The Gadfly

Corporatism, Spiritual de-privatization and technofascism

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one. – Friedrich Nietzsche

For those of us who work in a corporate environment, it is very clear that we either follow corporate policies or lose our job. At my workplace for example, we are not allowed to display any sort of religious material in or outside our offices. We are also forced to accept our company’s policies in regards to environmentalism or alternative lifestyles. Company policies are not created from the consensus or vote by the employees. Many companies have and are engaged in the most egregious forms of criminality: slave labor, murder, stealing, and holocausts to name a few.  The employees either don’t know, pretend not to know, or don’t care.

The employees have no say in the public and private policies of the company they work for and they must, as employees, accept their company’s public position, or leave. It is a tyranny we accept  because we get paid as long as the company continues to make a profit.  We must accept it even more due to the manufactured by design economic crisis. Getting paid and having the illusion of security seems to be worth the price of having to be something we are not, or having to be told what to do what to say and how to be. In many ways, we have sold our soul and we have done it with a clean conscious. Why with a clean conscious? Because we still believe we are simply serving the American dream of creating wealth and prospering and providing for a our family. The ends justify the means. That is what we have become. We have perverted the American dream. WE have perverted it. It is no longer “We, the people”. It is “We, the corporation” and we have chosen not to pursue happiness, but instead misery.

So Washington is not the only place where people are corrupt. We are corrupt, because we willingly participate and support tyranny within the private sector. The behaviors we learn and the ignorance we attain in the corporate environment naturally spill into what is left of our private lives. I say what is left because after we leave the tyrannical realm of the corporation, some of us go home, switch on the television and allow streams of propaganda to enter our consciousness: mainstream news, advertisements, television shows. Others switch on the computer and logon to Facebook, Twitter or some other internet network that collects personal data and publishes it for everyone to see.
Privacy certainly has become more precious than gold and most people don’t even want it because they don’t think it will make them famous or a lot of money. Privacy doesn’t even give them knowledge, they believe, because privacy is being “offline” or “out of touch” or “out of sync”.

I work in the technology industry at a very large company. Generally, most of the workers enjoy the work they do because they love technology. I love technology. In many ways, we are like kids in a toy store: lots of “cool” tools and gadgets that are used for making even cooler tools and gadgets. I myself got into the industry in the mid-nineties because of the possibilities for communication. Wow! You could publish your writings directly to the internet. You could talk to someone in China. The possibilities were endless. The dreams then began. Nothing could stop us.

Technologists, like scientists, easily fall into “do it because you can” trap. Take social networking. The impact on our culture of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook is immense, both sociologically and psychologically. It is not the purpose of this post to delve into the details of that impact, but suffice it to say that one of the affects has been the dissolution of the distinction between what is private and what is public. It is a distinction we take for granted, just like we take language for granted. Generally, when we take something for granted, we neglect it and, boy, have we neglected this one.

The technofacists, as I call them, do not care one whit what social networking has done and will do to our culture.  Social networking software is huge in the industry and the technologists see themselves as creating a framework in which human beings live, communicate, share, make friends and lose friends.  Make no mistake about it: technologists see themselves as being gods who are creating a landscape in which the deer and the antelope play. I worked on a team that was devoted to inventing as many social networking applications as they could: publishing, analyzing, interpreting personal data for public consumption.  They don’t see themselves as pawns in a new world order agenda. On the contrary, they see themselves as benefiting the people becuase they make life easier and fun.

So what are the principles of a good piece of social networking software? How do the technofascists believe they are providing for mankind? I will discuss two. One is intelligent automation; the other, rich community.

First, there is intelligent automation. Basically this principle is considered a very good thing because the user has to do less when communicating with his or her “friends”.  Texting offers intelligent automation when the phone software automatically anticipates that word being typed. This is also called “predictive texting”. Texters don’t have to bother as much with the complete spelling out of words.  The greater amount of intelligent automation in our daily lives, the less intelligence we tend to cultivate in ourselves. Use it or lose it, as they say. We have chosen to allow our kids to lose it.

