In The End, There's Only One Conspiracy That Matters

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In The End, There's Only One Conspiracy That Matters

Postby 8bitagent » Mon Sep 10, 2018 5:08 am

And that...is mass Climate Change/Global Warming. Of all the things the right leaning side has an abject revulsion toward that makes no sense, it's that every point of data shows the Earth is sick.
Denying Climate Change literally seems on par with Flat Earthers, Moon Landing theorists, "Crisis Actor" Sandy Hookers, and Holocaust Denial.

From the longer intense time ants are invading your kitchen, to mass West Coast fire season and midwest/southern Hurricanes in America to catastrophic floods in Asia and beyond...grave Climate Change literally seems to be driving so much of the shitstorm today. Even with the impending possible World War 3 clusterfuck in Syria, some might say a huge drought and climate change lead to the initial mass protests in 2011.

Even if a nuclear 9/11 happened or a UFO landed on the white house lawn to meet President Trump, climate change would still be the biggest story I feel...and on its present insane course would account for the main driver of so much mass death and misery.

But I have to wonder...is Big Oil paying off right wingers, thereby pushing ignorant anti climate change bunk solely to blame for conservatives laughing at the Earth's mass sickness? I've long been fascinated and wondered why
there is this religious like obsession with denying climate change...and just how insane shit may get. From bees dying to everything we used to take for granted falling off the deep end with cycles

And here we go with this.
Intensifying Hurricane Florence poses extreme threat to Southeast and Mid-Atlantic
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/cap ... 3ce442d029
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Re: In The End, There's Only One Conspiracy That Matters

Postby dada » Mon Sep 10, 2018 9:13 am

I think there's a bigger conspiracy. Can I discuss that here, or is this a climate change thread?

I think it's the conspiracy to keep the status quo. Everyone is afraid of the whole shithouse coming down, so they opt to stay on the reservation and stick their heads in the sand. Act dumber than they really are. Talk about the weather, think the way the media tells them to think, about what they tell them to think.

No one is forcing them to conform, it's a conspiracy against non-conformity. Some willing and enthusiastically choose to be conspirators, some complainingly and grumblingly choose. This isn't simply an American problem, but we'll take the simplest of simple examples here, since everyone is pretending they're dumber than they are and don't know how to really think: Donald. Donald isn't the problem, it's the structure of American politics. Everyone knows this. But you can't change the system. So everyone complains about Donald. Like complaining about the weather.

Huddling together in social groups, online and off. Social media is like a virulent brain cancer. Social mediatized-thinking spills offline, spills onto RI, one of the few bastions left. Literally. This is one of the few bastions left. RI comes on as an old, run down, washed up board. Hiding under the current events and kooky conspiracies, there's pure plutonium being cranked out by cats in disguise as old horror movie monsters and the Addams family. People don't know the value. Don't even see what a precious thing it is. Pretending to be blind, as well as dumb.

I guess even that has value. RI appears worthless, like chuang-tzu. Better to appear worthless than commercializable.

But you know, Surkov who. Walter Benjamin who. Urban Dictionary minds, letting the stupid intelligence agency will tell them what to think.

By the way, I hope this isn't taken in the wrong way, I'm just doing a rant. A schtick, in old Jewish comedian lingo. I know that nothing changes on the outside anymore, only inside. I harbor no ill-will, except against Urban Dictionary. Right now, Urban Dictionary is the only conspiracy that matters. That will probably change later today, when I decide Chinese spies are a bigger conspiracy. As I do.

Just an opinion, and having a bit of fun. Catchy thread title, by the way.
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Re: In The End, There's Only One Conspiracy That Matters

Postby DrEvil » Mon Sep 10, 2018 2:11 pm

I think there are several reason why some people are so opposed to the idea:

- Fear of change. This is most pronounced on the right where they outright deny it, but also a problem on the left where people make token gestures but don't really want to change their ways.

- The scope of the problem. People feel overwhelmed and stick their heads in the sand because it's easier to cope that way.

- Big oil spending millions over several decades paying "experts" for hire to spread lies and disinfo.

