We Need A Social Revolution

Source: PeakProsperity.com
Charles Hugh Smith
August 18, 2017

In the conventional view, there are two kinds of revolutions: political and technological. Political revolutions may be peaceful or violent, and technological revolutions may transform civilizations gradually or rather abruptly—for example, revolutionary advances in the technology of warfare.

In this view, the engines of revolution are the state—government in all its layers and manifestations—and the corporate economy.

In a political revolution, a new political party or faction gains converts to its narrative, and this new force replaces the existing political order, either via peaceful means or violent revolution.

Technological revolutions arise from many sources but end up being managed by the state and private sector, which each influence and control the other in varying degrees.

Conventional history focuses on top-down political revolutions of the violent “regime change” variety: the American Revolution (1776), the French Revolution (1789), the Russian Revolution (1917), the Chinese Revolution (1949), and so on.

Technology has its own revolutionary hierarchy; the advances of the Industrial Revolutions I, II, III and now IV, have typically originated with inventors and proto-industrialists who relied on private capital and banking to fund large-scale buildouts of new industries: rail, steel manufacturing, shipbuilding, the Internet, etc.

The state may direct and fund technological revolutions as politically motivated projects, for example the Manhattan project to develop nuclear weapons and the Space race to the Moon in the 1960s.

These revolutions share a similar structure: a small cadre leads a large-scale project based on a strict hierarchy in which the revolution is pushed down the social pyramid by the few at the top to the many below.  Even when political and industrial advances are accepted voluntarily by the masses, the leadership and structure of the controlling mechanisms are hierarchical: political power, elected or not, is concentrated in the hands of a few at the top. Corporations are commercial autocracies; leadership is highly concentrated and orders are imposed on the bottom 99% of employees with military-like authority.

Social Revolutions Are Not Top-Down

But there is another class of revolution that does not share this hierarchical structure, nor does it manifest in the large-scale, top-down power-pyramids of the state and private corporations: social revolutions are bottoms-up affairs, lacking centralized leadership and hierarchical control mechanisms.

Social revolutions eventually influence the state and private sector, but they do not require the permission, funding or leadership of these hierarchies; as a rule, social revolutions drag the state and corporate sectors forward, kicking and screaming, as the social fabric and values of the populace change and the state and corporate sector cling to the status quo.

Examples of recent social revolutions include the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, the Counterculture of the 1960s, and the gay rights movement.  The leadership of the state resisted each revolution, and was essentially forced to adapt to the new social order as it became mainstream.

Once corporations figured out ways to profit from the transformed social order, they quickly introduced new products and fresh marketing: all-Caucasian advertising, for example, gave way to targeted ethnic advertising and mixed-race national advert campaigns.

When social revolutions are suppressed by the state, they may spark a political revolution as the socially oppressed come to see the overthrow of the autocratic political order as a necessary step towards liberation.

In other cases, social revolutions may have little immediate impact on the political stage. Faith-based social secular movements–for example, the Second Great Awakening in the early 19^th century– were not overtly political; their eventual political impact (temperance, woman’s rights and support for the abolition of slavery) may manifest decades later.

In summary: social revolutions may generate political waves, but they need not be overtly political to do so, nor do they rely on political, financial or technological hierarchies to transform society.

The Decline of Social Groups and the Erosion of the Social Order

Robert Putman’s 2000 book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, documented the decline of social connections and what we might calling belonging in American society with reams of data. This erosion of social bonds is not limited to social groups such as bowling leagues; it is secular, spanning every social type of connection from family picnics to community and neighborhood groups.

If we extend Putnam’s findings to the core human bonds of family and friendships, we find the same fraying of social ties; people have fewer close friends, are more isolated and lonely, and family relationships are increasingly superficial or characterized by alienation.

The factors feeding this broad-based decline of connectedness and social capital are many: the nation’s economic mode of production has changed, requiring two incomes where one once sufficed, and globalization has increased both the demands on those with jobs and the number of adults who have fallen out of the work force.

This winner-takes-most economy has been accompanied by the rise of political divisiveness, a brand of politics that fosters us-versus-them disunity and the erosion of common ground in favor of demonized opponents and all-or-nothing loyalty to one party or cause.

The technological revolutions of broadcast television and radio homogenized the mainstream media even as they provided superficial substitutes for social engagement. The technologies of social media, mobile telephony and narrowcast echo-chambers of uniform opinion have created even more addictive forms of distraction that are not just shredding social connectedness—they’re destroying our ability to form and nurture social bonds, even within the family.

This dynamic was explored in a recent essay in The Atlantic, Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

Any careful observer of present-day family life would add that the addictive draw of mobile telephony has also damaged the parents’ generation and the family unit itself.

Cui Bono: To Whose Benefit?

Longtime readers know I often begin an inquiry with the time-tested question: cui bono, to whose benefit? Who has benefited from the erosion of the social fabric and social capital, from the politics of divisiveness and the mass addiction to the technologies of superficial connectedness?

While we can take note of soaring corporate profits, and draw a causal connection between these profits and the modern-day “always connected to work” lifestyle of high-productivity corporate employees, it’s difficult to argue that corporations have benefited directly from the loss of social capital that characterizes American life.

Rather, it seems that the corporation’s relentless pursuit of narrowly defined self-interest, i.e. maximizing profits by whatever means are available, has laid waste to boundaries between work and home life as collateral damage.

