Miracle of the Ages by Worth Smith

The Great, the Mighty God ...hast set signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, even unto this day. Jer 32:18-20

The architect of the Great Pyramid knew the exact length of the solar year, even to the tenth part of the second. This is shown in at least sixplaces, and by means of four units of length.

There is a second period known as the stellar year, or sidereal, year, about 20 minutes longer than the solar year. Thirdly there is another length called the orbital or anomalistic, year, which is in turn a few seconds longer still. And these two latter year lengths are also enshrined in the Great Pyramid.

The "Precesssion of the Equinoxes", a period of 25,827.5 years, the time required for our solar system as a unit to make one revolution around its vastly greater sun, the Pleiades, is shown exactly in the pyramid in four places.

Other scientific truths enshrined in the pyramid:
1. The mean distance from the earth to the sun.
2. The weight of the earth.
3. The mean density of the earth.
4. The fact of the sphericity of the earth.
5. The polar diameter of the earth, or the exact length of earth's polar axis of rotation.
6. The earth's mean orbit and maximum variation.
7. The variation of the earth's ecliptic.
8. The earth's mean temperature (the average temperature of the air in the Kings chamber).
9. The exact inch, foot, yard, furlong and mile, including the true length of the Standard
Geographical Mile, a measure of 2917.467+ Pyramid Cubits.
10. The exact grain, ounce, pound, stone, (English weight of 14 pounds) and ton.
11. The standard British (and American) measures of the pint, quart, gallon, bushel and "quarter."
12. The art of squaring the circle in theory and in practice.
13. The art of doubling the cube, likewise in practice as well as in theory.
14. The art of that extremely difficult mathematical feat of offering a practical solution to the baffling problem, the quadrature of the circle.
15. The direction of True North.
16. The Pi Proportion, Pi being the ratio of the diameter of a circle to its circumference, 3.14159+
17. The total land-area of the earth, the pyramid located in such a manner as to divide said land-area into four equal quarters, and in so doing to thus define both the earth's "master-meridian" of longitude, and "master-parallel" of latitude. In other words, the meridian passing over the Great Pyramid from north to south traverses more miles of land, and less of sea, than any other that can be drawn around the earth at any place, and that same distinction holds true of a parallel passing over the Pyramid's apex from east to west, or vice versa.

What about the Bible?
1. The cubic capacity of the Coffer in the King's Chamber is exactly the same as that of the famous Ark of the Covenant.
2. The Coffer's cubic capacity is also identical with that of the Jewish laver, and with that of the lavers, or baths, in the world-famous King Solomon's Temple, dedicated 1000 bc.
3. The "Golden Sea" of King Solomon's Temple had a capacity exactly equal to the cubic contents of the Coffer times 50.
4. Noah's Ark had a capacity identical with the cubic contents of the Coffer multiplied by 100,000.

The book of Job makes repeated mention of it. See 9:9, 19:24, 26:7 and 13, 28:7-9, 37:15-18, 38:4-36.

1941

The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events

"Unfortunately, many of your public health programs, and commercial statements through the various media, provide you with mass meditations of a most deplorable kind. I refer to those in which the specific symptoms of various diseases are given, in which the individual is further told to examine the body with those symptoms in mind. I also refer to those statements that just as unfortunately specify diseases for which the individual may experience no symptoms of an observable kind, but is cautioned that these disastrous physical events may be happening despite his or her feelings of good health."

