[EnviroEngr]

I'm going to fast-forward past all the introductory material I had last time, put this up and then expatiate:

Ivan = Blue
EE = Green


Hi EE

Yes, I have many thoughts on this.

Very difficult to be comprehensive in an email, as issues are complex and intertwined, though can be simplified; sometimes, however, the simplified version can sound glib and perhaps 'unprovable'.

Can I take your points a bit at a time?

Together in Truth we can change the world!
www.truthcampaign.co.uk


-----Original Message-----
From: EE
Sent: 05 March 2004 02:52
To: ivanfraser@....
Subject: Getting Back in Touch


Ivan,

I know it's been about a year since last we wrote. I see from some of your other, previous writings that the Illuminati have come up quite a few times. It appears you are ascribing this group a good deal of credence.

It's a general term. Interlocking secret societies of power-hungry individuals. Not strictly the Weishaupt organisation per se, although that is certainly one that was very influential and gave us the term that is used a great deal these days.

They are self-appointed 'illuminated ones', deeply entrenched in the occult, operating behind the scenes to steer the world in the most profitable way to themselves.

I had relegated them to the dustbin of unprovables.

If your definition is something other than mine, you may be correct. But I think we've seen enough of human nature by now to know just how corrupted and corruptible our powerful people are in this world and how much so they have been in the past.

Given your confidence in the existence of these beings, maybe it's time for a revisit of the arena. With a wide and deep view of both material history and metaphysics, we can agree that something is strangely awry in the way world events are proceeding. I'm sticking with the spirit of Occam's Razor in limiting the explanation to primarily physical-systems causes.

Occam's Razor is a good yardstick, as long as one allows for enough data in the equation. It's often good for simple scenarios - obviously - but a physical explanation for a multi-dimensional system could only ever be partly accurate.

In a message to an ecologist I know, writing about Garrett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons", I said
"But for me, that begs the questions "what is this consciousness we are?", "what's the point of persisting?", "what of any metaphysical dimensions have we access to?"

Our consciousness is an omnipresent, all-pervading Oneness. However, it is also subdivided into different states that have different levels of awareness of that Whole.

The 'I' that most people identify with is the physical and mental, with very little awareness of the inner spiritual infinite mind.

The point of persisting is to evolve and create something new from old material. The universe is a fractal being, exploring potential. The mind and the soul that drives it is inhabiting and shaping that matter.

It is the higher dimensions that bleed into the lower that bring consciousness into the material universe.

Is it that we've developed such a staggering denial of our mortality by way of dogma and faux spirituality that we need an Auschwitz-like wake up call to fit back into the natural world again?

I fear that many people will need an enormous shock. Whilst for others, there's no doubt nor difficulty accepting the clear fact that we are destroying too much and ignoring the potential for evolutionary creativity, in synch with nature.

Back to Dickens of sorts. Except, like you, I am of a bent that Scrooge doesn't get it this time.

Isn't this denying the reality that there are many Scrooges - some of whom get it very well, whilst others don't.

And the others don't because they have limited perspective and overactive egos.

No second chance. I think the argument that our time is over has solid constitution. We had x millennia to make our ascent after which, show over. Fall the Great Curtain of Endings on our giddy little drama of hopeless waste and futile aspirations born of imaginations filled with muse infinitum. We are but mere collections of molecular arrangements through which pulses of bioelectric sparks rouse dim awareness. I would actually go further, "As an ecologist, I would say that if humankind does discover a source of free energy then there is absolutely no hope: we will use up the whole world and there will be no survivors." and dare to say we will do this regardless the energy subsidy, but surely faster should it be found. I once, long ago, quipped to my biology teacher how amazing (are) the parallels between bacteria in a Petri dish and humans on Earth. Yes, indeed: Show Over. Poetic justice; incontrovertibility thickens the air. " But, perhaps a wider angle sees a clearer, more whole picture. Maybe introducing an element of transcendency brings us closer to what is real.

I believe so.

The ontology of ecology above is a distinct variety of bio-
determinism. But we know we're more than that somehow.

If God is defined as 'everything that is manifest' then we can appreciate that our perceptions are askew. We are actually One entity subdivided into many parts. Like cells in a body. The One, instead of being seen as a cell that divides, such as through binary fission, should be conceived as remaining One single cell that creates internally, with nothing on the outside. The whole is sub-divided internally, rather than the process we are more familiar with in Nature - that of replicating externally.

Space itself is created in this way - hence the accelerating expanding universe.

If Godhead is the centre of the cell - a point of equilibrium between all energy states - the ultimate 'zero-point' - it is the 'cpu' of the system.

The physical universe is a development of the subdivision of the one energy source. And the mind, soul and spirit are higher and learned aspects of this energy that creatively and consciously guides the evolution of that matter.

So 2 principles must be understood to be acting at the same time. The well-established 'bio-determinism', and the laws of physics that creates the environment that we strive to survive in, and the mind/spirit that guides us and our drive to create in consciously determined patterns.

Yet a good survey of archeological history shows us to be more like superstitious monkeys who make sound symbols, than gods in depravity. Does conjuring up Illuminati to explain what would otherwise seem a normal course of nature make sense of something that can't be explained any other way?

Like most explanations, the question has to be sound. Asking is it 'either' 'or', rules out other parameters that may be the truth.

The truth may be that it is neither and/or both.