A second example of intelligent automation is latent in an article published in the Telegraph which discusses how IT departments not only collect employee data via emails and IP telephone conversations, but analyze the data to determine their emotive meaning. The email in your inbox could potentially be flagged with some kind of angry emoticon because the IT software determine that the mail is filled with anger.  It will not be surprising should this technology appear on some social networking site.  At the moment, users must manually insert an emoticon to reflect their emotions. If the software can interpret the emotional content of your email, it can insert it automatically. “Automatic” or “without effort from the user” is cool because it feigns to “help people”, when it truly cripples them into an even deeper slavery. Why bother even interpreting your own emotions to people, when the software does it for you?

Another principle of good social networking software is that it allows for a “rich” community. What this means is that the community cannot be dead. It needs to be alive. People need to use it not as a tool in their lives, but as a way of life. Sending a tweet must become an hourly event. Otherwise, these networks die and the software doesn’t make money. They depend on you to keep the beast alive. This means that the more a culture becomes spiritually de-privatized, the more these social networks thrive. They are like vampires. The more you put in to the community, the less you yourself get out of it. However, the illusion created is that you are getting something out of it and that all these friends on your friends list care deeply about what you are doing right now. At the most, they care only like they care how many more children Angelina is adopting. Infectious, all this; and since humans are social creatures, they tend to go along with the herd. Social networking sites enhance the herd mentality of human beings, not the free-thinking mentality. Most people even have their boss or their co-workers on their “friends” list. The corporate slavery system floods into this strange sick brew of corporate fascism, gossip mongering and self-abdication.

I have spoken about technofascism many times on this blog. Technology is the key to the new world order. The strange thing about this new world order, or rather the genius of it, is that we will willingly accept it because it will continue to feed our “need” and “thirst for” technology and unethical lifestyles. Kids can’t live without their cell phone. They need to “tweet” every ten minutes. They need to document everything they are doing, where they are at every point in the day. They are being trained to love the lack of privacy. They are the next generation. Do you think they will care of the company they work for “spies” on them? Or if the government/corporation spies on them. No, they will actually think it is a benefit.

One of the keys to fighting this technofascist revolution is to have parents work together to face up to and own the world we have created in the name of supporting our family and putting food on the table. Our kids are destined to be helpless in thinking and acting for themselves.  The magical moments of my child were many times the moments I spent alone, in my own fertile imagination. I grew to love music because my need to express myself was so powerful that I had no choice but to learn and to play.  If I had intelligent automation and a rich community at a click of a button, I probably would have gone the easier route. The thought of that, parents, makes me sick.

The new world order is not a conspiracy.  It is not some wizard of Oz working behind the scenes to corrupt the universe. Evil is not the caricature of Hollywood. Evil is and always will be the other side of ourselves. It is our responsibility to learn it and know it and come to fight it.  We have failed to do that in our culture, because ours is a culture of denial and lies.  Take a good look at the seven deadly sins: extravagance, greed, envy, pride, vainglory and consider how deep we have fallen. We have chosen the dark side by pretending that someone else, our arch nemesis, is causing the misery of the world.  We are bifurcated into left or right, black or white, gay or straight, democrat or republican, socialist or capitalist: we always place ourselves in one camp and point the finger at the other. This is how we live in ignorance.

The new world order is a revolution that has arrived in currents and waves. Its momentum has insinuated itself in every area of our lives. It has one goal and one goal alone: to dominate and to enslave and drown us in our own evils.

