The French philosopher and universal genius once said that “Politics is the art of preventing people from interfering in matters that concern them.” This is something the elite have succeeded at very well, even in our so-called democracies. For us to be able to understand—or even sense—what the future holds, we must look at the present, and to understand the present we must have knowledge of what has happened in the past. This puts the information seeker to the test, especially the non–politically correct researcher, who is usually confined to the so-called “education” offered during the school years, as well as the often inadequate information available through the literature found in libraries or bookstores.
With the internet, we gained access to the world’s largest information database, but even there a problem arises. As a witty person quite rightly pointed out: “The advantage of the internet is that everyone has access to it; the disadvantage of the internet is that everyone has access to it.” In other words, anyone can publish important and relevant information—but anyone can also publish incorrect and nonsensical information. If we add to this the fact that anyone can also present correct facts mixed with disinformation, we understand that the information seeker is faced with a situation that requires more than merely being able to read critically, interpret objectively, and use information.
Moreover, in addition to comparing and examining different types of sources, the individual must be able to learn how to read between the lines and possess a substantial measure of intuitive sensitivity, as well as be equipped with solid knowledge in psychology, group dynamics, and propaganda.
The person must also have sufficiently strong self-esteem to let go of the fear of not fitting in and be able to handle the copious amounts of insults and mockery that are guaranteed to pour in—from politically correct, average Swedes alike, as well as from various quack academics and other armchair theorists who regard themselves as standard-bearers of reason.
The philosopher, teacher, and author Vernon Howard showed that he understood this when he said: “Those who do not know what it means to be under psychological hypnosis are probably already trapped in it,” and that “we are slaves to everything we do not consciously perceive, and we are freed through conscious perception.”
The counter-fire from those who are under the hypnosis of propaganda is often so intense that the vast majority of people who have begun to sense what has been or is going on refrain from even trying to touch the subject. Others become frustrated and may drift into mental illness or a kind of martyrdom, sometimes ending their days with countless rounds of litigious crusades behind them—which, in the eyes of their critics, merely serves to confirm that they were “crazy.”
The father of modern propaganda, Edward Bernays, who was related to Sigmund Freud, had already developed various techniques in the early 1900s for influencing the thinking and behavior of the masses. Among other things, he persuaded American women to start smoking on behalf of George Hill, the head of the American Tobacco Company.
As early as 1917, President Woodrow Wilson used the United States Committee on Public Information, a propaganda organization led by the journalist George Creel, who in turn enlisted Bernays to devise strategies for how the masses could be influenced and guided in a “desirable” direction.
Bernays believed that the general public could not be trusted and feared that they might very easily vote for the “wrong” person or want the “wrong” things if they were not guided from above. He worked closely with the journalist Walter Lippmann, one of the elite’s most renowned propagandists and an adviser to several presidents. Lippmann believed that “the bewildered herd must be guided by a specialized class,” and that people in general were incapable of drawing their own conclusions and arriving at solutions without being steered by an intellectual elite. It was therefore necessary, through propaganda, to “manufacture consent,” as Lippmann expressed it in his book Public Opinion (1922).
In the book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988) by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, they described how the mass media in reality serve the interests of corporations and politicians:
“The mass media in the United States have a supreme purpose: to support the interests of government and the private sector. In our society, decisions regarding investment, production, distribution, and so on lie in the hands of a relatively concentrated network of major corporations, conglomerates, and investors. They own the media. They dominate the economy, both legally and in principle.”
According to Chomsky, this leads to the media in the West being assigned an important task on behalf of those in power, namely:
“The manufacture of consent and of the necessary illusions—either to create marginal people or to place them in a state of apathy in one way or another.”
And further:
“The critical voices in political debate uphold and reinforce these frameworks by accepting them and directing their criticism toward the issues that fit within them. They would never be allowed into the debate if they did not tacitly approve these outer limits, which consist of the assumption that state policy is always characterized by goodness and benevolence.”
