The End Of Our Empire Approaches

This article was originally published by Chris Martenson at PeakProsperity.com

Do you have the nagging sense that our empire is in decline?

If so, don’t be embarrassed by it. Historically speaking, we’re in very good company. Far larger and longer-lived empires than ours have come and gone over the millennia.

This was hit home for me on a recent trip. I scored a major “dad win” by taking my youngest daughter, Grace, to England for her 18^th birthday (we live in Massachusetts, USA).

All on her own, Grace developed an abiding love of mythology at a very young age: Greek, Roman, Norse, Native American, Aztec…you name it. She’s read the Iliad four times, a different version each time, as each has the biases of the translator subtly woven throughout.

Naturally, her dream mini-vacation involved going to the British Museum where the Rosetta stone lies, along with Viking hoard treasures and every possible Roman, Greek and Egyptian artifact one could hope to see.

The British empire came of age at the perfect time to muscle in and “retrieve” the cultural treasures of many different countries. Such are the spoils of empire.

Who knows, perhaps one day we’ll see sliced off segments of the Palace of Westminster on display in Cairo’s main square. History ebbs and it flows. Back and forth. Victors and losers swapping places over and over again.

If the British Museum reveals anything it’s just that. The long sweep of human history shows us that the more things change, the more things stay the same.

The treasures on display at the British Museum also show us that every race and culture has revered beauty. The most intricate and delicate and objectively beautiful jewelry and adornments were worn by kings and queens, priestesses, nobles, and warlords alike.

Sutton Hoo

Consider the find of the Sutton Hoo burial mound. An eminently important and revered individual (possibly Raedwald) was buried sometime around the year 740, with an enormous ship 89 feet in length serving as his burial chamber.

Just imagine how many people it took to dig a hole in the ground that held the ship to its gunnels, and then bring forward enough earth to cover the whole affair in a gigantic mound of earth more than ten feet high in the middle. As a gardener, I can tell you that dirt is heavy stuff that really resists being moved by hand. Hundreds of people must have labored for a very long time to create this burial mound.

Whoever this person was, he was revered enough to be buried with an astonishing collection of wealth. And, perhaps more amazingly, none of it was looted.

Here’s the sword belt, made of an intricate lattice of pure gold and polished garnet:

Isn’t that a beautiful work of art?

Again, nobody came back and looted this afterwards. Maybe they killed the workers who built the gravesite, but surely folks still knew a very rich ruler had been buried in the area. And yet nobody looted the site. To me, it’s hard not to see that as a sign of how much the man buried there was respected by his kinsmen.

Here’s a close up of the dragons head from that sword belt:

If you’ve ever worked with garnet, you know just how devilishly hard it is (a 7.5 on a scale of 10) and how much work it must have taken to polish up even one of those tiny panels, let alone all of them, and into such careful shapes.

Similarly, these shoulder clasps meant to secure an article of clothing (like a cape or cloak) are also magnificent:

Again, the detail and workmanship are impressive. But what struck me most was how these works of art are so … beautiful. And from a time of early medieval history referred to ‘the dark ages’ and popularly described as a period of bleak survival.

If they were, somebody still had the resources to churn out works of extraordinary precision and beauty. That much is clear.

The rest of the artifacts are similarly extraordinary — especially the helmet, shields, and coinage. Just take a look at this purse lid:

Taken together, I see a culture where reverence mattered. Sutton Hoo’s buried leader was revered enough that his tomb was not looted afterwards, promptly or otherwise. The items buried display a reverence for his authority as well as for beauty.

These burial artifacts were by no means trivial items. Each one could have supported a family for many generations at a time when resources were scarce, only obtainable through the hard labor of many.

And yet they were left untouched. Who among today’s leaders would be honored enough as a leader that their tomb would not be looted for massive personal gain? Where can you see that our culture reveres beauty to the same degree, being willing to place so much collective effort into its creation?

The Taranto Scepter

Everywhere else in the British Museum were similar displays of honoring the feminine — the women and the goddesses of the world. Many of the Egyptian displays caught my eye, as did the Greek, but one piece stood out so much that I came back to it three times, so amazed was I by the beauty of it and the message I took from it.

It came from “The Tomb of the Taranto Priestess” and dated from 350 – 340 BC. Since kings did not rule Taranto during that period, it is believed to have been the property of a priestess.

First, her scepter is truly extraordinary:

The entire scepter is perhaps 18 inches in length and capped in extraordinary gold adornment. But what really caught my eye is the gold mesh you see running down the shaft (lost to history, thought to have been bone?). It consists of extremely fine gold wire wrapped in even finer gold wire, and is woven into a meshwork of little diamond shapes with tiny circles at their corners. Each of these circles contained a tiny gem or enameled treasure of some sort (most, again, lost to history).

Here’s a close up:

The gold wire used is finer than hair. This scepter speaks of power and delicacy in equal balance, one reinforcing the other.  Only the lightest of touch could hold the scepter without breaking strands of gold that fine. That made me think of the woman who wielded it with such a delicate touch.

Again, this person was revered to such an extent that an object of such immense value and beauty was entombed with her, and not robbed at a later time by someone who knew what the tomb contained.

Power, honor, reverence, and beauty. All attributes that show up again and again all throughout history.

The entire British Museum is packed to the rafters with such expressions. I came away both elated to have gotten back in touch with these better expressions of humanity, but also saddened because I can’t locate their equivalent in today’s world.

One missing element from today? Reverence for the goddess, for the feminine. I cannot think of a single western homage paid to the feminine. No temples to the goddesses and no elevation of feminine attributes.

This is important to note, not because we wish to bash the masculine, but because anything out of balance requires rebalancing. In fact, re-elevating the feminine will actually bring honor and meaning back to the masculine.

Our world is caught up entirely in money, and power, and wars, and force. We revere power over rather than power within.

So the questions I’d like to leave you with are these.

• Where do you have beauty in your life? Do you consciously manifest it?


• What do you revere?


• How honorable are you?


• Do you instill a sense of loyalty in those around you? Who would rob your grave and how quickly after you passed?


• Who do you honor, and how? Also, why?


• How important is it for you to be surrounded by people you can trust, and whose opinions you trust?


• Where and how do you respect, honor and encourage the feminine in yourself (whether you are male or female), in others, and especially in nature?

Finally, are you ready for the massive changes that are coming?

Our Empire Of Debt

The British museum is a testament to the fact that empires have been rising and falling for thousands of years. The common elements of every empire include its own appreciation for works of extreme beauty and human craftsmanship, along with strict hierarchy. They all expressed a strong connection to the divine, however they felt it, each with their own mythologies and attendant religions to make sense of it all…and help cement the rulers place(s) at the top, of course.

Each empire had a mythology by which it self-organized and people bought into that belief system. Looking back they seem like such obvious mental traps it’s easy to scoff and wonder how people could have been so blinkered.

Here’s the thing about hierarchical societies in every era…in every single one there were always a very few haves and a whole lot of have nots. How were the masses kept in line? Why did the vast bulk of humanity in every empire live in relative poverty and misery, never lifting a finger in revolt except under very rare circumstances?

The connection to yourself is this; each society has a set of reasons in place that explain to the people on the lower levels why they belong there. In some prior cultures the explanation was that authority was invested the royal blood line. You either had it or you didn’t.

In other societies, the rulers were said to be closer to the gods, if not descended directly from them. To go against the rulers meant you were assaulting or dishonoring the very gods you prayed to and on which you utterly depended.

While the mythologies in place “explaining” the hierarchy differed, the results did not. They always resulted in a few at the top and an expanding pyramid of population and entitlement laid out below them.

The middle management in this story, those that had relative advantage were the necessary keepers of the systems in each culture and each system. They had more to lose than to gain through revolt and so they stayed true to the system through their entire lives.

The people on the very bottom, despite having a vast numerical advantage, had the limiting belief that they had no power. So revolts almost never happened. Systems of hierarchy persisted until the empire had run its course, almost always failing because it ran out of resources to maintain itself and its growing complexity.

