Stepping out of the Christmas Nightmare

 Stepping out of the Christmas Nightmare and into the New Year

On the second day of Christmas a young man is stabbed through the heart, as shoppers battle for bargains on Oxford Street.  Across the country, parents drop exhausted from getting and spending on fashion items, electronic gadgets and software, mindful of the fact that poor children are bullied at school if they turn up without the latest consumer products. To the proverbial visitor from outer space, the collective madness of the consumerist Christmas must appear as a time of very little heartfelt joy.

For so many people Christmas is a time of great sadness. The empty chairs of families separated by premature bereavement, broken relationships and war, show up the getting and spending for what it is – at best a worthless sham. The joy of being together in good company, of giving time, not things, of putting home-made words to home-made music, of sharing sadness and joy with families, friends and community over the twelve Holy Nights: that is what a real Christmas is all about.

Christmas can be a time to start the vital task of “Gardening the Soul”. As Sister Stanislaus Kennedy explains in her book of that name:

“People are tiring of the competitive consumer-driven world we live in. They are starting to ask, What can be done to reverse the trend towards extreme individualism? How can we live our lives caring for ourselves and being supportive to others?

“I believe we can only fill this gap by developing a sense of ownership of the world and times we live in. This is our time and it is up to us to choose our destinies. What happens here, now, is our responsibility. It is not a matter of doing great things: it is a matter of doing or saying small things with responsibility and courage.”

A seemingly impossible undertaking so long as we remain in thrall to the brave new technological world where, we live under the illusion that there is no alternative but to work for an economic system which we do not understand, producing goods and services which we do not really need, whilst longing for Friday, holidays and retirement. “The world is” indeed “too much with us”:

 “Getting and spending we lay waste our powers:

   Little we see in nature that is ours. …”

Two hundred years after Wordsworth put pen to paper, Sister Stanislaus draws our attention to the solid fact that “NOW is the time to live”, to step outside the make-believe world of work and consumerist desires, so that “we develop a sense of ownership of the world and the times we live in.” It is indeed up to us all individually to abandon protest and wage-slavery, seeking to “choose our destinies” for ourselves. In that way we can, with Sister Stanislaus, encourage others to “Take time to live – it’s what life is for.”

Government Guidelines

Government has issued Health & Safety and Equality Considerations for Christmas Songs

23 December 2011

The Rocking Song
Little Jesus, sweetly sleep, do not stir;
We will lend a coat of fur,
We will rock you, rock you, rock you,
We will rock you, rock you, rock you

Fur is no longer appropriate wear for small infants, both due to risk of allergy to animal fur, and for ethical reasons. Therefore faux fur, a nice cellular blanket or perhaps micro-fleece material should be considered a suitable alternative.

Please note, only persons who have been subject to a Criminal Records Bureau check and have enhanced clearance will be permitted to rock baby Jesus. Persons must carry their CRB disclosure with them at all times and be prepared to provide three forms of identification before rocking commences.

Jingle Bells
Dashing through the snow
In a one horse open sleigh
O'er the fields we go
Laughing all the way

A risk assessment must be submitted before an open sleigh is considered safe for members of the public to travel on. The risk assessment must also consider whether it is appropriate to use only one horse for such a venture, particularly if passengers are of larger proportions. Please note, permission must be gained from landowners before entering their fields. To avoid offending those not participating in celebrations, we would request that laughter is moderate only and not loud enough to be considered a noise nuisance.

While Shepherds Watched
While shepherds watched
Their flocks by night
All seated on the ground
The angel of the Lord came down
And glory shone around

The union of Shepherd's has complained that it breaches health and safety regulations to insist that shepherds watch their flocks without appropriate seating arrangements being provided, therefore benches, stools and orthopaedic chairs are now available. Shepherds have also requested that due to the inclement weather conditions at this time of year that they should watch their flocks via cctv cameras from centrally heated shepherd observation huts.
Please note, the angel of the lord is reminded that before shining his / her glory all around she / he must ascertain that all shepherds have been issued with glasses capable of filtering out the harmful effects of UVA, UVB and Glory.

Rudolph the red nosed reindeer
Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer
had a very shiny nose.
And if you ever saw him,
you would even say it glows.

