Post by jeffolie on Dec 30, 2012 18:28:12 GMT -6
Illusion & Credibility Trap
www.jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/12/empires-of-illusion-and-credibility-trap.html
Jesse's site features an attack on America's politics.
Jesse's site features a criticism of our culture as one promoting illusion, celebrity over reality. The focus on illusion is magical thinking such as happened in fallen empires.
==============================================
30 December 2012
Empires of Illusion and the Credibility Trap
I came across a nice, compact interview with Chris Hedges which illuminates his thesis of the decline of the American Empire and the illusory thinking that accompanies it. Can the shock and meltdown of Karl Rove on election night be any better contemporary illustration of the power of selective thinking to delude a group of seemingly rational people to their own downfall?
The end of empires and the accompanying sea change of social organization are always remarkable for their extremes of human behaviour. The almost frenetic preoccupation and adherence to the Nazi ideology in the latter stages of the war, when it was obvious to any rational observer that they could not win, is remarkable.
I had been particularly struck in my reading some time ago with the 'wolf packs' of Nazis who had raged through Berlin, rounding up old men, and even boys who had not joined the Volkssturm, and hanging them, even while the Russians were shelling the Reichstag. It never made sense to me until today.
"The radio announced that Hitler had come out of his safe bomb-proof bunker to talk with the fourteen to sixteen year old boys who had 'volunteered' for the 'honor' to be accepted into the SS and to die for their Fuhrer in the defense of Berlin. What a cruel lie! These boys did not volunteer, but had no choice, because boys who were found hiding were hanged as traitors by the SS as a warning that, 'he who was not brave enough to fight had to die.'
When trees were not available, people were strung up on lamp posts. They were hanging everywhere, military and civilian, men and women, ordinary citizens who had been executed by a small group of fanatics. It appeared that the Nazis did not want the people to survive because a lost war, by their rationale, was obviously the fault of all of us. We had not sacrificed enough and therefore, we had forfeited our right to live, as only the government was without guilt."
Dorothea von Schwanenfluegel, Eyewitness account, Fall of Berlin 1945
I was reminded of this phenomenon by the trial of Sophie Scholl, and her words to the judge Roland Freisler, as he ranted his virulent condemnations at them. 'Soon you will be in our place,' she said to him. He did escape the hangman's noose at Nuremburg, but only by virtue of an Allied bomb in 1945. When his body was brought to hospital an orderly remarked, 'It was God's verdict.' He was buried in an unmarked grave, without ceremony and unmourned. Much like his beloved Fuhrer.
This is an almost perfect illustration of the credibility trap. One cannot allow the illusion to falter, even a little, to the bitter end. And as the fraud fades, the force intensifies, becoming almost rabid in its deflection. Because that illusion has become the center of a hollowed people's being, their raison d'être, a mythological justification for their existence.
If the ideology had been a lie, then they are not heroes and gods on earth, but monsters and criminals, and their life has been self-serving and meaningless, without significance and honor. And that is the credibility trap. It is the impulse for the leaders to keep doubling down in the hope of a win, until exhaustion and collapse.
"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
John Harrington
And this is the US financial system today.
www.jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/12/empires-of-illusion-and-credibility-trap.html
==================================
[these are my jeffolie notes on the video Jesse's site featured]
We are borrowing to sustain an empire we can not afford as the most power, virtuos nation in the world in magical thinking that America is true exceptional.
The qualities that are celebrated are the ability to manipulate, promote yourself to achieve money, fame with the lack of understanding the capacity for the common good above promoting oneself. ... warping perception of reality
US is a pornified society ... porn makes 4 times the money as Hollywood targeting 12 to 18 olds on the internet as an errotizing of violence leaving the porn stars battered and bruised from shooting the porn. Linking gonzo porn to the elite empire of illusion.
The education system withers the humanities introspection of challenging assumptions by a code for moral autonomy with system specialists awarding skills rather than wisdom. Preparing parasitic money speculators moving truckloads of money at an already failling system. Drone intelligence is celebrated over challenging the corporate state.
Confusing celebrity with knowledge.
Devistating for the working class of manufacturing industries shipped from Mexico at $.90 per hour to China. Leaving positive psychologists such as Tony Robbins dismissing the bleak by magical thinking to overcome reality by TV, etc permeating Human Resources in corporatism examplified with corporate retreats promoting happy conformity within the organization not allowing dissent similar to Maoist pernicious corporate psychologists promoting being happy, cheerful fake veiner. We are the stazi breaking souls without outside input at corporate retreats.
Military Industrial complex as corporate socialism.
The illusion that military spending will sustain US
Gas at $5 gallon will destroy our food producing system. An environmental crisis of methane chimneys from the artic.
No hope of 'trust busters' in US.
