Updated: the stimulus-response Empire
by Jon Rappoport
October 19, 2015
(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.