You are advised that under the Equal Opportunities for All policy, it is inappropriate for persons to make comment with regard to the ruddiness of any part of Mr. R. Reindeer. Further to this, exclusion of Mr R Reindeer from the Reindeer Games will be considered discriminatory and disciplinary action will be taken against those found guilty of this offence. A full investigation will be implemented and sanctions - including suspension on full pay - will be considered whilst this investigation takes place.

Little Donkey
Little donkey, little donkey on the dusty road
Got to keep on plodding onwards with your precious load

The RSPCA have issued strict guidelines with regard to how heavy a load that a donkey of small stature is permitted to carry, also included in the guidelines is guidance regarding how often to feed the donkey and how many rest breaks are required over a four hour plodding period. Please note that due to the increased risk of pollution from the dusty road, Mary and Joseph are required to wear face masks to prevent inhalation of any airborne particles. The donkey has expressed his discomfort at being labelled 'little' and would prefer just to be simply referred to as Mr. Donkey. To comment upon his height or lack thereof may be considered an infringement of his equine rights.

We Three Kings
We three kings of Orient are
Bearing gifts we traverse afar
Field and fountain, moor and mountain
Following yonder star

Whilst the gift of gold is still considered acceptable - as it may be redeemed at a later date through such organisations as 'cash for gold' etc, gifts of frankincense and myrrh are not appropriate due to the potential risk of oils and fragrances causing allergic reactions. A suggested gift alternative would be to make a donation to a worthy cause in the recipients name or perhaps give a gift voucher. We would not advise that the traversing kings rely on navigation by stars in order to reach their destinations and suggest the use of RAC routefinder or satellite navigation, which will provide the quickest route and advice regarding fuel consumption. Please note as per the guidelines from the RSPCA for Mr Donkey, the camels carrying the three kings of Orient will require regular food and rest breaks.
Facemasks for the three kings are also advisable due to the likelihood of dust from the camels hooves.

 

The lessons learned in Argentina in 2001/3

The lessons learned in Argentina in 2001/3 are today being used in Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Iceland, the UK and the USA.)

Exactly ten years ago Argentina suffered a full-scale financial and governmental collapse. That was the end-result of over a decade of doing exactly what the IMF, international bankers, rating agencies and global “experts” told us to do. Read on…

http://rt.com/news/argentina-tango-lessons-salbuchi-109/

All this has been on the cards since the short-lived Alberta Experiment (1935), the full story of which is told in Understanding the Financial System: Social Credit Rediscovered.  

Over the decades of the twentieth century we have been conditioned to think, live and work within a certain paradigm or world view, so that, very much like O’Duffy’s Asses in Clover, we remain absolutely convinced that as long as we work for our masters, our masters will continue to provide us with our keep.

“Don’t think about it,” we bray in unison. “No need to trouble our heads with rational thought… follow the rules, get and spend your money on the mass markets, be entertained by the mass media, - and all will be well.”

Alternative world views date back to Wordsworth’s day. Some, dating from the days of the guild socialists (Ruskin, Morris, Penty et al), can be found at http://www.douglassocialcredit.com/  . Copies of Asses in Clover can be purchased from the same site.

Routine Vaccination of Children Against HPV

At a recent family gathering my thirteen year old granddaughter showed me a small mark on her upper arm where she had been vaccinated at school “against cervical cancer”. She informed me: “You see, Grandma, young people between thirteen and nineteen sleep around these days, which makes them likely to get cervical cancer.” She had been told that the vaccine would protect her.  

Subsequent investigation revealed the following facts. The vaccination is probably against HPV – Human Papillomavirus, which is “the most common sexually transmitted infection in adults”. Wikipedia carries the following information:

In the UK the vaccine is licensed for girls aged 9 to 15 and for women aged 16 to 26.

HPV vaccination with Cervarix was introduced into the national immunisation programme in September 2008, for girls aged 12–13 across the UK. A two-year catch up campaign started in Autumn 2009 to vaccinate all girls up to 18 years of age. Catch up vaccination will be offered to:

·        girls aged between 16 and 18 from autumn 2009, and

·        girls aged between 15 and 17 from autumn 2010.

By the end of the catch up campaign, all girls under 18 will have been offered the HPV vaccine. Women over the age of 18 are not included in the programme as it would not be cost effective in preventing cervical cancer.

