The rebel against the controlled world
by Jon Rappoport
May 30, 2013
The campaign and attack against the individual takes many forms.
In 2012, I was contacted by a disillusioned psychiatrist who had “left the field.” He told me he was interested in discussing his experiences.
Here is a key remark he made in our conversation:
“Is there a normal state of mind? The answer is no. There is the ability to deal with the reality of the world, which is a very important skill. But state of mind is another matter entirely. You could have a million people who can deal with the world, and they’re all operating in different states of mind. There is no ‘normal’. ‘Normal’ is a modern myth that has no benefits—except to the people who invented it and control it. If you can control ‘normal’ and disseminate it broadly, slip it into consciousness, you have power. It’s like one of those steamrollers. You flatten people.”
There is no ‘normal’ state of mind. It’s a myth.
It’s sold.
The professional definitions of normal are supposed to create a uniform standard of thought and behavior. A collectivism.
Coming in from another vector, we have sociologists and anthropologists, practitioners of a fake science to rival psychiatry in promoting a climate of pseudo-babble.
One of the founders of sociology, Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), coined the phrase “collective consciousness.” Durkheim insisted there were “inherent” qualities that existed in society apart from individuals. Exposing his own absurd theory, he went so far as to claim suicide was one of those qualities, as if the “phenomenon” were present beyond any individual choice to end life.
He wrote: “Man is the more vulnerable to self-destruction the more he is detached from any collectivity, that is to say, the more he lives as an egoist.”
In other words, according to Burkheim, the individual who rejects the norms of society must be wrapped up in himself in some morally repugnant way. There are no other alternatives.
In his book, The Division of Labour in Society (1893) (wikipedia), Burkheim spun moral conscience in the following fashion: “…Make yourself usefully fulfill a determinate function.” He cited this as a kind of command issued by collective consciousness. If this sounds Marxian, and if it sounds like the presentation of the individual human as machine-cog, it is.
From the mud of sociology’s beginnings, the long sordid history of the academic discipline brings us to something like this. Peter Callero, of the department of sociology, Western Oregon University, has written a book titled: The Myth of Individualism: How Social Forces Shape Our Lives (2013, 2nd Ed):
“Most people today believe that an individual is a person with an independent and distinct identification. This, however, is a myth.”
By some mistake, Callero’s memo never reached me. For example, I’m under the impression that I’m sitting here writing these words. Apparently not. A collection or group is doing the job. Where are they?
Maybe they’re hiding under my desk or floating in the air of my room like invisible wraiths. Maybe they’re off in the Amazon annoying a tribe of hunters, shooting videos of their “daily customs and practices.”
Sociology and anthropology have established themselves as serious “social sciences.” That means professional journals, university courses, endowed chairs, conferences, links to foundations and governments, task forces designing optimum futures.
The practitioners of these fake endeavors are dupes and agents in a massive psyop, whose purpose is the deleting of the independent individual.
Collectivism is the replacement.
All their hypotheses start with a consideration of the group as the prime element of existence.
The psychiatric State operates hand-in-glove with sociology, in the sense that it promotes some 300 officially certified mental disorders that are the same in all people. Psychiatry is a collectivism of the mind.
I’ve established, in many articles, that psychiatric diagnosis is a complete fraud. There are no physical tests of any kind for any so-called disorder.
The 20th century saw the rise of systems-thinkers, who applied their ideas to society as a whole. They gained power because global elites were pushing forward a systems-program of their own: planetary management. (This is described well in Scott Noble’s film Human Resources: Social Engineering in the 20th Century (posted at YouTube)).
The Globalist program was (and is) all about central planning and distribution of goods and services, under the cynical rubric of “greatest good for the greatest number.” This is collectivism, plain and simple. It camouflages a leading prow of brute force, Soviet style, with more subtle forms of brutality.
Universities serve as mind-control factories, turning out graduates who only see the sunshine propaganda of group harmony.
Capitalism and socialism have sex, procreate, and their child is Globalism. It contains elements of both parents. The capitalism of the father is, however, is not about the free market. It’s founded in the crime of controlling the means of production, when what is produced (out of thin air) is money.
