Listen to a reading of this article: Our civilization is built upon lies and obfuscation to such an extent that advocating for transparency and the democratization of information can be a complete political ideology, all by itself. Rather than claiming to know what's best for society (whether we should move left or right, whether we should espouse this model or that model), it is perfectly legitimate to simply support giving humanity the information tools necessary to know the truth about what's happening so that they can collectively determine for themselves what direction to take.
While i agree with most everything you say...........
I can't help feeling it would all be accomplished if the 'sheep' wanted it so.
They don't. They want to be sheep.
At 72yrs, i have given up all hope that people desire to be leaders and participate in a democracy. The burden seems to fall on the few to lead, who become arrogant, in the process.
That there is no potent 3rd party, that Assange is being tortured, Ukraine, etc, etc, belie the fact, that its not just propaganda, its inveterate passivity. I hope it changes.
In practical terms, we must start with the recognition that 1) corporations are not persons, but creations of government, and do not have natural (for the religious, God-given) rights and 2) money is not speech, and society (government) may limit the amount of money that may be expended to promote speech.
"The idea of true information anarchy can be as frightening to the ego as the idea of total societal anarchy, because nobody being in control means there's nobody to stop it from going in a frightening direction. What if ideas I don't like gain popularity? What if people start thinking wrong thoughts and believing wrong beliefs? "
Caitlin, I think this is what our would-be controllers fear! And in my view this is why it is unlikely to manifest any time soon. But, radical though I may be, I don't think that this is what would actually happen. People could learn to communicate with each other across language divides and this may in turn lead to a reduction in paranoia and fear.
In my opinion it is the pathological desire of our manipulators to control that leads to "wrong" thoughts and beliefs.
I agree with everything CJ says about information freedom and concur on the illuminating world of psychedelics too.
Psychedelics never led to an audience with pan-dimensional Gods nor were they a transcendental meditation on the beauty of Indra's net.
Funnily enough, the psychedelics takeaway was basic and based: visceral preference for kindness over consumption and profound sense of "we ain't all that."
George Seldes clearly wrote 80 years ago "The facts are; a guide to falsehood and propaganda in the press and radio". History is sure reflecting page 2...
Thank you Caitlin for keeping the Spirit of Seldes alive.
I appreciate the essay. Sad to say that it might jump too short. Journalism is not the solution anymore. The difference between an 'intellectual' and appointed expert and a power agent is zero. Everybody holding a 'position', with the respective privileges organizations grants as long as the recruit obeys its imperatives, and an agent of power, whether secret or public, academically buffered or supported by arms or any kind of organized empowerment.
All this functions along the imperatives of organized power to control the subjects of the implemented extraction process, along the monoculture of organization, no matter the differences between the resulting regimes, or the means applied, private or public. Even 'fascism' can be 'privatized', and science and (especially digital) technology are intrinsically totalitarian and intended to achieve ABSOLUTE and TOTAL CONTROL.
They are 'rule based forms of order', according to their own inner telos, without any regard to political power or external implementation regulations, intrinsically totalitarian from the start.
According to a certain Mr. Tegmark THE UNIVERSE IS A MATHEMATICAL OBJECT.
The prayermill Mantra about the neutrality of science with regard to its practical use is an unscientific lie, science itself does contradict in every of its self made epistemical statements about its own meaning and purpose.
And 'humanity' is an idea, not congruent with the sum of the biomass of the species homo, a cannibal predator and omnivore split in itself into the difference between predator and prey, and there is no credible utopia to end thus but (self-) extinction of the species.
The final results of any as yet unfinished project of modernity and enlightenment is the inescapable confrontation of the species homo with itself and the history of its development as the sublimation of its cannibalism.up to the free labour market as the basis for a thermodynamic machine sucking up whatever can be fed o to it across the elementary table and whatever lives until the fuel and lubricant run out.
That's all. No reason anywhere, all just a temporal extension of the contingent and aimless process of biochemistry on this planet (only) not controlled by any meaningful mechanism or rules outside its biochemical functioning according to the energy status of the planet/moon/sun-system open to the vacuum.
Any excess of imagined meanings just the fog over a swamp built overnight dissolving in the light of a sober view on it.
