another sign the machine is rotting

[LHX]

...


this can only be settled with a wrecking ball and a stereo


what are the odds we are gonna settle this in the foreseeable future god of vengeful hatred?

I think I can round up the wrecking ball.

i got a cd player and some computer speakers

[Toots]

all i know is this:

there is no way of predicting or controlling what a man will do when he is under pressure that goes beyond his breaking point
and
there is no way of determining exactly what a mans breaking point is

ultimately
people cant be controlled OR trained

you can get them to submit to an unreasonable situation for a while
but
when the people start breaking
your ass is finished


'mental illness' is the proof in the pudding
and that shit is not declining
also
the drugs arent working

Let's break it down to the simplest form. There is no such thing as The Machine. (Concepts like The Machine, The Matrix are invented to keep the populace confused and make us think we're powerless.) It's just the same shit since time immemorial--there are rich people who are powerful because they have all the marbles, then there are the rest of the schleps who need to be controlled so that only a tiny fraction of the population can get all the marbles.

The breaking point can be calculated by those who care to know what it is, usually somewhere around not being able to eat or afford housing. So here comes North American society. The rich in North America (international corporations and the wealthy people controlling our governments) rob the rest of the world to make cost of living dirt cheap here. Overfed people are sleepy a lot of the time. You can take care of the rest of the time with TV and video games.

What critical thinking are you doing while playing Halo exactly?

There is also no such thing as mental illness. In the past the mentally ill used to be called heretics. The majority agrees to the way reality is, anyone who disagrees is mentally ill. Putting people on anti-psychotic drugs and anti-depressants works to precisely keep everyone docile=easier to control.

I just finished reading the biography of Lucrezia Borgia, it's astonishing how little has changed in government realms since the 16th century. Who runs our governments? Not the working poor that's for sure. Check out the Bush dynasty history if you don't believe.

Still, you got to keep up the good fight as Chomsky says--he points out that even the Vietnam war protest movement took years to organize. Change can be brought about, but it's a long and hard process of waking one person up after another. It's achievable, and that's not positive thinking here, but it's a hell of a hard job. In the end people will have to wake up or we'll go extinct.

Better hike up your sleeves ladies and gents. We have a lot of work to do.

[Cain]

No such thing as mental illness?  er...right.  I guess that those people who hear voices and suffer paranoid delusions that make them kill others are victims of Establishment conformity?  That psychotics and sociopaths are misunderstood?  Sure, some people have harmless illnesses and there is a nasty tendencey in some parts of the world to use anti-psychotics as tools of political repression.  But that does not invalidate the fact that mental illness exists.

[Eldora, Oracle of Alchemy]

There is also no such thing as mental illness. In the past the mentally ill used to be called heretics. The majority agrees to the way reality is, anyone who disagrees is mentally ill. Putting people on anti-psychotic drugs and anti-depressants works to precisely keep everyone docile=easier to control.

Tom Cruise?  Is that you?

There are all kinds of mental conditions that could be called illnesses.  

Most of the drugs they use for depression today are the SSRI's which do not make people docile.  If anything they get people moving.  Back when the only drug they had was valium, you might have had a point, but not so much today.  

Let's see now, antipsychotics....Those are usually resvered for people who are seriously schizophrenic and cannot function in society at all without medication.  If They(tm) really wanted the crazies easier to control they would put them on thorazine(OK, technically it is an antipsychotic, but it makes people non functioning and doctors who have any sense will use anything else).  

I don't know about crazy people being called heretics.  If someone was going to be called a heretic, it was usually someone in a position of power, that way you could snatch their land and other property, just like the witch trials.  In some cultures some crazy people would be shamans or something.  In some cultures they would be court jesters.  I some they would be beggars.

[Fizzwitz Glorypoop]

There is also no such thing as mental illness. In the past the mentally ill used to be called heretics. The majority agrees to the way reality is, anyone who disagrees is mentally ill. Putting people on anti-psychotic drugs and anti-depressants works to precisely keep everyone docile=easier to control.

Fuck you.

[Toots]

There is also no such thing as mental illness. In the past the mentally ill used to be called heretics. The majority agrees to the way reality is, anyone who disagrees is mentally ill. Putting people on anti-psychotic drugs and anti-depressants works to precisely keep everyone docile=easier to control.

Fuck you.

Temper, temper!

[Toots]

Tom Cruise?  Is that you?

There are all kinds of mental conditions that could be called illnesses.  

