I became exposed to The Abyss through the works of Neitszche, Crowley, and also some writing called The Dark Night of The Soul... These 3 angles; theologic, psychologic, and mystic, all served to create for me a practical symbolism by which to structure myself so as to weather the storm, so to speak.
The storm has raged far longer than any book can describe...
Along the way, I have grasped at numerous, weak handholds in hopes of finding some form of support in this trying time. As a poet, it suites me none to have my creativity sapped. As a human, it suits me none to have my desire to interact with the world equally sapped - to the point of near extinction.
I have become disillusioned in my pursuit of knowledge, and also of an understanding of the world around me that I just can't seem to get. There have been so many dead-ends which I had believed in, so many people and doctrines. In the end, most proved hollow, especially the people.
From time to time, there have been books that "mattered". One of them that left an impression, and often is recalled in times of stress, is called The Little Black Book. I found it at a store on South Street in Philadelphia. I couldn't tell you where I lost it.
The first page of this tiny, little, black book, said something like "It's not what a book says that matters, but rather what the book DOES." I believe in that. This attitude has helped me to better navigate the stormy seas of Enlightenment. A teacher I studied under was a big advocate of Know Your Authors. Religious beliefs, politics, affiliations... These factors are major players in the defining of a person, and the person who writes is the source, therefore I don't think it's good to take in just anyone's work. Some are accurate in their research, and practical in their application of philosophy. There is no apparent agenda behind the person, other than the desire to share knowledge, and maybe make a buck or two to support themselves along the way.
Then, there are others out there, The Stressful-Kind. These are the cult-leaders, the self-appointed iconic figures who are no more enlightened than other Monarchy-minded elitists. They use clever tongues to sway the audience into a form of blind allegiance. When challenged, they resort to anger. They avoid direct confrontation. They use manipulations like guilt or appeal to vanity to draw in followers. They have a lot of "friends" on their pages, and many titles under their belts. They know who to know, what to say, and when to say it. Inside, they are dead... The just want attention, fame, control. These writers, both present and dead, are my biggest thorn in my side. I may actually HATE them, to be honest.
I feel as though I have been wandering in a dark and creepy place, full of jokesters and pesky little devils. I am tired, and just want to feel the sun upon my face again, but I continue through the "abyss" that is my Life's Journey at the moment.. I have grown slightly paranoid, beyond the level of weary awareness. I have grown short-tempered with those beyond my inner circle of One, of myself. I distrust because I know others to be selfish, to be liars...
But, this isn't actually a blog about my feelings, or my frustrations. I'm writing this to say that it is my opinion, after close analysis, and interaction with some of the figures interviewed, you really should read Conspiracy Geek, by Joan d'Arc. I know that there are more skeptics reading these words, than there are blind followers. I know that you don't want someone to tell you what's in a book to get you to buy it, but I think if you knew WHY it's worth owning, you might go ahead and pick up a copy today. Maybe two, you can give the gift of Knowledge and Art!
See, Joan doesn't take her easy poise and vast knowledge of anthrpologic subjects, or the things that go bump in the day to steer the reader into Belief. Though you can tell that this author is well learned, you will be hard pressed to find preaching, in ANY of her books. I have read The Hunter Gatheress Journals, Phenomenal World, almost every issue of Paranoia and Paranoid Women Collect Their Thoughts. I've also had the fortunate opportunity to communicate with the author directly on a few occasions, and no matter what angle I poked from, she never become the Cult Leader that is lurking behind the public veneer of so many of our favorite "conspiracy theorists". I really hate that term. I've provided her with the opportunity to soapbox me to death, and in the end, it was probably only I that ever took advantage of that opportunity. Yes, I hate in others that which I hate in myself. I am soap-box prone.
So, when she asked me to review Conspiracy Geek, I was super-excited. Except, I don't really know how to write a review. Plus, even if I had something bad to say about the book, I'd have a hard time saying it, even nicely. So, I did those brief reviews of a few chapters and posted them here. It was fun, to try and not sound like a reviewer while doing just that! But, that's not what I was asked to do...
I can't effectively tell you about every topic covered, nor can I do a chapter by chapter report of the entire book. I end up just re-writing, re-inventing the wheel. There are just too many incredible intereviews, and Joan's elegantly styled prose with which she took me through numerous thought processes that ultimately enlightened me to the struggles others endure, places I've never had the opportunity to see in the U.S.A. and era-defining strangeness that can't be swept under enough layers of rug. And some conspiracies that were new to me, even though I thought I had heard them all by now!
The interviews are priceless. She has an easy air when running through extremely difficult topics with a who's who of conspiracy and alt. researching. While keeping the flow of the exchange interesting, she also manages to leave the interviewee enough wiggle room to really let us know who they are! That is so important. With the subject matter being of such great interest to me, I used the book as a starting point to get to know many of the figures I have come across over the years. I was pleased to get to know some folks by reaching out to them via their various web presences. A few people proved amazing, and I became further disillusioned by the phony shallowness of a person or two as well. However, the disillusionment was short lived, because by the time I was done reading Conspiracy Geek and looking into people who have been slowly reeling me in over the years, I had regained strength and tolerance. Though I was disappointed to find that my heroes are all human like me, it was a useful, and fast way, to come to know what I am dealing with, and make informed decisions on who to continue to read, and who to shelve forever.
I won't get into who I like or dislike out of the interviews in the book, but I can say that the dislikes are for outnumbered. Though I won't endorse or condemn anyone Joan interviewed, I will say that Joan has outdone herself and continues to earn her place on my bookshelf and in my brain. The entire book is intriguing, and there is ample room to return to chapters-past and re-read, so it's worth owning. This isn't a book, it's a tool, a viewer to see into the personalities of some of the underground's most potent voices... You will not be disappointed, even though you may find yourself falling out of love with a writer or two before you are finished. You owe yourself the Truth, though, and there is no reward sweeter, even if the Truth may be a bit ugly... Truth gets me through my "Abyss", maybe that is evidence of potency within that books pages that one just can't deny. While I won't say you'll find all of your answeres in CONSPIRACY GEEK, I can assure you there are useful tools to aid you in your travels!
Get your copy HERE, at WingTV.net. Save on the cover price when you buy from this site! http://www.wingtv.net/conspiracygeek.html
Showing posts with label joan d'arc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label joan d'arc. Show all posts
04 February, 2013
08 November, 2012
Thoughts on "The Deconstruction of Everyday Life", by Joan d'Arc in her new book "CONSPIRACY GEEK"
She calls the piece "The Deconstruction of Everyday Life", however I believe it could be called, "Memoirs of The Creator". Joan d'Arc certainly maintains her tongue-in-cheek pose while bringing to the table some of the most difficult questions, and also answers.
I began reading "The Deconstruction of Everyday Life" with expectations, as a friend of mine had sounded excited when suggesting I read it. So, I did. I'm already reading "CONSPIRACY GEEK", so there was no harm to be had of reading in the same irregular order I was already reading it in, just differently.
Immediately, I was confused. I said, "Wait, is this a fictional story or is this a thesis?". I didn't know. So I read on, paragraph after paragraph of finely-woven wording, expressing the impossible question of "Why?".
Immediately I was taken in by the stark harshness of her description of nihilism in everyday life. She simply states it to be a frame of mind "where no action is preferable to any other". I felt, things, as I read these words stitched into the tapestry of the whole in waves of undulating, conscious expression that seemed to tarry on the side of sorcery, rather than a matter to be reduced to the category of fiction or official.
I began to feel fear of this woman. These words were too powerful. She shouldn't have this power. I read on.
The pointlessness of my everyday life became evident. The emptiness of my motion, the lack of passion in my action. Life, the rite of existing in the physical form, had been hollow for a long time, and I know that.
To read the same thing I often feel, and not even know that to be the reason for my "fear"; well, that is even more power, is it not? And I read on, against my conscious Will, it seemed. What magic IS this?!
Then, in one fell swoop, the significance of the seemingly-useless became clear. The power that inactivity, as well as activity, has over the world around a person is tremendous, which is demonstrated by Joan d'Arc's use of Gerard Duprey.
I don't know who the man is, except for the unpleasant impression of the man's overall existence that I derived from inside the lines of Joan's wildly-flying magic carpet ride of literature. He sounded slovenly, apathetic, and utterly useless; though intelligent.
My instability began to settle, and I drew nearer the end. Mind you, this is only a short piece. Yet one hell of a ride! In the few pages of "The Deconstruction of Everyday Life" , I felt more, was moved further, and had the most intense "AH HA!" moment in many years.
This slob-of-a-loser-guy, this lethargic Duprey, gave Joan the fuel needed to show me that even in the state of inactivity, presence and thought are enough to make things happen; to create. She showed me, for a moment, what it was to be a creator, by inducing both understanding of the base-human "side of the coin", and somehow granting me a moments' detachment from all of that, through her crafting of this piece, so that I may really say "Oh, I see." I still can't express what I saw, am seeing, and wish I could just give to you, now. The activity we often think necessary to make something happen. The activity I have found is important... Only when it is.
Though I wouldn't opt to be a motionless mover, I can see how in Duprey's inactivity (which wasn't really inactivity and that may make him a bit of a contradiction in his self) has had effect. A ripple grew from his laying on the kitchen floor, snapping and pointing at the help, which reminds me of the term "thought-forms". This glimpse, and the practical way Joan applied her craft to expressing to the reader that there is reason to feel good, even if right now things seem bleak. She teaches how to be a creator, even if only in our own small ways. She gives us the formula of having a moment's peace, and if a moment can be achieved, a life-time can be aspired towards. In that is the Power. With that, my fear ceased to exist. I put it back down.
09 January, 2011
The Darwin Wars
"An unpopular opinion is almost never given a fair hearing." - George Orwell
By Joan d'Arc
The modern Darwin wars began in October 2004, when the town of Dover, PA, became the first school district to mandate the teaching of Intelligent Design (ID theory). However, to be clear on this, the school board had adopted a policy that simply required 9th graders to hear a prepared statement about ID theory in the Biology classroom. In no way was equal time being given to the new theory. Nonetheless, two dissenting board members resigned on October 18, 2004.
In May 2005, the Kansas School Board voted to teach Intelligent Design in public schools alongside the theory of Darwinian evolution. The fight that ensued was billed by the media as the anti-Darwinists against the scientific establishment, which considers the evidence of the origins of life to be "beyond dispute." It was clear the fight had gotten real down and dirty when, at a hearing, William Harris (co-founder of Intelligent Design Network Inc.) projected a "strategy letter" from a Kansas Citizens for Science member onto a screen. The letter stated that the way to defeat the "anti-evolution forces" was to portray them as "political opportunists, evangelical activists, unprincipled bullies and ignoramuses."
