rigorousintuition.ca

The Monkees!

Ok this is a bit off topic but it's always bothered me.

I was born in 1962. I was a child in the heyday of the Beatles popularity and fame. I heard them everywhere especially on the car radios driving around with my parents.

So when I got to college in late 1979, check this out. My roommate and I were dying for some music, and someone loaned us some Beatles albums. We both thought -- "the Beatles! What a cheese fest! Stupid asinine crap!"

Then we were bored enough to actually listen to the tapes and were blown away. Over and over again our reactions were "that song is The Beatles!? I love that song!"

Somehow, American media had convinced us that The Beatles and The Monkees were somehow one and the same.

Now how did that happen? Was it deliberate? We all know the Beatles were heavily studied and spied upon by the Spooks. With Lennon actually very likely killed by them.

Anybody else my age have this response? Just curious and I don't mean to derail the thread.

guruilla » Sun May 10, 2015 12:45 pm wrote: This was Operation Rolling Stone. It was the promotion of change in
all forms. To what end? The promotion of trade. The Jews and Gentiles that would run the 20th
century were masters of trade. They were money lenders and money changers and money makers.
These families had always been very good at making money, but in the 20th century they discovered a
way to accelerate this money making beyond even their own dreams. They discovered that accelerated
trade depended directly on accelerated change. The more change of any kind they could introduce into society,
the more money they would make. This is simply because change can always be accompanied with new products.
New products = new wealth. More products = more wealth. Therefore, the fundamental and underlying Operation
of the 20th century has been CHANGE.

This was revolutionary in every way, since humans don't really like change. Like cats and all other
animals, they prefer things to stay as they are. Living creatures tend to equate change with discomfort.
So to promote change was to go against human nature. It wasn't something that would happen on its
own. It had to be manufactured and constantly sold.

My feeling is that psychological manipulations of such a subtle and vague nature, such as "change", would not be an area where TPTB would focus. It is far too broad and unpredictable, IMO.

One example among many: what if this rapid change creates a scenario where people discover they no longer need or desire endless products? Change doesn't perfectly equate to trade and products, so the plan doesn't make sense in my mind.

Of course I'm not against the idea of psychological manipulations of any kind, even direct manipulation of the psyche by unknown forces. But my feeling when reading this is that it is an attempt to simplify a complex subject, package it in an easily branded and digestible manner.

I'm currently reading The Rhetoric of Conspiracy in Ancient Athens, a 2006 book by Joseph Roitman, and according to Roitman, the ancient Greeks, especially Athenians of the 4th century, preferred a good conspiracy yarn to a simpler, even more-likely scenario. This is made plain in the endless conspiracies -- sometimes real, more usually imagined or contrived -- claimed in the legal speeches of the great orators, the sophistic logographers who were essentially the first lawyers. Anyone could bring charges against anyone (there was no public prosecutor), and an Athenian jury -- comprising not twelve but usually a minimum of 500 citizens -- typically accepted the argument of the best speaker (or best speech, often ghost-written by a rhetorician and recited by the less-abled claimant) with the best conspiracy.

Interesting contrast with 20th century Americans, who look for and accept the most mundane explanations (coincidence, incompetence etc.) while pshawing real conspiracies.


P.S. I don't really recommend the book unless you're a Greek history geek. Roitman himself tends to poo-poo "the enticing trap of conspiratorial logic." At the same time, he has a point: most of the 'conspiracies' the orators sought to 'expose' were complete shite, usually contrived to attack a political enemy and appealing to the suspicious nature of the Greek mind. Yet on the other hand, the Greeks were inveterate liars and there were plenty of real conspiracies to go around.


Bob Dylan? I think he was merely the right man in the right place at the right time. Remember, Plato wanted to expurgate the teachings of the poets. Beware.

Nordic » Wed May 13, 2015 11:24 am wrote:The Monkees!

Ok this is a bit off topic but it's always bothered me.

I was born in 1962. I was a child in the heyday of the Beatles popularity and fame. I heard them everywhere especially on the car radios driving around with my parents.

