We all see the world through our own lens. Our opinions, which we freely express here, are formed by our experiences and our interactions with others. So in a very real sense, the battle that is currently being waged is over control of the zeitgeist which is a concept from 18th- to 19th-century German Philosophy meaning “spirit of the age” or “spirit of the times”. It refers to an invisible agent or force dominating the characteristics of a given epoch in world history. The zeitgeist is formed through communications between people. Between people like us. Our zeitgeist is formed by these discussions spurred on by the posts where each of us is free to express our opinions to the others and they are free to agree, or disagree.
This small microcosm of a zeitgeist is a part of the greater whole, the country, and ultimately the world with all of it’s people. Those who would be masters of all mankind must find a way to control the population, be it in a town, a city, a country, or the world and they do this by controlling the zeitgeist. But how do they operate so as to control this zeitgeist? What are the mechanisms, the levers of power, that magically (to us) seem to refocus the zeitgeist from one topic to another? And what the hell is a zeitgeist anyway?
Let us start with a simple explanation. Perhaps a definition.
Hegel in Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807) uses both Weltgeist and Volksgeist but prefers the phrase Geist der Zeiten “spirit of the times” over the compound Zeitgeist.[5]
The Hegelian concept does not necessarily contrast with the Great Man theory as by Thomas Carlyle, which sees history as the result of the actions of heroes and geniuses, as Hegel perceived such “great men”, specifically Napoleon, as the “embodiment of the world-spirit” (Die Weltseele zu Pferde “the world-soul on horseback”[6])
Hegel believed that art reflected, by its very nature, the culture of the time in which it is created. Culture and art are inextricable because an individual artist is a product of his or her time and therefore brings that culture to any given work of art. Furthermore, he believed that in the modern world it was impossible to produce classical art, which he believed represented a “free and ethical culture”, which depended more on the philosophy of art and theory of art, rather than a reflection of the social construct, or Zeitgeist in which a given artist lives.
In other words, Hegel is saying that great men create the zeitgeist and the rest of the people follow along. He also contends that art itself represents that zeitgeist as the artists are inspired by the world around them, just as we are inspired by those whom we read, and talk to. Let’s for a moment consider the zeitgeist of Trump. The art of Pepe and MAGA. That is the creation of a zeitgeist and those who find it appealing will take it as the truth and those who are opposed to it will take it as a lie. But the zeitgeist is formed by, if not one man, a very few men for sure. One day there is no Pepe and the next day Pepe is a thing. The day after that it is a big thing and then finally it enters the zeitgeist as a fully fledged thing that enters into the purview of those who would manipulate the zeitgeist.
The problem that we, as troglodytes, face is that we form our own zeitgeist from our own interactions with fellow troglodytes. Deplorables if you prefer. It is the boundary line between our personal zeitgeist and that overarching zeitgeist where the battle lines are drawn. The contention is between the masters of all mankind and those who would not be mastered. And then, at the very top of this battleground of subterfuge, we find the real battleground. Think of it as the air war being fought above the ground war. That war is between what has been labeled as communism and what has been labeled capitalism. Two opposing forms of economic governance, one where the means of production are controlled by a small cabal of communists and one where the means of production are controlled by a small cabal of capitalists. We troglodytes are rarely asked for our opinions and when we are, and we offer them, they are roundly ignored by our betters. Our own masters of all mankind.
So you are not given a choice. You are born into a zeitgeist that promotes either the capitalistic form of economic governance or the communistic form of economic governance. Some very small number of us troglodytes manage to migrate from one system to the other, and let’s face it, most of the migration is one way, but most are forced to stay within their birth zeitgeist for their lifetime. The only thing that holds the small cabal in it’s position of power is it’s manipulation of the zeitgeist.
So how is this zeitgeist manipulated? There are only a few successful mechanisms and these appear to be very consistently used over the millennia. The most obvious is bread and circuses or if you will, direct bribes. It worked for the cave men. It worked for the Romans. It worked for the Europeans and it worked for the Americans. The masters of all mankind know that they must appease the troglodytes and keep them fed and amused. So here we have round ball games, beer, hotdogs and steaks. We grow fat a lazy and too tired to waddle on down to the local pub to argue about politics and this laziness is what promotes the effectiveness of the second lever of power.