Inteverted totalitarism not around a single leader ... makes democracy in US politics subverted to economics such as the TARP bailout passing because the corporation wanted it passed dispite the public opposing TARP.
www.jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/12/empires-of-illusion-and-credibility-trap.html
Jesse's site features an attack on America's politics.
Jesse's site features a criticism of our culture as one promoting illusion, celebrity over reality. The focus on illusion is magical thinking such as happened in fallen empires.
==============================================
30 December 2012
Empires of Illusion and the Credibility Trap
I came across a nice, compact interview with Chris Hedges which illuminates his thesis of the decline of the American Empire and the illusory thinking that accompanies it. Can the shock and meltdown of Karl Rove on election night be any better contemporary illustration of the power of selective thinking to delude a group of seemingly rational people to their own downfall?
The end of empires and the accompanying sea change of social organization are always remarkable for their extremes of human behaviour. The almost frenetic preoccupation and adherence to the Nazi ideology in the latter stages of the war, when it was obvious to any rational observer that they could not win, is remarkable.
I had been particularly struck in my reading some time ago with the 'wolf packs' of Nazis who had raged through Berlin, rounding up old men, and even boys who had not joined the Volkssturm, and hanging them, even while the Russians were shelling the Reichstag. It never made sense to me until today.
"The radio announced that Hitler had come out of his safe bomb-proof bunker to talk with the fourteen to sixteen year old boys who had 'volunteered' for the 'honor' to be accepted into the SS and to die for their Fuhrer in the defense of Berlin. What a cruel lie! These boys did not volunteer, but had no choice, because boys who were found hiding were hanged as traitors by the SS as a warning that, 'he who was not brave enough to fight had to die.'
When trees were not available, people were strung up on lamp posts. They were hanging everywhere, military and civilian, men and women, ordinary citizens who had been executed by a small group of fanatics. It appeared that the Nazis did not want the people to survive because a lost war, by their rationale, was obviously the fault of all of us. We had not sacrificed enough and therefore, we had forfeited our right to live, as only the government was without guilt."
Dorothea von Schwanenfluegel, Eyewitness account, Fall of Berlin 1945
I was reminded of this phenomenon by the trial of Sophie Scholl, and her words to the judge Roland Freisler, as he ranted his virulent condemnations at them. 'Soon you will be in our place,' she said to him. He did escape the hangman's noose at Nuremburg, but only by virtue of an Allied bomb in 1945. When his body was brought to hospital an orderly remarked, 'It was God's verdict.' He was buried in an unmarked grave, without ceremony and unmourned. Much like his beloved Fuhrer.
This is an almost perfect illustration of the credibility trap. One cannot allow the illusion to falter, even a little, to the bitter end. And as the fraud fades, the force intensifies, becoming almost rabid in its deflection. Because that illusion has become the center of a hollowed people's being, their raison d'être, a mythological justification for their existence.
If the ideology had been a lie, then they are not heroes and gods on earth, but monsters and criminals, and their life has been self-serving and meaningless, without significance and honor. And that is the credibility trap. It is the impulse for the leaders to keep doubling down in the hope of a win, until exhaustion and collapse.
"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
John Harrington
And this is the US financial system today.
www.jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/12/empires-of-illusion-and-credibility-trap.html
==================================
[these are my jeffolie notes on the video Jesse's site featured]
We are borrowing to sustain an empire we can not afford as the most power, virtuos nation in the world in magical thinking that America is true exceptional.
The qualities that are celebrated are the ability to manipulate, promote yourself to achieve money, fame with the lack of understanding the capacity for the common good above promoting oneself. ... warping perception of reality
US is a pornified society ... porn makes 4 times the money as Hollywood targeting 12 to 18 olds on the internet as an errotizing of violence leaving the porn stars battered and bruised from shooting the porn. Linking gonzo porn to the elite empire of illusion.
The education system withers the humanities introspection of challenging assumptions by a code for moral autonomy with system specialists awarding skills rather than wisdom. Preparing parasitic money speculators moving truckloads of money at an already failling system. Drone intelligence is celebrated over challenging the corporate state.
Confusing celebrity with knowledge.
Devistating for the working class of manufacturing industries shipped from Mexico at $.90 per hour to China. Leaving positive psychologists such as Tony Robbins dismissing the bleak by magical thinking to overcome reality by TV, etc permeating Human Resources in corporatism examplified with corporate retreats promoting happy conformity within the organization not allowing dissent similar to Maoist pernicious corporate psychologists promoting being happy, cheerful fake veiner. We are the stazi breaking souls without outside input at corporate retreats.
Military Industrial complex as corporate socialism.
The illusion that military spending will sustain US
Gas at $5 gallon will destroy our food producing system. An environmental crisis of methane chimneys from the artic.
No hope of 'trust busters' in US.
Inteverted totalitarism not around a single leader ... makes democracy in US politics subverted to economics such as the TARP bailout passing because the corporation wanted it passed dispite the public opposing TARP.