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing. – Albert Einstein

Politics and “Conspiracy Theories”: It’s Not What You are Seeing

"To you, the bold searchers, researchers, and whoever embarks with cunning sails on terrible seas--to you, drunk with riddles, glad of twilight, whose soul flutes astray to every whirlpool, because you do not want to grope along a thread with cowardly hand; and where you can guess, you hate to deduce." - Nietzsche

In the beginning of Book I of his Histories, Herodotus, the first Greek historian, tells us the story of how King Gyges became ruler of Lydia.  The function of the story in the context of Herodotus’ history is to offer the reader an insight into the nature of political knowledge as Herodotus saw it. Political knowledge is not like any other kind of knowledge available to mankind and that is because political knowledge somehow involves having a certain kind of wisdom and comprehension of human nature, both the external and obvious characteristics, as well as the more subterranean and concealed ones. Without this kind of wisdom, political insight is actually quite impossible. Now most people who suggest that there is a subterranean and concealed government behind the known or public government are considered to be conspiracy nuts or whackos. I have had it up to HERE with this propaganda. People who don’t get their news from MSNBCCBSNBCFOXNEWS are somehow liars or misinformed. People who look behind the crap sandwich that is delivered daily at our door are somehow misinformed??? I’d say at the very least that they have good TASTE. I guess I will have to pull out Einstein in order to give our conspiracy nuts a little less nuttiness in the eyes of those who will AT LEAST listen to a genius of science.

Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else. And what a person thinks on his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous. There are only a few enlightened people with a lucid mind and style and with good taste within a century. What has been preserved of their work belongs among the most precious possessions of mankind. We owe it to a few writers of antiquity (Plato, Aristotle, etc.) that the people in the Middle Ages could slowly extricate themselves from the superstitions and ignorance that had darkened life for more than half a millennium. Nothing is more needed to overcome the modernist's snobbishness. (Albert Einstein, 1954)

Back to Herodotus, our inquiring mind of antiquity. The tale Herodotus tells is quite simple – almost the stuff of a child’s storybook. It begins at the time when Candaules was king of Lydia and Gyges was his right hand man. Now Candaules believed that his wife, the queen, was the most beautiful woman in the world. Unable to contain this secret and hidden knowledge from public view, he demanded (in the form of a request) that Gyges see her naked. Gyges, knowing that such a sight would have tremendous consequences, resisted as he tried to convince Candaules that such a deed was a bad idea. However, tyrants being tyrants, “no” was not an answer and Gyges prepared to sneak into the queens boudoir to watch her reveal what is not to be revealed to the public. Gyges was then to slip out of the room, unnoticed. Well, the plan succeeded, with the exception of the unnoticed part.  In the end, the queen let Gyges know that he has two possible courses: either kill Candaules and become king, or kill himself. Gyges chose to become king of Lydia. He ended up paying gold as tribute to the Delphic treasury. They in turn certified his reign by declaring that his rule was ordained by the gods. The people welcomed him because the Delphic gods told them too. Revolution was avoided and the people were kept at bay.

When we try to understand politics and the history of politics, we must keep in mind that there are two different types of knowledge. The first type is public knowledge. Public knowledge is like the clothes of the queen. Everyone can see them and comment on them. People can argue about whether or not they are beautiful or ugly. The knowledge is usual trivial and/or unimportant entertainment. The clothes can always change every day with either little or no real consequence. Plato identified this kind of knowledge as being “opinion” or a “seeming”, as opposed to the true thing-in-itself.  Herodotus’ understands it as being necessarily a part of public life – it is the appearances that are created or worn by the ruling class. The clothes are the stories they tell, the lies they distribute and the fame and fortune they advertise.

We see this kind of “seeming knowledge” occurring on a daily basis with the modern mainstream media. For example, the flu hoax was a staged media event designed to frighten an enormous amount of people. Nothing came of it. Life went on as usual. The same is the case with the economy. People are being convinced that the economy is improving because the government is wearing its’ happy clothes today. THIS IS ALL FAKE, folks. Every day we are being taught that our political life is about as real as an episode of 24: we watch it, then we go to bed expecting to see a new headline in the morning that will change our circumstances.  The people are about as passive as a bunch of dogs being trained to sit in puppy class. We are trained to watch the images and the people, as they shift shapes and appear to make some kind of progress towards the hazy ideals we imagine to be good. We cheer some and jeer at others. We fight amongst ourselves because we believe that there are two sides, one with nicer clothes and one with worse clothes. We are convinced that the lies we are told are real, and so we do not even look beyond this Matrix to seek the truth. We think we are THERE already. THAT is a sad state of affairs, to believe to know truth or truths. No wonder we are so bored that we require more and more entertainment and consumerism. THAT is exactly what our political life desires. We make money off need AND off of debt.