The lessons of history are absolute; nothing lasts. Everything changes, especially who’s in charge.

So what are our explanations today that keep us all in line? What keeps us from revolt? To what do we bow our daily collective heads in fealty to?

The answer is Money.

What we call “money” today was a wicked genius invention that popped up right around the same moment in history when humans were working out other keen, life-altering inventions such as clocks, and printing presses.

“None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.”

~ Goethe

A person in debt is a person controlled. But they think it was their own decision. Hence the Goethe quote above. A nation in debt is a nation controlled. The debt trap is especially insidious, and it relies on the illusion of free will combined with the full weight of ‘the law.’

By attaching a stated rate of interest to a loan, a person’s future output was yours if you were the holder of that note. What a stroke of pure (evil) genius! Set the rate high enough and the term long enough and you can get all of your money paid back plus another 100% of that amount or more, every bit of which was actually the future productive output (i.e. time) of the borrower.

Conjure up a promissory note out of thin air and then you get to skim the true productive output of that person, regardless of outcome. Whether they succeeded or failed in the endeavor, you still won. If they paid you back, the win was obvious. If they failed you often had collateral on the back end protecting your “investment.” No matter what, you won.

And even if that wasn’t the case? Well, you lost the amount of effort on your end that it took to draft up the note. In other words, nothing really.

I’ve yet to find this laid out in any museum even though the introduction of debt-based money was arguably the most course-altering invention of the past thousand years. It transformed millions of human slaves kept in check by threat of power and physical coercion (if not death) into billions of humans perfectly willing to hand over their labor to a very few elites at the top who did little to no work themselves.

Before this transformative invention money was always a very concrete thing – you either had a stash of silver or gold or you didn’t. Afterwards money became abstract. You could loan someone something you never had, written on a slip of paper, and the belief invested in that idea was sufficient to enslave that person until that debt was repaid. “Your” money might never be seen or handled by you at all, which is true for most people today. It exists as digits on a statement or computer screen. Yours, but utterly intangible. A powerful force, never actually seen or handled. In other words, a shared idea. A mythology imbued with tremendous power by a culture that served to enforce the current system of hierarchy.

There is a vast empire now spanning the globe but the mystery of it all is that it’s not based on or in any one country. It is an empire of debt. Those issuing the debt are harvesting the output of entire nations, no different in final effect than the Romans enforcing the practice of tithing from extant countries in AD 100.

We now live in a world of, by and for bankers, and other financial elites. Where once it was your royal lineage, or direct connection to the sun god Ra that assured your place at the top, today it’s your proximity to the temples of money.

But what happens when the economic pie is no longer expanding, yet the keepers of the system seem unable to turn off their own desires to grab more, more and yet more from that same pie?

That is where we find ourselves today. The economic oxygen is being sucked from the middle and lower classes and the social and political pressures are building.

Meanwhile more and more claims (currency and debts) are being piled on top of this stagnant economic pie thereby increasing the pressure on a creaking system. Someday that all gives way rather spectacularly and ends very badly. History says it ends with a lot of social anarchy and quite possibly another world war.

In Part 2: What History Tells Us Will Come Next, we provide a detailed analysis of how late-stage empires always collapse as the elites exhaust the resources of the masses. We are seeing clear signs of that today.

As we progress from here, the disparity between the haves and have-nots is only going to intensify, with debt (and our debt-based money system) being used as the primary weapon for controlling an increasingly dispossessed public.

Are you prepared?

Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)

We Are Entering An Era Of Shattered Illusions

The structure of history is held together by two essential and distinct kinds of links, two moments in time to which no one is immune: moments of epiphany, and moments of catastrophe. Sometimes, both elements intermingle at the birth of a singular epoch. Men often awaken to understanding in the midst of great crisis; and, invariably, great crises can erupt when men awaken. These are the moments when social gravity vanishes, when the kinetic glue of normalcy melts away, and we begin to see the true foundations of our world, if a foundation exists at all.

Catastrophe occurs when too many people refuse to accept that around us always are two universes at work. There is the cold, hard reality that underlies everything. And on the surface is a veil of deceit and compromise. The more humanity compromises vital truths in order to enjoy the comfort of illusions, the more mind-shattering it will be when those illusions fall away. These two worlds can coexist only for short periods of time, and they will always and eventually collide. There is no other possible outcome.

I think it could be said that the more polarized our realities become, the more explosive and disastrous the reaction will be when the separation is removed. I feel it absolutely necessary to relate this danger because today humanity is living so historically far from the bedrock of reality, political reality, social reality and economic reality that the stage has been set for a kind of full spectrum destabilization that has never been seen before.

Though my analysis tends to lean toward the economic side of things, I am not only speaking of shattered illusions in the financial realm. In my next article, one last time I plan to go over nearly every mainstream economic statistic used today to misdirect the public (from national debt to unemployment to inflation to retail sales and corporate profits) and expose why they are false while giving you the real numbers. Most of my regular readers are familiar with much of this information, but I think it important to consolidate it all in a single article so that we can take stock of where our society sits fiscally. For now, though, I want to discuss the core problem of self-deception, the problem that makes all the rest of our problems possible.

When the initial phase of the global collapse was triggered in 2007 and 2008, there was a substantial explosion in interest and education in terms of liberty issues and alternative economic awareness. I remember back in 2006 when I had just begun writing for the movement that the ratio of people on any given Web forum or in any given public discussion was vastly opposed to alternative viewpoints and information — at least 50-1 by my observations. We were at the height of the real estate frenzy; everyone was buying houses with money they didn’t have and borrowing on their mortgages to purchase stuff they didn’t need. Life was good. The shock of the credit crisis came quickly and abruptly for most people, and there has been a considerable shift in the kinds of discussions many are willing to entertain about our future. Yet the idea that such things can happen despite a consensus of social and geopolitical health does not seemed to have soaked into the thick skulls of average people.

Time, unfortunately, has a magical ability to erase vigilance. It’s not that the public has necessarily forgotten that danger can strike anytime anywhere (though some of them have). Many of them know full well that our culture is floating on a paper-thin ship in a turbulent sea. However, the disturbing trend today reveals that people have decided they do not care. “Taking the blue pill” is the rising rally cry from the so-called “new normal.” Yes, the economy is an illusion, the political system is an illusion and the various global conflicts our society participates in are mostly illusions. But we “can’t do anything about it,” so we might as well profit from these illusions while we can, right?

It has been said that during the economic collapse of the 1930s that the Great Depression was a depression only for the 30 percent of people that had lost everything. For the employed and the financially secure, the depression was much like any other time. This is the point at which we stand today in the collective mindset. With nearly a third of the U.S. population kicked off the unemployment rolls and approximately half the country dependent on a government check of some kind for their survival, the current depression is only now beginning to feel like a depression for anyone. The soup lines have received a fresh candy coating of EBT cards and welfare payments, but the illusion is finally fading, and this should be of great concern to us all.

Even more frightening is our culture’s deluded sense of what a collapse actually looks like. For many, collapse is a cinematic and overnight affair, with zombies, nuclear bombs and mass panic. In real life, and throughout history, collapse is a process. Since at least 2008, the U.S. and the rest of the world have been experiencing that process. Everyone is waiting for equities to implode and for social unrest to erupt before they take the threat seriously, but these are not signals of collapse. These are the things that occur when a collapse has run its course. Collapse never occurs overnight. It takes years for the effects of social and fiscal breakdown to be visibly felt. And when they are felt, many people refuse to notice. Eighty years ago, America was halfway through the Great Depression, and mainstream economists were STILL claiming that recovery was right around the corner. Illusion and self-deception can be so powerful that the worst miseries can be normalized, at least for a little while.