The Federal Reserve, along with other private international banking institutions, invent money at their discretion and profit from that invention. They give and they take. They expand economies and contract them. They create booms and busts. They bankrupt nations, as a prelude to asserting the only solution is a de facto single global nation.
At the same time, the fortunes of the old captains of industry have been diverted into foundations, which are run by men who were the diabolical spawn of the parents mentioned above.
These foundations (Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, etc.) are devoted to funding projects, both intellectual and material, which promote and expand collectivism.
The independent individual is seen as a barrier to these operations.
He must go.
As always, the men who run this planet have put in place “the solution to their own problem.” They understand that their schemes will raise resistance, and so they’ve devised the favored form of that resistance.
It’s: false unity.
They bankroll groups and projects that seek to overturn the march toward a fascist world order. These groups offer, instead, their own form of collectivism, under the flag of “cooperation.”
“If we all cooperate and come together, we can stop the spread of the evil empire. If we join hands around the world, we’ll attain social justice for all. If we see ourselves as One, instead of as individuals, we’ll emerge victorious.”
Naturally, this op causes considerable confusion. People want to cooperate. They want to do good. They want to join together. But when the means to make it happen are simply diversions from true resistance, we have a bait and switch.
And the target is still the free, independent, and powerful individual.
Occupy Wall Street was an example of a budding movement that went nowhere. It was co-opted by, of all people, the staff of the White House, who encouraged it, while at the same time carrying on their usual incestuous partnership with Wall Street.
The Big Sleep coming at the global population from a number of vectors is couched in terms of collective unity. The sign of waking up is a demand for individual freedom. And then, taking that freedom without waiting for permission.
The rebel is forged in any of a thousand different fires of mad controlling authority. That’s where he is born. He knows, in his bones, what these authorities are demanding of him: surrender.
He knows this in an unshakable core of his being.
He can spot the collective that asks for that surrender from a mile off. It approaches, these days, with a glazed friendly smile, produced out of thousands of hours of market research.
The rebel isn’t trying to produce a better overarching system. He isn’t falling for that one.
He knows that within him, the potential for creation is extraordinary. He doesn’t complain about a lack of answers. He invents them. He exposes arbitrary authority as an insane form of theater, more surreal than surreal.
He does this for his own sake, and then to wake others up.
Compromising his freedom to attain valuable goals isn’t on his list of things to do.
He knows the bait and switch.
He doesn’t need a mythical place where everyone comes together.
Like any fairy tale, myth, legend, story, collectivism began as the idea in the mind of one person. Somewhere in the mists of the past, that person dreamed it up. It was his notion. It was his perverse “work of art.”
He sold it to his friends as a way they could control the mass, the populace, the audience. He said, “Do you see how this works? We can subscribe to the most wonderful sentiments, we can appear to be servants of the Good, we can hide behind all that while we destroy freedom. It’s a winner.”
Collectivism isn’t a mass outpouring of share and care. It’s coming down from the top of the ladder.
The rebel understands these things. He knows someone, somewhere, cooked up the whole idea and promoted it, like flatware or recliner chairs or rhinestones.
In 1934, Smedley Butler became a rebel. He was the highest ranking general in the US Marine Corps. He’d been awarded two Medals of Honor. Approached by a group of corporate leaders to put together his own army, march on Washington, and dethrone Franklin Roosevelt, Butler pretended to go along with the plan, then exposed it.
Here are two of his more famous statements:
“Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.”
Butler’s second statement was published by Common Sense, a socialist newspaper, in 1935. The newspaper failed to realize that Butler’s derogatory references to capitalism applied to a specific kind of theft and murder, practiced by corporate men who ultimately intended to destroy whatever was left of the free market and, then, own all markets—State Corporatism, Globalism. Socialism.
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
Butler’s rebellion was actually against the elite capitalists who came to support socialism as the method for securing and expanding their wealth and power.
That’s the turnaround that many people miss, especially those who are dewy-eyed about what collectivism promises.
The rebel is able to defend himself against delusion all the way into the core of his own mind. He discovers and invents his own reality, and he doesn’t suppose that any other human being has to agree to the contents of that reality.
Oscar Wilde: “Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.”
Nevertheless, Wilde was a socialist. He labored under the puerile delusion that private property could be abolished, thereby freeing all people from the need to slave for a living. In this way, he urged, everyone would have the necessary leisure to pursue art.
