Awaken the Amnesiacs 14: Songs from the Halls of Amenti

 

Today, I present the best conspiracy theory songs and music of red-pilled culture, which I have curated from Suno AI:

Conspiracy Theorists' Red-Pilled Mixed Tape

This blog has collected conspiracy theories as cultural artefacts from a critical period when social media exploded. With the aid of AI, netizens are paying homage to these ideas in a new genre of alienation and self-reflection. 

Many of these songs revolve around an underlying conviction that humanity suffers from a collective amnesia about our deep history. Is this a glitch in the Matrix? A moment of Jungian enantiodromia? The awakened masses intuit that we and our planet are part of a great story which we have forgotten. Can a historical date, say, 38 thousand years ago, really be projected onto these musings?

Every rabbit hole, every cover-up, every riddle in the dark, every exposé of aberrant corruption seems to lead back to this problem of species-wide amnesia. It doesn't matter whether we speak of the top of the pyramid or the core of the human heart. Somehow, the source of it all is a profound absence of memory. In place of memory, we get a degraded nightmare, as evident in reports from the Diddy trial (see Rotten Mango's coverage here and Tisa Tells' coverage here). 

Prior to that, perhaps the most recent major news item in this speculative space was the 15 March 2025 press release which asserted that a city has been located beneath the Khafre Pyramid on the Giza plateau:

 

SAR Scan of Khafre Pyramid Shows Huge Underground Structures by Greg Reese

One of the greatest mysteries just got bigger

Read on Substack

 

You can see more from Jonathan Evatt: 'What's Really Happening Beneath the Giza Plateau?'

This talk echoes long-standing occult whispers of Thoth's so-called Halls of Amenti, a hidden city beneath the Egyptian pyramids. Or was it another dimension or realm? This is a place where the concealed history of humankind, immortality, cloning, "secrets of the stars, the blueprints of the universe" are inscribed, it is said, in marble walls and pillars. That story criss-crosses with rumours of Plato and Atlantis, aliens and the New Age; check out more here, here, here and here. You can watch many videos relating to Manly P. Hall's lectures and writings on Thoth / Hermes here.

The March 15 fringe academic findings are comparatively sober. They maintain that there are columns beneath the pyramid which stretch down two kilometres:

"Corrado Malanga, from the University of Pisa, and Filippo Biondi, involved in radar and remote sensing research with the University of Strathclyde, published peer-reviewed research in 2022 via MDPI, entitled, 'Synthetic Aperture Radar Doppler Tomography Reveals Details of Undiscovered High-Resolution Internal Structure of the Great Pyramid of Giza.'

Their research was conducted using SAR data, Synthetic Aperture Radar, along with proprietary software, developed by ... Biondi, that transforms the radar signals into phononic information which allows for the detection of millimetric vibrations. This cutting-edge technology is capable of revealing underground structures invisible to traditional methods, and revealed internal structures never seen before."

More:

• Schumacher, T., Pugacheva, P., Allam, H. et al. "Confirmation of the ScanPyramids North Face Corridor in the Great Pyramid of Giza using multi-modal image fusion from three non-destructive testing techniques." Sci Rep 15, 9275 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-91115-8 (18 March 2025)
• Trevor Grassi, Facebook (20 March 2025): THE KHAFRE PROJECT ... is REAL! [Updated post as of March 27] HERE IS THE THE CONFERENCE, with English subtitles. You don't have to believe me; the team is speaking now... Initial hour long release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDpdJFlLpRE Here is the FULL CONFERENCE, with English subtitles - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM8vzUUZdVM A friend,The team has also created an official facebook page with many new images: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574443323296 Here is a short interview I have released with Jahannah James setting the matter straight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuyYGdfWw48 Here is another interview I gave with Mike Ricksecker: https://www.youtube.com/live/Gt7MeqFoJPA Here is my super deep dive with Jay Anderson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhT6Vd9vO3U&t=3336s Here the team's first English interview with Jay Anderson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b513P5g7XmQ Here is their second English interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9ISC9ji-WA And here is their third [English] interview with me ... : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK3bjfxLM9s Original Post: For the record, if people are now looking to my feed here, for more information, yes; I was the source of this document and images. It is the project abstract, given to me by the Khafre Project Team; Corrado Malanga, Filippo Biondi, Armando Mei, and Nicole Ciccolo. (It is a separate document from their 2022 report on the Great Pyramid.) I've been helping them to help get their great discovery out to the world, and they gave me permission to release this. Their 2022 paper is peer reviewed, and they will release a written report on this one, but not until probably late June. It is in the works, I have confirmed. I have also released some major disclosures about the Giza Underworld, on my youtube channel, which are directly related to this new discovery and the Italian team. ... I am trying my hardest to get out a video to explain it all; how it was released, and why no one can find the source webpage. Those images were released by me, right here on this feed, on the day of the conference (15th). ... This discovery is REAL, and everything will be explained completely in time, rest assured! I feel completely honored to be the person who broke this story, and for the record, I had NO IDEA that was going to be the case ... . If you are interested in learning more about how this new innovation on traditional SAR scanning, which we are calling the 'Biondi Protocol', the ONLY source you should look to is Manu Seyfzadeh's fb page, where he has been explaining it in detail with many excellent posts. Manu was mentioned by name in the press conference, and he is now working to provide the [necessary] material to allow a secondary team to reproduce the results of the Khafre Project, for an unbiased confirmation of the method. See his profile here: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100016513153080. 
• Related book, Under The Sphinx.