Session 805, Page 48

Noretorp-Noretsyh - Kenneth Rexroth

Rainy, smoky Fall, clouds tower
In the brilliant Pacific sky.
In Golden Gate Park, the peacocks
Scream, wandering through falling leaves.
In clotting nights in smoking dark,
The Kronstadt sailors are marching
Through the streets of Budapest. The stones
Of the barricades rise up and shiver
Into form. They take the shapes
Of the peasant armies of Makhno.
The streets are lit with torches.
The gasoline drenched bodies
Of the Solovetsky anarchists
Burn at every street corner.
Kropotkin’s starved corpse is borne
In state past the offices
Of the cowering bureaucrats.
In all the Politisolators
Of Siberia the partisan dead are enlisting.
Berneri, Andreas Nin,
Are coming from Spain with a legion.
Carlo Tresca is crossing
The Atlantic with the Berkman Brigade.
Bukharin has joined the Emergency
Economic Council. Twenty million
Dead Ukrainian peasants are sending wheat.
Julia Poyntz is organizing American nurses.
Gorky has written a manifesto
“To the Intellectuals of the World!”
Mayakofsky and Essenin
Have collaborated on an ode,
“Let Them Commit Suicide.”
In the Hungarian night
All the dead are speaking with one voice,
As we bicycle through the green
And sunspotted California
November. I can hear that voice
Clearer than the cry of the peacocks,
In the falling afternoon.
Like painted wings, the color
Of all the leaves of Autumn,
The circular tie-dyed skirt
I made for you flares out in the wind,
Over your incomparable thighs.
Oh splendid butterfly of my imagination,
Flying into reality more real
Than all imagination, the evil
Of the world covets your living flesh.

Seth Speaks

"You are not a forsaken offshoot of physical matter, nor is your consciousness meant to vanish like a puff of smoke. Instead, you form the physical body that you know at a deeply unconscious level with great discrimination, miraculous clarity, and intimate unconscious knowledge of each minute cell that composes it. This is not meant symbolically."

Session 512, Page 8-9

Chuang Tzu Basic Writings (translated) by Burton Watson

Once, when Chuang Tzu was fishing in the P'u river, the king of Ch'u sent two officials to go and announce to him: "I would like to trouble you with the administration of my realm."

Chuang Tzu held onto the fishing pole and, without turning his head, said, "I have heard that there is a sacred tortoise in Ch'u that has been dead for three thousand years. The king keeps it wrapped in cloth and boxed, and stores it in the ancestral temple. Now would this tortoise rather be dead and have its bones left behind and honored? Or would it rather be alive and dragging its tail in the mud?"

"It would rather be alive dragging its tail in the mud," said the two officials.

Chuang Tzu said, "Go away! I'll drag my tail in the mud!"

*

*Supreme Happiness*

Is there such a thing as supreme happiness in the world or isn't there? Is there some way to keep yourself alive or isn't there? What to do, what to rely on, what to avoid, what to stick by, what to follow, what to leave alone, what to find happiness in, what to hate?

This is what the world honors: wealth, eminence, long life, a good name. This is what the world finds happiness in: a life of ease, rich food, fine clothes, beautiful sights, sweet sounds. This is what it looks down on: poverty, meanness, early death, a bad name. This is what it finds bitter: a life that knows no rest, a mouth that gets no rich food, no fine clothes for the body, no beautiful sights for the eye, no sweet sounds for the ear. People who can't get these things fret a great deal and are afraid- this is a stupid way to treat the body. People who are rich wear themselves out rushing around on business, piling up more wealth than they could ever use- this is a superficial way to treat the body. People who are eminent spend night and day scheming and wondering if they are doing right-this is a shoddy way to treat the body. Man lives his life in company with worry, and if he lives a long while, till he's dull and doddering, then he has spent that much time worrying instead of dying, a bitter lot indeed! This is a callous way to treat the body.

