Science's "Illegitimate" Children...

[m1thr0s]

This is a spin-off topic from a diversion that occurred in the Satanism & Autism (http://forums.abrahadabra.com/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=1280) thread that took out in the direction of railing against academia for being elitest to the point of being irrelevant to such an extreme extent that there now exists a susbstantial groundswell of "illegitimate" academics laboring just as hard (if not harder) than their legitimate peers, completely cut off from all the supports and assistances that should otherwise be there to help them. To some extent this is no big deal but there come critical points in any serious research endeavor where this lack of support is almost certainly going to amount to a tactical death-blow to the long-term success of the work these people have undertaken.

This topic is about those people...who they are and why they are and what the hell they are supposed to do placed in such an impossible circumstances.

This affects a lot of things...it includes but is not just about magick per se, or the attempt at developing magickal models of reality etc. It also includes people working in alternative energy or trying to develop new technologies or alternative healthcare systems or any number of things really. I can't see where modern academia has advanced much since the middle ages when it comes to their general inability to recognize legitimate ground-breaking research by non-sanctioned, independant research specialists...

At least a few of these people (I'm vain enough to include myself) are pretty godamm good at what they do, very meticulous, very "correct" in their approach to things, for the most part. If we can't change the institutions, is there simply no relief in sight for such people? Maybe 1/100 get lucky enough to get their work noticed in time to make any useful difference...where do the other 99 people go? Or is it maybe more like 999 or more? That's a lot of lose-lose scenarios going down just to mantain the status quo I think...

Just how long can the world itself sustain it? That's the toughest question of all I think. Because a whole lot of these folks are pioneering the survival of the human species itself, working outside the system because the system would be choking them to death if they didn't...and if their fucking lives don't matter...whose does?

So there's the outline of the dilemma as I see it and unfortunately it's just a sketch. The problem itself is actually something of a pandemic in my view at least. I think too many our very best minds are out there all by themselves, living completely ridiculous lives relative to what they could and should be doing, but have no way to accomplish this on their own thin dimes and no way to get their work "legitimized" enough to be recognized and supported.

Some of you (no doubt) won't give a shit at all and that's fine. This topic isn't really directed at you. Perhaps some others may have some clue as to what kind of organizational strategies could be employed by these disenfranchised academics that might take up a little slack in some way...

Or perhaps the situation is simply what it is, cannot be changed, and never really will improve.

m1thr0s

[Naomi]

Well like in any rennaissance you work outside of the system until the polarity shifts. This is already happening. It may not be as high of a quality or caliber of what comprises the Abrahadabra Foundation, but you have people like Robert Bruce who started out with a book called Astral Dynamics several years ago, written in a more scientific manner than you usually see. It's geared more towards people who have never worked with mental or so-called astral projection, and is filled with diagrams and his own personal research some of which includes his experiments with other people, himself, and his theories. He went on to start his own forum (astralpulse.net/com?) and I just noticed he's set up a larger more inclusive website.

http://www.astraldynamics.com/

You can see there that he now offers workshops and different assorted products.

All you really need is to publish a good book, cite your website in it, and people will follow, they'll buy the book, be amazed, come to the forum, donate, insist on workshops, etc. I see it happen all the time, not just in the occult community either. The gothic community gets a huge amount of support and they are barely just becoming mainstream. Just because your particular wellspring is cut off from the mainstream doesn't mean that additional support can't come from above in the rain or below in the apsu...sort of maintains the purity of it that way anyhow...

I mean, mutational alchemy! Wow that's the coolest most exciting name since "chaos magick"!

Well everyone already knows my attitude- who cares. What the academia thinks, if they don't see the value in it that's their loss, one way or another humans will wake up and smell the coffee. Don't push the river. ^_^

[m1thr0s]

I think there's a lot of truth in what you are saying here Naomi. In a sense we're sort of saying that once you set on that path you have to make up your mind to not look back as well...like it just causes pointless grief or whatever and detracts from getting things done that can get done in whatever way is doable.

I have actually seen isolated instances of where the academic community did make some sort of effort to track the kinds of work being done outside their usual jurisdictions to try to assist in some way...but it never seems to work. I think that part of the problem seems to be that you can't really have it both ways very well. If you work within the system then you have to acccept the various restrictions that goes along with this. If those restrictions make the work you have to do impossible (like because you need to rewire your own way of processing information for instance) then there's little point to running back for the supports and validations that it might also have to offer. So what we often find is that even if the institutions are willing, skillful individuals very often are not.

