'What do religion, psychology and "ancient alien theory" have in common? -- For Jung, the collective unconscious is a vast repository of human knowlege, instinct, memory and experience accumulated since the birth of the species and genetically and psychologically passed down from generation to generation. Therefore, the archaic collective unconscious is an invaluable and wisdom-filled source of information unconsciously linking us all together, much like the World Wide Web, the Internet, links us together and has become an integral part of our interconnected collective consciousness. ...many of the phenomena frequently cited by ancient alien theorists are more convincingly evidence of the existence of the collective unconscious than of early extraterrestrial influences. Whether or not extraterrestrial life exists and has visited this planet in UFO's, past or present, is still an open question. But it seems clear that deep in our collective unconscious resides the archetypal idea and imagery of these alien entities, just as the archetypal idea of God and the Devil live within us.' -- She's baaack. Mommy looms large over you laying in your crib. Nice, nasty, or indifferent? God, Devil, neither or both?

Comment: Guest: 'Absolutely simplistic and typical of people who don't "think" beyond what other people tell them to think. Imagine yourself as the Minotaur. Born as a creature no one wanted, born from the lust of a goddess to a bull, hated from conception to birth. Instead of given pitty or love when born, was imprisoned in a horrible place with no human contact other than the ones he fed on. What choice did he have, eat something that didn't look like him, or starve to death. He was born without education of morals or philosophy. He was treated as a monster, so he behaved like one to the eyes of other humans. To him, he was just trying to live, fearing his whole existence, surviving on, yes, instinct. And one day a "hero" comes to kill him. For the Minotaur, he probably was scared beyond his imagination. Something stronger than him was trying to kill him and he didn't know why. One has to ask, how long was the Minotaur in the maze, why were only children sent down there. Most likely cause the Minotaur was young himself, and probably lame. The only thing I read from this myth was that of a deformed outcast who was lost, weak and fearful, to be only killed by someone who was "normal" and be called a "strong and powerful hero" for it.' -- When you cut the throat of the abyss...

'What is the Minotaur? First, the Minotaur represents our primal fear of the unconscious. The unconscious is that which is unknown to us. For this reason, we humans are born not only with an instinctive fear of the unknown and of death, but also an archetypal fear of the unconscious. This is one of the factors that make the psychotherapy process so threatening: a profound fear of encountering our own unconscious, of entering the dark, lonely labyrinth and meeting the Minotaur. Fundamentally, the Minotaur represents the primal fear of the unknown. Fear of the unknown is deeply-seated in the human psyche. Indeed, the Minotaur may be seen as a metaphor for death and death anxiety. Existentially, death is a symbol of non-being or non-existence, and, therefore, death anxiety can be understood, in Kierkegaard's words, as the "fear of nothingness." As existential psychologist Rollo May (1977) points out, "the threat of non-being lies in the psychological and spiritual realm as well – namely, in the threat of meaninglessness in one's existence." The Minotaur also embodies both fate (our biological nature) and destiny (our freedom) and the integral interrelationship between the two. But why do we find it such a dreadful image? Because to confront the Minotaur in the dark labyrinth is to confront ourselves: our fears of the unknown, our ferocious, beastly nature, our rage, aggression, sexuality, mortality, the daimonic. This self-confrontation is successfully accomplished by proceeding carefully yet courageously along one's own Ariadnean thread. The secret is that, metaphorically, we each have been given this thread to follow and lead us to our destiny – but only if we are brave enough to do so. Psychotherapy sometimes entails helping the patient who has lost touch with this precious thread to find it, take hold of it, and follow it wherever it may lead, inching along blindly on hands and knees in the darkness through the unknown. ...once grasped, proceeding slowly but steadily along one's Ariadnean thread provides a profound sense of purpose and meaning in life. As though one is being pulled or guided by some power greater than oneself.'

