A Few Thoughts on These Bars & Walls

[The Good Reverend Roger]

"Success" in terms of successful propagation. From a purely survivalistic standpoint, individual happiness doesn't matter. But the way the systems of culture have worked for millennia is that they have to create enough contentment within their members to ensure cooperation, and discontent creates internal pressure which drives social change.

In a society where much of our signal is generated by and to serve the interests of non-human entities, IMO, we really have a problem. If culture has evolved to serve corporations, that short-circuits the discontent>internal pressure>social change mechanism, and that changes the answer to your last question significantly.

And the last question I have is WHY we have conditioned ourselves (or been conditioned) in such a fashion?  A lot of work goes into this sort of thing, and nobody asks why?

The answer used to be simple: it was us. Collectively. But we've created a new us, and culture serves that us now.

1.  We've been working on this shit for about 10000 years.  We should be able to do better than "survival", now.

2.  Then we need a better us.  This one is defective.  It is in fact so defective that if it was a tangible thing, you'd take it back and loudly demand a refund.

Damn straight we need a better us. But the downside is, to get a new "us" would require a complete restructuring of society, which most likely leads to The Road Warrior, and let's be honest, living in the realities of a Mel Gibson film would drive us right back to "survival".

What makes you say that?

Which part? About restructuring society? I am of the opinion that our current system is so institutionalized that attempts to change it have as much chance of failure as success, and worst case scenario is total degeneration (admittedly, not most likely scenario). (<= All opinion, with only anecdotal observation and vaguely generalized historical trends, and a tendency to assume people are assholes informing it, so you know, don't take it as cold, hard fact...  )
Also, today I'm feeling a might more misanthropic than is strictly healthy, so...

Or the thing about Mel Gibson movies? I'm fairly certain that any rational person would go into complete mental shut down at the realization that Mel Gibson has been right about anything ever, and become some sort of marauding ghoul or a catatonic wreck of a person. (Fact.) 

ETA: SWEET GIBBERING ZOMBIE FUCKING CHRIST. WHY THE FUCK CAN'T I SPELL THE WORD "RIGHT"?

But I'm not talking about the system, Phox.  I'm talking about us...Because any system we create will immediately become the old system.  That's been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

[Phox]

"Success" in terms of successful propagation. From a purely survivalistic standpoint, individual happiness doesn't matter. But the way the systems of culture have worked for millennia is that they have to create enough contentment within their members to ensure cooperation, and discontent creates internal pressure which drives social change.

In a society where much of our signal is generated by and to serve the interests of non-human entities, IMO, we really have a problem. If culture has evolved to serve corporations, that short-circuits the discontent>internal pressure>social change mechanism, and that changes the answer to your last question significantly.

And the last question I have is WHY we have conditioned ourselves (or been conditioned) in such a fashion?  A lot of work goes into this sort of thing, and nobody asks why?

The answer used to be simple: it was us. Collectively. But we've created a new us, and culture serves that us now.

1.  We've been working on this shit for about 10000 years.  We should be able to do better than "survival", now.

2.  Then we need a better us.  This one is defective.  It is in fact so defective that if it was a tangible thing, you'd take it back and loudly demand a refund.

Damn straight we need a better us. But the downside is, to get a new "us" would require a complete restructuring of society, which most likely leads to The Road Warrior, and let's be honest, living in the realities of a Mel Gibson film would drive us right back to "survival".

What makes you say that?

Which part? About restructuring society? I am of the opinion that our current system is so institutionalized that attempts to change it have as much chance of failure as success, and worst case scenario is total degeneration (admittedly, not most likely scenario). (<= All opinion, with only anecdotal observation and vaguely generalized historical trends, and a tendency to assume people are assholes informing it, so you know, don't take it as cold, hard fact...  )
Also, today I'm feeling a might more misanthropic than is strictly healthy, so...

Or the thing about Mel Gibson movies? I'm fairly certain that any rational person would go into complete mental shut down at the realization that Mel Gibson has been right about anything ever, and become some sort of marauding ghoul or a catatonic wreck of a person. (Fact.) 

ETA: SWEET GIBBERING ZOMBIE FUCKING CHRIST. WHY THE FUCK CAN'T I SPELL THE WORD "RIGHT"?