What usually happens is that these programs soon become a front for siphening off public funds to private pockets not directly involved with any real academic pursuits and eventually have to be shut down.

m1thr0s

[Naomi]

Yeah and I don't accept restriction at all. Well - at least not without a fair fight - you know, I compromise. :dull:

And I don't believe in the usefulness of regret, as you said it's pointless. I believe in recalibration to adjust for newly acquired data - i.e: errors - but regret is really not useful at all.

edit:

Another thing to be considered is the illusionary division we're looking at here. There is the scientific reasoning of a human mind using logos and intellect to derive clues about reality from the surrounding enviroment - and there is the established and what I view as largely entropic macro human mind of university and corporate research which is bound by obsolete parameters.

As occultists we don't have to explain ourselves to anyone - the occult is and always has been the forerunner for every major shift in human consciousness and will continue to be - for all eternity as far as humans are concerned. I have respect for the established sciences and rely on them for basic groundwork, but people have to pay more for occult discoveries and the value in them is more apparent to me and to the modern world. We need more schools that focus on the inner worlds rather than the outer worlds - it's difficult to find such things without trekking to Nepal or India. I get along well enough on my own not to have to do so, but it shouldn't be like this so clearly a new center of occult revivalism is long past due - the internet provides the groundwork for that.

Sometimes you have to look at it this way - get a feel for what you have first, the tools that are available. The internet, for example, is a priceless gift to humanity and it is right here in front of us. So using that is something cheap yet invaluable. You can use this to garner funds using various means - ConceptArt.org for example, sells t-shirts and calendars and instructional videos, over the past few years Jason Manley's company, Massive Black (the one that owns conceptart.org) has finally managed to open their own atelier, outside the boundaries of standard art schools. Their instructors are unparalleled anywhere in the university enviroment, so they've completely bucked the system and forged their own road. It was Jason Manley who first clued me into what a bunch of B.S. the art education system was - you really do not need a degree to be an artist.

And that's what occultists are anyways - artists.

[m1thr0s]

cool, see...I never even heard of ConceptArt.org...

I usually feel as though knowledge (or the lack thereof) is the biggest stumbling block to a more successful networking. Instinctively, it always seems to me that anybody onto anything of substance intrinsically has a "following" already...they might just not know how to get to the people that would recognize their stuff is all... But the work itself carries its own signature and is going to connect eventually anyway on its own merits...

So a lot of what we are talking about is how to eliminate wasted time and energy spent playing to the wrong crowd, barking up the wrong tree, all that kind of thing...how to really maximize your efforts...not how to package them up in any kind of contorted sort of way just to get more attention...that usually doesn't work just because the majority of people are locked into the so-called Dead-Artist's Society (mentality) whether they know it or not...They can't recognize what's right in front of them since it hasn't been dead for 200 years already...

So there's no point wasting any time on them...in another 200 years they'll undoubtedly give it some thought...they'll have to...it's already broken the ground they will wind up standing on.

I agree that occultism is primarily an art form...it is the art form actually...of which all other forms of art are mere shadows really.

m1thr0s

[Naomi]

cool, see...I never even heard of ConceptArt.org...Ah well, the story is pretty neat, it was just a handful of concept artists who started their own little company and later went on to become a huge name in the entertainment industry, they do work for LucasArts and Sony, among others. I got to watch it all evolve over the years so it's kinda cool - site's too big for my tastes now but I still go there occasionally. Manley deserves it, he's a great asset to the art world. Lots of musicians too, are pretty much managing their own stuff now, everyone is real sick of the RIAA and getting pennies for their work while lining the pockets of rich assholes. Yeah - the new rennaissance is waaaay underground but it's definately powerful.

I usually feel as though knowledge (or the lack thereof) is the biggest stumbling block to a more successful networking. Instinctively, it always seems to me that anybody onto anything of substance intrinsically has a "following" already...they might just not know how to get to the people that would recognize their stuff is all... But the work itself carries its own signature and is going to connect eventually anyway on its own merits...

So a lot of what we are talking about is how to eliminate wasted time and energy spent playing to the wrong crowd, barking up the wrong tree, all that kind of thing...how to really maximize your efforts...not how to package them up in any kind of contorted sort of way just to get more attention...that usually doesn't work just because the majority of people are locked into the so-called Dead-Artist's Society (mentality) whether they know it or not...They can't recognize what's right in front of them since it hasn't been dead for 200 years already...
Yes, well said. The simpler way is to create an appealing aesthetic around these advanced concepts and present them to persons not already shielded by the parameters of the academy. It may not even take 200 years at all for the first wave if you consider that most young people today are investigating occult matters during their teen years due to being exposed to the concepts presented in popular media. They're already excited about it, they just don't know it exists yet. There's a reason the Ninpo Kuji-In crap thread has at least one guest viewing it everyday - Naruto would be a good guess. People like to believe this stuff is real.