The Illuminati are an extreme example of a consciousness inherent in mankind. It has greater impact that, say, the same consciousness expressed by the African tribesman at war, simply because it is in a position of far greater influence over the world.

Or is it that our ascendancy from our primate cousins
roused the attention of aeon-old lower astral beings whose purpose in
creation is to befuddle any sentience threatening habitation in the higher
realms?

Rather than 'or' it is 'and'. All these things combine to create the meaning behind the Illuminati, as well as human behaviour in general.

Given the opportunity, I'm sure you could conceive that many 'ordinary' people could be capable of becoming members of such a 'sect'?

We've seen many historical examples of this nature - for example the Nazi movement, with its arcane inner circles and grand plots to shape humanity. It was knocked down of course because it directly threatened another branch of the same 'organisation' - that of the Bible-followers, especially the Zionist faction. It was allowed to happen to a degree in order to fulfil the Zionist agenda - which gives you a good hint at how powerful and manipulative the Illuminati are.

Or... is the existence and function of the Illuminati a well documented and established fact?

I suggest you read Nesta Webster's Secret Societies and Subversive Movements for a scholarly answer to that. They have certainly been accepted as fact by numerous influential and powerful players in history, such as Disraeli and Churchill.

In other words, I am honestly curious what your view of the Illuminati is, from what observations it derives and precisely how and where this group functions (multi-realm, I would guess) in your best estimation.

Yes.

Clearly you know by now, many things hang in the balance and the next 3 to 4 years will turn not just humanity but this world system as a whole right on its head.

That remains to be seen. That process is happening continually. Back in the Roman era, many cultures must have feared it was the 'end times' when they were conquered. Man fears change. Yet change is continual.

As most investigators would ask, "Qui bono?" From
a cosmic standpoint, "who benefits" when astral bozos like the
Illuminati get to interfere with affairs in a realm other than strictly their
own?

The Illuminati are not defined as 'astral'. They are people. But they open themselves to the astral influences that operate through them. Just like anyone else.

How does that balance the cycle of Justice and Love in the Order of the Godhead?

All energy is reciprocal - if you accept the definition of God that I gave. Order is in the Godhead, but not out here in this realm of chaos. Here, order is shifting continually.

If it's really Illuminati standing at the crux of us hairless
apes acting limbically while affecting cerebrally, might there be cause to
suspect that at much higher orders of being, it is understood that such
action seeks blindly but ultimately to challenge and expand nascent
consciousness?

Yes. It's all a lesson to evolve out of this mess and embrace a new creative way. For example, instead of a few hiding the free energy technology and physics behind it, we could have had this a century ago. We could be living in a totally different and much improved world. That is our potential, yet we squander our time and energy with matters of less importance.

We have stagnated and we should be creating.

From the illimitable perspective of the Godhead,
such self-aggrandizing megalomania as would have to be the very
lifeblood of Illuminati beings would ultimately self extinguish given the
functioning of its metaphysics.

If it is an anchor - a polarity - then not necessarily, but certainly potentially. And I believe, this will be the case.

But, on the way to its own immolation, it could serve the purpose of manifestly putting into play all the drama halfwits like us need to contrast free from enslaved.

Yes. But we're not all the same. There are always people who can see right through the charade and aren't nearly so half-witted. For them, the world and the Illuminati have served the purpose of helping them see the higher reality.

Just think of how rich the theater of the human race has been since the Dawn of our self-consciousness. If the Illuminati is responsible at least in part for creating all this mind racking activity, it's possible (perhaps quite ironically) that they're doing 'us' a favor in the process.

They're showing us what happens if we don't align ourselves with the right state of consciousness, yes.

That is to say, their 'interference' puts one of infinitely many paths on the map that newborn souls are given to take to "know the Tao" or see with unfettered sight the unobscured Ground of Being.

Yes.

Have any insights on this?

Warm Regards,
EE


Ivan
______________________________________________________

From: "Ivan Fraser" ivanfraser@...
To: "EE"
Subject: Re: Various Elements of Metaphysics
Date: Tue, 20 May 2003 17:54:52 +0100


Hi EE

There isn't space for my life story, I'm afraid. A bit of background is
on my website - link below. See especially the autobiographical Lifting
The Veil excerpts which I wrote in about 1995.

I began in the early 90's upon a psychic quest which led to diverse
discoveries, personal and to do with research into occultism and conspiracies. I was concentrating on hands on healing for a while, and the cleansing of ancient sacred sites etc. with a talented psychic friend.

I was doing the same kind of research at the same time as David Icke -
although we part company on his reptilian alien ideas.

The inner experiences are diverse and not easily documented in a short
space. Simply being switched on to intuition and gaining information
through subtle awareness leads one to a degree of gnosis which one can verify, such as through psychometry, channelling, and astral travel, as well as being sensitive to synchronicity. One chapter from my book - Psychism - is on the website, which should give you a basic flavour of what I have been involved in. That plus healing, battling demonic forces, using mind energy etc.

As far as I am concerned, Melchisedek is a strange man. I believe it
possible he's part of a sponsored cult. Certainly from people I know
who have worked with him for years, he promises much but delivers very
little.

Greer seems to be the link between sceptic and believer in the alien
saga. Recent works have documented earth-based free energy technology and UFOs - eg WR Lyne's Pentagon Aliens etc. - and I think Greers work is designed to cover the loophole by incorporating that and mixing it in with the 'good aliens' scenario. I think this is necessary because Intel have had an agenda of ETs since at least HG Wells, who was a member of an Illuminati think tank, promoting the New World Order and his works were used for psyops subtle mass programming.

