Saw this last night. Good. I defy anyone in the Tea Party to watch this movie and not agree with much of it. Do you get it, Tea Party? The left is just as furious with the corporate takeover of the country as the right. I shouldn’t say anyone in the Tea Party because anyone who thinks Sarah Palin is the answer for this country is serial killer insane. Likewise, anyone who talks about our problems being illegal immigrants or welfare mothers has the wrong targets. The poorest people are hardly the cause of our problems. Our problem is what made them poor. If a populist revolution is ever going to happen in this country, some elements of the right and left would have to come together, because there is overlap in some areas.

Here’s Dennis Kucinich, that famous conservative Paulite, using the same terminology used by the Libertarian right, “The Federal Reserve is as federal as Federal Express.” (around 4:00):

True lefty, socialist liberals hate this system as much as the Ron Paul right. Only the left wants to bring back the regulations that were stripped out during a Democratic administration (by Robert Rubin et al.) contributing to the financial crisis. And Ron Paul writes, Why More Regulation Makes Things Worse:

The other problem is the trust that people blindly put in regulations, and the moral hazard this creates. Too many people trust government regulators so completely that they abdicate their own common sense to these government bureaucrats….The free market works so much better than a centrally planned economy. With central planning, everything shifts from one’s own judgment about safety, wisdom and relative benefits of a behavior, to the discretion of government bureaucrats.

Yes, but how about the moral hazard of letting people roam free?  Is government intervention perfect?  Obviously not.  But when given unfettered rein to do whatever they want, profiteers will do what they’re in the business to do: profit.  I can’t claim to be an expert on the economy, but Paul’s argument doesn’t seem to hold up.  Because it’s the lack of regulation that led to the crisis.

You can liken it to a computer virus.  Virus coders are always looking to stay one step ahead and bypass new virus definitions in order to infect the network.  But you continually need new definitions to keep up with the basic human desire to fuck with things – i.e. you need more government regulations.  Until the human system is a little more naturally altruistic, having no legal authority over the human capacity to destroy things doesn’t make too much sense.  Paul writes, “Is your drinking water safe, just because the government says it is?”  So what’s the alternative – no laws governing the protection of the water supply?  You know what would happen then – a literal virus entering our water.  Fluoride paranoia aside: tap water doesn’t kill me.

In many cases, the nanny state goes too far.  But Libertarians take this idea too far by saying that all regulations are evidence of the nanny state.  The financial crisis proves that rabid capitalists will destroy the system if given the opportunity.  As Michael Moore points out in “Capitalism,” I don’t trust these guys to be guided by their own moral compass:

When conspiracy theorists collide. In this video, Alex Jones criticizes Zeitgeist for being anti-Christian and being a part of the New Age conspiracy to take over the world.

To sum up the video – it’s saying that Zeitgeist, which is anti-Christian, advocates a New Age New World Order in which Christianity is supplanted, even as the film attacks the New World Order which is coming through globalization. So Peter Joseph is an agent of the New Age agenda, even if he also warns against the NWO. God, I love this stuff. The New World Order is the new apocalypse, with everyone having a theory about how and when it’s going to arise (including myself, albeit in fiction).

In a recent video, Darryl Sloan talks about the occult symbolism in the U.S. and the U.K., such as the dollar bill and the MI5 logo, and wonders if that means there’s an occult influence in government.  It should be mentioned that just because MI5 or the Information Awareness Office uses occult symbolism does not mean they’re run on occult principles.  It’s just that occult symbolism has become a common motif.  Even so, the Information Awareness Office symbol is absurd:

I heard more than one person say, “Wait, that’s real? I thought it was a joke.”  The symbol is ridiculous on so many levels. If they are not really occult practitioners, how could they be so stupid as to not know what sort of paranoia this would inspire?  The fact is they had to know, which is enough to make you paranoid for other reasons – even if they aren’t practicing occultists, they are at least in the practice of inspiring paranoia.  They’ve discontinued the logo, with this explanation:

DARPA offices have traditionally designed and adopted logos. However. because the IAO logo has become a lightning rod and is needlessly diverting time and attention from the critical tasks of executing that office’s mission effectively and openly, we have decided to discontinue the use of the original logo.