Collectivism leading to freedom of the individual. How quaint.
The real strategy of collectivism is the squashing of the mind, making it into a center of passivity and obedience, bereft of any original thought. When all people share the same imposed reality, there is no reality at all. The mind then stands only symbolically, like a black tree that has been dead for years.
To the degree it ever existed, the principle of the individual determining his own reality is being lost. What’s replacing it is the idea that “common ground” comes first and last. This means doctrine. This means operant conditioning in schools. This means a Holism that preaches delusional unity.
The anthropomorphic religious diddle called Gaia has ascended. The idea of humble devotion to Mother Earth is a fool’s errand. As George Carlin put it: “The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference?”
It’s one thing to keep the environment healthy. It’s quite another thing to worship it and feel anxious about its future. Humans aren’t going to destroy the Earth.
But humans may end up submitting to a level of brainwashing that rivals the all-encompassing mind control of the Mayans. Humans may forget how to rebel. Humans may accept the loss of freedom as a minor bump on the road to promised salvation in the arms of “the wise ones.”
The Reality Manufacturing Company turns out its product every day. It strives to improve its sales pitch and televised fabrications. It deploys talent spotters to enlist the best and the brightest in its research divisions. It invests considerable time and money in diversionary scandals and their subsequent exposure by way of the limited hangout:
“Yes, mistakes were made. A few heads will roll. These people, who were supposed to serve the public good, wandered off course, and we promise to make every effort to see that this doesn’t happen again.”
“Do you want to be normal? Buy our product. You’ll never feel so welcomed, so accepted. You’ll resonate with all other minds. You’ll ascend to the highest point of the collective star. Be the first on your block to sign up for the future.”
This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a heavily armed, surveilled Disneyland. Everyone takes the same rides and eats the same cotton candy. In this cartoon called reality, whoever declines and defects is reeducated.
The list of functioning conspiracies in our time period is very long. But the conspiracy of conspiracies is systemic. It is the action of the non-rebel, who shapes his own mind as a receptacle, inviting in any philosophy that suggests interconnected zeroes.
This is a mind where any thought or idea is automatically stripped of meaning and then hooked up to another such zero, and the whole apparatus is networked for ceaseless motion.
It is, in fact, a mirror of collectivism which, similarly, insists on an intimate relationship among all persons, who have themselves been emptied of individuality.
The rebel says no. And he means it.
Jon Rappoport
The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com
[…] By Jon Rappoport | Jon Rappoport’s Blog […]
I think that it all boils down to one word:
CONTROL
I break that control down to three distinct groups;
1) Control Freaks
The bully and/or tyrant wants to control others. For them control isn’t just the most important thing, it’s the ONLY thing. Control freaks rarely if ever give up control once they have it and literally never voluntarily. Bully’s have no courage of any kind.
2) Sheep
The sheep want to be controlled. They want to be told what to think, what to do, who to kill, etc. Religious sheep will put a halo over their heads and set themselves up on a pedestal. They are oh so nice. Political sheep will wrap themselves in whatever nation state flag they worship. They are `super patriots.’ It’s all easier then actually thinking for themselves and learning how to form their own opinions. There isn’t a thought in their heads that’s their own. Sheep may exhibit physical courage from time to time, but they have no absolutely no moral courage. None!
3) Individuals
The true individual neither wants to control others or to be controlled by others. He/she has learned to think for themselves, accept the responsibility for their actions, and has a high degree of deductive reasoning skills – something totally lacking in the sheep. The individual may or may not have physical courage, but has a high degree of moral courage.
It’s all about control.
Poots
A manifesto of the individual , awesome !
Some good writing, verses New Age collective crap. Thank you!
Isn’t individualism as theorem a dogmatic invention to generate a competitive environment based on mutual distrust in order to weaken organised opposition? History of men has always been tribal or communal in order to increase survival. Mutual support and group dependence based on individual skills and strengths are inherently part of humanity. It is a balance of both that gave birth to innovation and grand cultures.
Right the fuck ON..Jon!!
Let’s try some of this. Consciousness is liquid; The collective mainstream is rich with nutrients but also very polluted. There is much to feed on there, but one must go upstream for clarity.
