Politics of the Geo

Folks Who Run Shit

In trying to understanding why some countries seem to be eternally developing while others stay "developed", why we use the finite resource of the Earth the way we do, and a slew of other "why's" I came to the conclusion that a schmuck like myself needs to know a bit about geopolitics. The eight organizations listed below are a useful starting point for understanding the Folks Who Run Shit (FWRS).

International Organizations

United Nations

After the chaos of World War II on the 24th of October 1945, the United Nations Charter was put into effect in order to replace the faltering League of Nations whose power was as broken as the rubble shards that covered Europe. It has grown into an intergovernmental organization of 193 member states (every internationally recognized soverign state EXCEPT the Vatican) who, in theory, are bound to the articles describing its aim and how it will function. The UN is split into the following major organizational bodies: the General Assembly (all members involved; deliberates and votes to give “recommendations” NOT binding resolutions), the Security Council (5 permanent members holding veto-power and 10 non-permanent members switched every two years; creates binding resolutions regarding global security issues), the Economic and Social Council (54 member states; gather data/produce reports to be used at other meetings), the Secretariat (currently headed by Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon; gathers info and produces reports), and the International Court of Justice (15 members; debates and rules on legal issues). A tall gray building (aren't they all) plopped on a piece of international terra firma in New York City houses the first four bodies, and the last is stationed at The Hague in the Netherlands. These five plus a slew of other more-specialized agencies (the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Health Organization, World Food Programme etc.) work, in theory, toward the stated goal of world-peace, international cooperation, international security, and human rights.

European Union


The initial seed of this intergovernmental organization reaches back to World War II, but it isn't until the June 1993 hammering out of entry requirements in the Copenhagen Treaty and the integration of this into the November 1st signing of the Maastricht Treaty that a true growth occurs. These two, along with the 2009 Lisbon Treaty, set out the structural and ideological foundations of the EU. To join, members must have a liberal democracy, respect human rights (as described in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights), agree to the EU Acquis (a 170,000 page tome of law), and have a rule of law. Currently the EU is composed of 27 member-states collectively representing 500 million people strewn across a mosaic of land and water that spreads from the Atlantic Ocean in the East to the Russia/Belarus/Ukraine border in the West. Within this lies the Eurozone, a group of 17 member-states who use the Euro as currency. These people are, theoretically, represented in the seven main organizational bodies of the EU, with the European Council (proposing and enacting legislation) and the European Central Bank (directing monetary policy and monitoring the Euro) being the most important. The stated aim of this immense entity is to abolish restrictions (trade barriers etc.) on the free movements of goods, people, and capital across member nations.

World Trade Organization

In Geneva lies a standard slab of tall concrete that houses the World Trade Organization (WTO). This intergovernmental organization of 156 member states (including the EU) can be broken down into four main parts: the Council for Trade in Goods, the Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), the Council for Trade in Services (oversees implementation of General Agreement on Trade in Services, or GATS), and Trade Negotiations Committee (headed by Director-Manager Pascal Lamy; debates global trade policy, currently in the Doha Development Round). When the Marrakesh Agreement was signed on January 1st 1995, the WTO was born, integrating and expanding upon the half-century year old General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The WTO aims to liberalize international trade by spreading a free-market ideology that lowers import tariffs amongst many other things. To enforce conformity it can impose trade restrictions on any of its members that don't abide by their rules.  

International Banks

Bank of International Settlements (BIS)

Inside the Hague on the 20th of January 1930, agreements were made that led to the creation of this "central banker's central bank". Despite a brush with possible extinction during the Bretton Woods conference of 1944 due to allegations of supporting Nazi war criminals, this bank has chugged along. Currently it's housed inside a garrish and grey twenty-story building in Basel, Switzerland. Comprised of 58 member banks (many being the central banks of their own countries), the task of the BIS is to unite the financial and monetary policy of its members --- and do this with immunity from the pesky laws of any national government. 

The World Bank

From the interior of a plush hotel in July of 1944, delegates at the Bretton Woods Conference gave textual birth to the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Agency (IDA). These two make up the World Bank. From its headquarters in Washington D.C., this intergovernmental agency of 188 member countries employs a Board of Governor's (one from each country) and a more powerful Board of Directors (25 members to represent all) to determine how to reduce poverty in two major constituencies. The first, covered by the IBRD (which includes all 188 countries), are the middle-income developing nations that need help with infrastructure building. The second, covered by the IDA (which includes only 172 countries), are the poorest developing nations. Each member has to be part of the International Monetary Fund, pay membership fees, approve activities, and vote on policy --- although a disproportionate amount of power is given to France, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the United States. The World Bank, granted an immunity that makes it impossible for any government to have authority over it, lends loans to these two constituencies in order to "help". However, to ensure a payback on their investment, certain Structural Adjustment Policies (SAP's) are imposed. These controversial tactics, are often referred to as The Washington Consensus, include: privatization of resources, deregulation of markets, trade barrier relaxations, currency devaluation, and austerity cuts to social services.  