And it isn’t only the general public that is stricken with crippling bias. There are those within the liberty movement who have bought into false paradigms for various reasons, and this threatens any progress we have made over the past several years. There are those who still think that the “conflict” between Eastern and Western politicians and banking elites is somehow real. There are those who believe that Russia and China, despite their numerous and undeniable ties to the global banking syndicate (information I have covered in multiple articles over the years), are the “good guys”, while Western nations are the “bad guys”, rather than them all being mere subsidiaries and franchises of the same monstrous globalist machine.

They hold onto this illusion, I think, because it is much more frightening to accept the reality that we are alone, that the liberty movement is the first and last line of defense against centralization, that the responsibility for the future of independence and individual freedom rests on our shoulders. It is much easier to fantasize that there are others out there, nations and governments with armies and capital, that are on our side and will fight our battles for us. This illusion will be a painful one for many in the movement as they begin to realize that the East is actually working in tandem with international financiers instead of working against them.

There are also those in the liberty movement who cling to the notion that the fight against globalism will be won without physical conflict. They believe that if we simply protest long enough, play the political and legal game long enough, nullify long enough, refuse to participate long enough, that the elitist edifice, an edifice which has existed for centuries and has manipulated historical precedence for just as long, will suddenly disappear in a puff of fairy dust.

The first problem with this strategy is that it relies on the assumption of time. Sure, anything is possible given ample opportunity. Perhaps the movement could grind away at the New World Order over the course of several decades until the majority of the masses are awake and aware (which is exactly how long it would take). However, I think it infinitely foolish to presume that we have decades to accomplish such a task. If the past has shown us anything, it is that tyranny does not respect reason and, at a certain point, couldn’t care less about image. Tyranny respects only power. It does not respect the protestations of ants it can crush under foot, but it will make a wide path around a rattlesnake ready to strike. While there is utility in the pursuit of intellectual and philosophical combat, if you are not willing to be the rattlesnake as well, then you are not going to affect change against such an opponent. You will eventually be stepped on.

The refusal to accept responsibility for one’s own defense is yet another product of fear — fear that the enemy is too powerful, that all resistance is futile. But resistance is only assured failure if resistance is never undertaken. Sheeple defeat themselves within their own minds before they ever stand up, and so they never stand. This is the only reason totalitarian elements ever achieve success. Again, many in the liberty movement are going to face a rude awakening when they realize they have relied too much on the notion of the system policing itself, instead of preparing for the worst-case scenario.

And finally, the globalists themselves suffer from a veritable fog of illusions to which I can speak only briefly.

We are stepping over the threshold of an age that will shatter the illusions of everyone, and the internationalists are no exception. The root pillar of elitist globalism itself is that some men are born to rule, while other men are born to serve. Some men are born kings, and other men are born slaves. The psychopathy of this belief system should be evident, but psychopathy also elicits blinding ego and hubris, which smothers any inherent questions of motive. I do not think the elites ever actually consider the validity of their own philosophies. I am relatively certain their manner of viewing the world is much like that of a cult, a religious sect driven by the brutality of zealotry rather than the empowering nature of understanding.

Such men cannot be reasoned with. In fact, zealots often revel in their ability to trample all other world views as they grasp for complete dominance of their ideology. The illusion of rightness is far more important to them than actual truth, and this is their greatest weakness. Hidden under all the posturing and power grabbing, deep in the recesses of their own assumed omnipotence, I sense an ever present terror within the globalist culture. I sense a brand of terror that comes only from the seed of doubt.

The incredible array of propaganda leveled at the public, the constant war gaming and mind gaming against the citizenry, the endless hailstorm of legal maneuvering designed to erase our sense of connection with our natural rights and liberties, the tidal wave of fearmongering, and all the manipulations and scapegoats and elaborate theatrical displays, all reek of fear. For if the globalists were truly as omnipotent as they pretend to be — if they really were all-knowing philosopher kings born to rule — then they would already have their New World Order. They would not need lies. They would not need the threat of force. The undeniable power of their ideology would be enough if their ideology actually had any validity. Lies are designed to hide lack of validity and lack of strength. The globalists are, at bottom, a hollow shell desperately clamoring for substance.

What may appear to be the “thoroughness” of the elitist con is actually a form of micro-management that exhibits a fundamental doubt of success. The globalists wish they could predict the future, but they cannot. So they are just as afraid as most of humanity. I believe we are entering an era in which they will feel the stark pain of shattered illusions and the destruction of their own fantasies, no less felt than the pain of the rest of the world.

Our mission as an opposing force to globalism is to come to terms with our own illusions and to erase them, to stop compromising and to stop waiting for the final shoe to drop and to take positive action now rather than after the endgame develops. This means preparation and organization for the worst-case scenarios. This means making one’s family, neighborhood and community as self-reliant and secure as possible. The excuses have to stop. The distractions and intellectualized silver bullet solutions have to stop. Hard work and risk are all that are left, all that matters. If we do this, and if we do this now, then victory is possible. In any contest of strength and will, he who knows himself best, he who sheds all illusion, will be the winner..

 

The post We Are Entering An Era Of Shattered Illusions appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Syrian Conflict: Australia Could Run Out Of Fuel In 43 Days, Would Be ‘MAD MAX World’

Australia is at risk of running out of fuel in the next few weeks due to the ongoing conflict in Syria. The escalating situation in the war-torn country threatens to cripple the supply chains that keep Australia going.

While the International Energy Agency mandates that countries hold a stock reserve “equivalent to 90 days of net imports,” Australia only has 43 days worth of supply, the Australian reports. And that could be cut down even further if a global crisis threatens supply channels from places like the Middle East.

Low oil reserves and an over-dependence on imports is what’s driving Austrailia’s fuel concerns.  Defense Strategy and Capability at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute senior analyst Dr. Malcolm Davis says Australia’s fuel reserves would last “20 days at best” if supplies were cut off, News.com.au reports. “[Australia is] one of the few countries in the world that does not take our energy security seriously,” said Dr. Davis. “It would be a Mad Max world. Our society and our economy would begin to fall apart very quickly… [because] everything depends on fuel to make an economy run. It is very serious.”

The rather ominous forecast comes in the wake of major US-led strikes on the Syrian government. As tensions escalate and threaten to compromise international trade, this could prove dire for Australia: a nation that outsources its oil refining to such international locations as Singapore. “Instead of investing in refinement facilities here for refining fuel, the government has decided it’s cheaper to do it overseas,” said Dr. Davis. “The price they pay for that in a crisis is that China can interrupt flow to Australia [from Singapore] relatively easy and our economy falls apart.”

According to The Daily Mail UK, liberal Senator and former major general in the Australian Army Jim Molan agrees that “we [Australia] stand[s] in real trouble.” Speaking to 2GB on Monday Morning, Molan criticized the government’s passive approach to issues of fuel supply and energy security, calling it “a single point of failure for Australia.”

“The way that we seem to get around this is that we buy credits overseas which ignores the entire problem,” Nolan said. “Those credits say that if things go wrong we can buy from overseas, but hang on: our supply lines of communication by ship are likely to be either threatened or because of insurers nothing will come to us at all.”

Moreover, a chronic shortage of petrol, diesel, and aviation fuel could render the Australian military immobile, and in these times where rhetoric and tensions over a war are high, that could prove disastrous for the country.

Sheeple: Why You Should Feel Sorry For Them

It is often said there only two kinds of people in this world: those who know, and those who don’t. I would expand on this and say that there are actually three kinds of people: those who know, those who don’t know, and those who don’t care to know. Members of the last group are the kind of people I would characterize as “sheeple.”

Sheeple are members of a culture or society who are not necessarily oblivious to the reality of their surroundings; they may have been exposed to valuable truths on numerous occasions. However, when confronted with facts contrary to their conditioned viewpoint, they become aggressive and antagonistic in their behavior, seeking to dismiss and attack the truth by attacking the messenger and denying reason. Sheeple exist on both sides of America’s false political paradigm, and they exist in all social “classes”.  In fact, the “professional class” and the hierarchy of academia are rampant breeding grounds for sheeple; who I sometimes refer to as “intellectual idiots”.  Doctors and lawyers, scientists and politicians are all just as prone to the sheeple plague as anyone else; the only difference is that they have a bureaucratic apparatus behind them which gives them a false sense of importance.  All they have to do is tow the establishment line, and promote the establishment view.