For the record, the IAO logo was designed to convey the mission of that office; i.e., to imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate, and transition information technologies, components, and prototype, closed-loop information systems that will counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness useful for preemption, national security warning, and national security decision making. On an elemental level, the logo is the representation of the office acronym (IAO) the eye above the pyramid represents “I” the pyramid represents “A,” and the globe represents “O.” In the detail, the eye scans the globe for evidence of terrorist planning and is focused on the part of the world that was the source of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. “Scientia est polentia” means “Knowledge is power.” With the enabling technologies being developed by the office, the United States will be empowered to implement operational systems to thwart terrorist attacks like those of September 11, 2001.

The unfinished pyramid and the eye depicted in the logo were taken directly from the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States of America (for a history of the seal, see http://www.heraldica.org/topics/usa/usheroff.htm). Both sides of the seal also appear on the back of the U.S. $1 bill.

It may just be that the person who designed the logo is a total idiot with no sense of perspective or history.  When considering the human race, that explanation is just as likely as something nefarious.

Meanwhile, there’s outrage about the Missile Defense logo looking like the Obama symbol from the election and the crescent and star of the flag of Islam:

People on the left are mocking this – which it deserves – but also there’s no denying that it looks similar to the Obama symbol.  And if anything it’s probably better politics if they don’t look alike, given the right’s proclivity for total paranoia.  There’s nothing to infer about the Information Awareness Office logo – that’s occult symbolism without having to interpret it.  More evidence that the justified paranoia about the Bush administration has morphed into the less justified paranoia of the right.   It points out, though, that if Obama was running an Islamist plot inside the American government, why would he be so obvious about it?  He wouldn’t – and the same concept could hold true for the Information Awareness Office.   In the end, it turns out that the Missile Defense logo was designed during the Bush Administration. Of course, that’s what they would want you to think.

I responded to Darryl Sloan’s post by saying,

Here’s the Secret Teaching of All Ages:

Manly Palmer Hall – The Secret Teachings of All Ages

Check out the long discussion on Reality Sandwich about its withdrawal from a Peru retreat scheduled for spring.  Gist is that Daniel Pinchbeck was going to lead a group to take Ayahuasca.  I entertained the thought of signing up for half a second because Pinchbeck’s writing has seriously opened my mind up, but I think in my current state Ayahuasca might just blow my head apart irretrievably.

The retreat idea fell apart due to financial problems and there’s a long discussion on the site between Rob from the Chimbre retreat, Reality Sandwichers, and Daniel Pinchbeck about the mix between spirituality and commerce.  Really, think this thread is going to be referenced down the line regarding the problems of mixing God and money in any form – it’s not just a problem for Christian mega-churches. After a lot of back and forth and suspicion, Pinchbeck weighs in:

Since starting Evolver, we have been struggling with the question of how to finance this operation. Somebody like Rob, who comes out of the Wall Street world but discovered his soul through ayahuasca, is exactly our dream candidate for an investor and ally. We dearly wanted to work with him because we could see that he brought in a business force and acumen that we, who started this venture, tend to lack….

I still really love Rob and believe he means to do good for the world. However I also believe that the new spirit he discovered through ayahuasca is currently warring with the old Rob who made a fortune through the Wall Street vulture-fest. During our negotiations, I felt that he betrayed my trust and went back on his word. I asked him in emails if he felt I had betrayed his trust, and he admitted he did not. For me, I kind of agree with Don Juan that a man’s word is the only thing he really has. When I felt Rob was reneging in his initial offer to us about Chimbre, at the same time he seemed to be using all sorts of cunning and nasty negotiating tactics around Evolver, I felt that we also shouldn’t be involved with retreats supported by such an energy.

As a friend says, “It’s tragicomic. A psychedelia pillow-fight showdown. These are the progenitors of a ‘new consciousness’? Henry, we’re so screwed.”