Men of ardor are regarded by the world as good, but their goodness doesn't succeed in keeping them alive. So I don't know whether their goodness is really good or not. Perhaps I think it's good-but not good enough to save their lives. Perhaps I think it's no good-but still good enough to save the lives of others. So I say, if your loyal advice isn't heeded, give way, and do not wrangle. Tzu-hsu wrangled and lost his body. But if he hadn't wrangled, be wouldn't have made a name. Is there really such a thing as goodness or isn't there?
What ordinary people do and what they find happiness in -I don't know whether such happiness is in the end really happiness or not. I look at what ordinary people find happiness in, what they all make a mad dash for, racing around as though they couldn't stop-they all say they're happy with it. I'm not happy with it and I'm not unhappy with it. In the end is there really happiness or isn't there?
I take inaction to be true happiness, but ordinary people think it is a bitter thing. I say: the highest happiness has no happiness, the highest praise has no praise. The world can't decide what is right and what is wrong. And yet inaction can decide this. The highest happiness, keeping alive only inaction gets you close to this!
Let me try putting it this way. The inaction of Heaven is its purity, the inaction of earth is its peace. So the two inactions combine and all things are transformed and brought to birth. Wonderfully, mysteriously, there is no place they come out of. Mysteriously, wonderfully, they have. no sign. Each thing minds its business and all grow up out of inaction. So I say, Heaven and earth do nothing and there is nothing that is not done. Among men, who can get hold of this inaction?

Chuang Tzu's wife died. When Hui Tzu went to convey his condolences, he found Chuang Tzu sitting with his legs sprawled out, pounding on a tub and singing. "You lived with her, she brought up your children and grew old," said Hui Tzu. "It should be enough simply not to weep at her death. But pounding on a tub and singing-this is going too far, isn't it?" Chuang Tzu said, "You're wrong. When she first died, do you think I didn't grieve like anyone else? But I looked back to her beginning and the time before she was born. Not only the time before she was born, but the time before she had a body. Not only the time before she had a body, but the time before she had a spirit. In the midst of the jumble of wonder and mystery a change took place and she had a spirit. Another change and she had a body. Another change and she was born. Now there's been another change and she's dead. It's just like the progression of the four seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter. "Now she's going to lie down peacefully in a vast room. If I were to follow after her bawling and sobbing, it would show that I don't understand anything about fate. So I stopped."

Uncle Lack-Limb and Uncle Lame-Gait were seeing the sights at Dark Lord Hill and the wastes of K'un-lun, the place where the Yellow Emperor rested. Suddenly a willow sprouted out of Uncle Lame-Gait's left elbow. He looked very startled and seemed to be annoyed.
"Do you resent it?" said Uncle Lack-Limb.
"No-what is there to resent?" said Uncle Lame-Gait. "To live is to borrow. And if we borrow to live; then the living must be a pile of trash. Life and death are day and night. You and I came to watch the process of change, and now change has caught up with me. Why would I have anything to resent?"

When Chuang Tzu went to Ch'u, he saw an old skull, all dry and parched. He poked it with his carriage whip and then asked, "Sir, were you greedy for life and forgetful of reason, and so came to this? Was your state overthrown and did you bow beneath the ax and so came to this? Did you do some evil deed and were you ashamed to bring disgrace upon your parents and family, and so came to this? Was it through the pangs of cold and hunger that you came to this? Or did your springs and autumns pile up until they brought you to this?" When he had finished speaking, he dragged the skull over and, using it for a pillow, lay down to sleep.
In the middle of the night, the skull came to him in a dream and said, "You chatter like a rhetorician and all your words betray the entanglements of a living man. The dead know nothing of these! Would you like to hear a lecture on the dead?"
"Indeed," said Chuang Tzu.
The skull said, "Among the dead there are no rulers above, no subjects below, and no chores of the four seasons. With nothing to do, our springs and autumns are as endless as heaven and earth. A king facing south on his throne could have no more happiness than this!"
Chuang Tzu couldn't believe this and said, "If I got the Arbiter of Fate to give you a body again, make you some bones and flesh, return you to your parents and family and your old home and friends, you would want that, wouldn't you?"
The skull frowned severely, wrinkling up its brow. "Why would I throw away more happiness than that of a king on a throne and take on the troubles of a human being again?" it said.