Of course the common argument made by sheeple is that EVERYONE thinks everyone else is blind to the truth, which in their minds, somehow vindicates their behavior.  However, the characteristic that absolutely defines a sheeple is not necessarily a lack of knowledge, but an unwillingness to consider or embrace obvious logic or truth in order to protect their egos and biases from harm. A sheeple’s mindset is driven by self centered motives.

So-called mainstream media outlets go out of their way to reinforce this aggressive mindset by establishing the illusion that sheeple are the “majority” and that the majority perception (which has been constructed by the MSM) is the only correct perception.

Many liberty movement activists have noted recently that there has been a surge in media propaganda aimed at painting the survival,  preparedness and liberty cultures as “fringe,” “reactionary,” “extremist,” “conspiracy-minded,” etc. National Geographic’s television show “Doomsday Preppers” appears to have been designed specifically to seek out the worst possible representatives of the movement and parade their failings like a carnival sideshow. Rarely do they give focus to the logical arguments regarding why their subjects become preppers, nor do they normally choose subjects who can explain as much in a coherent manner.  This is a very similar tactic used by the establishment media at  large-scale protests; they generally attempt to interview the least-eloquent and easiest-to-ridicule person present and make that person a momentary mascot for the entire group and the philosophy they hold dear.

The goal is to give sheeple comfort that they are “normal” and that anyone who steps outside the bounds of the mainstream is “abnormal” and a welcome target for the collective.

It would appear that the life of a sheeple is a life of relative bliss. The whole of the establishment machine seems engineered to make them happy and the rest of us miserable. But is a sheeple’s existence the ideal? Are they actually happy in their ignorance? Are they truly safe within the confines of the system? Here are just a few reasons why you should feel sorry for them.

Sheeple Are Nothing Without The Collective

A sheeple gathers his entire identity from the group. He acts the way he believes the group wants him to act. He thinks the way he believes the group wants him to think.  All of his “ideas” are notions pre-approved by the mainstream.  All of his arguments and talking points are positions he heard from the media, or academia, and he has never formed an original opinion in his life.  Without the group telling him what to do, the average sheeple is lost and disoriented.  When cast into a crisis situation requiring individual initiative, he panics or becomes  apathetic, waiting for the system to come and save him rather than taking care of himself.  Sheeple are so dependent on others for every aspect of their personality and their survival that when faced with disaster, they are the most likely people to curl up and die.

Sheeple Crave Constant Approval From Others

Sheeple are not only reliant on the collective for their identity and their survival; they also need a steady supplement of approval from others in order to function day to day.  When a sheeple leaves his home, he is worried about how his appearance is perceived, how his attitude is perceived, how his lifestyle is perceived and how his opinions are perceived.  Everything he does from the moment his day begins revolves around ensuring that the collective approves of him. Even his acts of  “rebellion” are often merely approved forms of superficial “individualism” reliant on style rather than substance.  This approval becomes a kind of emotional drug to which the sheeple is addicted.  He will never make waves among the herd or stand out against any aspect of  the herd worldview, because their approval sustains and cements his very existence.  To take collective approval away from him would be like cutting off a heroin junky’s supplier.  To be shunned by the group would destroy him psychologically.

Sheeple Are Incapable Of Original Creativity

Because sheeple spend most of their waking moments trying to appease the collective, they rarely, if ever, have the energy or inclination to create something of their own.  Sheeple do not make astonishing works of art.  They do not achieve scientific discovery.  They do not make history through philosophical or ideological innovation. Instead, they regurgitate the words of others and hijack ideas from greater minds. They remain constant spectators in life, watching change from the bleachers, caught in the tides of time and tossed about like congealed satellites of Pacific Ocean garbage from the after-wash of Fukushima.  The destiny of the common sheeple is entirely determined by the outcome of wars and restorations waged by small groups of aware individuals — some of them good, some of them evil.

Sheeple Have No Passion

If you draw all of your beliefs from what the collective deems acceptable, then it is difficult, if not impossible, to become legitimately passionate about them.  Sheeple have little to no personal connection to their ideals or principles; so they become mutable, empty and uninspired.  They tend to turn toward cynicism as a way to compensate, making fun of everything, especially those who ARE  passionate about something.  The only ideal that they will fight for is the collective itself, because who they are is so intertwined with the survival of the system. To threaten the concept of the collective is to threaten the sheeple’s existence by extension.

Sheeple Are Useless

The average sheeple does not learn how to be self-reliant because it is considered “abnormal” by the mainstream to be self-reliant. The collective and the state are the provider. They are mother and father. Sheeple have full faith that the system will protect them from any and all harm.  When violence erupts, they cower and hide instead of defending themselves and others.  When large-scale catastrophe strikes, they either sit idle waiting for the state to save them or they join yet another irrational mob.  They do not take proactive measures, because  they never felt the need to learn how.

Consider this: Why do the mainstream and the people subject to it care if others prepare for disaster or end their dependency on the establishment?  Why are they so desperate to attack those of us who find our own path?  If the system is so effective and the collective so correct in its methodology, then individualists are hurting only themselves by walking away, right?  But for the sheeple, successfully self-reliant individuals become a constant reminder of their own inadequacies.  They feel that if they cannot survive without the system, NO ONE  can survive without the system; and they will make sure that individualists never prove otherwise. “You didn’t build that” becomes the sheeple motto, as they scratch and scrape like spoiled children, trying to dismantle the momentum of independent movements and ventures in non-participation.

Sheeple Are Easily Forgotten

To live a life of endless acceptance is to live a life of meaningless obscurity. When one arrives at his deathbed, does he want to reflect on all of his regrets or all of his accomplishments? Most of us would rather find joy than sadness when looking back over our past.  For sheeple, though, this will not be possible — for what have they ever done besides conform?  What will they have left behind except a world worse off than when they were born?  What will they have accomplished, but more pain and struggle for future generations?  In the end, what have  their lives really been worth?

I cannot imagine a torture more vicious and terrifying than to realize in the face of one’s final days that one wasted his entire life trying to please the plethora of idiots around him, instead of educating them and himself and molding tomorrow for the better.  I cannot imagine a punishment more severe than to spend the majority of one’s years as a slave without even knowing it.  I cannot imagine an existence more deserving of pity and remorse than that of the sheeple.

The post Sheeple: Why You Should Feel Sorry For Them appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

The American Dunning-Kruger Epidemic (Or Why Ignorant People Are So Sure They’re Right)

It’s time to address an epidemic in the United States. It’s one that could be deadly, particularly to liberty.

It’s an epidemic of Dunning-Kruger. It’s why ignorant people are so certain that they’re right.

What’s that, you ask?

The Dunning Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which individuals, who are unskilled at a particular task, believe themselves to possess above-average ability in performing the task. On the other hand, as individuals become more skilled in a particular task, they may mistakenly believe that they possess below-average ability in performing those tasks because they may assume that all others possess equal or greater ability. In other words, “the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.” (source)

And haven’t we all seen that lately? Let’s look at a recent example right here in the good ole USA.

Those who haven’t lived like the rest of us are the ones shouting the loudest.

Let’s start with the current gun control debate.

We have high school kids who think they are experts on policy, firearms, and the Constitution, smugly telling us how clueless they believe we are.

We have movie stars who make millions from movies where they shoot people and who are protected by armed security guards, telling us that we law-abiding citizens who have guns are vicariously responsible for every school shooting that has ever happened.

We have wealthy city dwellers who live in buildings with doormen telling the rest of us that we’re nuts for wanting to protect ourselves.

And all of these people who want to loudly tell the rest of us how to live our lives have one thing in common: they are completely out of touch with the real world.