Darwinists indeed see the I.D. movement as driven by a bunch of hicks in a junk wagon. If anyone is interested in applying rationality to the issue, they could start by reading the 117-page Kansas Science Education Standards (www.ksde.org, which at this revision in 2008 is no longer posted). The curriculum is nothing short of the sentinel of science. Approved on November 8, 2005, the curriculum states, "All scientific theories should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." It asserts: "Compelling student belief is inconsistent with the goal of education. Nothing in science … should be taught dogmatically."
The Kansas Standards "defines good science, how science moves forward, what holds science back, and how to critically analyze the conclusions scientists make." It calls for students to "learn about the best evidence for modern evolutionary theory, but also to learn about areas where scientists are raising scientific criticisms of the theory." The curriculum's objectives are to help students understand the "full range of scientific views" on evolutionary theory, to develop understanding of the scientific method by studying "opposing scientific evidence," and to ensure that science education in Kansas is "secular, neutral and non-ideological."
In September 2005, the National Academy of Sciences responded to the Kansas Standards deeming anything contrary to Darwin is simply not science: "There really is no “range of scientific views” on this issue—those views that are being touted today are not scientific (despite statements to the contrary by their proponents), but they are ideological." By November 2006, Dorothy had returned safely from Oz and the conservative board of education in Kansas had shifted to a more moderate majority, and promised to restore a science curriculum "that does not subject evolution to critical attack." The moral is, don't buck the System, Dorothy.
There is no "range of scientific views" because Darwinism is the state religion of America. In her book Evolution as a Religion, philosopher Mary Midgley argues that evolution functions dually as a creation myth and a scientific theory, and that its sociobiological "escalator model" (of Herbert Spencer) is not only non-Darwinian, but distorts the theory's scientific standing toward that of ideology and myth. Midgley asserts, “The theory of evolution is not just an inert piece of theoretical science,” but is also “a powerful folk tale about human origins.” She warns against applying the confidence due to well-established scientific findings to a “vast area which has only an imaginative affinity with them,” and where only the “trappings of a detached and highly venerated science are present.”
My approach to this subject is not religious in any way. As for my papers, I have a B.A. in Anthropology and I was a card-carrying atheist for many years, including my time studying in college. I now consider myself to be an atheist creationist, if there can be such a crypto-animal. My Darwinian dissent began shortly after college, and in 1997 I began writing Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form, published in 2000 by The Book Tree. A second book called Phenomenal World followed.
In 2003, I founded a secular-based website, BIPED: Beings for Intelligent Purpose in Evolutionary Design (now gone) to highlight valid scientific alternatives to Darwinian evolution other than "creation," although I'm not particularly opposed to that term (if it walks like a duck). Among those alternatives are: Gaia Theory, Vitalism, Morphic Resonance (a.k.a. Formative Causation), Intelligent Design, Panspermia and Directed Panspermia. This article provides an overview of these theories for those who do not realize there are valid scientific hypotheses that are contrary to Darwinian theory—they just aren't part of the naturalist paradigm. As such they have a right to exist and students have a right to learn about them, if not in school then at least on their own on the Internet.
Gaia Theory
Microbiologist Lynn Margulis and chemist James Lovelock formulated the Gaia Hypothesis in the 1970s (now upgraded to a theory). They proposed that life creates the conditions for its own existence, challenging the reigning theory that the forces of geology set the conditions for life, while plants and animals, accidentally along for the ride, evolved by chance under the right conditions.
The Darwinian concept of adaptation to the environment has been seriously questioned by Margulis, Lovelock and others working from a systems point of view. Evolution cannot be explained by the adaptation of organisms to local environments, they argue, because a network of living systems is also shaping the environment. The evolution of life, according to the Gaia Theory, depends on a cyclical, self-regulating feedback relationship. Margulis has stated that one day neo-Darwinism will be judged as "a minor 20th century religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon biology." She has also asserted that Darwinism is based on outdated reductionist concepts, asserting that, "It's wrong like infectious medicine was wrong before Pasteur. It's wrong like phrenology is wrong. Every major tenet of it is wrong."
Lovelock popularized his Gaia theory in 1972 in a paper titled, "Gaia as seen through the atmosphere," and in his 1979 book, Gaia: A New Look At Life on Earth. His initial hypothesis proposed that the whole Earth behaves like one self-regulating organism wherein all of the geologic, hydrologic, and biologic cycles of the planet mutually self-regulate the conditions on the surface of the Earth so as to perpetuate life. When the mainstream scientific body got hold of the theory it changed significantly and we can guess why. It didn't conform to the Darwinian paradigm, which holds that evolution has no overarching purpose or goal. Lovelock's theory was teleological: some force outside of nature was possibly controlling the evolution of forms. According to Darwin himself, if any outside force (super- or supra-natural) was found to be at work, we were instructed to throw out his baby with the bath water.
Lynn Margulis still insists that consciousness evolved, but where did the consciousness come from? Answer: It had to come from inside the system (Earth-based) in the "naturalist" framework. According to evolutionists, consciousness has to evolve; it can't have been there in the first place. This conjecture is based on the anthropic principle: the minimum time required for the evolution of "intelligent observers." In this scheme, a billion years is required for the evolution of intelligence. The anthropic timescale argument posits that the types of processes allowed in the Universe must be of such an age that "slow evolutionary processes will have had time to produce intelligent beings from non-living matter." (Barrow)
Pondering how consciousness "arose in the Universe," this peculiar Western viewpoint refuses the primacy of consciousness, and instead assumes a chain of linear metamorphoses, accidental and directionless, from nonsentience to sentience. As I have written in Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form, the evolution story dramatizes the "natural" transfiguration of mankind through a linear procession of metamorphoses that eventually separate him from the animals of his ancestry—evolution is Western man's totem.
Vitalism vs. Natural Selection
Many people I talk to are under the assumption that Darwinism is playfully malleable and open to their mishmash of supernatural ideas. I try to inform them that Darwinian evolution is an all-or-nothing theory; it will not allow inclusion of any vitalist or supra-natural process—or, goddess forbid, any anthropomorphism. It is very exacting on that rule. If you are espousing any form of supernaturalism, you are clearly not a Darwinian. Perhaps you are a vitalist.
Vitalism is the doctrine which espouses that life processes arise from a nonmaterial essential principle that cannot be explained by physics and chemistry alone. One of its adherents was Swedish chemist Jöns Jackob Berzelius (1799-1848), who hypothesized that only living tissue, by possessing a "life-force," can produce organic compounds. French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) proposed the idea of an élan vital, or creative force, at the heart of evolution. Bergson advocated a return to neo-vitalism, which maintains that the phenomena of life are unpredictable, chaotic, and beyond the range of science. The well-known scientist Wilhelm Reich was a vitalist and Darwin's peer Jean Baptiste de Lamark utilized vitalism in his theory of acquired characteristics.
Yet, the notion of a life-force (perhaps involving the "ether" which Einstein wrongly abandoned) is flatly contrary to Darwinian theory, which emphasizes no purpose, goal or outside force at work in the development of new species.1 To be sure, the principle of natural selection is the only suspicious force allowed in through the back door of Darwinism.2 What force in nature does the selecting of the fit characteristics and how does it produce new and (at the same time) useful structures by random chance? Indeed, Darwin later regretted his use of the term because it suggested a mysterious guiding force was at work.
Natural selection is a supposedly blind "natural" process which somehow ensures (let's not say "chooses") that the most fit individuals survive to produce the most offspring. Darwin's concept of natural selection simply defines the fittest as the individuals that survive—the fittest organisms are, plain and simple, the ones that produce the most offspring. Hence, natural selection is a meaningless tautology which essentially states, "those organisms which leave the most offspring, leave the most offspring."
There is no evidence that would confirm the hypothesis, argues zoologist Pierre Grasse, that the concept of natural selection is "an evolutionary process capable of producing innovative designs" (i.e. new species). He explains that supposed proofs of evolution in action are simply "observations of demographic facts, local fluctuations of genotypes and geographical distributions"—not new and distinct forms.
The Fields of Morphe
A modern example of vitalist theory is Rupert Sheldrake's theory of Morphic Resonance ("formative causation"), described in detail in his book, A New Science of Life. Sheldrake believes morphogenetic fields are non-physical carriers of information (intelligence) which guide the development of an organism in the form of its species. He believes DNA is not the source of structure, but is a "receiver" that translates information into physical form. In this sense, genes are grossly overrated, he states.
Morphic fields (from the Greek morphe, which means form), he explains, are the organizing fields of nature. Morphic fields organize in living organisms as well as in the forms of crystals and molecules. Each kind of molecule has its own type of morphic field, and even our own mental lives depend on this field. In his book, The Presence of the Past, Sheldrake explains that morphogenetic fields contain an inherent memory, and he believes the structure of the fields "depends on what has happened before." Inheritance depends on cumulative memory built up through "a pool of species experience" in a process he calls morphic resonance. Sheldrake believes vitalism has come back to life as a scientific theory and is being embraced in many corners.
Intelligent Design
Intelligent Design is the science that detects "signs of intelligence." In his book, The Design Inference, its leading proponent, mathematician William Dembski, employs statistical testing of the natural world to see if it shows evidence of intelligent design. He explains:
"To say intelligent causes are empirically detectable is to say there exist well-defined methods that, based on observable features of the world, can reliably distinguish intelligent causes from undirected natural causes. Many special sciences have already developed such methods for drawing this distinction—notably forensic science, cryptography, archeology, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Essential to all these methods is the ability to eliminate chance and necessity."
For instance, scientists such as Dr. Mark Carlotto and Professor Stanley McDaniel explore the artificiality of formations on Mars. They argue that natural features do not exhibit a high degree of parallelism, symmetry or geometrical straight-edged patterns. Statistically, a feature on another planetary body such as the moon or Mars which was found to exhibit a high degree of parallelism or geometry, such as large-scale patterns that look like walls or streets, could perhaps be artificial constructions. Likewise, according to Richard Hoagland, such geometries might be construed as a mathematical "signal" from an intelligent race.