'What is the psychospiritual significance of the mythical labyrinth? The labyrinth can be seen as an archetypal symbol of the psyche and of what C.G. Jung called the individuation process: that twisty, unpredictable, tortuous, serpentine path toward wholeness and authenticity. The goal is to reach the center, the Self, the core of our being. But this is only half the journey. For having discovered the inner center with it's treasure, the "pearl of great price," is not sufficient: One must then find a way out of the labyrinth and back to the outer world – forever transformed by this experience. And this inward and outward expedition is repeated over and over, each time yielding new riches. Psychotherapy itself can be such a labyrinthine process. Patients often seek psychotherapy because they feel alone and hopeless, confused and abandoned, much like the unlucky lost souls caught in the mythic labyrinth. Indeed, as for those suffering victims, suicide sometimes seems the only way out of the labyrinth. The impenetrable darkness, disorientation, discouragement and deep dread of the unknown may be intolerable at times. What is it about the inescapable labyrinth that makes it so tragically intolerable? Perhaps it is precisely the immense nothingness and darkness of the labyrinth that we humans find most frightening: Such places echo or reflect back to us that which dwells in the deepest, darkest recesses of our own psyche. Whatever it is we fear most – and therefore flee from – is called forth and amplified by the lightless labyrinth. The psychotherapy patient too is heroic, sacrificing his or her narcissistic arrogance by seeking help, facing fear of the unknown, willingly walking into the labyrinth and confronting his or her own personal Minotaur. When the psychotherapist invites and encourages the patient to explore the labyrinth – the unknown, the unconscious, the shadow, the daimonic – we bestow the gifts of Ariadne: the empowering sword of strength, courage, and rational, logical, analytical insight, and the means to remain tangibly tethered, rooted, related and connected to us, to reality, to the light, to humanity, to the outer, material world – and to one's self. These are essential tools for the task. Venturing into the labyrinth improperly equipped and prepared is a perilous and foolhardy undertaking for both therapist and patient, courting catastrophe. In psychotherapy, the Ariadnean thread symbolizes both the therapeutic relationship – the strong, supportive, vital, empathetic tie between patient and therapist – as well as the struggling and disoriented hero-patient's still undiscovered destiny.'

'Psychotherapy can often entail confronting a lifetime of accumulated shit. Psychotherapy patients sometimes experience the daunting task of delving into their past and dealing with their emotional demons in much the same way Hercules must have felt as he faced his disgusting, demeaning and ego-deflating fifth labor. For some, even taking the decision to seek psychotherapy is perceived as a failure or defeat. Such a seemingly impossible, tedious, menial task is tough on the ego and can be a severe blow to one's narcissism. But it can take just such a turn in life to teach us some healthy humility and diminish our neurotic narcissistic grandiosity. Carl Jung once commented that "the experience of the Self is always a defeat for the ego." I prefer to think of this infuriating and humiliating "defeat for the ego" as a traumatic yet potentially transformational process. We are insulted, humbled and, at first feel defeated by such untoward events, which can take the form of outer travails or hardships, involuntary psychiatric symptoms, and/or inner crises painfully demonstrating that we are not in complete command of ourselves but rather subject to the superior or relatively autonomous powers of the unconscious and of life itself. Naturally, the ego furiously resists such displacement and dethronement, seeking to maintain its illusion of control and mastery over reality. This resistance on the part of the ego to surrendering to the Self is so strong, persistent and pervasive – and we are so overidentified with it – that sometimes a seemingly insurmountable crisis or trauma is required to forcefully topple it from its narcissistic ivory tower. Life inevitably provides precisely that which is called for.'

'Since Tolkien considered himself a conservative anarchist, it should come as no surprise that while trying to answer his publisher's questions regarding the symbolism hidden in his magnum opus, he suggested to "...make the Ring into an allegory of our own time… an allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power." One day a great magician, Gandalf the Grey, pays a visit to the village. He is concerned by the fact that one of the hobbits, a certain Mr. Bilbo Baggins, keeps there hidden a precious artifact – a mysterious ring. Forged many years ago by Sauron, the Lord of Darkness, the Ring of Power is one of many rings of power, the one, however, that controls all the others. Only someone so mediocre, so weak, inept, and created seemingly for the sole purpose of minding his own merry business like Frodo Baggins – Bilbo's heir – could, at least to some extent, resist the evil power.'

'I’ve talked more than once in these essays about the immense role that narratives play in our mental and social lives. In what we are pleased to call "primitive societies," a rich body of mythology and legend provides each person with a range of narratives that can be applied to any given situation and make sense of it. Learning the stories, and learning how to apply them to life’s events, is the core of a child’s education in these societies, and a learned person is very often distinguished, more than anything else, by the number of traditional stories he or she knows by heart. More technologically advanced societies often, though not invariably, move away from this, consigning their inheritance of stories to children—think, for example, of the role of fairy tales in nineteenth- and twentieth-century industrial societies—while narrowing down the range of stories adults are supposed to think with, until all that’s left are variations on one narrative. Serious thinking in these societies is by definition thinking that follows the accepted narrative.'

