Illegal Ideas
The Art of Thinking 1.
In this article, we will investigate a few taboos. Attention! An investigation is not an allegation. Just a 360 degree curiosity. Yes, we will go behind the altar and look in the cupboard where the vessels are kept. Is there really some mystery here, or is it just the priest murmuring magic words?
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Let me quickly wave around the disclaimer: We are not talking about 9/11. The fall of the Twin Towers is merely symbolic. While the subject is interesting, we are interested in more general things: the nature of social reality and our own mental processes. 9/11 is emblematic, partly because it is so dramatic, and also because it is the subject of very sharp and controversial opinions. So many questions could be asked about 9/11, but let us limit ourselves to, say, seven.
1. Can a skyscraper with a reinforced steel frame completely collapse as a result of an aluminium aircraft being flown into the top? 2. Can a 47 storey building close by collapse vertically, in seconds, just from the heat? 3. Why was the molten iron immediately sold to China? 4. Why was the commission of inquiry set up fifteen months after the event? 5. How can it be that the president of the biggest superpower, instead of investigating the attack, is declaring war on television the day after it happened? 6. Why were Afghanistan and Iraq attacked when fifteen of the nineteen alleged perpetrators were Saudi nationals? 7. Is it really possible that the most heavily guarded building in the world, the Pentagon, could be hit by a hijacked commercial plane? 7a) (This is part of the previous one:) How many high-ranking generals were fired from the U.S. Air Force as a result?
God, you must be a conspiracy theorist, or worse, an agent of Путин! Who knows? These are not arguments, however, but disqualification of the questioner. In the Middle Ages, they would have said that someone was possessed by the devil. He had planted sinful ideas in his head and he needed to be exorcised. I have actually only asked some questions. While the answers are quite interesting, let’s not focus on them, just observe that certain topics cannot be seriously raised in public discourse. If you raise them, you have become persona non grata, automatically excluded from the group of normal people. So these ideas are, in a quite real sense, forbidden.
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There are several ways to ban ideas. One fairly effective method is to dump you into the slammer for uttering them. This only bans collective thinking; the idea may appear in individual minds, but not in the collective consciousness of society. This rather simplistic method, formerly in regular use in the Eastern Bloc, has recently come back into fashion. We think we have freedom of speech, but just try to say in this Free World that the minister is a lying stinky animal and you get a suit as big as The Andromeda Galaxy. Even though everyone knows the minister is a lying stinky animal. (Excuse me, ferrets.)
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Cancel culture is a recent example of this phenomenon. Saying that sending missiles from thousands of miles is more cowardly than flying a kamikaze? Mephisto! That there is such a thing as biological sex? Lucifer!! Having someone ‘misinform’ the public about vaccination? Beelzebub!!!! This person is obviously colluding with Satan thus they need to be fired from their job, banned from all public forums, a sack pulled over their head, their name erased from history.
Cancel culture is connected to the next type of thought ban, social pressure. When they look at you so disapprovingly when you say those things that you stop. We humans are group creatures and the thoughts of others strongly determine our reality. “What they will think of me if I think something like that?” “I will be rejected, ridiculed, stigmatized.” Self-censorship is a mild case. Oh, I’ll keep that to myself so I don’t look stupid. This can happen individually or culturally. In Transylvania, if there is a Romanian in the group, you cannot question the Daco-Romanian theory1, because it is taboo. Romanians have been here for millenia. Alternatives are not to be brought up.
The more serious case is when you suppress your heretical thoughts. Decent people don't go naked in the street, don’t ponder if policemen could be clever criminals or if it’s the computer virus protection companies that manufacture the computer viruses. Oh, I’ll banish those sinful ideas from my head! What’s in the arena tonight? Have the new gladiators arrived?
There are also times when we don't dare to think something because if it was true, the world would be too frightening to live in. Is it possible that in a so-called democracy, some part of the state organization could carry out a terrorist attack against its own citizens? No, it cannot be, I’ll quickly forget about it.
Source: bess.hamiti@gmail.com, Pixabay
Keep in mind: we're still not claiming anything, just leaving all options open. Mass hypnosis works the other way around, too: If our peer group believes that only the CIA or the NSA or the Tel Aviv lodge could have blown up those towers, peer pressure will thrust our minds in that direction. We will only consider information that seems to support it, close our ears to arguments on the opposite side, explain them away, get outraged by them etc. Social media echo chambers have cemented already existing sectarian camps who are no longer geographically separated. Your neighbour may watch completely different news channels where different ideas are banned.