Although the late SETI pioneer Carl Sagan believed that such investigations are scientifically legitimate, many scientists disagree that Intelligent Design is comparable to SETI. In his essay entitled "Design Yes, Intelligent No," Massimo Pigliucci asserts:
"Dembski is absolutely correct that plenty of human activities, such as SETI, investigations into plagiarism, or encryption, depend on the ability to detect intelligent agency. Where he is wrong is in assuming only one kind of design: for him design equals intelligence and, even though he admitted that such an intelligence may be an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, his preference is for a god, possibly of the Christian variety. The problem is that natural selection, a natural process, also fulfills the complexity-specification criterion, thereby demonstrating that it is possible to have unintelligent design in nature."
According to this argument, the comparison of ID theory with SETI is flawed because the highest design in the court of naturalistic science, in fact the only design allowed, is unintelligent design. Stripped of any meaning or explanatory power outside of Darwinian scientism, this phrase only reiterates Phillip Johnson's assertion that natural selection is simply an algorithmic theory of non-random death.
Try as it will, Dembski argues, Darwinian evolution cannot explain human consciousness. The concept of natural selection, he explains, "places a premium on survival and reproduction and has no stake in truth or conscious thought. Indeed, meat-puppet robots are just fine as the output of a Darwinian evolutionary process."
When the Darwinian establishment charges that ID theory is not science, they are really saying it is not based on scientific naturalism. The heart of the reigning paradigm of naturalism is that intelligence is an accidental byproduct of evolution. In contrast, Intelligent Design tells us that we live in an intelligent universe. In ID theory, intelligence trickles down from the cosmos, if you will, and in naturalism it builds up incrementally from prebiotic chemical soup. As William Dembski has charged, "For the naturalist, the world is intelligible only if it starts off without intelligence and then evolves intelligence."
Ballistic Panspermia
Panspermia is the ultimate trickle down theory that life on earth was seeded by microbial life from space. This theory was advocated by many, among them the Greek philosopher, Anaxagoras (500-428 BCE), Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894), and William Thomson Kelvin (1824-1897). Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius later promulgated the theory of Radio Panspermia, wherein microbes from space are transported by light pressure.
The proponents of modern day Panspermia are British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle and Sri Lankan mathematician-astronomer Chandra Wickramasinghe, who theorize that DNA arrived on earth via meteorites (Ballistic Panspermia) or by comets (Modern Panspermia). In fact, Hoyle mathematically dismissed the chance of evolution having actually occurred the way Darwinists propose, arguing, "even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup ... the chance of producing merely the basic enzymes of life by random processes without intelligent direction would be . . . a probability too small to imagine."
Hoyle concluded that "Darwinian evolution is most unlikely to get even one polypeptide sequence right, let alone the thousands on which living cells depend for survival." Given that there are trillions of different kinds of cells in delicate balance, he argues, each of these varied cellular structures would also have to develop by chance. This mathematical impossibility is well known to scientists, he said; yet most of them "cling to Darwinism because of its grip on the educational system." They do not want to be branded as "heretics."
Directed Panspermia
As molecular biologist Michael Denton articulates in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, "Nothing illustrates as clearly just how intractable a problem the origin of life has become than the fact that world authorities can seriously toy with the idea of Panspermia." Such describes the dilemma of British molecular biologist Francis Crick, who received the 1962 Nobel Prize for the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA.
After discovering the astonishingly huge and complex information storage capacity of the DNA molecule (humans have three billion coding letters in each nucleus), Crick could not imagine any conditions under which this information vehicle could have evolved from non-living chemicals. He argued that since the earth has too short a history for life to have developed here, it must have developed on another planet in a solar system several billion years older than ours.
Crick's aversion to religion led him and Leslie Orgel, in 1973, to put forth the theory of Directed Panspermia. To get around the idea of God, Crick proposed that the primordial seeds of life were shipped to earth in spaceships billions of years ago by intelligent beings. After proposing this idea, Crick was left in the predicament of explaining the origin of the ET beings, and finally had to acknowledge the paucity of the idea, saying, "Every time I write a paper on the origin of life, I swear I will never write another one, because there is too much speculation running after too few facts." (Life Itself, 1981)
Although an atheist, Crick was quoted as saying, "An honest man, armed with the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense the origin of life appears to be almost a miracle."
Writing in his essay, "Astrogenesis," William Hamilton explains, "The real paradigm shift is to consider that the Universe is a life-producing nursery and that the genesis and evolution of life is not earth-centered but rather is distributed among the stars of the galaxies.” Let's not forget, however, that the theory of Panspermia still leaves us with the question of the origin of those stars and those galaxies, which of course was never addressed by Charles Darwin; nor was the actual origin of any species.
A Scientific Revolution
In his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn defines a scientific revolution as a “non-cumulative developmental episode” whereby an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an “incompatible new one.” Such scientific revolutions begin with a growing sense that “an existing paradigm has ceased to function adequately in the exploration of an aspect of nature.” The emergence of new theories is usually preceded by a period of “pronounced professional insecurity,” since it involves large-scale paradigm destruction.
The essential problem is, scientists cannot do research in the absence of a controlling paradigm. They cannot pull the floor out from under themselves, and when it goes this structure will fall hard. Kuhn explains, a scientific theory “is declared invalid only if an alternative candidate is available to take its place.” The normal response to crisis, he explains, will be to loosen the rules of normal problem solving in ways that will permit the new paradigm to emerge. This essentially describes the action taken by the Kansas School Board in its Science Education Standards. The new paradigm will emerge when the youth of tomorrow are not so emotionally and financially committed to the old one. Reading alternative science on the internet is a place to start.
Intelligent Design is a mathematically based theory, not a religious theory. Paranoid tirades about Christians taking over the world have nothing to do with the facts of the matter. Those who react this way are reacting emotionally to the messenger rather than opening the message with the minimum decorum expected of adult human beings. By dogmatically rejecting Intelligent Design without fully comprehending it, we allow the reigning naturalist, materialist scientific paradigm to become a fascist element in society. We do a great disservice to democratic scientific debate and to the way our children learn. And as for the separation of church and state, shouldn't we also be concerned about the separation of science and state?
The question we should ask is, Do we want our children and grandchildren to be taught or do we want them to be indoctrinated? Indeed, America's educational system is in dire trouble when a Chinese paleontologist notices that, "In China it's OK to criticize Darwin but not the government, in the U.S. it's OK to criticize the government but not Darwin."
Footnotes
1. Darwin never quite defined the term species. He wrote in Origin of Species, “it will be seen that I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms.” He wrote that “varieties” are simply “incipient species.” Forever teetering on the edge of potentiality, species are always in a hapless phase of becoming.
2. Some evolutionists argue that Darwin never claimed natural selection to be the exclusive mechanism of evolution. Selection merely preserves or destroys something that already exists. Mutation must provide the innovative changes in design which natural selection then tests out in the field. Problematically, mutations that are large enough to cause visible and immediate changes are deadly.
References and Further Reading
Barrow, John, and Frank Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle.
Behe, Michael, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge To Evolution.
Collins, Phillip, "Illuminating the Occult Origin of Darwinism" biped.info
d'Arc, Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form, (thebooktree.com)
Dembski, William, The Design Revolution.
Denton, Michael, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.
Johnson, Phillip, Darwin on Trial.
Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Lovelock, James, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth.
Margulis, Lynn, Symbiotic Planet.
Midgley, Mary, Evolution as a Religion.
National Academy of Science, www.nationalacademies.org/morenews/includes/20051027c.pdf
New York Times, Aug. 2006, Evolution Fight Shifts Direction in Kansas Vote, www.nytimes.com/2006/08/03/us/03evolution.htm
Overman, Dean, A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization.
"Pigliucci, Massimo, "Design Yes, Intelligent No," www.infidels.org/library/modern/features/2000/pigliucci1.html
Polanyi, Michael, Google: "Life's Irreducible Structure," 1968.
Sheldrake, Rupert, The Presence of the Past and A New Science of Life.
Joan d'Arc is the author of Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form, and Phenomenal World, published by The Book Tree (www.thebooktree.com). She is also the publisher of the infrequently transmitted HunterGatheress Journal (www.huntergatheress.com) and co-editor/co-publisher of PARANOIA The Conspiracy Reader (www.paranoiamagazine.com).
By Joan d'Arc
The modern Darwin wars began in October 2004, when the town of Dover, PA, became the first school district to mandate the teaching of Intelligent Design (ID theory). However, to be clear on this, the school board had adopted a policy that simply required 9th graders to hear a prepared statement about ID theory in the Biology classroom. In no way was equal time being given to the new theory. Nonetheless, two dissenting board members resigned on October 18, 2004.
In May 2005, the Kansas School Board voted to teach Intelligent Design in public schools alongside the theory of Darwinian evolution. The fight that ensued was billed by the media as the anti-Darwinists against the scientific establishment, which considers the evidence of the origins of life to be "beyond dispute." It was clear the fight had gotten real down and dirty when, at a hearing, William Harris (co-founder of Intelligent Design Network Inc.) projected a "strategy letter" from a Kansas Citizens for Science member onto a screen. The letter stated that the way to defeat the "anti-evolution forces" was to portray them as "political opportunists, evangelical activists, unprincipled bullies and ignoramuses."
Darwinists indeed see the I.D. movement as driven by a bunch of hicks in a junk wagon. If anyone is interested in applying rationality to the issue, they could start by reading the 117-page Kansas Science Education Standards (www.ksde.org, which at this revision in 2008 is no longer posted). The curriculum is nothing short of the sentinel of science. Approved on November 8, 2005, the curriculum states, "All scientific theories should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." It asserts: "Compelling student belief is inconsistent with the goal of education. Nothing in science … should be taught dogmatically."
The Kansas Standards "defines good science, how science moves forward, what holds science back, and how to critically analyze the conclusions scientists make." It calls for students to "learn about the best evidence for modern evolutionary theory, but also to learn about areas where scientists are raising scientific criticisms of the theory." The curriculum's objectives are to help students understand the "full range of scientific views" on evolutionary theory, to develop understanding of the scientific method by studying "opposing scientific evidence," and to ensure that science education in Kansas is "secular, neutral and non-ideological."
In September 2005, the National Academy of Sciences responded to the Kansas Standards deeming anything contrary to Darwin is simply not science: "There really is no “range of scientific views” on this issue—those views that are being touted today are not scientific (despite statements to the contrary by their proponents), but they are ideological." By November 2006, Dorothy had returned safely from Oz and the conservative board of education in Kansas had shifted to a more moderate majority, and promised to restore a science curriculum "that does not subject evolution to critical attack." The moral is, don't buck the System, Dorothy.