It will be many years before the vaccination programme has an effect upon cervical cancer incidence so women are advised to continue accepting their invitations for cervical screening.

The HPV vaccine is licensed for “girls aged 9 to 15”, which means children. It is also licensed for “women aged 16 to 26”, which means young people. It is offered through the schools education service.

When told about the vaccination, and the reasons for it, I was deeply shocked, but did not hesitate to believe the child. At just over twelve years old, I would have had no idea what was meant by “sleeping around”. Could it mean a tramp who had nowhere to live? Or camping out? As I did neither, I would have been mystified as to the need for a vaccination. And my parents, having been asked for permission, would have been outraged. Just think about it – a child of thirteen years old is vaccinated against sexually transmitted disease! What does that tell the child? It is alright to accept an invitation to have sex with a boy? An older man? Who? Do her parents understand why she has been offered to be immunised against sexually transmitted disease?

What is the reaction of the reader? Are you shocked? Do you disbelieve what you are reading? Do you blind me with science, saying that it is just a precaution, but one worth taking in view of the fact that cervical cancer is not confined to the middle-aged and elderly, but is occurring in young people? Do you turn on me in anger, accusing me of seeking to cause unnecessary suffering by protecting children from knowledge of the real world? The subject, when mentioned, raises powerful emotions. It also reveals great ignorance about the fundamental underlying issues, such as the origins of these policy decisions.

In Sexual Sabotage  Judith Reisman notes that “there is big money in the collaboration of Big Pharma, Big Pornography and Big Sexology”:

“Not coincidentally, big-business abortion funders (Rockefeller) and pornographers, (Playboy and Rockefeller) initially financed the sexology ‘field.’ … It seems eerie that Alfred Kinsey and his saboteurs launched this brave new world in 1948, the year of Orwell’s 1984. Now it is in full gear and fully financed - by Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Ford, Rockefeller, the pornography industry, and State-supported research, schools and libraries. Thus the SIC [Sex Industrial Complex] is entrenched in our society. …

“To unravel the agenda and outcomes of the pedophile lobby, again, ‘follow the money.’ In 2003, the Kinsey Institute built on tortuous child sexual experiments published Sexual Development in Childhood,[i] a product of the pornography-pharmacology connection. The marketing strategy of this deadly collaboration is to give children legal access to pornography (as in some ‘sex education’ classes today), so that they will have sex with each other and adults, then to vaccinate children for venereal diseases and even pregnancy, thereby preventing unfortunate consequences of such abnormal behaviour. This was – and is – a business partnership made in hell.”

Thoroughly researched and referenced, Judith Reisman’s Sexual Sabotage answers many of the questions asked by a generation of grandparents who feel uneasy at the lifestyles adopted by young people, lifestyles which all too often lead to tragedy and heartbreak.

See also http://www.famyouth.org.uk/ for information on the nature of sex education programmes in UK schools.

---

[i] John Bancroft (ed), Sexual Development in Childhood, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003.

Penniless Poets Unite

 

Across the UK, voluntary societies, including churches, are being given Government money to open soup kitchens to feed individuals who fall out of the benefits system. It is now government policy to turn away penniless any individual who does not ‘qualify’ for some form of assistance, benefit or income. The feckless who refuse to work, the mentally and physically sick who cannot work, asylum seekers, victims of domestic violence, can be quite literally thrown onto the streets, even whilst their application for assistance is under review or appeal. It is a fact, not fiction, that, if grand parents cannot or do not step in, the children of these men and women are removed from them into the care of the local authority. And they are powerless to prevent it. That is happening right now in England, and elsewhere in these islands.

“A woman must have a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” The words of the famous woman writer of the 1920s are meaningless today. We live in the machine age’, where bureaucrats are paid to administer a centralised system of laws and regulations which are designed to reduce the individual human being to a mere cog or cipher, to be used by the productive and consumerist machine, and spewed out when no longer of use. Already the remaining smaller hospitals are turning away casualties if the patient is over 65. Both parents are forced into paid employment, so that chronic illness of a child, parent or other close family member can spell homelessness in the long term. The notion of having a room that is one’s own by right, and a sufficiency of income by legal right of citizenship, so that one can be in control of one’s own life-choices, has become a whimsical idea of a long-forgotten past.  