The Main Stream Media is really only there for one thing. It is designed to replace your day to day interactions with real people with fake interactions with imaginary people who are presented as knowing more than you or your friends. It has come to light recently that these people do not know more than you or your friends, and so faith in the MSM is waning. Just as faith in elected officials is waning. But we are still too tired to group together to learn more about our society so we are forced to rely on saccharine presentations that are designed to misinform and slowly, like a cancer, the zeitgeist changes. It changes from a zeitgeist formed by personal experience into a zeitgeist that has been molded to reinforce the power of the masters of all mankind.
This battle ground, the battle fought over the ability to define the zeitgeist, is where the true battle is. If the masters of all mankind win this battle then they will control the zeitgeist. If they control the zeitgeist then there will be no physical battle. We troglodytes will settle once again into our breads and our circuses for a while and the masters of all mankind will continue to contest their battles in the clouds, beyond our sight. Beyond our knowledge. It is only now, at this point in history, where the illusion of knowledge has been stripped from the masters of all mankind and exposed by access to knowledge that the internet has provided that opinions other than those from the masters of all mankind can be heard and considered. Will the zeitgeist be dictated from on high, or will be distilled from billions of opinions on millions of topics? We can only be sure of one thing. The masters of all mankind will do everything that they can to keep us from forming our own zeitgeist from our own thoughts. They must, if they are to exist at all, control our thoughts.
In this regard, one must look upon the regulation of the internet in Europe as the most pernicious activity which is currently going on in the world today. If the apparatchiks in the EU manage to force free speech from the internet then the masters of all mankind will have won as there is only one internet and what is done in Europe will be done to us all. If they are allowed to steal free speech by labeling it hate speech then no speech will ever be allowed again. If they can define themselves as the arbiter of what is hate and what is love then they can never again be challenged as there will be no method for changing the zeitgeist. It will be game over, and the masters of all mankind will have won.
And how will they attempt to win? It would appear that they have chosen the meme wars as their battle ground. They realize that their appointed master of all mankind was defeated with simple thoughts expressed in an elegant way so they will very soon start to try and use the exact same weapons that Trump used to get elected against him. Watch for it on a blog close to you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soc-dg82qTw&has_verified=1
Long live Kekistan. Long live Pepe. Down with the bloody red queen.
One thing that sticks out to me is that under the capitalist system I do not have to be ruled as in being an active participant in what they are peddling if I want to do my own thing like an HSF can. Under the other system I have no choice about anything. There is a good deal of difference between the two regardless of whether we are peons or rulers under either. Am I presuming too much if I opine you have something left unsaid you couldn’t nail down to your satisfaction?
No, I love it. Thanks.
I have been thinking about free will lately. Most of my personal outlook is based on the concept that we have free will and therefore our rights to life liberty and pursuit of happiness naturally follow. I am beginning to doubt whether we are in fact just controlled by our DNA as expressed through our hormones and epigenetic memories that the vast majority of our actions and reactions are programmed and utterly predictable. By being predictable we are subject to influence and control and autonomy is simply an illusion.
The way a zeitgeist sweeps through a demographic cohort is very much like a virus….implying our consciousness is just as vulnerable as our bodies to outside influence.
If true then what is the point of all of this? What is the point of our existence if we are simply playing out a script…..speaking our parts and exiting stage left? Who benefits?
Are we really just NPC’s in a simulation?
I’ve been down this road as well, MH. Guys like Sam Harris and Lawrence Krauss make solid science-based arguments, but they both admit to fundamental mystery, that we really don’t know anything and also they must explain away the blatantly obvious observational evidence of consciousness itself.
The issue, as I see it, is in their pure materialist viewpoints. The brain is a biochemical machine and consciousness is wholly contained in that machine and everything we observe as “free will” (which is always ill-defined) is simply a side-effect of complex neuro-chemical interactions. Sam Harris particularly plays semantic games around the issue…”You can’t have made a different choice…” is something he says all the time…talk about an un-testable hypothesis….yes, Sam, time is an arrow. His favorite experiment for this is the one where he can predict which hand a person will lift before they become consciously aware of it themselves. Fine. Fair enough. BUT THAT”S NOT THE BEGINNING OF THE PROCESS. First, instructions must be received from the tester processed through the conscious mind and a decision is made to agree to do the test. Then, I can absolutely see a mechanism in our mind (I think of it as a sub-routine in code) that is used for arbitrary decision making. The chemical reaction the test shows does indeed happen before the subject is consciously aware of which hand they will raise, but NOT before the conscious decision to raise a hand in the first place. Sam will of course argue that that too is deterministic (but NOT fatalistic, whatever the fuck he means by that distinction, he never really explains the difference as he sees it). Ultimately, it’s the same problem as the proof that bumblebees can’t fly…it takes a snapshot of time and ignores what came before.