When Yen Yiian went east to Ch'i, Confucius had a very worried look on his face. Tzu-kung got off his mat and asked, "May I be so bold as to inquire why the Master has such a worried expression now that Hui has gone east to Ch'i?"
"Excellent-this question of yours," said Confucius. "Kuan Tzu had a saying that I much approve of: 'Small bags won't hold big things; short well ropes won't dip up deep water. In the same way I believe that fate has certain forms and the body certain appropriate uses. You can't add to or take away from these. I'm afraid that when Hui gets to Ch'i he will start telling the marquis of Ch'i about the ways of Yao, Shun, and the Yellow Emperor, and then will go on to speak about Suijen and Shen-nung. The marquis will then look for similar greatness within himself and fail to find it. Failing to find it, he will become distraught, and when a man becomes distraught, he kills.

"Haven't you heard this story? Once a sea bird alighted in the suburbs of the Lu capital. The marquis of Lu escorted it to the ancestral temple, where he entertained it, performing the Nine Shao music for it to listen to and presenting it with the meat of the T'ai-lao sacrifice to feast on. But the bird only looked dazed and forlorn, refusing to eat a single slice of meat or drink a cup of wine, and in three days it was dead. This is to try to nourish a bird with what would nourish you instead of what would nourish a bird. If you want to nourish a bird with what nourishes a bird, then you should let it roost in the deep forest, play among the banks and islands, float on the rivers and lakes, eat mudfish and minnows, follow the rest of the flock in flight and rest, and live any way it chooses. A bird hates to hear even the sound of human voices, much less all that hubbub and to-do. Try performing the Hsien-ch'ib and Nine Shao music in the wilds around Lake Tung-t'ing when the birds hear it they will fly off, when the animals hear it they will run away, when the fish hear it they will dive to the bottom. Only the people who hear it will gather around to listen. Fish live in water and thrive, but if men tried to live in water they would die. Creatures differ because they have different likes and dislikes. Therefore the former sages never required the same ability from all creatures or made them all do the same thing. Names should stop when they have expressed reality, concepts of right should be founded on what is suitable. This is what it means to have command of reason, and good fortune to support you."

Lich Tzu was on a trip and was eating by the roadside when he saw a hundred-year-old skull. Pulling away the weeds and pointing his finger, he said, "Only you and I know that you have never died and you have never lived. Are you really unhappy? Am I really enjoying myself?"

The seeds of things have mysterious us workings. In the water they become Break Vine, on the edges of the water they become Frog's Robe. If they sprout on the slopes they become Hill Slippers. If Hill Slippers get rich soil, they turn into Crow's Feet. The roots of Crow's Feet turn into maggots and their leaves turn into butterflies. Before long the butterflies are transformed and turn into insects that live under the stove; they look like snakes and their name is Ch'u-t'o. After a thousand days, the Ch'u-t'o insects become birds called Dried Leftover Bones. The saliva of the Dried Leftover Bones becomes Ssu-m,, bugs and the Ssu-mi bugs become Vinegar Eaters. Yi-lo bugs are born from the Vinegar Eaters, and Huang-shuang bugs from Chiu-yu bugs. Chtu-yu bugs are born from Mou-jui bugs and Mou-'ui bugs are born from Rot Grubs and Rot Grubs are born from Sheep's Groom. Sheep's Groom couples with bamboo that has not sprouted for a long while and produces Green Peace plants. Green Peace plants produce leopards and leopards produce horses and horses produce men. Men in time return again to the mysterious workings. So all creatures come out of the mysterious workings and go back into them again.

1964

On Fake News and Other Societal Woes

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Irene

NoOne's Listening, December 7, 2005

Interviewer: Hi Professor Chomsky.

Chomsky: Speaking.

Interviewer: This is Irene from No One's Listening, but in honor of your appearance on the show today we're entitling it Noam's listening.

Chomsky: Oh, well, that's nice.

Interviewer: So our show today is about video news releases.

Chomsky: Video news releases?

