Many people find it difficult to accept that our entire civilization is deliberately manipulated to the disadvantage of all individual nations and their people. People accept ... ah well, maybe the stock market is manipulated now and then ... maybe the international bankers rip us off to some extent ... perhaps wars may at times be started by vested interests; but you know, that's life . . . free enterprise ... what do you expect?
Well, what I expect is that we do not lie down in the mud and let ignorant people walk over us. If life is a competition then let us compete. Why let ourselves be abused through our own default?
But what we are faced with is not just a question of the individual smart-Alec taking advantage of an opportunity. And one of the reasons people have such difficulty in accepting the concept of massive manipulation is that they have not thought through the concept of slavery. The fact that one slave can take advantage of another slave does not mean that both are not slaves.
Activists are Misled as Easily as the Apathetic.
A problem of activists is their inability to come to grips with the underlying cause of significant social change. This problem is NOT confined to the apathetic; most activist groups look no further than the special issue that engages their attention and are easily misled by wolves in sheep's clothing who pretend a humanitarian enterprise. Perhaps we would find the idea of manipulation easier to accept if the overall situation were presented in terms of slavery.
We tend to think of slavery only in historic terms (probably because the crude forms of slavery still exist). What we overlook is that intelligence is natural and not something recently discovered. A little reasoning indicates an intelligent master may easily learn that brutally enforced slavery is a most expensive form of labour - far more expensive than a well-treated slave who retains some sense of freedom and dignity. It is not too difficult to realize that the best and most efficient slave will be the slave who believes he is entirely free. This could be discovered in one human lifespan.
Once that line of reasoning is entered into, the strong will seek to devise a form of trickery. If the masters can devise a form of slavery by trickery then unlimited workforce can be enticed to a project and caused to self destruct when no longer needed. This is certainly no impossible dream; in fact it has worked for thousands of years.
Our history is deformed. Many people have noticed that history is deformed and assume that the reason is ego, but if history can be deformed for ego it can also be deformed for manipulation.
When we look to find the working conditions of the past we are directed to look at the 19th century. Here we find a time when the pagans had already overcome Christian resistance to the point where they had re-established economic slavery and had a lot of exploitation to catch up on. You notice that to arouse the workers Marx did not point to the Middle Ages but to contemporary exploitation of industrial workers.
Artful deceivers; they create horror then point to it and say, 'Look what YOU have done! Follow me and I will save you from all that.' They then lead us into another trap. This is a trick much in use today; with small deceit and large they lead us to their purpose!
It is not just the worker who is tricked. The professors and the professionals, every person not part of the Secret Empire, is in the trap. Our educators have taught us, and themselves believed, that the pyramids of Egypt were built by slaves. When our movie industry or news media turns to ancient Egypt they make pictures of slaves and whip-cracking slave drivers. We see just how well off we are now in relation to the poor wretches in past ages. But is it true?
Actually none of the great labour-intensive masterpieces of past centuries could have been built with VIOLENCE-ENFORCED slave labour. It is economically impossible. Graffiti scratched on stones as the pyramids were being built prove that gangs competed with each other in a spirit of willing competition.
Although it is now established that the pyramids were built by willing workers you will probably not have heard of this unless you read the specialized literature; yet this error is only incidental to the important lies.
Could it Be Done by Free Labour?
How could such a large proportion of the working population of ancient civilization find the time to create such massive works of art? To get a better understanding of the situation we come forward in time to our own Middle Ages. I quote now from the publication Enterprise (June 1983); How did they build those Gothic cathedrals?:
"Even more astounding, they were built without pay, as a form of consecrated leisure activity. There were no tenders, contracts, mortgages, over-time, strikes or union confrontations. ..."
"Many will be amazed to learn that there was, contrary to general belief, a great deal of leisure time. Thorold Rogers, Professor of Political Economy at Oxford University in the middle of the 19th century wrote: "At that time [the Middle Ages] a labourer could provide all the necessities for his family for a year, by working 14 weeks."
The fact is, that in a civilized economy, people do not have to spend a lifetime in work merely to provide food and shelter. Human life is not inefficient and with modern technology is vastly more efficient today.
Probably less than one person in four now works at actually producing all the things we need for food, comfort and defence. What do the rest of us do? We mostly play with paper; we make records in triplicate then duplicate them; we occupy ourselves making work and obstructing those who produce wealth.