International Monetary Fund

Although written up in the legendary Bretton Woods Conference of July 1944, it wasn't until December 27th of the following year that 29 countries ratified its Articles of Agreement. Initially the IMF worked toward creating fixed exchange rates tied to the U.S. Dollar to aid Europe in rebuilding its decimated cities post-WWII. During this period, each member-country would pay a quota of money to a collective pool and this would be loaned to countries in fiscal crisis. All this changed on August 15, 1971 when President Nixon cancelled the ability to convert U.S. Dollars into reserve gold --- in comes fiat currency and the collapse of the Bretton Woods System. From its relatively simple beginnings, the IMF has grown in size and ambition. Currently it monitors the economic and financial policy of its 188 member-countries and judges how it will effect the global economy. This is done by a Board of Governors (1 actual and 1 alternate for each member-country) discussing policy and appointing directors to the Executive Board (24 members in all; headed by Managing Director Christine Lagarde), which makes most of the important policy decisions. Since the Executive Board is disproportionately represented by the U.S. and other developed countries, its bias is toward neoliberalism and global capitalism. A situation has arisen in which borrower countries (almost-always developing countries) have devastating conditionality's imposed on them by loaner countries (almost-always developed countries). These Structural Adjustment Policy's (SAPs) mirror the World Bank because they lower corporate tax, privatize public industries, and cut public spending, all in the name of maintaining fiscal health. 

Military Organizations

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 

The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4th 1949 and shortly after this intergovernmental military alliance was created. From its headquarters in Brussels, delegates from each of the 28 member-states (mostly Western European countries plus the U.S.) debate policy and work toward the collective defense of NATO defined territory. The main decision-power lies in the North Atlantic Council (NAC), a group of elected senior members headed by Secretary General Anders Rasmussen, that sets the policy and strategy (with the aid of the military committee) to be adopted by member-states. Although Article 5 of the NATO Charter (an attack on one is an attack on all) wasn't invoked until September 11, 2001, when the NATO member-states decide to provide collective defense, the combined military support represents 70% of global defense spending. 

United States Military
 

Established on an as-needed basis in 1775, the US military (like all military's) has grown into a large standing army that helps attain political objectives through the use of force inside and outside the country. The transition to a standing army was something many Americans were skeptical of prior to WWII, but with the passing of the National Security Act in 1947, it became a reality. 
To organize the vast military structure, the Department of Defense (headed by the Secretary of Defense) was established two years later. This department along with the President and the head of the National Security Council are the top decision makers for military policy. This job is complex, to say the least. Currently the US Military is composed of 5 branches (Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard), employs over two million people (active and reserve), and operates in over 150 countries. To maintain this, the budget of the Department of Defense runs to $550 billion, NOT including the over $100 billion that goes to “Overseas Contingency Operations” (aka the War on Terror). Although only 5% of the world's population, the US military gobbles up 41% of worldwide defense spending. This is more than enough force to obtain some political objectives. 

As the world continues to become more centralized, globalized, and complex, an understanding of (at least) some basic geopolitical players is essential. The war of centralized-hierarchies versus decentralize-holarchies continues to and the timeless advice of Sun Tzu stays pertinent: know thy enemy.

Help expand my knowledge, leave comments... 

MONEY MONEY MONEY

A Tale of Stored Value

In the Abstract 

Take a bit of money and clutch it in your hand, "what are you?" 

Essentially it's a means of storing extrinsic value. Sometimes it's material, in the form of graphically inscribed pieces of flattened tree or circular molding of metals (copper, nickle), and sometimes it's immaterial, in the form of digital binary code. 

To invoke a dead authority, Aristotle wrote "money exists NOT by nature, but by law". It's based on the idea that certain objects can be given value (extrinsic-value) so they can be traded among a collective of people for the purpose of infrastructure building. 

Historically, the minting of coin for the purpose of money crops up during the 600s BCE in China, India, and present-day Turkey. According to some monetary mythology, the invention of money comes as an outgrowth of earlier barter societies, it's simply a more efficient way of keeping tabs on the barter networks. The fact that none of these strictly-barter societies have ever been found leads David Graeber to make a compelling case against the idea, arguing that pre-money cultures relied on gift-economies and an elaborate system of debt to trade goods and build infrastructure. 