In a similar fashion, purveyors of smartphones and the software and content that render them so addictive don’t necessarily benefit directly from the destruction of intimate, authentic social bonds, but they certainly have prospered from the feeding of the smartphone addiction. Once again, the loss of authentic social connectedness is collateral damage.

While it seems quite clear that political groups have fueled divisiveness to their own benefit, does the state (government in all its forms) benefit from the fraying of the social order? It’s difficult to discern a direct benefit to the state, though it might be argued that a fractured populace is easier to control.

But the erosion of the social order has gone beyond fracture into disintegration, and it’s hard to see how class wars and social disunity benefit the state, which ultimately relies on some measure of social unity for its authority, which flows from the consent of the governed.

It’s Time To Take Our Future Back

In Part 2: Rescuing Our Future, we focus on the self-evident truth that governments and corporations cannot restore social connectedness and balance to our lives.  Only a social revolution that is self-organizing from the bottom-up can do that.

And we detail out the specific steps each of us can and should take to develop the values and skills required to form and maintain authentic social wealth—the wealth of friendship, of social gatherings, of belonging.

It takes courage and independence to swim against the toxic tides of our economy and society. The good news is that true wealth is within reach of everyone. The steps we each need take are clear; it’s just a matter of having the will to invest the time and effort.

Do you have it?

Read More At: PeakProsperity.com

Google’s intolerant workplace culture will cost it everything

Source: ActivistPost.com
August 17, 2017

Is The USA’s Worst Ideological Enemy Now Europe?

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.
July 24, 2017

This is a very unusual, and though-provoking, op-ed piece that was shared by Ms. K.F., and I want to discuss a few of its salient points. First, the article:

The Worst Ideological Enemy of the US is Now Europe

The premise of the article is that basically the institutions of the European Union itself, as those of many of its member governments, are now thoroughly dominated by the political (and, I would aver, more importantly, the cultural left), and that as such, Europe is emerging as a primary ideological opponent of the USSA:

Not anymore. In a sense, Europe looks like a continent where American Democrats have been in power for 30 years, not only in the European states, but also at the level of the European Union.

In the US, the political spectrum still spans a vast range of views between Democrats and Republicans, globalists and nationalists, pro-lifers and pro-choicers, pro-government control and pro-individuals’ control, and pro-whatever. Even today with a president and a Supreme Court clearly on the political “Right” these divisions, and the all-important separation of powers, allow for and encourage vigorous debate. By contrast, in Europe, at the “official” level, such a spectrum of views no longer exists.

In Western Europe, politically speaking, in the press and in universities, either you are on the “Left,” or you are a pariah. If you are a pariah, you are most likely to be prosecuted for “Islamophobia”, “racism”, discrimination or some other “trumped up” charge.

Now, this premise intrigues me, and I have to confess at the outset of my daily high octane speculation, I’m at rather a loss, simply for the reason that many of the regular readers of this website are not only Americans, but Canadians, Mexicans, Australians, Chinese(!), Estonians, Poles, Germans, Italians (or, at least, Americans living in Italy), Greeks, Croatians, Spaniards, Belgians, Dutch, French, British, Norwegians, Austrians, and Swedes. So we are pretty well scattered across the board at this website.

My distinct impression from interacting with all these people is (1) Europeans are anything but monolithic in their commitments to the political-cultural left, and (2) Americans on the other hand, while very diverse in the political-cultural commitments, are no better off than Europeans, for the institutions of the American government and culture are no less dominated by the left than the article alleges Europe’s are. Indeed, from years of interacting with all these people, one thing seems unusually clear to me about Europeans, namely, they are not only conscious of a uniquely “European” culture and how that culture forms the bedrock of what we call “Western” culture, but they are not ignorant, by any stretch of the imagination, of the uniqueness of their own national culture and its contributions to that overall “Western” or “European” culture. How could they be? If one pauses to reflect on the enormous influences of Italy, Spain, Germany, France, and Britain on this culture, one would be hard pressed to ignore it.

As I have mentioned before on this website, if anything, the USSA’s actions since 9/11 in the unipolar pursuit of a pax Americana have provoked a worldwide backlash against America, as long and staunch allies are reconsidering the stability of that alliance system. This will only continue, so long as American policy is focused on the same old paradigm (which, given my recent blog on the recent Pentagon assessment, it appears to be).

Every now and then, in these blogs, I “throw things open” because I really want to know what people think about an article, and this is one such case. Am I wrong, or is this article painting a picture of Europe and Europeans that simply is not true? And by the same token, is it painting an accurate picture of America, or one that is simply untrue? I suspect the latter, but I am not sure. By the same token, speaking as an American, I can say that the final paragraph in my citation above, reads a bit like make believe: “In Western Europe, politically speaking, in the press and in universities, either you are on the ‘Left’ or you are a pariah,”as if the same phenomenon is not in abundance in this country. Speaking only for myself, this is the way I’ve increasingly felt in America ever since my days teaching in college.

But more importantly, what is to be done about it? The author of this article, Dr. Drieu Godefridi, takes note of a frustration that many Europeans feel with the institutions of the E.U.: they are all centralizing, one-size-fits-all, and trample on the wishes of local and national populations and their institutions:

While Italy is “drowning” in refugees, Austria has deployed armored vehicles close to its border with Italy, to stop more migrants from coming north.

