Breakfast in the Ruins
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Breakfast in the Ruins
Forty years and more ago, the Beatles were telling us that "nothing is real", but we weren't listening . . .
Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It's getting hard to be someone
But it all works out . . .
It doesn't matter much to me . . .
While another very large future blog continues to be locked away temporarily due to a database malfunction in Tokyo (sigh . . .), there is another strand which needs to be discussed as a kind of prelude: how much of what we see or understand (not necessarily the same things, of course) are actually real? We can see and touch and hear things (or at least, we think we do), but does this indicate the "reality" of external objects or phenomena? One would suggest that it does not, and there may be many reasons for thinking this.
This idea often comes to me as I think about history. Looking back into the past is a fraught occupation because, as time progresses, it becomes increasingly fragmentary. This equates to a fundamental loss of data about past events. It is my contention (along with many others nowadays) that this phenomenon is being used as a convenent tool for social control. Some of these data losses are undoubtedly of natural origin, but many are not; and we are the unfortunate victims of this, because our perceptions of reality suffer.
Consider the following: it is often said that since the history of humanity is essentially a history of conflict, it is therefore written by the victors. Quite apart from the sad state of affairs indicated directly by this (who in their right minds could stomach a civilisation based eternally on conflict and warfare?), it means that history looks favourably upon those who write it: history as we read it is biased towards its source, and cannot therefore be taken at face value because it hides a multitude of unknown and possibly rather important events behind the benign (or otherwise) mask of respectability created by the "source", events which that "source" wishes to remain conveniently "buried" as the truth would threaten them in some way. When mere distraction (like the "bread and circuses" of Nero's Rome) proves to be insufficient to keep peoples' attention away from the truth, rewriting history is more convenient because once it enters into printed form, it takes on an unfortunate life of its own.
As an example of this, consider the maps of the German cartographer and cleric, Martin Walsenmueller. The US Library of Congress obtained the only surviving copy of his great world map of 1507 (2). Walsenmueller credited the naming of "America" being in honour of Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine explorer (3), rather than having been coined by Columbus. Walsenmueller later changed his mind about this (as noted by journalist Jim Marrs), but his earlier works were still in circulation, and therefore this incorrect idea remains with us to this day, forever repeated in error. We must go "digging" to rediscover the truth.
This idea of "burial" of knowledge is in no way inappropriate, because nature behaves in the same way towards physical objects (and here we are talking about the physical records of information). Consider earthquakes, for example. Many parts of the world are prone to earthquakes, and funnily enough, these also tend to be places where civilisations settle (think of the various Mediterranean civilisations). Periodically, after a settlement becomes established, an earthquake strikes and massive destruction ensues. But because they are persistent, people gather themselves up and reconstruct; they don't want to leave the disaster area. Far from it: the longer they have lived there, the more likely they are to want to stay and rebuild their lives. Just think of the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 (4, 5, 6) – this was massive and caused huge destruction, but the people there did not give up. Instead, they gathered themselves up and rebuilt their lives; and this continues despite the fact that SF has had more major earthquakes since that time, and despite the fact that all of the citizenry know absolutely for sure that it's only a matter of time before another one happens along . . . and the process will begin yet again.
The desire to stay in a familiar place and rebuild despite catastrophic events is surely a great strength in people; even the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not persuade all of the citizens of those cities to depart. Like the citizens of San Francisco, they rebuilt and each year, they commemorate the sad events. But there are other consequences of earthquakes which are not often discussed, and one of these is the loss of knowledge.
Let's turn now to the Kobe (Great Hanshin) Earthquake in Japan in 1995 (7). There was huge devastation resulting from this, and much of it was actually older buildings which were essentially the local historical legacy – and therefore weaker and more fire-prone than newer buildings, which were subject to tougher regulations. Once again, the citizens of Kobe did not abandon their city, even though some 6,000 were killed and over 300,000 made homeless: the survivors stayed and rebuilt, even though they knew that it must happen again some day. But the important point to note here is the destruction of older buildings – structures were disrupted, gas mains were broken and whole areas of the city erupted in flames. Whatever was in those buildings – including, sadly, some of the inhabitants – was destroyed. Fire is a convenient and thorough destroyer of information about the past.
