Glad To Say "We Are Entering An Era Of Shattered Illusions"
Posted by Zenphamy 9 years, 3 months ago to Philosophy
Recently, straightlinelogic submitted a post "Revolution In America" advocating a look at the objective reality of the current state of the country as a tyrannical police state, and a realistic projection of it's fate and our's in it's ultimate failure. An argument was proposed for helping that collapse occur sooner rather than later in a way and a time frame that offers an opportunity for the productive and liberty minded of our society to affect change in a non-martial method through denying financial support.
The comments and responses to that post were surprising (disappointing) to some of us, on an Objectivist site. But rather than just abandoning the argument and hope for a more thorough discussion of the topic somewhere else, I've spent some time in further search for supporting arguments and ideas that offer further opportunities for the application of objective reason to the real world we all find ourselves in.
The referenced author offers strong arguments for Objectivists to examine themselves for illusions that keep them from any positive actions. From the article linked:
"The structure of history is held together by two essential and distinct kinds of links, two moments in time to which no one is immune: moments of epiphany, and moments of catastrophe. Sometimes, both elements intermingle at the birth of a singular epoch. Men often awaken to understanding in the midst of great crisis; and, invariably, great crises can erupt when men awaken. These are the moments when social gravity vanishes, when the kinetic glue of normalcy melts away, and we begin to see the true foundations of our world, if a foundation exists at all.
Catastrophe occurs when too many people refuse to accept that around us always are two universes at work. There is the cold, hard reality that underlies everything. And on the surface is a veil of deceit and compromise. The more humanity compromises vital truths in order to enjoy the comfort of illusions, the more mind-shattering it will be when those illusions fall away. These two worlds can coexist only for short periods of time, and they will always and eventually collide. There is no other possible outcome."
and:
"Our mission as an opposing force to globalism is to come to terms with our own illusions and to erase them, to stop compromising and to stop waiting for the final shoe to drop and to take positive action now rather than after the endgame develops. This means preparation and organization for the worst-case scenarios. This means making one’s family, neighborhood and community as self-reliant and secure as possible. The excuses have to stop. The distractions and intellectualized silver bullet solutions have to stop. Hard work and risk are all that are left, all that matters. If we do this, and if we do this now, then victory is possible. In any contest of strength and will, he who knows himself best, he who sheds all illusion, will be the winner."
I would argue that many here and throughout the Objectivist and Liberty communities are mired in their own illusions of intellectual superiority, personal camouflage, and individual safety that prevents any realistic discussion of the true and imminent dangers faced by all.
The comments and responses to that post were surprising (disappointing) to some of us, on an Objectivist site. But rather than just abandoning the argument and hope for a more thorough discussion of the topic somewhere else, I've spent some time in further search for supporting arguments and ideas that offer further opportunities for the application of objective reason to the real world we all find ourselves in.
The referenced author offers strong arguments for Objectivists to examine themselves for illusions that keep them from any positive actions. From the article linked:
"The structure of history is held together by two essential and distinct kinds of links, two moments in time to which no one is immune: moments of epiphany, and moments of catastrophe. Sometimes, both elements intermingle at the birth of a singular epoch. Men often awaken to understanding in the midst of great crisis; and, invariably, great crises can erupt when men awaken. These are the moments when social gravity vanishes, when the kinetic glue of normalcy melts away, and we begin to see the true foundations of our world, if a foundation exists at all.
Catastrophe occurs when too many people refuse to accept that around us always are two universes at work. There is the cold, hard reality that underlies everything. And on the surface is a veil of deceit and compromise. The more humanity compromises vital truths in order to enjoy the comfort of illusions, the more mind-shattering it will be when those illusions fall away. These two worlds can coexist only for short periods of time, and they will always and eventually collide. There is no other possible outcome."
and:
"Our mission as an opposing force to globalism is to come to terms with our own illusions and to erase them, to stop compromising and to stop waiting for the final shoe to drop and to take positive action now rather than after the endgame develops. This means preparation and organization for the worst-case scenarios. This means making one’s family, neighborhood and community as self-reliant and secure as possible. The excuses have to stop. The distractions and intellectualized silver bullet solutions have to stop. Hard work and risk are all that are left, all that matters. If we do this, and if we do this now, then victory is possible. In any contest of strength and will, he who knows himself best, he who sheds all illusion, will be the winner."
I would argue that many here and throughout the Objectivist and Liberty communities are mired in their own illusions of intellectual superiority, personal camouflage, and individual safety that prevents any realistic discussion of the true and imminent dangers faced by all.