The vast majority of these European courts — whether the ECHR or the CJEU — in their attempt to be moral and just, have dismissed the sovereign laws of Italy as irrelevant, and trampled the rights of the Italian state and ordinary Italians to approve who enters their country.

I thought as I read this that there’s little difference between Europe and the USSA, as the following “creative substitutions” in the quotation – I hope – will make clear:

“While California is drowning in refugees, Arizona has deployed armored vehicles to close its border with California, to stop more migrants from coming north.

“The vast majority of these American Courts – whether the Ninth Circuit or the Supremes – in their attempt to be moral and just, have dismissed the sovereign laws of Texas and Arizona as irrelevant, trampled on the rights of American states and ordinary Americans to approve who enters their country.”

Far from seeing the differences between Europe and the USSA, at least as Dr. Godefridi paints them, I’m seeing much more the similarities. So, I want to know, what do you think, not only of the article and analysis, but much more importantly, what is to be done? Is it merely a matter of being able to “discuss” things or, to use that hated term, “dialogue” with “the other side”, or is something else going on that really, ultimately, precludes it?

See you on the flip side…

Read More At: GizaDeathStar.com
________________________________________________

About Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and “strange stuff”. His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into “alternative history and science”.

Book Review: Cultural Literacy – What Every American Needs To Know by E.D. Hirsch, Jr

TheBreakaway | BreakawayConciousness
Zy Marquiez
July 22, 201

Cultural Literacy by E.D. Hirsch is a sobering look into some of the reasons why public schooling in America has been spiraling downwards for the last few decades.  At the vanguard of these issues, Hirsch narrows down this intellectual death spiral to the loss of cultural literacy among the masses.  This loss of cultural literacy has exacerbated the significant bifurcation between the individuals that have literate cultural backgrounds, and those that do not.

Moreover, Hirsch makes it a point to show that cultural literacy is not just knowing about significant facts, or information as some would undoubtedly think.  Certainly, these are at times important, but more precisely, the author homes-in on the fact that cultural literacy is information shared by individuals within a particular social strata that makes their communications more efficient and enjoyable, thus allowing for a more cohesive social strata.

With a critical eye, Hirsch notes:

“….literacy requires the early and continued transmission of specific information…Only by accumulating shared symbols, and the shared information that the symbols represent, can we learn to communicate effectively with one another in our national community.”[1]

Employing copious amounts of research, Hirsch shows there should be a significant cause for concern about the poor quality of education, as well as other salient problems.

With deep concern, Hirsch soberingly warns:

“If we not achieve a literate society, the technicians, with their arcane specialties, will not be able to communicate with us nor we with them.  That would contradict the basic principles of democracy and must not be allowed to happen.”[2]

A sound and versatile education is impossible without a robust culturally literate repertoire.  This is why the information touched upon by Hirsch is so pivotal and should be ruminated upon.

To home in on the point of deteriorating education, let’s take a gander at what two-time award winning teacher, researcher and writer, John Taylor Gatto stated in A Different Kind Of Teacher:

““Schools were designed by Horace Mann, E.L. Thorndike, and others to be instruments of scientific management of a mass population.  Schools are intended to produce, through the application of formulas, formulaic beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.  To a very great extent, schools succeed in doing this.”[3][Bold Emphasis Added]

Lowering cultural literacy, among other things, would undoubtedly be part of this process.  This is because culturally literate individuals will be familiar with the scaffolding of history and many of its nuances; such individuals are magnitudes harder to control, which is why public schooling through the Common Core system seeks to conform everyone through standardized testing and more.  (For more information, please look below the sources at the resources and suggested reading.)

We are at a turning point in history, and we either stop the descent into cultural nescience, individually, and as a nation, or we continue into the swamp of ignorance.

Irrespective of the circumstances, one thing is certain: there is still time to make significant changes if individuals choose to.  It is really up to individuals and their families to educate themselves, because the way the system is constructed, a well-rounded and complete education cannot take place within the system.  This is one of many reasons why self-teaching is growing at an immense rate, and will continue to do so.  Don’t allow yourself, or those you know to fall by the wayside merely because the system is corrupt and cares not for true education but rather to instead create cogs for the machine.

__________________________________________________________
Sources:

[1] E.D. Hirsch, Jr., What Every American Needs To Know, p. xvii.
[2] Ibid., p. 2.
[3] John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind Of Teacher, p. 16.

___________________________________________________________
If you find value in this information, please share it.  This article is free and open source.  All individuals have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Zy Marquiez and TheBreakaway.wordpress.com.
___________________________________________________________
About The Author:

Zy Marquiez is an avid book reviewer, inquirer, an open-minded skeptic, yogi, and freelance writer who aims at empowering individuals while also studying and regularly mirroring subjects like Consciousness, Education, Creativity, The Individual, Ancient History & Ancient Civilizations, Forbidden Archaeology, Big Pharma, Alternative Health, Space, Geoengineering, Social Engineering, Propaganda, and much more.

His other blog, BreakawayConsciousnessBlog.wordpress.com features mainly his personal work, while TheBreakaway.wordpress.com serves as a media portal which mirrors vital information nigh always ignored by mainstream press, but still highly crucial to our individual understanding of various facets of the world.