Really fascinating to see people who are looking for enlightenment devolve into bickering and infighting.  I found this on Youtube, which is fairly enlightening about Rob, the guy behind the disagreement. At 1:35, there’s a pretty revealing anecdote about his volatility. Don’t want to denigrate him totally, as I don’t know the guy, but Pinchbeck’s made a recent comment about how people can have their mind opened by something like Ayahuasca and think the work’s over – they’re enlightened, they’ve been to the other side, they’re priests. But real-world human instincts aren’t shed that easily.

The two most compelling movements I see right now are the Zeitgeist Movement and Evolver & Daniel Pinchbeck’s work regarding a possible change in consciousness.  The Zeitgeist movement is anti-religion, and even anti-God, as the purpose of part one of Zeitgeist is to show how Christianity and other religions have a basis in sun worship, and that’s it, just worship of this object that leads to photosynthesis and creates life on the planet.  Pinchbeck would argue, I imagine, that the sun’s relationship to the earth is as spiritual as it is physical – ala his essay in Toward 2012 about Cosmos and Psyche.

A merging of the two movements would be interesting.  Zeitgeist’s plan seems to be to start a test society somewhere to prove a new economy could work – on his radio show, Peter Joseph, the filmmaker, mentions Finland as a possible starting point. An aside – he calls the integration of Zeitgeist into a real-world framework “Phase III,” which is what I call “The New City” in The American Book of the Dead, when a new community starts after WW III is over.

Could the two movements co-exist – a community of psychonauts and a community of atheistic libertarians?  The real question is how successful any new community could be, given the proclivity for power grabs even by people who are supposedly enlightened.  Not to be too pessimistic, but it’s going to take a hell of a lot of work to make any new revolution effective.  If a planet of 8 billion people is already not on board with these sorts of ideas, how is it going to work if even the “believers” are fighting with each other?  Making these grievances public is useful in order to iron them out, but it’s as if the human system is built to make the transition difficult.

There’s also the potential for demagoguery, especially among revolutionaries.  That seemed to be people’s fear about Pinchbeck and Chimbre – that he was trying to profit off his celebrity.  But that doesn’t really seem to be the case.  I don’t know if Peter Joseph has it in him to be a cult leader, but my fear is that the Zeitgeist movement could devolve into that if the movement started an isolated society somewhere. Not saying that’s the case, but the Reality Sandwich debacle shows just how hard it is to create these sorts of forward-thinking movements.  Zeitgeist is all about how power corrupts, and that’s true even for people who are fighting the power.

Yeah, it’s hard.  But at least they’re trying.

Nice couple of posts about the best songs about space @ Sci Fi Songs.  But the best song about space is “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft (The Recognized Anthem of World Contact Day)” by the Carpenters.  It might be the best song ever recorded:

In your mind you have capacities you know
To telepath messages through the vast unknown
Please close your eyes and concentrate
With every thought you think
Upon the recitation we’re about to sing

Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary, most extraordinary craft

Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary, most extraordinary craft

We’ve been observing your earth
And one night we’ll make a contact with you
We are your friends

Calling occupants of interplanetary quite extraordinary craft

And please come in peace we beseech you
(Only of love we will teach you)
Our earth may never survive
(So don’t come we beg you)
Please interstellar policemen
Won’t you give us a sign, give us a sign that we’ve reached you

With your mind you have ability to form
And transmit thought energy far beyond the norm
You close your eyes, you concentrate, together that’s the way
To send a message we declare World Contact Day

Calling occupants
Calling occupants
Calling occupants of interplanetary, anti-adversary craft

We are your friends

I’ve written before about how certain types of conspiracy theory have been taken over solely by the right.  I’ve been on the lookout for a forum to discuss some of these issues but find they’re now taken over by the hard right.  Case in point, a place like Godlike Productions, which last I checked (during the Bush Administration) was a place to talk about UFO’s and such.  Or it’s just that the intense railing against the practices of Bush Administration didn’t rail me so. But I got caught in a thread where Palin was called “very liberal” because, I guess, she supports military engagement anywhere and everywhere, unlike Ron Paul who’s an isolationist. Doesn’t make her liberal.