But I'm not talking about the system, Phox.  I'm talking about us...Because any system we create will immediately become the old system.  That's been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

*Rereads quoted post*

Goddammit, I am apparently having comprehension issues this morning. 

Objections withdrawn. 

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Realizing that one's beliefs and opinions are not immutable and that one has the power to change them at will is a big step in the first place. Many people on PD for example are aware of this, and I think as a subset of the general population we are more or less satisfied with our lives. At least, when compared to The Masses. There's something reassuring about knowing it's okay to be wrong, even knowing that we probably are wrong about a lot of things. That reassurance gives people the power and the desire for self-improvement without the fear of losing one's moral or cultural foundations.

I think the BIP is defined not only by the static bars and walls of your internal dialogue, but by not knowing that it's there, or not caring to change it. It's transformed by recognizing it by what it is. On an individual level this is the closest thing to magic that I've ever experienced - seeing walls give way to doorways and uncertainty give way to excitement. On a collective, cultural level, I don't know that the BIP can be changed by anything as quaint as just telling a lot of people about it.

As the Machine™ is the unconscious result of seven billion people clanging at the walls of their prisons, any collective liberation or transformation must be the unconscious (read: unintentional) result of seven billions people (or at least a lot of them) being liberated from their prisons.

Lately I have been thinking about what it would take to change society. It used to be I thought nothing short of a burn-it-all-down Revolution™ would make a damn bit of difference. Institutions are, well, institutionalized; officials are corrupt; elections are a sham; the media is practically discarding even the illusion of objectivity. It's easy to see it as hopeless, but I think that "The System is Fucked and There's Nothing You Can Do" is itself an infectious, false meme put out there to extinguish the desire to make a difference. Like its cousins "I got mine, Jack," and "It doesn't affect me," this meme isn't the neutral, do-nothing, go-with-the-flow philosophy it pretends to be. It has an active purpose, and that purpose is to silence dissent.

I believe the system can be changed, that corruption can be eliminated, that equality can be achieved, and various other things that exist now for most people only alongside mermaids and unicorns in fairytale books. I believe it because I choose to believe it. It's practically blind faith based on a superstitious notion of the Noble Homo Sapiens, but as a result of that belief I don't live on a planet where progress is eternally postponed and people are always apathetic. It's a nice planet to live on, despite its numerous and severe shortcomings, because the future is still there, and better things are always possible.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Realizing that one's beliefs and opinions are not immutable and that one has the power to change them at will is a big step in the first place. Many people on PD for example are aware of this, and I think as a subset of the general population we are more or less satisfied with our lives. At least, when compared to The Masses. There's something reassuring about knowing it's okay to be wrong, even knowing that we probably are wrong about a lot of things. That reassurance gives people the power and the desire for self-improvement without the fear of losing one's moral or cultural foundations.

This.  If you can't admit that you're wrong, you can't remove or change your filters, because it's the same thing, isn't it?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Realizing that one's beliefs and opinions are not immutable and that one has the power to change them at will is a big step in the first place. Many people on PD for example are aware of this, and I think as a subset of the general population we are more or less satisfied with our lives. At least, when compared to The Masses. There's something reassuring about knowing it's okay to be wrong, even knowing that we probably are wrong about a lot of things. That reassurance gives people the power and the desire for self-improvement without the fear of losing one's moral or cultural foundations.

This.  If you can't admit that you're wrong, you can't remove or change your filters, because it's the same thing, isn't it?

Very much.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

"Success" in terms of successful propagation. From a purely survivalistic standpoint, individual happiness doesn't matter. But the way the systems of culture have worked for millennia is that they have to create enough contentment within their members to ensure cooperation, and discontent creates internal pressure which drives social change.

In a society where much of our signal is generated by and to serve the interests of non-human entities, IMO, we really have a problem. If culture has evolved to serve corporations, that short-circuits the discontent>internal pressure>social change mechanism, and that changes the answer to your last question significantly.

And the last question I have is WHY we have conditioned ourselves (or been conditioned) in such a fashion?  A lot of work goes into this sort of thing, and nobody asks why?

The answer used to be simple: it was us. Collectively. But we've created a new us, and culture serves that us now.