Don’t Drink Water In Ottawa

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.
June 30, 2017

I’ve known many Canadians over the years and even visited their beautiful country, and for the most part, found them to be a very “grounded” group of people, which leads me to think that maybe the proverbial “they” are putting something – LSD? oxycontin? –  into the water supply at Parliament House in Ottawa, for ever since the lamentable advent of Mr. Trudeau on the scene, Canada appears to be in a race to establish Ottawa, and not Washington D.C., as the undisputed leader for the swampiest and kookiest place on the planet. (To my Canadian friends: yea, good luck with that. We’ve had a lot more practice).  As a tangent, I would like to propose a new Friendly International Competition between the two countries, one perhaps to rival the Stanley Cup, for the USA and Canada to compete for the kookiest idea to come from its political class on a yearly basis. This will pit Congress and Parliament House directly against each other. We can call the award the Grand Tacky Award (le Plus Grande Tacqueie for those in Quebec) or Green Worm Award, or some other appropriate name (to be decided at a later date), for the appalling kookiness governing our respective swamps. The award nominations would be reviewed by a committee of equal numbers of sane Canadians and Americans (if they can be found) and a winner chosen by that committee. In cases of ties, Mr. Putin would be invited to interfere in our internal affairs, and cast the deciding vote, which could then be turned over to Congress and the Canadian Parliament as more evidence of Russian malfeasance.

What am I talking about? Canada’s new “gender language” law, which, like most projects coming out of the left these days, is not only nutty, but a massive restriction on freedom of speech, and, at the same time, a dangerous codification in law of what is, at best, a theory(and thanks to Ms. C.V. for sending along the following article):

Canada Passes Bill-C16 Forcing Gender Theory Acceptance

What is intriguing here is to note the reactions:

Senators who voted against the bill along with Plett are all affiliated with the Conservative Party.

They are David Tkachuk, Yonah Martin, Richard Neufeld, Leo Housakos, Don Plett, Betty Unger, Norman Doyle, Tobias C. Enverga, Thanh Hai Ngo, Lynn Beyak, and Denise Batters.

Senators who abstained are Anne Cools (independent) and Conservatives Larry Smith, and Michael MacDonald.

Campaign Life Coalition, the political arm of Canada’s pro-life movement, condemned the passage of Bill C-16.

“This tyrannical bill is nothing but social engineering to the nth degree, all in the name of political correctness,” Campaign Life’s Toronto vice president Jeff Gunnarson told LifeSiteNews.

Jack Fonseca, Campaign Life’s senior political strategist, said the bill will be used the attacked Christian belief.

“Mark my words, this law will not be used as some sort of ‘shield’ to defend vulnerable transsexuals, but rather as a weapon with which to bludgeon people of faith and free-thinking Canadians who refuse to deny truth,” he told LifeSiteNews.”

This, I suspect, is the real root of the problem: it’s a bill designed to attack certain fundamental core pillars, not just political ones, or not just pillars of Canadian law or custom (or, for that matter, the USA, where similar measures have been attempted), but of our common culture; it is a bill enabling a certain vocal minority to be used by people ostensibly concerned with its rights, to seek to impose cultural norms and values on a greater number of people. This is not politics, but culture, and the plain fact of the matter is, the divide is cultural, and not political.

It is, I suspect, about exactly what its conservative critics say it is: an attempt to legalize unrestrained social engineering, and social engineering of a certain type at that.

This month is June, the month that seventy-three years ago the troops of America, Britain, and Canada stormed ashore in Normandy, France, to put an end to a tyranny that likewise regulated speech in the most extreme manner, choosing what words were acceptable, and what were not. One wonders what those men would think, now.

In the final analysis, the Canadian bill is a form of tyranny, like it or not. Let us hope that the insanity which produced it in Canada, and produces similar nonsense in the USA and elsewhere, will not require similar measures to defeat it.

But note, this bill is about forcing certain types of language, and again, this critique suspect what I suspect, that a certain community, in this case, the transgendered community, is being used by the political elite to drive something very different:

Peterson told the Senate committee last month that he believes “ideologues” are “using unsuspecting and sometimes complicit members of the so-called transgender community to push their ideological vanguard forward.”

“The fact that it’s potentially illegal for me not to participate in that is something that I think is absolutely dreadful. It puts a shudder in my heart as a Canadian that we could even possibly be in a situation like that,” he said.

Peterson became Canada’s preeminent critic of the Liberal bill after he produced three videos opposing the enforcement of gender ideology, one of which blasted Bill C-16, which he said “requires compelled speech.”

He has also vowed that, come what may, he will not use “genderless pronouns” such as “zir” and “ze” for those who self-identify as gender non-conforming when requested.

Lawyer Brown told the Senate Committee the federal Liberals have made it clear they will follow Ontario’s lead when implementing Bill C-16. And Ontario Human Rights Code guidelines “mandate” the use of genderless pronouns on request, he said.

“Mandating use of pronouns requires one to use words that are not their own that imply a belief in or agreement with a certain theory on gender,” he added.

And this, as I wrote and said long ago, is the hallmark of all gnostic systems: the demand to (1) define reality solely by language (2) the demonstration that one has subscribed to that “raised consciousness” by adherence to the linguistic agenda, and hence, (3) the pressure on others – by law or simple “shaming tactics” – to adopt the linguistic agenda.  Ultimately, as I have warned before, the coup was to substitute “gender” for “sex.” Once this occurred, it became possible to deal with a fundamental human issue by manipulations of language.