I have to agree with what you say about many debunkers. I realise that
as time has gone on I have been challenging others like Icke etc. to
support their claims and offering information and reasonable arguments that constitute 'debunking'. I believe in speaking one's truth without fear
an am passionately concerned for the welfare of the inhabitants of this
planet. As such, when I see claims made which I have experience and personal verification of through experience and research - such as religious and mythological and historical research - and these claims can be countered with a reasonable amount of data, then I try to do just that.

Love

Ivan

Together in Truth we can change the world!
www.truthcampaign.co.uk

----- Original Message -----
From: "EE"
To: "Ivan Fraser"
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2003 4:32 PM
Subject: Re: Various Elements of Metaphysics


> Good Morning Ivan,
>
> I think it best to give you some of my background first and then get
to know you as we discuss items of interest. A review that I did is
posted here: <WebPage> and a summary of my vocation is attached. It will open either with WordPad or Word for Windows. Standard Viewers can also open it.
>
> The two things I am interested in knowing more about are Drunvalo
Melchizedek's writings: <http://www.drunvalo.net/> and Dr. Steven Greer's work: <http://www.disclosureproject.org/> Are they complete information, incomplete information, disinformation or misinformation. My experience has been with many debunkers that they are themselves hoaxsters and sorting out what's deliberate misdirection from what's poor academic practice is very difficult indeed.
>
> Let's start here and see what we find out. Then I'd like to find out
about your life story: the experiences that led you to this point and
what 'inner' experiences you've had. I can, little by little, relate to you
the things I've come across and we can corroborate our interpretations.
>
> Warm regards,
> EE
>
> Ivan Fraser wrote:
>
> Hi EE
>
> Certainly. What is it you would like to discuss?
>
> Love
>
> Ivan
>
>
> Together in Truth we can change the world!
>
> www.truthcampaign.co.uk
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "EE"
> To:
> Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2003 3:26 AM
> Subject: Various Elements of Metaphysics
>
>
> > Ivan,
> >
> > I rcv'd this from Mark Davey; you may or may not know him. After
> > reading it, I have pause to reflect on its implications and calls-to-action.
> > Before I pursue the issue any further, I'd like to know a little more about
> > you and your experiences. I am in the sciences and engineering by trade and
> > metaphysics and anthropology by avocation. There are lots of major things
> > happening and I'm looking to confer with your ideas and perceptions.
> >
> > ----- ----- -----
> > From: "Ivan Fraser"
> > Subject: Feedback on the Taken with Taken article in Rising Phoenix Series
> > #24: Spiritual Awakenings
> > Date: 6 May 2003
> >
> > Dear Jean
> >
> > Thank you for your many articles and the good vibes you are helping to
> > transmit.
> > You asked for feedback on the Taken with Taken article, and I find myself
> > drawn to respond to the subject on a wider viewpoint. And so I don't bore
> > everyone with preamble I'll try and make this brief......
> > ----- ----- -----
> >
> > There are a few things about 2 sources of information I have I'd like to
> > run by you to verify my research.
> >
> > Write back when you get the chance.
> >
> > EE

[EnviroEngr]

There was a fair amount of discussion and contest over this material in the last 3 weeks.

What I remember of it was that science became the pivot around which all else revolves, or should revolve according to our cultural dogma. My sense of it is that modern society, particularly Western, is driven by Reductionistic Positivism. I found that this approach to Life is pernicious and its limitations unacceptable. I found also, that the tools of science are nonetheless necessary elements to balancing one's ways and means. And, for good measure, a discussion about The Map and the Territory should be pursued to make sure an appropriate awareness of boundaries is obtained.

Staying with the spirit of Kurt Gödel, a (formal) system that is complete is inconsistent and a system that is consistent is incomplete. If science, mathematics, logic, formal symbol systems and/or human thinking and cognition itself are to be taken divorced from their integration with the rest of the system, at best they are meaningless, at worst - weapons. Our proper and highest aim is to keep combining knowledge with compassion in a never-ending search for Truth. As I mentioned before, the much celebrated "White Lab Coat Deity" truly is a bastardization of the Human Spirit and as such poses more of the threat than a benefit to this world and others. "Scientists" in my mind have become a collective halcyon beacon of Imbalance, veritable icons of pompous self-aggrandizement in nearly all their manifestations. To hail to their league is to come into alignment with some of the most destructive evils ever unleashed on this planet under than banner of "Progress" and "Humanitarianism". You needn't think any further than Oppenheimer, Einstein and Feynman to find highly laudable examples. Feynman lived to regret his naivete. Many never even give it a second thought.

The core value of science, per se, is ascensionist in its inherent proclivities and as an idealism unto itself, could in theory bring humanity to the pinnacle of its crowning glory. But, when mixed improperly with economic or political motivations, it turns quite deadly -- a cannon in the hands of a toddler.

[EnviroEngr]

The definitions I am going by -

From Dictionary.com:

met•a•phys•ics ( P ) Pronunciation Key (met'e fiz'iks)
n.
$this->bbcode_list('1')

(used with a sing. verb) Philosophy. The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.

(used with a pl. verb) The theoretical or first principles of a particular discipline: the metaphysics of law.

(used with a sing. verb) A priori speculation upon questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation, analysis, or experiment.

(used with a sing. verb) Excessively subtle or recondite reasoning.