Interviewer: Video news releases and fake news. I imagine you don't have time to watch much tv since you've written 90 books but I think the reason you'd be so good for this show is because you could give a historical analysis of the print media.

Chomsky: Well there was a period, in the mid-19th century, that's the period of the freest press, both in England and in the US. And it's quite interesting to look back at it. Over the years, that's declined. It declined for two basic reasons. One reason is the increased capital that was required to run a competitive press. And as capital requirements increased, that of course lead to a more corporatized media. The other effect is advertisement. In the 19th century, the United States had something kind of approximating a market system. Now we have nothing like a market--they may teach you [that] in economics courses, but that's not the way it works. And one of the signs of the decline of the market is advertisement. So if you have a real market you don't advertise: you just give information. For example, there are corners of the economy that do run like markets--for example stock markets. If you have ten shares of General Motors that you want to sell, you don't put up an ad on television with a sexy model holding up the ten shares saying "ask your broker if this is good for you; it's good for me," or something like that. What you do is you sell it at the market price. If you had a market for cars, toothpaste, or whatever, lifestyle drugs, you would do the same thing. GM would put up a brief notice saying here's the information about our models. Well, you've seen television ads, so I don't have to tell you how it works. The idea is to delude and deceive people with imagery. And the same has happened to the print media. Take the New York Times for example. They have something called the news hole. When the editors lay out tomorrow's newspapers, the first thing they do is the important things - they put the ads around. Then they have a little bit left that's called the news hole, and they stick little things there. Quite apart from that the media are just big corporations and of course represent the interests of their owners, their markets, which are advertisers, and for the elite newspapers, more or less the managerial class, the educated population they deal with. The end result is that you get a very narrow perspective of what the world is like.

Interviewer: Well then what would be the alternative. That's where I'm searching.

Chomsky: The alternative would be a free press. It's not hard to imagine, there actually was one in the mid-nineteenth century. So that would mean a press that isn't reliant on massive capital concentration, corporate ownership, that is not reliant on advertising for its revenue, and would involve engaged people who are interested in understanding the world and participating in a reasoned discussion about what it should be like. I mean that's not inconceivable.

Interviewer: Right. I don't know if you know how these video news releases work. There are actually PR agencies that don't try to be covert about it. They'll be called VNR PR agency.

Chomsky: It's very open. Take say television. In the industry when they have an hour of program, whatever it is, a comedy, a cop show, or whatever. In the industry there's what's called content and fill. The content is the advertising. The fill is the car chase or the sex scene or something, that's supposed to keep you going between ads. And if you look at a television program, actually I do it some times because I'm intrigued, the creativity and the imagination and the expenses and so on are for the ads; the car chase you can pull off the shelf. And in fact this has led to a serious deterioration of the political system. I mean we don't have anything resembling a democracy anymore. Take a look at the last campaign. The campaign is run by the same people who sell toothpaste, exactly the same PR agencies. And when they sell a candidate they do it the exact same way they sell a lifestyle drug. You don't put up information about the candidate, what you do is create delusional images that delude and deceive. The population knows it. A very small number of the population, about 10% of the voters, literally, knew the stands of the candidates on the issues. And it's not because they are stupid or uninterested. It's just like you don't know the characteristics of toothpaste.

Interviewer: Hopefully we can change that and people can start questioning..

Chomsky: There's really two separate questions about the media which are usually muddled. One is what they're trying to do and the second one is what's the affect on the public. The affect on the public isn't very much studied but to the extent that it has been it seems as though among the more educated sectors the indoctrination works more effectively. Among the less educated sectors people are just more skeptical and cynical.

Interviewer: So what can we do because now because I'm depressed.

Chomsky: Well look I think it's a very optimistic future, frankly.

Interviewer: Really?

