Updated: the stimulus-response Empire
by Jon Rappoport
March 21, 2016
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)
“From the moment the first leader of the first clan in human history took charge, he busied himself with this question: ‘What can I say and do that will make my people react the way I want them to.’ He was the first Pavlov. He was the first psychologist, the first propagandist, the first mind-control boss. His was the first little empire. Since then, only the means and methods have changed.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)
I include my original article below. I want to provide a new introduction, based on the notion of “expanding thought-forms.”
A thought-form is a picture in the mind that tends to guide behavior. Its presence is usually unknown to the user.
If the behavior results in objective successes in the world, the thought-form expands, takes on more force, and even can pretend to a sense of inevitability.
Sometimes, for example, in war, an Alexander, operating from his thought-form of conquest, and piling up victories, begins to see himself destined to be the “ruler of the whole world.”
The dominant thought-form in Earth civilization today is: universal rule through gigantic, highly organized structures; e.g., mega-corporations that owe no allegiance to any nation.
Imagine a few thousand such corporations with interlocking boards and directorates; colluding with super-regional governments and their honeycombed bureaucracies; combined with regional armies, intelligence agencies and technological elites; hooked to a global surveillance operation; in control of media; cooperating with the largest organized religions on Earth.
Imagine all this as essentially one organization—and you see the thought-form in its wide-screen version.
Top-down as top-down has never been before.
Functions and compartments defined and specialized at every level, and coordinated in order to carry out policy decisions.
As to why such a thought-form should come to dominate human affairs, the simplest explanation is: because it works.
But beneath that answer, for those who can see, there is much, much more.
Individuals come to think that “effective” and “instrumental” and “efficient” are more important than anything else.
Keep building, keep expanding, keep consolidating gains—and above all else, keep organizing.
Such notions and thought-forms replace life itself.
At that point, the civilization is doomed. It may take a thousand years to fall, or it may happen all at once. But it’s finished.
The individual creative-force has gone into hibernation. It’s over.
The Machine has come to the fore. All questions are now about how the individual sees himself fitting into the structure and function of The Machine.
Which cog does he want to be part of? At which level?
Which piece of the latest technology does he want to adhere to, like a barnacle?
—end of introduction—
I’ve spent the past 30 years analyzing, taking apart, and exposing highly centralized structures:
Government, supra-government, corporate, energy, intelligence, education, medical, mind-control, media, organized-religion structures; those are some of the targets.
They all operate on the basis of stimulus-response.
The elite future is stimulus-response. It’s based on the premise that humans are inherently (biologically) programmed to be dangerous and the programming must change. In other words, a better Pavlovian dog must be created.
Stimulus-response has been the guiding principle of elite rule since the dawn of history. The priest-class searches for the most effective inputs it can find, which in turn will produce the desired responses from the population.
Mainstream media, which are actually disseminated propaganda, aim to produce three overall responses to stimuli: a) “conflicts and major problems are never resolved”; b) “I should be afraid”; and c) “this is all too confusing,” which results in viewers and readers sinking into passivity.
For the most part, political leaders have paid no attention to the idea of freedom, regardless of which documents they’ve signed and given lip-service to. Why? Because freedom implies something beyond stimulus-response. Freedom implies action by choice. And politicians know their power depends on managing conditioned response in populations.
In that light, the 20th century was the century of PR, advertising, propaganda, and it was also the launching pad for a number of drugs targeting the brain and its responses.
But now, further technological paths are being followed. The alteration of the human genetic structure. The probing of brains with electronic interventions, so that, for example, it will be possible to insert images directly into the visual cortex, bypassing what humans would ordinarily perceive.
This is called the transhumanist agenda, and it is. But it is also stimulus-response at a more sophisticated level. And it is another way of attempting to eliminate freedom, while never admitting that freedom exists in the first place.
What are the requirements of a future society in which conditioned responses are locked down and pervasive, on chemical, biological, and electronic levels? Well, there is one basic requirement:
The population must believe they are happy.
That’s the end game. That’s the triumph of Brave New World over 1984.
“Happiness” is an elusive word. It can refer to a number of feelings and thoughts.
If you recall, from your childhood, a peak experience, a few moments of sheer ecstasy, you are certainly remembering happiness. But you are also remembering freedom.
That’s not what the elite controllers are aiming to produce as a mass societal effect. No; for them to succeed, they must create, in people, an article of faith:
People must believe that happiness is shallow, tepid, “average.” If they accept that premise, the game is over.