There is no "range of scientific views" because Darwinism is the state religion of America. In her book Evolution as a Religion, philosopher Mary Midgley argues that evolution functions dually as a creation myth and a scientific theory, and that its sociobiological "escalator model" (of Herbert Spencer) is not only non-Darwinian, but distorts the theory's scientific standing toward that of ideology and myth. Midgley asserts, “The theory of evolution is not just an inert piece of theoretical science,” but is also “a powerful folk tale about human origins.” She warns against applying the confidence due to well-established scientific findings to a “vast area which has only an imaginative affinity with them,” and where only the “trappings of a detached and highly venerated science are present.”
My approach to this subject is not religious in any way. As for my papers, I have a B.A. in Anthropology and I was a card-carrying atheist for many years, including my time studying in college. I now consider myself to be an atheist creationist, if there can be such a crypto-animal. My Darwinian dissent began shortly after college, and in 1997 I began writing Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form, published in 2000 by The Book Tree. A second book called Phenomenal World followed.
In 2003, I founded a secular-based website, BIPED: Beings for Intelligent Purpose in Evolutionary Design (now gone) to highlight valid scientific alternatives to Darwinian evolution other than "creation," although I'm not particularly opposed to that term (if it walks like a duck). Among those alternatives are: Gaia Theory, Vitalism, Morphic Resonance (a.k.a. Formative Causation), Intelligent Design, Panspermia and Directed Panspermia. This article provides an overview of these theories for those who do not realize there are valid scientific hypotheses that are contrary to Darwinian theory—they just aren't part of the naturalist paradigm. As such they have a right to exist and students have a right to learn about them, if not in school then at least on their own on the Internet.
Gaia Theory
Microbiologist Lynn Margulis and chemist James Lovelock formulated the Gaia Hypothesis in the 1970s (now upgraded to a theory). They proposed that life creates the conditions for its own existence, challenging the reigning theory that the forces of geology set the conditions for life, while plants and animals, accidentally along for the ride, evolved by chance under the right conditions.
The Darwinian concept of adaptation to the environment has been seriously questioned by Margulis, Lovelock and others working from a systems point of view. Evolution cannot be explained by the adaptation of organisms to local environments, they argue, because a network of living systems is also shaping the environment. The evolution of life, according to the Gaia Theory, depends on a cyclical, self-regulating feedback relationship. Margulis has stated that one day neo-Darwinism will be judged as "a minor 20th century religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon biology." She has also asserted that Darwinism is based on outdated reductionist concepts, asserting that, "It's wrong like infectious medicine was wrong before Pasteur. It's wrong like phrenology is wrong. Every major tenet of it is wrong."
Lovelock popularized his Gaia theory in 1972 in a paper titled, "Gaia as seen through the atmosphere," and in his 1979 book, Gaia: A New Look At Life on Earth. His initial hypothesis proposed that the whole Earth behaves like one self-regulating organism wherein all of the geologic, hydrologic, and biologic cycles of the planet mutually self-regulate the conditions on the surface of the Earth so as to perpetuate life. When the mainstream scientific body got hold of the theory it changed significantly and we can guess why. It didn't conform to the Darwinian paradigm, which holds that evolution has no overarching purpose or goal. Lovelock's theory was teleological: some force outside of nature was possibly controlling the evolution of forms. According to Darwin himself, if any outside force (super- or supra-natural) was found to be at work, we were instructed to throw out his baby with the bath water.
Lynn Margulis still insists that consciousness evolved, but where did the consciousness come from? Answer: It had to come from inside the system (Earth-based) in the "naturalist" framework. According to evolutionists, consciousness has to evolve; it can't have been there in the first place. This conjecture is based on the anthropic principle: the minimum time required for the evolution of "intelligent observers." In this scheme, a billion years is required for the evolution of intelligence. The anthropic timescale argument posits that the types of processes allowed in the Universe must be of such an age that "slow evolutionary processes will have had time to produce intelligent beings from non-living matter." (Barrow)
Pondering how consciousness "arose in the Universe," this peculiar Western viewpoint refuses the primacy of consciousness, and instead assumes a chain of linear metamorphoses, accidental and directionless, from nonsentience to sentience. As I have written in Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form, the evolution story dramatizes the "natural" transfiguration of mankind through a linear procession of metamorphoses that eventually separate him from the animals of his ancestry—evolution is Western man's totem.
Vitalism vs. Natural Selection
Many people I talk to are under the assumption that Darwinism is playfully malleable and open to their mishmash of supernatural ideas. I try to inform them that Darwinian evolution is an all-or-nothing theory; it will not allow inclusion of any vitalist or supra-natural process—or, goddess forbid, any anthropomorphism. It is very exacting on that rule. If you are espousing any form of supernaturalism, you are clearly not a Darwinian. Perhaps you are a vitalist.
Vitalism is the doctrine which espouses that life processes arise from a nonmaterial essential principle that cannot be explained by physics and chemistry alone. One of its adherents was Swedish chemist Jöns Jackob Berzelius (1799-1848), who hypothesized that only living tissue, by possessing a "life-force," can produce organic compounds. French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) proposed the idea of an élan vital, or creative force, at the heart of evolution. Bergson advocated a return to neo-vitalism, which maintains that the phenomena of life are unpredictable, chaotic, and beyond the range of science. The well-known scientist Wilhelm Reich was a vitalist and Darwin's peer Jean Baptiste de Lamark utilized vitalism in his theory of acquired characteristics.
Yet, the notion of a life-force (perhaps involving the "ether" which Einstein wrongly abandoned) is flatly contrary to Darwinian theory, which emphasizes no purpose, goal or outside force at work in the development of new species.1 To be sure, the principle of natural selection is the only suspicious force allowed in through the back door of Darwinism.2 What force in nature does the selecting of the fit characteristics and how does it produce new and (at the same time) useful structures by random chance? Indeed, Darwin later regretted his use of the term because it suggested a mysterious guiding force was at work.
Natural selection is a supposedly blind "natural" process which somehow ensures (let's not say "chooses") that the most fit individuals survive to produce the most offspring. Darwin's concept of natural selection simply defines the fittest as the individuals that survive—the fittest organisms are, plain and simple, the ones that produce the most offspring. Hence, natural selection is a meaningless tautology which essentially states, "those organisms which leave the most offspring, leave the most offspring."
There is no evidence that would confirm the hypothesis, argues zoologist Pierre Grasse, that the concept of natural selection is "an evolutionary process capable of producing innovative designs" (i.e. new species). He explains that supposed proofs of evolution in action are simply "observations of demographic facts, local fluctuations of genotypes and geographical distributions"—not new and distinct forms.
The Fields of Morphe
A modern example of vitalist theory is Rupert Sheldrake's theory of Morphic Resonance ("formative causation"), described in detail in his book, A New Science of Life. Sheldrake believes morphogenetic fields are non-physical carriers of information (intelligence) which guide the development of an organism in the form of its species. He believes DNA is not the source of structure, but is a "receiver" that translates information into physical form. In this sense, genes are grossly overrated, he states.
Morphic fields (from the Greek morphe, which means form), he explains, are the organizing fields of nature. Morphic fields organize in living organisms as well as in the forms of crystals and molecules. Each kind of molecule has its own type of morphic field, and even our own mental lives depend on this field. In his book, The Presence of the Past, Sheldrake explains that morphogenetic fields contain an inherent memory, and he believes the structure of the fields "depends on what has happened before." Inheritance depends on cumulative memory built up through "a pool of species experience" in a process he calls morphic resonance. Sheldrake believes vitalism has come back to life as a scientific theory and is being embraced in many corners.
Intelligent Design
Intelligent Design is the science that detects "signs of intelligence." In his book, The Design Inference, its leading proponent, mathematician William Dembski, employs statistical testing of the natural world to see if it shows evidence of intelligent design. He explains:
"To say intelligent causes are empirically detectable is to say there exist well-defined methods that, based on observable features of the world, can reliably distinguish intelligent causes from undirected natural causes. Many special sciences have already developed such methods for drawing this distinction—notably forensic science, cryptography, archeology, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Essential to all these methods is the ability to eliminate chance and necessity."
For instance, scientists such as Dr. Mark Carlotto and Professor Stanley McDaniel explore the artificiality of formations on Mars. They argue that natural features do not exhibit a high degree of parallelism, symmetry or geometrical straight-edged patterns. Statistically, a feature on another planetary body such as the moon or Mars which was found to exhibit a high degree of parallelism or geometry, such as large-scale patterns that look like walls or streets, could perhaps be artificial constructions. Likewise, according to Richard Hoagland, such geometries might be construed as a mathematical "signal" from an intelligent race.
Although the late SETI pioneer Carl Sagan believed that such investigations are scientifically legitimate, many scientists disagree that Intelligent Design is comparable to SETI. In his essay entitled "Design Yes, Intelligent No," Massimo Pigliucci asserts:
"Dembski is absolutely correct that plenty of human activities, such as SETI, investigations into plagiarism, or encryption, depend on the ability to detect intelligent agency. Where he is wrong is in assuming only one kind of design: for him design equals intelligence and, even though he admitted that such an intelligence may be an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, his preference is for a god, possibly of the Christian variety. The problem is that natural selection, a natural process, also fulfills the complexity-specification criterion, thereby demonstrating that it is possible to have unintelligent design in nature."
According to this argument, the comparison of ID theory with SETI is flawed because the highest design in the court of naturalistic science, in fact the only design allowed, is unintelligent design. Stripped of any meaning or explanatory power outside of Darwinian scientism, this phrase only reiterates Phillip Johnson's assertion that natural selection is simply an algorithmic theory of non-random death.
Try as it will, Dembski argues, Darwinian evolution cannot explain human consciousness. The concept of natural selection, he explains, "places a premium on survival and reproduction and has no stake in truth or conscious thought. Indeed, meat-puppet robots are just fine as the output of a Darwinian evolutionary process."
When the Darwinian establishment charges that ID theory is not science, they are really saying it is not based on scientific naturalism. The heart of the reigning paradigm of naturalism is that intelligence is an accidental byproduct of evolution. In contrast, Intelligent Design tells us that we live in an intelligent universe. In ID theory, intelligence trickles down from the cosmos, if you will, and in naturalism it builds up incrementally from prebiotic chemical soup. As William Dembski has charged, "For the naturalist, the world is intelligible only if it starts off without intelligence and then evolves intelligence."
