note, Alfvén’s theories discussed the possibilities that space itself exhibits a cellular structure, or crystal lattice along which energy can be tapped. There is some actual evidence for this ‘electric universe’, specifically in the questions raised by Dr. Nikolai Kozyrev who noted that during the first hydrogen bomb tests there was an unknown source of energy. The energy of the detonated hydrogen bombs actually varied with the time which they were detonated. Farrell discusses the possibility that the energy variation occurred because the bombs became a transdimensional gateway into the energy of space-time itself which varied based on planetary rotations and proximity to higher dimensions.

Farrell draws connections between this obscured physics and an ancient international money power which are revealed in various historical accounts as they guarded gold mines with mercenaries and usurped local economies with gold and silver based transactions. But how would this international money power communicate in an era without radio? German physicist and engineer Dr. Meyl published a comprehensive account of scalar waves and their corresponding relationship to ancient temples in 2003, drawing the connection between temples as a long-range communication system between the various factions of this monetary elite. And while it sounds a little outlandish, the resonant frequency calculations of each building along with the similarities between modern magnetrons and ancient temple floor plans are rather convincing.

While the book is extremely well footnoted and referenced, where Farrell fails is in quoting his previous work too often. He could have dramatically strengthened his case by omitting those references and linking me to his original sources. Farrell breaks down every section with numbered lists of evidence he presented in previous pages which helped me track the overwhelming amount of information. This is the densest few hundred pages I’ve ever read. While I still remain unconvinced by the entire premise Farrell lays out, I’m thoroughly fascinated by the obscure scientists and historical references he can ferret out. I’m surprised I’ve waited this long to discover Farrell’s unique approach to science, technology, history and humanity. Clearly there’s much more to physics and finance than I could ever imagine and through Babylon’s Banksters I’ve discovered a tremendous number of new and interesting speculative paths on which I can embark, and that’s really all I can ask for from a book like this.

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Post tags: conspiracy, economic crisis, economics, finance, humanity, physics, science

John Michael Greer adds his commentary to the Lovins v Andrews issue and extrapolates that trend to all the super technologies that will save us that are ‘just around the corner’. The key point being that we are mostly stuck with what we’ve got because nearly all our surplus resources are committed to maintaining the current technological and social order and that those surplus resources are largely gone,

Those specific reasons can be usefully subordinated to a more general point, which is that airy optimism about technologies that haven’t yet gotten off the drawing board is not a useful response to an imminent crisis in the real world. This is a point worth keeping in mind, because airy optimism about technologies that haven’t yet gotten off the drawing board is flying thick and fast just now, especially but not only in the peak oil scene. Mention that industrial society is in deep trouble as a result of its total dependence on rapidly depleting fossil fuels, in particular, and you can count on a flurry of claims that Bussard reactors, or algal biodiesel, or fourth generation fission plants, or whatever the currently popular deus ex machina happens to be, will inevitably show up in time and save the day.

One of the things that has to be grasped to make sense of our predicament is that this isn’t going to happen. Some of the reasons that it’s not going to happen differ from case to case, though all of the examples I’ve just given happen to share the common difficulty of crippling problems with net energy. Any attempt at a large-scale solution at this point in the curve of decline faces another predictable problem, though, which was discussed back in 1973 in The Limits to Growth: once industrial civilization runs up against hard planetary limits, as it now has, the surplus of resources that might have permitted a large-scale solution are already fully committed to meeting existing urgent needs, and can’t be diverted to new projects on any scale without imposing crippling dislocations on an economy and a society that are already under severe strain.

[Read the full post at The Archdruid Report]

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Post tags: collapse, energy, peak oil, post-industrial society, technology

On 11 February 1944, the 68-year-old Carl Gustav Jung – then the world’s most renowned living psychologist – slipped on some ice and broke his fibula. Ten days later, in hospital, he suffered a myocardial infarction caused by embolisms from his immobilised leg. Treated with oxygen and camphor, he lost consciousness and had what seems to have been a near-death and out-of-the-body experience – or, depending on your perspective, delirium. He found himself floating 1,000 miles above the Earth. Seas and continents shimmered in blue light and Jung could make out the Arabian desert and snow-tipped Himalayas. He felt he was about to leave orbit, but then, turning to the south, a huge black monolith came into view. It was a kind of temple, and at the entrance Jung saw a Hindu sitting in a lotus pos­ition. Within, innumerable candles flickered, and he felt that the “whole phantasmagoria of earthly existence” was being stripped away. It wasn’t pleasant, and what remained was an “essential Jung”, the core of his experiences.