Link to metaphysics

... and from my Webster's College Edition Dictionary, we have:

met•a•phys•ics (met'e fiz'iks) n.pl. [with sing. v.] [ < ML. metaphysica, neut. pl. < Gr. (ta) meta (ta) physika, lit., (that) after (the) physics (in reference to location after the Physics in early collections of Aristotle's works)] 1. the branch of philosophy that deals with first principles and seeks to explain the nature of being or reality (ontology) and of, the origin and structure of the world (cosmology) : it is closely associated with the study of the nature of knowledge (epistemology) 2. speculative philosophy in general 3. the theory or principles (of some branch of knowledge) 4. popularly, any very subtle or difficult reasoning.

[EnviroEngr]

Gotta get Stuart Wilde back in this game, along with Justis Barrymore:

Stuart Wilde Morph Wall

Justis Barrymore

[EnviroEngr]

... of Queens, Witches and Mages; 2006, the year to watch.

More to come on this.

[MrBean]

You sound like you might get a lot from David Bohm's ideas. If you haven't allready, I recommend "Science, Order and Creativity" (Bohm & Peat) to begin with.

[EnviroEngr]

As this little cartoon cleverly implies, there is also the issue of dualistic epistemology to grapple with. In "Maps of the Mind", Charles takes several different angles on how this plays out -- nearly all of them describing the salient features of contemporary human societies. It seems to me that we are entering an age when the dynamics of this system will become more commonplace between people in their interactions with each other. In my experience, dualism often becomes the "default assumption" or the "lowest common denominator" mode of operation when the going gets tough. I suspect that this may explain a lot of what's happening now and what's to come in the near future.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnviroEngr', '[')img]http://peakoil.com/images/DescartesUnicorn.jpg[/img]

As this little cartoon cleverly implies, there is also the issue of dualistic epistemology to grapple with. In "Maps of the Mind", Charles takes several different angles on how this plays out -- nearly all of them describing the salient features of contemporary human societies. It seems to me that we are entering an age when the dynamics of this system will become more commonplace between people in their interactions with each other. In my experience, dualism often becomes the "default assumption" or the "lowest common denominator" mode of operation when the going gets tough. I suspect that this may explain a lot of what's happening now and what's to come in the near future.

[EnviroEngr]

It's from a scanned cartoon; JPEG'ed and uploaded. You can copy it to something like Photobucket and link to it using the IMG dialog accessible from the formatting buttons above Font colour and Font size.

[EnviroEngr]

I am pleased to present a favorite writer of Ocean Arks International, William Irwin Thompson. Although not specifically addressing metaphysical postulates, William writes in a manner taking these methods heavily into account and to very good effect.

In Volume XXII, Number 3, 2004, of Annals of Earth, William offered up "Al Qaeda, the Neocons, and the Transition from Nation-State to Noetic Polity"

What follows is a completely unedited version of the story. I will put a link to a cleaner RTF version at the bottom. I can come back later and spiffy this one up:

Al Qaeda, the Neocons, and the Transition from Nation-State to Noetic Polity
William Erwin Thompson

Even without an apocalyptic world scenario, humanity has already passed an event horizon that is drawing it from one attractor to another. This end of conventional history involves a morphological distortion of our time in space, one that alters both our bodies and our body-politic. Outside becomes inside, as microtechnologies enter our bodies through MIT's celebrated "wear-ware," and international terrorists enter our old territorial twentieth-century nation state space. At the same time, inside becomes outside as consciousness becomes an endosymbiont inside a global noosphere of networked computers. In this meta-historical crossing of within and without, a singularity appears and traditional culture dissolves, and the residues of melted cultures become religious toxic wastes in fundamentalist violence everywhere: Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu and Sikh.

In the evolution of the primates, the hominids developed into consciousness-bearing animals. This large brain structure requires a content, so humans will fill it with whatever comes to mind: Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or an absurdly personified and vengeful parental God. Religion, with its systems of explanation, is a fundamental expression of human consciousness, but we do need to remember that religion is only one highly limited and time-bound expression of human spirituality, and that in the evolution of human culture there have been three stages of development: 1. prehistoric shamanism, 2. literate religions and mythological systems, and 3. science and a postreligious form of spirituality. Einstein is a good exemplar of stage three.

When a new cultural stage becomes efficient, the previous system becomes deficient. Shamanism decays into sorcery and black magic. In the conflicts of Orpheus and Quetzalcoatl with the proponents of bloody sacrifice, we can read the story of this painful transition in the evolution of human culture. Now in our transition from religion to spirituality, we can see the violence of the religious fundamentalists all over the world in a new light.

But now that consciousness has become a globally enhanced distributed lattice, and consciousness studies a new scientific discipline,' humans are beginning to realize that mind is an emergent property and that it just might overlight other systems besides cells. The engineers look to their machines, the poets look to the stars. Rather than asking ourselves, "Are there other minds in the universe?" we might better ask, "Is the universe a mind of nested systems---cell, animal, planet, star, and galaxy?" Most scientific materialists are not yet ready for the philosopher A.N. Whitehead's "panpsychism," but more and more thinkers are beginning to realize that precivilized animism is not the only form this vision of mind and life can take.

A narrative of history that reflects our new global historical situation needs to become a miniaturization of the passing civilization as means of effecting a transition to the next that, technically speaking, is not really a single civilization but a complex dynamical system expressing a new planetary culture. Like the tiny mitochondria that carried their ancient DNA into the new and larger life of the cell with a nucleus, the religions are being engulfed by the giant cell of the planet with its new planetary culture.