1.  We've been working on this shit for about 10000 years.  We should be able to do better than "survival", now.

2.  Then we need a better us.  This one is defective.  It is in fact so defective that if it was a tangible thing, you'd take it back and loudly demand a refund.

I'm kind of hoping that's about to happen. A great Upsetting of the Tables, so to speak.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm not convinced that any system we create will become the old system. I think that we tend to assume that because exploitative systems always invade sustainable systems, by their very nature, so even if 99% of all systems created are sustainable, that exploitative 1% will always dominate. So the question is, can we create an invasion-resistant sustainable system, and if yes, can we make it effectively self-propagating enough to hold its own without turning into an exploitative system?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

"Success" in terms of successful propagation. From a purely survivalistic standpoint, individual happiness doesn't matter. But the way the systems of culture have worked for millennia is that they have to create enough contentment within their members to ensure cooperation, and discontent creates internal pressure which drives social change.

In a society where much of our signal is generated by and to serve the interests of non-human entities, IMO, we really have a problem. If culture has evolved to serve corporations, that short-circuits the discontent>internal pressure>social change mechanism, and that changes the answer to your last question significantly.

And the last question I have is WHY we have conditioned ourselves (or been conditioned) in such a fashion?  A lot of work goes into this sort of thing, and nobody asks why?

The answer used to be simple: it was us. Collectively. But we've created a new us, and culture serves that us now.

1.  We've been working on this shit for about 10000 years.  We should be able to do better than "survival", now.

2.  Then we need a better us.  This one is defective.  It is in fact so defective that if it was a tangible thing, you'd take it back and loudly demand a refund.

I'm kind of hoping that's about to happen. A great Upsetting of the Tables, so to speak.

And THIS is where I get my laughs in at conspiracy theorists talking about the "elite" trying to change things.  If there IS a conspiracy of the elite, it exists to maintain the status quo.

[President Television]

"Success" in terms of successful propagation. From a purely survivalistic standpoint, individual happiness doesn't matter. But the way the systems of culture have worked for millennia is that they have to create enough contentment within their members to ensure cooperation, and discontent creates internal pressure which drives social change.

In a society where much of our signal is generated by and to serve the interests of non-human entities, IMO, we really have a problem. If culture has evolved to serve corporations, that short-circuits the discontent>internal pressure>social change mechanism, and that changes the answer to your last question significantly.

And the last question I have is WHY we have conditioned ourselves (or been conditioned) in such a fashion?  A lot of work goes into this sort of thing, and nobody asks why?

The answer used to be simple: it was us. Collectively. But we've created a new us, and culture serves that us now.

1.  We've been working on this shit for about 10000 years.  We should be able to do better than "survival", now.

2.  Then we need a better us.  This one is defective.  It is in fact so defective that if it was a tangible thing, you'd take it back and loudly demand a refund.

I'm kind of hoping that's about to happen. A great Upsetting of the Tables, so to speak.

And THIS is where I get my laughs in at conspiracy theorists talking about the "elite" trying to change things.  If there IS a conspiracy of the elite, it exists to maintain the status quo.

Wait. I've had it backwards all along? Conspiracy theorists actually believe that the elite are powerful and far-reaching,  and that their fingers have been sunk into every inch of the fabric of our society, and yet that the world they want isn't the world that already exists? 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

"Success" in terms of successful propagation. From a purely survivalistic standpoint, individual happiness doesn't matter. But the way the systems of culture have worked for millennia is that they have to create enough contentment within their members to ensure cooperation, and discontent creates internal pressure which drives social change.

In a society where much of our signal is generated by and to serve the interests of non-human entities, IMO, we really have a problem. If culture has evolved to serve corporations, that short-circuits the discontent>internal pressure>social change mechanism, and that changes the answer to your last question significantly.

And the last question I have is WHY we have conditioned ourselves (or been conditioned) in such a fashion?  A lot of work goes into this sort of thing, and nobody asks why?

The answer used to be simple: it was us. Collectively. But we've created a new us, and culture serves that us now.

1.  We've been working on this shit for about 10000 years.  We should be able to do better than "survival", now.

2.  Then we need a better us.  This one is defective.  It is in fact so defective that if it was a tangible thing, you'd take it back and loudly demand a refund.

