Myth:
A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society: the myth of Eros and Psyche; a creation myth.
Such stories considered as a group: the realm of myth.
A fiction or half-truth, especially one that forms part of an ideology
As bikers we pride ourselves on our "independence" and the mytho's that has grown up around the lifestyle. However, in fact, we are no different than any other people. For Americans have fallen into the same trap of believing in the myth that has grown up around who we are, or are supposed to be.
In other words we have fallen guilty to believing the lie of not only our country but ourselves.
It is an easy trap to fall into. As we have suffered from the false belief that we are our own person. Which is a lie.
Being born with a "Tabula rasa," like the hard drive of a computer, our programmers (parents, schools, media, friends, religions and life experience) begins our programming. Unfortunately our programmers, being born before the time of anti-virus and anti-malware programs, have been programmed and over time become infected with many viruses and malware.
The blank slate that we are born with is unable to differentiate between that which is real and that which is not. It trusts it's programmers and accepts that which is inputted as the truth. Thus "garbage in, garbage out".
When we are taught the lie over and over again it becomes our truth, our reality. And people are highly resistant to having their truth denied. The truth becomes a threat to our reality and security and without our reality what have we?
An example: Copernicus was a Church Administrator, lawyer, medical practitioner, defense planner and "respected" astronomer. In other words a staunch member of the establishment of the times.
But he did something that scared the hell out of not only him, but the rest of the world. After 39 years of work he proved that the planets revolved around the Sun instead of the earth. He died, writing in his book , De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, “The scorn which I had to fear on account of the newness and absurdity of my opinion, almost drove me to abandon a work already undertaken.”
His work was banned by the church and he was buried in an unmarked grave for his efforts. And then came Galileo. another establishment member, mathematics professor who just happened to discover the law of "falling bodies" as well as the parabolic path of projectiles, invented a calculator, built a telescope, proved Aristotle wrong and Copernicus right.
And how was he rewarded for proving and advocating for the truth?
he was summoned to Rome by the Inquisition to stand trial for "grave suspicion of heresy," stating that he had been ordered personally in 1616 to not discuss Copernicanism, either orally or written. Despite the fact that Galileo was able to produce a certificate signed by the late cardinal Bellarmine stating that he was under no further restrictions than applied to other Catholics, he was compelled in 1633 to abjure and was sentenced to life in prison.and
That sentence was swiftly commuted to permanent house arrest, but the Dialogue was ordered to be burned, and the sentence against him was to be read publicly in every university.
An investigation into the astronomer's condemnation, calling for its reversal, was opened in 1979 by Pope John Paul II. In October 1992 a papal commission acknowledged the Vatican had made errors, but stopped short of admitting the Church was wrong to convict Galileo on a charge of heresy because of his belief that the Earth rotates round the sun.There are some important words above that haunt us today. "Censorship". Denial of the truth.
Especially relevant when you consider current events, such as:
China's government plans to require all PCs sold in that country as of 1 July to be shipped with software that blocks certain websites, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
The move, which is expected to give government censors heightened control over how China's citizens use the internet, is intended to protect young people from "harmful" content such as pornography, according to the software's main developer.Note the words. "protect", "harmful", "banned," "government censors", and most interestingly,
The software, called Green Dam-Youth Escort, would block access to banned websites by connecting to a regularly updated database of banned sites and block access to those addresses, according to the report. The requirement is aimed at "constructing a green, healthy and harmonious internet environment, and preventing harmful information on the internet from influencing and poisoning young people", according to a 19 May Chinese government notice the newspaper cited.
The Chinese government has a reputation for restricting its citizens' access to the internet.
Earlier this month, on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, China reportedly blocked access to websites such as Twitter, Yahoo's Flickr, YouTube, Microsoft Hotmail, Live.com, Wordpress, Blogger and many other social-networking sites.
"constructing a green, healthy and harmonious internet environment, and preventing harmful information on the internet from influencing and poisoning young people"Now ask yourself, how would that sentence sound if you removed the word "harmonious and replaced it with "politically correct"? And how American Companies who profit in China respond?
A spokeswoman for Hewlett-Packard Co., which has the largest PC market share of any U.S. vendor in China, said the company is "working with the government authorities and evaluating the best way to approach this. Obviously we will focus on delivering the best customer experience while ensuring that we meet necessary regulatory requirements."
Sales of PCs in China neared 40 million units last year, second only to the U.S. Chinese company Lenovo Group Ltd. had the largest market share, with 26.7% of units shipped in the first three months of 2009, while H-P had 13.7% and Dell Inc. had 8.1%, according to research firm IDC.
Manufacturers have more than just sales in China to consider when the government asks them to do something: Major PC companies also have investments in factories and research facilities in China.
Dell declined to comment on the software. Lenovo said, "We review all legislation relating to our business," and didn't comment further.
