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.

How the New World Order is taking over: Part I

 http://www.wat.tv/video/papandemonium-nwo-chokes-world-4heb3_31wod_.html

http://naturalsociety.com/un-bill-gates-foundation-push-deadly-hpv-shots-on-poor-nations-under-gavi-alliance/

The first video was broadcast by Russian TV. It shows how, having placed disreputable politicians in positions of power in certain countries, and brought politics into disrepute, the next step is to remove all pretence of constitutional rights by replacing politicians with bankers and bureaucrats who will sort out the economy by dispensing with politics altogether. That way, we can all get on with working to maintain the system, machine, call it what you will, without bothering our heads about policies and human rights.

The second link will take you to a video of a talk by Bill Gates, where he prepares the ground for total centralised control over energy. What he says is shot through with lies, illusions and false, unscientific statements that it has to be heard – critically – to be believed. Of course, you can just let it flow over you and accept, as is intended, that sterling measures are necessary to combat the effects of man-made global warming because fuel shortages and high prices impact upon the poor. Measures include massive sums of money to be spent on Research and Development of some alternative form of nuclear energy underground, so that mankind will have enough energy to last as long as the earth lasts. The measures are to be paid for by the people. No mention is made of cutting back on air travel, commuting to work, wars, packaging, production of gimcrack rubbish etc, let alone sane local farming projects.

In due course, we will be tagged to receive an allotment of “carbon currency” non-transferable coupons in a cashless New World Order. The age of total subservience to THE MACHINE is just around the corner.

There is no doubt about it, we are being drawn into reacting to a very well planned agenda. The New World Order is taking control of material resources, so we need to be pro-active.

If we do not want our lives to be controlled by the NWO, we must ourselves take control of our own lives.

That is, we must reclaim our constitutional rights as citizens. These rights include the citizen’s right to counsel, habeas corpus, protection from state coercion, the right to a fair trial and above all, the right to Constitutional Government. The obligation to be coerced into working-for-money is not part of the citizens’ agenda.

Many thanks to a number of individuals for gathering this information.

You Have Two Cows

Oppression, injustice and disasters have existed since times immemorial. Nevertheless, in the bad old days it was always possible to identify the sources of each individual problem with a view to taking appropriate remedial action. The world-wide money economy has given rise to systems of mass communication, so that daily we receive news of individuals and groups in dire need of support. One can, at best, offer financial support or signatures to shore up a selected number of the plights brought to one’s attention by friends and colleagues. But the attempt to view the bigger picture is so mind-boggling that we shrink back into our private comfort zones, seeking to carry on as normal with the sticking-plaster approach.

Realistically, what can be done? Well, you are currently reading a ‘slow read blog’. You are invited to take a little time out to look at the bigger picture by assessing the nature of the world political economy of the second decade of the twenty-first century. The term ‘slow read’ was coined by Tom Raines, editor of the anthroposophical quarterly magazine New View.

In the early twentieth century, would-be statesmen and politicians were sent to study economics at the newly-founded London School of Economics (LSE) so that they would not fall into error by threatening big business and financial interests with ‘uneconomic’ schemes. In the introductory course, students were taught the value of money as an invention. Illustrations featured a farmer in a moneyless society who uses the cattle he owns to trade with his neighbors. A typical example is: "You have two cows; you want chickens; you set out to find another farmer who has chickens and wants a cow". These examples were meant to show the limitations of the barter system, leading to the brilliant invention of money and the financial system. By the early twentieth century it was apparent that without the institutions of finance, the modern political economy could not function. Money has made it possible for ‘you’ – Rational Economic Man – to exchange your ‘two cows’ – the land, labour or capital (plant or finance) – for money. That money will be accepted in exchange for any goods and services you require. Nevertheless, we ordinary individuals often find it very difficult to comprehend the complexity of the institutions governing the political economy under which we live. The following ‘two cow’ parodies, which circulated in the 1990s, demonstrate the dilemma we face in seeking to understand the man-made system under which we all live.

FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbours decide who gets the milk.
REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbours pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.
BRITISH DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. You feed them sheep’s brains and they go mad. The government doesn’t do anything.
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for them. After the election the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair ‘Cowgate’. The cow sues you for breach of contract.
EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. After that it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

TOTALITARIANISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.
CRONY CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You leverage a hefty campaign contribution to a seat on the State Dairy Board. There you pass a regulation guaranteeing that no one can sell milk in the state cheaper than you. Your son becomes the most influential lobbyist in the State.

COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you should need.
IDEALISED COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.
LENINIST COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Actually, the state owns them, but you have to take care of them. Most of the milk goes to the Revolutionary Vanguard.
STALINIST COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The state kills them and you. Your children and neighbors starve to death waiting for the state to replace the two cows. The state denies you ever existed.
BREZHNEV COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You bribe the local Party Boss to let you sell some of the milk on the black market. With the profits you buy Beatles albums and used Levi jeans.

ENRON CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back. You take a tax deduction for five cows. The milk rights for six cows are transferred to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by a majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows' milk back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows in order to report lower overhead and project higher profits. Your stock soars-for a while.
MODERN CHINESE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You bribe the party boss, sell the milk on an open market, buy a nightclub, deal drugs, and live well so long as you never speak your mind.
SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.
With thanks to the various contributors of entries to these lists, available on the internet.

For an exploration of economic thought see The Archaeology of Economic Thought