"The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see".
Ayn Rand
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes...
The Bilderberger globalists exist just as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. In addition, there are other well respected (at least in their own minds eyes) groups albeit less well known such as; the United World Federalists, World Federalists International and their ilk. All focused on creating a True New World Order under the banner of market socialism (crony-capitalism perhaps?).
To reinforce this issue, back in the 90's, Mikhail Gorbachev (now who heads up a think tank in California) said that the road to the future required 3 things; 1) a single world government (I.e., UN), 2) a single world economy (globalist/Keynesian, market socialism) and 3) a single world religion -(Gaia/Eviromentalism). So, for those who believe this is all "conspiracy theory, I can assure you it is much more than that!.
This is all verifiable I assure you.
Agenda 21 is but one of these treaties that came out of the Rio Accords, signed by Bush 1, and because of a massive and coordinated push, all 50 states have already signed on to it (in my state, NJ) all 21 counties have also endorsed it without understanding its full ramifications. The other 4 treaties are just as onerous and corrosive to our sovereignty.
For these reasons, we are much further along the path to this growing world tyranny. The problem is that our attention has been kept riveted on the war on terror (almost as if it were part of a master plan). We have been continuously surrendering our liberties in exchange for some ill-defined sense of security and as Franklin once said (sic, "he who trades liberty for security ends up with neither).
There is much more going on than the American public knows and that is a fact.
The vast majority of people aren't interested in fighting anybody for their cause any more than for our cause. They simply want to go on sleepwalking, and will put up with conditions we would not in order to do it.
This doesn't mean there isn't any hope. It does mean we might want to reread Sun Tzu on how to motivate the lazy so that they do care. The opposition is good at that.
His statements that the collapse is already underway and that it won't be obvious until it's over are right on.
Don't get me wrong, I do not advocate violent revolution. But I do advocate being prepared. Many, probably most revolutions in history have not been "won" by the group that started them, but were successfully "hijacked" once in progress. We might need to do that. But I'm hoping all it will take for reform is to recreate the conditions of 1787, where the existing government felt they couldn't continue to operate.
I get closer to getting my head around a catastrophe and how govt might behave in such scenarios. The problem is-as the author states, collapses unfold. I fear that small business owners will fall apart first along with massive corporate lay-offs. Federal and state employees will have time to recover and make arrangements. this is the way it always is. during the depression, one of my grandfathers farmed. they had food but not alot of anything else. My other grandfather was a rural mail carrier. that family really didn't feel touched by the depression, except there were fewer goods available and of course the war and war effort. I note that some of the friendliest states to hunker it out in could also be a problem with droughts and water availability. we're getting closer to an off the grid system for living, but I still need to be able to get gas. after weathering out a hurricane this summer that shut down grid services for two weeks, my eyes were opened up pretty quick and I realized that every day what your weakest link in the system is, changes. I am glad that we moved somewhere where I can have a year round garden but limited storage capabilities for stocking in lots of stuff.
I am trying to learn how to drink things at room temperature lol I'm a princess, really
Maybe not quite as apocalyptic but similar in several ways.
For myself, it's cold or hot drinks. Luke warm just doesn't taste good.
I live in Sedona Az. where most people here are walking around in a daze any way. Every time my wife and I go shopping, wonder if the people I see around me could survive a catastrophe man made or other wise. How many would band together for a common cause or become animals. I have serious reservations about this. I have may written before about my conversation with an Vietnam Veteran about what is happening in this country. He believed that violent revolution is the only solution. He put it to me this way-"I getting to old for fighting but will deliver ammunition to the front lines so you youngsters can keep on fighting" This soldier was about a decade older than I am. I keep developing rational ideas that could change the world around me but there are to many mentally deaf people here. I even try to make connections to dark groups that have the same sentiments as I do. But, they are very afraid of gov't surveillance.
I pray to God that a large stone would fall from the sky and obliterate the NSA Facility in Utah. I'm sure the BHO Terrorist Conference will target these Son's of Liberty types of groups and the NRA instead of the real threat of Islamist Extremists..
Reducing these costs is virtually impossible due to the politically exploited, low information voter. The only remotely possible hope is freeing the economy up to produce enough real goods and services to support the non-producers while somehow rebuilding a more contributive social order.
