“Keep it unreal”—Mr. Scruff.
“Literature is news that stays news.”—Ez.
The question "is it real" and "is it true" reverberates throughout the global village, sounding all the more desperate and panicked to me, as we all grapple with our place in the village, our individual identity and cultural identity, race, and hyperconnected cultural backlash. The black mirror of 2016.
I see fundamentalist materialism leading some once open-minded people down a concrete path to absolutism, and the dissolving of any critical method of analysis left. Some literally can't see the forrest for the trees. I feel that without some understanding of how our sensory nervous system operates, how humans tend to colour and edit perceptions, for the most part unconsciously, we will continue on a trajectory of global disinformation, lies, untruth and paranoia. Unless you take daily precautions and develop a sense for critical thinking, suspend your judgement, at least temporarily, the global village will have a tendency to seem full of fakes, snakes and events that do not fit your cagey convictions.
We all produce a kind of fake news to ourselves and to others. But stay with me here, we decide to narrow down the infinite flux of being, the infinite possibilities, to a particular point/opinion. A story, a single event, a particular such and such. Which is fine, unless the language you are using implies that your story is the only story, the true story, the singular almighty perception of the all seeing "I". And it seems to me that alphabet cultures have a tendency to lead to such a confusing of levels of abstraction. Alphabet cultures are ripe for fake news and made up truth, hell a good lawyer can prove anything these days, and a good old crafty orator can capture the hearts minds, and gullibility, of a nation of voters.
"Nothing is true, everything is permitted"--Hassan I Sabbah.
Here so far i use the word "fake" in a different sense, in the sense that human perceptions are not pure absolute truth - they emerge tainted with bias and the limitations of your uniquely tuned sensory apparatus. (They is slightly faked) Sure, the truth is out there, or better yet the truth is in here, but forever diluted with untruth, perhaps in equal measure, in which case the wise remain open to new signals before deciding. Resolving the unknown with something as close to mathematical probability theory as possible. I sincerely hope we can move on from the two-valued duality of fundamentalist materialism, so as to see the complex array of truths and fakes together to compare, evaluate fairly and criticise constructively.
To move outside of the linguistic cages we build for ourselves can prove difficult, especially when using the very language that imprisons you. However, to speak of matters outside of my own existential experience, i get the feeling that huge multinational corporations, think tanks and governments, cults and terrorists purposefully create untruthful fake news to further their specific agenda. Usually controlling, right-wing and fundamentalist in nature. The ever expanding toolkit of misdirection, trickery, and deception maybe in the hands of money madmen, plus a lot of money and funding to launch lies into the minds of the people, but the responsibility remains with the individual to question everything, to think for yourself and deduct what is real, and/or fake, true, and/or false. One look at the TV news in 2016 will prove the importance of doing your own research, and not swallowing the shit you are delivered every day in the pompous language of absolute certainty. The two way golden gate between political influence and corporate might seems wide open for business next year.
Satireday night fever
"You are been lied to"--Disinformation Company.
Perhaps satire is like an art of faking truthing. You dig? The playful art of using language is a special way to imitate and simulate various truths and lies, in varying degrees, often prat-falling into humour. The important distinction here is the agenda of the Satirist/artist. Hitlers calculated chiefs of Nazi propaganda and disinformation, like Goebbles and Gehlen are operating on a different set of principles to Jonathan Swift, or James Joyce. This should be obvious on contact with their words. A fabricated news story which aims to dehumanise a race of people on behalf of a massive military industrial war machine, with the means to production--and global distribution--of said 'fake news' has proven to be toxic to humanity, dangerous, and 180 degrees opposite in effect to what the artist who fabricates the truth in a playful way, intends. One other distinguishing feature is the lack of critical, and especially self-critical thinking on behalf of the Nazis, and the playful multivalued self-questioning demonstrated by satirists and writers.