Ballistic Panspermia
Panspermia is the ultimate trickle down theory that life on earth was seeded by microbial life from space. This theory was advocated by many, among them the Greek philosopher, Anaxagoras (500-428 BCE), Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894), and William Thomson Kelvin (1824-1897). Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius later promulgated the theory of Radio Panspermia, wherein microbes from space are transported by light pressure.
The proponents of modern day Panspermia are British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle and Sri Lankan mathematician-astronomer Chandra Wickramasinghe, who theorize that DNA arrived on earth via meteorites (Ballistic Panspermia) or by comets (Modern Panspermia). In fact, Hoyle mathematically dismissed the chance of evolution having actually occurred the way Darwinists propose, arguing, "even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup ... the chance of producing merely the basic enzymes of life by random processes without intelligent direction would be . . . a probability too small to imagine."
Hoyle concluded that "Darwinian evolution is most unlikely to get even one polypeptide sequence right, let alone the thousands on which living cells depend for survival." Given that there are trillions of different kinds of cells in delicate balance, he argues, each of these varied cellular structures would also have to develop by chance. This mathematical impossibility is well known to scientists, he said; yet most of them "cling to Darwinism because of its grip on the educational system." They do not want to be branded as "heretics."
Directed Panspermia
As molecular biologist Michael Denton articulates in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, "Nothing illustrates as clearly just how intractable a problem the origin of life has become than the fact that world authorities can seriously toy with the idea of Panspermia." Such describes the dilemma of British molecular biologist Francis Crick, who received the 1962 Nobel Prize for the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA.
After discovering the astonishingly huge and complex information storage capacity of the DNA molecule (humans have three billion coding letters in each nucleus), Crick could not imagine any conditions under which this information vehicle could have evolved from non-living chemicals. He argued that since the earth has too short a history for life to have developed here, it must have developed on another planet in a solar system several billion years older than ours.
Crick's aversion to religion led him and Leslie Orgel, in 1973, to put forth the theory of Directed Panspermia. To get around the idea of God, Crick proposed that the primordial seeds of life were shipped to earth in spaceships billions of years ago by intelligent beings. After proposing this idea, Crick was left in the predicament of explaining the origin of the ET beings, and finally had to acknowledge the paucity of the idea, saying, "Every time I write a paper on the origin of life, I swear I will never write another one, because there is too much speculation running after too few facts." (Life Itself, 1981)
Although an atheist, Crick was quoted as saying, "An honest man, armed with the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense the origin of life appears to be almost a miracle."
Writing in his essay, "Astrogenesis," William Hamilton explains, "The real paradigm shift is to consider that the Universe is a life-producing nursery and that the genesis and evolution of life is not earth-centered but rather is distributed among the stars of the galaxies.” Let's not forget, however, that the theory of Panspermia still leaves us with the question of the origin of those stars and those galaxies, which of course was never addressed by Charles Darwin; nor was the actual origin of any species.
A Scientific Revolution
In his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn defines a scientific revolution as a “non-cumulative developmental episode” whereby an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an “incompatible new one.” Such scientific revolutions begin with a growing sense that “an existing paradigm has ceased to function adequately in the exploration of an aspect of nature.” The emergence of new theories is usually preceded by a period of “pronounced professional insecurity,” since it involves large-scale paradigm destruction.
The essential problem is, scientists cannot do research in the absence of a controlling paradigm. They cannot pull the floor out from under themselves, and when it goes this structure will fall hard. Kuhn explains, a scientific theory “is declared invalid only if an alternative candidate is available to take its place.” The normal response to crisis, he explains, will be to loosen the rules of normal problem solving in ways that will permit the new paradigm to emerge. This essentially describes the action taken by the Kansas School Board in its Science Education Standards. The new paradigm will emerge when the youth of tomorrow are not so emotionally and financially committed to the old one. Reading alternative science on the internet is a place to start.
Intelligent Design is a mathematically based theory, not a religious theory. Paranoid tirades about Christians taking over the world have nothing to do with the facts of the matter. Those who react this way are reacting emotionally to the messenger rather than opening the message with the minimum decorum expected of adult human beings. By dogmatically rejecting Intelligent Design without fully comprehending it, we allow the reigning naturalist, materialist scientific paradigm to become a fascist element in society. We do a great disservice to democratic scientific debate and to the way our children learn. And as for the separation of church and state, shouldn't we also be concerned about the separation of science and state?
The question we should ask is, Do we want our children and grandchildren to be taught or do we want them to be indoctrinated? Indeed, America's educational system is in dire trouble when a Chinese paleontologist notices that, "In China it's OK to criticize Darwin but not the government, in the U.S. it's OK to criticize the government but not Darwin."
Footnotes
1. Darwin never quite defined the term species. He wrote in Origin of Species, “it will be seen that I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms.” He wrote that “varieties” are simply “incipient species.” Forever teetering on the edge of potentiality, species are always in a hapless phase of becoming.
2. Some evolutionists argue that Darwin never claimed natural selection to be the exclusive mechanism of evolution. Selection merely preserves or destroys something that already exists. Mutation must provide the innovative changes in design which natural selection then tests out in the field. Problematically, mutations that are large enough to cause visible and immediate changes are deadly.
References and Further Reading
Barrow, John, and Frank Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle.
Behe, Michael, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge To Evolution.
Collins, Phillip, "Illuminating the Occult Origin of Darwinism" biped.info
d'Arc, Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form, (thebooktree.com)
Dembski, William, The Design Revolution.
Denton, Michael, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.
Johnson, Phillip, Darwin on Trial.
Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Lovelock, James, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth.
Margulis, Lynn, Symbiotic Planet.
Midgley, Mary, Evolution as a Religion.
National Academy of Science, www.nationalacademies.org/morenews/includes/20051027c.pdf
New York Times, Aug. 2006, Evolution Fight Shifts Direction in Kansas Vote, www.nytimes.com/2006/08/03/us/03evolution.htm
Overman, Dean, A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization.
"Pigliucci, Massimo, "Design Yes, Intelligent No," www.infidels.org/library/modern/features/2000/pigliucci1.html
Polanyi, Michael, Google: "Life's Irreducible Structure," 1968.
Sheldrake, Rupert, The Presence of the Past and A New Science of Life.
Joan d'Arc is the author of Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form, and Phenomenal World, published by The Book Tree (www.thebooktree.com). She is also the publisher of the infrequently transmitted HunterGatheress Journal (www.huntergatheress.com) and co-editor/co-publisher of PARANOIA The Conspiracy Reader (www.paranoiamagazine.com).
20 November, 2008
We are the Robots
Android Meme's Xenochrony by Bob Dobbs
Translation:
Dobbs: I say people are now largely patterns of information. So I like to use historical patterning to illustrate to friends how they became reduced or inflated to these patterns.
Marshall: We've been weaved?
Dobbs: Yes. We've been robots for five hundred years here in the West.
The first phase was psychological automatism. Its icon is Newton.
The second phase was biological automatism. The icon is Darwin.
The third was hardware automatism. Two icons - Edison and Ford.
The fourth was software automatism. Two icons - any President of the United States since World War Two and Walter Cronkite.
The fifth phase is a paradoxical condition. I call it autonomy automatism - the robot confident in declaring its independence and in refining its sense of freedom.
We have an endless supply of icons for this phase - any star in any demographic of any genre of entertainment or information. It's probably obvious to you we have not arrived at the sixth phase.
Everything has disappeared.
There is no present – only an ersatz present.
There is no longer a now. . . .
Translation:
Dobbs: I say people are now largely patterns of information. So I like to use historical patterning to illustrate to friends how they became reduced or inflated to these patterns.
Marshall: We've been weaved?
Dobbs: Yes. We've been robots for five hundred years here in the West.
The first phase was psychological automatism. Its icon is Newton.
The second phase was biological automatism. The icon is Darwin.
The third was hardware automatism. Two icons - Edison and Ford.
The fourth was software automatism. Two icons - any President of the United States since World War Two and Walter Cronkite.
The fifth phase is a paradoxical condition. I call it autonomy automatism - the robot confident in declaring its independence and in refining its sense of freedom.
We have an endless supply of icons for this phase - any star in any demographic of any genre of entertainment or information. It's probably obvious to you we have not arrived at the sixth phase.
Everything has disappeared.
There is no present – only an ersatz present.
There is no longer a now. . . .
Just Say NO to bailing out the Big Three!
There are still far too many SUV’s wandering the boulevards.
Will Obama do the right thing?
Revenge of the Electric Car
While the Big Three U.S. automakers in Detroit cry for a $25-billion dollar bailout, we should keep in mind the documentary, "Who Killed the Electric Car." This important documentary released in 2006 investigates the "creation, limited commercialization and subsequent destruction of the battery-powered electric vehicle in the United States, specifically the General Motors EV1 of the 1990s."
CAR-ma?
On November 14, 2008, Nate Holden, former California State Senator and L.A. City Councilmember, held a press conference demanding General Motors apologize to the American people for destroying the automaker’s EV1 plug-in electric vehicle. Mr. Holden demanded the EV1’s immediate re-introduction before, or in exchange for, any Government bailout of GM.
GM now has a hybrid-electric car called the Volt due in 2010. It promises to be a great car - it's just far too late.
Chris Paine, director of "Who Killed The Electric Car," is currently working on the sequel titled, "Revenge of the Electric Car."
Simply put, the Big Three don't deserve a bailout - they've had 30 years of bad management and refused to give the American people what they wanted: Fuel-efficient vehicles. Instead, they seemed to be holding hands with the oil companies and other special interest groups, making big gas guzzlers. Because of this obvious conspiracy, they destroyed every one of those EV1 electric vehicles.
I say give a new car manufacturer a try - one who will make the necessary adjustments, keeping in mind future energy issues, sustainability and foreign oil from countries who hate America and are trying to destroy this nation. Oil companies who do not have America's best interests at heart have had a monopoly for far too long.
Now is a perfect time for such a new direction, with a new automobile industry and a new President who promises to finally give the U.S. a real energy policy, for the first time in 30 years. Hopefully, Obama will also consider the Pickens Plan. These are great opportunities, if the US government and business can get it together.
The Stone Age didn't end because they ran out of stones. So it should be with the fossil-fuel industry - let's end it before we run out of oil, and before it ends us! I have no problem saying, "Good riddance!" to the oil industry. Let it and these dinosaur automakers remain in the last century. Bring in the sustainable energy age.
Will Obama do the right thing?