Getting them to understand how powerful these tools are is only a matter of the hook and grab - appeal to the aesthetic laws of the current reality - wrap it in beautiful packaging and imagery and then tell them what it can do for them, honestly and up front, - it's alot more than any of the other outdated concepts on the shelf out there can offer or even lie about. In the end, daring to go where no one else goes allows you to reach far more valuable minds in the end - malleable ones. It's also notable that, with a few exceptions, children are almost always more knowledgeable and more intelligent than their parents.

In a few hundred years, yes - scienticism and the closed minds that follow that religion will be no more than a footnote in the thousands of years of recorded human history.


So there's no point wasting any time on them...in another 200 years they'll undoubtedly give it some thought...they'll have to...it's already broken the ground they will wind up standing on.

I agree that occultism is primarily an art form...it is the art form actually...of which all other forms of art are mere shadows really. Yeah see, we're already ahead and on top, saw the brick wall up ahead and hit the detour, so there's no hurry really, just a hope everyone else will catch up....it's all just a picture show anyways, as Siva would say...some things never change.

[Ci Celli Ddu]

On the other hand, what the academic communities are doing in effect is isolating themselves, and if you isolate yourself people stop paying you attention, so we should expect them to begin to become more flexible in their approach sooner or later. The last thing they want after years of academic study is to be ignored.

At the moment we already have the situation where people are questioning a given "academic truth" and the academic community associated with whatever the object/subject in question is, refuses point blank to even consider a debate, because for them there is no debate, the debate is over. As a result whoever is offering or advocating an opposed view is given more credence through the media, this is then taken advantage by, say, politicians, for their own ends. The result is that the academic community in question loses a debate because they weren't willing -out of arrogance or a misguided trust in the public's common sense- to engage in that debate.

[m1thr0s]

I think what I have seen going on is that it is ever so gradually being infiltrated...pretty much within the range of flexibility it can itself afford...which isn't much...but is at least a little. But it's a very slow process...too slow to be useful to anybody focusing ahead of the curve. It's motto should be: "Academia - On the Trailing Edge of Evolution!"...

Not so many years ago I heard about somebody getting a Ph.D. in "Hexagramology" through the University of California at Berkeley for instance. It kind of ticked me off at the time cuz it's a pretty expensive school to attend and even though I was born in Berkeley the circumstances of my life have made it completely impossible for me to have ever attended school there...

Now...there's not a hell of a lot you can do with a degree in Hexagramology, but granted to the right person on the basis of real merit it would have meant a hell of a lot more than it did. I know the drill on this one...this would have been an extension of Asian Studies that didn't really take any chances on ground-breaking material at all...This would have been about some student doing a dissertation on the classical changes in some perfectly stagnant and uninspired context. Being fundamentally impotent, UCB might have seen their way to allow it since somebody was otherwise willing to pay for it. They do have a reputation for being "kinky", afterall...

So I do think it's true that academia is cutting itself right out of the "relevancy" picture one timid little step at a time...

m1thr0s

[fr.novumorganum]

cool discussion. a few points to consider:

there are many cutting edge, or even hermetic things one can study in graduate programs (after all a phd really should be crafting your own path and field of knowledge) but there is a huge difference between what one can study and write on, and what institutions will support in terms of teaching jobs, research funding, chairs, librbary resources, well you get the picture. And this applies not just to underground or developing fields like mutational alchemy, but even to new approaches in already established disciplines.

a real reason is that there really is a very limited pool of resources for departments, and the humanities get the crumbs from that pie. a disturbingly large portion of university resources are consumed by administrartion, who do nothing except beurocratic shit. unless a department is tied into pharm comapnies, or a part of the right wing foundation circle (which basically means being an ideologic mouthpiece for fascism in exchange for $$$) there really is little money.

i'm not trying to defend the academy, just point out some factors to consider, which leads me to say there are many academics who recoginze the importance and reality of these fields (hell, you've got a bunch of them on this forum :rolleyes:)....there is an academic underground, just as there is still a strong psychadelic underground in the academy...