A century ago people from all walks of life took a keen interest in matters of political, economic and constitutional rights. Quite ordinary people took it upon themselves to read the original works of leading thinkers in the field (see http://www.douglassocialcredit.com/ ). Many read Marx’s predictions that capitalism would so oppress the workers that they would rise in revolution to create the centralised communist Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Some went on to read Thorstein Veblen’s argument that Marx could be wrong. If the workers became better off materially under capitalism they would remain contented slaves of a centralised system which would supply them with all their needs so long as they followed orders from above. And so it was: the ‘brave new world’ of the centralised welfare state provided jobs for the workers, training to fulfil those jobs through the ‘education’ services, ‘health’ services to produce healthy workers, and a massive leisure industry to keep the workers entertained in their ‘time off’. The notion of an autonomous citizen, with rights but with corresponding duties freely to give service to others, went clean out of the window.

As a result, the mass of the workers are inculcated with the notion that their responsibilities in adult life are limited to earning enough money to keep a roof over their own heads, and caring for their immediate family. They pay taxes so that the government can pay other workers to provide the infra-structure necessary to keep the economy supplying the consumer goods and services necessary to – keep the economy going. The underlying philosophy is that human beings are nothing more than advanced animals, capable of developing a highly sophisticated technology which will sustain human life in some form of artificial intelligence. Bereft of spiritual considerations, a degraded human nature emerges. Programmed to obey automatically, to be good because there is no other choice, the human being becomes an automaton, incapable of taking the needs, feelings or wishes of another as their prior consideration in selecting a course of action.

As Forster’s story, The Machine Stops, demonstrates, the industrial age has transformed the relationship between humanity’s understanding of the natural, spiritual and cultural worlds out of all recognition. For most people throughout most of history, the creation of life’s necessities gave meaning to life. The arts of agriculture and of the kitchen involved in the production of food developed skills, challenges and satisfactions in co-operation with others. As long ago as 1936 Eric Gill wrote:

“It may sound sentimental to our town and factory populations, but it is true to say that even bread may be holy or unholy, and therefore human or inhuman. And when we consider the high art of architecture, it seems obvious that the house is only a machine to live in, if the word ‘machine’ be used as a purely fanciful and literary conceit.” ( Eric Gill “The Leisure State: A Criticism” The Fig Tree, June 1936.)

Whilst Corbusier observed that “A house is a machine to live in”, Eric Gill raises the much broader question as to whether the products of the machine age, the food, clothing, furniture and shelter produced mechanically, are really appropriate for man and women’s use. With Gill, we can follow the argument that reduced hours of work might enable human beings to pursue “higher things” in their leisure time. But with Gill we can observe that “when we consider man’s history”, until the evolution of the Machine Age, it is precisely “the things necessary to him upon which he has expended all his love and imagination and tenderness”. And we can further agree “tenderness is of all his virtues the most characteristically human. And it has been upon the making of what he needed that man has chiefly shown his nature.”

The Machine Age has no use for artists, poets, playwrights, musicians and literary figures, save to provide leisured entertainment for the ruling Davos Class.

The Machine Stops Notes for Today

 Today, human survival is completely dependent upon a system of production and distribution which is entirely beyond the comprehension, and hence control, of the individual citizen. In every country of the world, complex technologies are used to supply machine-manufactured goods for distant markets. The situation was foreseen by E.M. Forster in his novella The Machine Stops. First published in serialised form in a magazine during 1909, the story reveals much about life in the twenty-first century that might otherwise pass by unnoticed.  

Production of basic necessities

When the story was written mass production of the basic necessities of life was in its infancy. Food, clothing, furniture, furnishings, tools, containers and all manner of artefacts were designed, produced and consumed locally. Goods were produced and consumed in common, using resources taken directly from the land, coupled with inherited wisdom and ways of working. As tools and equipment wore out, they were repaired or replaced within the local community. Today, virtually every item of food we eat, clothing we wear, and artefacts we use, has been designed and produced by people unknown to us. All we can do is to select from the range on offer, dumping waste into the local environment. We are being kept in luxury. But we are increasingly powerless to control what is made available to us and our families. Furthermore, legal controls restrict our choices of healthy foods and medicines – for our own good and/or that of powerful pharmaceutical companies.