Now, back to the materialist view–that consciousness is entirely contained in the machine that is the brain–well here we have a causal paradox. We can, use the machine to do a thing called “make a decision” to improve something in said brain in a process called “learning” and improve the function and increase the complexity and efficiency of the self-same machine. That this process exists cannot be denied…so, either it is an accidental side-effect of trillions of billiard balls colliding (which is how the materialists really see the Cosmos…just a giant game of billiards and the Big Bang was the break, by no one of course, an effect without a cause? but I’ll ignore that one for the time being) OR there’s something going on with consciousness that we simply don’t understand…and I don’t mean that we don’t “fully” understand, but we don’t even begin to understand. For me, it is clearly the second avenue. Yes, we have many deterministic attributes, but we also clearly have limited free will. These dipolar arrangements show themselves all the time (order and chaos, stasis and change, every property in existence that demonstrates a bell-curve distribution) What the mechanism is and what that rests upon, I have no idea. Reductionist arguments always just claim that wherever they find unassailable ignorance, well that must be bedrock…but its bullshit. There are many sound reductionist arguments for how we got here (evolutionary biology) but that is not firmament. There’s always a logical level beneath it…and who’s to say how many beneath that. Is there one more level beneath the tiniest subatomic particles we can observe? 2? 5? Infinite? How would we possibly know the difference?
It’s understandable that people want to think that they understand existence or that it can BE understood. For me, all I can do is stare in stupid wonder at all that IS and realize that the more I understand about existence, the more I realize how little I understand about existence…but it really is the journey that matters.
As for free will, today, I can choose to get shit ton of work done, I can choose to fuck around all day online (post some long ass comments on TPB for instance) or I can choose to go downtown try to scrounge up some heroin and inject it into my eyeball. I’ll probably do a mix of the first two, but they are ALL IN PLAY. That’s as clear of evidence that I have some form of free will that I need.
No matter how long I ramble on, I always leave out something I wanted to say. I think a far better model for consciousness is an interactive one. Clearly we interact with our environment in a wide range of conscious ways and a whole lot more unconscious ways (psychological)…why not in more physics based ways. What if consciousness (or maybe life itself) was an interaction between some unknown but ubiquitous field (you know, really ubiquitous (omnipresent) like the fundamental forces) and our incredibly complex (like the most complex structures known to exist) brains. Not a materialist model, but neither an entirely mystical one either….on the border between the dipoles of rational and irrational perhaps?
Just a thunk I’ve had for a while now.
Drud. Interesting thought. I myself prefer the brain in a bone box theory. Clearly we each can only exist as our physical being. You know, the parts that hurt as we get older, and as our thoughts that can only exist within our own chemical brains in our own bone boxes.
I don’t see the need for any magic. All of the living beings that inhabit this earth interact with their environment in the same way. Each species learns what it needs to learn in order to survive. If it doesn’t, then it doesn’t survive. That learning is facilitated by our senses that you mentioned above and our ability to divine the nature of what our senses provide to our brains. While the level of sensory input and the level of cognition vary across the species, the basics are there in each species. So, I suppose that you could say that I am claiming that consciousness is there in all living things. It is not that consciousness is limited to humans, but rather that our level of consciousness is just a bit greater than that which say a mole is capable of wielding.
So essentially, I am unwilling to agree with Hegel in his claim that there is an invisible force. I see the force as being very visible, and that the battle is over the efforts of the masters of all mankind to keep their force invisible. Perhaps Hegel was not as plugged in as we are today. Maybe he didn’t get enough information to see how Napoleon manipulated things to become the master of all mankind that he eventually did, but today we can see it.
We see it and find it crass and plebeian, not a glorious invisible force. We see it and it disgusts us.
“So, I suppose that you could say that I am claiming that consciousness is there in all living things.”
That’s very much down the same avenue I’m headed….in my model, all matter is analogous to an antenna in EM radiation. Simple antennas pick up only the simplest signals at only a narrow range of frequencies. Add in more and more complexity in the antennas and you get more and more complex interactions (antennas are used for both receiving and for broadcasting). Inanimate objects have little or no interactions, single-cell organisms a little more, plants more still….and on up until you get to the most complex of all (known) interactions, human consciousness.