Though I find elements of Paul’s outlook interesting, I also think libertarianism is impractical. Yes, a stateless utopia via the Venus Project is a nice idea, but it’s not possible currently with the current U.S. system. You could argue that the system necessarily needs to fall apart in order to usher in a new stateless system, and given human instincts, libertarianism would probably usher in that downfall faster than any other system. As has been proven countless times, if the unfettered free market is given free reign to do whatever it wants, it sides with abuse of the planet and its people. To have government intervene with new regulation isn’t proof of creeping fascism, it’s proof that humans won’t do the right thing if they have the choice not to.

Whenever anyone cries socialism about Obama I recoil – it’s just such an inaccurate reading of the tea leaves.  If Obama was a Communist, he wouldn’t be making the far left so angry.  He’s a Clinton centrist, and for that reason he’s a disappointment.  I figured he was running towards the center for the election and would be a bit more open when he finally got into office.  And by open, I mean, yes, more socialist.

The problem we’re in is that we’re in a corporatocracy, so anything that takes away corporate power is fine by me.  But some conspiracy theorists and the “small government” right see nefarious encroachment in any government – which doesn’t make sense.  All government isn’t evil.  Of course not.  At what point do libertarians draw the line at regulations?  I’m glad my tap water doesn’t kill me, for one.  Much regulation is reasonably self-protecting.

Doubtlessly, the entire system needs reworking because people are basically forced into a system in which their income doesn’t much exceed their basic needs, so they’re tied endlessly to the 40 hour work week.  People then blame taxes for their troubles, but really they should be blaming the amount of their paycheck, not the amount that goes to taxes – how much profit is the business making relative to what its paying its employees? Make no mistake, if the monthly paycheck was higher, people wouldn’t be so concerned with the amount taken out by taxes. Perhaps that makes me a Communist – because I see no fault in there being some equality between what a business owner makes and what an employee makes. Perhaps not equal, but some better disparity is more equitable.

Likewise, the hardliner conspiracy-minded rightwing that scream about the global warming “hoax” also makes me want to flee. The mounting scientific evidence aside, the fact that global warming is inspiring more environmental awareness can only be positive. At my kid’s school, there’s a board where kids have created collages saying “Protect the earth” and so on. Some would call this “indoctrination.” It’s not because at its core, it’s positive.

If you look at the rhetoric of the right – libtards, et al. – it doesn’t take into account how Teabagger-style angry the left is about the state of the country.  For example, Game Over:

Without a single iota of hyperbole, it may now be said that regulatory capture of our government by Wall Street has been concluded. Done deal. Since Monday, the sheer volume of news supporting the truth that Wall Street essentially controls our government has become–quite simply–overwhelming.

It is the total sellout of Main Street and our country as a whole that’s been all but concluded before our very eyes. To call it anything less than that would be inaccurate reportage.

It’s beyond disgusting, IMHO. Words cannot convey my sense of contempt…that to which we’re bearing witness today.  It is the definition of betrayal.

That sounds exactly like Teabagger hysteria, but unlike “Obama is a socialist,” this one has some merit.  It’s actually closer to fascism – the marriage of corporations and government – except that doesn’t make Obama a fascist, because this is an ideology perpetrated by the right much more than what remains of the left in power.  An idea very much lost on the right wing.  The purpose of a government health care plan, for example, is not “socialism,” but to take power away from Blue Cross and other corporations who are screwing their consumers.

Where the right stupidly think Obama represents a socialist takeover, they don’t seem to realize that they basically have a Republican, corporate-centered candidate who is stripping regulation, not adding more government “interference.”  People’s sense of logic really does seem to be devolving – though I imagine this is how it’s always been.  Stupidity has no generation:

More in this vein:

There’s a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business interests—financiers, in the case of the U.S.—played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them.

Think that’s from a Paulite conspiracy screed?  Joe Stack’s manifesto?  No, it’s from The Atlantic.

Obama is enough to make one paranoid – I’ll grant conspiracists that.  In the sense that he had more honest idealism during the campaign (wasn’t entirely just exploiting people’s hopes) and then once he was handed the reins he learned – this is how it really works.  I continually can’t get my head around a system that is continually built so that it destroys itself.  He seems to be playing the same game as everyone else.  Basically, all of Obama’s slogans were crap: “Change doesn’t happen from the top down, but from the bottom up.”  “We’re the change we’ve been waiting for.”  “This is the moment.” Etc.  The crash from all that hope is pretty stark.

