Bcc: some colleagues Dear friends, When I was about six or seven, I got into trouble with the neighbors because I told their kids there wasn't any Santa Claus. Nobody had told me, I simply figured out that there were too many chimneys, and too little time, for Santa to visit everyone... not to mention that no sleigh could hold that many presents. I mention this because Santa serves as a paradigm for believing in the absurd. Why do people believe things that make no sense, just because everyone else seems to believe? In some sense, all my writing is simply a continuation of what I was doing at six or seven... pointing out to people that much of what they accept as true is not only false, but absurd. The matrix is a shallow sham. My next youthful encounter with beliefs happened at about 15, when I started thinking about Christianity. I didn't conclude that Christianity was a lie, not then, but I did conclude that there was no way I could tell whether or not it had any validity. My reasoning went like this... suppose I had been born in India, to a Hindu family. I would have grown up believing in those myths, and those values, and not have known I wouldn't be 'saved' when the 'Judgement Day' came. How would I have known that I was learning falsehoods, that my 'soul' was in danger? That then led to the question: how did I know ~I~ wasn't learning falsehoods in Christianity? I then realized there wasn't any way to know... kids simply believe what they're told, that's the long and the short of it. And kids are told what their parents were told when they were kids. Now consider what people call 'conspiracy theories'. Liberals have a knee-jerk way of dismissing certain ideas, or evidence... "That sounds like a conspiracy theory". With that, they consider the matter settled, the ideas or evidence obviously refuted. I've tried on more than one occasion to delve into this kind of non-reasoning. One fellow articulated it rather well: "If such and such were true, then it would eventually come out, we'd hear about it". I think what he meant was that we'd hear about it in the mainstream media. The same kind of non-reasoning which a kid might use: "I don't care what the evidence is, if there were no Santa my mommy would tell me." I call such thinking 'non-reasoning', not because there isn't a logic to it, but because at the core we're talking about faith rather than reason. A child was once asked by his pastor, "What is faith?". His answer: "Believing what you know isn't true". The pastor chuckled at the innocence, but the kid had hit the nail on the head. Just like the kid who pointed out that the Emperor had no clothes. Liberals have a faith that the system is fundamentally legitimate. There may be corrupt officials, and irresponsible corporations, and misleading media, but these are anomalies. With a bit more reform, intelligent voting, public education, etc., such rough edges can be rounded off and everything will be OK. They have a hard time getting their head around the idea that the whole system was designed in the first place as a deception - to enable rule by wealthy elites - and that the 'anomalies' reflect precisely how the system is ~intended~ to function. Consider this thing people call 'democracy'. Anyone with half a brain can see that it doesn't actually work. That is, it does not achieve it's main purpose: to run the country the way people want it run. Most people, survey after survey shows, want things like nuclear disarmament, peace, full employment, a sound environment, etc. Government policies, quite obviously, are aimed in entirely the other direction. So why do most people continue to believe that they live in a democracy? It boggles the mind. I could explain, and I have, why a system based on parties and elections could never be democratic, but there's little point. Such explanations mean little to someone who is governed by faith. Until someone is ready to question, they don't have much capacity to look at answers. And then there's capitalism, today's dominant religion. Never has there been a clearer example of the emperor's new clothes. The first thing to look at, as with all issues, is the results - the empirical facts. Today, when capitalism is more dominant than ever before, we see all around the world declining standards of living, unstable economies, a wrecked environment, poverty, famine, genocide, disease, eroding civil liberties, and the destabilization of already pitiful democratic institutions. Capitalism is a dark cloud whose few silver linings are rapidly disappearing. And yet, how many people are ready to question capitalism as a system? What is it that maintains this blind faith? Certainly it isn't the theory of capitalism. The theory is even more absurd than the results on the ground. The theory talks about fair and open competition among a large number of small producers and consumers, none of whom can individually effect market prices. It's an intriguing theory, but it has nothing to do with capitalism. Capitalism has always been about