And, then, there is another mystery. That is, who paved the road upon which consciousness travels? I speak of language (pun intended).
Word on the street (pun intended) is there may be a “Language Acquisition Device” that is a mysterious blueprint in human DNA that makes only human babies literal geniuses at acquiring language across all languages and cultures.
The famous linguist Noam Chomsky claimed “languages are infinite pertaining to the sequence of word forms (strings) and grammar”. Yet, “these word forms organize grammatically correct sequences of words that can be pooled over a limited lexicon of each independent language”.
Evidently, no one can explain the presence of any “language acquisition device”. Not even the Darwinists because “categories like noun and verb are biologically, evolutionarily and psychologically implausible”.
Once again, just typing out loud….
Well I too will type out loud. I think that you and Noam have the cart before the horse. There is no language acquisition device. Language does not evolve through genes. Language is taught and learned thru Drud’s senses into my brain in a bone box. All of the nuance of language can be explained very easily as it can be traced right back to the dawn of recorded history. If one cares to, one may find languages without vowels. We can’t go all the way back to the first language, but we know that it existed.
But I will offer this to think about. How is our language with all of it’s complexity that you describe above, functionally different from dogs barking? Yes, our language is much richer, but their language still gets the point across to the other dogs and it allows them, in the wild, to coordinate their activities to gather food.
Those are awesome comments Drud, very helpful, thanks!
Agree with most of it… but there is nothing so simple as “winning” in this game. Tyranny comes often bur it always fails eventually as it rots from within. The best analogy for the power elite is a swarm of locusts… as such they never “win.” They consume until there is nothing left and then turn on each other. The level of meaning in such sn existence is the same as that of the locust as well. Not that i don’t oppose them and hold the most fervent wish for their peaceful demise….but at the same time realize that is a wish only. It will not happen no matter what actions i take or do not take. Make myself better, stronger so that when the inevitable chaos and destruction comes i may just be able to make a small stand against it. Until then enjoy the relative peace and find meaningful engagement wherever i may.
The more you look into any zeitgeist, the more you find out that you’ve been lied to. Whether it’s politics, religion, economics, etc., our narrative creators have made us believe that we are thinking independently but we’re not. Our thoughts are not our own, they are shrewdly imposed upon us without us even knowing it.
Then there is Plato’s “The Allegory Of The Cave” at work. When someone steps outside the cave and sees the real world then goes back in to warn the others, they are immediately ridiculed. The one’s that make it outside the cave are the outsiders.
“If you don’t submit to control, if you’re a radical, You’re less likely to be loved, you’re not fitting in with society, you’re viewed as an outsider, so there is a lot of social prohibitions about the outsider and the person who’s going to upset things” – Doug Valentine Author ~ “The Phoenix Program”
Art imitating life imitating art…
Our perceptions and experiences are subjective, yes; but with the accumulation of personal stories over a zeitgeist, patterns and trends arise…
However, There is nothing new under the Sun…
Just a core universal archetypal battle that boils down to motives and choices…none should judge. However, AWARENESS and discernment should still be practiced.
Great comments all. Sitting at the car wash just now but can’t wait to dig further into all of your thoughts.
I often wonder if the “spirit” could be as simple as life or death. Or even truth versus untruth and the interacting manifestations of these, by degree.
Long ago, the byline of an article caught my attention. It said something like: “What if everything you ever thought you knew about the world was that it wanted you dead”.
It could be history could be compared to a tall tower – a tribute to the rise of man. But, in reality, it acts as a drain of time turning, swirling downward into a funnel. The funnel itself – the societal zeitgeists. Broad is the mouth until it narrows – always unto the same end: Depopulation.
The wheel of time. The change of the seasons. Birth, growth, decline, death. All of which, of course, corresponds to the turnings as identified by Strauss & Howe.
And so, perhaps, the most important question is this: What do we do now?
Try to survive. Enjoy each moment. Anything else?
Because things change. And shit happens.
Who knew?
Doug, I suspect that the invisible force that Hegel was thinking about was actually more mystical, and less plebeian. He had already discarded God as a concept so it can’t be that. Maybe he was referring to that great invisible force that is the will of the masses – the zeitgeist in his language. Who yet can discern that will? We can still only ask after the fact what moved great events. There is no way to predict how the zeitgeist is going to move, but I suspect that there are a lot of people working on moving it every day none the less.