This new historical situation is one in which we are shifting from the era of a global industrial economy of territorial nation-states to a planetary cultural-ecology of noetic polities (a noetic polity is one based on consciousness and not territorial identify). The war against Islamicist terrorism is not a war against a territorial nation-state; it is a conflict against a noetic polity that seeks to destroy the secular modernism of the industrial nation-state to replace it with regional Caliphates in a single global Islamic civilization. In a medieval Caliphate, the leader rules for life, so it is not surprising that modern-day Caliphs like Gaddafi in Libya, Mubarak in Egypt, and Hassad in Syria, rule for decades and are not subject to the Western politics of election and re-election.

Paradoxically, enemies tend to become like one another through conflict. "We become what we hate." So the neoconservatives of the Bush administration are the mirror-image of al Qaeda; they are also a noetic polity that seeks to deconstruct the modern middle class democratic nation-state and replace it with a metanational corporate cartel — a capitalist al Qaeda. Halliburton, Bechtel, Enron, the Carlyle Group, and Newmount Mining are postnational formations that really care little about the welfare of any particular people or nation. The American soldiers that died in Iraq did not die "defending their country"; they died defending Cheney and Bush's interests in Halliburton and the Carlyle Group. These neocon corporate managers, very much like the privateers and pirates that helped Queen Elizabeth create a postbaronial world of naval power, are offshore pirates that care as little for the entire nation, as Texan Enron cared for the state of California it plundered. Historically, these neocon managers have moved beyond national patriotism, and only have need of patriotic propaganda and national armies to provide them with the soldiers they need to advance their mafia Don aims. So when Saddam Hussein was not co-operating with Cheney and Rumsfeld, it was decided by the Defense Policy Board of Pearle, Woolsley, and Wolfowitz to take him out but call this mafia hit "the installation of democracy in Iraq"— this even before Bush Jr. was chosen by the party to be its publicist.

The neoconservatives decided to modernize the Middle East and open it up to the restructuring of the unrestrained corporate free market system. After the "Shock and Awe" had done its work in Iraq, the War on Terror could be used to overwhelm the middle class democratic nation state of the United States through another application of "Shock and Awe." Through the clever use of religious issues such as abortion rights and Gay marriage, the Republicans could teach the lower middle class to hate the secular and urban values of the liberals, and thus distract it from the neoconservative campaign to eliminate the social democratic state set in place by FDR. Medicare could be turned over to the redesign of the pharmaceutical companies, social security could be privatized and put under the management of banks and brokerage houses, and income tax could be eliminated in favor of a value added tax that would effectively shift the burden of taxation from investors to the salaried class. In this pauperization of the American middle class, new recruits would be found for the new working class of the armed forces that would be needed for the Neocons' doctrine of pre-emptive war against the Axis of Evil and the unending War on Terror. And so, if one looks beyond the ideological camouflage, one can see that al Qaeda and Cheney Rumsfeld Bush and company are mirror-images of one another. Both are intensely anti-democratic, anti-modernist, and transnational formations, and both would welcome an American terrorist attack to gain support for their leadership.

If one looks back on World War II, one can now see in twenty-twenty hindsight that Churchill, FDR, Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin were all different versions of the authoritarian leader of the modernizing industrial nation-state. Each played "the great game," and each used propaganda to camouflage his hidden agenda. Hitler and Stalin may have been more openly homicidal, but even American alpha males still derive their sense of power from being able to send other men to their death. Whether they do this by manipulation of the media or through the activities of a secret police is merely a cultural variation on a common theme. FDR strove to incite Japan to attack the United States and kept the Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor to lure them into his trap.' He was willing to sacrifice thousands of lives to advance the national interests of the American economy, just as Bush Sr. and Jr. were willing to do in their wars on Saddam Hussein. This is what alpha males do, and in millions of years, humans have still not evolved beyond Chimp politics. American politics is not a question of "red states and blue states," but two different streams of evolution: Republicans are Chimps, Democrats are Bonobos.

The United States is no longer a nineteenth-century territorial industrial nation-state constructed on a continental railroad. What the red and blue states of the 2000 presidential election expressed was the emergence of two distinct noetic polities within the USA. In this spiritual reincarnation of the American Civil War, the red polity is an Enron managed corporate theocracy — a Christian version of Iran; and the blue polity is one in which a more individualized and personal post-religious spirituality exists within a scientific culture.

This shift from the industrial nation-state to a planetary culture involves three disorienting melt-downs or disintegrations. The first melt-down is the disintegration of the biosphere — more accurately described as an evolutionary and catastrophic restructuring. A new relationship between the global economy and the global ecology is forcing us to understand the intimate relationship between culture and nature in ways that are not obvious to President Cheney and Vice President Bush. As the national currencies of the global economy interact with currents of the biosphere, the Greenhouse Effect transforms global weather patterns, and hundred-year floods become frequent events, as do hurricanes, continental forest-fires, and other disasters. All of these catastrophes are drawing down on the reserves of insurance companies and the emergency funds of our once prosperous American nation-state.