Because, through genetic manipulation, through chemicals, through electronics, that happiness-target stands a chance of being reached.
Then you would have a population ruled by stimulus-response, by conditioned reflex—a population that nevertheless interprets that state of affairs as acceptable, because it carries “happiness” with it.
This is how you drastically reduce the possibility of unending rebellion, revolution, and war between the people and the leaders.
This is the goal of elite empire.
Counter to that, as I mentioned above, is freedom.
In its fullness, freedom implies a personal and individual knowing that one is free. No doubts, no conditions.
Travel anywhere is the world, visit every college and university from Tierra del Fuego to the North Pole, and count how many courses are called Freedom. Count how many courses are taught with the explicit intent of exploring, deeply, what individual freedom means and is.
If, reading this far, you are beginning to suspect that the discredited and ugly word “philosophy” is creeping in, you’re right. Yes, that old saw, that ridiculous subject.
Back in the Stone Age, when I went to college, I majored in it. I have a good memory, and I can tell you that nowhere in the department’s curriculum was there a serious and extensive treatment of individual freedom.
Philosophy is supposed to take up and illuminate fundamental questions of existence and fundamental conflicts embedded in opposing views.
Such as the conflict I’m discussing here: stimulus-response vs. freedom.
Let me boil this titanic issue down to something I’ve introduced before: my analysis of two concepts: understanding and meaning.
You are reading this article, these words on the page. If you are nothing more than responses to stimuli, if you are merely atoms in motion, none of which are conscious in and of themselves, then how can you possibly understand the meaning of what you are reading?
Yet you do understand the meaning of the words.
So do I.
We are not merely atoms in motion. We are not merely matter. We are not merely pre-programmed responses to stimuli.
Which is a way of saying: we can choose, we can decide, we are free, each one of us.
The princes of Pavlov would have us accept that there is no “you” or “I.” Instead, there is the just the unceasing flow of particles in the universe. That’s all.
But again, you are here, right now. You, beyond particles, are reading these words and you understand them.
This is what has happened to the human race, through unceasing tons of propaganda and false science: people have come to believe that the arena of stimulus-response is gigantic. But the opposite is true:
It is individual freedom that is gigantic.
Which leads to the question every individual must ask himself: what is my freedom for?
For what action?
Is it for bowing down to the Reality that has been artificially constructed for me and everyone else?
Or is it for imagining and creating and inventing the reality and the future I most profoundly desire?
Now we are getting to the pivot of this civilization. Which way will it ultimately swing? Toward the stimulus-response empire, or toward individual power?
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. 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 NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
Love this article! One of your most timely and important. Fantastic script for a not so science fiction film. On parr with THEY LIVE.
Consciousness is reflective – or rather, what is held in consciousness reflects back.
The notion of being controlled is a reflection of a control mentality.
Defending self concept rather than evolving it is a simple beginning for such a control mentality.
This control mentality may operate ‘in the dark’ – that is – behind a mask of ‘justified anger or defence’. Such ‘judgements’ seem to be a one way pronouncement. It associates a form of something with a negative intent – and in the same reflective quality ‘sees’ deceits in the other such that regardless what the other says or does – an undercurrent of distrust keeps the option of attack handy – but concealed. It ‘see’ then, this hidden ‘enemy’ everywhere.
As the Consciousness is identified in dramatic or narrative representation – it is only able to allow a very limited trickle of distorted communication – which is filtered for threat or advantage. Only that which conforms to the self-concept is able to share.
While the drama takes on its cat and mouse action and reaction course into a more and more complex and fragmented set of denials – the need for ‘control’ is ever more underscored – excepting in areas that are abandoned as no-go areas that become a deadness or walled off lack of any capacity of response – because the only response left is too dangerous.
As the sense of being inundated by a wave of negative reaction rising that allows no further manouevre; as the sense of being denied and deprived the capacity to live and feel and move freely; as the various reflections and shadows ripen to crises from which no further holding back or control over is possible…the original separation trauma that was sough to be escaped or controlled by ‘self-concept’ reveals itself as like a ‘Beast rising out of the Deep’ – And the original concept of imposing upon Creation; which is the denial of the freedom of Will in conformance to an IDEA of self then blames the WILL for seeming to be hateful, evil, deceitful – when all along it is the core definitions defended against change in the false belief that God is a Static Perfection! That self-concept is to be an immutable – from which all else shall order and align itself.