[m1thr0s]

yeah...I can relate to that. I do think that the money factor is a really big deal.

m1thr0s

[fr.novumorganum]

slowly slowly slowly there are a few ripples in the pond

http://sbinstitute.com/

http://consciousness.arizona.edu/mission.htm

http://www.mindandlife.org/initiatives_section.html

[m1thr0s]

those are all interesting links fr.n...pardon my skepticism but I can't help thinking in reading through all of that that these folks are going to be among the last to have any real clue what's going on...

it's not really their fault...it's their training. I could be wrong I suppose but I don't think so...I feel like they only really know how to look under the rocks that have already been clearly marked "look here"...

and that's the whole problem really. think about it...can you really even remotely imagine one of these groups ever approaching somebody like me to be a guest lecturer at one of their symposiums? Me who is not a dali lama, has no certifications of any kind and only has an unpublished body of work to qualify my academic authority?

It just won't happen...and maybe it shouldn't happen...but that gulf is the missing link in the whole equation I think. there is no way for these folks to look at a body of work itself and say...holy shit...this cat is really onto something! They are so locked into their pecking orders that they inherently assume that if you know anything of merit, you must already be established in some way.

Perhaps this is simply the way it always is and always will be...but it still rather sucks. I don't expect any real solution to come from academia itself however...I think I am more interested in how that growing body of "outside" expertise begins to pool its resources together without somehow destroying itself in the process.

I almost wonder if what we don't really need here is a more comprehensive set of tutorials and general guidelines that serve to instruct "outsider" academians as to the finer points of infiltrating the system...to be able to get in...get whatever they need and get the hell back out again... Because it's all locked up in these petty little secret handshakes and crap really. There are processes and procedures that outsiders do not typically have access to. Maybe I actually could be invited to more conferences and crap...I wouldn't have a clue how to even apply and there's also only just so much time and energy I am willing to invest into it...otherwise I would just go get a freaking Ph.D...

So you know...like an Institutional Hacker's Bible for independant researchers...

m1thr0s

[MythMath]

I almost wonder if what we don't really need here is a more comprehensive set of tutorials and general guidelines that serve to instruct...
Sign me up for a copy... :yes:

[m1thr0s]

yeah? it's got a ring to it though doesn't it MM...

to some extent we can use this platform right here to try to pool some of that together...I'm not quite sure how to frame it yet...I'll have to give it some thought.

Oftentimes independant research people really just need help with the basics...how to get money...how to publish (and how to take advantage of publication alternatives), how to get networked with similar minded groups etc., how to submit for prize money or grants or all that sort of thing...how to set up a laboratory space or teaching space...logistical stuff really. How to get free stuff from office equipment to technical gear to transportation, lodging and so on...how to get their work appraised when the time is right etc...

m1thr0s

[Naomi]

Ok we'll stick around, lol...

In the meantime:

"The only reason I have a high school degree was 'cuz a special principle who let me just play baseball and drink beer and smoke dope because I told him I'd cut his eyes out if he didn't let me graduate."

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

[m1thr0s]

well...when you ain't got nuthin', you got nuthin' to lose...and for an investigative body of light physicist (at least), this can be pivotal. It's about the only way you can really fly free in this world...possibly any...

even so, to expect one's work to achieve 100% success operating under such adverse conditions is frankly stupid whether I expected this, or the universe expected it, or the world, or whatever...

So whether in my own case or in like cases scattered about the place, networking of some kind does eventually become an integral part of the overall issue of success itself and does have to be dealt with as meticulously as anything else...

Unfortunately, Academia itself is really a wash in any kind of practical terms. I think it's just too damn embedded with corporate sponsorship. There is a saying that you cannot grow a live tree from a dead branch and that's exactly the problem we are facing here. People is another matter. People build these antiquated constructs and people can unbuild them and/or rebuild them if and when they choose to. It's all a matter of motivation really...of *energized enthusiasm*, as they say.

this is the information age for xst sake and as Naomi points out there are new tools afoot, so it's doable. A little uncertain maybe but not actually impossible. My impression is that at the level of its people, Academia is already looking for this alternative but hasn't quite landed on the format that really works yet.

m1thr0s

[Kuroyagi]

I think one problem of todays academia is the lack of universalism. I know a nuclear physicist who basically thinks that all humanities are useless. On the other hand such a guy will inadvertently fall into the most stupid models of historic fictions and believe the most ridiculous cultish theories, or be an emotional cripple. (cf. also eg many chaos magic authors who are primarily natural scientists and who discover their "emotions" or other "arcane" secrets only via "magic"). Good that the Renaissance was mentioned, I like that view. I myself have simply used many introductory courses into various fields at university, without ever aiming for making a degree. Most students only study because they want to have a good job i.e. to get a degree, but the rogue scientist has to learn not to be ashamed of "abusing" what the academic instiutions can offer, for the sake of his personal development. (he neednt tell them openly)

University should be more open to alternative suggestions from the outside, and also more integrating and educating on a universal level, on the inside- like to make its graduates more holistically developped, also outside of their special field of study; because this gives science a better chance for creativity.