So when I got to college in late 1979, check this out. My roommate and I were dying for some music, and someone loaned us some Beatles albums. We both thought -- "the Beatles! What a cheese fest! Stupid asinine crap!"

Then we were bored enough to actually listen to the tapes and were blown away. Over and over again our reactions were "that song is The Beatles!? I love that song!"

Somehow, American media had convinced us that The Beatles and The Monkees were somehow one and the same.

Now how did that happen? Was it deliberate? We all know the Beatles were heavily studied and spied upon by the Spooks. With Lennon actually very likely killed by them.

Anybody else my age have this response? Just curious and I don't mean to derail the thread.

I remember a couple of first grade disputes about whether the beatles or the monkees were better. I'm afraid I liked the monkees, but I had only heard "She Loves You" and knew it was the Beatles so I thought the Beatles terribly dated. It wasn't until a few years later when I started listening to radio late at night that I began to learn who the beatles were.

If it makes it any better we also used to get into fights over 'bewitched' vs 'I dream of jeannie' and what in hell the HR Puffenstuff creatures really were...

BrandonD » Wed May 13, 2015 4:55 pm wrote: My feeling is that psychological manipulations of such a subtle and vague nature, such as "change", would not be an area where TPTB would focus. It is far too broad and unpredictable, IMO.

One example among many: what if this rapid change creates a scenario where people discover they no longer need or desire endless products? Change doesn't perfectly equate to trade and products, so the plan doesn't make sense in my mind.

Of course I'm not against the idea of psychological manipulations of any kind, even direct manipulation of the psyche by unknown forces. But my feeling when reading this is that it is an attempt to simplify a complex subject, package it in an easily branded and digestible manner.

Like I said in the OP, MM's piece uses too broad a brush stroke for my taste; however, the idea of change for change's sake is I think a close match with both the capitalist agenda to expand by devouring more & more "stuff" and by conquering new lands (expanse IS change) and the "Aquarian Conspiracy" of Huxley & Harman et al., i.e, the idea of Illumineers pushing for some sort of Scientisitic New Order of the Ages. So maybe sometimes over-simplification can help us see something that may otherwise be too obvious (omnipresent) for us to notice?

I have noticed on this thread a spectrum of responses/reactions ranging from "anyone who's anyone is already bought and sold" to mocking dismissals of the idea that Dylan might be a manufactured phenomena. As always, the middle way is both the hardest to walk and, maybe, the one that gets closest to understanding ~ for me at least.

I no longer use mainstream/corporate music in my podcasts because the more I see of the Corporate Conspiracy of Culture, the more I accept that the apple never falls far from the tree; whatever poisons are in the tree, they must extend to the fruit that grew from it. Inside Llewyn Davies (itself a corporate product, so...) was sort of a revelation to me in showing how talent and soul don't win out in our present culture (despite the myth that propagates this idea), but in fact the reverse, and that soulful expression, being the inverse of thick-skinnedness, is doomed to despair if it tries to become successful on the terms of the dominant culture and at the same time to retain its purity/vulnerability. Interestingly, that film shows Dylan showing up at the end, out of nowhere, deus ex machina, only (as we know) to ascend to rapid glory as the legendary folk-hero/culture-maker of the era. (The ending can be interpreted in various ways; some people view Davies as a loser and a heel who is naturally being succeeded by "the real deal" ~ go figure!)

Is it over-simplification to say that, in a psychopathic (corporate) culture, only psychopaths get ahead ~ or rather, that the energy and "mood" required to get ahead is of the psychopathic variety? Or that allowing the psychopathic drive (a.k.a. the will to power) to guide and fuel one's process and progress as an artist is the psychological equivalent to becoming a "schill"? This makes it a spectrum, of sorts, a very rough guide being, the bigger the stardom, the greater the psychopathic drive in that individual, and/or the more useful his/her creative expression (or in some cases maybe just charisma) was seen by TPTB, to co-opt the sort of changes that were a-coming, and redirect them down corporate-culture-friendly channels . . .

