dj_ivocha on 7/2/2015 at 14:01

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And National Treasure was billed as a made-up entertainment movie, when in fact it was a documentary about the fantastic treasures the freemasons have hidden around the world. :eek:

Kolya on 7/2/2015 at 16:07

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I read the Illuminatus trilogy in my teenage years and it's a pretty interesting read. At first it seems to have no structure at all, jumping between times, places and characters pretty wildly. It keeps doing that, but between the chaotic episodes you soon begin to notice recurring passages, the most obvious one being the description of every world leader, which is the same every time, word by word. Yet you may still imagine each a bit differently.
This is not just a formal quirk but very much part of the content itself, as is explained at various points, that a lie (or a truth) only needs to be repeated often enough, preferably from different sources, to become believable and eventually reality.
The book pulls this trick with useless and potentially insightful pieces of information alike, with lies and truths. The whole numerology revolving around the number 23 is entertaining nonsense, but a sentence like "real communication can only take place between peers" is at least worth thinking about. Most importantly though the book teaches you something about how learning works, how fact acquisition works and how stupid primates delude themselves that they were surly able to distinguish truth from fiction, by fucking with that part of your brain the whole time.

Kolya on 7/2/2015 at 16:36

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Fine, let's talk about your deep-seated need to appear smarter than them.

Kolya on 7/2/2015 at 17:25

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What you took as a cue to talk about the stupidity of esoteric believers was actually an inclusive description from my side: The "stupid primates who delude themselves that they were surly able to distinguish truth from fiction" are you and me. Because of how human brains work, ie by repetition, which builds up stronger and stronger neural connections, regardless whether you initially believe the fact that's being repeated or not. If you were indifferent you will be convinced. But if you believe the fact being repeated to be a lie you will have to expend at least equal amounts of energy to stay convinced that it's a lie. For example by telling unsuspecting people on the internet how stupid it all is.

demagogue on 7/2/2015 at 18:15

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The original idea behind mystical symbolism I understand was to advocate for liberal ideas in an illiberal time, to those that cared to look for them. So then you get De Vinci's God looking like a brain, or Maiomonides Guide for the Perplexed having two readings, one for the hoi paloi and one for the enlightened.

I personally like the mystic's purpose, though, which is to direct people to look for the divine mysteries in their own experience, buried underneath all the day to day crap. And packaging them as secrets is a way to skirt around all that and get to the core, to go deeper into your own consciousness than any microscope could reach. Surrealists did it by painting their dreams. Tibetan Buddhism or Masons do it with regimens of secret knowledge. Then there are the Sufis, Kabbalists, Zen Buddhists, and Christian mystics with their own methods.

I guess I'd say there's cheap pop mysticism--power crystals, newspaper astrology, and Dan Brown books--then there's the good stuff, which IMO is interesting not to learn something you didn't already know, but because the practice itself makes you look at your own experience in a totally new way.

As for the big conspiracies of our age, I suppose given my resume, or my security clearence at the least, I should be on the inside. I could tell you things, but I think the biggest conspiracies are in the corners people never knew even existed and would make their eyes go glassy if you tried to explain. That's their power. It always has to be Jews and Bankers and Capitalism and Structural Racism for people. No one ever thinks to look at the lisene trade or currency devaluations or subsidies or dumping or microtrading.

I'll tell you another secret. No one ever asks about the Pleistocene era East African Rift Valley, or the click languages of South Africa, but there's where you go looking for real answers. And there are secrets hidden in plain sight in your own experience, but you have to know how to find them.