Occupy frustrated the hell out of me. I carried out my own version of Occupy by going to media sites and making comments (In my own name, mind you, which IMO is putting my ass on the line just as much as standing in the street with a bunch of people—maybe even more so because I did it AS AN INDIVIDUAL). Every time there was an article in LA Times or other prominent media, addressing Occupy and what they were up to, I defended them at the top of my lungs (via keyboard of course).
So at Firedoglake.com there is ?? was ?? a whole bunch of Occupy enthusiasts, right? I started posting there and I tried my darnedest to get people on that site to HELP ME post comments on these media sites. Because people DO read them, people in power of all sorts; and people measure public opinion via the comments on these sites, which are already subject to sock puppets.
My effort to get people at Firedoglake.com to participate in these very public discussions went exactly nowhere. In fact there was a resounding silence. I wrote a blog about it, in fact, saying, in effect, there’s no way the movement will succeed if it only is carried out in the street..because life isn’t just lived in the street, it’s now lived on the computer and the computer is where public conversations are taking place; it is talk radio without sound.
And as Evgeny Morosoz writes in “The Net Delusion” ..protest, traditionally, did not begin in the street; taking to the street was the final step in a process of coming together, organizing and communicating.
I loved what Occupy stood for and felt completely shoved aside by the non-reaction to my ideas at FDL. And I stopped posting there. There was actually the sentiment that I was not doing enough. And if I put my full name online in a public forum, to me, that’s doing plenty. It means anyone could come find me, and there won’t be other protesters standing around to witness. I was really insulted and discouraged by the attitude.
Thanks for letting me vent about that. You mentioned Occupy and while it was and is a beautiful thing, there was no room in it for people who were working at their desks during the day, and without that, you’re sunk. That they couldn’t see this really broke my heart.
Good stuff. Definitely no and nothing is happening which is likely to make that anything but more certain. However it’s getting lonely out here when out of the few dozen people I know out of the matrix, only a couple of them are not spread around the world on the internet.
Daniel I think that you’re just referring to selfishness. It is possible to be an unselfish and co-operative individual who is part of a society. You’re right there’s a balance involved, some degree of individual freedom is sacrificed for a functioning community, but that has been taken to the extreme today, where the individuality is being sacrificed for the perfect functioning (from the controllers point of view) community.
Lucid thinking.Rare.
Rabbitnexus – I don’t think (lack of) Individuality has anything to do with Marxism, Capitalism, Collectivism, etc.
Social Engineering in regard to group thinking or imposed behaviourism is ideology-independent and particularly present in spheres with strong powers. It was definitely more visible in China or North-Korea (still), although Soviets and Cubans were not less individual than the average US citizen. Communism, especially in the 30’s was a testbed for imposed behavioural control and it tried to abolish the structures of family, church and nationalism by force and by propaganda. It never really succeeded. Propaganda was better tuned in the US ( and in lesser degree in Europe) through group division (youth, woman, gay, black, …) by creating subgroups with strong identities (fake individuality). At the same time the message was broadcasted that this was true freedom and only possible in the USA. Patriotism. Then came the laws to protect these groups and the imposed mindset for political correctness was established and exported in the 90’s to Europe. From then on it goes downhill. Almost everything becomes forbidden. Paranoia and distrust rules and the State takes a role as patriarch (and matriarch) to ‘protect, take care and secure’ its citizens by all means against other fellow citizens and against oneself. It becomes a centralised platform for individual human interaction (conflict & frustration)). It all goes through division and intolerance planted in fake individual identities. A true individual rebel today is a bit of a loner and outcast, who is able to recognize a kind of universal morality which is by its nature independent of intrusive memes. A true rebel is mainly a victim today. Unconnected to mainstream thinking. Well, there are still enough of them out there and I have the impression that this group is growing although it will always remain a minority.
Lest it be overlooked, the Reality Manufacturing Company includes the terrifying agencies that hide behind national security, i.e. CIA, NSC, etc. and the ones purported to protect the public such as, EPA, DOE, SEC, repeat ad nauseum.
I see it a little differently.
Individualism like collectivism has two types, the types tolerated in elite society and the types tolerated in lower classes, servant or the disenfranchised.