Go ahead and read an issue of the Daily Mail, who incidentally supported the Nazis at one point in history, and compare it with an article from The Onion, or NewsThump, two satirical news sites. Some say both sites and their articles are 'fake news' but, we are speaking of two very different kinds of fake here, two levels of abstraction. The first a Nazi propaganda type of fake, lies to incite hatred, genocide, and closed mindedness with insular thinking. The second fakes are to make you laugh and to think outside of the usual field of meaning, perhaps consider somebody else's field of meaning.
"F For Fake--Orson Welles.
Lets not forget that ‘fake news’ of the Daily Mail variety, the kind of fake news associated with brain washing, pandering to social confusion and hatred, for the most part, seems to me a natural concern of intelligence agencies worldwide. John Cleese recently reminded me that Vladimir Putin was the ex head of the KGB, and used a technique to crush any opponents that included accusing the opposition of everything that you are doing yourself. I noticed a similarity here to clinical sociopaths, and the psychology of blame and denial. Once again we return to the biased self-reflection of disturbance cycling through every human nervous system. The difference, to me, is the difference between some who become psychologists, or artists, to try and break free the individual from the chains of absolutism and cognitive bias, and the Putin/CIA/Trump/Daily Mail types who use the knowledge of human stupidity in large groups, and neuro-psychological tools to create weapons.
Weaponizing Neuro-science.
“Everything is under control”—Robert Anton Wilson.
Although Joyce was once referred to as a one man literary I.R.A, this metaphor does not imply Joyce wanted to inflict any physical harm with the kind of explosives and bullets used to invade Iraq and Afghanistan recently. Joyce was a pacifist. He used his art to turn the word around and point it back at those wishing to weaponize language. Everywhere you turn in poetry and literature you will find James Joyce starring you blank in the face. You could say he's eternally sticking a double barrelled shotgun in your mouth. Joyce weaponized neuro-science long before the spooks and advertisement men came to town, before L. Ron Hubbard and Dr. Ewen Cameron twisted the inner workings of neuro-psychology to their own sordid aims and objectives. Joyce gifts his reader and listener with a rainbow mirror, a eternally returning oracle, a ludic journey into language and the life of the mind helping to build new connections, and expand ones apprehension of the universe. His tricks are surprises build to try and gently awaken the reader to new levels of abstraction. Not to plant a road side bomb, or order in a drone strike on anything he doesn’t like or understand.
Trickster Guru
"The Book Of Lies: falsely so called--Aleister Crowley.
The Trickster Guru brings us to another type of ‘fake news’, what might be defined as left leaning progressive anarchist ‘fake news’ or satire. The ability to bend the truth and repel the falsehoods long enough to inspire the initiate to become a self programer. A form of mind-cleansing and not so much brain-washing? The trickster guru like the stage magician, brings about a new open pathway, another menu of possibilities by using the same toolkit that the Daily Mail/CIA/KGB/Trump gangs use, except with a total difference of intent: to force one to think, not to sleep and blindly follow. Think! "there are no facts, only interpretations" wrote Nietzsche, learn to understand your own processes of interpretation, and dare to step into those of others.
Fundamentalist right-wing materialism meets with radical fundamentalist religious fanaticism at the absolute truth. Simply, both favour unquestioning obedience and submission to a higher power (the state or god, the choice is yours) I can’t deny that to my mind, in December 2016, the right wing republicans of Trump, the Brexiteers, Le Pen, and the Dutch PVV are walking in similar patterns: denying experts, making demonstrably false statements, accusing the opposition of what they are doing themselves. Informed by cutting edge neurolinguistics and the latest philosophy of consciousness and advertising, these sociopaths are busy tricking anybody who is not them, any who do not think like they do, to join them, and trust them or else die at the hands of some foreign infidel. In the hands of these monsters ‘fake news’ becomes entertainment news, such as Fox news, and arguably ever single publication touched by Rupert Murdoch. Tabloid banality, the mind numbing low information content of stories in The Sun newspaper, running on Fox news, transported by Metro Newspapers, Gannet Media, CNN, AT5, The Daily Mail. Even more progressive papers such as the Guardian, Huffington post and New York Times constantly employ dualism and perpetrate binary traps.
