1. Introduction
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General Propaganda Machines
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1.
Introduction |
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| 1.4.2 General Propaganda Machines | ||||
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After five thousand years of civilization it is sad but true that man still has no properly functioning social systems, or honest or functional religions. Crippled by religious myths, Machiavellian politicians, economic ideologies and counter-ideologies, we can barely cope with the sheer scale of disinformation that floods civil space. In every case some scheme of ideology is at work to focus attention according to some myth, propaganda, or agenda. It is almost impossible for individuals to achieve autonomy in this mix controlled by elites and/or popular delusion. Arriving at the facts of history is difficult, to say the least. Some major propaganda machines are: GPM1, the monotheistic religious corpus, Judaic, Christian, Moslem GPM2, the Buddhist/Hindu spiritual world GPM3, the classic liberal, leftist, and capitalist economic ideologies GPM4, the scientific worldview, with Darwinian theory. That’s not the full list. GPM1, a favorite with politicians since Constantine, and hoping to survive the Enlightenment challenge, is at severe risk from Biblical Criticism, and this is the last generation we can take Biblical claims of any kind at face value without charges of fraud. A similar status creeps up on the Gita in GPM2, the quest for the historical Mohammed continues. Refugees from GPM1 are flooding into GPM2. GPM2 has a severe guru problem and is infested with crocodiles, but has important data on evolutionary psychology. We can manage with a few bootleg sutras. Sorting out the confusion of fronts here is almost impossible, so one proceeds with caution. The Buddhist Propaganda Machine, we thought, is the most compassionate, but after recent charges of occult fascism, many are turning around and flooding out of the BPM. Drone political operatives under the spell of GPM2 can be quite deadly, and untraceably proxy-robotic, especially as genocidal agents, so the extreme importance of republican government is called for. If one branch of the dot.gov succumbs, the rest can avert disaster. Let’s make sitting ducks out in the open, like Stalin and Hitler, a thing of the past. A hybrid of GPM1, 2, the ‘Sufi’ Propaganda Machine, is especially disinforming, with dangerous fronts for the unwary. The vast majority of Sufis are harmless mystics, dupes of SPM, and keep getting blamed for the actions of a few hoodlums passed off as holy men. GPM4 wasn’t supposed to be on this list, but the Darwin Propaganda Machine (DPM), another hybrid with GPM3, has put it at risk. Toiling away in their labs, scientists must have felt left out of the world domination game, and needed a nice idiot-simple theory to get them started, so Darwin’s theory is handy here. You can pull rank on everyone with claims of Total Explanation, claiming to eliminate philosophy, religion, esthetics, and anything else. The Darwin debate and the Science Wars show the cracks forming, and it won’t be long before we get back to serious science. If we seem hard on science, don’t worry. Dealing with the DPM is almost recreational compared to the rest. We can’t get apocalyptic and reject all of what this quite incomplete list represents due to these impostors, and need to find what is of value behind the fronts, deceptions, and bad history that stews in the Augean stables of these traditions. But we are under no obligation to accept spiritual authority for the religious sectors, GPM2 included. Each sector divides into subcategories, e.g. the Capitalist Propaganda Machine, Marxist Propaganda machine, Madison Avenue Propaganda Machine. CPM and MPM, actually, have shot holes in each other for so long as to make them inseparable companions. The Capitalist Propaganda Machine has to convince you exploitation is justice, and needs a lot of fancy theory to keep the wheels spinning. The MPM started out as the grand expose of ideology, via the short lived Hegel Not Quite A Propaganda Machine, which lasted a mere decade, but ended up turning into another GPM, being accused of same, at the end of ideology, by the CPM, amazed at their good fortune at this proof their superior freedom from ideology, and the ‘end of history’ propaganda from the HNQPM. According to MPM a bunch of fat purses bought up government and hogs the airwaves. Is there any truth to the charges? Actually the LPM is the only one that allows free speech, so we stick to that, if we can figure out what do about the fat purses. Let us hope that the Real Information Age, if it ever comes, will see the collapse of these machines in the End Times of Propaganda. But we aren’t at the end of history preening our feathers. So far, civilization hasn’t happened, and we don’t have another five thousand years to keep trying. Are these remarks extreme? Perhaps we are indulging in our own propaganda. But since your leadership seems to have let you down, the problem is yours to diagnose and solve. In any case, we should note how each of these GPM’s attempt to coopt the idea of evolution. We must suspect that modern culture is too disturbed by the propagandas of these machines to get straight a theory of evolution. |
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