Note this excerpt from an article that just showed up in my inbox:
<<Nordic nations get fairly decent scores because they have very laissez-faire policies for regulation, trade, monetary policy, and property rights. --- Yes, the fiscal burden of the welfare state slows growth and drags down their rankings, but they still do far better than other European countries that have big governments and a lot of intervention.>>
I’m not saying this is at all possible; only that I see it as the only way of unwinding the economic doomsday machine we currently are operating.
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/m...
Many objectivist and those in the loosely termed Liberty Movement concentrate their efforts in education and demonstration of the rightness of the philosophical principles of individual natural rights and capitalism while not realizing that such an effort will take decades at least to make significant inroads into the population, or in finding individual means to personally "shrug' to escape.
Some think that those efforts as well as the political approach are illusory at best and that the progressive socialism taking over the country is already in a collapsing spiral and that full collapse is inevitable with catastrophe for the individual and a free society unavoidable.
While the epiphany of that realization has and is occurring to some urging them to want to find more proactive approaches to facing and dealing with the situation, many others seem to want to hang on to the illusions of education, demonstration, or escape (shrugging) being the only acceptable discussions and actions for the Objectivist and Natural Individual Rights citizen to contemplate.
Long four sentences, but the question arises; which is more right and are there acceptable proactive approaches, and are there further considerations to include in such thoughts.
Lots to ponder. While there are only two propositions, they each entail myriads of considerations. My first thought is that there is no reason that education and demonstration cannot be put forth along with a more proactive approach. Fashioning such a movement is easy to say, but complex to put forth. However, starting with basic premises, there's no reason why It can't be done.
What I wish for in government is a "deliver the mail and protect the borders" kind of entity. I don't think tax dollars should be spent on curing cancer, aborting babies, researching stem cells. These may all be fine ideas, depending on your political POV, but how is the government in the business of those things and so much more?
Historian David Barton was on the blaze one day reading questions from an 8th grade final exam. I have lived long enough to retire with a reasonable nest egg. I couldn't answer a single question. How much better is education now the we have the Education department?
I believe it was in the Carter years they started the Department of Energy, to move us to energy independence. We finally got there, but did the energy department forge the way or were they in the way?
It seems to me all of the agencies and departments, at the least, become millstones around our necks and at worst become weapons used by the party in power against the opposition.
Taking the agencies apart would be as difficult as repealing and replacing Obamacare. It would require the passage in both chambers and a Presidential signature. These days we understand how difficult that is.
So we look about the world and wonder where is Atlantis? Should we go to England, France, Spain or Portugal? All more governed than where we are, they've been at it longer. How about the Middle East? Not for me, wouldn't fit in with the Muslims. I might do something foolish and lose my head. Far East? South Korea and Japan are enterprising places. North Korea and China, not so much. Anyplace I think of seems like a frying pan to fire move. Maybe that's one of the illusions. Maybe someplace else is different, but fine just the same.
The elephant in the room illusion is total collapse will mean "the end". Until the sun loses it's ability to heat and light the Earth, there will be a tomorrow. In the worst of the western socialist states people still have jobs, families, homes, goals, and a life. People own property real and tangible. People pay and collect rent, shop for groceries, eat out, and they sometimes cook at home. We argue about whose buying the groceries and whose actually paying the rent. But the truth is, there will be a tomorrow. The real question is how to shape it in a more libertarian way. I believe the checks will have to bounce and the promises be broken before we find real answers. As long as there is a way to continue to avoid the real issue, change the value of the currency, continue to make payments, and refinance the whole mess...our elected officials will do as always. This could be considered good news. In the great depression fortunes were made. Fortunes were also lost. That would be another kind of redistribution! Still, opportunities were real for those that recognized them and took action. Taking action is the overlooked part in the process. Thinking about doing a thing is not the same as doing it. Dreaming of kissing the prettiest girl in town is not the same as kissing her.
I somehow can't seem to find the one size fits all answer to this. For me, I will continue to maintain my small string of rental properties and use that money to afford the freedoms I enjoy. I may divest if a fit time ever comes, or I may go to my grave and let the estate figure it out. Either way as long as people need a decent place to live my family will survive the foolishness. I guess if the government started ignoring property rights and taking what is ours there would be hell to pay.
