I wish we'd get past this idea that these are 'crazy' or 'stupid' people. I see this attitude too often in patriot sites. This is purposeful Clive Piven strategy on steroids. They want chaos and crisis so they can leverage the fear it generates for ever more control. And you can bet that the untermenschen they have created as scapegoats (the unvaxxed) will be blamed and further demonized.
Everything Voegelin says in your excerpts is spot on in describing the left in the West right now. Totally prophetic! This in particular struck me:
"Gnostic societies and their leaders will recognize dangers to their existence when they develop, but such dangers will not be met by appropriate actions in the world of reality. They will rather be met by magic operations in the dream world, such as disapproval, moral condemnation, … etc."
Regarding the "magic operations," How many hundreds or thousands of times do we this in the left's rhetoric daily. The fact that the left is in "dream land" rather than reality means that acceding to their demands/morality puts one right there with them and only makes reality worse. I would only add that they need to continually find scapegoats in order to hold up the structure of their delusional morality in the face of its contradictions with reality. In the end, how do you come to agreement with someone who is a lunatic and condemns you for thinking straight? And why would you do so? I'm thinking of writing letters to my congressional Republican representatives asking them this very question.
Yes, this happens because people either do not pay attention--or cannot believe that a prosecutor would actually enact the policies upon which they campaigned. This is why I have taken the position that--with the exception of family members--I will no longer interact with people who vote for Democrats. For decades--literally--I have had discussions with them, presented them alternative news and opinion sources. All to no avail. They are no longer just political opposition. With the damage their ignorance and immorality has wrought, they have become my enemies. I am cutting them off. Votes for Biden and Soros-backed candidates are declarations of war. They are confirmations of demonic insanity. There is no compromise with those who want to murder babies at any point of a pregnancy or who want to go easy on perverts who defile children. They can go to Hades.
More from this Waters post (him being something of a major player in Ireland) :
< ‘Everywhere,’ writes Ellul, ‘we find men who *pronounce as highly* personal truths, what they have read in the papers only an hour before, and whose beliefs are merely the result of a powerful propaganda.
Everywhere we have people who have blind confidence in a political party, a general, a movie star, a country, or a cause, and who will not *tolerate the slightest* challenge to that god.… We meet this alienated man at every turn, and are possibly already one ourselves.’
Universal education of the kind described by Ellul has generated populations of citizens, who provide easy meat for propaganda for at least *four reasons*: people who consider themselves ‘educated’ have a need to hold *opinions on any and all* matters arising in their purview;
such people, by virtue of their ‘education’, have access to large amounts of what might be called contextless information;
they think of themselves as capable of *judging all questions* on their own; they are generally people who have left behind the kind of communities, which in the past provided a kind of filtering for external propaganda, such as families, churches, villages etc., to live in some anonymous metropolis to which they have no historical connections.
Hence, in mass society, the pre-programmed citizen, who becomes isolated and dependent upon his own resources to fulfil his conditioned needs, is a sitting duck for propagandists of all kinds.
When you consider present-day instant access to a certain kind of basic information about next to everything, it is not surprising that, on virtually every matter of public controversy, there is a ready constituency for the indoctrinations by propagandists, among those who *believe themselves educated* because they *hold a degree*, have instant access to Google and other search engines, and regard themselves as free, because they cling to what they firmly believe to be their own opinions, but are not....
Thus, what might be called the market for propaganda has expanded, to include virtually every member of a modern society — everyone, that is, except those who understand the underfoot conditions, and are prepared to seek their *information from other than ready* sources, and remain determined to think for themselves....
When the pioneers of depth manipulation were plying their dubious trade, they were dealing with a world in which there were but a handful of media, by which a society and its members could be manipulated.
The work of the founding fathers of the 'science' of the ‘depth approach’ — Bernays, Dichter etc. — is all firmly embedded in the first half or middle of the 20th century, when TV was in the womb or in its infancy, and all you had were a few newspapers, cinema, advertising hoardings, and the radio.
Our understandings of 'depth manipulation' spring from this period, and have not been updated to take into account, that media are now almost *constantly central* to the consciousness of most of the human race.
We're therefore dealing with a *different kind* of animal — in the average human being — than those guys were talking about. >
Very interesting. Just this morning I was thinking of including the idea that susceptibility to ideology--rather than thinking for oneself ( a la Rihanna?) has been greatly encouraged by mass 'higher' education. People who, mistakenly, think they know things that simply aren't so, because they have a degree or had a course or heard a professor say so. It's a relatively recent development.
I suppose you could trace the rise of propaganda back to the development of printing press, mass communication, but these are all good points. The last one expresses well where we find ourselves:
"‘The ascendency of crowds,’ wrote Le Bon, ‘indicates the death throes of a civilisation.’ The upward climb to civilisation is an intellectual process driven by individuals; the descent is a herd in stampede. ‘Crowds are only useful for destruction.’`
In places like Manhattan and Brooklyn I don't think it is so much how much people pay attention. It is more that they are in voting doing their own form of "virtue signalling" as members of the majority group (Democrats and leftists) in those places. They would rather live in Hell and be accepted in the group than live in Heaven and be cast out of the group (IMO).
OT, but not really....
https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/26/biden-security-adviser-jake-sullivan-tied-to-alleged-2016-clinton-scheme-to-co-opt-the-cia-and-fbi-to-tar-trump/
The USS Durham appears to be springing leaks.