See all my posts in the series, Awaken the Amnesiacs.

Pivot Point for the Great Awakening: Unconscious Collectivism

Fake political news is growing, so how can you spot the misinformation? (26 January 2021). Video Source: Youtube.

I have a new post up at The Dragonfly:

The Miracle of Context
It concerns how one can recognize hidden truths in the post-truth world, where information is controlled, manipulated, denied, erased, and suppressed.

Leonardo DiCaprio Deep Fake Face (21 January 2021). Video Source: Youtube. 

While there are legitimate concerns over technological manipulation and dissemination of unverified information, the establishment are making a mistake if this is the sword they want to die on. 

Our leaders seek to monopolize the right to discuss information publicly, based on their power and expertise. As I have said in a previous post:

"It is not good enough, in the Age of Information, to state something and be believed just because one is authoritative. Purveyors of information must be telling the truth."

If our public figures abuse their power to hide information which challenges that power, they will be exposed. Of course, they will crack down on the free Internet before that happens.

I will soon be exploring practical responses to censorship for my $1 patrons on Patreon, with reports on how you can invest in decentralized social media platforms.

Become a Patron!

Whether truth is shared inside networks or is observed in the real world, it has a meaning which cannot be controlled or measured. Secrets cannot really be hidden; forbidden knowledge cannot be eradicated. This point has come to a head partly because the Internet takes us into virtual reality, which is a platform for Carl Jung's collective unconscious. We don't need to know something consciously in order to be aware of it unconsciously. And that knowing extends beyond our own individual unconsciousnesses into a collective, objective reality. This is definitely not the type of collectivism that the technocrats want!

The Principle of Causality Confronts the Principle of Synchronicity

Unconscious collectivism is a serious problem for materialists and rationalists. The modern period taught us that the principle of causality provides the foundation of scientific thought. It describes linear, Cartesian consciousness: I think, therefore I am. It is the scheme for testable reality, derived from the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It reveals the world as discovered by the rational mind, awakened within a limited consciousness, bounded by the experimental framework of science.

Image Source: Wiki.

But can you know something without knowing it or measuring it? Can you know something without thinking? Do our unconscious selves, particularly when they act in the realm of the collective unconscious, have autonomy and independence? Can they fight for freedom of knowing inside that realm? Are those who are still asleep the unexpected foot soldiers of the Great Awakening? 

In the information wars over the past decade, battle lines were drawn between awakened parties, dark and light, battling over unawakened sheep. This is why you have seen stern warnings to the public from the mainstream media, celebrities, and politicians not to look at dangerous information. They are saying: "Don't look at that information, because it might wake you up."

This is also why you have seen frantic appeals from the alternative media to the public to wake up. I posted a message along these lines last year: Wake Up, You're Next. I also explored this issue in my Awaken the Amnesiacs series.

But perhaps the truth is equally a force in the unconscious and conscious realms. This is a revolutionary idea: maybe you don't have to be awake to be part of the Great Awakening. Maybe the sleeper doesn't have to awaken to defend the truth of the human condition. All the world's sleepers might be a bit like the dead army in the Lord of the Rings.

If anything would make the occult controllers say, "Uh oh," it would be that.

According to Carl Jung (1875-1961), the laws of the universe do not work solely according to cause and effect. 21st century experience confirms Jung's ideas. His principle of synchronicity provides an alternative to the principle of causality, where the former is defined by 'meaningfulness.' Meaningful synchronicities are alarming to empiricists, because they are unverifiable. They exist outside conscious thought, and they reside in the realm of the collective unconscious, that is, in the soul spaces of memory, myths, madness, death, and dreams. They are fundamentally uncontrollable.

Image Source: 4chan.