When you live in your guarded castles, you don’t have to worry about defending yourself from a rapist who might break in through your bedroom window. When you’re a kid, you can’t fathom the vast responsibility one feels as a parent to protect one’s children from home invaders or kidnappers. When you haven’t yet gone out there and lived your life with jobs and crime and financial instability, you have no idea what it’s really like for the average American.

And yet, these out-of-touch people are the ones screaming the loudest that only they know what is right for America.

And that’s where the Dunning-Kruger effect comes into play.

Back in 1999, social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University performed tests on some subjects and discovered that in many cases, the lower the performance of a subject, the higher their confidence was that they had done well. They published their findings in a paper entitled, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.”

In an article by David Dunning called “We Are All Confident Idiots,” he wrote of his studies:

In 1999, in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, my then graduate student Justin Kruger and I published a paper that documented how, in many areas of life, incompetent people do not recognize—scratch that, cannot recognize—just how incompetent they are, a phenomenon that has come to be known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. Logic itself almost demands this lack of self-insight: For poor performers to recognize their ineptitude would require them to possess the very expertise they lack. To know how skilled or unskilled you are at using the rules of grammar, for instance, you must have a good working knowledge of those rules, an impossibility among the incompetent. Poor performers—and we are all poor performers at some things—fail to see the flaws in their thinking or the answers they lack.

What’s curious is that, in many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious. Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.

This isn’t just an armchair theory. A whole battery of studies conducted by myself and others have confirmed that people who don’t know much about a given set of cognitive, technical, or social skills tend to grossly overestimate their prowess and performance, whether it’s grammar, emotional intelligence, logical reasoning, firearm care and safety, debating, or financial knowledge. College students who hand in exams that will earn them Ds and Fs tend to think their efforts will be worthy of far higher grades; low-performing chess players, bridge players, and medical students, and elderly people applying for a renewed driver’s license, similarly overestimate their competence by a long shot. (source)

Hmmm….that sounds familiar.

And the way Dunning applies this to politics vividly demonstrates why we have the polarization we’re currently experiencing in the US.

Some of our most stubborn misbeliefs arise not from primitive childlike intuitions or careless category errors, but from the very values and philosophies that define who we are as individuals. Each of us possesses certain foundational beliefs—narratives about the self, ideas about the social order—that essentially cannot be violated: To contradict them would call into question our very self-worth. As such, these views demand fealty from other opinions. And any information that we glean from the world is amended, distorted, diminished, or forgotten in order to make sure that these sacrosanct beliefs remain whole and unharmed…

…Political and ideological beliefs, too, often cross over into the realm of the sacrosanct. The anthropological theory of cultural cognition suggests that people everywhere tend to sort ideologically into cultural worldviews diverging along a couple of axes: They are either individualist (favoring autonomy, freedom, and self-reliance) or communitarian (giving more weight to benefits and costs borne by the entire community); and they are either hierarchist (favoring the distribution of social duties and resources along a fixed ranking of status) or egalitarian (dismissing the very idea of ranking people according to status). According to the theory of cultural cognition, humans process information in a way that not only reflects these organizing principles, but also reinforces them. These ideological anchor points can have a profound and wide-ranging impact on what people believe, and even on what they “know” to be true.

It is perhaps not so surprising to hear that facts, logic, and knowledge can be bent to accord with a person’s subjective worldview; after all, we accuse our political opponents of this kind of “motivated reasoning” all the time. But the extent of this bending can be remarkable. In ongoing work with the political scientist Peter Enns, my lab has found that a person’s politics can warp other sets of logical or factual beliefs so much that they come into direct contradiction with one another. (source)

And most importantly:

Sacrosanct ideological commitments can also drive us to develop quick, intense opinions on topics we know virtually nothing about. (source)

This isn’t just about gun control, though.

This article isn’t just about the hot-button topic of gun control. It’s about how we’re living our everyday lives.

Here’s an example: People either love President Trump so much they are unwilling to see any wrongdoing or they despise him to the point that they are unwilling to recognize any right-doing. Most people’s analyses of the actions of the President are completely warped by their sacrosanct ideologies of whether he is “good” or “bad.” They don’t weigh the merits of the actions – instead, they judge them from a place of deeply committed cognitive bias.

The same thing is true for many topics:

• Illegal immigration


• Freedom of speech


• Political ideologies


• Economic theories


• Gay rights


• Abortion


• The right to bear arms


• Taxes


• The bathroom drama at Target

All of us – myself included – can look at the list above and immediately say whether we are for or against these things, and what our specific belief is – but do we honestly know the details of these topics? Are our opinions sourced from cognitive bias or fact?

I have biases. You have them. We all do. However, the ability to recognize your own cognitive bias and not useit as “evidence” in a debate is the gold standard of intelligence.

This isn’t something that is going to change.

It’s completely normal for us to base our opinions on our own moral beliefs. As Dunning wrote, we are, at heart, either individualist or communitarian, hierchist or egalitarian. These are core attributes that would be difficult, if not impossible, to change.

But what we CAN do is make a conscious effort to catch ourselves when we make rapid judgment calls without the facts. We can educate ourselves on both sides of an issue and make an effort to use facts instead of feelings in our arguments.

What we CANNOT do is expect everyone to play by these rules. But that’s okay because by understanding how an opposing view was developed, we can use that to fuel our own arguments. We can call out the cognitive biases. What we can’t expect is for facts to change their deeply held beliefs, no matter how ignorant those beliefs might be.

We can correct the lack of information, but we can’t really expect someone with a confident, sacrosanct opinion to change their minds. They’ll hold on to a belief even after it is proven factually incorrect because, as Dunning said, “We are all confident idiots.” Remember, facts have nothing to do with why they have their points of view.

The good news is that there are folks in the middle, who may not have a deeply held opinion on hot-button topics. These are the folks who can be reached by logic and facts.  It’s nearly impossible to battle confident ignorance, but with facts, you can influence people who are undecided.

If you ask me what is going to be the end of our civilization, the rampant epidemic of Dunning-Kruger seems to be the most likely cause. Let’s not be guilty of this confident ignorance ourselves. Let’s vow to inoculate ourselves with facts instead of enabling ourselves with emotional biases.

Hat tip to Suzanne

The post The American Dunning-Kruger Epidemic (Or Why Ignorant People Are So Sure They’re Right) appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

How To Recognize When Your Society Is Suffering A Dramatic Decline

 

(Alt-Market) When historians and analysts look at the factors surrounding the collapse of a society, they often focus on the larger events and indicators — the moments of infamy. However, I think it’s important to consider the reality that large scale societal decline is built upon a mixture of elements, prominent as well as small. Collapse is a process, not a singular event. It happens over time, not overnight. It is a spectrum of moments and terrible choices, set in motion in most cases by people in positions of power, but helped along by useful idiots among the masses. The decline of a nation or civilization requires the complicity of a host of saboteurs.

So, instead of focusing on the top down approach, which is rather common, let’s start from the foundations of our culture to better understand why there is clear and definable destabilization.

Declining Moral Compass

There is always a conflict between personal gain and personal conscience — this is the nature of being human. But in a stable society, these two things tend to balance out. Not so during societal decline, as personal gain (and even personal comfort and gratification) tends to greatly outweigh the checks and balances of moral principles.

People often mistake the term “morality” to be a religious creation, but this is not what I am necessarily referring to. The concepts of “good” and “evil” are archetypal — that is to say they are psychologically inherent in most human beings from the moment of birth. This is not a matter of faith, but a matter of fact, observed by those in the field of psychology and anthropology over the course of a century of study.  How we relate to these concepts can be affected by our environment and upbringing, but for the most part, our moral compass is psychologically ingrained. It is up to us to either follow it or not follow it.

Watching how people handle this choice is a bit of hobby of mine, and I do take notes. You can learn a lot about the state of your environment by observing what people around you tend to do when faced with the conflict of personal gain versus personal conscience. It is saddening to admit that even though I live in rural America, where you are more likely to find self-reliance and cultural stability, I can still see a faltering nation bleeding through.