He knew that inside the temple the mystery of his existence, of his purpose in life, would be answered. He was about to cross the threshold when he saw, rising up from Europe far below, the image of his doctor in the archetypal form of the King of Kos, the island site of the temple of Asclepius, Greek god of medicine. He told Jung that his departure was premature; many were demanding his return and he, the King, was there to ferry him back. When Jung heard this, he was immensely disappointed, and almost immediately the vision ended. He experienced the reluctance to live that many who have been ‘brought back’ encounter, but what troubled him most was seeing his doctor in his archetypal form. He knew this meant that the physician had sacrificed his own life to save Jung’s. On 4 April 1944 – a date numerologists can delight in – Jung sat up in bed for the first time since his heart attack. On the same day, his doctor came down with septicæmia and took to his bed. He never left it, and died a few days later.

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Post tags: mysterious, spiritual experience

At the heart of every crisis we currently face is the modern system of education. Our educational model churns out an advanced primate concerned with security and the desire to be important while focusing solely on how to have a good time with as little thought as possible. Education is not merely a matter of training but a method of knowing who you are and how the energy flows around you supply your basic needs.

To quote Krishnamurti, “The ignorant man is not the unlearned but the man who does not know himself. What we now call education is the accumulation of knowledge from books which anyone can do who can read.”

The problem is that governments want efficient technicians, not human beings because human beings become dangerous to governments.

In a recent TED talk, Sir Ken Robinson discusses a system of education that treats our children like pieces of an organic agricultural ecosystem instead of cogs in a machine. The fact that he is on a major platform talking about such reforms to influential people is encouraging.

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Post tags: education, humanity, modern education, videos

In his autobiography, the psychologist Carl Jung tells the story of a man who comes to him for therapy, apparently at the insistence of his wife. The man is dull as a stick: a Swiss high school principal of about sixty years of age, who did everything “right” all his life, and never experienced a moment of ecstasy or imagination. Jung suggests that he keep a record of his dreams, which he does, showing up at the second session with something potentially disturbing. He dreamt that he entered a darkened room, and found a three-year-old infant covered with feces, and crying. What, he asked Dr. Jung, could it mean? Jung decided not to tell him the obvious: that the baby was himself, that it had had the life crushed out of it at an early age, and was now crying out to be heard. Exposing the “shadow” to the light of day, Jung told himself, would precipitate a psychosis in this poor guy; he wouldn’t be able to handle the psychic confrontation. So Jung gave him some sort of neutral explanation, saw the man a few more times, finally pronounced him “cured,” and let him go.

A grim assessment, but I doubt there is any way of denying it. Nor is it limited to the United States, of course; if Freud was right, there is no civilization without deep discontent. It just takes a different form in different cultures. And in any case, it is hard to imagine what a society based entirely on cellular memory would be like—although figures such as Rousseau and Nietzsche did their best to sketch it out. True, the results are less than impressive, but one would like to think that more can be done in this direction beyond individual initiative. It is very rare for a society to literally stop, for a moment, and collectively discuss what an authentic way of life might consist of. Indeed, I can barely imagine such a thing, except that it actually happened in France in May/June of 1968, and for those who were privileged enough to have been at the two-month “teach-in” held at the Sorbonne during that time, it was like breathing oxygen. What is man? What is the good life? What are we doing here? And: Why aren’t we asking ourselves these questions all the time?

[via Morris Berman's Dark Ages America blog]

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Post tags: human beings, humanity, spiritual experience

At the end of the movie Mike Ruppert makes a few immediate predictions, many of which have come true since then. The point that Ruppert continually makes is that he has developed a deadly accurate map of the world. I think that while some of his details might end up being incorrect, the overall picture has proved to be spot on.

Recently, Ruppert gave a rousing talk in Vermont to a group of people campaigning to secede Vermont from the United States in order to prepare for the plethora of rapidly approaching systemic problems with globalization. If you’ve seen the move Collapse, this video serves as a spectacular update. If you haven’t seen Collapse or aren’t familiar with the ideas contained within, then get ready for a roller coaster ride.

I’m always impressed by the way Ruppert can make alarming predictions with a particular level of believability because he has based them on a wealth of information.

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Post tags: collapse, economic crisis, peak oil