For example, I don't need to explain why I've juxtaposed the 'Free Hugs' bunker photo above with the Finger Lakes New York map. If you don't know why, it really doesn't matter whether you search for the reason or not. I don't even need to share the material here at all. The information, and its meaning, are already out there and have become independent memes. Both are affecting your reality now, whether you are conscious of them or not.

This will be a news flash as much to the alt media as it is to those who thrive on secrets in darkness: information does not behave according to simplistic, linear, cause-and-effect, manipulatable patterns. Truth can be suppressed; but it still affects reality and everyone knows this, even if they remain unconscious about that fact.

In George Orwell's book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, oligarchical collectivism triumphs because Orwell believed that political realities depended on conscious knowing. Once truth could be eradicated inside the mind of the last radical individual, freedom was surgically removed from the human condition. This outcome presumes that there is no higher order which could reveal itself to human minds trapped inside a technocratic political system.

Orwell was wrong. Even in a completely censored, totalitarian system, the stars would align to point the ways to truth, and the truth would exert a force of its own accord which could not be controlled. Truth arrives in surprising, non-linear, lateral ways, interstitially, through surrealism and synchronicities.

Image Source: World Wide Weber.

Image Source: Dream, Live, Achieve.

Image Source: AZ Quotes.

Image Source: Quote Fancy.

In Jung's concept of synchronicity, events may appear in parallel and not be causally connected. The connectedness occurs instead through higher forms of meaning. Meaningfulness has already been demonstrated online as an independent online force through memes. The meme wars of the 2016 US election showed how memes magically connect people. Memes spontaneously generate independent, powerful meanings inside decentralized, anonymous networked systems.

Synchronicities cannot be assessed by scientific method and cannot be tested empirically. They are coincidences which exist outside the probabilities of chance. Jung described them as "temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events."

It appears that social media's inventors tried to harness the power of synchronicities. Algorithms on social media guide people so that they never see anything or anyone challenging. That false harmony is an artificial version of smooth, synchronized awareness.

The same goes for advanced marketing, in which search engines, AI, IoT, and surveillance mechanisms work together to present us with fake synchronicities. For example, I may talk on the phone about buying dog food. The next day my computer, which was in the same room, begins showing me dog food ads. What a (false) coincidence!

These artificial echo chambers rapidly become bell jars. They initially work, but later they drive people crazy, because deep down, everyone knows something is wrong with them. They are a poor replacement for real synchronicities. It is right at that point of madness that the collective unconscious will depart social media, aka big tech's fake consciousness construct. In short, we will connect to the truth, and respond to it, whether we know it or not. That is how real synchronicities, as natural phenomena, could mobilize the collective unconscious in the Information Age. 

Awaken the Amnesiacs 13: Wake Up, You're Next

Wake Up Outta Your Sleep (3 May 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

The Technological Revolution stands at a crossroads. The leaders of the technocratic movement are using the global population to enter the heart of darkness. My Awaken the Amnesiacs series concerns the ways in which the technocratic movement has exploited human slumber, both the collective unconscious and a deliberately-imposed unconsciousness, forced upon our daily awareness.

Wake Up, You're Next

Dear members of the global public, you must wake up. You must heed the warnings. You must not sleepwalk into the technocratic heart of darkness. Authoritative voices will tell you to trust authority under the guise of the left-right division. They will tell you that believing them is part of your personal identity. You are intelligent, well-educated, prosperous, respectable, well-traveled, civilized, and liberal.

Make no mistake. The technocracy will use these slogans, but it is about being none of these things. Stop believing authorities, just because they are mainstream and official. It is not good enough, in the Age of Information, to state something and be believed just because one is authoritative. Purveyors of information must be telling the truth.

Nor is the current debate solely about COVID19, lockdowns, or a mandatory vaccine. This is not about whether a citizen is personally 'respectable' or 'intelligent,' or not. This is not about what other people will think if you change your mind. It is not even about the virulence of the virus and whether good citizens obey lockdowns. Leave all smug dismissals and judgements of others at the door. This is about whether you and everyone else will be subjugated to technocratic totalitarianism. It is about the implementation of the human body and brain as the new technocratic operating system. This is not a game.

If you agree with the mainstream media and official line because you think that Bill Gates is a selfless great humanitarian and his critics are ignorant, stupid, and left behind, impoverished racists, then you are reacting based on your social, educational, political, and professional conditioning.

For your own sake and for of all humankind, step back from politics. Even step back from the pandemic. Investigate the COVID19 question purely in terms of what is happening in the technological space. Look at what is being done in that space. Begin researching the proposals and projects which are bring brought forward now, particularly in the areas of transhumanism, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and nanotechnology. Listen to the years of speeches, made by tech leaders. Listen to the words they have used, the plans and promises they have made. Start with the fact that Bill Gates called his vaccine, "the Final Solution." That was not a mistake. Wake up.