Make no mistake, this is an assault on free speech, and for the fools in the Canadian transgendered community who think this is a good thing I have only this warning: eventually, they will turn on you, as well, and force you to use language you do not wish to use, to force your subscription to a cosmology with which you are not agreed.

See you on the flip side…

Read More At: GizaDeathStar.com
________________________________________________

About Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and “strange stuff”. His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into “alternative history and science”.

Shocker: Some Things Are Learned For Their Own Sake; Not For Application

NoMoreFakeNews.com
Jon Rappoport
June 21, 2017

At college a few lifetimes ago, one of my earliest experiences was reading Yeats’ Sailing to Byzantium. Here is the famous last stanza:

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

At the time, in those college years, it was well understood that you learned some things for their own sake. You didn’t even have to agree with the sentiment expressed. You could appreciate the expression.

Certain expressions were aesthetic and spiritual and alive in their own way. Argument on that score was unnecessary.

What about the opening lines of Dylan Thomas’ Fern Hill? If they don’t take you off your chair, read them out loud a few times:

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

No one asked the student how he was going to use those words of a poem when he was working, years later, for a bank. No one asked him how he was going make the words count when he was fronting for a suit filed by a corporation. No one said he had to postpone appreciating poetry because injustices still existed in the world.

Education can expose students to glorious things they will never apply.

Yet, those things can transform their lives.

As civilization declines, an impression is imparted that there are only crises. Every event is some kind of crisis.

If that were true, what would be left over? What inner life would be possible?

What joy could be experienced for its own sake?

All of this leads me back to a theme I’ve covered from many different angles over the years. Reality, ordinary reality is not the end-all and be-all.

Art, for example, proves that.

The thrill of actual poetry proves that.

Why do I bother saying all this? Because part of what it means to have a civilization is part of what it means to be an individual: there is a profound appreciation of human creations. When that goes by the boards, when education ignores that because “more important issues” must be presented and framed and slanted, for purposes of sheer indoctrination, life-force drains away.

Elevated language taken to poetic heights is not a mere distraction.

Many years ago, when I was working at a community college, I started an informal poetry project. I brought together a small group of foreign students and taped them reading poems in their own languages (Portuguese, ancient Persian, English, etc.). I wanted them to hear the sounds of those poems, apart from their meaning. I wanted them to hear the music(s).

Now we’re talking about real diversity, not the fake imposed version. Now we’re talking about great energies that have been injected into, and fortified in, many languages by individual poets from all times and places.

Now we’re talking about the heights those cultures reached, not the depths to which they sank.

Now we’re talking about an authentic level of understanding reaching across bridges and gaps.

There is something very right about that.

Burned flowers of the field
My noon is over, growing old
Everything I have is finally sold
Sewed designs for men with money
Thinking it was duty
To watch them lead the world to war
From my little field of beauty

I wrote that poem when I was 23. It was published in 1966, in The Massachusetts Review. At the time, I was focused on the break-up of The American Dream. Soon after, I had my moment of insight, when it became clear to me that individuals and their minds and imaginations and choices could exceed the negative reach of any civilization and, at the same time, fertilize that civilization. Reality (things as they are) is not the answer; it is the lowest common denominator, which waits for people to sign declarations of surrender.

Preposterous surrender.

Read More At: JonRappoport.wordpress.com

When It Starts With You, Not The World

Source: NoMoreFakeNews.com | JonRappoport.wordpress.com
By: Jon Rappoport
June 13, 2017

I’ve always conceived of my work as “up one side, down the other.” Expose the roots of the major covert ops of our time; expose the power of the individual to mount his own “op” for a better future.

In this journey of many years, I’ve come to a conclusion: a person looking at the world to obtain clues about his own potential and power is looking through the wrong end of the telescope. He’s bound to come to wrong decisions.

He skirts the edge of: I can’t succeed because the corrupt world is organized to fail.

This idea takes you into the morass, into the quicksand.

Yes, a person needs to understand what is going on at a deep level in the world—this is vital, but it’s a prelude. A beginning.

The real meaning of power is creative power. And that pertains to the individual, not the group. So the question becomes: what does a given individual profoundly want to create?

Limitation, inaction, and self-sabotage may be a few of the characteristics of society, but the individual doesn’t have to reflect them.

Nor does he need to reflect notions like “average,” “normal,” and “status quo.” They are meat grinders that turn out typical sausage.

Speaking of society, it’s instructive to read what authors wrote about core values a hundred or two hundred years ago, because then you can appreciate what has happened to the culture of a nation. Try to imagine these famous and celebrated authors from the past gaining prominence in the mainstream now:

“All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.” — James Fenimore Cooper

“The less government we have, the better, — the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of [by] formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The former generations acted under the belief that a shining social prosperity was the beatitude of man, and sacrificed uniformly the citizen to the State. The modern mind believed that the nation existed for the individual, for the guardianship and education of every man. This idea, roughly written in revolutions and national movements, in the mind of the philosopher had far more precision; the individual is the world.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” — Henry David Thoreau

“They [conformists] think society wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world…Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members….Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist…. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Can you imagine, today, any of these statements gaining traction in mainstream media?