Either way, the historical progression of money has led to the present day situation where a cadre of creation-agencies (central banks) write the software code, inscribe the flattened tree, and mint the coins that we are to believe contain legitimate "value".  This "value", especially in fiat-currency, is created by maintaining the belief that value has been created... a bit of the ol' circular logic loops, don't ya think?. This belief entwined with the physical/nonphysical object is then spread among a group of people. 

Through the coordination of creation-agencies and dispersal-agencies, money fulfills its purpose as a means of value-exchange (a receipt tied to a claim on human effort/labor) that can traded to facilitate infrastructure-building (architectural, social, economic). However, this infrastructure-building potential has been centralized so that only a powerful few determine what gets funded. Whoever controls the money supply controls those who must use the money supply.

In the United States


In the United States, the "who" that controls the money supply is the Federal Reserve. This amalgam of complex software, economists and bankers, gray geometric buildings, bank vaults, business suits, and a hierarchy of management (Board of Governor's, Federal Open Market Committee, Reserve Banks, and Member Banks), creates the money supply we use. 

On the 23rd of December 1913, the Federal Reserve Act was signed into law and voila, a private central bank is born. The murky genesis of the document reaches back to J.P. Morgan and his cohorts secretly meeting on Jekyll Island to formulate a plan for creating a centralized bank --- a nefarious sequence of events well detailed in G. Edward Griffin's classic book. A crop of shiny buildings pop up to house this new model.

Although the Money Trust had a wet dream fantasizing about the revenue-potential of this new act, the realization that the U.S. Government (theoretically its citizens) would borrow the use of its own money and the pay interest on it, was anything but pleasurable --- a dry nightmare perhaps? Beyond the pale of regulation, this new entity largely determines the economic fate of the United States. 

In order to serve the purpose of the ancient historical fetish of concentrating vast wealth into a few hands, the Federal Reserve system employs some quite powerful monetary tactics. In particular, they:

1. Create "money" out of thin air ("open market operations") through a little sleight-of-hand maneuver: they credit the U.S. Treasury/Bureau of Engraving and Printing with a debt that needs to be paid back --- with interest! With interest not being created at the same time, this ensures that more debts must be taken out, thus making it impossible to ever pay off and leading to an entangled spider web of debt-traps.

2. Employ a fractional reserve banking model to expand the debt-money supply. They do this by loaning up to 9 times as much as they actually have in reserve, thus creating elastic currency that can expand-inflate (more tickets = less value each) and contract-deflate (less tickets = more value each) based off the business needs of this private corporation and, maybe, some consideration for the economic health of our whole society. 

3. By speaking in that "turgid dialect of English" called Fedspeak. This art of speaking while saying nothing is a specific form of the old technique of disinformation, packaged to fit the battlefield of monetary warfare. 

Along with all the legal loopholes and physical forms that drive the Federal Reserve's engines is our belief, however ingrained and unconscious, in its legitimacy. This same belief backs the fiat currency that we depend on. This doesn't mean that if you stop believing, it will simply collapse, but then again if you never stop believing in its legitimacy, where does that lead? 

As a former Chairman of the Housing Committee on Banking and Currency said many years ago: "I have never yet had anyone who could, through the use of logic and reason, justify the Federal Government borrowing the use of its own money….I believe the time will come when people will demand that this be changed. I believe the time will come in this country when they will actually blame you and me and everyone else connected with the Congress for sitting idly by and permitting such an idiotic system to continue".

Alternatives and Solutions

Clearly the present system of private, centralized banks issuing debt-money with a built-in impossibility of ever paying it back, is flawed. Relying on this broken and inherently undemocratic system is insane, the time for monetary reform is now. 

Stephan Zarlenga and the American Monetary Institute (AMI) describe how to reform the private Federal Reserve banking system within the United States. Their bill, H.R. 2990, advocates a three-part process for reform: 1. Incorporate the private Federal Reserve into the public U.S. Treasury  2. End fractional reserve banking 3. Eliminate the debt-with-interest-to-be-paid model and spend the money into circulation to fix our faltering infrastructures.

Just as a healthy ecology thrives with a diversity of value-givers, so should a healthy monetary landscape. Nowhere in Nature do we find just one value giver --- monotheism is a stranger, time to diversify. Complimentary currencies are key, we need digital networks like BitCoin, Digital Coin, and the LETSystem, as well as physical currencies like the Ithaca Hour and BerkShares. 

The ethic of decentralization and resilience runs through all these innovations. It's about creating currencies that do not get siphoned off into private vaults. The central tenet of monetary reform is to get more people to determine what gets funded and how.