Do not only consider the sources you usually consult. Examine the companies involved. Read their Websites. Do not do this to criticize the anti-vaxxers or the moronic, racist populists and conservatives. Stop relying on outdated political ideologies and rhetoric, which were designed to enslave you and keep you asleep, trapped in the false emancipation of hating the other half of the political population. Look into these questions now, as if for the first time, because if you do not, your own life, as an individual, will be destroyed.

What Americans MUST Remember Once the Dust Settles... (4 May 2020). Video Source: Youtube.

Pitted against these authoritative voices are alternative voices, like the Youtuber above. It is not these contending mainstream and alternative media actors who will profit or lose, based on your decision over whom to believe - it is you, directly. Do your research. Read and listen widely, not just in the places you are accustomed to seek information. You must wake up.

Imagine the picture presented in Robert Browning's 1844 poem, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, about which I have blogged here.

Childe Roland is a poem about a knight, cut off from his company, all of whom have been picked off, one by one. This knight is the last of his companions. In despair and isolation, he comes to a crossroads, where a smirking, sinister guardian of the road encourages the knight to take the wrong turn: "My first thought was, he lied in every word." The knight ends up at the Dark Tower, and all around him, there are ear-splitting warnings, screaming at him. He is deaf and blind, but in a sudden moment, he hears the alarms and recognizes that he has nearly wandered into the heart of darkness.

Into the Heart of Darkness

The Heart of Darkness scene from King Kong (2005) © Universal Pictures. Reproduced under Fair Use. Video Source: Youtube.

As the technocrats push humanity toward the heart of darkness, at double time, and drive us forward with crowbars and sticks, we may well ask: why do they keep going? They know that they are pushing everything past the point of no return. Some of these moguls and tech designers have even had moments of doubt. Why are they so convinced that there are problems, yes, but we must do this anyway? Hurry, hurry, hurry, we must do this now. There is no time to debate. There is no time to pause and contemplate. Their breathless rush is a warning sign that something is wrong.

Political and media authorities, and the tech leaders behind them, do this on purpose so that the global public cannot wake up and question them. We will be given no time or space to consider whether or not the technocratic course and transhumanist cybernetic immersion is healthy and justified. The time to consider these questions was in the independent media, from 2005 to 2019. If you did not use that time wisely, then you will have to wake up quickly, and you must wake up now.

Elon Musk liking a #Qanon tweet completes his demise. pic.twitter.com/zN1AyftNQt

— Sean Walsh (@seanow18) May 4, 2020

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided All Cutscenes (Game Movie) 1080p HD (22 August 2016). Video Source: Youtube.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Full Game Walkthrough - Longplay No Commentary (PS4) (24 August 2016). Video Source: Youtube.

See all my posts in the series, Awaken the Amnesiacs.

See all my posts on Epidemics here and here.

In case of censorship and you find my blogs, Histories of Things to Come and The Dragonfly closed or restricted, please refer to my Vocal Media blog and my home Website, LCDOUGLASS.COM, where you can join my newsletter at the bottom of the page. If my gmail goes down, you can DM me here.

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Politics, Ideology and the Technosphere 2: Anarchists and Luciferians

Image Source: The Transmetropolitan Review via The Conversation.

This year, I am presenting a series on ideology and the technosphere. The series rejects mainstream political discourse and returns to first principles, historical background, and online trends to deconstruct the current evolution of politics.

Thus far and in today's post, I have identified the following components of tech-oriented politics:

• New political terms, like the Red Pill and Black Pill
• The weaponization of political virtues, morals, ideals, and values, leading to inversions of those values in practice
• Internet dynamics and unpredictability
• New moral, spiritual, or ethical frameworks of common reference

Positive Values, Negative Outcomes: Our Inverted World

Political virtues, moral labels, and positive platforms contrast with real outcomes, whether in everyday reality or online practice. There is a vast gap between what people say they are doing politically and what actually happens. On the Internet, this gap is exposed and described, especially among the alt media and conspiracy theorists, as corruption.

Awaken the Amnesiacs 12: Kevin Spacey's Fourth Wall Christmas

Image Source: pinterest.

On Christmas Eve, the American actor Kevin Spacey posted a sociopathic video, entitled KTWK, on Youtube. He appeared in character as House of Cards' Jack Underwood and uttered veiled threats at unnamed nemeses.

KTWK (24 December 2019). Video Source: Youtube.