When Bush says that he does not want to wreck the American economy to preserve the environment, he does not understand that the biosphere can wreck the American economy. Just wait until multiple hurricanes overlap with West Coast earthquakes and Bush's huge deficits to see what an ecology can do to an economy. Republicans think that nature is a consumer's country club for playing golf or a park for fishing, hunting, and speeding over the snow on a polluting skidoo in the winter. They do not understand that nature is a complex dynamical system with a Gaian mind of its own. The planetary dynamics of this globally turbulent system cannot be modeled or managed by national governments, and the shadow of pollution cast by catastrophe is actually a caricatured form of the newly emerging planetary cultural-ecology that ignores national borders. This melt-down of the traditionally taken-for-granted biosphere is inseparable from the secondary meltdown of the territorial nation-state, which obviously comes with an enormous release of heat.

Throughout the formative centuries of the rise of the modern nation-state — from the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 to the recent war in Iraq nationalist leaders have tried to assert that for the poor to die for the rich of the country is a matter of honorable sacrifice and personal apotheosis. Statues of war heroes were forms of urban decoration, and nation-states were personified as folk souls as feminine spirits calling young men to their deadly embrace in a mythologized vision of death and transfiguration. The trenches of the First World War proved this atavistic rite of sacrifice to be the great lie, and the poet Wilfred Owen nailed a stake into the heart of this vampire with his prophetic poem, "Dulce et decorum est."

It was a stroke of demonic genius on the part of aristocracies and plutocracies to wed their own economic development to patriotism and the mystery religion of folk souls and holy soil, for this enabled them to send the sons of the poor off to die willingly for the protection of the economic interests of the rich — a ruse that is now only too painfully visible in the second Gulf War in Iraq. What junior Bush, in his performances of Karl Rove newspeak, calls the freeing of Iraq is really the enforced capitalistic modernization of Iraq---a program that had been planned long before Bush's Supreme Court fixed election or 9/11. But this attempt to force Islam to transform itself into a secular, capitalist, consumer society only enrages Muslims further, for it appears to them as an act of imperial hubris that makes them heartily desire the failure of the United States' projects of cultural engineering in Afghanistan and Iraq. For them, the project is also a camouflaged Likud effort on the part of Wolfowitz and Pearle to create a new security umbrella over Israel in the heart of the Arab Middle East.

The third melt-down or restructuring is the meltdown of the human body. John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmary have shown that when a new and more complex level of evolution emerges, the older constituent units lose their ability to reproduce as reproductive viability passes to the higher and more complex levels of organization.' Today human sperm counts are declining and we do not see evolution introducing new versions of Homo sapientissimus with a bigger brain and a higher forehead. Rather we are witnessing the emergence of complex noetic polities in which humans are clustering in global electronic networks of consciousness. Machines that were once external to us are now becoming intimate architectures of our involvement with other minds, other cultures, other heavenly bodies. In this new complexity, reproduction is no longer simply a family affair. What agribusiness was to the family farm, medibusiness is now to the family. Small wonder Republicans scream for family values in fighting abortion and Gay marriage.

The shadow-form that is prefiguring our transition from one biological state of being to another reflects itself in both sex and death, Eros and Thanatos. Disease is also an expression of the new world of medibusiness. The disruption of the biosphere in industrial global warming and the burning of the rain forests is bringing malarial swamps northward, exposing humans to primate viruses from cleared rain forests, and stirring up airborne viruses into the global atmosphere where they function as disrupters of the immune systems that have served as traditional definers of the fence between self and other, nurture and nature. This global supersaturation of bacteria, viruses, parasites, chemical pollution, and electromagnetic fields of noise and radiation is forcing us out of one adaptive landscape into another. And when genetically manipulated crops and genetically engineered animals are added to this new postindustrial biome, we shall begin to see not merely industrial but evolutionary pollution as well.

This process of cultural change is not occurring at the twenty-four frames per second of the movies made for the human eye; the phenomenon is not an event like the drop-ping of the bomb on Hiroshima; it is a transformation, and even then, it is a gradual one, more like the neolithic shift from gathering to gardening than the industrial revolution of eighteenth-century England. Because it is a transformation and not an event, it cannot be perceived in time, it can only be sensed in the imagination, and this, sadly, means that we are all especially vulnerable to the manipulations of myths in political propaganda. Whether representational government can survive this cultural shift from print to electronic media is the question of our time. Judging by the recent American presidential election of 2004, one would have to admit that those who own the media own the mind of the country. The Neocons now have a clear road to complete their deconstruction of the social democratic state set in place by FDR during the Depression. By allowing workers to set up private accounts in lieu of their payments into Social Security, Bush can insure a short fall of payments into the system and thus guarantee its collapse. What Bush calls "the ownership society" is really the ownership of the salaried class by the investing class. The middle class "Age of Democratic Revolutions" has now ended and with the war on terrorism we have returned to the castles of corporate feudalism.

_________________________________________________

RTF (Write, WordPad or Word) file link:
Al Qaeda, the Neocons, etc.

[EnviroEngr]

Given that piece by William Irwin Thompson, I urge you to sign up for Annals of Earth and help Ocean Arks International in its quest to conserve and preserve what's left of our Home.

http://www.oceanarks.org/annals/

This is by far and away, consistently the best publication of its type I have ever read.

[gg3]

Interesting. From metaphysics to occultism, and then to something like a reasoned analysis of the current Predicament, plus or minus some points of contention.

It is not wise to prejudge all Republicans as belonging to the evolutionary lineage of chimps, and all Democrats as belonging to the lineage of bonobos. (For those who don't know this one: bonobos are another species of ape, of intelligence equal to or slightly ahead of chimps, and with a much lower level of violence within their social units. They basically appear to be a more civilized type of monkey.)

