My book is now available on Amazon Kindle for $3.99. In addition, the price for the print version has been lowered to $12. Also, check out my latest article here at Dmitry Orlov’s site where I discuss the current state of Bureaucratic Insanity.
(Please note that these links go to my Amazon Associate page, and allow me to collect an additional commission from the sale at no cost to you.)
This election may or may not be revolutionary in the traditional sense, a hinge point where history seems to take a turn, or at least changes shape in its endless push toward “progress.” But one thing is for sure: it has been incredibly instructive in giving us observers a view into how power really functions.
It turns out that the major political and social scientists of the last 60 years were right. Here are just two of the ways where they predicted the evolution of our political process:
Lewis Mumford Accurately Described ‘The Machine’
This is the big one. We won’t recount Mumford’s entire theory here, but the gist of his argument is that the various machines protect one another. The media protects the banks, which protects the government, which protects the corporations, and so on. The result is a kind of hyper-resilient mesh of governing structures which are highly resistant to reform. They all have their own individual motivations, but all support the expansion of centralized power and control.
We see this clearly today in this article from the Associated Press: “Analysis: Trump ‘rigged’ vote claim may leave lasting damage.” It reads:
Donald Trump keeps peddling the notion the vote may be rigged. It’s unclear whether he understands the potential damage of his words, or simply doesn’t care…. Clinton and congressional Republicans, should they retain control, would be left trying to govern in a country divided not just by ideology, but also the legitimacy of the presidency.
God forbid this criminal government have its legitimacy imperiled! The horror. We might have people questioning whether our countless illegal wars are moral. People might even think they can govern themselves! The AP continues:
As Trump’s campaign careens from crisis to crisis, he’s broadened his unfounded allegations that Clinton, her backers and the media are conspiring to steal the election.
Unfounded. Wow. That’s plainly not true, and we have dozens, perhaps hundreds of emails both from the DNC hacks and the leaked Clinton email server that prove at least some soft collusion between the media and outfits like the CNN and the AP, as well as bloggers, and individual TV personalities. It defies the common sense of anyone paying attention. Read More
If you’ve been paying attention, most of this information should come as no surprise, but I feel like things are moving so rapidly, it makes sense to repost what we know.
It seems hard to believe that less than a week ago, Hillary collapsed on camera into the arms of her handlers. Soon after, Don Fowler, who headed the DNC from 1995 to 1997, urged the party to come up with a process in the event that Hillary could no longer be the candidate. And they did so right away.
Unless otherwise noted, the following information comes from broadcast anchor Davis Shuster and all quotes are from his source. Read More
I just finished work on this video documentary of my previous essay of the same name. It discusses the scientist John C. Lilly and his ideas. Lilly is best known for inventing the Float Tank and his work with Dolphin communication.
The subject of this documentary however concerns his most controversial idea — the so called “Solid State Entity.” According to Lilly, the SSE is an extra-terrestrial artificial intelligence whose goal is to spread by making copies of itself. It does so by influencing societies to surrender more and more control to machines until it creates an A.I. that can take over the planet.
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John C. Lilly is one of my favorite “alternative” scientists. His popularity has waned significantly since his death in 2001, even as his contemporaries like Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna have continued to have strong followings. Still, Lilly’s admittedly outrageous ideas and prophecies are worth remembering, not because they are necessarily true, but because, like all mythologies, they give us insight into the consensus reality.
A medical doctor with a background in hard science, Lilly spent most of his adult life studying the human mind, especially his own. He is known for being one of the early scientific cartographers of human consciousness. He’s also known for inventing what is now called the float tank, a device I’ve documented at length.
Lilly was what you might call a “psychonaut,” literally translated from Greek as a “sailor of the soul.” By isolating himself in the float tank and taking a large amount of psychedelic drugs, Lilly wanted to understand the mysteries of existence.
He used psychedelics like LSD in his float tank to produce deeper and more profound visions, but his preferred drug was the anesthesia Ketamine. “Seeing things” after a few hours in a float tank is not uncommon, but with the use of Ketamine, he was able to radically increase the intensity of these visions.