I have seen supposedly good people act dishonestly in business agreements. I have seen local institutions scam hardworking citizens. I have seen a court system rife with bias and a “good old boy” attitude of favoritism. I have seen local companies pretend to be benevolent contributors to the community while at the same time running constant frauds and rackets. I have even seen a few people within the liberty movement itself put the movement at risk with their own avarice, gluttony, narcissism and sociopathy.

Again, it is important to make a note of such people and institutions, for as the system continues its downward spiral it is these people that will present the greatest threat to the innocent.

As Carl Jung notes in his book The Undiscovered Self, there is always a contingent of latent sociopaths and psychopaths within any culture; usually about 10% of the population. In normal times, they, at least most of them, are forced into moral acclimation by the rest of the populace. But in times of decline, they seem to leak out of the woodwork like a slimy fungus. During heightened collapse, they no longer have to pretend to be upstanding and they show their true colors.

Most dangerous is when latent sociopaths or full blown sociopaths assume roles of leadership or power during the worst of times. With everyone distracted by their own plight, these people can become a cancer, infecting everything with their narcissistic pursuits and causing destruction in their wake.

Disinterest In Rewarding Conscience

During wider cultural collapse, it can become “fashionable” to see acts of principle as something to be scoffed at or ridiculed or to even see them as threats to the status quo. The concept of “going along to get along” takes precedence over doing what is right even when it is hard; this attitude is not relegated to the less honest people within society.

As a system collapses, a fog of apathy can result. Good people can become passive, scrambling to their individual corner of the world and hoping evil times will simply pass them by. The phrase “I just want to put all this behind me” is spoken regularly; but as we ignore the trespasses of terrible men and women, we also enable them. How? Because by doing nothing we allow them to continue their criminality, and we subject future persons and generations to victimization.

When doing the right thing is treated as laughable or “crazy” by what seems like a majority in the midst of widespread corruption, you are truly in the middle of a great decline.

In Christian circles, the idea of “the remnant” is sometimes spoken of. In Christian terms, this usually represents a minority of true believers surviving a tumultuous and immoral era. I see “the remnant” not so much as a contingent of Christians alone, but as a contingent of people that continue to maintain their principles and conscience when faced with unprecedented adversity. In the worst of times, these people remain stalwart, even if they are ridiculed for it.

Disinterest In Independent Effort

It is said that in this world there are two kinds of people — leaders and followers.  I’m not so sure about that, but I can see why this philosophy is promoted; it helps evil people in power stay in power by encouraging passive acceptance.

I would say that there are in fact two kinds of people in this world — people who want to control others and the people that just want to be left alone. In life sometimes we are both leaders and followers; we just have to be sure that when we lead we lead by example and not by force, and when we follow, we follow someone worth a damn.

In any case, passivity is not a solution to determining our roles in society. In most situations, independent action is required by every person to make the world a better place. Yet, in an era of systemic crisis, it is usually independent effort that is the first thing to go out the window. Millions upon millions of people wait around for someone, anyone, to tell them what they should be doing and how they should be doing it. In this way, society finds itself in stasis, frozen in a position of inaction. Poisonous collectivism wins through mass aggression, but also through mass passivity.

In fact, when individualists do take action they can be admonished for it during times of societal breakdown, even if their actions have the potential to solve a problem. The idea that one man or woman (or a small group of people) could do anything about anything is sneered at as “fantasy” or “delusion.”  But mass movements of citizens working towards a practical goal are rare, and even more rare is when these movements are not controlled or manipulated to benefit the established order. It is not mass movements that change the world for the better, but individual people and small organizations of the dedicated, acting without permission and without administration.

It is these individuals and small groups that, over time and through relentless effort, inspire a majority to do what is necessary and right. It is these people that inspire others to finally take leadership in their own lives.

Individual Self-Isolation

I write often on the plight of the individual and individual rights within society, and I continue to see the factor of the individual as the most important element in any culture. A culture based on protecting and nurturing individualism and voluntarism is the only culture, in my view, that will ever be successful at avoiding full spectrum collapse. That said, the downside to overt individualism is the danger of self isolation. That is to say, when true individuals only concern themselves with their personal circumstances and ignore the circumstances of the rest of the world, they eventually set themselves up to be crushed by that world.

Organization on a voluntary basis is not only healthy but vital in the longevity of a society. The more people turn in on themselves and only care about their own general conditions, the easier it is for evil people to do evil things unnoticed. Also, self isolation in the wake of collapse sets individuals up for failure, as no one is capable of surviving without at least some help from a wider pool of knowledge and talents.

In a system based on corruption, the establishment will encourage self isolation as a means to control the populace. Or, they will offer a false choice, between self isolation versus mindless collectivism. The truth is there is always a middle ground. Voluntary organization and individualism are not mutually exclusive. I call this the “difference between community and collectivism.” A community does not supplant the individual, while a collective requires the complete erasure of individual pursuits and thought.

If you find yourself surrounded by people who refuse any organization, even practical and voluntary organization in the face of instability, then your society may be in the latter stages of a collapse.

Disaster Denial

Even as a crisis or collapse unfolds, if a society actually reels or reacts to it and takes note of the problem, there is hope for that society. If, however, that society willfully ignores the danger and denies it exists when presented with overwhelming evidence, then that society will likely suffer complete disintegration and will probably have to start all over from scratch — hopefully with a set of principles and ideals based on conscience and honor.

The strength of a culture can be measured by its willingness to self reflect. Its survival can be determined by its willingness to accept its flaws when they arise and its willingness to repair the damage done. Self-aware societies are difficult to corrupt or control. Only in denial can people be easily manipulated and enslaved.

If you cannot accept the reality of the abyss, you cannot move to avoid it or prepare yourself to survive the fall. I see this issue as perhaps the single most important element in the fight to save the portions of our society worth saving. Educating people on the blatant facts behind our own national decline can dissolve the wall of denial, and perhaps we will find when disaster strikes that there are far more awake and aware individuals ready to act than we originally thought.

 

 

 

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The post How To Recognize When Your Society Is Suffering A Dramatic Decline appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

How To Recognize When Your Society Is Suffering A Dramatic Decline

This article was originally published by Brandon Smith at Alt-Market.com

When historians and analysts look at the factors surrounding the collapse of a society, they often focus on the larger events and indicators — the moments of infamy. However, I think it’s important to consider the reality that large scale societal decline is built upon a mixture of elements, prominent as well as small. Collapse is a process, not a singular event. It happens over time, not overnight. It is a spectrum of moments and terrible choices, set in motion in most cases by people in positions of power, but helped along by useful idiots among the masses. The decline of a nation or civilization requires the complicity of a host of saboteurs.

So, instead of focusing on the top down approach, which is rather common, let’s start from the foundations of our culture to better understand why there is clear and definable destabilization.

Declining Moral Compass

There is always a conflict between personal gain and personal conscience — this is the nature of being human. But in a stable society, these two things tend to balance out. Not so during societal decline, as personal gain (and even personal comfort and gratification) tends to greatly outweigh the checks and balances of moral principles.

People often mistake the term “morality” to be a religious creation, but this is not what I am necessarily referring to. The concepts of “good” and “evil” are archetypal — that is to say they are psychologically inherent in most human beings from the moment of birth. This is not a matter of faith, but a matter of fact, observed by those in the field of psychology and anthropology over the course of a century of study. How we relate to these concepts can be affected by our environment and upbringing, but for the most part, our moral compass is psychologically ingrained. It is up to us to either follow it or not follow it.

Watching how people handle this choice is a bit of hobby of mine, and I do take notes. You can learn a lot about the state of your environment by observing what people around you tend to do when faced with the conflict of personal gain versus personal conscience. It is saddening to admit that even though I live in rural America, where you are more likely to find self-reliance and cultural stability, I can still see a faltering nation bleeding through.