Our Father, Who Art in Silicon: Censorship of Social Media and the War over the Virtual World

A livecam (here) constantly broadcasts footage of the Centennial Light, a light bulb which has been burning since 1901. The bulb, located in a fire station in Livermore, California, USA, is taken as a proof of planned obsolescence in industry. Image Source: mnn.

Do you know who you are? One can define oneself in terms of the past, present, or future. Tech companies are currently censoring social media to produce a toxic, Orwellian 'now,' in which past content is being erased on the grounds that it is not authoritative. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the main character, Winston Smith, is a 'historian' in that nightmare world. Or rather, he is what historians will become: a censor. Winston Smith erases history and creates new versions of it, from one hundred years ago, right down to yesterday.

In anticipation of the American 2020 election, among other agendas, tech corporations are becoming Orwellian censors. In the past month on Youtube, Google has begun weirdly removing date stamps from videos. Today, Youtube will begin erasing past content of which they disapprove.

Awaken the Amnesiacs 11: Depart from the Camera Obscura

A natural instance of a camera obscura: an image of the New Royal Palace at Prague Castle projected onto an attic wall by a hole in the tile roofing (2 August 2011). Image Source: Gampe/Wiki.

For this weekend's solstice, the blog journeys into the darkness, the blind spot. Try this experiment. If you are left or liberal, try watching or reading conservative news and alt-media for a week. If you are conservative or libertarian, force yourself to listen to or read liberal-left media for a week.

The holidays are a good time to do this, when many people encounter friends and family they haven't seen in awhile, and have conversations which reveal uncomfortable political differences. Have compassion for your fellow human beings at holiday dinner tables, because we are all equally hammered by divisive and misleading propaganda.

If you follow the 'wrong' politicized narrative for a few days, you will notice that people are being fed the exact same story with which you may be familiar, but the players are changed.

Can Energy Be Moral?

Scientists have begun to prove that quantum entanglement can be demonstrated at macro levels. Could the same be said for the observer effect? Image Source: Develop Good Habits.

To my readers, I have a new post up at Vocal Media, concerning 2018 scientific research which has proven that quantum entanglement can be taken to the macro level:

How Many Saints Are There in Outer Space?

In that post, I argue that the endgame of the current Tech Revolution is to reach a Kardashev Civilization Level I, in which a tech-harmonized global society would be able to consume and harness the energy of the entire planet.

Black Friday and the Aesthetics of Fascism

Window-mounted cat beds, Amazon review: "It's been nine months and Tucker still loves this bed ten times more than anything else I've bought him." Image Source: Buzzfeed.

In North America, Thanksgiving weekend is the cornerstone of consumption-based capitalism. Thanksgiving is celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November, this year on November 22nd, followed by Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which have become pre-Christmas discounted shopping bonanzas. Stores are selling everything you could imagine, down to the window-mounted cat bed. This weekend is lucrative enough to tempt merchants in other countries to use the same gimmick to boost their fourth quarter sales.

Kohler Pedestal Sink. These sinks retail at Home Depot in the USA for USD $600-$800. Image Source: Miley Photos.

Essex Metal 24" Console Bathroom Sink with Overflow by Cheviot. Regular priced at Wayfair for CAD $830.25, on sale on Black Friday for CAD $584.99. Image Source: Cheviot.

Waldorf Ceramic 24" Wall Mount Bathroom Sink with Overflow by WS Bath Collections. Regular priced at Wayfair for CAD $1109.99, on sale on Black Friday for CAD $849.99. Image Source: homeclick.

This week, I saw some Black Friday examples which reminded me of an earlier commentary, Fascism at a Hairpin Turn. In a series of posts on this blog, I am considering how 1940s' fascism became a part of modern global culture in ways which are poorly understood. Above, are sinks by Kohler, Cheviot and WS Bath Collections. Kohler Co. was founded in Wisconsin in 1873 by Austrian Americans; it employs a sharp German aesthetic in its high end lavatory designs.

I was struck by the aesthetic similarity between today's sinks and 1940s' institutional sinks. Below, are sinks in an autopsy room and in another room from the French concentration camp near Strasbourg, Natzweiler-Struthof, where human experiments were conducted.

Sinks at Natzweiler-Struthof. Images Source: La Vie est Bonne.

Of course, sinks made outside fascist Europe in the 1940s would also resemble today's designs and their modernist style could be pre-World War II, derived from interwar Bauhaus. When I mentioned this similarity between past and present, my friend, C., said,

"The fascist aesthetic ... merged what ... [the fascists] wanted of [the] modern aesthetic (some aspects of architecture and NO aspect of the fine arts) and aspects of the neoclassic as well as empire styles, both of which were adopted as official styles by Napoleon's ... régime. ... Makes one think that everything that happened[,] including sinks, New York skyscrapers, and concentration camps were all a part of leaving the feudal system."