Fourth Generation Warfare

The Promising Threat of 4GW

War is a market. It needs advertisers, perceptual managers if you will, to sell the products of war --- community dissolution, death, fear, and a boat load of money. For thousands of years this ritual of death has been repeating itself in variety of outward forms built on the same inner drive, namely profit. Currently nine “major” wars, defined as those with more than 1,000 deaths per year, are being fought and a slew of “minor” wars, defined as those with less than 1,000 deaths per year, continue to drag on. Although the goals of war stay the same, the ritual forms are changing. 

It all starts on the 23rd of May, 1618. Ferdinand II, soon-to-be King of Bohemia, sends along two representatives to work out a deal with his detractors, but they are “defenestrated” instead --- aka thrown the fuck out a castle window. On the backs of these poorly bruised souls rise the bloody Thirty Years' War. It was resolved (a term used lightly) by the Peace of Westphalia, whose carefully crafted inkblots grow the nation-state structures that dominate the geopolitical arena for centuries. 

According to William S. Lind, since the 1648 signing of the Peace of Westphalia, nation-states have been progressing through three generations of warfare. Each stage requires group cohesion; it's vital for any collective organization that asks/tells its members, "go kill...oh yeah, you might die too". Nationalism, racial superiority, and the endless "fighting for freedom" variations repeated by the propaganda machine become the ideological strings that weave this cohesion together. Now back to the progression.

First Generation Warfare: A tactic of mass human warfare guides this era of low-tech design --- whoever kills or destroys the most wins. The military culture of strict orders, obedient soldiers, and a centralized command becomes formulated. Examples include the Napoleonic War and U.S. Civil War.

    Second Generation Warfare: A tactic of firepower warfare guides this era of growing industrialization --- whoever wears down the enemy with more firepower and mobility wins. The military ethic of obedience and hierarchical command becomes standard. Examples include the U.S. Civil War and WWI.

Third Generation Warfare: A tactic of maneuver warfare guides this era of innovative technological design --- whoever bombards the enemy greatest and then penetrates furthest, wins. The Blitzkrieg tactic exemplifies this. The military culture becomes less obedient and centralized, with on-the-ground innovation being prized. Examples include WWII.

The above three generations of warfare are dying because the nation-states they are fitted to are dying. These bulky behemoths are phasing out, with centralized command being to slow and the legitimacy waning. So when cohesion is flimsy, double up on the propaganda!

Actual War ---> Media Re-Presentation ---> Public Perception 

The field of Information Operations (IO) works by the integrated employment of: Electronic Warfare (EW), Computer Network Operations (CNO), Psychological Operations (PSYOP), Military Deception (MILDEC), and Operations Security (OPSEC). These age-old tactics (minus EW and CNO) were/are used by nation-states because they work, and because it works, they are used in an emerging new generation of warfare.

Global Guerilla's is the name John Robb uses to refer to those practicing the form and ethic of this new warfare.

Fourth Generation Warfare: A tactic of guerrilla warfare guides this era of high-tech design and communication --- whoever can disrupt enemy systems with the greatest return on investment, wins. The military culture is decentralized and more fluid. Examples include 9/11 and the Iraq War.

Moving beyond the bulky clutter of nation-states, the participants in 4GW are decentralized non-state entities that are self-funded, flexible, fast, and efficient. They're able to gain HUGE return-on-investments (ROI's) by adhering to this model --- the World Trade Center attacks cost $500,000; the resulting War on Terror cost $500,000,000,000! 

In this highly connected world where transcontinental communication is simpler than tying shoes, Open Source Warfare (OSW) becomes the model for success.  By sharing their information openly (to those in the same "group"), it can be studied and tweaked to allow for a self-correcting emergent intelligence to arise. Groups that might not have direct communication with others can still contribute to this overall intelligence by paying attention to signs, by coordinating their actions through "stigmergy"...

 

"How did that group get portrayed in the media?"

 

"It seems that group didn't get too far, too much government security --- hit another spot." 

 

"What was the quantitative force of the security backlash?"

 

"What was the qualitative impact of that groups attack?"

By scrutinizing attacks carried out by other non-state entities, the source code becomes more intelligent. The result is a more focused approach to battle...and a far bigger pain in the ass to hierarchical nation-states. Global Guerrilla's don't need to win by brawn and behemoth technology (first generation through third generation) because: 1. they can't compete with the resources of nation-states and 2. they can cause far more damage by disrupting key systems (like oil pipelines in Iraq). The ease to which Global Guerrilla's construct weapons and move about places the specter of unpredictable black swan's on the table of a nation-state's central command. With a system entrenched in obedience-ethic and predictability, this is harrowing. 