I myself am rather a rogue artist than a rogue scientist but also theres the problem of influence and dependance, still. Just the other day a friend asked me why I didnt participate in certain "workshops" and crap like that. The problem with many groups and the "art scene" in general is that it has turned into some sort of routine: if you make this workshop and get this and that scholarship (and portray a certain political view, maybe), you will be invited again here and there--- and consequently will be able to publish and sell your stuff: BUT as a consequence all those people who do it have to "sell their souls", they will all produce the same more or less boring crap- they are mostly epigones.(its a long discussion actually: contrary arguments could involve the perseverance one has to show to get oneself into a poistion that gives one the opportunity to show and present ones work). If one is too involved in certain cliques it can be very mind numbing, but for people who consider it as just another "job" its fine I guess.

[m1thr0s]

ah yes...the parties, the gatherings, the scene...it's all coming back to me now. So long ago really, I had nearly forgotten the overwhelming stench of ennui permeating everything...

nothing to be done for it I suppose but it annoys me that the bottom line is always its power to boycott those who will not play the game... take that away and they've got nothing really...just a bunch of pointless parties...

oh yes...and *bored* meetings...mustn't forget those...

m1thr0s

[Kuroyagi]

haha youre right though I wasnt talking of uni there, I graduated many years ago and wouldnt want to work there- but about the literary scene where also 35 or 40 year old will participate in those workshops and competitions, but this is very different from region to region, and from country to country...

[Kuroyagi]

I have thought about the structures of a good university: it should be based on freedom of method and thinking, and not be dependent on political economical or ideological interests, yet be financed by the political system that does not in any way interfere with it. It should be exoteric (publicly accessible) and not esoteric. It should be based on the education of ones being, i.e. the living reflection and contemplation of oneself and the world. It should not be restricted to mere practicality or usefulness but cognition and understanding should be pursued for the enjoyment of itself, also- for the lust of itself. See the writings of Aristotle and Wilhelm von Humboldt, there.

Very many of those ideals are not fulfilled by today’s universities anymore- even its name: university (cooperation of knowledge, exchange and contest, and freedom of methods)= universality of it, are suffocated by economic interests and mere mundane practicalities; by simply providing "society" or "the country" or the market with "jobs" and technologies.

It already starts with the educational system itself. Education is degraded to mere Knowledge: a capital to be exploited- it is set equal with information. One has to be "flexible" and "international" and has to subscribe to other modern phrases coined by some management trainers.

In fact, to what does the phrase of an "information age" bear up to? Information is nothing without the brains and the people who "transport" it, and the common people, the "workers" have not been "informationalized", but contrarily science and knowledge has been economized, and made marketable, made easy to process and quantify in various rankings and statistics. Universities have been made to adhere to profit, once independent scientists have- in incredible stupidity- subjected to a dubious phraseology of marketing experts; the humanities have- since everything is assessed by its practicality- been degraded to be trinkets of curiosity in an ever-changing wheel of media exhibitionism of discoveries, of simple wonders and miracles; this media presence/curiosity factor- surely one great motivation of al the sciences at all times- constitutes nearly their sole raison d’etre.

In the craze of the utopia of a nivellating [levelling] internationalism, national differences in scientific traditions and methods (like the Chinese or -in humanities- the German ones) have been willingly overlaid by Anglicisms. All signs point to a totalitarian reversion and destruction of the motives and aims of the Enlightenment-movement like publicity, freedom and equality with the creation of elite universities, and the institution of a new lingua franca- English- like Latin was before only much more willingly executed and widely accepted, so that "normal" people will understand less and less what the scientists are talking about, yet the scientists themselves –those who still will belong to this "elite"- wont be philosophers or literates or historians- cause those are too "impractical" for "business" and not fit to make money for their Alma Mater anymore: they- those who will be recognized as real scientists- will be subjected to financiers who hide themselves behind euphemistic pseudo democratic dictums, much more than they ever were subjected to kings and feudal lords!