It is also not wise to divide the public between liberal and "everything else" and label the latter as conservative.

Aside from the self-defeating nature of such prophesies, they are simply not correct. Both Democrats and Republicans, both liberals and conservatives, come in a rainbow of colors from the absolutist theocrats to the corporate-state monopolists, to social libertarians, economic libertarians, social democrats, greens, Jeffersonians, Lincolnians, moderates of all stripes who believe in living-and-letting-live, and various mixtures of the above depending on the issue at hand.

The old labels are no longer valid or relevant except perhaps as rhetorical points on the part of those who don't bother to look beyond their own biases.

What's centrally important in this new era, is to recognize the the vast majority of civilized peoples around the globe, are far more moderate than many of those who pull, or attempt to pull, the levers of power.

The numbers are basically on our side, if we could only focus our pluralistic diffusity into concerted action. (deliberate neologism: diffuse (adjective) + diversity (noun))

[EnviroEngr]

Your points are definitely well taken and the corrections apt. Insofar as William stays on track, he provides good leads for further development; but, as you clearly suggest, there are breaches in his thinking. I suppose if he had used facetious constructions with an element of loosely worded metaphor to describe what he views as "evolution", he would have gained ground with simile where he instead lost ground with judgment.

Adding your analysis with his line of thought and forging a synthesis, this could be rewritten and recast in a much more well-rounded light. I might take up with this at some point.

Thanks for your contribution.

[EnviroEngr]

Also, now that I'm thinking about it, I should bring this up with Nancy Jack Todd and see what her take is on the 'misinclinations' of Thompson and his veritably misanthropic gestures.

[mindfarkk]

for whatever it's worth, the tendency to stereotype and "group" perceived threats is believed to be a function of the limbic system, which is also responsible for basic emotional impulses.

In other words, when we perceive a threat and our limbic system kicks in "fight or flight" impulses, we also tend to process incoming information as very large, black-and-white generalizations (such as "I hate all republicans" or "all democrats are liberal assholes" or "all americans are corrupt self-serving liars who deserve to suffer and die"). the FEELING of hatred is a limbic system response. if you weren't aware of it, your limbic system is a very old part of your brain, second only the the brain stem and cerebellum (the "lizard brain".) hatred bypasses intelligence, but it can subliminally warp rational thought by altering our perceptions and supercharging our intentions.

when i find myself having these kind of thoughts about ANY group, i try to discipline my thoughts because they are detaching from reality.

this function of the limbic system is good when you are learning to recognize dangers like predator groups (say, lions) or snakes (say, poisonous vipers) or something along those lines. THEN it is a service to your survival to say "all lions want to eat me". the advantage is your reaction time is faster when the limbic system uses these rules-of-thumb to process information and react, rather than having to go all the way through the cerebral cortex (intellectual thought and memory). the disadvantage is that it doesn't serve so well when the threat cannot be generalized. in order to deal with THIS threat - PO and various difficulties arising from the state of human evolution, social and otherwise - we need our full cognitive resources available to make good judgements. the situation is complex. the most survival-worthy of us will be able to appreciate it's complexity without getting so bogged down we can't act in a timely way, and act appropriately.

my .02

[EnviroEngr]

About that raskowy Limbic System: http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic311-0.html#7377

[EnviroEngr]

News from Princeton's Global Consciousness Project
February 23, 2005

Two weeks ago an article about the GCP that was positive
(but suffered from literary license and misunderstandings)
appeared in the UK Daily Mail. It was picked up by a
website called Rednova and subsequently by Slashdot. So we
were "slashdotted" which means that a rather large number of
people with technical interests become aware of the project.
The result was a flood of inquiries, and since I try to respond
to all serious notes, it's been a busy time. On the order of
400 wrote. About 60 people offered to host eggs, and several
offered to help with programming or analysis. (Unfortunately,
the link from the "Participate" button was not working in
Internet Explorer browsers for a while, so some potential
contributors to our funding might have been frustrated.)

One resulting project is an application of powerful geophysical
datamining programs to our data. These are used to look for
weak signals of unknown character in massive datasets, seeking,
for example, oil or mineral concentrations. This kind of
sophisticated, albeit brute-force search for patterns is one
of the things we have had on the list to do for a long time,
and it is pleasing to see progress.

Such work is a complement to the continuing "Analysis 2004"
project that I have mentioned in previous updates. There are
new results, including long term trends that are robust --
that is, definitely not random fluctuation. There is some
indication that we may be able to link such trends with
sociological measures, but I mention this more because it is
an exciting prospect than because the evidence is completely
clear. What is clear is that, as George deBeaumont once
said, "This is a subtle beast we are chasing."

The work in progress is linked under the "science" half of
the new GCP home page: http://noosphere.princeton.edu/
For those of you who have been aware of the GCP for a long
time, the home page is new. Its design implements at last
a long-standing intent to split the website into two tracks,
one that focuses on science and the other on aesthetics.
Such a split is a little arbitrary for such a project as this,
where, it seems to me, these perspectives are complementary
in the strong sense. Both views are required at this stage
because the subject is more complex than can be managed with
any of our current "standard" physical models. Nevertheless,
I think it is valuable to present the scientific evidence with
minimal overlay of interpretation. I will welcome feedback and
suggestions about the approach.