I’m glad I didn’t see Zeitgeist until now because in 2008, during Obama’s rise, I wouldn’t have wanted to absorb it.  The primary and election season were a fucking lot of fun.  It felt like Kennedy – don’t insert Kennedy’s bad policies here, on a more thematic level than that.  I’ve held on for a long time that Obama’s presidency was transformative enough by just who he is, but basically all we get with Obama is financial collapse at a slower rate than would have happened with McCain/Palin.

So I’m kind of in no man’s land. Too liberal for the libertarian right, and too whacked out entertaining 9-11 truth, UFO’s, et al. for the Daily Kos left.  I’m not sure such a forum exists.  So I’m writing here.

Philip Heying, who I recently got in touch with again via a Facebook post about 2012, has a great post up on Reality Sandwich about his dispiriting stay in Kansas. I met him via a friend from Paris and we hung out a bit in New York. I remember a pretty strange birthday one year – me in the middle of a serious bout of isolation, him getting over a girl. I go through extended bouts of lonerness. Coming out of one now – book’s done, time to move into the world.

Anyway, that’s when I knew Philip, and now we’ve reconnected. From his piece,

I’ve made frequent work-related trips to the southeast section of the state, particularly to a town called Coffeyville, and seen such reckless toxic industrial waste it staggers the imagination. Whole cities and sections of cities have had to be evacuated (Treece, Kansas, Picher, Oklahoma, Galena and Coffeyville, Kansas). There is a refinery in Coffeyville that is owned by Goldamn Sachs, does $3 billion in sales every year, that dumps its waste straight into the Verdigris River and can be smelled throughout the town and, depending on the winds, from twenty miles away. A business called Safety Kleen (you can’t make this up), owned by Viacom, dumped enormous quantities of dioxin and PCB into the regional ecosystem. No one has yet figured out how to clean up Safety Kleen’s lethal mess. The populous of Coffeyville demonstrates a bizarre array of skin afflictions. The tap water tastes like something you would use to clean a rug.

It’s not entirely hopeless:

What can be hoped for?

Much of it can be resolved by simply stopping the destruction. The landscape has an unstoppable capacity for regeneration. If you don’t mow your lawn, in a few short months you’ll find yourself surrounded by jungle.

Once erosion stabilizes and wetlands renew themselves, they have a near miraculous capacity to filter and break down most toxins. Wildlife populations race into new niches, adapt quickly and thrive when relieved of the stresses of human encroachment.

Philip Heying’s responsible for this very great picture of William Burroughs and Timothy Leary. Other great photos on his site.

Two interesting interviews found recently.  One via Futurismic with the founder of Paypal and principle investor in Facebook who has a sci-fi vision of the future.

Wired: What happens if we don’t get the growth everyone expects?

Thiel: If it doesn’t happen, people will go bankrupt in retirement. There are systemic consequences, too. If we don’t have enough growth, we will see a powerful shift away from capitalism. There are good things and bad things about capitalism, but inequality becomes completely intolerable to society when everything’s static.

Wired: You’re worried about economic stagnation, but you’re optimistic about artificial intelligence and space?

Thiel: I think we have to make those things happen. We should be looking at technologies that might lead to really big breakthroughs. As a starting point, let’s just go back to the science fiction novels of the 1950s and ’60s and try to run the past 40 years again.

Wired: We need underwater cities and flying cars, otherwise we’re going bankrupt?

Thiel: We go bankrupt if radical progress doesn’t happen and we don’t realize it’s not happening. That’s a dangerous combination.

Next, via Dangerous Minds, a piece from Of Two Minds called “Why I am Optimistic”:

I am optimistic for the reasons laid out in Survival+: voluntary, transparent, non-privileged parallel organizations and productive structures are self-assembling under the leadership-by-example of The Remnant. Once 20% of the populace is permanently unemployed and permanently lost to the consumerist corporatocracy/Savior State status quo, then the Pareto principle suggests The Remant’s influence will grow rapidly.