Now the second type of knowledge seems to be something like true knowledge. It is the recognition that the clothes can be removed.  However, we are not talking about scientific truth or mathematical truth. We are talking about human nature here: in regards to politics and the human state, the knowledge of the truth will somehow get someone killed. If you come to have a glimpse of the truth you, like Gyges, will either be killed for sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong, or you will have to be lucky enough to become President of the United States or some other official position in the legal mafia. Either way, danger lurks on all sides, because you could then become like Candaules, eager to show off the truth that you have seen or found by going public with it.  Before you know it, you will be excommunicated by Jacqui Smith of Britain or you will be removed from your post for destroying the sanctity of the inner circle, or you will be eliminated from the YouTube.com website.

So why is Herodotus telling us this? Why wouldn’t an historian tell you this?  Any historian that DOESN’T tell you this is not worth his salt. One of the criticisms of against people like Bob Chapman or Alex Jones is that they don’t have all the facts. Well, OF COURSE THEY DON’T. There is a point where are knowledge stops when it comes to politics because there is so much secrecy inherent in it.  History is difficult because it is either told by flatterers or fear mongers. It is difficult if not impossible to see or discover that which is so deeply hidden from view. Herodotus understands that the essence of political power IS secrecy and concealment. If the government happens to be benevolent, we are great. If not, we are doomed. Either way, we are slaves to a force that is beyond the distance, beyond our ability to immediately identify and see. We must, as Herodotus does, come to see the truth in an entirely different way. We do not learn by demonstration of the truth – we learn instead by looking for the clues, the obvious fakeries and lies, by learning how to at the very least recognize the difference between what is clothing and what is flesh. We can find and locate the lies, even though the truth will be ever out of our grasp. But that is a better state to be in than to believe that the lies we hold dear are true or that the true is a lie.

Propaganda, Ponzi Schemes and Pontification: The Government at Work

"Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations and ages it is the rule" - Nietzsche

This is the third time I have headed my post with that Nietzsche quote. This time, however, instead of using it to reinforce my position, I am going to juxtapose it against its uglier creature cousin that was created out of Obama's left leaning witches crew.  The brew runs in the following way: "Financial health and virtue is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations and ages it is the rule."

The strategy used to destroy capitalism once and for all is to first create a distasteful image of it in the form of unsavory individuals.  Now this has nothing to do with the true nature of capitalism. It's true nature can only be uncovered by those who spend some time researching and learning about it. But let's face it.  This is the age of YouTube, and people want to learn through images more than ever before. "The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more you need to seduce the senses to it". The abstract "truth" the left wishes to teach is best illustrated by the following syllogism: individuals bad; groups good. Capitalism favors individuals. Socialism favors groups. Therefore, capitalism bad; socialism good. A fine example of how logic differs from actual thinking.

This kind of propaganda will teach the sheeple that evil, greed and corruption mostly come in individual packages.  At the same time, the current (a.k.a. incoming) government will appear free from such divergences off the path of virtue, or if they do diverge, it is some schmuck's fault.  So, what the media does and will continue to do is parade each salacious individual, one after the other, for all the world to see and upon which to gape. Then they will hang him one way or another and the sheeple will cheer for their just government. Meanwhile the real - and much more dangerous - crooks get away scot free. Typical of any Hollywood movie.

So here are a few of the sacrificial lambs laying on the alter of the god called The State:

 

Bernie Madoff
This clown is the seven deadly sins personified. No doubt about it.  Kudos to everyone who was responsible for pulling this guy and  his attached sludge out of the sewers. Even the press, in their virtuous posing, continue to howl about the fact that this insect is still sitting comfortably in his multi million dollar duplex in Manhattan. Yet that same press has said virtually nothing about Henry "Ponzi" Paulson, Ben Bernanke and our Congress who all seem to make a pretty good living off spending taxpayer money and debasing the dollar. Madoff may be a roach. But the rest of them comprise the entire roach's nest.