But the fact that the culture has devolved doesn’t get the present-day individual off the hook.

His independence, his contributions, his imagination and creative power are needed more than ever.
Read More At: JonRappoport.wordpress.com
_______________________________________________________________

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Why Did Pope Benedict XVI Resign?

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.
June 4, 2017

That question has been hovering in the background of European geopolitics ever since he did it, and one Italian geopolitician and strategist, Germano Dottori, thinks he has an answer, according to this article shared this week by Mr. G.P.:

https://onepeterfive.com/italian-geo-strategist-fuels-debate-over-pope-benedicts-resignation/

The essence of Signor Dottori’s argument is this:

The conflicts between the Church and the United States did not become less, even with the passing of John Paul II. They instead continued during the pontificate of Pope Ratzinger, in the course of which, what exacerbated them was not only the [policy and strategic] investment made by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the political Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood during the so-called Arab Spring, but also the firm desire of Benedict XVI to achieve an historic reconciliation with the Patriarchate of Moscow [under Patriarch Kirill], the true and proper religious coronation of a geopolitical project of Euro-Russian integration, which were in his intentions strongly supported by Germany and also by Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy – but not by that more American-friendly one [Italy], which is to be recognized in Giorgio Napolitano [Italian President, 2006-2015].

How it has come to an end is well-known to everyone. The Italian and papal governments were simultaneously hit by a scandalous, coordinated, and unusually violent and unprecedented campaign, even involving more or less opaque maneuvers in the financial field, with the final effect coming to a head in November 2011 with Berlusconi’s departure from the Palazzo Chigi and, on February 10 [sic – 11], 2013, the abdication of Ratzinger. At the height of the crisis, Italy progressively saw its access to international financial markets closed, while the Institute for Religious Works (IOR) [the Vatican Bank] was temporarily cut out of the Swift 4 circuit.

Note the implied claims:

(1) the Vatican, with Germany’s blessing (Ratzinger was, after all, the first German pope in about six hundred years), was pursuing a closer relationship with Eastern Orthodoxy, principally through Patriarch Kiril III;

(2) This was apparently being done in conjunction to create a “Eurasian integration”, which apparently was emphasizing the cultural basis of that integration in a common Catholic heritage;

(3) the Vatican and Italy were both hit by “a scandalous, coordinated, and unusually violent and unprecedented campaign,” which we may assume is “code” for the pedophilia scandals rocking Ratzinger’s pontificate. Dottori is clearly suggesting this emanated from the circles of western power. (At this juncture, one has to pause, and mention another possibility: with the pedophilia scandals erupting around western leaders, and the arrests in this country and others associated with it, that possibility emerges from the fact that, a few years ago, when one said “pedophilia rings” one thought of the Vatican, and, to a lesser extent, other churches. Now, however, there has been an interesting shift of perception, for when one says “pedophilia rings” one thinks of corrupt, and largely secular, western politicians. This may indicate a covert counter-operation emanating from the Vatican.)

(4) This campaign was also coordinated with a campaign to strip the Vatican of its access to international financial markets.

We can recall much corroboration of these suggestions, in that shortly after the beginning of his pontificate, Jorge Cardinal Bergolio (Francis I) began to attempt to clean up (yet again) the operations of the Vatican Bank, even going so far as to appoint the same auditor for it as for the Bank of International Settlements and, reportedly, Lloyd’s of London. In short, Bergolio’s efforts appear to cave to the pressures being exerted by the West and the USA.

It’s that first point, however, that seems to have been much more important than meets the eye:

Here an Italian expert in geo-strategic studies thus claims that both the Italian government under Berlusconi and the papacy of Benedict XVI were toppled due to financial maneuvers that put both states in jeopardy. Alessandro Rico published, on 17 May, an article entitled “Ratzinger costretto ad abdicare dal ricatto di Obama” (“Ratzinger Forced to Abdicate Due to Obama’s Blackmail”) in the Italian newspaper La Verità – a publication which has no inclination toward traditional Catholicism at all, but, rather, sharply rebukes traditional and conservative Catholics in that same 17 May issue (as Giuseppe Nardi points out). Rico himself puts the Dottori statement in context with the 20 January 2017 Open Letter to President Trump, published by the traditional Catholic newspaper The Remnant, which called for an investigation into a possible U.S. intervention against Pope Benedict XVI. As Rico points out, Pope Benedict at the time stood in opposition to President Obama’s collaboration with the Muslim Brotherhood, especially with the pope’s Regensburg address in which he criticized Islamist fundamentalism. The U.S., as Rico along with Dottori explains, was not in favor of a papal rapprochement with the Patriarch of Moscow which could further support a European rapprochement with Russia. A partial basis for this desired rapprochement could also be a rejection of the moral relativism of the West.

When speaking about the financial pressure that was, in 2013, put on the Vatican by excluding the Papal State from the SWIFT system – which interrupted the credit card payments in the Vatican City, and thus in the Vatican museums – Rico also recalls: “Strangely, this [SWIFT] function was re-established immediately after the resignation of Benedict XVI.” (Bold-italics emphasis added)

In other words, American policy was deliberately attempting to forestall the formation of what can only be called a “Christian bloc.” If this seems farfetched, one should recall that Russia, prior to the Soviet era, played precisely this role in European and world geopolitics, as the protector of Orthodox Christians. The Vatican exercised this role through proxy states, most recently through Austria-Hungary, Italy, and various other Catholic regional powers.