The internet has brought an unprecedented amount of information to a humanity not particularly well equipped to process it. I think some parts of this are positive. Earlier it was just a few central trumpets: newpapers, radio, TV. Now anyone with a computer can disseminate observations, opinions, knowledge and news. But recently more and more of this info is reaching us via platforms run by a few giant companies and it has again become easier to turn off the tap. What used to be done by censors is now increasingly done by Big Tech. Algorithms simply filter out unwanted information. It doesn’t come up in the search engine, period. What you don't know about you don't miss.
Information that may lead to unwanted thoughts can also be turned off by more direct means. A relatively new buzzword is ‘Fake news’. Quite an interesting term, suggesting that there are ‘real news’ and ‘fake news’. How is this different from heresy? Different power groups on Earth have different definitions of 'fake news' — it was fascinating to watch this word being taken up by all sides. Obviously there is a lot of nonsense and deliberate misinformation circulating on the net, but what authority is given the Holy Mission of deciding what’s true? When every second of human screen time has a value measurable in votes and dollars, would governments or corporations miss the opportunity to direct our attention? A government or private megacompany will surely only speak truth to us.
Fortunately here in the former Eastern Bloc we have it easier. We still remember a paper called правда. The propaganda mouthpiece of the Soviet Union was very simply called ‘The Truth’. They were quite direct, those guys. Thank you, Big Brother, for looking after us!
Of course, as every hypnotist knows, indirect methods are more effective than direct methods. One of the easiest and most common ways is to fill your head with so much stuff that there is no room remaining for forbidden material. The mass media love to play on our emotions. “Woman in Budapest puts her dog into a bag and throws him into the dumpster.” Or it draws attention to vitally important issues: “Stacey Macey’s pubic tattoo for her XVI marriage.” Intellectuals are not exempted: How to achieve economic growth. Capitalism or communism? The latter, which Erickson called the illusion of choice, resonates with the deep philosophical question of ‘Pepsi or Coke?’ Getting bogged down in trivia will make you miss the point.
The question always arises whether there is a deliberate, centrally controlled effort to dumb the populace. (Recommended reading: The National Enquirer.) I wonder what happens on the meetings of the IQRTF (I.Q. Reduction Task Force). Hypotheses that have been dubbed conspiracy theories deserve a separate article, but I think it’s clear that a two-minute news flash does not bear any relation to nuanced thinking. Scaring people with catastrophies also works well; the didactic ability of a person in panic is not particularly good.
Respect for the Official Truth, for the ‘facts’ communicated by ‘experts’, comes from our childhood self, from listening with big round eyes to the revelations of the Big People. Unfortunately benevolent parents have been replaced by the State while wise scientists are increasingly in the pay of giant corporations. We lived in a horde of a few dozen, only able to survive together, for millions of years. There the experienced, the elders really did want the good of all. That was a place for respect for tradition, expertise, the social order. In the present ocean of manipulation, however, doubt is your best friend. Even apparent heretics like myself have to be treated with scepticism. Some of us have been hired, others are completely nuts, and of course there are some who are sincere. Don't let someone else decide for you which is which.
The main question is not whether 9/11 was a false flag attack. Or whether remote sensing is real. Or whether Romanians are Dacians. Or if homosexuality is genetically determined. Or whether the Covid virus was deliberately unleashed on humanity. These are all fascinating topics, and we will address some of them in time. The most important question is whether we are allowed, or even capable of thinking something that is not in line with the position of a government, a profession claiming to have monopoly on the truth, the public opinion, our own peer group. Another question is whether such ideas can be raised in public. In detail, considering the options, listening to everyone, weighing the pros and cons. So that, instead of predetermined answers, we can get to the truth, or at least closer to it.
Being emotional creatures we will not be completely objective when examining the world. Preconceptions will also always come into play. But it is possible to handle our own biases. In fact, seemingly irrational intuition can help us to get to the heart of issues. Intellect and emotion are intertwined in many ways, and unravelling them is a fascinating subject that we may one day attempt to explore in these pages. If we don't know how things are connected how can we create a worthwhile future? We must understand the real phenomena of the world and this can only be done by being allowed to ask anything, examine anything, talk about anything, think anything.
Source: Juan Rumimpunu, Unsplash
So I wish you great boldness of thought. There are a few aspects that I think are worth considering when studying a subject, and we will bring them up in turn. And if there are any questions (taboo or not) that you would like to explore, feel free to post them here:
Our not being experts might be the very feature that helps us examine anything with a curious, free and independent mind.
The theory that today’s Romanians are the descendants of Romanized Dacians.