Any infusion of 'hope' is just another attempt of the 'intellectuals' to gather new follower masses for their own self sustain meint and self aggrandisment. That would be the minimum of self reflection for anybody who claims to be able to find and to hold an archimedan point outside the orbit of the semantic system of meanings the system produces as a function of its selfmaintenance. 💯 (c)
Interesting article and comments. Certainly, I desire a more honest and transparent government. I also think integrity and compassion are sorely needed. Therefore, I must be those things I desire.
There is no democracy without an enlightened citizenry.
Imagination a true democracy wherer boards of directors of all the news divisions of all major media corporations were selected randomly from the public at large, with the mandate to ensure that the public heard from policy advocates from across the political spectrum whether the owners and controlling officers (ceos etc.) liked it or not. Imagine further than they were backed by a government body also randomly selected from the public tasked to ensure authorized democratized media news division boards had the authority to oblige other parts of the media corporation (entertainment, sports etc.) or the conglomerate that owns/controls the media corporation to provide the funds and resources to ensure the public receives high quality, entertainingly presented yet genuinely informative and widely based information productions (tv, print, social media)? That’s the media system presented in books like The Democracy Manifesto. It’s the only practicable way of actually achieving the reforms Caitlin calls for but doesn’t say how they could happen.
Psychedelics might do it, although I shudder at the possibilities of the inner worlds of some public officials. I would push for the democratic socialism format, an idea that predates neoliberal capitalism by eons, but was violently opposed by various kinds of elites and vested interests throughout the ages. Such a system would not end all social problems, and Marx never claimed it would, but it's a helluva good start.
If I had to take a stab at what the question of vision means today, it would be:
- Cancelling the fake giant funny money casino financial system which is all the oligarchy really has to control the economic sovereignty of nations in the West.
- Remind people that the oligarchy is not a nation or country, it’s a a small financial nexus, with an intelligence arm (the “Five Eyes”) and the brute muscle power of the US military and NATO.
- What the oligarchy fears most is a return to the Hamiltonian credit and Lincoln-style greenback system where nations no longer allow private merchant banking institutions to control their national credit institutions, and instead force those institutions to create legitimate national credit based on the creation of future-orientated multi-generational projects (rather than short term purely profit-based and speculative activities).
- people need to know what’s going on, and they need to know how nations and civilizations have gotten out of crises like this before, as Solon led Athens with a debt jubilee or as Hamilton did with the national bank and Lincoln with the Greenback and trans-continental railway system.
- If the funny money casino economy was cancelled (with a Glass-Steagall-style re-organization of the banking system), then it would be relatively easy to redirect the productive sectors of the economy towards a future orientated multi-generational program of economic reconstruction.
This is what the bad guys fear most.
They’re not that smart or that strong. They depend on dumb left vs. right Ben Shapiro vs. APC debates.
As I was reading the post I was waiting for a punch line along the lines of it all being wishful thinking for the humanity as a whole. Unless it is well hidden there somewhere.
One of your best pieces. I agree wholeheartedly. It's no coincidence that, as we move into the age of Aquarius, the old controllers are doubling down on censorship and misinformation.
For those who grew up in the church, it reminds me of one of the Bible's statements about the Antichrist; "He knows his time is short". This system knows its time is short. That's why it's desperately clamping down on info, and working as hard as possible to kill people off and turn us against one another.
And just like the Antichrist, this system knows it will lose. We can hasten that process by keeping a level head, learning to live and let live, and calling out every single act of injustice, lies, and malice this Beast System has to dish out.
It all starts with Santa Claus, in my opinion. The lies. What a story they tell us, about a benevolent old man who knows everything about us and breaks into our homes every year to leave us gifts or lumps of coal, depending on our behaviour.
The other big lie is that it's necessary to forcefully breed, imprison, and kill animals for human consumption and entertainment. And that it's okay to do that.
All bullshit. And they build the rest of their lies on top of this very early programming, after we've already surrendered part of our brain and rational thinking to the dominant culture.
Break Free! Be Vegan !!! And tell Santa to go stuff himself.
Like I've said before: OCCUPY SILICON VALLEY! Our one demand? Free speech, total and unversal. Yes, you can call it Information Anarchism if you like. I like it too.