“OK, so what?” one might think. “Where’s the high octane speculation?”

Well, brace yourselves, because it’s a whopper: note that the actions taken against the Vatican were (1) a pedophilia scandal and (2) a severing of access to international financial clearing in response to Ratzinger’s statements about fundamentalist Islam. (And at this juncture, please recall that Francis I has indicated that Christians do have the right of self-defense against Islamic terrorism, a point often lost in the shuffle). This suggests, as the Russians were similarly affected by threats of exclusion from SWIFT, to the point of developing their own domestic, and ultimately parallel system of international financial clearing, that the Vatican may have been attempting to do an end run around the Western Financial blackmail (denial of service, effectively, to SWIFT), and to gain access to the system(s) being built out by and in Russia. In short, this means the Vatican was attempting to gain access also to the space assets that make international clearing possible.

If this reading of the covert warfare taking place against the Vatican by Mr. Globaloney (and vice versa, if my reading of the pedophilia scandal having moved from the Vatican to western politicians is true), then what one is witnessing is a long-term strategy and goal of the Vatican, which, for the moment may be summarized in the following high octane speculation:

(1) Intermediate goal: Gain access to other systems of financial clearing that are independent of that of the West. For the moment, this means the systems being put into place by Russia and China and, to a lesser extent, existing Japanese capabilities in the Pacific (and for a historical note, do not forget that connection between Japan and the Vatican, via Emperor Hirohito who deposited some of the Golden Lily loot in the Vatican bank, according to Peggy and Sterling Seagraves in Gold Warriors);

(2) Longer term goal: use contacts thus gained to utilize (and perhaps finance) their space launch capacity to launch Vatican-owned communications satellites;

(3) Ultimate goal: build out an independent system of financial clearing by and for the Vatican and any allied churches.

If that high octane speculation is correct, then the USA and the Vatican are engaged in a covert war, just as are the USA and China and the rest of the BRICSA bloc, for those independent financial clearing systems, more than anything else, are a direct challenge to the US dollar reserve currency status.

(And as for the religious “rapprochement”, Orthodoxy’s position has always been clear, because conceptual/doctrinal content defines Orthodoxy, not institutional boundaries or adherence to supreme authorities claiming infallibility: if there is to be such an arrangement beyond mere ecumenical cooperation, then there must be a full return of Roman Catholicism to that conceptual content, and a jettisoning of all those doctrines added to Orthodoxy on the basis of papal authority alone. While this is not the place to elaborate on this, it is to be noted that the recent statements of Francis I and Kiril III focused, not on doctrinal differences and the departure of the Papacy from that tradition, but rather on areas of common cultural concern. This would seem to indicate that both churches perceive a very serious existential threat, perhaps exhibited by Benedict XVI’s remarks about Islamic fundamentalism which led, according to Dottori, to his resignation.)

There’s one more implication here: if indeed Ratzinger was forced to resign, i.e., resigned under duress, then a case might be made that the resignation is null and void… and that, of course, would be a scenario that would throw the papal church into a position it has not been in since the middle ages, and it may thus be the “high trump card” the plotters of the coup are holding over Bergolio.

Whatever one makes of these high octane speculations, this is definitely one to watch, because we have not heard the last of this story.

See you on the flip side…

Read More At: GizaDeathStar.com
________________________________________________

About Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and “strange stuff”. His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into “alternative history and science”.

Book Review: The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri | #SmartReads

TheBreakaway | BreakawayConciousness
Zy Marquiez
June 2, 2017

The Divine Comedy is one of those timeless pieces of literature that everyone should read, if at least once.  In fact, if public schooling followed any type of common sense and had appreciation for High Culture, The Divine Comedy would be part of a strong school curriculum along with classics such as The Iliad & The Odyssey, The Lord Of The Rings, The Aenid, and others.

Each of those books makes learning about virtues, and countless other themes vastly more interesting than the nonsense that is espoused in education today.  Furthermore, it would strengthen the public schooling curriculum that is rather lacking in depth, although not in ‘method’.

Due to those reasons, and others, thought it prudent to avail myself of The Divine Comedy as the prospect of reading the book has always resonated with me, especially after having read Dante’s Inferno a few years ago.

The Barnes & Noble Edition of The Divine Comedy is as demanding a read as it is satisfying.  Moreover, the book is peppered with dozens of Gustave Dore’s illustrations, which saliently add a more vivid and engrossing journey for the reader.  At times, the neophyte reader might need a dictionary handy to clear up some confusion, but otherwise it’s readable at least.

In contrast, Dante’s Inferno, the version that was translated by Stanley Lombardo, is a much more reader-friendly version of this piece, which is modern in its diction and poetic in its presentation.  That said, that is only book one of Dante’s triumvirate, but I am mentioning for those that might be interested merely in the opening salvo of Dante available in a much simpler format.

The Divine Comedy really is an adventure to be intellectually enjoyed, and everyone who chooses to set out in a fictional foray would benefit greatly from it.

As an allegorical account of his spiritual journey being guided by his lover Beatrice, Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy is timeless for a reason.  Not only is the book unique, but it stokes the engines of imagination in ways most other books do not, while also offering readers ample intellectual considerations to ruminate upon.