- Rampant whataboutism: "but what about this other bad thing?"

- And of course the morons who really believe it is all a big conspiracy to push Agenda 21 down our throats to usher in the New World Order.


There is this huge disconnect between reality and how people act. Taking my home country as an example: Norway has a shit-ton of oil. All the major parties agree that climate change is real and a big problem and that we need to move away from it, but they all still want to drill for more oil because it would be bad for the economy if we didn't. The post-oil industry is always twenty years in the future. And then they start to rationalize it with "our oil is cleaner than the others", or "people are going to use oil anyway so it might as well be ours".

We spend billions on programs outside of Norway, like paying people not to cut down their forests, all the while feeling smug about how we're fighting climate change, only not at home. It's all those other people who have to change their ways.

Short version: short term gains trump long term survival.

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Re: In The End, There's Only One Conspiracy That Matters

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Mon Sep 10, 2018 2:19 pm

DrEvil » Mon Sep 10, 2018 1:11 pm wrote:
- And of course the morons who really believe it is all a big conspiracy to push Agenda 21 down our throats to usher in the New World Order.


Disagree. I mean, yes, they're morons, my sweet fuck they are morons, but - it's horse sense and they've got that much right.

Because there is *no motherfucking way* to seriously address the problem at scale without doing exactly that.

The future is high-density, total-control environments. This is why we're seeing a push to curtail rights, because the long-term goals of both basic bitch corporate fascists and utilitarian liberals overlap: imposing safety on mass populations requires imposing control on mass populations. Freedom of speech really is dangerous. So are guns! So is the Freedom of Information Act. So are 3-D printers. So are cars.

All of this needs to be under more control. And it will be.
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Re: In The End, There's Only One Conspiracy That Matters

Postby DrEvil » Mon Sep 10, 2018 3:13 pm

^^That's a very good point.

It will have to be either that, or things get so bad that we have something like a global awakening and people voluntarily do what's necessary (haha, as if).

One of the things that really worry me is, what if a Chinese-style authoritarian system turns out to be more successful than western-style democracy in the long term? I sometimes feel as if our societal norms have overtaken our nature and we're now in the middle of a rebound back to the more traditional, top-down systems we have had for most of our history. Progressive, open democracies are still just a tiny blip on history's radar.

Exponential change vs. linear evolution will at one point clash. We either have to slow down change or speed up evolution.
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Re: In The End, There's Only One Conspiracy That Matters

Postby Elvis » Mon Sep 10, 2018 3:21 pm

"Like" :thumbsup


As the Professor says, The environment is everything. Everything.
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Re: In The End, There's Only One Conspiracy That Matters

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Mon Sep 10, 2018 3:42 pm

DrEvil » Mon Sep 10, 2018 2:13 pm wrote:One of the things that really worry me is, what if a Chinese-style authoritarian system turns out to be more successful than western-style democracy in the long term?


Meh. They're equally doomed. They'll just calcify into failure differently.

There is no political system I'm aware of that really addresses the issues of competence and agency with anything but platitudes. I think a lot of that is because "political systems" are inherently aspirational -- in order to convince people you've got the solution, you have to pretend you've already got the solution.

The reality is that you'll never even glimpse the solution until you step into power and have to start dealing with operational realities that no ideology can prepare you for. The amount of effort humans waste defending their ideological turf is staggering, but highly profitable.

I know I'm sad old broken record, but "unintended consequences" is the name of the game and I remain unconvinced that human beings are capable of effectively governing human societies.
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Re: In The End, There's Only One Conspiracy That Matters

Postby dada » Mon Sep 10, 2018 4:01 pm

Wombaticus Rex wrote:All of this needs to be under more control. And it will be.


So it will. Of that I have no doubt.

In the end, it all comes down to the individual. Because there's no escape for the masses. The urgency to self-mutate has never been greater.