Transport and communications

Mass systems of transport and communications were yet to be developed in 1909. The idea of flying across the world on a commercial airline in order to visit a relative was pure science-fiction fantasy. A century later it is conceivable that Skype and video conferencing could replace virtually all human contact.

Religion and the arts

Forster’s imaginary nightmare world is dominated by the mechanical Machine. Equal amounts of daily necessities are doled out systematically on an equal basis, as individuals sit in their identical little boxes underground. In the resultant spiritual and cultural desert there is no room for a Supreme Being, no artistic endeavour, no story of human existence. All is scientific, mechanical, devoid of life or meaning.

Child care and education

The most untenable aspect of Forster’s imaginary Machine is the notion that children could be reared in nurseries without love. Had Kuno in reality been removed to a nursery at birth, there would have been no affective relationship between mother and son in adult life. In this circumstance, adults, in the unlikely event that they survived, would be mere automatons, socially and physically brainwashed into their allotted status in the ‘brave new world’ of the Machine, not able to choose for themselves between right and wrong behaviour. When viewed objectively, this is the most terrifying aspect of the situation we face today. As children are removed from the family home from an increasingly earlier age, for increasingly long periods, they are given into the care of relative strangers who pass through their lives like characters on the flickering screen. When taught to respect nobody and to love nobody but themselves, many end up with little respect for anybody or anything.

The political economy

Gone are all notions of citizenship, of consumer sovereignty, of civil rights or of democratic government. In Forster’s story, as is the case in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and in George Orwell’s 1984, the use of money has disappeared. No mention of it is made in any of the stories. Policies are determined by the New World Order of the ‘Committee of the Machine’. The evolution of the ‘Committee of the Machine’, the Controller, or ‘Big Brother’ has been monitored and predicted by many perceptive writers, including contributors to The Social Crediter dating back to the 1930s. In his recent book, Dr. Kerry Bolton draws together the contributions of past authorities, bringing them up to date with the present. In Revolution from Above, he demonstrates that:

“the supposed rivalry between Marxist-inspired movements and capitalism has always been an illusion. Marxism, Communism and liberalism have been and continue to be exploited by the forces of international capitalism to further their global agenda, despite their surface disagreements. Dr. Bolton shows that the ultimate goal of capitalism is to create a worldwide collectivist society of consumers, and Marxism is merely one means of attaining this. He traces this idea back to Plato, through the Illuminati, the Freemasons, the French Revolution, and Communism, and examines the evidence for the existence of a shadowy network of bankers who control a large portion of the world’s political and economic power. He then discusses the various instruments this network uses to maintain control, such as tax-exempt foundations and think tanks. Dr. Bolton also reveals how capitalist governments actually worked closely with Communist regimes and, in fact, frustrated genuinely anti-Communist efforts during the Cold War. He discusses the impact this has had on Western society, resulting in such trends as the sexual revolution and the promotion of drug use. Dr. Bolton then brings us up-to-date by discussing the role of the recent "Arab spring" in these ongoing developments. One will never be able to view modern history the same way again after reading Dr. Bolton’s arguments and examining the supporting evidence.

“K. R. Bolton holds doctorates in Historical Theology and Theology; Ph.D. (Hist. Th.), Th.D. as well as in other areas. He is a contributing writer for The Foreign Policy Journal, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social and Political Research in Greece. His papers and articles have been published by both scholarly and popular media, including the International Journal of Social Economics; Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies; Geopolitika; World Affairs; India Quarterly; and The Initiate: Journal of Traditional Studies. His work has been translated into Russian, Vietnamese, Italian, Czech, Latvian, Farsi and French.”

        Kerry Bolton Revolution from Above, (Arktos, 2011).

2012

Study reading of the three dystopias (The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and 1984 by George Orwell) might help to illuminate the intention and drift of bureaucratic controls over all aspects of life – health, education, farming, travel, news, communications, economic and political affairs. With the introduction of a world-wide system of carbon currency, ordinary people will be relieved of the necessity to make rational, moral choices of any kind (for some information about what is meant by ‘carbon currency’ see article by Patrick Wood reproduced in current issue of The Social Crediter). All will be decided for them. Many individuals living today have been so brainwashed by the educational processes, the barrage of deceptive electronic  ‘news’ services, and the all-pervasive in-service training programmes in every trade or profession, that the brave new world of the Machine will seem like a natural evolution into Nirvana.