___________________________________________________________

Related Links:

The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Paradise Lost by John Milton
The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien
The Lord Of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Le Morte D’Arthur by Thomas Malory

___________________________________________________________
If you find value in this information, please share it.  This article is free and open source.  All individuals have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Zy Marquiez and TheBreakaway.wordpress.com.
___________________________________________________________
About The Author:

Zy Marquiez is an avid book reviewer, inquirer, an open-minded skeptic, yogi, and freelance writer who studies and mirrors regularly subjects like Consciousness, Education, Creativity, The Individual, Ancient History & Ancient Civilizations, Forbidden Archaeology, Big Pharma, Alternative Health, Space, Geoengineering, Social Engineering, Propaganda, and much more.

His other blog, BreakawayConsciousnessBlog.wordpress.com features mainly his personal work, while TheBreakaway.wordpress.com serves as a media portal which mirrors vital information nigh always ignored by mainstream press, but still highly crucial to our individual understanding of various facets of the world.

Seneca On True & False Friendship

Source: Brainpickings.org
Maria Popova
May 19, 2017

“Friendship is unnecessary,” C.S. Lewis wrote, “like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself… it has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” Darwinian caveats aside, the truth of this beautiful sentiment resonates deeply for anyone whose life has been enriched or even saved by the existence of a genuine friend. And yet today, as we face the commodification of the word “friend,” what do we even mean — what should we mean — by this once-sacred term, now vacated of meaning by chronic misuse?

That’s what the great first-century Roman philosopher Seneca examines in a series of correspondence with his friend Lucilius Junior, later published as Letters from a Stoic (public library) — the indispensable trove of wisdom that gave us Seneca’s famous letter on overcoming fear and inoculating yourself against misfortune.

Eighteen centuries before Emerson wrote in his meditation on the two pillars of friendship that “a friend is a person with whom [one] may be sincere,” Seneca considers the uses and misuses of the term in a magnificent letter titled “On True and False Friendship”:

If you consider any man a friend whom you do not trust as you trust yourself, you are mightily mistaken and you do not sufficiently understand what true friendship means… When friendship is settled, you must trust; before friendship is formed, you must pass judgment. Those persons indeed put last first and confound their duties, who … judge a man after they have made him their friend, instead of making him their friend after they have judged him. Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship; but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with all your heart and soul. Speak as boldly with him as with yourself… Regard him as loyal and you will make him loyal.

In another letter, titled “On Philosophy and Friendship,” Seneca examines the common bases upon which friendships are formed and admonishes against the tendency, particularly common today, toward seeing others as utilitarian tools that help advance one’s personal goals. Observing that some people form so-called friendships by estimating how much a potential friend can help them in a moment of need, he writes:

He who regards himself only, and enters upon friendships for this reason, reckons wrongly. The end will be like the beginning: he has made friends with one who might assist him out of bondage; at the first rattle of the chain such a friend will desert him. These are the so-called “fair-weather” friendships; one who is chosen for the sake of utility will be satisfactory only so long as he is useful. Hence prosperous men are blockaded by troops of friends; but those who have failed stand amid vast loneliness their friends fleeing from the very crisis which is to test their worth. Hence, also, we notice those many shameful cases of persons who, through fear, desert or betray. The beginning and the end cannot but harmonize. He who begins to be your friend because it pays will also cease because it pays. A man will be attracted by some reward offered in exchange for his friendship, if he be attracted by aught in friendship other than friendship itself.

With an eye to such arrangements of convenience and favor, which he condemns as “a bargain and not a friendship,” Seneca adds:

One who seeks friendship for favourable occasions, strips it of all its nobility.

My visual taxonomy of the four levels of platonic relationships

In another letter, Seneca cautions against mistaking flattery for friendship — an admonition all the more urgent today, in the Age of Likes, when the forms of flattery and the channels of positive reinforcement have proliferated to a disorienting degree:

How closely flattery resembles friendship! It not only apes friendship, but outdoes it, passing it in the race; with wide-open and indulgent ears it is welcomed and sinks to the depths of the heart, and it is pleasing precisely wherein it does harm.

He turns the beam of his wisdom toward the only valid and noble reason for forming a friendship:

For what purpose, then, do I make a man my friend? In order to have someone for whom I may die, whom I may follow into exile, against whose death I may stake my own life, and pay the pledge, too.

Illustration by Maurice Sendak from a vintage ode to friendship by Janice May Udry

In another letter, Seneca suggests that such genuine friendship extends its rewards beyond the personal realm and becomes the civilizational glue that holds humanity together:

Friendship produces between us a partnership in all our interests. There is no such thing as good or bad fortune for the individual; we live in common. And no one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility; you must live for your neighbour, if you would live for yourself. This fellowship, maintained with scrupulous care, which makes us mingle as men with our fellow-men and holds that the human race have certain rights in common, is also of great help in cherishing the more intimate fellowship which is based on friendship… For he that has much in common with a fellow-man will have all things in common with a friend.

Letters from a Stoic remains a timelessly rewarding read. Complement this particular portion with Eudora Welty on friendship as an evolutionary mechanism for language, Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue on the ancient Celtic ideal of friendship, and the epistolary record of Mozart and Haydn’s beautiful and selfless friendship, then revisit Seneca on the antidote to the shortness of life and the key to resilience in the face of loss.

Read More At: BrainPickings.org