I wish we'd get past this idea that these are 'crazy' or 'stupid' people. I see this attitude too often in patriot sites. This is purposeful Clive Piven strategy on steroids. They want chaos and crisis so they can leverage the fear it generates for ever more control. And you can bet that the untermenschen they have created as scapegoats (the unvaxxed) will be blamed and further demonized.
"NY Gov: State Workers Who Get Fired for Being Unvaccinated Will Also Be Denied Unemployment"
That's pretty crazy, inna?
Everything Voegelin says in your excerpts is spot on in describing the left in the West right now. Totally prophetic! This in particular struck me:
"Gnostic societies and their leaders will recognize dangers to their existence when they develop, but such dangers will not be met by appropriate actions in the world of reality. They will rather be met by magic operations in the dream world, such as disapproval, moral condemnation, … etc."
Regarding the "dangers to their existence" part, I thought this a good monologue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfvOOY0SbyA
Regarding the "magic operations," How many hundreds or thousands of times do we this in the left's rhetoric daily. The fact that the left is in "dream land" rather than reality means that acceding to their demands/morality puts one right there with them and only makes reality worse. I would only add that they need to continually find scapegoats in order to hold up the structure of their delusional morality in the face of its contradictions with reality. In the end, how do you come to agreement with someone who is a lunatic and condemns you for thinking straight? And why would you do so? I'm thinking of writing letters to my congressional Republican representatives asking them this very question.
Thanks very much for posting Voegelin, Mark!
ALWAYS happy to!
Yes, this happens because people either do not pay attention--or cannot believe that a prosecutor would actually enact the policies upon which they campaigned. This is why I have taken the position that--with the exception of family members--I will no longer interact with people who vote for Democrats. For decades--literally--I have had discussions with them, presented them alternative news and opinion sources. All to no avail. They are no longer just political opposition. With the damage their ignorance and immorality has wrought, they have become my enemies. I am cutting them off. Votes for Biden and Soros-backed candidates are declarations of war. They are confirmations of demonic insanity. There is no compromise with those who want to murder babies at any point of a pregnancy or who want to go easy on perverts who defile children. They can go to Hades.
More from this Waters post (him being something of a major player in Ireland) :
< ‘Everywhere,’ writes Ellul, ‘we find men who *pronounce as highly* personal truths, what they have read in the papers only an hour before, and whose beliefs are merely the result of a powerful propaganda.
Everywhere we have people who have blind confidence in a political party, a general, a movie star, a country, or a cause, and who will not *tolerate the slightest* challenge to that god.… We meet this alienated man at every turn, and are possibly already one ourselves.’
Universal education of the kind described by Ellul has generated populations of citizens, who provide easy meat for propaganda for at least *four reasons*: people who consider themselves ‘educated’ have a need to hold *opinions on any and all* matters arising in their purview;
such people, by virtue of their ‘education’, have access to large amounts of what might be called contextless information;
they think of themselves as capable of *judging all questions* on their own; they are generally people who have left behind the kind of communities, which in the past provided a kind of filtering for external propaganda, such as families, churches, villages etc., to live in some anonymous metropolis to which they have no historical connections.
Hence, in mass society, the pre-programmed citizen, who becomes isolated and dependent upon his own resources to fulfil his conditioned needs, is a sitting duck for propagandists of all kinds.
When you consider present-day instant access to a certain kind of basic information about next to everything, it is not surprising that, on virtually every matter of public controversy, there is a ready constituency for the indoctrinations by propagandists, among those who *believe themselves educated* because they *hold a degree*, have instant access to Google and other search engines, and regard themselves as free, because they cling to what they firmly believe to be their own opinions, but are not....
Thus, what might be called the market for propaganda has expanded, to include virtually every member of a modern society — everyone, that is, except those who understand the underfoot conditions, and are prepared to seek their *information from other than ready* sources, and remain determined to think for themselves....
When the pioneers of depth manipulation were plying their dubious trade, they were dealing with a world in which there were but a handful of media, by which a society and its members could be manipulated.
The work of the founding fathers of the 'science' of the ‘depth approach’ — Bernays, Dichter etc. — is all firmly embedded in the first half or middle of the 20th century, when TV was in the womb or in its infancy, and all you had were a few newspapers, cinema, advertising hoardings, and the radio.
Our understandings of 'depth manipulation' spring from this period, and have not been updated to take into account, that media are now almost *constantly central* to the consciousness of most of the human race.
We're therefore dealing with a *different kind* of animal — in the average human being — than those guys were talking about. >
Very interesting. Just this morning I was thinking of including the idea that susceptibility to ideology--rather than thinking for oneself ( a la Rihanna?) has been greatly encouraged by mass 'higher' education. People who, mistakenly, think they know things that simply aren't so, because they have a degree or had a course or heard a professor say so. It's a relatively recent development.
Yeah, a relatively recent development, but anticipated (if memory serves) by Allan Bloom, in his famous Closing of the American Mind.
I suppose you could trace the rise of propaganda back to the development of printing press, mass communication, but these are all good points. The last one expresses well where we find ourselves:
"‘The ascendency of crowds,’ wrote Le Bon, ‘indicates the death throes of a civilisation.’ The upward climb to civilisation is an intellectual process driven by individuals; the descent is a herd in stampede. ‘Crowds are only useful for destruction.’`
In places like Manhattan and Brooklyn I don't think it is so much how much people pay attention. It is more that they are in voting doing their own form of "virtue signalling" as members of the majority group (Democrats and leftists) in those places. They would rather live in Hell and be accepted in the group than live in Heaven and be cast out of the group (IMO).
Yeah, these types of elections just aren’t big enough on people’s radar, esp. if the MSM draws no attn. to the buffoons' antics.