Most of the drugs they use for depression today are the SSRI's which do not make people docile.  If anything they get people moving.  Back when the only drug they had was valium, you might have had a point, but not so much today.  

Let's see now, antipsychotics....Those are usually resvered for people who are seriously schizophrenic and cannot function in society at all without medication.  If They(tm) really wanted the crazies easier to control they would put them on thorazine(OK, technically it is an antipsychotic, but it makes people non functioning and doctors who have any sense will use anything else).  

I don't know about crazy people being called heretics.  If someone was going to be called a heretic, it was usually someone in a position of power, that way you could snatch their land and other property, just like the witch trials.  In some cultures some crazy people would be shamans or something.  In some cultures they would be court jesters.  I some they would be beggars.

Okay, flatly denying that mental illness exists entirely does sound like a Tom Cruize thing to say, I take a little of that back. Delusional/violent people MAY have something wrong with them, MAY. Some may just want to kill a bunch of people becuase they like it.

Heretics were far more numerous than just the wealthy. The European witch trails alone wiped out somewhere between 50,000 to 100,000 people, many of them poor as dirt. Some historians think the number was closer to 500,000-1,000,000 but since many of the people killed were on the margins of society nobody kept accurate enough records to know for sure.

Even within the mental health profession there is a ton of discussion and dissagreement as to what exactly mental illness is, what causes it, how to cure it etc.

SSRI's work to keep you happy, so I don't know how that disproves my point. Where was depression 15-20 years ago? How come all of a sudden we all have it? If depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain where is the test to measure those chemical levels, because surely no one would put people on drugs that alter their brain chemistry without making sure first that this is what is going on in their brain right? I'm sure before being put on SSRI's all people who are suspected of having depression are submitted to a medical examination/test that measures their seratonin levels.

[Schizzy]

Many of the things that cause mental illness are things which we have little or no control over--worldly conditions.  Rarely do people choose to be mentally ill, and rarely is anybody not at least somewhat mentally ill.  Mental illness is usually caused by social ills or mortalist madness, though it sometimes is caused by bad brain chemistry.  We have little control over the evil social conditions that we sometimes live under and we have probably no control over the gloom of doom.  Medicating mental illness can be helpful in alleviating mental problems, but can also be a problem for the individual when they have to walk around numb in the noggin all the time.  Doctors always have to respect a patient's decisions about medication, unless they're so bad that they must be put in a cookoo's nest.  Of course, being that I'm Christian, I'll probably change everything so that it's eternal Heaven on Earth... maybe tomorrow... or the next day... or later.  Or not... I'm too busy slacking to be bothered with teh messiah thingy.

[LHX]

all i know is this:

there is no way of predicting or controlling what a man will do when he is under pressure that goes beyond his breaking point
and
there is no way of determining exactly what a mans breaking point is

ultimately
people cant be controlled OR trained

you can get them to submit to an unreasonable situation for a while
but
when the people start breaking
your ass is finished


'mental illness' is the proof in the pudding
and that shit is not declining
also
the drugs arent working

Let's break it down to the simplest form. There is no such thing as The Machine. (Concepts like The Machine, The Matrix are invented to keep the populace confused and make us think we're powerless.) It's just the same shit since time immemorial--there are rich people who are powerful because they have all the marbles, then there are the rest of the schleps who need to be controlled so that only a tiny fraction of the population can get all the marbles.

The breaking point can be calculated by those who care to know what it is, usually somewhere around not being able to eat or afford housing. So here comes North American society. The rich in North America (international corporations and the wealthy people controlling our governments) rob the rest of the world to make cost of living dirt cheap here. Overfed people are sleepy a lot of the time. You can take care of the rest of the time with TV and video games.

What critical thinking are you doing while playing Halo exactly?

There is also no such thing as mental illness. In the past the mentally ill used to be called heretics. The majority agrees to the way reality is, anyone who disagrees is mentally ill. Putting people on anti-psychotic drugs and anti-depressants works to precisely keep everyone docile=easier to control.

I just finished reading the biography of Lucrezia Borgia, it's astonishing how little has changed in government realms since the 16th century. Who runs our governments? Not the working poor that's for sure. Check out the Bush dynasty history if you don't believe.

Still, you got to keep up the good fight as Chomsky says--he points out that even the Vietnam war protest movement took years to organize. Change can be brought about, but it's a long and hard process of waking one person up after another. It's achievable, and that's not positive thinking here, but it's a hell of a hard job. In the end people will have to wake up or we'll go extinct.