While floating under the influence, Lilly claimed to become aware of a cosmic hierarchy of aliens. He called one group the Earth Coincidence Control Office or ECCO. (This and Lilly’s other ideas later became the inspiration for the Ecco The Dolphin video game series.) Lilly’s contact with extra-dimensional beings is similar to those described by Harvard medical professor John E. Mack and his books on alien abductions — specifically, that aliens are not necessarily physical entities driving around in spaceships, but trans-dimensional spirits with an interest in human activities.
According to Lilly, the ECCO aliens use their powers to alter events on Earth, specifically through the use of carefully crafted coincidence, to guide some human beings toward higher levels of consciousness. The intent of these aliens, Lilly says, is to help humanity evolve in a peaceful and healthy way. Interesting as his experience or delusion may be, this is not his most important contribution. Read More
Here is part 2 of my interview with Jasun Horsley of the Liminalist Podcast. Listen to part 1 here.
I sat down recently to do an interview with Jasun Horsley of the Liminalist Podcast. We talk about my new book, Bureaucratic Insanity for a short bit. Then we get into discussions about meaning, the banality of office life, the death of autonomy, the worship of symbols, and too many other eclectic topics to lists.
Click here to listen to part 1. Part 2 is here.
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I’ve always defined god as that which motivates a person the most. Whatever makes you get up in the morning or whatever makes you go to work for 40 hours or more a week, that is your god. For a lot of people, God is money. Money does after all affect almost every interaction we have on a day-to-day basis. It’s ridiculous to say you have no God or that your God is Jesus, Allah, or whoever when your every interaction is colored by a slavish service to money.
That said, money isn’t the only god on the scene these days. There are lots of gods: power, political ideology, and yes, even fictional characters like Spider-Man. It might seem ridiculous that I would argue that anyone would elevate Spider-Man or any other superhero to the status of a deity, but let’s look at the evidence.
As a purely financial measure, Spider-Man alone brings in a stunning amount of revenue, roughly $1.3 billion every single year. That’s more than if you won the largest lottery payout in history, and this is a yearly occurrence. Read More
The Washington Post just reported that a friend of OJ Simpson believes he may be willing to confess to the 1994 murders after he is released from prison for unrelated crimes (possibly as early as 2017).
Everyone who is old enough to remember 1994 has a story about OJ Simpson. Maybe they saw the infamous white Bronco chase through Los Angeles, or saw one of the several TV movies or shows on the trial. Some even make reference to the “Dancing Itos” from time to time. (Just check YouTube and be amazed.)
Then there was the catch phrases: “If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit.” There was the closing argument from Johnnie Cochran, which is now called the “Chewbacca Defense” or a strategy that involves confusing the hell out of the jury rather than try to refute the opposition’s claims.
For me, I remember them announcing the verdict on the loudspeaker at school. Keep in mind, this was a middle school, 6th grade for me. Truly, the OJ trial was a cultural event. With the jury deciding the verdict in only two hours (an almost certain indication they plan to convict), everyone thought it was a done deal. The “not guilty” verdict was about as shocking as they come.
Many think the jury was simply starstruck with Simpson. Perhaps. Others believe Simpson was found not guilty because no one could trust the proven racist LAPD officers involved. The list of mistakes and embarrassments for the prosecution went on from there. Turning the trial into a referendum on the then bubbling culture war essentially decimated the state’s case.
Will OJ finally confess? Well he’s had more than enough chances to do so in the past. So it will probably take a sincere and profound sense of remorse for him to decide to do so now. But, as they say, where there’s life, there’s hope.
Thanks to my editor and publisher, you can now view two blog length excerpts from my new book, Bureaucratic Insanity: The American Bureaucrat’s Descent into Madness.
The first excerpt discusses the “master/slave” relationship that has become widespread in American schools and workplaces. I also talk about what that kind of pressure means for our psychological health. The second discusses comedian George Carlin, Sigmund Freud, disaster movies and our civilization’s unmistakable longing for death. Good stuff.
One last thing: If you haven’t seen it, you can watch my teaser trailer I made for the book here.
(Please note that these links go to my Amazon Associate page, and allow me to collect an additional commission from the sale at no cost to you.)