It starts like the cover of the Among the Living album by Anthrax. I'm not embedding the image here. That's only surface appearance, anyway. Revered Billy's church of stop shopping moves in the right direction. Mutated individuals, stop time, grind the commercial machine to a halt. It isn't a sudden thing, it's sloppy, messy, piecemeal. The commercial machine will work harder to fascinate. Invent crimes like we haven't even considered, to keep the mutations from starving it out. There will be much bloodshed, many tortured prisoners of conscience, lots of heartwrenching drama.

Self-mutation, I'm talking about. Not getting off the grid, zen guy in the mountains eating rain and drinking wind. That's zen guy, that isn't you, or me. I don't mean escapism, giving up, retreating into Japanese space aesthetic and video games. The mutation must go further, the individual must dig deeper. Immune to temptation, impervious to appeal.

I know it will never happen. The wheels of karma grind, that's what they're there for. I just do this for shits n giggles now, maybe inspire some Among the Living album covers to push it further, further than they ever thought possible. No hope for the masses. Only individuals.

But now I find myself trying to help, so I'll stop, and talk about something else. My dear departed grandma.

One time when I was a kid, grandma said to me "The oil pipelines way up north are good, because the animals all huddle around them for warmth." Ah, grandma. God bless her.

I didn't say anything in response. We just looked at each other. Something happened then, some kind of exchange between our eyes, like our souls switched places for a second, and she saw. I saw, too. It was nothing but love, I wasn't offended by what she'd said, there was no fight. Just love. Then our souls switched back and she changed the subject like it never happened.

Last year I was taking care of her until she dropped her body. There were some times that we'd just sit and hold hands, and look in each others eyes. That same soul exchange happened a few times, like we did that time, long ago. She couldn't talk at this point, but there was nothing to say, anyway.

So in the end, there's only one conspiracy that matters. Can you figure out which one it is?

Technology is coming for you, are you ready?

Of course there's hope in technology, as much as it is the clickbait ad that says "abandon all hope, enter here and play Terry Gilliam's Virtual Brazil!"

The pacifier of doom. Could cut both ways. Depends on individuals, mutation.
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Re: In The End, There's Only One Conspiracy That Matters

Postby Elvis » Mon Sep 10, 2018 4:25 pm

no civilization has in it any element which in the last analysis is not the contribution of an individual.

Ruth Benedict
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Re: In The End, There's Only One Conspiracy That Matters

Postby JackRiddler » Mon Sep 10, 2018 5:31 pm

.

"Conspiracy" is not a useful frame for this discussion. (Welcome back 8bit but you still have not overcome this bullshit.) What starts with the misconception that "conspiracy" is the central category is unlikely to yield very much, but I'll throw in some comments:

Destruction of the ecological basis sustaining the present global civilization and human population level is not a conspiracy. It's the civilization's way of life. Denial is also not the product of conspiracy, although there has been a lot of that involved. Denial is a big political movement, a kind of religion combined with the old religions, and it has developed an industry that employs millions who are not going to stop doing what they are doing, not easily. Layers of past and present capitalist ideologies are more air than the air we breathe.

What wombat says is self-evident. It's been a driving logic for centuries already. Complex social systems require obedient but also trained and willing parts to operate. That's why general literacy, education, career-paths as life-meanings, universities and academic disciplines, sciences designed for system maintenance, growth and development, as well as advertising and consumerism. Family systems, nations, ethnic self-understandings, churches and religions, child-rearing, the self-help section in the former bookstore, everything's been conditioned to these needs, invented or reinvented by them, and reinvented as the needs develop. Thus layer upon layer of formerly useful ideology, and somewhere under there some kind of essential drives of humanity we cannot possibly recognize, delineate or separate. I mean, sure we can say all kinds of beautiful things about the desire for love and warmth and freedom and self-actualization that are generally true but useless for understanding very much about what is to be done.

The systems will still break down as an almost physical inevitability; no part including collective/algorithmic subsystems can understand how they will work through all developments. Attempts to do so are always going to have necessary blind spots, the eye cannot see itself. The other big elements driving systems to breakdowns are legacy and momentum. Institutions that have been revealed as obviously destructive and superfluous and replaceable do not agree with their own abolition or even scale-back, so for example instead of scaling back automotive society we are seeing an attempt to plunge into its next iteration. And obviously the hydrocarbon energy cartel isn't abolishing itself, it's blowing up rock from the mountaintops down, dreaming of reaching the mantle. And obviously the war industry, ha ha ha.