I have seen supposedly good people act dishonestly in business agreements. I have seen local institutions scam hardworking citizens. I have seen a court system rife with bias and a “good old boy” attitude of favoritism. I have seen local companies pretend to be benevolent contributors to the community while at the same time running constant frauds and rackets. I have even seen a few people within the liberty movement itself put the movement at risk with their own avarice, gluttony, narcissism and sociopathy.

Again, it is important to make a note of such people and institutions, for as the system continues its downward spiral it is these people that will present the greatest threat to the innocent.

As Carl Jung notes in his book The Undiscovered Self, there is always a contingent of latent sociopaths and psychopaths within any culture; usually about 10% of the population. In normal times, they, at least most of them, are forced into moral acclimation by the rest of the populace. But in times of decline, they seem to leak out of the woodwork like a slimy fungus. During heightened collapse, they no longer have to pretend to be upstanding and they show their true colors.

Most dangerous is when latent sociopaths or full blown sociopaths assume roles of leadership or power during the worst of times. With everyone distracted by their own plight, these people can become a cancer, infecting everything with their narcissistic pursuits and causing destruction in their wake.

Disinterest In Rewarding Conscience

During wider cultural collapse, it can become “fashionable” to see acts of principle as something to be scoffed at or ridiculed or to even see them as threats to the status quo. The concept of “going along to get along” takes precedence over doing what is right even when it is hard; this attitude is not relegated to the less honest people within society.

As a system collapses, a fog of apathy can result. Good people can become passive, scrambling to their individual corner of the world and hoping evil times will simply pass them by. The phrase “I just want to put all this behind me” is spoken regularly; but as we ignore the trespasses of terrible men and women, we also enable them. How? Because by doing nothing we allow them to continue their criminality, and we subject future persons and generations to victimization.

When doing the right thing is treated as laughable or “crazy” by what seems like a majority in the midst of widespread corruption, you are truly in the middle of a great decline.

In Christian circles, the idea of “the remnant” is sometimes spoken of. In Christian terms, this usually represents a minority of true believers surviving a tumultuous and immoral era. I see “the remnant” not so much as a contingent of Christians alone, but as a contingent of people that continue to maintain their principles and conscience when faced with unprecedented adversity. In the worst of times, these people remain stalwart, even if they are ridiculed for it.

Disinterest In Independent Effort

It is said that in this world there are two kinds of people — leaders and followers. I’m not so sure about that, but I can see why this philosophy is promoted; it helps evil people in power stay in power by encouraging passive acceptance.

I would say that there are in fact two kinds of people in this world — people who want to control others and the people that just want to be left alone. In life sometimes we are both leaders and followers; we just have to be sure that when we lead we lead by example and not by force, and when we follow, we follow someone worth a damn.

In any case, passivity is not a solution to determining our roles in society. In most situations, independent action is required by every person to make the world a better place. Yet, in an era of systemic crisis, it is usually independent effort that is the first thing to go out the window. Millions upon millions of people wait around for someone, anyone, to tell them what they should be doing and how they should be doing it. In this way, society finds itself in stasis, frozen in a position of inaction. Poisonous collectivism wins through mass aggression, but also through mass passivity.

In fact, when individualists do take action they can be admonished for it during times of societal breakdown, even if their actions have the potential to solve a problem. The idea that one man or woman (or a small group of people) could do anything about anything is sneered at as “fantasy” or “delusion.” But mass movements of citizens working towards a practical goal are rare, and even more rare is when these movements are not controlled or manipulated to benefit the established order. It is not mass movements that change the world for the better, but individual people and small organizations of the dedicated, acting without permission and without administration.

It is these individuals and small groups that, over time and through relentless effort, inspire a majority to do what is necessary and right. It is these people that inspire others to finally take leadership in their own lives.

Individual Self-Isolation

I write often on the plight of the individual and individual rights within society, and I continue to see the factor of the individual as the most important element in any culture. A culture based on protecting and nurturing individualism and voluntarism is the only culture, in my view, that will ever be successful at avoiding full spectrum collapse. That said, the downside to overt individualism is the danger of self isolation. That is to say, when true individuals only concern themselves with their personal circumstances and ignore the circumstances of the rest of the world, they eventually set themselves up to be crushed by that world.

Organization on a voluntary basis is not only healthy but vital in the longevity of a society. The more people turn in on themselves and only care about their own general conditions, the easier it is for evil people to do evil things unnoticed. Also, self isolation in the wake of collapse sets individuals up for failure, as no one is capable of surviving without at least some help from a wider pool of knowledge and talents.

In a system based on corruption, the establishment will encourage self isolation as a means to control the populace. Or, they will offer a false choice, between self isolation versus mindless collectivism. The truth is there is always a middle ground. Voluntary organization and individualism are not mutually exclusive. I call this the “difference between community and collectivism.” A community does not supplant the individual, while a collective requires the complete erasure of individual pursuits and thought.

If you find yourself surrounded by people who refuse any organization, even practical and voluntary organization in the face of instability, then your society may be in the latter stages of a collapse.

Disaster Denial

Even as a crisis or collapse unfolds, if a society actually reels or reacts to it and takes note of the problem, there is hope for that society. If, however, that society willfully ignores the danger and denies it exists when presented with overwhelming evidence, then that society will likely suffer complete disintegration and will probably have to start all over from scratch — hopefully with a set of principles and ideals based on conscience and honor.

The strength of a culture can be measured by its willingness to self reflect. Its survival can be determined by its willingness to accept its flaws when they arise and its willingness to repair the damage done. Self-aware societies are difficult to corrupt or control. Only in denial can people be easily manipulated and enslaved.

If you cannot accept the reality of the abyss, you cannot move to avoid it or prepare yourself to survive the fall. I see this issue as perhaps the single most important element in the fight to save the portions of our society worth saving. Educating people on the blatant facts behind our own national decline can dissolve the wall of denial, and perhaps we will find when disaster strikes that there are far more awake and aware individuals ready to act than we originally thought.

If you would like to support the publishing of articles like the one you have just read, visit our donations page here. We greatly appreciate your patronage.

You can contact Brandon Smith at: brandon@alt-market.com

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The Tools Collectivists Use To Gain Power

(Alt-Market.com) While many divisions within our society are arbitrary or engineered, there is one division that represents perhaps the most pervasive and important conflict of our time; the division between collectivists and individualists.

Now, people who do not understand the nature of collectivism will often argue that individualism and collectivism are not mutually exclusive because individuals require groups in order to survive and thrive. However, a “group” is not necessarily a collective.

For some reason the core fundamental of collectivism – the use of psychological coercion or physical force to compel participation – goes right over the heads of many skeptics. A group does not have to be collectivist. Any group can and should be voluntary. Collectivism is NOT voluntary. Therefore, collectivism and individualism are indeed mutually exclusive. Collectivists and individualists cannot exist in the same space at the same time without eventually coming into conflict. There is simply no way around it.

From the position of the liberty minded (or the average Libertarian), collectivism is by far the inferior of the two philosophies. Collectivists often boast of the social and economic “harmonization” collectivism creates, as well as the mobilization of labor to “streamline progress.” The reality is that artificially rigged harmony is no harmony at all. If people are forced to homogenize and get along through fear, then peace has not truly been accomplished.

Human beings must come to their own conclusions on cooperation and tolerance in their own time. They cannot be manipulated and shoehorned into a “utopian” framework. Problems will result, like genocide, which tends to erupt during almost every attempt at collectivist utopianism.

Economic harmonization is even less practical, with government force inevitably used to confiscate resources from one group to give to another group, essentially punishing success or frugality. This creates an environment in which achievement becomes less desirable. When people do not have individual incentive to pursue achievement, they see personal effort as wasted. Innovation and entrepreneurship fall by the wayside, and society as a whole begins to diminish in prosperity. Without individual accomplishments and ingenuity, the group is nothing but a hollow mindless ant hill.