Usually I have a quasi political or philosophical observation
to make. Today what comes to mind is the remarkably strong
common thread of interest in something like global consciousness
represented in the flood of email just past. Of the 400 or so
notes, only two were from people who simply rejected the idea
that it might make sense to look for patterns in random systems
where there should be none, apparently created by our thoughts
and feelings.

And one of those came around a bit when I asked why not.

May your day go well,
Roger

--
Roger D. Nelson
Director, Global Consciousness Project
rdnelson@princeton.edu http://noosphere.princeton.edu

[EnviroEngr]

A quick little recap on the Scientific Method for posterity:


The Scientific Method

The essential elements of the scientific method are iterations and recursions of the following four steps:
$this->bbcode_list('1')

Characterization

Hypothesis (a theoretical, hypothetical explanation)

Prediction (logical deduction from the hypothesis)

Experiment (test of all of the above)

This can be called the hypothetico-deductive method. These activities do not describe all that scientists do (see below). The 4-step method described above is often used in education. Teachers using inquiry as a teaching method sometimes teach a slightly modified version of the scientific method in which "Question" is substituted for Observation.

Science is a social activity. The process is subject to evaluation by the scientists directly involved, or by the scientific community, at any or every stage. A scientist's theory or proposal is accepted only after it has become known to others (usually via publication, ideally peer reviewed publication) and criticised. See the list of unsolved problems in science, for example.
___________________

The details are HERE

... and for a little Quality Control: Double-Blind

[EnviroEngr]

News from Princeton's Global Consciousness Project
April 27, 2005


It is time for our occasional update. Much is happening.

Recent time has been rich with interesting activity in the
world and on a smaller scale in the EGG project. We've added
several events to the list of formal hypothesis tests at
[ http://noosphere.princeton.edu/results.html ] and some new
explorations to provide context. As you probably would
surmise, we looked at Pope John Paul's death and funeral,
and the new Pope's election. And we looked at Prince
Charles' wedding, despite that it was overshadowed. And on a
more intimate scale, we extended the category of celebrations
to include the Oraworld Resonance Action on April 23, which
represents a vision of a peaceful planet. The EGG network
liked the idea: [ http://noosphere.princeton.edu/oraworld.html ]

For a longer perspective, we now can look back over 6 years.
A working group of about 10 people met in early April at the
Institute of Noetic Sciences' beautiful campus in Petaluma,
CA to dig deeply into the GCP data and related materials. We
wanted to develop a shared picture of the patterns we find
in the random data from the EGG network, collected over more
than six years. The goal was to define incisive new questions,
and work toward theoretical models able to explain the sources
and facilitate interpretation of the findings.

We reviewed the GCP event-based analysis, which is detailed
at [ http://noosphere.princeton.edu/event-based.html ] and
looked at the larger context of psi research, courtesy of a
summary by Dean Radin of his new book, "Entangled Minds" (to
be published this fall).

With this background, Peter Bancel detailed products of
the "Analysis 2004" project during the past two years.
This in-depth analysis is described in the "Scientific Work"
half of the newly designed GCP Website. It enables us to ask
a range of new and useful questions. We have only begun
to explore this territory, but the analyses described at
[ http://noosphere.princeton.edu/science2.html#extensions ]
give some idea of the power of these new tools.

A successful working meeting developed from this background.
Discussions addressed details of analysis and implications
for modeling and touched on issues of interpretation as well
as the question of support for continuing and expanding the
analytical work. For those of you who are interested in
examples of the kinds of work we have been looking at, I'll
give a few links (some of this is pretty technical, but the
graphs usually speak clearly).

One procedure that addresses skeptical perspectives is to
split the data into independent parts, and determine if
the anomalous structure appears in both parts. Dick Shoup
did an early version of this for the 9/11 case:
[ http://noosphere.princeton.edu/terror.html#shoup ]
More recently, Peter Bancel examined overall correlation
between two independent subsets of the full database,
created by selecting alternate seconds. You can see this at
[ http://noosphere.princeton.edu/pab/long ... #splitting ]
He says his favorite "figure of the day" is a summary plot at
[ http://noosphere.princeton.edu/pab/long ... html#90day ]

Another extremely interesting new analysis asks how sharply
focused the event definitions are. What happens if we "slide"
the data extraction process to start earlier or later than the
formal hypothesis test specifies? It turns out that the effect
is not sharply focused at the nominal time, but may spread out
2-4 hours before and after. This is pretty esoteric statistics
but it is striking material for those with a technical interest.
[ http://noosphere.princeton.edu/sliding.event.html ]
Look especially at the last set of graphs. Of course, as usual,
we have to say there is much to do before attempting strong
interpretations, but this material is consistent with occasional
findings that "events" may begin to register before we become
aware of them.

Finally, for an indicator of the type of serious thought the
project can stimulate, here is a question from one of our
long-term egg hosts. It was a pleasure to be able to make a
plausible response -- from the data:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ') "I've been wondering if we've entered into a new "Dark Age"
with the current war-making administration - that is, is
there some long-term effect that can be detected during
the term of this administration?"

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnviroEngr', ' ')interesting activity in the EGG project. added events to the formal hypothesis tests
we looked at Pope John Paul's death and funeral,
and the new Pope's election. And Prince
Charles' wedding, on a
more intimate scale, we extended the celebrations

A working group met at the beautiful campus in Petaluma,
CA to dig deeply into the GCP data and related materials to define incisive new questions,
and work toward theoretical models