Revenge of the Electric Car
While the Big Three U.S. automakers in Detroit cry for a $25-billion dollar bailout, we should keep in mind the documentary, "Who Killed the Electric Car." This important documentary released in 2006 investigates the "creation, limited commercialization and subsequent destruction of the battery-powered electric vehicle in the United States, specifically the General Motors EV1 of the 1990s."
CAR-ma?
On November 14, 2008, Nate Holden, former California State Senator and L.A. City Councilmember, held a press conference demanding General Motors apologize to the American people for destroying the automaker’s EV1 plug-in electric vehicle. Mr. Holden demanded the EV1’s immediate re-introduction before, or in exchange for, any Government bailout of GM.
GM now has a hybrid-electric car called the Volt due in 2010. It promises to be a great car - it's just far too late.
Chris Paine, director of "Who Killed The Electric Car," is currently working on the sequel titled, "Revenge of the Electric Car."
Simply put, the Big Three don't deserve a bailout - they've had 30 years of bad management and refused to give the American people what they wanted: Fuel-efficient vehicles. Instead, they seemed to be holding hands with the oil companies and other special interest groups, making big gas guzzlers. Because of this obvious conspiracy, they destroyed every one of those EV1 electric vehicles.
I say give a new car manufacturer a try - one who will make the necessary adjustments, keeping in mind future energy issues, sustainability and foreign oil from countries who hate America and are trying to destroy this nation. Oil companies who do not have America's best interests at heart have had a monopoly for far too long.
Now is a perfect time for such a new direction, with a new automobile industry and a new President who promises to finally give the U.S. a real energy policy, for the first time in 30 years. Hopefully, Obama will also consider the Pickens Plan. These are great opportunities, if the US government and business can get it together.
The Stone Age didn't end because they ran out of stones. So it should be with the fossil-fuel industry - let's end it before we run out of oil, and before it ends us! I have no problem saying, "Good riddance!" to the oil industry. Let it and these dinosaur automakers remain in the last century. Bring in the sustainable energy age.
18 November, 2008
Children of the Damned
There is no explanation possible for this one!
Except perhaps the film Children of the Damned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_Damned
Children of the Damned is a 1963 science fiction film, a sequel to the 1960 version of Village of the Damned. It is about a group of children, with similar psi-powers to the original seeding but with notable improvements upon their design and distribution.[1]
Children identified by a UNESCO research initiative into child development are gathered from around the world and housed in London for collective study. The children have extraordinary powers of intellect and are all able to complete a difficult brick puzzle within the same amount of time. Apparently, there were six children born from all around the world—China, the Soviet Union, India, Nigeria, the USA and the UK—who share this advanced intelligence.
British psychologist Tom Lewellin (Ian Hendry) and geneticist David Neville (Alan Badel) show an interest in Paul, the boy born in London. After a while, they realize that all six children were born without any fathers and are capable of telepathy.
After international and Cold War tensions lead world governments to return the children to their respective embassies, the children escape and hide out in an abandoned church in Southwark, London. The children take control of Paul's aunt to help them survive in the derelict church while the military debates whether to destroy them. The children have demonstrated the ability to mind-control, causing the deaths of several government officials and soldiers.
Lewellin urges the government to give the children a chance. He and a few scientists observe the difference between an ordinary human cell and the children's body cells. After a short while investigating the cells, a scientist postulates that they may be human cells—but more advanced by a million years.
When authorities try to take control of them, the children are compelled to protect themselves. The situation escalates into a final showdown between armed forces and the children.
Except perhaps the film Children of the Damned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_Damned
Children of the Damned is a 1963 science fiction film, a sequel to the 1960 version of Village of the Damned. It is about a group of children, with similar psi-powers to the original seeding but with notable improvements upon their design and distribution.[1]
Children identified by a UNESCO research initiative into child development are gathered from around the world and housed in London for collective study. The children have extraordinary powers of intellect and are all able to complete a difficult brick puzzle within the same amount of time. Apparently, there were six children born from all around the world—China, the Soviet Union, India, Nigeria, the USA and the UK—who share this advanced intelligence.
British psychologist Tom Lewellin (Ian Hendry) and geneticist David Neville (Alan Badel) show an interest in Paul, the boy born in London. After a while, they realize that all six children were born without any fathers and are capable of telepathy.
After international and Cold War tensions lead world governments to return the children to their respective embassies, the children escape and hide out in an abandoned church in Southwark, London. The children take control of Paul's aunt to help them survive in the derelict church while the military debates whether to destroy them. The children have demonstrated the ability to mind-control, causing the deaths of several government officials and soldiers.
Lewellin urges the government to give the children a chance. He and a few scientists observe the difference between an ordinary human cell and the children's body cells. After a short while investigating the cells, a scientist postulates that they may be human cells—but more advanced by a million years.
When authorities try to take control of them, the children are compelled to protect themselves. The situation escalates into a final showdown between armed forces and the children.
17 November, 2008
Scott Ritter on Taking on Iran
penucquem,
Thank you for posting this video in your Of Donkeys and Men post below.
The Middle East WILL retaliate to any size nuke.
Pick which city you're willing to lose, people!
Seattle? Miami? Boston? New York?
Washington DC?
Thank you for posting this video in your Of Donkeys and Men post below.
The Middle East WILL retaliate to any size nuke.
Pick which city you're willing to lose, people!
Seattle? Miami? Boston? New York?
Washington DC?
16 November, 2008
G20 Won't Change This Financial Crime Scene
G20 Won't Change This Financial Crime Scene
By Richard C. Cook
Author of the forthcoming book, We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform
Please order the book at:
http://www.tendrilpress.com/
Remarks by Richard C. Cook
George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia
November 15, 2008
The G20 is meeting today in Washington, D.C., to discuss the world financial crisis, its causes, and what can be done about it. But this won’t help the people of the U.S. who have been victimized by their own financial system.
The stated objectives are to find ways to stabilize and reduce speculation in the financial markets and make financial transactions more transparent, more efficient, and more international in scope. But this is also a revolt by the nations of the world against over-reliance on the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. What we are likely to see over time is a multi-currency regime that includes the Euro and one or more Asian currencies as well.
But the conference will not address the real causes of why the world is heading into a global recession or why the U.S. economy in particular is in such dire straits. Nor will the meeting result in redress of the staggering level of bankers’ criminality abetted by the U.S. government in the creation of the financial bubbles whose collapse is underway.
The real problem is that the world is locked into a debt-based financial system run by the world’s banks, where the only way currency can be entered into circulation is through lending. It’s been massive amounts of completely irresponsible lending which have leveraged the bubbles against much smaller amounts of tangible value.
The GDP of the entire world is $55 trillion. This is dwarfed by speculative lending in the derivatives markets of ten times that amount--$525-$550 trillion. No nation has clean hands in this travesty. The governments of the world and the central banks have allowed it to come into being.
Within the U.S., reliance on money-creation through bank lending has been the problem since the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. At that point the U.S. monetary system was privatized. The case has been the same with all the other nations which have private banking systems that control their central banks. The granddaddy is the Bank of England which dates from 1694.
The creation of the Federal Reserve System marked the start of a century of world war. This is hardly a coincidence. Indeed, the central banking system encourages wars and lives off them, because it is war and the threat of war that is most profitable to a system where the more money governments borrow the more profits the banks make.
All this started with World War I, which was largely financed by the British, French, German, and the U.S. banks. Events have continued in that vein through today, where the nations of the world are armed to the teeth and global finance capitalism tries to increase its control everywhere to the detriment of workers, national economies, and the environment.
To try to fix the crisis through bailing out the system, we are now seeing in the U.S. and Europe levels of government borrowing that have not been experienced since World War II. The purpose is to recapitalize a financial system that has destroyed itself through its own greed and folly. But all this does is defer the bill to future generations who have to pay the enormous compounded interest charges this borrowing entails. Interest on the national debt in the 2009 federal budget is over $500 billion. Every man, woman, and child in the nation is a victim of this crime.
The situation is so bad that many people believe the U.S. may even be in danger of defaulting on its gigantic national debt sometime in 2009.
Meanwhile, the failed financial system is dragging down the world’s producing economy with it, and the bailouts won’t change that situation. Combined with the financial crash has been a collapse in consumer “demand.” In other words, consumers, who are maxed out on their credit, no longer can borrow enough to keep the wheels of the economy turning.
But the reason they must borrow for consumption is that earnings are not sufficient for people to buy what they need to live. This is why in the U.S. there has been an outcry, including with the Obama campaign, for new government job-creation programs. Every day there is another proposal by progressives for new government spending, which, of course, will have to be financed by even more government debt.
So when are we going to learn how to introduce purchasing power without debt? How did we ever come to believe that the only way to create money is through a bank inventing it out of thin air? In the past few weeks we have had a number of Nobel-prize winning economists chip in with their suggestions of what to do, but none have addressed the obvious question of what the alternatives may be to bankers’ debt-based currency.
If we look at history, we see other ways governments have used their powers to create money. Indeed, until the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the U.S. was a kind of laboratory of alternative methods of money-creation.
If we go back to colonial days, the American colonies used a variety of means to introduce currency into circulation. In Virginia, plantation owners received tobacco certificates when they deposited their product at public warehouses. The certificates then circulated as currency.
In Pennsylvania the government ran a land bank which paid cash to land-owners for liens on property. The interest paid for the costs of government without any taxation of citizens.
In Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere, governments spent paper money directly into circulation. The money received value by then being accepted by those governments, after it circulated within the economy, in payment of taxes.
Other forms of currency were Spanish dollars, Indian wampum, and IOUs. There was also a flourishing barter trade.
The system worked. By 1764, the American colonies formed one of the most prosperous trading regions on the planet. When asked why, Benjamin Franklin said it was because of colonial scrip—i.e., their paper money. When the British Parliament outlawed it through the Currency Act of 1764, an economic depression followed. It was the underlying cause of the Revolutionary War.
During that war, the Continental Congress issued the famous Continental Currency. What likely caused that money to inflate was extensive British counterfeiting, not being used to excess by our national government.
Once the nation became independent, a U.S. mint was founded so individuals could bring in gold or silver and have it stamped into coinage free of charge. New discoveries as with the California and Yukon gold rushes or better methods of extraction from ores resulted in economic booms. From then until coinage lost its value after the Federal Reserve System was established, precious metals were a major part of the U.S. monetary system that included not only coinage but also gold and silver certificates.