Some freedoms will actually be expanded - for example, acceptance of the total surveillance state will be much smoother as certain personal behaviors defined previously as vice or sin are being allowed, and as a bonus each one is also a market. The immediate biggest battle is that capitalism on the basis of competitive private ownership with unlimited personal accumulation for the robber-baron types (it's a personality type, to be sure, some nature, some nurture) is going to have to be reined in or replaced. But they're like half the executive level of this beast, and the other half works for them. Privately-owned capital is currently in a world-destroying tantrum over this conundrum, and its owners have really only gotten started in the process of lashing-out and self-delusion about how they are the solution. It's a question what exactly will survive this stage.

.
Last edited by JackRiddler on Mon Sep 10, 2018 6:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: In The End, There's Only One Conspiracy That Matters

Postby American Dream » Mon Sep 10, 2018 6:33 pm

It's bigger than all of us:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7os9V-n7rs

This song speaks of healing power and medicine of Woman, the Moon and the Earth Herself. A Machi is a medicine woman and sometimes also refers to a medicine man. May the images here remind us all what a miracle this life is. May we see that though tender and vulnerable our Earth is wise and resilient beyond all measure. "Where there is Love there is Life " and here there is a lot of Love. Blessed Be.

Lyrics:

Machi machi machi - ma
Machi machi machi - ma

Machi cura
Machi sana
Machi cántame una nana

Machi machi machi - ma
Machi machi machi - ma

Yo no lloro
Yo sólo canto
Con tu encanta
Pacha Mama
Madre Tierra


Translation:

Machi is curing
Machi is healing
Machi sings me a lullaby

I do not cry
I just sing
with your love
Pacha Mama
Mother Earth
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Re: In The End, There's Only One Conspiracy That Matters

Postby dada » Mon Sep 10, 2018 11:46 pm

I mean, sure we can say all kinds of beautiful things about the desire for love and warmth and freedom and self-actualization that are generally true but useless for understanding very much about what is to be done.


I can't tell if you were being dismissive of some of the shit I said here, or not.

Either way, - and I love your words, by the way, they're like poetry to my eyes - you're not getting it, Jack. Nothing is to be done. That's why it's called stop shopping.

Something else is going on here besides love and warmth, freedom and self-actualization, that is totally lost on you. But it isn't my job to show it to you, I'm talking to those who see. Not giving lessons in how to see, or arguing a case in the marketplace of ideas.
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Re: In The End, There's Only One Conspiracy That Matters

Postby JackRiddler » Tue Sep 11, 2018 5:52 am

dada » Mon Sep 10, 2018 10:46 pm wrote:I can't tell if you were being dismissive of some of the shit I said here, or not.


No. I responded spontaneously to the OP, and to WR's comments, and thus indirectly to DrEvil's comments. I did not read your posts here. So now I will. Give me a little bit...

Okay, actually I had read your first post above but wasn't responding to it. This part of yours matches up with what I wrote about denial being built into legacy ideology and the organization of present societies:

you, dada wrote:I think it's the conspiracy to keep the status quo. Everyone is afraid of the whole shithouse coming down, so they opt to stay on the reservation and stick their heads in the sand. Act dumber than they really are. Talk about the weather, think the way the media tells them to think, about what they tell them to think.

No one is forcing them to conform, it's a conspiracy against non-conformity. Some willing and enthusiastically choose to be conspirators, some complainingly and grumblingly choose. This isn't simply an American problem, but we'll take the simplest of simple examples here, since everyone is pretending they're dumber than they are and don't know how to really think: Donald. Donald isn't the problem, it's the structure of American politics. Everyone knows this. But you can't change the system. So everyone complains about Donald. Like complaining about the weather.