turning control of the economy over to wealthy investors, industrialists, and bankers - it is the ISM of CAPITAL. It is a ~political~ doctrine, justified by a false economic argument. It is a system of elite rule, whose actual economic nature changes from time to time - depending on what best serves to maximize elite wealth and to maintain elite control. If sharing the wealth (1945-1980) serves that purpose, so be it - but otherwise forget it. If protectionism serves elite interests, then we have protectionism; if free trade serves elite interests, then we have free trade. No matter how often capitalism changes its tune, the flock keeps its faith nonetheless. At least with Christianity there's a bit of consistency. Closely linked to capitalism is the relationship between the West and the third world. Most Westerners believe that the West strives to help the third world, out of humanitarian concern. Where does such blind faith come from? Certainly it isn't from history, from current practice, or from looking at the results. Never for one moment has the West done anything to the third world except exploit, plunder, murder, and dominate. How can so many people believe the opposite of what is plain to see? In some sense, we can answer all these Why and How questions by pointing to the mass media and the education systems. But even those who question the media usually do so entirely too halfheartedly. Most people see the media as trying to tell the truth, but over influenced by government and corporations. Not so. The purpose and practice of the corporate-controlled media is to present a charade, a fictional world - a world where capitalism is beneficial, the West is humanitarian, democracy works, etc. etc. Out of all the events going on in the world, most are ignored (eg., East Timor genocide for two decades). A few selected stories are followed, and each is slanted to maintain the charade. Many people have written to me, saying that they find my analysis persuasive, but that they find it too discouraging to accept. I find this attitude very difficult to fathom. It's the choice Cypher makes in The Matrix: "Insert me back in the Matrix, and take away all my memories." It's the choice of a heroin addict, who seeks oblivion. I can understand how someone can believe what the flock believes, out of self-doubt, before I can understand how someone could consciously choose to believe lies because it's comfortable. If this were all a matter of academic truth, then it wouldn't matter much. The point, however, is that WE MUST CHANGE THINGS IF HUMANITY IS TO SURVIVE IN OTHER THAN DISMAL SERVITUDE. If you don't want to do anything about it, and you just want to hide in the matrix, then you can believe what you want. But if you want to do anything effective, then you must understand what the system is really about. If you consider yourself an activist, and you're working from the wrong map of reality, then you're wasting your time. For example, let's consider some of the responses of activists to the World Trade Center incident and Bush's phony War on Terrorism. One of the responses has been to preach an attitude of understanding and forgiveness, to counter feelings of outrage and revenge. This is a waste of time for two reasons. Not that understanding and forgiveness are not good things, but they are strategically irrelevant. The first reason is that popular sentiments for revenge have nothing to do with the war being pursued by Bush. They are not the cause, they are the excuse. The second reason is that we don't live in a democracy. If 90% of the population wanted peace and forgiveness, that wouldn't change government policy one iota - although it might lead to a different slant in media propaganda. Another response, among those who suspect that the CIA knew beforehand of the attack, is to call for a Federal investigation. That's like asking the fox to investigate the theft of hens. Either there won't be an investigation, or it will be a cover-up, like most Federal investigations before it. When a crime is committed, the perpetrator is not the one to turn to for help. Just as Santa could not visit billions of homes in one evening, a hijacked airliner could not proceed unmolested for 35 minutes after the second World Trade building had been hit - not without top-level complicity from Washington. Can't you see this for yourself? Do you need to wait for a prime time news broadcast to tell you? If so, it will never happen. Your grandchildren ~might~ learn the truth on the History Channel, as we've recently learned that FDR knew in advance about Pearl Harbor, but it will be too late then. The reality of the WTC attack is that it was a replay of the Reichstag fire - a self-inflicted outrage designed to usher in a fascist regime. If you're reading from another map, you'll never get anywhere. Not that the true map makes the job easy, not at all. Overcoming global fascism will be a monumental task. But until we recognize what the task is, we cannot begin it. imho, rkm http://cyberjournal.org