'We find them everywhere in fantasy fiction: the "orphaned heroes," young men and women whose parents are dead, absent, or unknown, who turn out to be the heirs to the kingdom, the destined pullers of swords from stones, the keys to the riddles, the prophesies' answers, the bearers of powerful magic. For young readers, there is a distinct brand of pleasure in inhabiting the skin of the orphan hero, tasting both the joys and terrors of operating as a fully independent being without the protective cushion (or burden, depending on the child's circumstance) of parents standing between them and the wide, wide world beyond. For children with difficult childhoods, the appeal is obvious; such stories provide escape, a vision of life beyond the confines of a troubled home. But even children from healthy families welcome escape from time to time. In the guise of the orphan hero they can shed their usual roles (the eldest daughter, middle son, the baby of the family, etc.) and enter other realms in which they are solitary actors. Without adults to guide them (or, contrarily, to restrict them), orphan heroes are thrown back, time and time again, on their own resources. I do not think we outgrow our need for such stories, accounting for their continuing popularity among adult readers as well — for who among us does not feel orphaned in this vast, strange world sometimes? Through Harry Potter, Jane Eyre, and Cinderella we experience the orphan within ourselves.'

'From McKee: "Story begins when an event, either by human decision or accident in the universe, radically upsets the balance of forces in the protagonist's life, arousing in that character the need to restore the balance of life. To do so, that character will conceive of an "Object of Desire," that which they [believe] they need to put life back into balance. They will then go off into their world, into themselves, in the various dimensions of their existence, seeking that Object of Desire ... and they will struggle against forces of antagonism that will come from their own inner natures as human beings, their relationships with other human beings, their personal and/or social life, and the physical environment itself. They may or may not achieve that Object of Desire; they may or may not finally be able to restore their life to a satisfying balance." -- Everything that happens in your life is digested by you through this process, so it would be worth your time to memorize it.'

'Give something to your audience – even warm tingles, and they’re one step closer to being happy customers. Give them something and let them beat the bad guy, and they’re yours for life. Everyone wants to have stories to tell. If they’re in the stories, they tell them better. And more often. This storytelling/folklore is the best part of the whole equation, because your audience loves you for making them part of the story, and they help you get the word out at the same time. If beating the bad guys and taking their stuff is the incentive that gets people involved with you, then telling stories is how you can get existing customers to indoctrinate new people into the club and keep them there. How many people here run businesses that live and die on referrals? What’s a referral? Uh-huh. It’s someone telling others how smart they were to choose you. They’re telling the tale of how they conquered the Great Black Beast of Q1 Sales Goals. #Slay monsters #Take their treasure #Tell the tale'

"You thought he was your guy," the senior man said quietly. "But maybe he was in the mix all along." The junior man looked startled. "OK. Or maybe he's gone off the reservation." "He's sure getting news coverage. One article every two minutes at its height. That doesn't happen to everybody. Has to be ... arranged. So perhaps plans have changed. Maybe the idea is to admit a lot more now. And to build this guy up as the other side of the Hegelian dialectic. The trick is to win over those who don't believe. You have to appeal to the ones who DISTRUST the new order of things." "So someone like him—" the junior man said, glancing sideways. "Persecuted - Jailed." "Sure, he becomes the guy, the chosen one." "Someone who turns the Internet upside down—even gives us the rationale to crack down if we need to." "Exactly," the senior man said. "The other half of the dialectic." "I'm not sure I believe it," the junior man said. "That's pretty devious, but also obvious." "Hm-mm—just a thought."'

'Dominant Social Theme: This fascinating man, Julian Assange, has thought of everything. He is the proverbial "Trickster [hero] who serves as a transformer who creates order out of chaos." -- If Assange is authentic, he is using the Internet in a heroic fashion to make increasingly authoritarian, Western states less feasible; if he is not authentic, he is still accomplishing some good by making government bureaucracies nervous. But we must add that if Assange's persona and work are indeed a promotional ploy, then this is certainly one of the most important dominant social themes of the 21st century. Assange, were he providing an elaborate kind of disinformation, is smack in the middle of the Trickster narrative. We are like wide-eyed children gathered nightly about the flickering flames. We lean forward, straining to catch the utterances of our sages. The Trickster speaks and we listen. Trickster explains; we internalize. We yearn to believe in the magic of these mystical narratives.'