This Fourth Generation of Warfare presents the opportunity for decentralized non-state entities to be on par with over-sized nation states by strategically disrupting the key systems that keep these bloated dinosaurs running. Hmmm.... does anyone else's toes tingle?

The Deception of Words

Abstract Deception

 

 

The human psyche is a battlefield with various factions seeking control. One of them, The Archons of Gnostic mythology, is described by John Lamb Lash as a sort of spiritual control system implanted into the human mind. According to his definition, these inorganic entities have a tri-fold identity: cosmological (an independent alien population creating virtual worlds between the Sun-Earth-Moon system by imitating geometric forms), noetic-psychological (a software program within the mind causing us to move away from the intentionality humans possess and archons enviously lack), and sociological (working through authoritarian structures to steer collective evolution). By entangling the human psyche in a world of abstractions --- lacking human intentionality (ennoia), they can only imitate NOT truly create --- we are pulled away from direct connection with a living earth.

This development of abstraction during the Upper Paleolithic period of 50,000 BCE has fanned out to express itself in language, mathematics, and art. John Zerzan views this "development" as a fundamental error leading to the domestication-domination fetish of modern civilization. The uniqueness and multi-sensory immersion of pre-named experience becomes filtered into a systematized division when names and symbols work their magic. Naming binds; silence frees. The disenchanting of the world begins.

With names working to simplify the idiosyncratic details of each form, diminish the integrity of the whole, and bring in the obsession with control, a ground plan is laid for the game of Manipulation --- of pitting Masters versus Slaves. This is the water we are ignorant of in this fishbowl of modernity. The Archons help create this aquatic environment and use humanity as a meme-machine to spread their abstract simulacra vision. The alive gaian entelechy, the world as-it-is, becomes more and more distant, buried beneath a layer of abstraction until it becomes like a disposable commodity. This is objectification: a living unity is made into a sterile dead object. 

Our social relations help manufacture this commodity. We often interact with each other under the disempowering weight of abstraction --- the archons are heavy! Martin Buber in his book I and Thou sets up two modes of relating: I-It and I-Thou. The former is born from the domination and control-fetishes inherent in Symbolic Culture; it's a dynamic of objects to be used or experienced. The latter is born from a pre-abstracted world of unfiltered experience; it's a dynamic of interwoven subjects that move toward relating with each other. The dumbing down of experience by the use of words stifles the emergence of this more reverential mode of relating.

Now for the paradox: do you understand me? And if so, how will you respond?

Before Religion

The Descent of Religion

Tree Incarnation by Mark Henson

Long before dogmatic religions became a stale and bastardized relic of their initial inspiration, anyone could enter these "religious realms" without the messy, corrupting, restricting, disempowering etc. etc. business of priest mediators. People crossed into very specific vibrational fields via monotonous drumming, pain endurance, rhythmic dancing, and psychoactive plant ingestion.

Clearly the landscapes and entities experienced in these non-ordinary states of consciousness had some value. For a more articulate and just plain better expose on this, pick up Graham Hancock's book Supernatural. In brief, these realms were seen as being imbued with sentient information that could be brought back to heal individuals and communities.

The spectrum of possible experiences is wide, ranging from the deeply religious to the strangely bizarre. Michael Hoffman sees the ego-death experience that some had as leading to the emergence of God. In these experiences, self-control dissolves and a unitive immersion occurs whereby a "higher-power" seems to control the on-goings. At this point, the only apt reaction is a slow astonished repeating of “oh.....my.....god.....” 

Shortly after those eternal tones dissolve into the folds of measured time, attempts to re-experience and re-present it arise. The travel accounts begin. Compositions of spoken words and scrawled symbols seek to create a meaningful description of what the experience was all about.

These descriptions are elaborated upon, re-worked, and used in rituals that aim to replicate the experience and direct it in a unique manner. As this process expands, Mystery Schools arise to further systematize the rituals and instruct novices in the art of non-ordinary states of consciousness. The teachers were appointed based upon a spiritual attainment meritocracy, basically they had learned how to navigate the non-ordinary state experiences and could teach others. 

This spiritual meritocracy system eventually devolves into a system of appointed priest-authorities. They're not necessarily the most adept at navigating these states of consciousness, but they have memorized a large part of the sounds and scrawlings that re-present the initial experience. Being estranged from the experiences themselves, the authorities construct exoteric doctrines from second-hand accounts of earlier, more adept spiritual navigators. These doctrines are highly moralistic and produce a contractive-fear state that molds people into simple, predictable creatures --- a necessary first step in any worthwhile brainwashing campaign. 