Hardly surprisingly, Chomsky has had to endure countless insults and outright false accusations from various critics hopelessly trapped in the consensus trance.
Since most societies today consist of cities populated by wage slaves who have largely obtained—and continue to obtain—their information about the world through mainstream media, it is self-evident that this will shape how they think and act. For many decades, the elite, through their propaganda machines, have relentlessly hammered in what they consider to be the “right things” for people to think and consume.
The public has been conditioned not only to think in a certain way, but also to attack the “apostates” who occasionally dare to stick their necks out and make claims that run counter to the consensus and turn long-held “self-evident truths” upside down. Like Pavlov’s dogs, people react automatically and ridicule anyone who asserts that there is another version of events—one that has been deliberately kept from public awareness.
I believe, however, that the vast majority of people, deep in their hearts, carry the same longing to enjoy the fruits of life: to socialize, to express their playfulness, their dreams, their curiosity, and their creativity. Above all, to be allowed to be themselves—who they truly are. The renowned psychoanalyst C. G. Jung spoke of this drive using the term individuation, that is, the development of a human being into a unique and independent personality. Jung described it as a psychological process whose goal is to develop the individual personality in the direction for which that personality is best suited, and that when this occurs consciously, it grants us both greater self-knowledge and a deeper understanding of collective norms.
The author Lyall Watson wrote in the book Lifetide about the phenomenon of “the hundredth monkey.” Watson claimed that Japanese researchers, during a study, discovered that when a group of one hundred monkeys began washing their potatoes before eating them—something none of them had done before—the behavior spread to monkeys on other islands with no connection to the first group. On this basis, Watson argued that when a sufficient number of individuals come to realize something, the insight spreads to others on an unconscious level. In other words—when the hundredth monkey gains the insight, the spread occurs.
Critical studies later questioned this claim. Ron Amundson, a researcher at the University of Hawaii, argued after examining the sources Watson relied on that his conclusions were unfounded, and Watson later stated that the hundredth monkey was a metaphor, and that strictly scientific evidence for the phenomenon did not exist.
Jung spoke of the collective unconscious, which is a kind of universal human inheritance. He found clear similarities between patients’ dreams, hallucinations, and the myths and religions of antiquity. He described the collective unconscious as the result of the way humanity has functioned since time immemorial in situations of a universal human nature—for example, our relationship to birth and death, and the relationship between children and parents.
Jung argued that the collective unconscious contains archetypes—universal primordial images, mythological motifs, and symbols—and that these images have, since ancient times, been valuable material in religious practice and express a shared body of knowledge about the connections between the divine, humanity, and the universe. Archetypes continue to be active in the psyche even though, in today’s Western world, they are relegated to areas of the personality other than the rational consciousness.
These universal symbols and patterns are stored genetically in each individual and represent our deepest aspirations. The most important archetypes are the persona (our mask and the roles we present to the outside world), anima and animus (the feminine and masculine aspects within us), the shadow (commonly occurring complexes in the unconscious that are dealt with through denial, projection, integration, and/or transmutation), and the Self (the organizing principle of the personality). According to Jung, these symbols are in fact nature’s way of attempting to balance opposites within our psyche and give expression to unconscious contents of the personality. C. G. Jung believed that the unconscious contains latent positive possibilities which, when brought into consciousness, can be integrated into the personality.
My own hope is to be able to speak to both the conscious and the subconscious in people and, hopefully, to plant a seed that awakens the innate longing for freedom and wisdom that I am convinced resides within us all. When, then, a sufficient number of people have awakened (the hundredth person?), good things can happen.
At best, this may initiate a process that ultimately leads to reaching the critical mass required for us, as a species, to begin taking our first tentative steps toward a paradigm shift in human history—one in which we work to create a society that is not built on deceit, manipulation, violence, slavery, and environmental destruction.
Michael Delavante, The hundredth human
