Tin Foil Hat NWO thread for fun.

[stonehart]

Those are powerful forces that serve to reinforce our utter helplessness regarding choice.

It's true that our species is also defined by biological and social traits, and the biology we tend to associate most with choice and free will resides in our brain. If we have any choice or free will ( in the generic sense ) it's only because we think we have choice, and although there are those who might dispute this fact, the vast majority of evidence suggests that there's not much thinking that can go on without a functioning brain. A couple of decades ago I came to the independent conclusion that based on logic and the biology of the brain, choice and free will ( in the generic sense ) must be illusory.

Since then I've seen a couple of articles that tend to scientifically confirm my own pondering, and there are even a few links to supporting scientific evidence strewn about the forum. But basically it boils down to the idea that conscious thought doesn't arise simultaneously ( everywhere in the brain in a single flash ), but begins in some region of the brain possibly even a single synapse among billions, and then spreads out to link up with other synapses until hundreds of millions of connections are established and a conscious thought based on those connections emerges. Although this happens fairly rapidly, it still doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of connections that are made take place before the thought is fully formed and we become aware of it.

The above being the case, if we are literally unaware of what our next thought will be, we cannot have possibly had any conscious choice in it's formation. It simply happens automatically and it works so well that we see the process as seamless and thus becomes the illusion of conscious choice. In reality, with respect to any given thought, our mind is already made up before we ever become aware of it. Between this fact and the fact that the vast majority of the universe leaves us no choice as to how it operates or our general place in it, and the points you made above, there's simply no question that we're little more than specks of dust on the cosmic wind whose existence is governed by forces of nature still beyond our understanding, let alone our control.

NOTE: On an unrelated point of interest. There's a tidbit in the "New Ted Roe Interview" thread nobody seems to have noticed yet. Skip the politics in the first paragraph ( your already familiar with that ), and check out the Extreme Ball Lightning comment. It's hard not to draw parallels between the two events mentioned, although they are separated by many years. New interview with Ted Roe. | The Paracast Community Forums

Nice post.. I think you nailed it down in the first paragraph there my friend and I also have come to much the same conclusion.
Not much more I could add to this myself.

 

[stonehart]

Oh course it would be remiss if someone didn't mention that "the clown" archetype is one of the last overt forms of the "trickster" archetype found in this so-called "modern age."

Nice point there Chris.

Just a question as it has been some time since I read your book on the Trickster .. The Trickster and free will did you cover this aspect? and what are your thoughts?

 

[dyingsun]

I took so called horror films pretty well as a kid, no nightmares etc., just loved them watching for the thrill of it...and then , I think I was 12, I made the fucking mistake of watching the movie version of Stephen Kings 'IT'...cue in sleepless nights and , to this day , a queasiness being near clowns.. hey, but they all float down there

 

[Charlie Prime]

... I think I was 12, I made the **** mistake of watching the movie version of Stephen Kings 'IT'...cue in sleepless nights

I think reading Steven King's book The Stand when I was 12 may have been a factor in putting me onto the path of studying political science, and then later studying political conspiracy.

I still remember the image that book created in my mind of the protagonist Stu waking up in a fluorescent lit government lab with nobody around.

 

[E. L. Wisty]

Since this is a silly thread, I'd like to add my favorite utterly bonkers conspiracy theory of all time - the 1969 Paul McCartney Death Hoax. It uses exactly the same logic as many other much more serious conspiracy theories, notably the idea that huge organizations are covering up something enormous, but for some reason there are subtle clues which the general public can discover hidden in easily available commercial products. In real life, this makes no sense at all. If the Nazi plan for world domination had revolved around Illuminati-style concealment of tiny little swastikas in banknotes and food packaging, nowadays we'd probably remember Hitler as an obscure B-list painter with some really wacky hobbies.

What it's all about is empowerment. You, Joe Public, the ordinary powerless guy, know a Big Secret that The Man doesn't want you to know, so The Man isn't so smart after all, is he? And people like that feeling. The ironic thing about the Paul McCartney Death Hoax is that, although there were a great many Americans at the time who wanted the Beatles dead because of that ill-considered off-the-cuff "bigger than God" remark John made, those characters were the ultra-conservative pro-establishment bigots who didn't go for this crazy theory at all. The anti-establishment rebellious youth types who embraced it didn't want any of the Beatles to de dead, and some of them were genuinely grief-stricken by the possibility that it might actually be true. But all the same, they couldn't resist the allure of knowing something the establishment didn't want them to.

There's an excellent book by Andru J. Reeve called Turn Me On, Dead Man which tells the whole story. It gets utterly surreal - for instance, the belief that by various methods, including massaging Vaseline into the cover of the White Album, you could discover a secret telephone number which, if dialed at 5 AM on a Wednesday, would get you a direct line to Heaven and Paul would personally admit that he'd been dead for years. To this day, several British telephone numbers remain permanently out of use because the random UK citizens who happened to have them in 1969 were plagued by transatlantic phone-calls in the early hours of the morning from stoned Americans who thought they were talking to Paul McCartney's ghost. Though it has to be admitted that the infamous backwards clip from "Revolution Number Nine" really does sound like "turn me on, dead man". And of course there's this:

 

[SRL+]

 

[pixelsmith]

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[pixelsmith]

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[stonehart]

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Hey Pixel not seen you post for a while.. or I have just not been in the same threads..
Good to see you anyway.