While i agree with most everything you say...........
I can't help feeling it would all be accomplished if the 'sheep' wanted it so.
They don't. They want to be sheep.
At 72yrs, i have given up all hope that people desire to be leaders and participate in a democracy. The burden seems to fall on the few to lead, who become arrogant, in the process.
That there is no potent 3rd party, that Assange is being tortured, Ukraine, etc, etc, belie the fact, that its not just propaganda, its inveterate passivity. I hope it changes.
In practical terms, we must start with the recognition that 1) corporations are not persons, but creations of government, and do not have natural (for the religious, God-given) rights and 2) money is not speech, and society (government) may limit the amount of money that may be expended to promote speech.
"The idea of true information anarchy can be as frightening to the ego as the idea of total societal anarchy, because nobody being in control means there's nobody to stop it from going in a frightening direction. What if ideas I don't like gain popularity? What if people start thinking wrong thoughts and believing wrong beliefs? "
Caitlin, I think this is what our would-be controllers fear! And in my view this is why it is unlikely to manifest any time soon. But, radical though I may be, I don't think that this is what would actually happen. People could learn to communicate with each other across language divides and this may in turn lead to a reduction in paranoia and fear.
In my opinion it is the pathological desire of our manipulators to control that leads to "wrong" thoughts and beliefs.
Nice idea, but how do you deal with the psychopaths and the congenitally stupid?
I agree with everything CJ says about information freedom and concur on the illuminating world of psychedelics too.
Psychedelics never led to an audience with pan-dimensional Gods nor were they a transcendental meditation on the beauty of Indra's net.
Funnily enough, the psychedelics takeaway was basic and based: visceral preference for kindness over consumption and profound sense of "we ain't all that."
George Seldes clearly wrote 80 years ago "The facts are; a guide to falsehood and propaganda in the press and radio". History is sure reflecting page 2...
Thank you Caitlin for keeping the Spirit of Seldes alive.
https://archive.org/details/factsareguidetof00seldrich/page/2/mode/2up
I appreciate the essay. Sad to say that it might jump too short. Journalism is not the solution anymore. The difference between an 'intellectual' and appointed expert and a power agent is zero. Everybody holding a 'position', with the respective privileges organizations grants as long as the recruit obeys its imperatives, and an agent of power, whether secret or public, academically buffered or supported by arms or any kind of organized empowerment.
All this functions along the imperatives of organized power to control the subjects of the implemented extraction process, along the monoculture of organization, no matter the differences between the resulting regimes, or the means applied, private or public. Even 'fascism' can be 'privatized', and science and (especially digital) technology are intrinsically totalitarian and intended to achieve ABSOLUTE and TOTAL CONTROL.
They are 'rule based forms of order', according to their own inner telos, without any regard to political power or external implementation regulations, intrinsically totalitarian from the start.
According to a certain Mr. Tegmark THE UNIVERSE IS A MATHEMATICAL OBJECT.
The prayermill Mantra about the neutrality of science with regard to its practical use is an unscientific lie, science itself does contradict in every of its self made epistemical statements about its own meaning and purpose.
And 'humanity' is an idea, not congruent with the sum of the biomass of the species homo, a cannibal predator and omnivore split in itself into the difference between predator and prey, and there is no credible utopia to end thus but (self-) extinction of the species.
The final results of any as yet unfinished project of modernity and enlightenment is the inescapable confrontation of the species homo with itself and the history of its development as the sublimation of its cannibalism.up to the free labour market as the basis for a thermodynamic machine sucking up whatever can be fed o to it across the elementary table and whatever lives until the fuel and lubricant run out.
That's all. No reason anywhere, all just a temporal extension of the contingent and aimless process of biochemistry on this planet (only) not controlled by any meaningful mechanism or rules outside its biochemical functioning according to the energy status of the planet/moon/sun-system open to the vacuum.
Any excess of imagined meanings just the fog over a swamp built overnight dissolving in the light of a sober view on it.