Many people expect some sort of rapid implosion of social order into violent chaos. While anything is possible, my research into the devolution of the Roman Empire persuaded me that the Roman Empire remains the best available the model for our future: a slow decline and unwinding of Empire and the Savior State.

Why might it be slow? As I have explained at length in Survival+, various feedback loops are actively resisting collapse. History is not a vector so much as a slowly orbiting mass of complex feedback loops.

Devolution is not a chaotic mob of armed thugs rampaging. Such a concentration is relatively easy to control or simply liquidate by force. The State excels at violence and control, so rampaging mobs would be the State’s preferred “domestic enemy.”

Devolution is this: half the toilets in the Chemistry building no longer work, and they aren’t being fixed nor will they be fixed. The city/county/state can’t print money, and as the public unions demand higher taxes to fund their Protected Fiefdoms, then the compliant State and its parallel shadow structures of privilege will comply, raising junk fees and taxes on the dwindling class of still-productive citizenry…

Many people moan that the U.S. is becoming a “Third World country.” I say, good; life is better in a well-ordered Third World country than in a debt-serf Empire. Not all Third World countries are equal; those hobbled by corruption, dictatorship, poor infrastructure and education, etc. are truly wretched. But those “developing nations” with lesser shares of these burdens can actually be better places to live than crumbling empires based on killing commutes, endlessly higher debts and a mindlessly self-destructive culture seeking ever-higher doses of self-medication.

Maybe not that optimistic, because it still relies on things falling apart before being reborn as something less manifestly stupid. I was at the doctor’s office where I picked up a copy of Time Magazine and this article by Kurt Anderson called The End of Excess:

We cannot just hunker down, cross our fingers, hysterically pinch our pennies, wait for the crises to pass, blame the bankers and then go back to business as usual. All that conventional wisdom about 2008 being a “change” year? We had no idea. Recently Rush Limbaugh appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, panicking not so much about the economy but about how the political winds are blowing as a result. If we finally manage to achieve something like universal health care, Limbaugh warned, it would mean “the end of America as we know it.” He’s right, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. This is the end of the world as we’ve known it. But it isn’t the end of the world.

In a mainstream magazine, it’s basically making the exact same point.  This system needs to die because it doesn’t work.  While anti-government/corporation hysteria makes sense, the trouble is that this sort of rallying cry has been taken over by the fanatical right-wing.  Timothy McVeigh was “anti-government,” and there’s no sense that the pro-militia right have any answer about how to run this very complex system except to burn it all down.  And the right-leaning anti-government types usually have the wrong targets, when it’s the “small government” right wing that enables a further devolution of our system.  From The Economist:

The figures for 2007, the last year of an economic expansion, show that average income reported by the top 400 earners more than doubled from $131.1 million in 2001. That year, Congress adopted tax cuts urged by then-President George W. Bush that Democrats say disproportionately benefits the wealthy.

Libertarians, though, want to do away with the tax system altogether.  Though it would be great to have a Venus Project style Utopia ala Zeitgeist, it’s less feasible than reforming our current system (even if a reformed system is unsustainable).  What’s so striking about Joe Stack’s suicide note is that he’s no right wing teabagger – he references Communism as being potentially preferable (while decrying the tax system, which makes limited sense).  The guy’s no hero – he tried to kill his wife and daughter, so he’s a mentally ill fuckwit.  But it’s not going to be entirely surprising if things like this happen with more and more regularity.  The Economist article concludes, “It’s a massive populist backlash waiting to explode.”

A Second American Revolution is not entirely implausible (or at least an attempt) because imagine a time when oil has peaked, jobs are scarcer due to digital automation, and the planet seems to be killing itself with our help, people would actually need to “take it to the streets” in order to change the system – a form of self-preservation.  This isn’t a right-wing idea – it’s the basis of the hippie movement, or anyone who’s been anti-establishment.  It’s just with Obama in power, the right have lost their collective minds with the incredibly stupid mantra “I want my country back.”  Which country – the one that led to the state we’re in right now?