This has to be pointed out because one characteristic of any "great civilisation" is its desire to store its accumulated knowledge centrally, with the intention of it being available freely to those who need it. Yet one disturbing historical fact is that periodically, these great repositories of information are destroyed. And because some materials may only be available as single copies, this means that vast collections of information are lost forever. In some cases, we are fortunate in that amid the destruction of their surrounding cities, the libraries have simply been buried, but for others, such as the Library of Ashurbanipal, the Library of Alexandria, the Royal Library of Ctesiphon, and the Imperial Library of Constantinople, looting and destruction, so common in warfare, turned out to be their ultimate fate. (1)
We cannot fail to see the link between warfare and the destruction of libraries. If the necessary consequence of warfare is the destruction of accumulated wisdom (which is, after all, the whole point of having a library), this brings a completely new meaning to the expression stated above: "since the history of humanity is essentially a history of conflict, it is therefore written by the victors." Like the effects of earthquakes, successive waves of destruction deprive us of our history and our accumulated wisdom. They cut us off from our "real" past, and therefore make it possible for interested parties to reconstruct plausible alternatives with which to control us – after all, how can we tell that we are being deceived when no other sources of information are available? When all that we have to reconstruct an unknown past are just the broken shards buried in the dust? A few pieces of ancient parchment and fragments preserved by accident as a result of looting and torching? "Interpretations" which are really just collections of prejudices instilled by endless media repetition, which enter into textbooks but really are just opinions with scant connections with the "real" past? Yet this is what passes for "knowledge"; whole careers are built essentially upon a fraud.
It's just a simulacrum, it exists in appearance only and does not reflect past events accurately; it's not supposed to!
Clearly, given a few brain cells and some common sense, people would see through this in the end, but the perpetrators know that. So they also need to know how the human senses can be deceived – tricked into seeing something different when they look at an object or phenomenon. Part of this is forms of "sleight of hand" known since antiquity, and part of it is simply endless repetition so that people "know" things instinctively, but some of it is more modern and has to do with such things as the inability of human senses to detect certain stimuli. For example, the human eye is limited both in its range (it is difficult to see distant objects, or small ones close to the observer, in detail) and wavelengths (it sees only the visible octave of electromagnetic frequencies and not others beyond red and violet). Many things could not be characterised properly or accurately until the arrival of telescopes and microscopes which enlarged the range of phenomena which could not previously be observed, both in terms of resolution and in terms of observing at higher or lower frequencies than human senses will allow. And with these new technologies came new methods of control and deceit; the knowledge that they brought was used in ways to control people (Be afraid of bugs! Be afraid of falling rocks! Be afraid of disease! Be afraid of cosmic catastrophe!!!) as well as enlightenment.
Everything that we see in the mainstream media represents contemptible mind control. There is not a single area of modern human experience in which our minds are intended to be free for long enough to notice something and start asking questions. And the thrust of much modern technology – for example, computer-based Hollywood special effects – seems geared to keep us entranced and as far removed from reality and its understanding as possible. We are forever being kept in a distracted and disinformed state – like a rabbit caught in headlights at night – with ridiculous scientific and social theories which have little basis in anything except endless repetition, which possiby shows how afraid of the truth their adherents really are – with the single-minded goal of keeping us stupid, enslaved and willing to give up our wealth of finances and resources into the hands of an egregious few who sincerely believe that all others on this Earth are dumb cattle simply to be controlled and exploited.
And we do not know exactly how far this stretches: we do not know where its limits lie, and where the truth begins; that also is a deliberate manipulation of our senses. The Internet, for example, often seen as a bastion of truth, is in fact mainly full of supposition, rumour and downright disinformation, to such an extent that even "official" web sites can only be extended a limited amount of trust because rather than reporting actual facts, they instead offer the creators' collective "interpretation" of reality – the "reality" that they want us to see and accept. So the Internet especially has to be handled with extreme care – because not only is it full of truth, half-truth and anything but the truth, it is also a very useful way of monitoring the movements and activities of its users.
So in posts which follow here, we will explore aspects of this deceit, and why they cannot be trusted. But at the heart of it all lies the simple notion that people's minds can be controlled simply by altering their perception, and this itself simply by controlling the flow of information. Just think how news reports are so repetitive; how much information must be conveniently dismissed as "not newsworthy" on the grounds that there is something there which would make people start to ask inconvenient questions! The line must be held at all costs, or our "controllers" would lose control. And when that control finally crumbles, we shall start to see both ourselves and the world around us quite differently.
Every morning we wake up and eat breakfast in the ruins of past civilisations . . . the truth lies buried beneath our feet, and buried in a hideous mélange of half-truths and lies laughingly passed off as "knowledge". Perhaps for all of us, like the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and San Francisco, it's time to start rebuilding?
A.
Edited: September 20th, 2010
References:
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_larger_libraries_in_the_ancient_world
(2) http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0309/maps.html
(3) http://www.notablebiographies.com/Tu-We/Vespucci-Amerigo.html
(4) http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca/1906/18april/index.php
(5) http://seismo.berkeley.edu/seismo/hayward/seismicity.hist_1906.html and links therein, including (6)
(6) http://www.oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=tf5n39p42x;developer=local;style=oac4;doc.view=items
(7) http://www.city.kobe.lg.jp/foreign/english/disaster/index.html
Tags: breakfast in the ruins, conspiracy, control, deception, destruction, education, English, English teaching, ESL, history, information, knowledge, Korea, mind control, perception, public school, reality, South Korea, suppression, teaching, Yangsan