Any infusion of 'hope' is just another attempt of the 'intellectuals' to gather new follower masses for their own self sustain meint and self aggrandisment. That would be the minimum of self reflection for anybody who claims to be able to find and to hold an archimedan point outside the orbit of the semantic system of meanings the system produces as a function of its selfmaintenance. 💯 (c)
Interesting article and comments. Certainly, I desire a more honest and transparent government. I also think integrity and compassion are sorely needed. Therefore, I must be those things I desire.
There is no democracy without an enlightened citizenry.
Imagination a true democracy wherer boards of directors of all the news divisions of all major media corporations were selected randomly from the public at large, with the mandate to ensure that the public heard from policy advocates from across the political spectrum whether the owners and controlling officers (ceos etc.) liked it or not. Imagine further than they were backed by a government body also randomly selected from the public tasked to ensure authorized democratized media news division boards had the authority to oblige other parts of the media corporation (entertainment, sports etc.) or the conglomerate that owns/controls the media corporation to provide the funds and resources to ensure the public receives high quality, entertainingly presented yet genuinely informative and widely based information productions (tv, print, social media)? That’s the media system presented in books like The Democracy Manifesto. It’s the only practicable way of actually achieving the reforms Caitlin calls for but doesn’t say how they could happen.
Psychedelics might do it, although I shudder at the possibilities of the inner worlds of some public officials. I would push for the democratic socialism format, an idea that predates neoliberal capitalism by eons, but was violently opposed by various kinds of elites and vested interests throughout the ages. Such a system would not end all social problems, and Marx never claimed it would, but it's a helluva good start.
There’s a proverb I always liked:
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
If I had to take a stab at what the question of vision means today, it would be:
- Cancelling the fake giant funny money casino financial system which is all the oligarchy really has to control the economic sovereignty of nations in the West.
- Remind people that the oligarchy is not a nation or country, it’s a a small financial nexus, with an intelligence arm (the “Five Eyes”) and the brute muscle power of the US military and NATO.
- What the oligarchy fears most is a return to the Hamiltonian credit and Lincoln-style greenback system where nations no longer allow private merchant banking institutions to control their national credit institutions, and instead force those institutions to create legitimate national credit based on the creation of future-orientated multi-generational projects (rather than short term purely profit-based and speculative activities).
- people need to know what’s going on, and they need to know how nations and civilizations have gotten out of crises like this before, as Solon led Athens with a debt jubilee or as Hamilton did with the national bank and Lincoln with the Greenback and trans-continental railway system.
- If the funny money casino economy was cancelled (with a Glass-Steagall-style re-organization of the banking system), then it would be relatively easy to redirect the productive sectors of the economy towards a future orientated multi-generational program of economic reconstruction.
This is what the bad guys fear most.
They’re not that smart or that strong. They depend on dumb left vs. right Ben Shapiro vs. APC debates.
As I was reading the post I was waiting for a punch line along the lines of it all being wishful thinking for the humanity as a whole. Unless it is well hidden there somewhere.
One of your best pieces. I agree wholeheartedly. It's no coincidence that, as we move into the age of Aquarius, the old controllers are doubling down on censorship and misinformation.
For those who grew up in the church, it reminds me of one of the Bible's statements about the Antichrist; "He knows his time is short". This system knows its time is short. That's why it's desperately clamping down on info, and working as hard as possible to kill people off and turn us against one another.
And just like the Antichrist, this system knows it will lose. We can hasten that process by keeping a level head, learning to live and let live, and calling out every single act of injustice, lies, and malice this Beast System has to dish out.
It all starts with Santa Claus, in my opinion. The lies. What a story they tell us, about a benevolent old man who knows everything about us and breaks into our homes every year to leave us gifts or lumps of coal, depending on our behaviour.
The other big lie is that it's necessary to forcefully breed, imprison, and kill animals for human consumption and entertainment. And that it's okay to do that.
All bullshit. And they build the rest of their lies on top of this very early programming, after we've already surrendered part of our brain and rational thinking to the dominant culture.
Break Free! Be Vegan !!! And tell Santa to go stuff himself.
There's a proverb I like that goes as follows:
"Where there is no vision, humans thrive and flourish."
Think about it.
Like I've said before: OCCUPY SILICON VALLEY! Our one demand? Free speech, total and unversal. Yes, you can call it Information Anarchism if you like. I like it too.