U.S. Internet companies have for years grappled with demands from the Chinese government to censor content or share potentially private data with police.
Several of the biggest -- including Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft -- joined together last October to announce a set of guidelines for how they would comply with censorship requests from countries such as China, including a promise to be transparent about the requests they receive. But the effort, known as the Global Network Initiative, was criticized by some civil-liberties groups as being short on specifics and not doing enough to fight censorship laws. No computer hardware makers are members of the group.
A Yahoo spokeswoman said that the company would "continue to analyze international developments that may impact our industry." "We strongly support the free flow of information and the right to freedom of expression," she said.
An argument can be made, has been made and will continue to be made to justify profit, that a taste of "capitalism" will motivate a people to thirst for Freedom to be "all that they can be." But how can that occur when "freedom" of the mind is replaced by "programming" of the mind.
The issue of "slavery" during the formation of our on Constitution might be analogous here.
Which brings us back to the "lie" which we referenced to begin with.
With the programming we have received since birth comes the skill of "rationalization". A defense mechanism by which we learn to re-enforce our lie to create or maintain our reality:
According to the DSM-IV rationalization occurs "when the individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by concealing the true motivations for his or her own thoughts, actions, or feelings through the elaboration of reassuring or self serving but incorrect explanations."This is not just done on an individual basis but with co-operation of the masses. Thus China rationalizes it's need to perpetuate oppression to protect the masses from "pornography".
America rationalizes it's need to implement repressive laws to "protect homeland security", to protect us against "terrorism".
It is our failure to understand the role of our rationalizations that allows us to continue to repeat the mistakes of history over and over again. Although we know the Holocaust occurred there is still argument as to the why of it and if we can not answer that question we can guarantee that such actions will happen again as they have and do in Africa. Consider from,
'Explaining Hitler': Dangerous to Understand, Dangerous to Ignore:
What the more absurd of these theories make clear is how dangerous the effort to explain Hitler can be -- how it can result in a rationalization of his actions, exempting him from responsibility for his crimes while shifting the blame to abstract historical forces or subconscious psychic drives.
It can also provide us with false consolation. Those theories that suggest that Hitler was a madman completely off the charts of human behavior allow us to shrug him off as a horrible anomaly, while other theories, which suggest that he was not consciously evil, enable us to ignore his darkest implications about human nature.
At the same time, Rosenbaum argues, repudiating any effort to understand Hitler or the Holocaust (as Lanzmann has done) can lead to a process of mystification that effectively shields the murderers from responsibility for their crimes and thwarts all efforts to learn from the horrors of the past.
Our own individual responsibility is to "question" everything or become pawns of the ones who do.
This is especially true in matters of Government, as governments have a tendency to rationalize/sell their actions to be in "your" best interest. Unfortunately, the process of our learning, accepting, and acting on the truth may be to late.
After all the Jews have not been the only ethnic group to suffer indignities forced on them by others who felt superior. It is happening right now, here in America. To Americans who have abdicated responsibility to the truth, in favor of agendas. Many of whom spend little to no time investigating the whys and hows that which is ours is being taken from us a little at a time. Just quietly suffering as we desperately try to cling on to the little piece of the pie we have and grab more if we can.
And let us not forget that should we support the American Corporate participation in Censorship in other companies, will we see it when it happens here?
Paradoxically this is our fault and it is not our fault. Remember we have been programmed. Are we Democrats or Republicans and why for example? Are you one or the other because your background "programmed" you to be such? Or did you arrive at your persuasion based on your own independent
investigation of the facts? And if so, chose one, why is it that you can not see the validity of the other?
Choosing instead to treat the other as the enemy. Is it out of fear that should your enemy have a point your own reality is so tenuous as to be at risk? If so, Congratulations, you have just joined the ranks of those who who don't believe we ever set foot on the moon.
How much has been stolen from us by Government, Corporations and even Charities because we have failed to ask the questions we may not want to hear the answers to?
How many want to believe that they have been suckered by the Muscular Dystrophy Association (and others)?
Now take that a step further and ask, how many want to believe they were suckered by their programmers? Their parents, teachers, media, friends, government, and all the other forces your trusted with your safety. Worse yet, just trusted period. Reality a little thin yet?
Imagine your reality, your belief system, as an old reel to reel tape going around and around in your head. Everything is fine as long no pressure is exerted against it. If you apply a little pressure, a threat to your reality/belief system, to the tape you will notice there is resistance, but it will still go round and round. As you apply more pressure the resistance is greater, to the extent that the spools may begin to slow and heat up. A headache so to speak. Now this is a tape that you value, that you do not want to lose. If that tape breaks, if information is provided the substantiates that your belief system/reality is faulty what will you do?
Embrace the truth or discount it and save the valued faulty tape and the pain of losing it?