The symbols used to understand the initial "...oh...my...god..." eternities become the controlled domain of priest authorities who manipulate this world of abstraction and those who live inside it. It's time for a return. 

Worlds of Words

Words Words Words

Intro

Long ago in the far off’s of mythical whenever’s on an unknown day of an obscure year before years and days were counted the first words were starting to rattle off the tongues of our prehistoric parents. For the sake of convenience (the convenience of not chasing “the first word” ever spoken), lets say these primordial glossalalia-like jabberings bounced through the air during the Symbolic Revolution 50,000 years ago.
    

The jabberings flesh out into a body of rules that impose structure on any “thing” it tries to describe. This structure is artificially created. Count Korzybski sums it up in six words, “the map is not the territory”. 

Welcome to the Trap. Like Ol’ Ouroboros eternally chomping its tail and eternally wanting more, we language using people use language to try and understand what language is... "how the....huh....what the...." and other stilted, half-spoken expressions usually follow. Peel back a few assumptions and soon the strange conundrums operating the monkey mind pop into awareness.

The next logical step is to greet the trap --- "hey trap, how are you?" --- and then question its life. Language grows from simple grunts connected with direct and tangible objects to complex grunts connected with indirect and intangible hypothetical entities. These entities take on a life of their own, becoming systems of interconnected concepts expressing worldviews. 

Although weightless, the momentum of thought is heavy. Worldviews are the ultimate conservatives. They lag along with their connotative baggage and outmoded concepts for centuries at a time, injecting programmed fluff to clog the vital flow of meaningful speech and impede the whole project of human understanding!

A small detour into the mind of Bucky Fuller reveals a human well aware of this. Following the cue of a slew of dead Greek philosophers and modern quantum physicists, Fuller conditioned himself to say "universe" rather than "the universe" because "the" implies a static entity --- something universe clearly is not!

Sending

We are language. Quite literally it's given birth through our brain-mouth-lung system. Air flow is manipulated and sound vibrations are sent across space to spiral down the ears of a listener. 

This process seems to be a reaction to the continual cacophony of chaotic signals that universe bathes us in unstoppable portions at all times. A paltry itsy-bitsy ("so paltry bro") of this becomes ordered. These verbal acrobatics are done so that messages, or ordered signals, can be sent to other humans to decode and extract meaning from. 

Receiving

Even astronomical distances don't stop people from sending messages to supposed receivers. Here on earth, in everyday interpersonal settings, compressed puffs of air spiral down receiving ears and transform into neuro-chemical oscillations that can (to be stressed more than italics could know!) be understood as meaningful.  

Speaking too much about listening can make one deaf, so I'll keep it brief. The essential difference is in the internal narrator --- shallow listening is when this character doesn't shut up and deep listening is when this character shuts up. The quality of this listening will determine the spectrum of meanings extracted from the sent message. 

Conclusions

Meaning is context-dependent. It arises through denotation and connotation, the former being its descriptive similarity to some object and the latter being its common use among a community of speakers. When words becomes solely dependent upon connotation for their meaning and this connotation is highly prejudicial/fear-based, then it can be viewed as a battle tactic in the arena of linguistic warfare. The genocide of potential ideas are the high stakes at hand.

As Phillip K Dick said, “those who control the words control those who must use the words”. Expanding this a bit leads to, “those who control the meaning of words, control those who must use the meanings”! 

If words are a major vessel of potential meaning and we assume that a meaningful life is based upon, well, creating meaning, then this is terrifying. The whole process of coordinating brain-lung-mouth physiology to express spurts of distinct air rests upon this attraction --- the attraction to create meaning. 

The dwindling of meaning, once understood, can be overcome. Re-branding the prejudicial connotations of some words and spreading it among a community of speakers can help further the evolution of vital concepts. As all verbal therapies in psychology can attest, the simple act of speaking honestly about one's experience can help purge toxins from our psychological digestive system. 

Now for the magickal words of Alan Moore: 

Three Views of Health

Health: Western, Eastern, Indigenous

 

Sickness can be thought of as an asymmetry in the mathematics of existence. If our life experiences are viewed as happening within an enormous mathematical shape, a sort of living geometry, then the form this shape takes influences the type of life experiences we have. If it's harmonious, we are healthy; if it's disharmonious, we are sick. 

Harmony can be seen as the symmetry that emerges when our bio-psycho-socio-spiritual aspects are fully integrated into a functioning whole. At least that's what my simple monkey mind recapitulating Ede Frecska sees. 

Different cultures have different narratives on how this symmetry might emerge. Each story, or prognosis, has limitations that determine the scope of its prescribed healing methodology, or diagnosis. Following the stories back far enough can unravel some basic metaphysical foundations propping up the worldview of that culture.
  