Another argument which usually arises is that individualism leads to “selfishness” and the dominance of wealth devouring machines like corporations. I would remind collectivists that corporations exist only through the legal framework and protections of corporate personhood created by governments, and without government protections and favor, corporations could not exist. It is by collectivism, not individualism, that corporatocracy thrives.

At the same time, collectivists consistently blame individualist “free markets” for the numerous ailments of nations.  Yet another misrepresentation considering America has not had true free markets in well over a century, and most other nations have never had true free markets in their history.  Feudalism and its child Socialism have always been present to plague mankind.

There are no merits to collectivism that are not accomplished with greater success by individualism and voluntary community. In fact, collectivism only serves to enrich and empower a select few elites while destroying the future potential of all other individuals.

Given the disturbing nature of collectivism, one would think that attempts at collectivist societies would be a rarity, shunned by most people as akin to inviting cancer into the body. Unfortunately, cultures based on individualism are the minority in history.

The average collectivist is not usually much of a beneficiary of collectivism. We call these people “useful idiots” or “sheeple” who unknowingly serve the darker machinations of elitists while under the delusion that they are changing society for the better. The reason useful idiots participate in collectivism are many, but I have found that across the spectrum these people tend to be weak willed, weak minded, and by extension, possess a rabid desire for control over others.

It is perhaps no coincidence that “intellectuals” (self proclaimed) tend to end up at the forefront of modern efforts for collectivism. While the poor and destitute are often exploited by collectivism as a mob to be wielded like a battering ram, it is the soft noodle-bodied and fearful academia that acts as middle management in the collectivist franchise. It is they that desire the power to impose their “superior” ideologies on others, and since they are too weak to accomplish anything on their own, they require the cover and momentum of collectivist movements to give them the totalitarian fix they so crave. In other words, they believe in humanitarianism by totalitarianism.

Individualism is under constant and imminent threat as the collectivist obsession with control grows. The ultimate end game of collectivists is to derive submission from individuals, to corner people into handing over their individualism willingly.  It is not enough for them to merely apply force, the greatest power is in the power of consent.  Here are the most common tools used by collectivists to obtain power and manufacture consent from the masses.

The Illusion Of Consensus

Collectivists rely greatly on the force of a well-aimed mob to convince the general public they have the consensus position; that they are in the majority. Appearing to be in the majority is the single most important goal of a collectivist movement, even if they are in reality a small minority. The anonymity of web activism gives the force of the mob a new potency. No more than a dozen collectivists working in tandem can wreak havoc in multiple web forums or harass numerous individualist publications while giving casual readers the impression that their ideology is “everywhere.”

The key here is that collectivists understand that the average person does not want to be seen as too contrary to the majority. They understand that the majority view matters to the public, even if the majority view is utterly wrong. If collectivists can convince enough people that their ideology is the majority view, they know that many people will blindly adopt that ideology as their own in order to fit in. The lie of consensus then becomes a self perpetuating prophecy. This problem will remain forever a danger as long as people continue to care at all about the majority view.

The Destruction Of Core Institutions

Those institutions people consider “core institutions” are sometimes vital, and sometimes not. That said, it is the openly admitted objective of collectivists through socialist-style movements to destroy core institutions so that there is no competition to their new system. A collectivist society cannot allow citizens to have any loyalties beyond their loyalty to the group or the state.

So, individual liberties must be degraded or removed, as per the constant reinterpretation of the Constitution as a “living document.”  Religious institutions must be painted as shameful affairs for stupid barbaric cave-people. And, the family unit must be broken apart. This is done through economic depravity so pronounced that families never see each other, through state influence over children through public schooling, and through identity politics and propaganda which create sexual and racial conflicts out of thin air.

Dominating Discussion

This coincides with the idea of artificial consensus, but it goes beyond the use of the mob. In our daily lives we are now bombarded with collectivist messages — in mainstream news, in television shows, in movies, through web media and print media. The money behind these outlets belongs to a very small and select group of people, but through them the collectivist worldview is injected into every corner of our society. I would call this propaganda by attrition; an indirect but steady insertion of collectivism creating an atmosphere in which the ideology becomes commonplace even though it is being promoted by a limited number of people.

Exploiting The Youth

When we are young, most of us spend a great deal of time and energy working to be taken seriously. The question is, should we be taken seriously?

In my view and the view of the liberty minded, it really depends on the person’s actions, experience, efforts and accomplishments. Most younger people have little to no experience in life and haven’t had the time to accomplish much. They are still learning how to function in the world, and what kind of goals they want to pursue (if they ever pursue any goals). Because of this, it is hard for those of us who have gone through considerable struggles in life and reached a certain level of achievement to take them seriously when they decide to stroll into a room and pontificate on their moral and philosophical superiority. It makes me want to ask; what the hell have you ever accomplished?

This is not to say that there are not ingenious young people out there, or ignorant and lazy older folks. There are. But collectivist movements seek to exploit younger generations exactly because of their general lack of experience and naivety, as well as their feelings of entitlement when it comes to respect.

Collectivism almost always utilizes a theory called “futurism” in order to appeal to the young. The theory, which was a leading philosophy behind the rise of fascism, proclaims that all new ideas are superior in their social usefulness and all old ideas and beliefs should be abandoned like so much dead skin. According to futurism, those who cling to old ideas and principles are an obstacle to the progress of society as a whole.

The funny thing is, the ideas usually expounded by collectivists are as old as time — elitism, feudalism, totalitarianism, etc. None of these methodologies are “new” by any stretch of the imagination, but collectivists repackage them as if they are some grand new secret to Shangri-La. Younger adherents of collectivism latch onto futurism almost immediately. For, if all new ideas are superior, and all old ideas are barbaric, and younger people are the purveyors and consumers of everything new, then this means that it is the youngest generations that are the wisest, and the village elders that are naïve. By default, the young become the village elders without them ever having to struggle, make sacrifices, learn hard lessons, suffer loss, rise to challenges, or accomplish anything.

The enticing nature of this sudden groundswell of cultural respect is simply far too much for the average person college age or younger to ignore. Collectivism gives the young what they think they want, then uses them as tools for greater conquests.

Forcing Society To Accept The Lowest Common Denominator

Collectivism requires the homogenization of society, to the point that individualism is frowned upon and success is treated as negligible. Whether it is public schools lowering standards to the point that students with little or no reading comprehension graduate, or businesses being forced to lower standards in the name of “diversity” while rejecting employees with superior skill sets because they do not belong to a designated victim group, or government institutions like the military lowering physical standards to accommodate far weaker candidates in the name of “gender parity” while putting every soldier’s life at risk in the process, we are constantly being asked to accommodate the lowest common denominator instead of reaching for the highest level of excellence.

This makes the concept of success a bit of a joke. For “success” within such a system is easy as long as one follows the rules; excelling as an individual is not a factor. And by success I mean being allowed to survive, because that is the best you are going to get in a collectivist structure. The only way to fail is to not follow the rules, rules which may be arbitrary or idiotic at their core. Individualists are immediately punished for thinking or acting outside the box, when this is exactly the kind of behavior that should be encouraged. A society built on the lowest common denominator is a society destined for collapse. Individuals are systematically weeded out in the name of homogenization and all of their potential achievements and innovations disappear with them.

The nightmare of collectivism is the defining battle of our age. It is in this era that we will decide whether or not individual liberty and freedom of thought are more important than the illusory security and “harmony” of the collective.

I, for one, long to see a future in which individual enterprise is allowed to thrive and voluntary participation is the root principle on which our culture functions; a future in which state power is reduced to zero, or near zero, and government force is no longer an acceptable means by which one group can seek to control another group. I may not see this world in my lifetime, but the liberty-minded can make it possible for newer generations by avidly defending ourselves against collectivism today. As pointed out in the beginning, collectivism and individualism cannot coexist; confrontation is inevitable. Recognizing this, and preparing for it, is our duty as free human beings.

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