One technical note: WordPress sends every comment with 2 or more links to the antispam so just avoid sending them since I am in a remote place and not always online to check that and de-spam messages.

What I have copy and pasted (5) is history. An analysis by Aldous Huxley on technological progress and society. And the very real dangers involved. In relation too the Obama administration and its plan for universal health-care coverage for every American citizen, you might have picked up on the fact that ‘Republicans’ (and quiet possibly insurance/pharma organisations^) are broadcasting messages such as, ‘the claim that health care reform will create “death panels” (in Sarah Palin’s words) that will shuffle the elderly and others off to an early grave.’*

Please wake up everyone. This is very serious. I wonder how come most of us don’t really seem to know, care or wonder? How is that possible? A bit of Conspiracy perhaps?

^http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/watch2.html
*http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/opinion/14krugman.html

Who Nationalized Whom?
http://baselinescenario.com/2009/07/17/who-nationalized-whom/

The Quiet Coup
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice

The level of corruption is staggering. Being aware of what is going on is the least you can do. This is also the reason I send you the websites of Zero Hedge and Max Keiser. I think you are not into economics (= politics). The economy is the superstructure in which we all operate.
http://www.chomsky.info

Rene, I don’t believe in organized conspiracies but those sentences for sure give space for some considerations.

Myrrh I checked your blog, welcome to the club of people reflecting on the impact of technology on our soul.

I am French-Syrian, born in Dimasq, grew up in the rarified, constricting environment of the diplomatic corps, lived and travelled in scores of countries, attended a dozen schools, learned a handful of languages, and until I was in my twenties, was witness and subject to beauty, horror, violence, and political events beyond anything all but soldiers might experience firsthand.

I now live a simple, “ordinary” life where I am happy and practice a profession that, while it benefits by my life experiences, is as far removed from politics and the terrors of the past as is possible. Only a very small, intimate circle of friends know something of my history; my features, coloring, and accent are “exotic” here where I live, so people may guess or assume things about me, but ultimately, I am “a different person in the eyes of each person”.

Interestingly, most of my intimes are the product of similar backgrounds — the children of parents in the military, missions, petroleum, refugees, and many are of mixed parentage. If you ask any one of us the seemingly simple question, “Where are you from?”, be prepared for an equivocation, a rote but evasive answer, or a long story. “Who are you?” isn’t easily answered by anyone with an ounce of self-awareness; for us it is confounding and occasionally, dangerous.

‘In the Brave New World of my prophetic fable, tech­nology had advanced far beyond the point it had reached in Hitler’s day; consequently the recipients of orders were far less critical than their Nazi counter­parts, far more obedient to the order-giving elite. Moreover, they had been genetically standardized and postnatally conditioned to perform their subordinate functions, and could therefore be depended upon to behave almost as predictably as machines.’

‘Since Hitler’s day the armory of technical devices at the disposal of the would-be dictator has been con­siderably enlarged. As well as the radio, the loud­speaker, the moving picture camera and the rotary press, the contemporary propagandist can make use of television to broadcast the image as well as the voice of his client, and can record both image and voice on spools of magnetic tape. Thanks to technological prog­ress, Big Brother can now be almost as omnipresent as God.’

‘Let us see what Hitler thought of the masses he moved and how he did the moving. The first principle from which he started was a value judgment: the masses are utterly contemptible. They are incapable of abstract thinking and uninterested in any fact outside the circle of their immediate experience. Their behav­ior is determined, not by knowledge and reason, but by feelings and unconscious drives. It is in these drives and feelings that “the roots of their positive as well as their negative attitudes are implanted.” To be success­ful a propagandist must learn how to manipulate these instincts and emotions. “The driving force which has brought about the most tremendous revolutions on this earth has never been a body of scientific teaching which has gained power over the masses, but always a devotion which has inspired them, and often a kind of hysteria which has urged them into action. Whoever wishes to win over the masses must know the key that will open the door of their hearts.” . . . In post-Freud­ian jargon, of their unconscious.’

‘Unlike the masses, intellectuals have a taste for ra­tionality and an interest in facts. Their critical habit of mind makes them resistant to the kind of propa­ganda that works so well on the majority. Among the masses “instinct is supreme, and from instinct comes faith. . . . While the healthy common folk instinc­tively close their ranks to form a community of the people” (under a Leader, it goes without saying) “in­tellectuals run this way and that, like hens in a poul­try yard. With them one cannot make history; they cannot be used as elements composing a community.” Intellectuals are the kind of people who demand evi­dence and are shocked by logical inconsistencies and fallacies. They regard over-simplification as the origi­nal sin of the mind and have no use for the slogans, the unqualified assertions and sweeping generaliza­tions which are the propagandist’s stock in trade. “All effective propaganda,” Hitler wrote, “must be confined to a few bare necessities and then must be expressed in a few stereotyped formulas.” These stereotyped for­mulas must be constantly repeated, for “only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea upon the memory of a crowd.” Philosophy teaches us to feel uncertain about the things that seem to us self-evident. Propaganda, on the other hand, teaches us to accept as self-evident matters about which it would be reasonable to suspend our judgment or to feel doubt.’

‘Such, then, was Hitler’s opinion of humanity in the mass. It was a very low opinion. Was it also an incor­rect opinion? The tree is known by its fruits, and a theory of human nature which inspired the kind of techniques that proved so horribly effective must con­tain at least an element of truth. Virtue and intelli­gence belong to human beings as individuals freely associating with other individuals in small groups. So do sin and stupidity. But the subhuman mindlessness to which the demagogue makes his appeal, the moral imbecility on which he relies when he goads his vic­tims into action, are characteristic not of men and women as individuals, but of men and women in masses. Mindlessness and moral idiocy are not charac­teristically human attributes; they are symptoms of herd-poisoning.’

Very interesting piece, thank you.

Would have been cool if you had emphasised on the dangers to the mental (and quiet possibly the physical health) dangers involved when we are all connected online.

It is becoming increasingly clear how corrupt the business world is. Washington is bought by the OLIGARCHY, i.e. Wall Street, Big CO2 Inc., Pharma etc, etc.

Do you want to give away free information about yourself to such organisations? You gotta be yoking!

1984
http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/orwell.html

Brave New World
http://www.huxley.net/bnw/index.html

Brave New World Revisited
http://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/index.html

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