I'm kind of hoping that's about to happen. A great Upsetting of the Tables, so to speak.

And THIS is where I get my laughs in at conspiracy theorists talking about the "elite" trying to change things.  If there IS a conspiracy of the elite, it exists to maintain the status quo.

Wait. I've had it backwards all along? Conspiracy theorists actually believe that the elite are powerful and far-reaching,  and that their fingers have been sunk into every inch of the fabric of our society, and yet that the world they want isn't the world that already exists? 

Weird, isn't it?  This is the best time in history to be filthy fucking rich, and the CT guys think the rich would want to change that.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

"Success" in terms of successful propagation. From a purely survivalistic standpoint, individual happiness doesn't matter. But the way the systems of culture have worked for millennia is that they have to create enough contentment within their members to ensure cooperation, and discontent creates internal pressure which drives social change.

In a society where much of our signal is generated by and to serve the interests of non-human entities, IMO, we really have a problem. If culture has evolved to serve corporations, that short-circuits the discontent>internal pressure>social change mechanism, and that changes the answer to your last question significantly.

And the last question I have is WHY we have conditioned ourselves (or been conditioned) in such a fashion?  A lot of work goes into this sort of thing, and nobody asks why?

The answer used to be simple: it was us. Collectively. But we've created a new us, and culture serves that us now.

1.  We've been working on this shit for about 10000 years.  We should be able to do better than "survival", now.

2.  Then we need a better us.  This one is defective.  It is in fact so defective that if it was a tangible thing, you'd take it back and loudly demand a refund.

I'm kind of hoping that's about to happen. A great Upsetting of the Tables, so to speak.

And THIS is where I get my laughs in at conspiracy theorists talking about the "elite" trying to change things.  If there IS a conspiracy of the elite, it exists to maintain the status quo.

Yep. And it's definitely not an "if".

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

It's a little hard to run from yourself, when the legs you are running with are part of the thing you're running away from.  But you'll run anyway, like a man on fire tries to run from whatever it is that is causing the pain.  Fight or flight, and like most mammals, we'll usually try running first.

So you make a mad dash, and bounce right off the walls and bars of your Black Iron Prison.  When it's all over, you're bruised up a bit...And right back where you started. 

Conclusion #1:  Flight doesn't work.  Try something else.

The next response open to a mammal is to fight.  But what are you going to fight?  The cop inside your head?  The daily obligations that keep you in that Black Iron Prison?  Hardly an option...Most of the bars are made out of things and/or people you love.  Hurting them won't set you free, it will at best make the situation worse, make YOU worse, and maybe get you the regular kind of jail cell.

Conclusion #2:  Fight doesn't work, which means...

Conclusion #3:  None of the pre-programmed portions of your brain, ie, neural circuits 1 or 2, will get you out.  Something else is in order.

Fact is, the walls and bars of your Black Iron Prison are a result of conditioning done to you by yourself and by society.  You have been conditioned to believe that there are walls and bars.  Your brain cannot process anything else, because - at least at this level - you are functioning under memetic false consciousness.  You may be the inmate, but you're also the guard and the warden.

You hear people babble about "magick", and how it's a method to "reprogram" yourself, presumably to deal with the BIP that we all experience every day.  If that's not what it's meant to deal with, then what good is it?  Problem is, it doesn't seem to be working.  I have yet to hear of a practicioner springing himself.  Maybe that's because they're concentrating on the cell, but not on the warden or the guards.  Or maybe because it doesn't work, even as a psychological tool.

And here's a disturbing thought:  You have been conditioned by yourself and society to see a cell that isn't there (everyone has, some don't realize it, most don't care).  To what other degrees have you been conditioned?  What have you been conditioned to NOT see (cue fnord jokes, yeah, yeah)?

And the last question I have is WHY we have conditioned ourselves (or been conditioned) in such a fashion?  A lot of work goes into this sort of thing, and nobody asks why?

Or Kill Me.