The Nazis definitely took that white porcelain neoclassical look and made it theirs. Going forward from 1945, there is no way a designer could be ignorant of that aesthetic reference when creating a consumer product in that style. This is why it was startling to see Nazi-esque sinks on sale on this Black Friday at Home Depot. I can't say that the example of the sinks proves anything in terms of demonstrable historical aesthetic lineage because I have not researched that. But it made me ask why and how that aesthetic has been absorbed into mainstream North American culture and values.

Hallowe'en Countdown 2018: They Live ... Don't They?

Still from They Live (1988). Note the book behind the hero: On ESP by Edgar Cayce, which you can read for free online here. All stills and film © Universal Pictures. Reproduced under Fair Use. Image Source: IMDB.

On this blog, I have written about poverty and homelessness, the destruction of the middle classes, and how conspiracy theories provide dramatic and supernatural explanations for growing social inequality.

In 1988, horror film director John Carpenter made a film which tackled all these ideas. It was entitled They Live. Carpenter intended his film to be an attack on the Reagan era and 1980s' conspicuous consumption. The film suggests something prevalent in Millennial conspiracists' circles, namely, that the establishment élites are pawns of alien overlords who conceal their true appearance and feed off the energy of the impoverished common people. This is a metaphor for social alienation, racism, and socio-economic distress. But the film raises an additional question as to why They Live presented a story which many netizens now believe to be literally true.

Fascism at a Hairpin Turn

The undercut was an Edwardian haircut which remained popular through the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. It became the iconic male haircut of Nazi fascism. It did not become widely popular again until the 2010s. Today, it is sported in different variations by hipster urbanites on the left and the right, with only some individuals aware of the hairstyle's political message. Image Source: The Bold Italic.

Social control. Censorship. Totalitarianism. They won't arrive in the 20th century varieties we expect. Nouveau Nazis have appeared in dozens of movies, including Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984); V for Vendetta (2005); The Man in the High Castle (2015-present); The Handmaid's Tale (2017-present), and Fahrenheit 451 (2018).

Greater Germanic Reich | Man in the High Castle (5 March 2018). Video Source: Youtube.

An alt-historical adaptation of Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle (1962), produced by Ridley Scott, considers what America would be like if the Axis Powers won World War II. The new adaptation of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) depicts fascists as rigid, hypocritical, psycho-Christians, who impose a violent, patriarchal and puritanical monoculture, viciously suppress women's rights, and divide American society into uniformed, hierarchical, militaristic-gender castes.

The Handmaid’s Tale Trailer (Official) (26 April 2017). Video Source: Youtube.

Elisabeth Moss Describes A 'Fictional' Totalitarian, Right-Wing Regime (21 April 2017). Video Source: Youtube.

Because of these cultural representations, we expect totalitarianism to dress itself in brownshirts and jack boots. The subtext in liberal adaptations is that Donald Trump's America is an alt-right neo-Nazi régime.

Neo-Nazis have certainly reemerged during Trump's administration more boldly than they have in the previous sixty years. Yet fascism is also exploding into the mainstream from other political quarters. It must be combated at all costs, but to do that, you have to understand what fascism is and how it works. That requires recognizing the menace you can't see coming, as much as the threat you're sure you know.

Lessons from Building the Outer Brain

The NYT reported that smart assistants can be (re-)programmed by ultrasonic signals, which are inaudible to their owners. Image Source: NYT / Lynn Scurfield.

There have been several headlines about AI and robots in recent weeks. All of them involve a gap between what we want to see in technology (and in ourselves) and what we don't want to see.

Losing Our Addiction

Mark Zuckerberg in 2009: Facebook privacy is central - BBC News (21 March 2018). Video Source: Youtube.

The endgame of social media is becoming clear. The exciting 2000s and early 2010s were the heyday of the Creative Commons. A beautiful ideal established in 2001, the Creative Commons refers to the free-sharing of information, the democratization of data.

The Commons made way for cyber-variants of political ideologies, which attempted to describe and defend new virtual freedoms. Social media seemed to offer soapboxes and development venues for tech-savvy individuals. Some of these individuals became hacktivists and citizen journalists, who used search engines and video platforms like Youtube to expose the power structures of the world. They fell for the tempting promise that the little person could finally be empowered, independent, and free. Having identified themselves in the system as potential leaders, they are now being censored. Each new liberty in this testing ground has led social media users ever deeper into a matrix of control.