First I would like to say where I agree with the author, albeit with a humorous twist: It is really tragic when I find myself hoping that the Earth WILL be hit by an asteroid. (Only a little asteroid; maybe just sideswiped.) I am in substantial agreement with the author that 'lack of contact with reality' is the root of the illusions that we encounter. (This makes a case for Starship Trooper or Tunnel in the Sky, does it not?) People cannot seem to understand that you cannot vote more money-worth into existence or change reality by amassing overwhelming opinion. (Personal peeve: we even seem to have lost the idea that science consists of disproving theories - your own or somebody else's.) Perhaps if we had a recoverable physical catastrophe (asteroid) we would have a large opinion-shift in favor of reality - and a common 'enemy'.
Not too likely, eh? I agree. It is a dream.
The aspect which I feel is overlooked in the article is the role of technology. (Though khalling referred to that in her post.) If we leave a grid energy model, we can at least ameliorate the effects of collapse. More importantly: If the collapse is delayed by another 20 years, we will be in a different world: a world in which robots are the non-innovative producers and a very small fraction of the humans are innovative producers.
I say this not to take the conversation off-track, but because I believe that this IS the track we are on and to overlook it is just another way of not seeing reality. Where we are now, the article is probably largely correct in the catastrophic effects of collapse (though like DrZarkov I am less sure of the Illuminati aspect). Had the collapse come twenty or even 10 years ago, it would not have been so severe. Five years from now it will probably be worse...but 20 years from now (MIT leaf-hydrogen panels; 3D printers ubiquitous) it might be much 'less bad'.
Like many of you, I am trying to hedge my bets even now so that I will not experience a worse-case scenario if an catastrophic collapse does occur. (NB Yesterday was the anniversary of the Northridge Quake in LA, which I experienced close up and personal.) I am not certain if the best answer is 'chaos now; beat the rush' or 'hang on'.
Jan
If you do not take changes in technology into consideration, you are wallowing in poop.
Jan
Despite the accusations, we have no "illusions". We are all aware of what is happening in government. It isn't new. Anyone who has followed Ayn Rand is well aware of her observations and explanations of what has been happening and why since Atlas Shrugged was published almost 60 years. People have been thinking and acting for decades both for cultural change and in their personal lives to protect themselves.
It is insulting and dishonest for these Walter Mittys of the Revolution claiming to represent Ayn Rand's philosophy to smear rejection of nihilistic revolution as "hiding behind Ayn Rand", "advocating a placating attitude towards your masters" and "a life of slavery", "recommendation of living in fear and trepidation" as a "lap dog that accepts occasional kicks in the ribs as the cost of free meals of scraps and dares to think that all the other dogs should do the same in order to spread the kicks out" -- and in response to the rejection of the smears: "Whaaa". Advocacy of the rejected "overthrowing the government" and "revolution" is pawned as "the use of the mind and the expression of the works of that mind".
Yes, they really said that. None of it is true. It's shear demagoguery trying to manipulate people into going along with their nihilistic scheme through through the purple prose of misrepresentation, mocking, taunting and moral intimidation, all of it dishonest.
This is a forum for discussion of ideas and current events for those sympathetic with the values of Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand's philosophy. That certainly includes discussion of the declining state of the country and the nature of the government, and has included discussion of ideas on how to find the best place to live with as much independence as possible, not generally confused with reforming the country or bringing down the government. Some have for years been involved in effecting political policy for the better here in reality and know very well what is feasible and what isn't.
The forum is not a place for anarchists -- who don't even have the strategic sense not to do their planning in public -- promoting, with frantic rhetoric, illegal action and plotting the overthrow of the government, with or without any idea of what would replace it, and which only needlessly endangers everyone here from those in government and elsewhere who don't know the difference between Ayn Rand and what they call "terrorists".
I would like to thank you for this contribution. I found many of these contributions not well thought through and expressing what, to me, seems heavily emotion-loaded cries out of fear.
The whole talk about "two worlds" is just a misunderstanding. There is only one reality that exists. Draw your own conclusions, ladies and gentlemen.
I think that many misinterpret what is a glacially slow evolution of the human species. How long ago were we mating with Neanderthals? How long ago have we learned how to use tools? And now, in what in comparison seem overnight, we want create New World and a New Man? That is what Stalin and Hitler preached. Remember?
I also share your concern about talking loosely about revolutions and demolition of governments. That has nothing to do with either Objectivism or Ayn Rand's ideas and writings. Some shallow-thinking governmental spy will use it to cause us much trouble and achieve a pay raise.
Finally, I am ashamed that at least three people here gave you negative points. To end on a light-hearted note, I donate to you the +1000 that someone else, misguidedly, gave me in another discussion here.
All the best to you.
Sincerely,
Maritimus