Chomsky: Yes very much so. There's something we know about the country, this country, more than any other. We know a lot about public opinion, it's studied very intensively. The results are very rarely reported but you can find them. It's an open society and you can find them. What they show is remarkable. What they show first of all is that both political parties and the media are far to the right of the general population on a whole host of issues and the population is just disorganized, atomized and so on. This country ought be an organizers paradise. And that's why the media and the campaigns keep away from issues. They know that on issues they're going to lose people. So therefore you have to portray George Bush as a - look he's a pampered kid from a rich family who went to prep school and elite university, and you have to present him as an ordinary guy, who makes grammatical errors, which I'm sure he's trained to make, he didn't talk that way at Yale, fake Texas twang, and he's off to his ranch to, you know, cut brush or something.

Interviewer: Right, to go fishing.

Chomsky: That's like a toothpaste ad and i think a lot of people know it. Given the facts about public opinion, it means what's needed is something not very radical. Let's become as democratic as say the second largest country in the hemisphere, Brazil. I mean there last election was not between two rich kids who went to the same elite university and joined the same secret society where they're trained to be members of the upper class and they can get into politics because they have rich families with a lot of connections. I mean people were actually able to elect a president from their own ranks. A man who was a peasant union leader, never had a higher education, and comes from the population. They could do it because it's a functioning democratic society. I mean there were tremendous obstacles, repressive state, huge concentration of wealth, much worse obstacles than we have. But they have mass popular movements. They have actually actual political parties, which we don't have. There's nothing to stop us from doing that. I mean we have a legacy of freedom which is unparalleled. It's been won by struggle over centuries, it was never given, and you can use it, or you can abandon it. It's a choice.

Interviewer: But don't you think to some extent maybe people don't even realize their own discontent because of the media?

Chomsky: No I think people are very discontented and their attitudes towards the media are very cynical and skeptical.

Interviewer: The attitudes towards the media [are skeptical] but because we're not banding together they almost feel that sort of detachment. They don't know where to get angry or who to band with.

Chomsky: That's true. But that's again the lack of democratic structures. I mean if you have popular movements. Well why are unions so detested by elites? Because Unions are one of the few ways in which people without great privilege, working people, can actually get together - for workers education, for interaction, for participation in the political arena and so on. So therefore they have to be destroyed. It's true that it's a very atomized society, and there are a lot of reasons for that. The last 25 years things have gotten much worse. The US has gone through a unique period of economic history. Real wages for the majority of the population have stagnated or declined. Working hours have gone way up - they're now the highest in the highest in the industrial world, wages are the lowest. And people are deluged from infancy. You know I watch children's television with my grandchildren sometimes. From practically infancy you are deluged with propaganda that says your life depends, your value as a human being depends on how many useless commodities you consume. So you have a working family, you know, husband and wife, working to keep food on the table, their kids want to buy everything there is even though they don't need it or want it. Then you go deeply in debt and then you're trapped. You don't have time to talk to people - you don't know what your neighbors think. Popular attitudes are just not reported. Sometimes it's fantastic. So after the federal budget came out last february, the major public opinion institute in the country did a careful poll of people's attitudes toward the budget. It was just like a mirror image of what the budget was. Where federal spending is going up - military, Iraq, Afghanistan - people wanted it to go down, large majorities; where it was going down, same large majorities, people wanted it to go up: social spending, education, renewable energy, support for the united nations, so on. A huge majority wants Bush to rescind tax cuts for the rich, people with over $200,000 income and so on. Well how was that reported? Well a friend of mine did a database search and nothing. Zero. Only one newspaper in the country - some small town newspaper in Iowa.

Interviewer: So what's going on? Are they scared? I mean I've interviewed some journalists on this show and..