The idea that this is “Barack Obama’s economy” is myopic bordering on insane – hear that, media?  You’re insane.  There is no way Obama is responsible for our current economy any more than he’s responsible for our oil-based economy or rampant obesity.  Our civilization is systemically fucked-up and if anything, you can fault Obama for zombifying a system that needs to die.  He’s keeping it alive, not killing it, and it needs to be dead and buried. So when people decry “socialism” over the health care debate, when reform is (ideally) meant to benefit people and take power away from the corporations, they are hardly the people to lead a populist revolution against the status quo.  They’re too fucking stupid.

The interview on Of Two Minds led me to the book Operation Serf, which I’m going to check out, though on his blog he refers to the Socialist agenda, which makes me nervous.  That novel in turn led me to the book American Apocalypse – interestingly, both self-published via CreateSpace.  Not sure about the political affiliation of that one.  Most end of the world scenario diatribes tend to be Libertarian.

Pretty volatile and interesting time we’re living in. Or at least an interesting time to be a writer.

More on this later:

Joe Stack’s Suicide Note – http://embeddedart.com/

There’s a nice review of The American Book on Pod People.  In the review, Cheryl Anne Gardner writes, “The alien thing almost had a Scientology glow about it,” which I took issue with because I don’t really see my vision of UFO contact as being comparable with the Xenu story.  We got into a bit of a dialogue about it in email.  Here it is:

Cheryl Anne Gardner: Thanks for the stellar read Henry, as far as your quibble with the review, allow me to explain:

I wasn’t saying you were advocating Scientology, I said it felt like a satirical jab at Scientology. Didn’t even have to be that. It could have been any of the cult groups that think aliens built the pyramids and will come to save the worthy. That’s why I made the connection initially. I was assuming Winchell’s father was just as demented as his son. His son seemed to think so. I think you might have misread that part of the review. I did say I felt it was satirical. That was what you were doing, right? Even if the Aliens do come in the end.

My quote from the review: “The alien thing almost had a Scientology glow about it. SATIRE of this sort definitely hits the hot buttons.”

I don’t really know how you infered anything from that line other than I thought it was a satirical jab. Look, you will obviously get some conflicting views about this book, and I am sure not all of them will match your personally philosophy or your intent. Some with think you are advocating aliens and a Christian hater, others like me will see the satire but get the point.

I don’t believe in quibbling about reviews live on the net. It looks unprofessional. Normally I don’t respond to such things, but in this case you clearly misread what I said.

As for the Aliens, well, I believe there is life out there, but I am more of a Douglas Adams mindset. The only reason Aliens will come here is to blow us up to make way for the highway.

Me: The thing with this book is that it came out of some pretty fringe obsessions (and paranoia) that I do think are possible – about consciousness, life after death, UFO contact, and the like.  It may take a million years, but I do think humans may very well evolve to the point where we are able to enter dreams, contact aliens in other dimensions and so forth.  Really.  The cover of the book comes from a diagram from a book by UFO researcher Jacques Vallee, who’s got a more-progressive view of aliens and UFOs, in that they’re not just from another planet riding on a spaceship, they’re possibly a projection of consciousness.  Long story.  Anyway, point being that I find these ideas fascinating, so while I do condemn fundamentalist religion in the book, I don’t mean to be satirizing all fringe beliefs.  In other words, I don’t think UFOs=Xenu because UFOs might actually exist.  So that’s maybe where I was being oversensitive.

Thanks a lot for the consideration of the book.  I probably shouldn’t have made that first comment before my 1st morning coffee.

CAG: Probably not. Coffee is good for the brain.

In Antiquity, I have a dead Assyrian King making contact with an archaeologist through her dreams, eventually in reality in the end. But it was to express my own beliefs and struggles when it comes to the nature of death, reincarnation, time travel, out of body experiences, and our deeper connection to the universe.

Now when people read Antiquity, some readers thought the King was God in a Christian sense. I got a lot of email. And while he wasn’t God in that particular traditional sense, the story was about finding faith. The faith that suits you as a person. Joliette wanted to believe in her science and she also needed to believe in something greater because she had lost her parents in an accident. Death was difficult for her to deal with. Just like the death of my father was difficult for me. Her God saves her by giving her hope beyond death.