It does not have to be that way if there are enough individuals who see things differently.

. 



Introducing "Understanding Life and Debt" Blog

Introducing the Blog

This blog was originally set up during 2010, but at the time I could see no particular use for it. The Social Credit Secretariat already edits the douglassocialcredit.com website and the quarterly journal, The Social Crediter, back numbers of which can be viewed on the same website.  Introducing the work of many talented writers and activists, past and present, these forms of communication are available for consultation whenever the need arises.  There seemed very little point in adding to the mass of blogs, email circulars, discussion groups and other messages sent out more frequently.

Recent discussions indicate that the times are changing. Theologians such as Canon Peter Dominey and Dr. K. R. Bolton inter alios, are writing on money, politics, economics and international affairs, presenting an increasingly perceptive analysis of the fundamental underlying causes of malaise.

Meanwhile, much frantic action is accompanying very ephemeral trains of thought. Far too many people are busy trying to re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, deck chairs which are being thrown into disarray as she lurches in her death throes. Millions of man-hours are spent raising money for charity, whilst governments subsidise arms manufacture and the military on a massive scale.  Nestle is now Fair Trade, massive supermarket chains stock organic food, and we are encouraged to work more to produce more to keep the economy going. The terminology may have changed, but the fundamental issues have remained the same since the founding of the Social Credit Secretariat by Clifford Hugh Douglas in the 1930s, and the establishment of The Social Crediter.

We recently received the following messages from subscribers to The Social Crediter:

Dear Editor :

Just to say that this issue of The Social Crediter (Vol. 87/No. 4) was superb. Carbon Credits will indeed replace present currency. The banks who create the money supply do control the economy and the politicians; and the memoirs of the Economic Hit-man are on order as we speak.  

The present Government is working to old established parameters, with a seeming ignorance of the true state of play. Foreign policy is distancing us from the world of reality. What a mess we live in. Governed by incompetent old boys.

Malcolm (Parkin)

Dear Editor:

The matters of Alfred Kinsey, and of carbon credits, and of bolshevism, bankers, New Left, Old Left, LSD, Arab Spring, etc. are placed into historical context in my recent book Revolution from Above, available from the publishers; also from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, etc:  See http://www.arktos.com/revolution-from-above.html

K.R. Bolton

The question is, what can replace the ‘Titanic’, aka the ‘brave new dystopia of rapidly stopping Machine? This Blog seeks to explore the many optimistic signs now emerging with increasing frequency.

How the New World Order is taking over: Part III

How the New World Order is coming in Part III

Throughout the UK people have been conditioned into thinking that ‘THEY’ are busy passing laws and introducing welfare measures for the good of the people as a whole. Hence you must wear a seatbelt in your own car, whether you agree to do so or not, on pain of financial penalty backed by the force of law. Similarly, you must observe the stated speed limit regardless of your own judgement of the speed appropriate to the prevailing road conditions. You must not smoke in a public space, even in the open air, outside a hospital or on a railway platform. You may not enter a railway carriage without passing through a ticket barrier because you cannot be trusted to be honest, whatever your status or standing in the community.

The pros and cons of each individual issue can be debated until the cows come home. But the fundamental concern, at the heart of many matters to be covered in subsequent issues of this blog, is the citizen’s right to decide what is the right thing to do, and what is the wrong thing to do. That is, in a free society, individuals must exercise their judgement, acting in their own right as a citizen. A population cowed into subservience to a series of legally enforceable restraints, backed by the physical force of the law, is a population of automatons who have been deprived of their God-given right to free will through the exercise of their own judgement of what is appropriate.

The most worrying thing about ‘health and safety’ rulings, is that, without any serious debate on each issue, a large proportion of the population will argue in favour of the measures, on the grounds that people ought to be made to abide by the rules. The blind acceptance of the necessity to remove the citizen’s right to make an informed choice, the willing collusion in enforcing the measures, combined with the readiness to accept an income from the authorities in return for restraining others for breaking the rules, is un-nerving, to say the least. When Big Brother takes over (for our own good, of course), hard-won civil rights inherited from the past (see Share the Inheritance) fly out of the window.