Many people think the capitalist system is efficient. That is just part of the trick! We are led to confuse the capitalist system with 'Free Enterprise'. By merging these two concepts in the public mind the good points of free enterprise can be credited to capitalism and the bad points of capitalism credited to free enterprise. But free enterprise is essentially composed of enterprising individuals, while capitalism is essentially organized *usury. The reason the capitalist system is so wasteful is because in capitalism everyone tries to live by cheating on everyone else and no one can be trusted. (*usury: used in the wider sense of misusing others for personal gain.)
But to end off this review of willing slavery let us move right forward to our own time. While millions are out of work our cities are having difficulty providing the full essential services, or other needs, of their citizens. What an indictment of the system in this age of science and labour-saving technology! And how much better off have we become over the last twenty years of peace, progress and prosperity.
Maxwell Newton, The Australian newspaper (15-3-'84) Finance section, reports: The February 1984 Economic Report of the U.S. President shows that in 1982 real median family income was lower than it had been in 1968. But taxes have doubled. Although these figures relate to the U.S.A. the situation seems very similar in Australia. He goes on to say:
"Facing a stagnant real earnings and rising taxes, the working American family has made a collective decision that the wife and other females in the family must go out and get jobs.
"In the last 20 years, the number of men in employment has risen 27 per cent while the number of women in work has doubled."
It seems that up to and beyond the Middle Ages a man could keep a wife and family with about four months work. Let us assume he worked a ten hour day and six days a week; equal to six months in today's terms. Without going to the trouble of checking out all the holidays let us say a man now works ten months and that when the eight hour day became law he could have kept a family on that. But next thing his girl child had to go out to work, and just as well because as a wife she will probably have to keep working.
So while technology allows us a big increase in goods and chattels we gain nothing from its labour saving potential. In fact we have lost almost all our previous creative and personal freedom. Even what 'holiday' time we have is not used for personal development because the periods have become so small and fragmented it is impractical for most to re-adjust to self-fulfilling activity. In short we have lost whatever ability to live for ourselves we may have had. Our free time is now donated to, and confined to, the brainwashing of the mass entertainment industry; to this we are encouraged.
We have been enslaved! We are enslaved! We were cleverly used to set up the new technology and for those creations were allowed our food and lodging. But the great mass of people are now redundant; a nuisance; a threat to the masters.
Manipulation is difficult to accept. The incredible organization and problems of maintaining secrecy while such an enterprise is being established, seem beyond reason. But this thing was not established in modern times, it was established in ancient times; we only partially freed ourselves during the Christian era. With the mechanism in place and certain key items of knowledge restricted, it is not incredibly difficult but incredibly easy, to mislead people by the gradual introduction of new beliefs and attitudes.
Once accustomed to the idea and able to appreciate some of the evidence of manipulation, we become amazed to see just how easily we are misled. Like lion taming: to catch an old jungle lion and train it for the circus is an impossible task, but a young cub trained will be content because it knows no other world than its cage.
The problem with communal slavery is that having deformed the public mind in respect to reality, the slaves have to be taken care of and protected from their own irrationality. Fine so long as they can be beneficially employed. But once their usefulness to the masters ends! Ah then; it is the master who, in effect, becomes the slave of the slaves, as the slaves have to be taken care of.
Naturally that is not an end suitable to the slave masters. The 'common' people (having had removed much of that ability which separates them from other animals) are looked on as animals and can be disposed of as such. So if the masters do not want to devote their lives to nursemaiding the slaves, then they have the alternative of enticing them to war, or of destroying them with plague or famine; example Ethiopia.
Why can we not just go on as we are?
A simple way of appreciating the position is to ask oneself what Adam and Eve would do with a million milking goats. If they did not want to become enslaved to the goats they would have to get rid of them in some way.
Another way is to imagine our situation if every land except Australia sank beneath the ocean. Would we be disadvantaged? No! We have everything we need for a full and peaceful life, indefinitely. Free of the troubles of the world we could make Australia a paradise.
But we are not Adam and Eve and the world will not leave us in peace.
We feel that we are not mind-manipulated slaves. We feel we are independent people quite able to look after ourselves without any 'Big Brother' telling us what to do. Is it so?
We may feel that in comparison to ancient times the population today is massive, well educated and not so easy to manipulate; but massive also is the knowledge that can be used for manipulation. We may want to believe our leaders now more humane, more honest, more moral?are they? avoid2.htm
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