It is evident that early Millennial spaces of free discussion, sexual libertinism, and politically liberated behaviour, alongside honeypot offers of cheap hardware and open source toolkits, were always controlled environments. Think of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Google and even the chans! - as Petri dishes and you start to get a better idea of what has been happening. As I stated in an earlier post about the Dark Web, anonymity is a myth. These free spaces were merely opportunities to gather vast amounts of human data for future AI systems, dedicated to social control and surveillance.

"Sean Parker, 38, claims social media sites like Facebook are 'exploiting vulnerabilities in human psychology' and said social media pioneers like himself 'understood this consciously and we did it anyway.'": Facebook founder warns of social media addiction (10 November 2017). Video Source: Youtube/ABC News.

Last year, VICE talked to Google ex-designer and ethicist Tristan Harris. Harris confirmed that social media platforms were deliberately designed to addict their users and employed tricks used in casinos, such as intermittent variable rewards. Social media platforms use social reciprocity, social approval, fear of missing out, and fear of social exclusion to trick users into sharing their personal data and their emotional sensibilities around that data. It's all done in a climate of fake positivity, driven by an undercurrent of addiction, social threat, and fear.

Social media platforms also employ principles of deception because they only offer users certain courses of behaviour, with few considering the choices which were not made available. You can read Harris's essays on this topic here.

Dopamine, an "AI platform" to engineer addictiveness. Saddest thing I've read about today. If you work in AI, you have de facto some power over others, so remember to always exercise this power responsibly. https://t.co/tcT7t1QETc

— François Chollet (@fchollet) November 8, 2017

Facebook's ex-president Sean Parker confirmed the founding principles of the platform in a series of interviews last year; from Slate:

"The thought process was all about, 'How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?', he said. 'And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever, and that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you more likes and comments. It’s a social validation feedback loop. … You’re exploiting a vulnerabilty in human psychology.'"

Parker's revelations mean that in the 2009 interview at the top of this post, Mark Zuckerberg was outright lying to the BBC about Facebook's endgame. Today's Silicon Valley marketing is reminiscent of cigarette ads from the 1950s through the 1980s, which deliberately misled consumers about the terrible health effects of smoking.

I Love My Microchip

The new slavery: employers are now microchipping employees the way a veterinarian would microchip the family pet. Image Source: Mark Gasson/BBC.

I Love My Microchip: Employers are now micro-chipping their employees and the BBC thinks this is a good idea.

Predicting the biometric future of 2017 in 2007: NBC Prediction That We Will All Have an RFID Chip Under Our Skin by 2017 (28 May 2010). Video Source: Youtube.

The LA Times reports on BD EpiCenter software, which "provides advanced data management for all BD Microbiology systems" and confirms that the Internet of Things will incorporate biological entities:

"'The biggest benefit, I think, is convenience,' said Patrick Mesterton, co-founder and chief executive of Epicenter. As a demonstration, he unlocks a door merely by waving near it. 'It basically replaces a lot of things you have, other communication devices, whether it be credit cards or keys.' ... 'I mean, people have been implanting things into their body, like pacemakers and stuff to control your heart,' he said. 'That's a way, way more serious thing than having a small chip that can actually communicate with devices.'"

On 2 August 2017, Dave Williams, a Mozilla systems engineer in the UK, explained the benefits to the BBC:

"'I have the world's worst memory,' says Williams. The fact that he now has a gadget on him at all times that opens doors and unlocks his computer — one that he can’t leave at home or forget — is a huge advantage. 'It's also fun to give someone my number and email address by touching their phone to my hand.'"

Microchipping is recommended for commuters so they don't have to buy transit tickets. Image Source: Independent.

Swedish rail operator accepts microchip tickets (16 June 2017). Video Source: Youtube.

The claims that microchips will be used to monitor public health, improve workplace efficiency, and enhance tech users' convenience distract target audiences from the fact that microchips are the foundational element of a new slavery. Soon, being microchipped will be a prerequisite for being employed. Not only is it possible that you won't get hired without a microchip, you may not even be able to travel to work without a chip in your hand.

In past centuries, slaves were branded like livestock to show ownership. For centuries, serfs and slaves fought to become free citizens, demanding constitutions, democratic elections, and civil rights. The resolution to that journey is to be microchipped, live in a faux-democracy, and await World War III in a 5G supercity.

Awaken the Amnesiacs 9: A True Mirror of a Better World

Image Source: Ideas That Will Change The World.

The preface to this post is a new piece I have published at Vocal Media:

Why People Fear Success:

Because They Don't Want to Make the World Worse

Part of my series, Awaken the Amnesiacs, involves coming to terms with life in a surveillance state, where privacy has been lost. My earlier post, Reflection Reversal, introduced the idea that computer screens and monitors act like mirrors which turn viewers into objects, rather than subjects.