Chomsky: Look they've just internalized the values. They'll tell you, and they're correct, that nobody is ordering them to do anything. That's right. Nobody is ordering them to do anything. The indoctrination is so deep that educated people think they're being objective. Actually this is a point that Orwell made. You and everybody else has read Animal Farm, I'm sure, but you and everybody else hasn't read the introduction to Animal Farm. There's a good reason for that: because it was suppressed. The introduction was found 30 years later in Orwell's own published papers. The introduction to Animal Farm says look this book is a satire on a totalitarian state but I'm going to talk about England, Free England. In Free England it's not that different. Without state coercion unpopular ideas can be suppressed and are. And then he described how. He didn't go in much details but he said partly it's because the press is owned by wealthy men who have every reason not to want certain ideas to be expressed. But the more important reason, he said, was because of a good education. By the time you've gone through, you know, Oxford and Cambridge and here you could say Harvard and Princeton and so on, and even less fancy places, you have instilled into you the understanding that there are certain things that just wouldn't do to say, and that's what a good deal of education is. So the people who come out of it - and there are many filters, if people go off and try to be too critical there are many ways of discouraging them or eliminating them one way or the other. Some get through, it's not a uniform story. There are plenty of journalists with integrity and honesty. And many of them, some personal friends, will give a much harsher picture of the media than I do, because they have to live with it. But the basic points that Orwell made are fundamentally correct. The more educated you are the more indoctrinated you are. And you believe you are being free and objective, whereas in fact you're just repeating state propaganda.

Interviewer: I feel like one of the things with academic readings is that you can trace the source.

Chomsky: Well for example you could trace what I just told you about popular attitudes about the budget. But the point is that you have to do an individual research project, and who's going to do that? So some guy comes home from his 50 hour week, his wife is working 50 hours, the kids are demanding this and that, does he have time to do an individual research project? That's what popular associations are for. When you have unions, political parties, women's groups, whatever it may be, people can get together and do those sorts of things. Individuals can't do them.

Interviewer: Well that's what we're trying to do over here. I think that's one of the problems with the media..

Chomsky: The truth of the matter is NPR [National Public Radio] is not that different. So I listen to NPR when I'm driving for as long as I can stand it, that's supposed to be the liberal media, just take a look at their reporting. So last night I was listening to the reporting on Bush's speech about how to get victory in Iraq. Just imagine - just do a thought experiment. Suppose you were in Russia under Brezhnev or let's say in the early 80s and you heard reports about the war in Afghanistan. Well, I'm sure it would have been the same thing. They would have discussed how can we get victory, how can we destroy the terrorists, will this tactic work, will that tactic work, we're losing too many soldiers and so on. Well, just like the most liberal journal in the US. Did anybody ask the question in Russia: do we have a right to invade another country? Can you imagine anyone asking that question here? But in Russia there's a difference. That was totalitarian control, if you said the wrong thing you'd go off to the gulag. Here it's just willing subordination to power.

Interviewer: I think it's because what makes it through the filter is the only thing people see, so they latch onto that and don't even know to question other things..

Chomsky: It's indoctrination so profound that educated people can't even understand the question that I just raised. Try it with journalists. Ask them: can there be journalism on the Iraq war that can be something different from the college newspaper cheering for the home team.

Interviewer: Right. Ya I don't know.

Chomsky: Ask. There can't be because they can't think of it. It's like Orwell said: it's just inculcated into you that there are certain things that it wouldn't do to think.

Interviewer: But there are ways, that's what's so exciting about the internet.

Chomsky: And there are plenty of opportunities.

The Early Sessions, Books 6 & 7

Because of other procedures I have explained, including the existence of constant telepathy, there is some agreement as to the placement of these objects, or if Ruburt prefers, locations, in space. Now this gives rise to what you may call mass-perception... When you are dealing with dream locations, you are not dealing with mass-perceptions, but with personal perceptions. There is no need therefore for any complicated arrangements calculated to insure agreement between persons as to location in space.

*

One of the root agreements upon which physical existence is based is that physical objects have a reality that is entirely independent of any subjective cause; and that these objects, within definitely specified limitations, are permanent.