We all know that scientists make no exception when it comes to serve willingly and eagerly under extreme ideologies- the 20th century has shown that; and now they will again serve the new totalitarianism of a market oriented practicality-thinking that nearly reminds one of the negative fictions of Marxism, in a world subjected to economic less than human usefulness, controlled globally by an English speaking elite of "reformers" (cause revolutions are too slow for them!) and "think-tankers" and modern consultants who sell themselves to the best bidder- cause truth has died and with it any notion of morality that is a prerequisite of ethical *correct* action.

School comes from the Greek scholé that once meant: to "stop in ones work" (-ing process)- but who has time for leisure now; to actually sit down and contemplate when you, as a scientist, have to fill out evaluation forms or have to try to acquire third party financing for your university, when you pose and parade yourself before your fellows and sponsors on redundant congresses devoid of content or concern yourself with bureaucratic, administrative details cause the politicians decided to make yet another reform of the educational system – even though the old one has not even been tested yet…how free then will be your method and how much time will one have for study and research? Moreover, how motivated can students be to research and question teachings from the beginning and experience collegiality when they just want to get a diploma as quickly as possible so to have the most "advantage" on the job-market, how motivated to educate will be professors who try to get the most money out of them? Well people like Immanuel Kant for example would have no chance- he never left his hometown, so he was not "international" enough. After long years he got a professorship (the venia legendi=right to read/teach at uni) but then he didn’t "publish" anything for the next ten years: now this would be the death sentence in todays academic community! Yet that very well may have been the most important time of gestation for him when his thoughts ripened so he could write his great subsequent works…what about the local differences, the queerness and strangeness of some people (of genius), or their "slowness"…one merely wonders. And where will be the thinkers who think about the new technologies and inventions from the outside; about "being in the world" itself in an epistemological way, after they have been deemed too inefficient? Maybe some will return to be alchemistic labourers and natural- hermit-philosophers while others will sell themselves to various media. Subjects like philosophy, mathematics, history- that are very "theoretical" (in the mind alone) are more and more pushed out of the curricula for the sake of more "practical" things like marketing, journalism or applied chemistry (and I don’t say that these aren’t worth studying, either, well all but journalism maybe.)

Now a good (secondary, middle) school needs to at first only teach two things: to think and to speak well- to express oneself well in ones mother-tongue and to understand and acquire contents, to filter and digest experiences for oneself methodically and consciously [and this is not possible by multiple choice-tests!]. But surprisingly no educational system does that. There is a nice aphorism by Nietzsche that points to the advantage of learning your own language well in the meaning of that the people who have brought forth the stylistically best writers- namely the French and the Greeks- did not learn foreign languages at all. That’s an interesting aspect. One has to think about such aspects not one-sided meaning that one would be mistaken to interpret this necessarily as an all-out refutation of all global or international "net-working", as it is called in the modern phrase, but rather as a corrective to such global developments.

In the middle of the last century Adorno has written a good treatise about half knowledge/half-education in that he criticised the educational system and its then-imminent calcification but even he could not anticipate the modern increase of idiotism and virtual non-knowledge. Never was education and knowledge as maltreated and disposable as in today’s so called information age. One can see how empty yet how dominant such terms, like info age, are when one tries to suggest alternative ways. Who could afford to oppose terms like innovation, reform, and internationality? Yet what’s often meant by them is rather a return to totalitarianism, dissolution of structures and of independent institutions and the creation of new elites.

[m1thr0s]

the bane (and eventual demise) of capitalism is that is caters to ambitious opportunists at the express expense of whole systems...so it is able to create the impression of economic success available to anyone who *applies themselves* when in fact it only offers this success to those willing to disregard the impact of their own personal gains on the *whole* which they parasitically attack. Capitalism itself will have to evolve, which it is adamantly unwilling to do...so blinded is it by its own reflection in the mirror... You can get by without a soul for awhile. Sooner or later the natural laws of entropy will catch up.

A little progress has been made in this direction but not enough and nowhere fast enough...it will have to come crashing down hard before people will be willing to acknowledge that it was a flawed economic strategy all along...and education and industry and all those things which it controls will continue to erode until this finally occurs...

In the meantime, whatever options may exist to those who refuse to play the game by the rules will apparently remain few and far between. Individuals are ultimately more powerful than economic regimes but they have to acknowledge that power and act upon it or it means nothing... It's hard to imagine how this would ever actually occur on a scale large enough to turn the tide...there seem to be so few precedents historically.

m1thr0s