In 1791 and again in 1816 Congress passed legislation for the First and Second Banks of the United States. These banks were dupicates of the Bank of England whose purposes were to fasten on the U.S. the same type of debt-based monetary system that was the driving force for the British Empire. Presidents Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, and Martin van Buren were among those who saw these banks as a Trojan Horse for financier tyranny. The split between pro- and anti-bank forces was the origin of the two-party system within the United States.
When Jefferson became president in 1800 he refused to borrow from the bank and balanced the federal budget for eight consecutive years by cutting military expenditures. Andrew Jackson took similar action in 1833 when he withdrew federal funds from the bank and paid off the entire national debt. It was recognized back then that fiscal responsibility was an effective means for keeping the government out of the control of the bankers and their political friends.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln refused to borrow from the banks. Instead he financed the war through income and excise taxes, sale of war bonds directly to citizens, and issuance of the famous Greenbacks. This came about in 1862 when Congress authorized the government to spend $450 million in paper Greenbacks directly into circulation. Congress also introduced tangible value into the economy by what was then the very wise policy of transferring huge amounts of public land to the railroads and to citizens under the Homestead Act.
During the late 19th century, ordinary citizens were not so stunningly ignorant of the politics of money as they are today. People recognized the Greenbacks for having saved the union. A Greenback Party was formed that elected representatives to Congress and ran candidates for president.
Greenbacks remained in circulation, and as late as 1900 still made up a third of the nation’s monetary supply, along with coinage, gold and silver certificates, and national bank notes. Also, many other business entities, including the “company stores” owned by mining companies, issued their own paper scrip that was part of the circulating currency. For example, in a pamphlet on monetary reform written by American poet Ezra Pound in the 1930s was an illustration of paper money his grandfather issued from his lumberyard in Michigan in the late 1800s backed by board-feet of lumber payable on demand! Of course barter trade continued and still exists today among industrial firms.
But the bankers were on the move. In 1863 and 1864 Congress passed the National Banking Acts which drove the extensive system of state-chartered banks, including some owned by state governments, out of existence. By the early 1900s, the power of the bankers had coalesced under the New York banking trust led by the J.P. Morgan and Rockefeller financial interests.
The bakers struck in 1913 just before the Christmas recess when many Congressmen had already left Washington for the holidays. The Federal Reserve Act had actually been written by bankers from Europe who were allied with the Rothschild interests. Congressman Charles Lindbergh, Sr., father of the aviator, called the Act “the legislative crime of the ages.” Later President Woodrow Wilson, who signed the Act, said he had “unwittingly ruined my nation.”
But the deed was done. The Federal Reserve System created the first major financial bubble through World War I spending, followed by a depression, then created and burst the stock market bubble whose collapse started the Great Depression in 1929. President Franklin D. Roosevelt took over credit creation through low-cost government lending in the 1930s but had to use World War II to achieve full employment because by then the government was totally locked into the Keynesian tax-and-borrow credo of public finance.
The bankers began their comeback in the 1950s and consolidated their power in the 1970s under the heading of “monetarism,” which is the philosophy of trying to control the economy through raising and lowering of interest rates. This travesty—which is really institutionalized usury—is as familiar to us today as the water a fish swims in. We don’t even notice it. Yet it’s this system that has ruined the world. Ever since the 1970s, every period of economic growth in the U.S. has been a bank-created bubble followed by a crash and a recession.
We had the inflation of the 1970s created by the government-induced oil prices shocks, followed by the Paul Volcker crash of 1979-83 when the Federal Reserve raised interest rates above twenty percent and caused the biggest downturn since the Great Depression.
During the later Reagan years we had the merger-acquisition bubble followed by the recession that brought Bill Clinton to office in 1992. Then we had the dot.com bubble of the mid- to late-1990s that ended with the crash of 2000-2001.
Next, instead, of rebuilding an economy that had been devastated by export of our best manufacturing jobs to China and other cheap-labor countries, the Federal Reserve under chairman Alan Greenspan, with assistance from the George W. Bush administration, created the biggest bubble economy in history, with the housing, commercial real estate, equity, hedge fund, derivatives, and commodities bubbles all blowing up at the same time and leaving us with the mess we are in today.
What has happened during the Bush administration has been the greatest crime against the public interest in U.S. history. Its effects are only starting to be evident.
Of course in the face of so many disasters, the credit markets have imploded, and governments don’t know what to do except recapitalize and restructure them but without taking action to address the deep systemic problems with the producing economy. And while the Europeans may have blown the whistle on U.S. excesses through the G20 meeting, this country still faces disaster.
Yes, Wall Street is killing Main Street, and no one has come up with an answer except suggestions for the bailouts and some New Deal-type programs in an environment that is much worse even than in the 1930s. For one thing, most of what we consume today is produced abroad. For another, family farming has been ruined. In a pinch, our nation could no longer even feed itself.
But the amazing thing is how easy it would be to salvage the situation if the government took the simple step of treating credit as what it really is—a public utility like clean air, water, or electricity, not the private property of the banking system. In fact the banking system and the politicians they own have stolen and abused this fundamental piece of the social commons.
Banks have no legal right to work against the public interest. Every single bank that has ever existed has operated under a public charter. The Constitution gives Congress—i.e., the people’s representative government—authority to regulate interstate commerce. It also gives Congress the right and responsibility to control the monetary system.
So why doesn’t Congress do it? Why does Congress sit passively and stare when Federal Reserve chairmen such as Alan Greenspan or Ben Bernanke sit before them and mumble nonsense about markets and interest rates and inflation and the rest of a made-up system whose main result is to funnel the wealth of the economy upwards into the hands of the financial elite?
In my writings I have advocated several measures Congress could take immediately to remedy the catastrophe we are facing:
1. Congress could authorize direct expenditure of government funds for legitimate public expenses, as was done with the Civil War-era Greenbacks. Contrary to bankers’ propaganda, the Greenbacks were not inflationary then and would not be inflationary now, because they would be backed by tangible economic production of goods and services. What has been inflationary has been the debt-based currency which, since it was introduced in 1913, has caused the dollar to lose 95 percent of its value. Greenback-type spending is contained in the proposed American Monetary Act, developed by the American Monetary Institute.
2. Congress could authorize a national infrastructure bank that would be self-capitalized and would lend money into existence to state and local governments at zero percent interest. Legislation for such a bank has been introduced by Congressman Dennis Kucinich.
3. Congress could authorize dividend payments to citizens as advocated by the Social Credit movement founded by Major C.H. Douglas of Great Britain decades ago as a means of monetizing the net appreciation of the producing economy. Dividends exceeding $1,000 a month could be issued from a national dividend account without recourse to taxation or borrowing. Such a concept is related to the Alaska Permanent Fund which paid over $3,200 to each state resident in 2008 and to the concept of a basic income guarantee advocated by proponents of the negative income tax in years past.
4. Congress could utilize dividend payments once they were spent, possibly in the form of vouchers for necessities of life like food and housing, to capitalize a new network of community savings banks that would provide low-cost credit to home purchasers, students, small business people, and local farms.
I worked in the U.S. Treasury Department for 21 years and learned first-hand the history and operations of public finance in the U.S. I have seen the disastrous results of the debt-based financial system and how it has driven our nation, government, and people into bankruptcy. I have also seen how these simple measures of monetary reform would be easy to implement and would begin to turn the situation around within weeks or months.
All it takes is political will and a determination to challenge the death-grip the financial elite has had on our economy for a century.
We can be quite certain that these vital issues will not be addressed by the summit of the G20 meeting in Washington today. If anything, these meetings are likely to render the grip of private finance on the peoples of the world even tighter than before.
But sooner or later change must come. For the immediate future people could fight back by doing everything possible to get out of debt, convert their cash reserves to tangible holdings, and start their own local currency and barter systems. But for real change, a monetary revolution is required.
Copyright © 2008 by Richard C. Cook
Richard C. Cook is a former U.S. federal government analyst and an advocate for economic democracy and sustainability. His new book, We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform, can now be ordered for $19.95 from www.tendrilpress.com.
By Richard C. Cook
Author of the forthcoming book, We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform
Please order the book at:
http://www.tendrilpress.com/
Remarks by Richard C. Cook
George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia
November 15, 2008
The G20 is meeting today in Washington, D.C., to discuss the world financial crisis, its causes, and what can be done about it. But this won’t help the people of the U.S. who have been victimized by their own financial system.
The stated objectives are to find ways to stabilize and reduce speculation in the financial markets and make financial transactions more transparent, more efficient, and more international in scope. But this is also a revolt by the nations of the world against over-reliance on the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. What we are likely to see over time is a multi-currency regime that includes the Euro and one or more Asian currencies as well.
But the conference will not address the real causes of why the world is heading into a global recession or why the U.S. economy in particular is in such dire straits. Nor will the meeting result in redress of the staggering level of bankers’ criminality abetted by the U.S. government in the creation of the financial bubbles whose collapse is underway.
The real problem is that the world is locked into a debt-based financial system run by the world’s banks, where the only way currency can be entered into circulation is through lending. It’s been massive amounts of completely irresponsible lending which have leveraged the bubbles against much smaller amounts of tangible value.
The GDP of the entire world is $55 trillion. This is dwarfed by speculative lending in the derivatives markets of ten times that amount--$525-$550 trillion. No nation has clean hands in this travesty. The governments of the world and the central banks have allowed it to come into being.
Within the U.S., reliance on money-creation through bank lending has been the problem since the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. At that point the U.S. monetary system was privatized. The case has been the same with all the other nations which have private banking systems that control their central banks. The granddaddy is the Bank of England which dates from 1694.
The creation of the Federal Reserve System marked the start of a century of world war. This is hardly a coincidence. Indeed, the central banking system encourages wars and lives off them, because it is war and the threat of war that is most profitable to a system where the more money governments borrow the more profits the banks make.
All this started with World War I, which was largely financed by the British, French, German, and the U.S. banks. Events have continued in that vein through today, where the nations of the world are armed to the teeth and global finance capitalism tries to increase its control everywhere to the detriment of workers, national economies, and the environment.
To try to fix the crisis through bailing out the system, we are now seeing in the U.S. and Europe levels of government borrowing that have not been experienced since World War II. The purpose is to recapitalize a financial system that has destroyed itself through its own greed and folly. But all this does is defer the bill to future generations who have to pay the enormous compounded interest charges this borrowing entails. Interest on the national debt in the 2009 federal budget is over $500 billion. Every man, woman, and child in the nation is a victim of this crime.