The legal framework underpinning the checks and balances in local communities has changed so dramatically in recent decades that the whistle-blower blows in vain. Nobody has any recognised or recognisable standing in the community which enables them to speak with authority and influence matters. Virtually everybody seems to be bemused. As American researcher Charlotte Iserbyt explains:

“The next time you attempt to discuss with a friend or acquaintance a serious issue (such as illegal immigration, the Iraq War, our loss of constitutional rights under the Patriot Act, or the latest Supreme Court Decision doing away with private property rights) and you get that ‘glazed, blank, mindless, couldn’t care less expression,’ refer back to this article which attempts to explain the cause of that glazed expression: Pavlovian/Skinnerian conditioning, be it through operant conditioning programs in the schools, computers at home or school, the television, radio, music, video games or plain print media. It is important for people to become aware of the effects of conditioning, the brain and soul (conscience) killer, which is silently at work in our society 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year.” (See ‘Revolution in Education … Soviet Style’, by Charlotte Iserbyt,  Namaste, Vol. 12, Issue 3.

Charlotte Iserbyt has served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), US Department of Educational Research, during the first Reagan Administration, where she first blew the whistle on a major technology initiative which would control curriculum in America’s classrooms. She is a former school board director in Camden, Maine, and was co-founder and research analyst of Guardians of Education for Main (GEM) from 1978 to 2000. Her book, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, is downloadable at www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/pages/order.htm .

As a growing number of individuals seek alternatives to our ‘brave new dystopia’, it becomes essential to look around for viable alternative social models. This blog seeks to work to that end.

How the New World Order is taking over: Part II

How the New World Order is coming in: Part II

The Machine Stops, is shortly to be available in audio form. Written over a century ago, it is an amazingly accurate prediction of our present predicament. The unthinking use of the new technologies of electronic communications could not, however, succeed in cock-up fashion without the development of some centralised system of control over social interaction. In E.M. Forster’s story, the Committee of the Machine determines policy and administration, keeping people in line with those policies – purely for their own good. In their very different ways, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984 demonstrate the potential for centralised power to operate through psychological manipulation and terror. As Chris Hedges has demonstrated, the nightmare dystopias of the twentieth century are emerging as twenty-first century reality.

But what are the alternatives?  

Two essentials:

First, it is essential that the group shall have no conscriptive power over the

individual; i.e., the individual must have the power to contract-out of any group in society. Central to civil rights is the ability to contract out of waged or salaried slavery.  

Self-Employing Centers

The remedy for unemployment

is employment,

and there is no better employment

than self-employment.

Self-Employing Centers

are small shops

where repairs can be made

and workers can be found

to do work outside.

With the Self-Employing

Centers

could be connected Houses

of Hospitality where the

self-employing workers

could find shelter. This

complicated world is too

complicated to be dealt with

in an efficient manner by

specialized technicians.

Specialized technicians

knowing more and more

about less and less do not

know , how to simplify a

complicated world. We need

fewer specialists and more

encyclopedists, fewer

masters of one trade and

more jacks-of-all trades.

Peter Maurin

Catholic Radicalism (1949)

NOTE: This book is available to be downloaded from the internet, but I have failed to make the link work on this blog.

Second, maximum decentralisation of initiative is essential for human welfare. This is not devolution of power from a central power to the people living and working locally. On the contrary, it is a taking back of power over decision-making by the people creating and consuming the goods and services at local level.  

Cult, Culture, and Cultivation

When the Irish scholars

decided to lay the foundations

of medieval Europe,

they established:

Centers of Thought

in all the cities of Europe

as far as Constantinople,

where people

could look for thought

so they could have light.

Houses of Hospitality

where Christian charity

were exemplified.

Agricultural Centers

where they combined

(a) Cult—

that is to say Liturgy

(b) with Culture

that is to say Literature

(c) with Cultivation—

that is to say Agriculture. "

Peter Maurin

Catholic Radicalism

The origins and implications of these quotations will be explored in the course of this series of blog entries.