In short, we kill ourself in complex shadow manouevres that guilt acting through fear triggers into act UNCONSCIOUSLY – and resumes a hindsight view to fit the continuity of self-narrative. This mind is legion – whilst attempting to consolidate or unify its splits through the operation of psychological defences of denial, projection, dissociation, fragmenting with diversionary distraction operating a blindside or ‘forgetting’ to notice such that the persona can serve as a mask for the denial of and power over the ‘unconscious’ evils and terrors that have all the force of denial with which to ‘attack’.
Waking up can be to a nightmare – in which REAL enquiry is entered directly because the NEED is acute and visceral. The force of NEED is the desire for healing in amongst the routine operation of the desire for vengeance. These two are mutually exclusive – so until that wakes as living insight – the nightmare intensifies in flip-flopping irreconcilables. Perhaps a negative choice exists here to choose vengeance and let healing (embrace of life) go – which collectively looks like a re-cycle of density in ‘will-less-ness’. But the willingness of choosing to embrace Life has to back up from drama and re-visit and re-invision its imprinting, conditional and defences all the way back to the core beliefs that have been regarded AS Self and lived or acted and reacted FROM rather than brought out to the open in willingness for Wholing, Sanity and a true Peace in which joy in life rises freely and spontaneously – Just Because! – and with no need for justification or apology.
Waking up to anything less than a felt wholeness of Communioned being is a stepping stone – and one that like every step you have ever taken – is part of the unfolding of who you truly are – even amidst the experience of what you are NOT.
If you put all your understanding and insight in terms of the world – or external actors and forces – then you are not abiding in the power in you that is prior to any interpreted experience and which is your timing and timeliness as to where and how to be in relation to anything in your life.
If you put all your wealth into ‘thinking’ then when the banks fail – there will be no currency of use or meaning. The banks are failing. A slow motion crash is holding open the space and time in which to accept a choice that is in us to recognize and join with – regardless that fear says that without its protection you will be defenceless and meet denial and rejection – because WE KNOW what we do to a Feeling Will – and have joined in hate beneath attempts to mitigate the pain and subscribe to the ‘human conditioning’.
But embracing Life is no dream of a life – and regardless the outer symptoms – the inner connection is a pearl beyond price. But no one else can accept for you – though they can root for you and join with that in you which is yet alive and has eyes to see and ears to hear.
Elitism is not the same as excellence. Finding a place of integrity and excellence within and growing it is not the same as competitive superiority in self-specialness. If you need losers to feel a winner – you have yet to even glimpse what true worth is. Uniqueness is ‘God-given’ or innate – because you are the only you there is – and this becomes a unique gift when our presence illumines from within – be that happy or truly felt sad – it is the transparency to Life that communicates the true of you, not ever more subtle capacity to mimic the natural and pass off as if it was you – and thus feel isolated and invisible (or superior and powerful if that is your spin).
I’m writing her in resonance with Jon – regardless he uses different words and stories to communicate a core realisation. The words don’t communicate the living fact – and taking the words as if the fact is the old error of identifying in concept as if to control a relational outcome.
It is individual freedom that is gigantic.
Which leads to the question every individual must ask himself: what is my freedom for? For what action? Is it for bowing down to the Reality that has been artificially constructed for me and everyone else? (Jon)
ANSWER::
Well, first of all, it is to stop the insanity. Get involved, like Trump is doing, and fix the problem that is ruining your personal freedoms.
Because, believe me, in this powerful era of weapons of mass destruction, what will be our personal freedom and individual power under a New World Order or a WW3 thermonuclear war? It will be over folks, for all of us.
—————————-
Or is it for imagining and creating and inventing the reality and the future I most profoundly desire? (Jon)
ANSWER:
Unfortunately, you cannot put the cart before the horse.
But, YES, after you fixed the problem, the ultimate goal will be imagining and creating and inventing the reality and the future we most profoundly desire.
Your last line, is most important because you precisely described the “FIX”
For imagining in conformity with the terms the ‘problem’ sets will not allow true desire to register with you or embody to a shared appreciation. Fixing the problem IS the problem. Imagining or opening Perspective sees what was defined ‘problem’ from a point that is not IN it. However, that does not mean you have to leave the script altogether, for you can now witness freedom within a repurposed script that was made to deny it
Stimulus-response is the standard model of humans in economic theory: homo economicus. You should mention that in your otherwise great article.
Private consulting, really? I tell all first timers that encounter my testimony, visit the Cave of John the Baptist, and go deep if you can and study the PDF file. The Articles of Corporation Sole are not published, yet. Real action is beginning. Yes, private consultation would be a real blessing. I do intend to purchase your studies soon. God bless you.