If tomorrow morning news broke presenting irrefutable evidence that God never existed, how would you react? Discount the truth? Rationalize the truth? Or accept the truth and radically change the behaviors that were based on your belief of a non existent God? More telling yet, how do your behaviors now align themselves with whatever God you choose to profess to believe in?
And when you have answered that, answer this one, how do your behaviors now, align themselves with the principles of individual rights on which America was founded?
Are you a free individual or an easily manipulated pawn by virtue of defective programming?
Ask a car salesman that has studied pacing, mirroring and other forms of "irresistible communication." Ask marketing firms whose lifeblood is contingent upon getting you to believe that "Cheerios" will save your life.
The fact/truth is that we have become well programed to believe that lies are truth. How many times have you listened to someone repeat a infinitely forwarded e-mail as a "fact," referred them to "Snopes.com" and had them respond with Snopes lies????
So the source of all lies is us. If you own stock in a computer company that is positioned to rise based on increased sales to China based on agreeing to help suppress the truth to masses of people will you sell it at a loss? It goes further than that. Would you stop purchasing items made in China or Oil exported from Russia, providing other countries with the ammunition to destroy what little we have not already destroyed.
Of course not. For some one simple reason. We can not. The train has left the station. It is to late. We have allowed the Corporate/Governance alliance to engage in the ultimate capitalistic achievement, the sale of a country and it's people.
They were able to do that by creating an economy by which most American workers receive at least some percentage of their income from the federal government (via tarp). Which of course you will have to repay in order to enable the Federal government to return a portion of it to the rich, who will then use it to pay some of us and the circle becomes vicious indeed.
See:
Fed Would Be Shut Down If It Were Audited, Expert Says
Russia to sell US Treasuries, eyes IMF bonds
China's Yuan Ambitions
The Issue: Outsourcing
And for all the talk of green shoots there is more than one second shoe out there ready to drop:
Credit Card Defaults Reach Record Highs in April
U.S. unemployment—currently at 8.9 percent—is expected to approach 10 percent as the country endures its worst recession since World War Two. Credit card losses are likely to follow that way.It is not VISA that is going to take this hit. VISA does not loan money for the most part. It processes the money loaned out by the same banks that created the sub prime mess that YOU and I have had to bail out. It is us that will take the hit again.
In fact if there are any green shoots at all it is not for you and I. It is for those who do not need them!
In June of 2005 Richard Greenspan said,
The income gap between the rich and the rest of the U.S. population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself.or check out:
Greenspan cites income disparities and an inadequate high school education system as detrimental to America in the long-term.
And this is where belief systems become skewed based on programing, you have been led to believe that you are well off and you to can participate in the "American Dream". An example:More or less equal?
THE past 30 years have been a great time for the wealthy. Their businesses became more profitable; their equities and properties increased in value; for those who worked in investment banking or hedge funds, bonuses rose steeply. And the further up the income scale you went, the better the rich did. Just as the bottom 90% of the population have lagged far behind the top 10%, most of those in the top 10% have trailed the elite 1%. And that select 1% has looked in envy at the Croesus-like 0.1% at the very top of the tree.
You, if you are one of the ones that can afford it (do not discount the large mass of Americans who can not), purchase a couple hundred shares of a stock and are elated if it rises in price a dollar contributing to your retirement (which is another lie entirely). The really rich, and by that I mean people in this country that have money that you or I can not fathom, who have no conception nor care for the daily trials and tribulations you face, buy the whole company, rape it, resell it with no thought to weather or not your shares go down and you take a beating.
The reality is that most today have been priced out of the new economy and burdened with enough debt to insure that our grandchildren will have little choice of participating also. State and municipal workers pray that enough taxes can be generated to keep there salaries.
Especially Federal workers. Just look at the disparity among wages between federal and private sector workers (see:
Lou Dobbs says thats the stuff of Revolutions)
We have gone from a country of individuals of revolutionary spirit with a dream of making things better for the future of all to a country of sheep who fight each other while the wolves stand on the hill salivating at a free meal provided by ignorance and fear.
Of course the revolution is not going to come any time soon and if it did we may in fact be in even more trouble. We have become a country so divided that any legitimate revolution would surely result in anarchy, as we would be to absorbed in self interest to effect a solution. Which is ironic considering a solution already exists, The Constitution of the United States of America in conjunction with the Declaration of independence
In my conversations with people on these issues, when you can actually find one or two that are even interested in such conversations, inevitably I am confronted with the statement, "that won't happen!"
The problem is, it has. We are just no longer able to tell the difference between a lie and the truth.
Now that we are the victims, what will we do?Nicole Herbots said: "Our truest self-interest is in the end is always the ethical choice of resisting or leaving, as we will be inevitably be the next victims of the repressive policies we did not confront but ended up supporting by complying."
"ARGUE FOR YOUR LIMITATIONS AND THEY ARE YOURS"
"IF NOT NOW WHEN"
From the book "illusions" by Richard BachAdd to Technorati Favorites
