COVID-19: The Great Reset
2022-02-04
The WEF (World Economic Forum) sees themselves as de facto rulers of the world (after all, if they weren't chosen, they wouldn't be rich). Building on Schwab's Fourth Industrial Revolution's technical predictions (that are really a plan) to solve the problems of Covid-19 (the real problem has been the reaction). The gist is that we need more globalization in the form of a hyperconnected, consumer driven, mass surveilled global society. He claims that there is no inflation in sight (there is), but it will show up soon (it did) and it will be a threat (that happens when you print trillions in 18 months) and likely the global economy will have to be reset to use some kind of digital currency while also redistributing wealth (universal basic income to keep the guillotines from rolling) In the end, there is 'no place for the nation state' in Schwab's future (dream).
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
2022-01-18
The predicted technological changes, while mostly presented as positives, might very well lead to potential civil unrest fueled by a widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. This divide will be likely seen most prominently in automation (capital) replacing jobs (labor) of both blue (replace by robots) and white collar (replaced by AI) workers. A public-private (read fascism) should be built to ameliorate this unrest by understanding and controlling the rollout of said technology. Ironically there is a simultanious call to increase retirement age (drastically) along with the hope that these emerging technologies will create more jobs than they destroy even though the evidence points directly to that not happening. One major theme that can not be glossed over is that most of the new technology is in the digital world and will lead directly to a loss of privacy and an increased amount of surveillance that can be seen as nothing short of digital totalitarianism.
Education and the Social Order
2019-01-24
Religion is decried as science is foisted upon the global as a replacement ideology that will somehow improve **everything**. This globalism will be enforced with international standards set about by supranational bodies like the League of Nations (United Nations). To bring this about we must reformat the way we educate our young so that they are immune, or at least less susceptible to propaganda. In actuality the new educational system itself is a more pervasive form of propaganda. Once the younger generation is sufficiently indoctrinated, we can convince them to destroy their families and give up their children to be raised by the state (of global communism).
The Human Use of Human Beings
2018-03-28
The same way signals can control an electronic machine, messages can control the human machine; feedback can amplify or attenuate these messages for maximal impact. Messages delivered via the global communication network beget a world state where those that control of the media will compel cooperation or ruin to all who stand against it. These controlling messages can be hidden in the white noise of unneeded communication, which will give rise to a proliferation of useless communication and will likely dumb down of both sender and receiver. Eventually the machine delivering the messages, through automation [AI], will start to make decisions on its own and we might very well find ourselves making a bargain with a monkey paw machine that won't understand our nuance delivering us straight into hell. Alternatively, the machine may never be out from under the thumb of the ruling class yet through their lust for control lead us to a different, albeit irrelevantly so, hell.
Cybernetics - or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine
2018-02-26
General systems theory, often called cybernetics, is concerned with, most generally, mathematically modeling feedback loops in mechanical, biological, ecological, economic, and other kinds of systems. The idea was birthed by the author, Norbert Weiner, with collaboration of his colleagues around Princeton University. These scientists, recognizing the importance in what they were only beginning to understand, employed the assistance of a plethora of other scientists through various venues, the most famous being what are today known as the Macy Conferences, a multidisciplinary conference where ideas, hitherto unrelated, were unified. On the biological front, man is viewed through the lens of cybernetics as a clockwork automata, a biological machine, a golem, that can be manipulated by varying social and environmental conditions. The social implications of such a view are all pervasive today in the realm of media, religion, education, and any other aspect of life one might consider; from the benign advertiser to the power hungry politician, cybernetics, for better or worse, has been and will continue to shape the world around us.
Crystallizing Public Opinion
2018-02-03
This edition, from 1961, contains and extensive preface that recounts the modern history of propaganda through the first half of the 20th century as seen from Bernays' position at the center of the development. Mentioned more than a few times are the tools of the propagandists trade - magazines, motion pictures, radio, books, lectures, plays, and any other kind of media available. A kind of circular logic is presented when you consider that the promotion of public relations was done in the same way you'd promote anything else - through the aforementioned media - until the public opinion, on public relations, was formed. Bernays, Lippmann, and several other prominent propagandists of the era usher in a new way to understand public opinion with the advent of the so-called group mind, the precursor to today's group think and hive mind. The eventual conclusion, contrary to what you might think given the association most make between public relations, advertising, marketing, and their goal of sales, is that the upper class of society must use these means to inject morals into the lower classes.