Your reader will interpret it based on their own dogma and beliefs. It’s the risk we take when we write this stuff. So I totally understand.

Me: Cool, good points about accepting interpretation.  I should, uh, follow my own advice I’ve given in the past about not responding to reviews.  It’s different when it’s your own skin at stake.  But I DESPISE Scientology.  The word makes me recoil, so that’s what happened.

Say what you will about the conspiracy theory inherit in the Zeitgeist movement, but you cannot deny the intelligence and sincerity of Jacque Frescoe and his vision of a possible utopia.  Here’s a fascinating interview (first part) with Larry King from 1974.

The Venus Project clearly separates the Zeitgeist movement from other conspiracy theorizing from the likes of Alex Jones or David Icke – who seem mainly to be fear peddlers without any real answer to moving on from that fear. That’s what disturbs me about them. Obama may be a disappointment who is tasked with rescuing an unsustainable system, but he is not equal to the Bush legacy. The sheer fact that he’s a black man with the name Barack Obama shows that we’re inching closer to a more open society. I don’t think you can underestimate that, even if his promise of change is not really arriving – and most likely can’t because “rescuing banks” is the process of rescuing something that caused the problem. But Jones and Icke want to see totalitarianism everywhere and then sell that fear, so they will look for evidence wherever they can. Their terror alert level doesn’t seem much more honest than the one perpetrated by the Bush administration.

The Venus Project is in part what makes Zeitgeist so convincing, because it offers a level-headed alternative amidst some very far out claims. What this vision of utopia doesn’t see to emphasize is our potential for spiritual evolution, as well as economic and technological progress.  Daniel Pinchbeck, in 2012, rails against the concept of the Singularity, as it sees technology as solving all our problems, when his more-New Age stance is that a kind of mind technology is more important for our progress than literal technology.  If we see technology as the savior, we’ll be less inclined to explore and expand consciousness and tap into the greater world of outer and inner space.  There’s something to this.

Perhaps the Venus Project could usher that in because only until we become less warlike we’d be given access to other worlds.  Otherwise we might abuse the privilege, as we abuse everything.  What’s attractive to me about a techno utopia is that it satisfies both needs – technological and spiritual, as the technological would free us to spend more time with spiritual and creative pursuits.  And it’s more practical and feasible to create a sustainable environment than waiting for an evolution that never comes.

The Maya, after all, were technologically advanced, and going “back to nature” doesn’t necessarily mean being free from technology.  The Na’vi from Avatar are nice and all, but I don’t want to sleep in a hammock in a tree – I like my computer and the copy of Logic that allows me to record music.  That’s not a distraction like TV, it enhances the potential for creativity. So on that front I agree with the Venus Project and its aim to use technology to create an environmentally sustainable world that frees people from the mindless and unnecessary work that makes up most people’s workdays.  If a true Theory of Everything incorporates both the religious and the scientific (determining the “why” as well as the “how”), then it would seem an advanced society would incorporate both as well.  My worry is that our entire structure needs to fall apart first in order for it to be rebuilt as something better.

I’m currently reading (among other things) A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit, which makes the supposition that people are at their best amid total catastrophe.  Most people have no doubt seen this, even if they’ve never been part of a disaster, as the collective support after 9-11 shows how disaster can inspire goodwill.  That’s not entirely a positive prospect, as it may just be the case that the world system needs to collapse in order for us to start over with a better blank slate.  The environment might go to war with us before we go to war with each other as a form of self-protection.  Either way, we seem to be headed in that direction, and troubling as it may be, how else do you reform a world of 8 billion people that needs instant reforming?  I suppose everyone could take Ayahuasca at once, and blow everyone’s heads open, but somehow I don’t see that happening.

Whatever the case, Zeitgeist and the Venus Project are literal manifestations of my novel and the soundtrack so I’ve been glued to finding out new information about these two developments – “The New City is my home and I love all I know.”  Cool to me too that the filmmaker writes and records his own music.

More: Who is Peter Joseph?