by glubglubglub » Wed Nov 09, 2005 7:12 pm
as a long-time reader of xymphora I can tell you that something weird's happened -- a major shift in writing style since ~ a year ago or so, and a sublter shift in outlook...I suspect that the site was always an intelligence/disinfo outlet of sorts, but it recently may have been seized and/or repurposed to serve a slightly different agenda. Caveat lector, I suppose: the only issue w. xymphora is who's puting the info out, not that it is official (dis)info or propaganda from somewhere.<br><br>---<br><br>I was going to put this in the blacklite thread but it goes better here and so I will put it here instead:<br><br>From as near as I can tell when you follow the money + influence strings all the way to the top you arrive at a class of people -- largely hereditary in that it's difficult to drop out of that class except by betrayal/intrigue, although it's possible to ascend to that class by 'merit' -- who largely consider the world their private estate(s) to administer as they see fit; this isn't meant to be metaphorical, as for the most part they actually do ascribe to the view that, very literally, they own the world.<br><br>In the days when the equivalent class was more brazen about things -- say, the feudal era on earlier -- this property relationship was made quite explicit: serfs knew they were owned and who owned them; this explicitness led to the danger of decapitation attacks and the proverbial torches-and-pitchforks attack...the revolution of the modern era is that the current such elite class is sufficiently diffuse and obscure that its presence isn't readily apparent and, consequently, the risk of decapitation attacks is substantially reduced.<br><br>To keep the serfs entertained -- after all, you might become unmanagably upset if you were daily aware that you were the perceived property of agents far wealthier + more powerful than you and that many of the difficulties seemingly inherent to your situation were artifacts of your owners' manipulation -- a system analogous to a casino is in place; I will justify the analogy below, but keep in mind that a casino is one of the few places where one is effectively guaranteed to fritter away one's resources while gaining little beyond the rush of throwing good effort after bad.<br><br>On to casinos: aside from the glitter, glamour, and dancing girls, a typical casino offers three kinds of games:<br>i) guaranteed-lose games: these games (roulette, slot machines, etc.) are mathematically fixed so as to favor the house; playing against these is a measure of your personal egoism ("I WILL get lucky tonight") versus your rational mind ("But my odds of coming out ahead are astronomically small" or "I should know better but perhaps just this once I will...").<br>ii) guaranteed-rake games: these games (poker, usually) are games of skill (ie, not exclusively luck), and because of the skill factor you typically play against other players, with the house raking off an entrance fee you pay for the priviledge of playing; these games you're free to win at all you want, unless you do so in a sufficiently unsavory manner to scare off other players.<br>iii) guaranteeable-win games: these games (blackjack the prime example) were traditional games that were later shown to be beatable with sufficient mental acuity and advance planning; they are kept around because<br>a) more people think they can beat those games than can actually beat them<br>b) getting rid of the games would be bad for business -- it'd be a sign of ruthlessly eliminating opportunities to win, which clashes with the illusions that make the type i) games so popular<br>c) by keeping the games widely known to be beatable around -- ie, blackjack -- it provides flypaper to attract the ambitious sorts and identify them; getting rid of, say, blackjack might cause trouble if the smarties tried to break other games, but with blackjack available most smarties are lazy enough to go for the easy money<br>d) and, finally, the simple fact of the matter is that one collects one's winnings at the leisure of the house, and consequently if somone's, say, counting cards, it's not a whole lot of trouble to void out his winnings entirely; this ability to play fast and loose with the apparent 'rules of the game' mitigates most of the downsides of keeping the type iii) games available.<br><br>Here is how the casino analogy applies:<br><br>Under ordinary circumstances in the west -- ie, w/out a real totalitarian in place -- the political system is a game of type i): a participatory game that appeals to egoism -- maybe this time our embattled movement / my elected representatives / our particular issue will find success / represent my interests / be advanced -- but a game whose outcome is largely scripted in advance (aside from isolated, random pockets of legitimate winning or losing) in such a way to make sure that no matter who wins, you lose. As in the casinos -- where games of type i) are simultaneously the most popular and most addicting -- so in the real world: the vast bulk of people trying to 'make a difference' fritter away their time playing this game.<br><br>The economic systems tend to be games of type ii): closer to (somewhat winnable) games of skill than the fixed games of type i). For the most part, the economic systems pit people against each other to collect chits that have value within the systems but can only under very restricted circumstances be exchanged for something of value outside the system (the typical restrictions are either that the amount exchanged be very small, or that it be very large -- there's a huge deadspace in the middle ranges).<br><br>(here's the relevant part of this to blacklite)<br><br>Looking into free-ish energy or starting towards building the infrastructure for truly effective alternative means of social organization and production -- these things are games of type iii). And just like in the casinos, if you go about them the wrong way -- overly ambitious, overly noticed, overly evangelistic -- you'll quickly find yourself dragged out back and roughed up a bit, or worse; even if you're subtle about it when you get caught you wind up typically getting a warning or two, the disregarding of which will only lead to getting the hammer brought down.