I still watch movies & TV shows, BTW, but when it comes to my own output, I'd rather not mix my creative expression with that of the CCC. (Meaning no more David Byrne songs, ) Actually this didn't come about due to applying any conscious principle, but in a more positive fashion, as the result of discovering how much great music is being done by total unknowns who aren't scrabbling to reach some position of power & influence on the crap-heap of culture, but just doing what they love.

Elvis wrote:Bob Dylan? I think he was merely the right man in the right place at the right time. Remember, Plato wanted to expurgate the teachings of the poets. Beware.

Sure; but again there may be a middle ground here: if TPTB can't expurgate, then they can have a hand in creating those poetic "teachings." Plato was a Poet too, or no? (He might roll in his Merkaba to hear it.)

weird thing....I was born in 63 and my parents had no Beatles records, and i have never bought any except the 'recent' reedited album done by Martins son (I think) and didn't have any friends who played their toons I suppose i must have heard them on the radio but I know just about every lyric to all their songs. The only other lyrics I know except odd songs are the albums of pink floyd and that's from endlessly playing them in my youth

Guys I'm still pretty proud of my "joke" back on page 2.

you sent me all the way back there for that?
- thats 3 minutes all shot to hell..........

re: the beatles, they're not really a rock and roll band. i mean, they were while in hamburg, but ceased being so with the release of 'a hard day's night'. imo, they and dylan sort of invented the good, playful, dialectical side of postmodernism in the arts that was slowly superseded by the growth of neoliberalism. it's no fault of either that fifty years on they've become tiresome emblems of their gullible generational cohort, but that's what's happened. time has eroded the shock of their inventiveness, which previously would have taken many generations to occur, but sometimes it still astonishes just how utterly fresh and brash and savvy these artists truly were.

i think of the beatles as being alot like matisse. their music is art for adults, in the best sense, and is somewhat close to how the painter likened his work to an armchair. there are problems to be found here if one is completely anhedonic but to each their own. comfort is in short supply these days, and when not blanketed in nostalgia dylan or the beatles can still hit pretty hard while providing that special thrill that comes in the presence of beauty, or even profundity.

guruilla » Wed May 13, 2015 7:40 pm wrote: Is it over-simplification to say that, in a psychopathic (corporate) culture, only psychopaths get ahead ~ or rather, that the energy and "mood" required to get ahead is of the psychopathic variety? Or that allowing the psychopathic drive (a.k.a. the will to power) to guide and fuel one's process and progress as an artist is the psychological equivalent to becoming a "schill"? This makes it a spectrum, of sorts, a very rough guide being, the bigger the stardom, the greater the psychopathic drive in that individual, and/or the more useful his/her creative expression (or in some cases maybe just charisma) was seen by TPTB, to co-opt the sort of changes that were a-coming, and redirect them down corporate-culture-friendly channels . . .

I still watch movies & TV shows, BTW, but when it comes to my own output, I'd rather not mix my creative expression with that of the CCC. (Meaning no more David Byrne songs, ) Actually this didn't come about due to applying any conscious principle, but in a more positive fashion, as the result of discovering how much great music is being done by total unknowns who aren't scrabbling to reach some position of power & influence on the crap-heap of culture, but just doing what they love.

What is the CCC? I looked up this acronym on the slang dictionary and apparently it refers to a type of cold medicine that gets kids really high. Somehow I don't think that's what you're referring to here

I might be going off on a side-tangent but it seems to me you are equating artistic success with psychopathy above, I would think for an artist this might be a form of self-sabotage.

You might be referring specifically to success on the "superstar" level, though. I doubt one can reach that level without some serious psychological issues, particularly in the modern era.

BrandonD » Thu May 14, 2015 5:38 pm wrote: What is the CCC?

The answer is in the original post quoted. I think the 3 cs has significance in intell. too, however, as in 3 cubed. (C is 3rd letter)

regarding the rest of the above posts:

Here's yer HR Pufnstuf... I worry about how the the Krofft brothers got produced in the first place. Forget it Jake, it's Laurel Canyon.

might as well note that Miles Mathison was the name of a central character in Revolution (tv series)

corporate conspiracy of culture - referenced earlier in the post (00:40 Guruilla)