The second post, I just read, and be assured that the statement from me, to which you are responding:

me wrote: I mean, sure we can say all kinds of beautiful things about the desire for love and warmth and freedom and self-actualization that are generally true but useless for understanding very much about what is to be done.


was not a response to anything you wrote, including your thoughts about mutation and the impossibility (for most?) of zen.

Either way, - and I love your words, by the way, they're like poetry to my eyes - you're not getting it, Jack. Nothing is to be done. That's why it's called stop shopping.


I'm not sure I said anything is to be done.

Something else is going on here besides love and warmth, freedom and self-actualization, that is totally lost on you. But it isn't my job to show it to you, I'm talking to those who see. Not giving lessons in how to see, or arguing a case in the marketplace of ideas.


I don't know.

.
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Re: In The End, There's Only One Conspiracy That Matters

Postby smiths » Tue Sep 11, 2018 9:14 am

Destruction of the ecological basis sustaining the present global civilization and human population level is not a conspiracy


Former PM of Australia as he was knifed from office in a bizarre coup
""The reality is that a minority in the party room supported by others outside the Parliament have sought to bully [and] intimidate others into making this change of leadership that they're seeking."

Who are those "outside the Parliament" who worked to remove him from the leadership?

"there is a campaign being waged against them ... News Corporation (Murdoch) [is] waging a war against the Prime Minister of Australia.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal ... 4zz7f.html

"The pressure became particularly intense during the government’s deliberations on the national energy guarantee (NEG)." (An attempt to build Paris Climate Targets into Energy Policy)
"In the days before the party room vote on the NEG, News Corp commentators lined up to warn Liberals to “stand against Turnbull’s global warming idiocy”, as columnist Andrew Bolt termed it.

"Rupert Murdoch has a vast media empire. In the UK, his News Corp assets include The Times and The Sun. In the USA, he has Fox News, The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal. In Australia, he's got The Australian and a multitude of local newspapers.
Many of Murdoch's news outlets are also among the worst when it comes to getting climate science wrong and disseminating climate myths and misinformation. Inaccurate media coverage is in turn the primary reason why the public is so misinformed about global warming."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ate-basics


The person who replaced Turnbull as PM, Scott Morrison, loves coal
"“The treasurer (formerly) of Australia, Scott Morrison, came to Parliamentary question time with a lump of coal on Thursday ... kindly supplied by the Minerals Council of Australia.
“This is coal,” the treasurer said triumphantly, brandishing the trophy as if he’d just stumbled across an exotic species previously thought to be extinct.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said, soothingly, “don’t be scared.”
The coal was produced as a totem of how the government in Canberra was going to keep the lights on, and keep power prices low, and stop the relentless march of socialism, or prevent random thought crimes against base-load power stations."
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... cy-is-this

In this country at least, there definitely has been a conspiracy to manipulate the public debate and understanding of climate science and the climate change crisis,

it has been run by the big mining companies and the coal lobby, and it it has used Murdoch and right-wing elements of the right-wing Liberal Party of Australia

attempts to deal with the mining lobby and teh coal lobby have cost 2 PM's their jobs
the question is why, who, why, what, why, when, why and why again?
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Re: In The End, There's Only One Conspiracy That Matters

Postby dada » Tue Sep 11, 2018 9:42 am

JackRiddler wrote:I'm not sure I said anything is to be done.


Ah. Mostly I didn't want anything I wrote to be confused with self-actualization. Self-actualization is entirely compatible with the commercial machine. As for zen, I was only using it as an example of what I wasn't getting at. I wanted to be clear that I wasn't talking about 'getting off the grid,' or 'emulating the zen guy ideal.'

Perhaps I'm being overly cautious to clarify content. Guess I'm being too sensitive about it. Probably shouldn't worry about it at all, it's the form that matters, anyway.

See, I thought what you were getting at was that what needs to be done is 'figuring out what is to be done.' I guess I misunderstood. But I wouldn't knock saying all kinds of beautiful things about the desire for love and warmth, they might not be that useless for understanding. I can agree that saying beautiful things about freedom doesn't have much use, though. Freedom is such a nebulous, formless thing.

So alright, we're back on common ground..
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