*

All mental life is characterized by divergent perceptions of any given set of sense data that is recognized as Reality, with a capital R. Those who perceive this set of data in such a way that agreement is reached are called sane. But none of you perceives the same reality.

The Critical Path by Buckminster Fuller

It is now possible to give every man, woman and child on Earth a standard of living comparable to that of a modern-day billionaire.

This is not an opinion or a hope -- it is an engineeringly demonstrable fact. This can be done using only the already proven technology and with the already mined, refined, and in-recirculating physical resources.

This will be an inherently sustainable physical success for all humanity and all its generations to come. It can be accomplished not only within ten years but with the phasing out forever of all use of fossil fuels and atomic energy. Our technological strategy makes it incontrevertible that we can live luxuriously entirely on our daily Sun-radiation-and-gravity-produced income energy. The quantity of physical, cosmic energy wealth as radiation arriving aboard planet Earth each minute is greater than all the energy used annually by all humanity. World Game makes it eminently clear that we have four billion billionaires aboard our planet, as accounted by real wealth , which fact is obscured from public knowledge by the exclusively conceived and operated money game and its monopolized credit system accounting.

We find all the no-life-support-wealth-producing people going to their 1980s jobs in their cars and buses, spending trillions of dollars' worth of petroleum daily to get to their no-wealth-producing jobs. It doesn't take a computer to tell you that it will save both Universe and humanity trillions of dollars a day to pay them handsomely to stay at home.

Ephemeralisation - humanity learning to do more with less

As a long-time student of foreign investment I saw a pattern developing. Between 1938 and 1940 I was on the editorial staff of Fortune magazine as its science and technology consultant, and my researchers harvested all the statistics for Fortune's tenth-anniversary issue, "USA and the World." In that issue I uncovered and was able to prove several new socioeconomic facts -- for the first time in the history of industrial economics:

1. the economic health of the American -- or any industrial -- economy was no longer disclosed (as in the past) by the total tonnage of its product output, but by the amount of electrical energy generated by that activity; tonnage had ceased to be the criterion because

2. we were doing so much more given work with so much less pounds of materials, ergs of energy, and seconds of time per given function as to occasion ever newer, lighter, and stronger metallic alloys, chemicals, and electronics.

Though at that time universally used as the number-one guide to the state of economic health of any world nation, tonnage no longer represented prosperity. The amount of energy being electrically generated and consumed became the most sensitive telltale of economic health....

There is not a chapter in any book in economics anywhere about doing more with less. Economists traditionally try to maximize what you have, but the idea that you could go from wire to wireless or from visible structuring to invisible alloy structuring did not occur to them at all. It was outside their point of view -- beyond their range of vision. Economists are specialists trained to look only at one particular thing.

In my Shelter magazine of 1930-33 and in my 1938 book Nine Chains to the Moon, I identified this progressive doing-more-with-less as ephemeralization. Though Fortune magazine also published my 1922 concept of ephemeralization in its tenth-anniversary issue of 1940 in a prominent manner, and despite ephemeralization having subsequently wrought epochal advancements in the standard of living for two billion previously deprived humans, ephemeralization is a phenomenon that in 1980 is as yet largely unknown to or overlooked by the world's professional economists. Nonetheless, the combination of accelerating acceleration and ephemeralization has now elevated 60 percent of all humanity from its year-1900 99-percent poverty level into realization of an everyday standard of living superior to that enjoyed by any kings, tycoons, or other power-commanding humans prior to the twentieth century.

1981

The Early Sessions, Book 3

"Intuition represents the directions of the inner self, breaking through conscious barriers."

Session 93, Page 44

The Early Sessions, Book 7

"None of us are ever equipped, for general purposes, to perceive reality in all of its forms. The pyramid gestalts can do this, and we help the pyramid gestalts perform this feat. But as a rule we must pick and choose. There is too much for any consciousness to digest except those so highly developed that even I know little of them."

Session 297, Page 138