For the sake of brevity, I'll outline three major cultural narratives of why we get sick. 

1. The Western View is largely an Anatomical Narrative --- materialist, reductionist, and one-size-fits-all. An imbalance of some anatomical entity (god-dam that liver lookin' bad) is often the prognosis leading to a physical diagnosis like pills or surgery. An understanding of the composition of certain anatomical systems is vital to this narrative. 

1. The Eastern View is largely an Energetic Narrative --- borderline materialist-immaterialist, holistic, and one-size-fits-one-person. An imbalance in some energetic entity (god-dam that fourth chakra lookin' bad) is often the prognosis leading to a bio-energetic diagnosis like acupuncture. An understanding of the composition of certain subtle-energy systems is vital to this narrative.

1. The Indigenous View is largely a Spiritual Narrative --- immaterialist, holistic, and one-size-fits-one-person. An imbalance in some spiritual entity (god-dam that demon lookin' bad) is often the prognosis leading to a spirit-realm diagnosis like a psychoactive plant ceremony. An understanding of the composition of certain archetypal-spiritual systems is vital to this narrative.

Each of the three narratives agree that an imbalance, or disharmony, of some sort leads to human sickness. Whether this imbalance is strictly bio-chemical, bioenergetic, or spiritual is where disagreements arise. To lug in that awkward yet highly descriptive nomenclature, health is a bio-psycho-socio-spiritual integration --- it needs all three!

What's Going On?

Deep Disintegration

 

 

Three Questions

 

The death rattles of an outdated multi-thousand year old vision of the human experience, built by the architectural firm Fear & Control Inc., seems to have outgrown its evolutionary usefulness. This vision generates through a deeply felt nonverbal experience, operates through thinking and behavior patterns that interpret and express this experience, and disintegrates through the inadequacy of the deep experiences that create these interpretations and expressions.

    

To reiterate, it seems that three conditions manifest a reality-vision:   

1. How do I fundamentally experience Universe? OR How does Universe fundamentally experience Me?

    

2. How do I think about and interpret this fundamental experience? How does this fundamental experience become interpreted and thought about through me?

    

3. How do I act upon the interpretations of this fundamental experience? How does the interpretations of this fundamental experience act upon me?

    

In general, our basic scheme of relating with “self” and “other” seems to be through an I-It dynamic rather than an I-Thou dynamic. This leads toward reductionistic interpretations that express a disjointed world, as evidenced by the malfunctioning of diverse human institutions.  

  

A Prison of Re-cycled Oldies

 

Alienation from a basic experience of Oneness leads to fragmentation, false duality, strong ego-attachments, fear of unitive experiences, a low sensitivity to Orgone currents, and an unperceptiveness to the morphic resonances that record our destructive actions. These pre- and trans- linguistic fundamentals of experience become encoded into our language filters. Many people do not understand the nature of these filters and make the mistake of not distinguishing between the map and territory, causing the belief that a seperation of words means a seperation of things in phenomenological reality. Thus the fragmentation of existence increases. Habits of linear thinking and dogmatic assumptions lead to: an inability to make sense of disconnected parts of experience, an inflexibility of mind that rejects socratic methods of inquiry, and the ineffective re-cycling of old thought-patterns to solve new problems. An example of these re-cylced thought-patterns are the major world religions. Anachronistic religions inadequate for the present world crises seem to be little more than systems of political control that breed literalist interpretations of dogma, fundamentalist cults, and extremists physically acting out the narratives of holy books.

 

A Sexual Dissolve

Our receptiveness to sexual energy (orgone energy) ---which ecompasses more than simple reproduction and permeates beyond the physical body --- can be seen as a marker of origin for CULTumor. A sex-negative armoring against Orgone Energy (bioenergetic currents, life-force etc.) leads to collective neuromuscular rigidity, behaviors that deny rather than embrace experience, and rape-seperative fantasies rather than fusion-unitive fantasies. The hyper-sexualization of modern culture seems to be a gut reaction against earlier hyper-conservative attitudes, yet this ethic seems entangled in the same sex-negative armoring and points towards the need for a new eroticism. 

This new eroticism would embrace boundary dissolution  leading to an integrative ethic that contrasts sharply with the shallow ecological ethic that underpins the drive towards atmosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere pollution. In the tireless search for marketable commodities, the innate right for an organism to live becomes ignored, habitats become destroyed, and fish are caught beyond replacement capability. This leads to the endangerment and extinction of many species (forecasted at 25% in coming years), the disruption of ecological balances they maintained, and ethnocide---the death of human cultures, including their languages and worldviews.