<br><br>It's usually not worth the trouble to harass you if you keep to yourself about your activities in general -- hence the basic code of silence that's afoot amongst the real investigators in that area -- and thus there's a little window of freedom (which I think if properly exploited is enough, but don't want to say more on that, esp. here).<br><br>(blacklite thread relevance ends here)<br><br>So now that I've set up this large metaphor, what is my point? Simply that worrying about general trends in politics is a lot like worrying about staffing the casino, and trying to divine their masters' intentions by reading the political tea leaves is a bit silly -- it's interesting and captivating in the way that a bouncing roulette ball is en route to its destination, but we know where it'll end up: far, far away from where the significant majority of those playing wished it'd end up.<br><br>And, just like in the casinos, if you know that a machine is fixed to have players lose more than they win, you shouldn't let some flashing lights and the occasional win -- no matter how big -- convince you that the long-term trend is a net negative. <br><br>Of course -- since the end goal seems to be complete and completely solidified ownership of the real wealth of the world -- of course there will be a succession of victories for this or that group, but each victory will carry with it the seeds of larger losses down the road; that should be expected, not surprising.<br><br>---<br><br>What, then, to do? I'd argue that the only successful strategies are the following (and ideally a combination of both):<br>i) make conditions such that no one but no one is voluntarily willing to staff the proverbial casino...ie, for so long as collaborating with the masters leads to some measurable increase in personal situation there will always be collaborators; if, on the otherhand, it is a virtual certainty that collaborating will only bring you more pain than its worth -- your home and family burned before your eyes (see Polish history), your getting tarred, feathered, and beaten to death in view of fellow collaborators -- you can expect the rank of willing collaborators to shrink overnight. People are people, and the techniques of terrorism work well against populace and 'leaders' alike. Nasty and brutish, sure, but very capable when well applied...there are less severe forms of this, but for the most part there does seem to be a direct correlation between the harshness of the mechanism and the effectiveness.<br>ii) dilute the enforceability of the masters' property claims over you. This deserves more explanation: the funny thing about 'property' is that it is most easily possessed when those who would dispute the claim pose little threat to those making it; in other words, as a practical matter if you cannot defend one's claim to one's purported property economically enough to justify the expense of defending it one's claim on that property is effectively moot.<br>What this strategy means is, first and foremost, shifting the economic structure away from direct dependency -- currently personal food and energy supplies drop off after 2-4 days without functional infrastructure (viz New Orleans), but there's no reason a cultural and technological shift towards (reasonable amounts of) hoarding and local food/energy production; similarly, giving the masses access to the same kinds of surveillance technology regularly employed against them raises the barrier to getting disappeared or mistreated -- if it's no longer possible to swoop in unnoticed and do dirty deeds, fewer dirty deeds will be worth the cost of entry ( for example, if the investigator had had hidden cameras throughout her home the assailant would be found that much more easily, and future, similar dirty deeds would be that much more costly and therefore that much rarer ); similarly, a fit and healthy populace -- not to mention an armed or trained populace ( that's actually willing to use those skills ) is that much more difficult to control.<br><br>Both of these strategies synergize quite well -- strategy ii) in general raises the cost of enforcing the masters' claims of ownership, strategy i) reduces the ranks of the masters' enforcers (and gradually draws out the hidden hand of the masters more explicitly).<br><br>---<br><br>All of the above is an EXTREMELY lengthy explanation/justification for the following position:<br>i) the visible workings of politics are just glitter + distraction to keep occupied those who might otherwise change things for the better<br>ii) the political realm is sufficiently intricate and full of obscure influences that even apparently positive changes can be manipulated to become negative<br>ergo<br>iii) it is easy to spend overmuch effort analyzing the glints of hope emanating from the disco ball of politics, but if you step back you can both see the pattern for what it is -- at which point its overall trend is entirely predictable and the glimmers here and there lose their appeal<br>and ergo<br>iv) the proper use of time + effort isn't into influencing or shaping politics -- that's too slippery an area and also largely rigged (ie, a type i) game ) -- but rather on, slowly but surely, changing the physical reality of the game for the better (ie, in ways that dilute the grip of the 'masters' over time).<br><br>If I sound a bit harsh it's mainly b/c I've had the (mis)fortune to rub shoulders with plenty of the scions of the (lower rungs of) the elite and had the misfortune of dealing with some of the bastards themselves, and really the only variation in their outlook -- that they, unofficially and collectively, own the country/theworld -- is whether they have, internally, drawn from 'we own the country' the conclusion that 'and that means you, too' explicitly or implicitly.<br><br>It isn't that political discussion is entirely futile -- if, ultimately, a better world is to be made a plan must be established and implemented -- but simply that change made in the political sphere can be clamped down and perverted; changes made in the physical world will have effects that propagate back up the power hierarchy, and if enough changes rattle that brittle hierarchy it may shatter. <p></p><i></i>