I could definitely see it being “moved” if zeitgeist was akin to worldview affecting societal attitudes and actions at any given time. But, then again, I wonder if it isn’t actually even more ethereally spontaneous than that- or, actually, like a spirit. Or, at the very least, as instincts in nature.
And maybe Freud was onto something regarding instincts as through the lens of life and death – psychic energy and biological drives and their vicissitudes.
Is Trump a phenomenon or a psyop? And does it matter?
Is Trumpy-Cat, Inc. a force or a symptom? A catalyst or a sign of the times? A spark to ignite a revolution or a passing fad?
I suppose we’ll know before it’s over
Uncola…
“It [zeitgeist] refers to an invisible agent or force dominating the characteristics of a given epoch in world history.”
Much like muscle memory develops, the environment (the B.elief S.ystem) in which I was raised, is one that holds a world view with a KJB at the center. So, the reference to a ‘zeitgeist’ is immediately recieved as “the prince of the power of the air” to my ears……immediate, pre-conditioned bias, you might say.
On this site, there have been many discussions concerning Israel, Jews, Zionism, etc ad nauseum…..a seemingly never ending tit for tat.
Over the yrs. that I’ve been chasing the rabbit down the hole, I’ve come across one you may have heard of? This twenty min. video is very interesting…..and I’ve listened to a number from him concernning the book he wrote titled “The Harbinger”…..this video clip is a teaser on another book he has authored “The Oracle”….(I’ve read neither, have only seen the videos where they are being promoted)
annuit coeptis novus ordo seclorum <<<—-
"But, then again, I wonder if it isn’t actually even more ethereally spontaneous than that- or, actually, like a spirit."
Rabbit Hole defined: down at the bottom of everything, kosmakrators, archons, demons, angels….unseen manipulators have their place.
"Jonathan Cahn is a Messianic Christian pastor, biblical scholar, four time New York Times best-selling author who is best known for his novel The Harbinger, in which he compares the United States and the September 11 attacks to ancient Israel and the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel. Cahn has followed up with 3 other books- The Mystery of the Shemitah The Book of Mysteries, and The Paradigm. His most recent work The Paradigm debuted at #5 on the New York Times best-seller list. In March 2019"…..wikipedia
So, who knows?
"It is what it is"
“Jonathan Cahn is a Messianic Christian pastor, biblical scholar, four time New York Times best-selling author …”
What is a “messianic christian pastor”? I detect a massive conflict in terms here. I’ve read Cahn’s books. There is much he needs to learn, but he sure makes a lot more money selling prophecy porn than I do!
Hi, GCP…
What IS a ‘messianic Christian pastor’?……….good question, got an answer??
I haven’t read his books, only watched/listened to several of his talks on utube etc. I do remember the political leaders of his nation calling out scripture verse (Isaiah 9:10) in the days/years to follow 911:
Rudy Giuliani:
Tom Daschle-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts1IOn57a6s
annuit coeptis novus ordo seclorum- is Isaiah Ch. 9 another instance of pride and ‘going astray’ of the Israelites….
I get what you say about the ‘prophecy porn’….they always be hawkin a book….but then again, the worker is worthy of his hire…..
It’s just nature….nature is life… nature is always trying to kill you and will always ultimately succeed. Both are true at the same time.
No one gets out alive. That is for sure the truth.
“No one gets out alive/You can’t save the world?ect.”
Damn,this defeatism is depressing,I say”Grow stronger/Try harder”.
When you win then start tilting at windmills,there is no time for rest.
Well maggie, perhaps you can help us do better.
Maggie?!Nope,just forgot to show a name,been one of them days,still fighting though!
This is good.
This thread should get to 100 by Christmas. You should have used the word “troglodytes” more often.
EVERYTHING Trump does is based on shit he learned from his involvement with Worldwide Wrestling.
How exactly is that different from Congress? Or the State period?
Impressive. You can discuss Hegelian philosophy yet not know the difference between its and it’s. Are bloviating pseudo-intellectuals another sign of the times? Alas, no. They have always been with us.
To bad you couldn’t be more helpful maggie. I am sure with your vast intellect and your knowledge of German Philosophy you could do more than pick at grammar. You should be able to help us all understand Hegel much better than any of us here ever could. Of course, you won’t and we will all be the poorer for it.
https://vimeo.com/288804845
Hahahahaha, maggie your are truly an outrageous lying piece of shit.
https://vimeo.com/287456998
Well, at least this one doesn’t have a four pack and an empty bottle.