Better hike up your sleeves ladies and gents. We have a lot of work to do.

yeah

it would be fun if things were that cut-and-dry


i think i dont see anything of what you are saying except the rolling up of the sleeves
but
that is because it is warm in here





the machine has tricked you into thinking that there is a lot of work to do

[Fizzwitz Glorypoop]

yeah

it would be fun if things were that cut-and-dry

Word.

[Toots]

I am but another brick in the wall after all...heh heh.

I'd be intereted in hearing what you think though. How come you don't see anything I'm saying? Just wondering what the argument against my point would be.

Keep in mind that ultimately I agree with you, the "machine" has to fall apart at some point or we go extinct. But I don't see the machine falling apart right now. What I see is the wealthy in countries like ours, where there is democracy and information flying every which way, working hard to control the information and control us so that the "machine" can be morphed into something that keeps the rich super rich even with all the technology and information available.

I don't think any of this is exactly cut and dry, but I don't think it's nearly as complicated as we're all made to think it is either. In the human struggle of us vs them it's always been about who gets the spoils. Tons of different ideologies can get wrapped around this so it looks like the goal is something else (communism, free markets, democracy, votes for women in Afghanistan) but I firmly believe that the first question you should ask whenever faced with any kind of an issue is--who stands to benefit? Who is going to make the big bucks? If that doesn't get you to the bottom of it then it at the very least gets you a good portion of the way there.

[Shibboleet The Annihilator]

Democracy...

[LHX]

maybe part of the frustration results from the fact there there does not NEED to be any mental illness

it looks like yet another one of those things that would disappear if we would let it
but
there does not seem to be any chance of that happening



what a horrifying existence
that everybody can conceptualize a more comfortable (more 'liveable')  existance on this planet
but
still cant get anything done



too busy putting pressure on each other
the same way the machine works

[LMNO]

[Iranon]

Should I make an actual proposition for actual action to be taken to "be a counterfriction to the machine," rather than sitting around here arguing about whether or not there's a problem, would we still be here two weeks from now posting in this thread without having done anything?

The answer is probably yes, and it is a VERY SAD ANSWER!

In any case... I'm going to make a proposition anyway.

There will always be a machine. As long as people live, they will attempt to dominate one another, to convince one another that they are right. Even at this moment, I am doing this by trying to convince you to go along with my half-baked idea. Even if you don't, I will have gotten my information into your psyche, where it can sit around cluttering up your own thoughts.

On the other hand, that doesn't mean we have to stand for it. If you want things to be interesting, to change, to be revealed as Chaos for a split second or two, it can be done. Since I think most of you are unhappy with the way things are now, I think it's worth a shot.

THE PLAN

1. The machine thrives on the appearance of order. Operation Mindfuck: scale it up. Spend all the time you can making someone else's day more surreal. Hell, it's even fun, you shouldn't have any problem with this.

2. Tear down structures that allow influential people to maximize their access to other people. From the inside is the way to do this: infiltrate organizations, then screw them over, taking as many of their assosciated organizations down with them as possible. Targets: the news industry, the TV/movie industry, the video game industry, any other industry, all world governments, the conspiracies that were controlling those governments, radio, organized religion, anything else you can think of... I desperately want there to be some way for people to share ideas on an equal footing, but the internet in its current state is unacceptable due to its corporate-dominated nature and commercialism. It should be replaced by something, but I can't think of any way to keep the machine which never dies because it lives inside us from getting its grubby claws on it again... as soon as we refuse to let people use the thing however they want, WE become agents of the machine, and the process starts over.

However, I'm all for a "we'll worry about that when we get there" approach, because I doubt we'll be that effective. In fact, if we tip the balance too far, we've missed the point and become oppressors. We need a way to get everyone heard on an equal level, with everyone sharing ideas freely and without central organizations controlling the circulating information. So we start with the targets that speak with "authority" and go from there: governments, organized religions, and news media first. We probably won't get farther than that, but it'll be interesting.

If you're not into #2, consider #1, which is really where the operation hinges (even if number 2 succeeds, number 1's failure will put everything back where it was). #1 to convince people that they are free people in a chaotic world, and #2 to tear down the structures that would subtly (or not-so-subtly) retain control, the same program with just a slightly different skin.

So... any takers? Come on guys, #1 is simple and fun to implement... and #2 really needs to get started ASAP, as I've come to the conclusion that things won't be getting any better on their own.