  

Meet Profit, Our Deity

 

In many industrialized cultures, the stratification of people seems to be the outgrowth of a sex-negative character armor that encourages greed, competitveness, a strict-materialistic worldview, and the commoditization of most things. At nearly all times, a low-level form of anxiety oscillates around the hive, easily ramped up to the hysteria of “terrorism! terrorism!” that justifies enormous hate-campaigns and further alienates people. These subjective and inter-subjective experiences interweave into flawed infinite-resource assumptions that ignore ecological principles regarding the limits of Natural Capital to form the dangerous illusions our economic paradigms rest upon. Greed and predatory inter-personal relations foster actions that extract money away from collective pools, make “wealth” and “illth” indistinguishable as the drive for more profit outweighs all concerns (especially ethical ones), measures economic success with inadequate metrics, employ’s workers that are alienated from the fruits of their labor, widens the gap between rich and poor, and creates a large percentage of meaningless jobs. Money reigns supreme in this framework and central banking authorities (like the private Federal Reserve) that control the creation of public money are like deities, whose powers include: 1. the ability to artificially induce inflation/deflation 2. the ability to create profit out of thin air by the use of exotic financial instruments (like derivatives) that produce little of tangible value. 3. the ability to block money’s ability to be dispersed freely as a social tool of renumeration to be used for infrastructure building 4. the ability to accumulate massive amounts of debt (which all require interest payments!).

Enterprising politicians seem to be nothing more than actors in a theater production written, funded, and directed by mega-corporations and their lobbying campaigns. These multi-nationals are run by a small elite psychotically obsessed with increasing profit -- regardless of humanitarian & ecological consequences. They mold politics by funding elections campaigns for puppet politicians in exchange for legislative favors. Within this environment of constant anxiety, the fear of saying or doing the “wrong thing” leads many politicians towards creating and supporting dangerously short-sighted policy that hardly looks beyond the next election cycle. Both the puppet-politicians and director-corporations become increasingly distanced from the people they’re supposed to be serving and create dehumanized methods of interpersonal exchange that lead to institutional inefficiency, like the prolonged lag times for dealing with simple problems.
 

The business of war entices both the financial and political factions. Warfare was, is, and probably will continue to be a very profitable enterprise (weapons development, re-construction contracts, communication technologies etc.), leading to an increase in the strength of technologies of destruction (biological & nuclear warfare etc.) as well as a move to distance actions from consequences by controlling on-ground machinery through computers far away. 

 

 

Pesticide for Evolution

Our socio-cultural mode of operation requires enormous streams of energy. Often these tend to be unrenewable resources extracted in ecologically & geopolitically damaging ways. The vast clearing of land and the concentration of resources for extraction processes comes at a time when inequality in resource distribution leads to a situation in which an individual’s Earthshare---the amount of land needed to sustain them---is rapidly declining.

Large scale agriculture contributes to the problem by operating under the business-framework of producing more profit rather than the nutrition-framework of producing healthy food leads to quantity becoming much more important that quality. Ethically scarring, unsustainable, and ecoloically damaging growing operations (crowded CAFOs with drug-infested animals & monoculture fields coated with pesticides) consume vast amounts of scare resources (water & land), pollute the surroundings, and require enormous inputs of (often unrenewable) energy resources---all to produce a product of low nutritious quality. The regular ingestion of such products often leads to physical and mental sickness, as evidenced by the sharp rise in obesity and anti-depressent drug use. This situation ensures a steady stream of new customers for the “health-care” industry, an enterprise that’s little more than a legitimized drug cartel that integrates a strictly materialistic view of sickness with an economic drive towards profit leading to the rise of the Pop-A-Pill-Paradigm (POPP), the simultaneous emergence of new diseases and their expensive cures, and the creation of enormous treatment debts.

This socio-cultural framework seems to produce a decrease in the sum total of human imagination by way of: educational methods that lead to standardized and dogmatic students, the diversion of creativity into producing technologies of destruction, and the conditioning of R-brain reactions that cut off experiences of higher-consciousness. Our factory model of outcome-based education churns out (largely) standardized, creatively stifled, and predictable students with an inflexible and monotheistic approach to knowledge as well as a preoccupation with memorizing what to learn rather than a pratical understanding of how to learn (critical thinking skills, trivium method etc.) This vulnerability becomes exploited by large media conglomerates that (mostly) produce a narrow range of low quality discussion. People are persuasively sold (through the use of logical fallacies and magick---hypnotic song, movement, and visualization) intellectual dogmas and emotional fetishes. This encourages a passive slave-mentality and decreases the total inflow of human novelty. 

All of humanity living within the web of this collective vibration suffers...