Due to the sheer repetition of this particular species of ‘fake news’, the billboard adds, the mobile phone ads, the TV, radio and newsagents ads, plastered on every possible piece of urban material like the skin of satan, the message, whatever it maybe, gets lodged into the minds of the people. The gyre does spin. Duality and division by way of binary programming, in/out right/wrong true/false black/white friend/foe real/fake, we are bombarded with binary choices, and often forced into one of two choices, which is no choice at all, in some sense. Polarization is fun for dualists, like cheering for the home team, your either with us, or against us. Cliche’.
“You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection,” —George Washington.
True Conspiracy.
“…causing a kind of fun-house effect that leaves the reader doubting everything, including real news”—Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times, 8/12/16
The Wikileaks and Snowdon releases are ample evidence that many banking conspiracies and geopolitical conspiracies, were demonstrably true. The Panama papers for example blew the lid off a can of festering worms, showing how tentacles between banking intelligence and terrorism sprawl around the planet like the image of a giant Octopus enveloping the earth. A moving Cthulhu captured in full effect. Alex Jones calls himself a conspiracy theorist, Robert Anton Wilson was called and would accept the title of conspiracy theorist, but the difference, once again is a full 180 degrees. Most of the mainstream news can’t even get past the fact that there are progressive left-wing satirical conspiracy theorists, and conservative right-wing conspiracy theorists, all going at it like mad. Due to the glaring reality of right-wing conservative conspiracy theorists, like Alex Jones, and a worrying amount of characters in Trumps proposed cabinet, and Trump himself, the satirists, and not to mention the well researched and methodological studies of other left-wing conspiracy theorists, are gagged and smothered by the largely right-wing conservative owned means to production and distribution, globally speaking. Once again the neuro-linguistic toolkit has been used in different ways for different ends.
Robert Anton Wilson demonstrates by example, with his scientific humanism, warm hearted skepticism or better yet zeteticism, and more than 15 published non-fiction books, that a conspiracy theorist can be just one hat of many, one hat of a multitude of hats. A neurological relativist hat and/or, a semantic hygienist hat, and/or a model agnostic hat, can help lead us to new vistas of discovery, to different angles of perception, not just fucking one, one monotheistic absolute truth. Are you mad. Open your eyes. Plus, like James Joyce succeeded in doing, uncle Bob can sure make the people chuckle a little bit too. Alex Jones is about as witty as a bag of peanut dust.
I hope you will begin the struggle ahead to nullify and show to be false, these dangerous exaggerations and divisive strategies employed by the new word order.
-Steve Fly 'Agaric 23' Pratt.
Amsterdam. 09/12/16
“…the "obscenity" is in the mind of the person passing judgements. It is, in Freudian terms, a projection, in which the mind imagines that its own contents are outside itself in the external universe; or, in semantic terms, a "confusion of the levels of abstraction," in which the mind's own machinery is identified with the non-mental things it is attempting to understand.—Robert Anton Wilson, Ishtar Rising.
Resources and Sources and links of interest:
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jep/3336451.0014.208?view=text;rgn=main
https://www.edge.org/conversation/mark_pesce-hyperpolitics-american-style
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Inquisition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming
http://theconversation.com/neuroscience-hasnt-been-weaponized-its-been-a-tool-of-war-from-the-start-69097
https://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Being-Lied-Disinformation/dp/0966410076
http://www.sacred-texts.com/oto/lib333.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickster
http://naturyl.humanists.net/zetetic.html https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/19/brexit-trump-left-crucial-flaw-leavers-alt-right-ruthlessness
http://time.com/4504010/europe-politics-swing-right/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/us/fake-news-partisan-republican-democrat.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/us/politics/michael-flynn-son-trump.html?_r=0
https://panamapapers.icij.org/
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2183057-transcending-the-partisan-mind-2/
http://www.salon.com/2016/11/03/listen-how-alex-jones-conspiracy-theories-enthralled-right-wing-america/
http://www.rawilson.com/ishtar.html