The core of this idea is the fact that we think we are in control of technology. Tools are objects and we are subjects. Right? We think we are using computers to empower and express ourselves. But there is a warning sign in our addiction to technology.

Our technology is constantly subliminally objectifying us, enslaving us, and siphoning off our energy. This unconscious inversion of individual integrity is creating underlying cognitive dissonance, tension, anxiety, and stress. As a result, we are absolutely convinced that 'something is wrong' with the whole world. There is endless harping, conflict and confusion over 'who is to blame' for this grating distress. It never occurs to us that 'what is wrong' is the lens we are using to view reality, not reality itself, nor the people [insert annoying/threatening group here] who bother us.

Thus, part of resolving 'what is wrong' with the world is not to: ramp up our attacks on the annoying people who bother us; or to withdraw into depressive, individual introspection; or to get lost in wacky spiritual practices or cults; or to become engrossed in conspiracy theories as a comforting alt-reality; or to lose yourself in virtual reality environments like Facebook or video games; or to heal what is wrong by self-sacrificing to aid the world and help others; or to immerse yourself  completely in the real world, like work, job, bank account, and hard, cold facts no matter what ...

Part of resolving 'what is wrong' with the world involves reconsidering the art of perception and self-perception in the turbulent times of the nascent surveillance state.

So how should we define ourselves? As we see ourselves, as others see us, or as technology sees us? The conventional self-help wisdom these days is to define ourselves from the inside out, not the outside in. We are counseled to know ourselves, and to go forth in the world in an authentic and grounded way.

The Limits of Consciousness

Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality | Anil Seth (18 July 2017). Video Source: Youtube.

Good luck with that! Before you can get past the social contract, the job, the expectations, the cv - before you can tame your ego and become a soulful human being through internal consciousness and then try to awaken beyond consciousness - and before you can even get to the fact that computers are constantly undermining that process - there is another problem.

Consciousness -- the final frontier | Dada Gunamuktananda | TEDxNoosa 2014 (16 April 2014). Video Source: Youtube.

The True Mirror

We almost never see ourselves accurately, at least physically. Because we primarily have used mirrors to see ourselves, we do not see ourselves correctly, nor do we know how others see us.

Robbie Burns Day just passed, and the great Scottish poet wrote in his 1786 poem, To a Louse:

"in the original Scottish, 'O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us!' Or, in modern English, 'Oh would some Power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us.'"

Interstellar Hystery

"This artist’s impression shows the first interstellar asteroid: `Oumuamua. This unique object was discovered on 19 October 2017 by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawai`i. Subsequent observations from ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and other observatories around the world show that it was travelling through space for millions of years before its chance encounter with our star system. `Oumuamua seems to be a dark red highly-elongated metallic or rocky object, about 400 metres long, and is unlike anything normally found in the Solar System." Image Source: ESO/M. Kornmesser; image published 20 November 2017.

Since the end of October, astronomers have been buzzing about the first ever observed interstellar visitor to our solar system. Jointly confirmed by ten observatories as it was momentarily captured by the gravity of our sun, this asteroid has arrived from elsewhere in our galaxy. The International Astronomical Union has now given this rock a name, 1I/2017 U1 ('Oumuamua - pronunciation here). The name is a Hawaiian word meaning “a messenger from afar arriving first.” The asteroid was spotted on 19 October 2017 by Robert Weryk with the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) telescope at the University of Hawaii.

Video Source: Guardian.

What struck me, looking at its path, is how strict and staid the average person's view still is of the cosmos. That is, on the unconscious level, our view of reality is shaped by the order and predictability of our tiny solar system - sun plus planets on a plane, the night sky punctuated by familiar constellations. The visit of 'Oumuamua is a reminder of the scope of space and its unpredictability. Of course, thousands of these interstellar objects regularly enter our system, and our limited knowledge of them is symptomatic of our level of science and technology, rather than their absence.

"A/2017 U1 is probably of interstellar origin. This NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech diagram shows its path of travel from above the plane of our solar system, around the sun and past earth at 44 kilometres per second. It was closest to the sun on Sept. 9." Image Source: NASA JPL/Caltech via Weather Network.

"This diagram shows asteroid 'Oumuamua's path through the solar system. An analysis of its path shows that it is coming from the direction of where the star Vega is now, although Vega would not have been at that location millions of years ago. Now that it is leaving, it is headed for the constellation Pegasus. A new report, written using observations made using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, is now providing even more information about this asteroid." Image Source: ESO/K. Meech et al. via Weather Network.