Couple thoughts:

The Circuits themselves are part of the prison. How we feel about the world (Circuit 1) and our place in it (Circuit 2) are the first two circuits of consciousness, and IMO the first building blocks of the BiP. As we go up to the third and fourth, we get the same kind of thing. The circuits might be the foundation of our prison. So to spring free of the prison, gaining control of these circuits is key. When we 'reprogram' our circuits, we are modifying our BiP. If we can consciously choose which programs to run on which circuits, then I think that may be as close to a 'prison break' as is possible.

I think you hit well on the comment of 'magic'. The prison, the circuits are exactly what its good at working with... its not about The Secret or throwing Fireballs from your belly or reading the future with some cards/starcharts/bones/ejaculate etc. Again, based on my experiences and the experiences of some people I've talked to, I'd say that it is sometimes successful and sometimes unsuccessful. Its certainly not a sure thing and definitely not a tool for everyone. The same could be said about Entheogenic attempts... it seems to work in some way for some people. The only thing that these two processes have in common, though, is that they force (or at least strongly encourage) the individual to 'see' reality from a very different perspective. This I think is the key... the process used isn't nearly as important as the effect. So if the effect of an act is that it forces the individual to perceive a reality that is different from the one they normally see in the BiP, I consider that an escape (even if only partially).

Escaping the BiP is perhaps an impossible goal. However, stepping stones of a continual process may be. If we begin at "Recognizing that your reality is really just your perception of reality" (recognizing the Prison) we can graduate to changing aspects of those perceptions (modifying the prison, changing the bars and bricks). While it may never spring us fully free of the BiP, it may be the closest we can get.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The Circuits themselves are part of the prison. How we feel about the world (Circuit 1) and our place in it (Circuit 2) are the first two circuits of consciousness, and IMO the first building blocks of the BiP.

I think you're mistaking the measuring system for the quantity being measured.  Map/menu, whatever you want to call it.

[Verbal Mike]

Lately I have been thinking about what it would take to change society. It used to be I thought nothing short of a burn-it-all-down Revolution™ would make a damn bit of difference. Institutions are, well, institutionalized; officials are corrupt; elections are a sham; the media is practically discarding even the illusion of objectivity. It's easy to see it as hopeless, but I think that "The System is Fucked and There's Nothing You Can Do" is itself an infectious, false meme put out there to extinguish the desire to make a difference. Like its cousins "I got mine, Jack," and "It doesn't affect me," this meme isn't the neutral, do-nothing, go-with-the-flow philosophy it pretends to be. It has an active purpose, and that purpose is to silence dissent.

I've come to believe that, actually, no meme or action whatsoever can be truly neutral; anything "neutral" is just in favor of the status quo. Everything and everyone's political, especially the frightened idiots who insist that they're not political.

(I came upon this realization when I saw it in print, black on white, in an interview with a couple who decided to keep their young child's sex a secret from everyone but the immediate family, to keep it from being forced into a gender role. They said people think that assigning your child a gender is just normal and value-neutral, but like anything "neutral" it's a political statement of acquiescence to the status quo. I'm not sure I'd be able to do what they did, but they sure as hell gave me a very useful perspective on things.)

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

The Circuits themselves are part of the prison. How we feel about the world (Circuit 1) and our place in it (Circuit 2) are the first two circuits of consciousness, and IMO the first building blocks of the BiP.

I think you're mistaking the measuring system for the quantity being measured.  Map/menu, whatever you want to call it.

Hrmmm... Not sure what you're saying here. I think that the 'Circuits' and the 'BiP' are both 'maps/menus'... but I think that they are maps/menus of the same thing.

BiP = The impact to our consciousness from all of your experiences(beliefs/books/music/standards of your society etc etc)
Circuits = The programs within our consciousness based on our experiences.

So when we are a baby and we experience a safe/happy/loving environment we will have a strong positive imprint within our first circuit (the World is a safe place to explore), if we experience a not safe/unhappy/unloving environment we will have a strong negative imprint within our first circuit (the World is a scary place).

As the first building blocks of our BiP, this seems to translate to a more open prison cell or a more constrictive prison cell.

The same for the second circuit (Top Dog/Bottom Dog; territorial). More bricks and bars in our prison. We begin to see ourselves as Leaders or Followers.

etc etc etc

We can say that our early experiences program our circuits, or we can say that our early experiences lay the foundation of our BiP. I think its two maps talking about the same territory...