No matter Soviet style or American style society… there are distinct class differences. And there are ‘quotas’… so many artists may be tolerated, even nurtured, but a society of artists? Never!
Free thinkers? Yes, maybe, but what type of free thinking? The type that might lead to freedom? Well, no. That would not be advisable unless of course you are a member of the elite and only wish to secure your own freedom and are otherwise harmless.
These are all possibilities or limitations experienced within the empire societies. And, they are more or less meaningless outside of strictly controlled, empire artificial realities.
Outside empire culture, a rich experience is possible. Inside, no matter how when argues… the argument itself lacks substance, reality, experience, noesis.
Outside, we meet sentiences beyond our own… way beyond, and we glimpse our own, way beyond the imaginings possible when straight-jacked as we are by the limitations imposed by empire acculturation… no matter at which level one is reared, falls to or attains.
Individuals can interact meaningfully with individuals with whom they share the same linguistic code (elaborated or restricted – Bernstein) and institutions with institutions and states, states, each with an institutional or legal language. Interactions between the individual and institutions and the state are difficult except where the state has to initiate action, as in the case of crime. Its a simple problem of numbers. Writers, academics, some politicians and celebrity figures who have something to say, can take a short cut and ‘Speak Truth to Power’ in publications, the press and social media, like Jon himself. Essentially the argument is contained in Benjamin Franklins remark, ‘If we restrict liberty to attain security we will lose them both’. So it does boil down to how the apparatus of the state can be organised to listen to individuals. At the same time social media and networking is creating its own lobby. So the future resolution of these issues lies in technology and the willingness of politicians to engage with it.
There is not a conspiracy and no-one is out to get you. In relation to the state, individuals feel powerless and frustrated the more they try to understand politics and the more they think they are not heard the more suspicious they become. But the mighty state cannot interact as a whole with individuals. Knowledge cannot be distributed equally. Levels of expertise are just part of the overall economy of knowledge. When we use language to capture inductively, general features of our experience, i.e. classify, we inevitably create boundaries: what is and what is not an element of the class or set named by the word or expression, who is and who is not part of our religion, social group, tribe, party and so forth. If our linguistic categories or code is restricted, these terms can simplify our experience in such a way as to limit our understanding of others and set limits, sometimes divisive and hostile, to our mutual understanding. Referring expressions and names do this exactly. Instead of doing Political Science we can transform the state into an enemy in just this way. What general class terms don’t do is offer an explanation. Explanatory concepts or theories (they are also concepts) such as those of the natural and the social sciences, augment understanding by offering quantitative or qualitative explanations of the relations between the elements brought together under the concept. So where restricted linguistic divisions are created which set supporters of ‘this’ tribe, team, group, against ‘that’ tribe or group, a more elaborate linguistic code, such as that used in scientific understanding, shows their relations and obtains an explanatory understanding. I would not blame sociologists for trying to understand the complexity of society. I would encourage their attempts. So I take a more optimistic view.
TY JON
This was a very good article and I’m sharing it with the collective. LOL Just can’t escape it it seems! How far down the rabbit hole are we? Just layer after layer of Onion skin. You peel one layers off only to discover there is more and more and more.
cheryl,
well said. artists are always on the fringe. it is where the light gets in.
empires are all militaristic and conformist. communalism/collectivism for the poor and working class is about survival and the ability to be able to be turned into a robot. not that a person wants that. but at the level of survival the matrix thing is a hoax. but from the standpoint of usa’s imperialism collectivism is the matrix.
jon’s attacks on marx are part of usa imperial mind bending. marx’s class analysis and understanding of the outcomes of capitalism still hold true and assist all who study them in seeing right through the matrix. they also give those whose lives are more social and extroverted a strategy for creating social change.
What about spirituallity? Aren’t we all connected, maybe on another plane? If idividuallity were the end of it, we might as well just say “fuck it, I’m going to do whatever the hell I want.” That is exactly what the one-world government bastards tell themselves. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” I’m not saying that I disagree with this article, just that there is even MORE to the story. I consider myself a rebel against evil but not everyone is evil. The “We” in “We the People” is very important, I think. So is, “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Anyway, great article, Jon. Glad I caught it.
“Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance.” -Henri Bergson