Tracking the White Rabbit - Essays in Subversive Psychology
2018-01-29
It begins with a look at Alice in Wonderland that leads to defending Lewis Carroll for taking photographs of naked girls and being glad we remember him for Alice and not the photographs, which 'would land him in jail today.' This kind of subversiveness continues unabated throughout the book with the promotion of homosexuality, promiscuity, the supposed plight of the Jews, outright anti-male sentiment, and countless other hateful positions. She dodges a bullet when discussing the 'False Memory Syndrome' (that has been used to discredit abused children in both the Finders and San Francisco Presido school cases) as unimportant, claiming that the veracity of the memory is secondary to healing the psychological wounds and helping the victim feel better. The book essentially preaches victimhood on one page and then how to overcome being a victim on the next, but this seems like nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to promote what we see today in the oppression Olympics so prevalent in our universities and beyond - the more victimized you are, the smaller your minority, the more 'points' you get. Last, but far from least, the author plainly states that heterosexuality is an artifact of culture that is reinforced through media and that heterosexuality is actually a neurosis.
Nudge
2018-01-23
This book is an exploration of understanding and exploiting the choices of people. Anyone that is in a position to offer some kind of choice is thought of as a 'choice architect' and the way the choice is presented is called the 'choice architecture'. Supposedly most people can't make 'good' decisions because they lack the skills or data to make such decisions. Defaults, placement, and language can be used to structure the choice architecture to provide less chance for choosers to make 'bad' choices. While there are many case studies presented to back up these claims, what constitutes a good or bad choice is subjective and the lack of ability to make good choices, whatever good may be, is not examined.
Psychological Warfare
2017-08-08
After a whirlwind journey through some historical examples of propaganda as a military tool, the book moves toward a more pragmatic approach. Most propaganda should be suited for long term effects, a glacially slow example being education as propaganda, rather than pinpoint targeting as in more kinetic military engagements. The propagandist must also not let their ideology get in the way of delivering a truthful message that the enemy wants to hear. The second half of the book discusses analysis of both enemy propaganda to determine their position on various topics as well as polling enemy populations and prisoners to understand the effects of propaganda on them. Finally an operational dissection of propaganda covers such topics as format (radio, print), deployment (shelling, air-drop), and target populations (combatants, civilians).
From Versailles to Cybernetics
2017-08-07
The most important things in Bateson's life, as he tells it, were the Treaty of Versailles and the cybernetic 'breakthrough'. All mammals, and thus humans, are concerned only with the patterns of relationship that give rise to abstractions like love, hate, and trust. The Treaty of Versailles was full of deceit to demoralize the Germans and should have been seen to provide the foundation for with WW2 sprung from. We must understand how we got to the present to have any chance at understanding the present. The 'rules of the game' that were laid down with the Treaty of Versailles and the advent of cybernetics need to be changed before the computers lead us into a more rigid world.
Cultural Patterns and Technical Change
2017-04-16
First, a culture must be understood by closely watching and documenting the interactions between its members. Next, determine which of the current cultural tendencies can be exploited to introduce a, usually minor, change in habit. Care must be taken to limit the negative consequences, when possible, of the introduced change, which can be far reaching and non-intuitive. Education of the, primarily, younger generation can smooth the transition towards industrialization - children are educated to accept the constant change the new society will be subject to. Money economies and cash crops often obliterate a community - children can skip rites of passage by buying a herd of their own, cash crops introduce malnutrition, and foreign goods often displace traditional roles, such as factory produced clothing replacing woman spinning the family's clothing.
The Book of the Law - Liber AL vel Legis sub figura CCXX as delivered by XCIII = 418 to DCLXVI
2017-03-23
The text contains many numbers, mentions mathematical operations and an equation; it feels like encryption. At one point there is a 'random' string of characters and numbers, 4 6 3 8 A B K 2 4 A L G M O R 3 Y X 24 89 R P S T O V A L. Some of the main recurring themes deal ambiguously with hedonism and anti-reason. Additionally, death is worshipped alongside ideals such that compassion is a weakness and the weak should be crushed. It seems to portend the decline into narcissistic consumer culture quite well.
From PSYOP to MindWar - The Psychology of Victory
2016-12-06
Once war begins, the enemy will be full of national pride, pumped in by their governments so it is of the utmost importance to use persuasion on the soldiers before they are soldiers. Both the enemy and their domestic sympathizers should be treated in much the same fashion, constructing their world views via an ever encroaching technological connectedness. While it is repeatedly stated that MindWar tactics must use truth, for to tell lies builds your control on a foundation of sand, but that truth can be 'willed into existence'. Again there is an outright denial of using psychedelics and similar mind altering substances to increase suggestibility, but it leaves plenty to the imagination of how to use pre-existing cultures that DO promote drug use - like raves - where everyone is imbibing via their own volition. Further, naturally occurring forces are seen as potential leverage to be utilized directly as phenomena in nature, or induced synthetically as in ELF waves.
Propaganda
2015-01-01
Excruciating detail is paid to crafting almost everything we see and hear. By controlling the messages we receive, propagandists can subsequently inject a narrative, reinforced by the audience themselves in the form of social stigmas. To control the message one must influence those key structures or individuals that are opinion forming within a community. No matter the message, it will be accepted if delivered by a trustworthy source. This manipulation can be used to sell you a new trend in fashion in much the same way it can take nations to war.