"Dominoes of the collective begin to fall. The whole rotting
structure begins to collapse, a wing here and a wing there, and the
robots open their eyes and turn off their cameras."
Several years ago, after reading an article of mine, a producer
approached me about writing a movie script. He wasn't sure whether he
wanted it to be a documentary or a feature. But he wanted it to be
"heroic," he said. And long.
We had discussions. I sent him notes. The tentative title was, "Cartels of the Mind."
He eventually wobbled, then disappeared.
Here are some of those preliminary notes. They're not always sequential. And I've recently added one or two comments.
~~~~
If you can't see the background of a crime, you aren't seeing the crime, you're seeing the sensational effects, that's all.
There are people who want their own minds to look exactly like the
world. They want their minds to look like photographs of the world.
This is what they strive for. The idea that they could invent something
is so terrifying they opt instead for the world as it is.
This is what amused the surrealists. They started turning things upside
down and inside out. They were reacting to humans who had made
themselves into robots. Into robot cameras.
The Surveillance State is a robot camera. It captures everything, based on the premise that what isn't Normal is dangerous.
The cartels of the world become the cartels of the mind.
At the outbreak of World War 2, the Council on Foreign Relations began making plans for the post-war world.
The question it posed was this: could America exist as a self-sufficient
nation, or would it have to go outside its borders for vital resources?
Predictably, the answer was: imperial empire.
The US would not only need to obtain natural resources abroad, it would
have to embark on endless conquest to assure continued access.
The CFR, of course, wasn't just some think tank. It was connected to
the highest levels of US government, through the State Department. A
front for Rockefeller interests, it actually stood above the government.
Behind all its machinations was the presumption that planned societies were the future of the planet. Not open societies.
Through wars, clandestine operations, legislation, treaties,
manipulation of nations' debt, control of banks and money supplies,
countries could be turned into "managed units"---and then, with the
erasure of borders, combined into regions.
Increasingly, the populations of countries would be regulated and directed and held in thrall to the State.
And the individual? He would go the way of other extinct species.
For several decades, the pseudo-discipline called "social science" had
been turning out reams of studies and reports on tribes, societal
groupings, and so-called classes of people.
Deeply embedded in the social sciences were psychological warfare
specialists who, after World War 2, emerged with a new academic status
and new field of study: mass communications.
Their objective? The broadcasting of messages that would, in accordance
with political goals, provoke hostility or pacified acceptance in the
masses.
Hostility channeled into support of new wars; acceptance of greater domestic government control.
Nowhere in these formulas was the individual protected. He was
considered a wild card, a loose cannon, and he needed to be demeaned,
made an outsider, and characterized as a criminal who opposed the needs
of the collective.
Collective=robot minds welded into one mind.
As the years and decades passed, this notion of the collective and its
requirements, in a "humane civilization," expanded. Never mind that out
of view, the rich were getting richer and poor were getting poorer.
That fact was downplayed, and the cover story--"share and care"---took
center stage.
On every level of society, people were urged to think of themselves as
part of a greater group. The individual and his hopes, his unique
dreams, his desires and energies, his determination and will power...all
these were portrayed as relics of an unworkable and deluded past.
In many cases, lone pioneers who were innovating in directions that
could, in fact, benefit all of humanity, were absorbed into the one body
of the collective, heralded as humane...and then dumped on the side of
the road with their inventions, and forgotten.
In the planned society, no one rises above the mass, except those men who run and operate and propagandize the mass.
In order to affect the illusion of individual success, as a kind of
safety valve for the yearnings of millions of people, the cult of
celebrity emerged. But even there, extraordinary tales of rise and then
precipitous fall, glory and then humiliation, were and are presented as
cautionary melodramas.
This could happen to you. You would be exposed. You would suffer the
consequences. Let others take the fall. Keep your mind blank. Do
nothing unusual. Shorten your attention span. Disable your own mental
machinery. Then you'll never be tempted to stand out from the mass.
The onrush of technocracy gears its wild promises to genetic
manipulation, brain-machine interfaces, and other automatic downloads
assuring "greater life." No effort required. Plug in, and ascend to
new heights.
Freedom? Independence? Old flickering dreams vicariously viewed on a screen.
Individual greatness, imagination, creative power? A sunken galleon
loaded with treasure that, upon closer investigation, was never there to
begin with.
The Plan is all that is important. The plan involves universal
surveillance, in order to map the lives of billions of people, move by
move, in order to design systems of control within which those billions
live, day to day.
But the worst outcome of all is: the individual cannot even conceive of
his own life and future in large terms. The individual responds to
tighter and control with a shrug, as if to say, "What difference does it
make?"
He has bought the collectivist package. His own uniqueness and inner
resources are submerged under layers of passive acceptance of the
consensus.
And make no mistake about it, this consensus reality, for all its
exaltation of the group, is not heraldic in any sense. The
propagandized veneer covers a cynical exploitation of every man, woman,
and child.
Strapped by an amnesia about his own freedom and what it can truly mean,
the individual opts for a place in the collective gloom. He may
grumble and complain, but he fits in.
He can't remember another possibility.
Every enterprise in which he finds himself turns out to be a pale copy of the real thing.
The deep energies and power and desire for freedom remain untapped.
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