 

And why is the press largely silent? Why haven't they attempted to really "educate" the public on the corruption of our government? Why has only Madoff been threatened with punishment? Because, again, this is not a system of justice that we live in. We live in system that is created and determined by the socialist left who wishes to hang a few individuals in order to divert spotlight away from themselves and their socialist agenda. Roaches like the dark.

Rob Blagojevich
Blago is a disgrace equal to Madoff, with the exception that Blago has more hair than brains. "I went to law school at a place called Pepperdine in Malibu, Ca, overlooking the Pacific Ocean -- a lot of surfing and movie stars and all the rest. I barely knew where that law library was." A self-proclaimed moron, Blago does not have the intelligence to practice his guile in secret. As a result, he was thrown out of the nest, sliding down into the sink and into the garbage disposal. All the rest of the roaches looked shocked and scattered about into the cracks. No one knows who or where they are - exactly. The press is going to keep it that way.

Wow. The roach analogy is working really well. Its always nice to find common ground. For a writer, it's like sitting in a comfortable La-Z Boy.  If this is not diplomacy, I don't know what is.

Timothy Geithner
Whoops! Obama's new Treasury Secretary hasn't paid his taxes. Well that just will not do, will it?

"He's dedicated his career to our country and served with honor, intelligence and distinction," incoming White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. "That service should not be tarnished by honest mistakes, which, upon learning of them, he quickly addressed."

Geithner failed to pay self-employment taxes for money he earned while working for the International Monetary Fund from 2001 to 2003, the transition official said. In 2006, the IRS notified him that he owed $14,847 in self-employment taxes and $2,383 in penalties from 2003 and 2004. - Wall Street Journal

An "honest" mistake. Will they let it slide? Only time will tell. No one knows the ways of the roaches when they connive in their dens.

 

Sheila Dixon
Bribery, theft and fraud. All in a days work. You can read it here. But ho hum. Corrupt individuals are the norm these days. Eventually we will become, if we are not already, bored with the entire show.

And boredom, my friends, is the intended destination. Because boredom is yet a further way to distract and dissimulate. The sheeple get comfortable with the constant stream and reminder of corruption. They sit back and watch the media and the judicial system chase the rascals off the stage. As a result, they learn, like good puppies, to just trust that the media and the government have a handle on it all. They learn to love socialism because the government will protect them from evil individuals.

We are watching a government reinvent itself before our eyes. How is that for Change you can believe in?

You know, I received an email from "Michelle Obama" after I signed up for updates at their new USA Service web site. Here is what she said to me. You have to get the fuzz out from between the ears to really comprehend this one, if comprehension is even possible.

"If you want to be important -- wonderful. If you want to be recognized -- wonderful.
If you want to be great -- wonderful. But, recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant.
That's a new definition of greatness."

Who is the greatest among us? Is she referring to Obama? Or are there many greatest ones and even more less great ones? There are always more less great ones, so does that means the servants( the greatest ones) will have to serve way more than they can handle.   In what manner are the great ones always servants of the less great ones? Does this mean that if I am great in economics, I "shall be" (notice the decree) servant of the one who is lesser in economics? Does this mean that we will continue to follow the economic advice of Paul Bernanke or does it mean I will just pick up his Starbucks?

“In politics stupidity is not a handicap.” - Napoleon

“Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.” - Plato

The public argument against capitalism is not an argument at all. It is a parade of empty clown suits. Even writing about it feels absurd. But this how the left communicates with its victims. It seduces with emotional imagery and nonsense in order to gain market share. Michelle Obama's vacuous pontification has the appearance of something profound and inviting. It is meant to inspire. In truth it is about as substantial as the black abyss.

"and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Nietzsche

Cross Posted at Modern Conservative