The situation is so bad that many people believe the U.S. may even be in danger of defaulting on its gigantic national debt sometime in 2009.
Meanwhile, the failed financial system is dragging down the world’s producing economy with it, and the bailouts won’t change that situation. Combined with the financial crash has been a collapse in consumer “demand.” In other words, consumers, who are maxed out on their credit, no longer can borrow enough to keep the wheels of the economy turning.
But the reason they must borrow for consumption is that earnings are not sufficient for people to buy what they need to live. This is why in the U.S. there has been an outcry, including with the Obama campaign, for new government job-creation programs. Every day there is another proposal by progressives for new government spending, which, of course, will have to be financed by even more government debt.
So when are we going to learn how to introduce purchasing power without debt? How did we ever come to believe that the only way to create money is through a bank inventing it out of thin air? In the past few weeks we have had a number of Nobel-prize winning economists chip in with their suggestions of what to do, but none have addressed the obvious question of what the alternatives may be to bankers’ debt-based currency.
If we look at history, we see other ways governments have used their powers to create money. Indeed, until the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the U.S. was a kind of laboratory of alternative methods of money-creation.
If we go back to colonial days, the American colonies used a variety of means to introduce currency into circulation. In Virginia, plantation owners received tobacco certificates when they deposited their product at public warehouses. The certificates then circulated as currency.
In Pennsylvania the government ran a land bank which paid cash to land-owners for liens on property. The interest paid for the costs of government without any taxation of citizens.
In Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere, governments spent paper money directly into circulation. The money received value by then being accepted by those governments, after it circulated within the economy, in payment of taxes.
Other forms of currency were Spanish dollars, Indian wampum, and IOUs. There was also a flourishing barter trade.
The system worked. By 1764, the American colonies formed one of the most prosperous trading regions on the planet. When asked why, Benjamin Franklin said it was because of colonial scrip—i.e., their paper money. When the British Parliament outlawed it through the Currency Act of 1764, an economic depression followed. It was the underlying cause of the Revolutionary War.
During that war, the Continental Congress issued the famous Continental Currency. What likely caused that money to inflate was extensive British counterfeiting, not being used to excess by our national government.
Once the nation became independent, a U.S. mint was founded so individuals could bring in gold or silver and have it stamped into coinage free of charge. New discoveries as with the California and Yukon gold rushes or better methods of extraction from ores resulted in economic booms. From then until coinage lost its value after the Federal Reserve System was established, precious metals were a major part of the U.S. monetary system that included not only coinage but also gold and silver certificates.
In 1791 and again in 1816 Congress passed legislation for the First and Second Banks of the United States. These banks were dupicates of the Bank of England whose purposes were to fasten on the U.S. the same type of debt-based monetary system that was the driving force for the British Empire. Presidents Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, and Martin van Buren were among those who saw these banks as a Trojan Horse for financier tyranny. The split between pro- and anti-bank forces was the origin of the two-party system within the United States.
When Jefferson became president in 1800 he refused to borrow from the bank and balanced the federal budget for eight consecutive years by cutting military expenditures. Andrew Jackson took similar action in 1833 when he withdrew federal funds from the bank and paid off the entire national debt. It was recognized back then that fiscal responsibility was an effective means for keeping the government out of the control of the bankers and their political friends.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln refused to borrow from the banks. Instead he financed the war through income and excise taxes, sale of war bonds directly to citizens, and issuance of the famous Greenbacks. This came about in 1862 when Congress authorized the government to spend $450 million in paper Greenbacks directly into circulation. Congress also introduced tangible value into the economy by what was then the very wise policy of transferring huge amounts of public land to the railroads and to citizens under the Homestead Act.
During the late 19th century, ordinary citizens were not so stunningly ignorant of the politics of money as they are today. People recognized the Greenbacks for having saved the union. A Greenback Party was formed that elected representatives to Congress and ran candidates for president.
Greenbacks remained in circulation, and as late as 1900 still made up a third of the nation’s monetary supply, along with coinage, gold and silver certificates, and national bank notes. Also, many other business entities, including the “company stores” owned by mining companies, issued their own paper scrip that was part of the circulating currency. For example, in a pamphlet on monetary reform written by American poet Ezra Pound in the 1930s was an illustration of paper money his grandfather issued from his lumberyard in Michigan in the late 1800s backed by board-feet of lumber payable on demand! Of course barter trade continued and still exists today among industrial firms.
But the bankers were on the move. In 1863 and 1864 Congress passed the National Banking Acts which drove the extensive system of state-chartered banks, including some owned by state governments, out of existence. By the early 1900s, the power of the bankers had coalesced under the New York banking trust led by the J.P. Morgan and Rockefeller financial interests.
The bakers struck in 1913 just before the Christmas recess when many Congressmen had already left Washington for the holidays. The Federal Reserve Act had actually been written by bankers from Europe who were allied with the Rothschild interests. Congressman Charles Lindbergh, Sr., father of the aviator, called the Act “the legislative crime of the ages.” Later President Woodrow Wilson, who signed the Act, said he had “unwittingly ruined my nation.”
But the deed was done. The Federal Reserve System created the first major financial bubble through World War I spending, followed by a depression, then created and burst the stock market bubble whose collapse started the Great Depression in 1929. President Franklin D. Roosevelt took over credit creation through low-cost government lending in the 1930s but had to use World War II to achieve full employment because by then the government was totally locked into the Keynesian tax-and-borrow credo of public finance.
The bankers began their comeback in the 1950s and consolidated their power in the 1970s under the heading of “monetarism,” which is the philosophy of trying to control the economy through raising and lowering of interest rates. This travesty—which is really institutionalized usury—is as familiar to us today as the water a fish swims in. We don’t even notice it. Yet it’s this system that has ruined the world. Ever since the 1970s, every period of economic growth in the U.S. has been a bank-created bubble followed by a crash and a recession.
We had the inflation of the 1970s created by the government-induced oil prices shocks, followed by the Paul Volcker crash of 1979-83 when the Federal Reserve raised interest rates above twenty percent and caused the biggest downturn since the Great Depression.
During the later Reagan years we had the merger-acquisition bubble followed by the recession that brought Bill Clinton to office in 1992. Then we had the dot.com bubble of the mid- to late-1990s that ended with the crash of 2000-2001.
Next, instead, of rebuilding an economy that had been devastated by export of our best manufacturing jobs to China and other cheap-labor countries, the Federal Reserve under chairman Alan Greenspan, with assistance from the George W. Bush administration, created the biggest bubble economy in history, with the housing, commercial real estate, equity, hedge fund, derivatives, and commodities bubbles all blowing up at the same time and leaving us with the mess we are in today.
What has happened during the Bush administration has been the greatest crime against the public interest in U.S. history. Its effects are only starting to be evident.
Of course in the face of so many disasters, the credit markets have imploded, and governments don’t know what to do except recapitalize and restructure them but without taking action to address the deep systemic problems with the producing economy. And while the Europeans may have blown the whistle on U.S. excesses through the G20 meeting, this country still faces disaster.
Yes, Wall Street is killing Main Street, and no one has come up with an answer except suggestions for the bailouts and some New Deal-type programs in an environment that is much worse even than in the 1930s. For one thing, most of what we consume today is produced abroad. For another, family farming has been ruined. In a pinch, our nation could no longer even feed itself.
But the amazing thing is how easy it would be to salvage the situation if the government took the simple step of treating credit as what it really is—a public utility like clean air, water, or electricity, not the private property of the banking system. In fact the banking system and the politicians they own have stolen and abused this fundamental piece of the social commons.
Banks have no legal right to work against the public interest. Every single bank that has ever existed has operated under a public charter. The Constitution gives Congress—i.e., the people’s representative government—authority to regulate interstate commerce. It also gives Congress the right and responsibility to control the monetary system.
So why doesn’t Congress do it? Why does Congress sit passively and stare when Federal Reserve chairmen such as Alan Greenspan or Ben Bernanke sit before them and mumble nonsense about markets and interest rates and inflation and the rest of a made-up system whose main result is to funnel the wealth of the economy upwards into the hands of the financial elite?
In my writings I have advocated several measures Congress could take immediately to remedy the catastrophe we are facing:
1. Congress could authorize direct expenditure of government funds for legitimate public expenses, as was done with the Civil War-era Greenbacks. Contrary to bankers’ propaganda, the Greenbacks were not inflationary then and would not be inflationary now, because they would be backed by tangible economic production of goods and services. What has been inflationary has been the debt-based currency which, since it was introduced in 1913, has caused the dollar to lose 95 percent of its value. Greenback-type spending is contained in the proposed American Monetary Act, developed by the American Monetary Institute.
2. Congress could authorize a national infrastructure bank that would be self-capitalized and would lend money into existence to state and local governments at zero percent interest. Legislation for such a bank has been introduced by Congressman Dennis Kucinich.
3. Congress could authorize dividend payments to citizens as advocated by the Social Credit movement founded by Major C.H. Douglas of Great Britain decades ago as a means of monetizing the net appreciation of the producing economy. Dividends exceeding $1,000 a month could be issued from a national dividend account without recourse to taxation or borrowing. Such a concept is related to the Alaska Permanent Fund which paid over $3,200 to each state resident in 2008 and to the concept of a basic income guarantee advocated by proponents of the negative income tax in years past.
4. Congress could utilize dividend payments once they were spent, possibly in the form of vouchers for necessities of life like food and housing, to capitalize a new network of community savings banks that would provide low-cost credit to home purchasers, students, small business people, and local farms.
I worked in the U.S. Treasury Department for 21 years and learned first-hand the history and operations of public finance in the U.S. I have seen the disastrous results of the debt-based financial system and how it has driven our nation, government, and people into bankruptcy. I have also seen how these simple measures of monetary reform would be easy to implement and would begin to turn the situation around within weeks or months.
All it takes is political will and a determination to challenge the death-grip the financial elite has had on our economy for a century.
We can be quite certain that these vital issues will not be addressed by the summit of the G20 meeting in Washington today. If anything, these meetings are likely to render the grip of private finance on the peoples of the world even tighter than before.
But sooner or later change must come. For the immediate future people could fight back by doing everything possible to get out of debt, convert their cash reserves to tangible holdings, and start their own local currency and barter systems. But for real change, a monetary revolution is required.
Copyright © 2008 by Richard C. Cook
Richard C. Cook is a former U.S. federal government analyst and an advocate for economic democracy and sustainability. His new book, We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform, can now be ordered for $19.95 from www.tendrilpress.com.
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