'A flood myth or deluge myth is a mythical story of a great flood sent by a deity or deities to destroy civilization as an act of divine retribution. It is a theme widespread among many cultures... Parallels are often drawn between the flood waters of these myths and the primeval waters found in some creation myths since the flood waters are seen to cleanse humanity in preparation for rebirth. Most flood myths also contain a culture hero who strives to ensure this rebirth.' -- Broken waters

'A goddess is a female deity. In some cultures goddesses are associated with Earth, motherhood, love, and the household. In other cultures, goddesses also rule over war, death, and destruction as well as healing. -- Joseph Campbell: "It has to do with the earth. The human woman gives birth just as the earth gives birth to the plants...so woman magic and earth magic are the same. They are related. And the personification of the energy that gives birth to forms and nourishes forms is properly female."'

'Our social alters contain early levels of our unbearable hurts ("Why didn't mommy want me?" "Why did daddy hit me?"), restaged as fairy tales ("Are there witches?" "Will the monster kill me?") and then as social questions ("Shall we take children away from teenage mothers?" "Is Saddam Hussein a new Hitler who will blow up the world?"). The adaptive function of social alters is that they allow people to go about their daily business without being overwhelmed by traumatic memories... By dissociating early persecutors into our social alters and then identifying with these persecutors in our social lives, human beings manage to live more sane daily lives, while warding off unseen but felt dangers by "feeding" victims of society to terrifying religious, political and economic divinities. So important to our sanity is the social alter that when a poison container for a group-fantasy is removed, tremendous anxiety is aroused that has to be defended against by creating a replacement.'

'All religions contain at their center the Suffering Fetus and its Poisonous Placenta, whether it is the dismembered, suffering Osiris or the bleeding Christ on his placental cross... Because the fetus's umbilicus is like a pulsing fifth limb and because the placenta is the fetus's first love object, I believe we so deeply experience the loss of our umbilicus/placenta that we walk around feeling we have still a "phantom placenta" – the same phenomenon as the "phantom limb" and are constantly looking for a leader or a flag or a god to serve as its substitute. Just as gods are imagined as beings "from whom all blessings flow," leaders are seen as beings "from whom all power flows." In ancient Egypt, people saved the actual placenta of the Pharaoh and put it on a pole which they carried into battle; it was the first flag in history. In America, we still ritually worship our placental flag with its red arteries and blue veins at the end of a umbilical flagpole – in public gatherings.'

'...the enemy in war were dominated by an image that was even more widespread than that of the dangerous mommy: it was that of a blood-sucking sea-beast, associated with watery caves or lakes; often with many heads or arms, a dragon or a hydra or a serpent or an octopus that threatened to poison the lifeblood of the nation. This serpentine, poisonous monster I have termed the Poisonous Placenta, since it resembled what the actual placenta must have sometimes felt like to the growing fetus, particularly when the placenta fails in its tasks of cleansing the fetal blood of wastes and of replenishing its oxygen supply ...when the mother smokes, takes drugs or is hurt or frightened or otherwise stressed, the placenta does not remove the wastes from the fetal blood... Under these stressful conditions, the helpless fetus experiences an asphyxiating Poisonous Placenta, the prototype for all later hate relationships, including the murderous mother, the castrating father or the dangerous enemy.'

'...I was puzzled by recurring claims by aggressors that they were forced to go to war against their wishes because "a net had suddenly been thrown over their head" or a "ring of iron was closing about us more tightly every moment" or they had been "seized by the throat and strangled." I piled up hundreds of these images of nations being choked and strangled, "unable to draw a breath," "smothered, walled-in," "unable to relieve the inexorable pressure" of a world "pregnant with events," followed by feelings of being "picked up bodily" in "an inexorable slide" towards war, starting with a "rupture of diplomatic relations" and a "descent into the abyss," being "unable to see the light at the end of the tunnel" as the nation takes its "final plunge over the brink," and even that wars were "aborted" if ended too soon. Given the concreteness of all this birth imagery, I concluded that war was a rebirth fantasy of enormous power shared by nations undergoing deep regression to fetal traumas.'

'Wars have often been thought of as purifying the nation's polluted blood by virtue of a sacrificial rite... The blood of those sacrificed is believed to renew the nation. The question immediately arises: How do such poisoned blood fears originate? And what is their connection with birth? The answers to these questions will become more convincing only after we have examined a prior question: Why is war so often depicted as a woman? ...group-fantasies of monstrous bloodthirsty women have preceded every war... When war breaks out, these terrifying women images disappear from the nation's fantasy life. The dangerous woman image now is projected into the enemy, so that the war is experienced unconsciously as a battle with a mother-figure. Yet even though we understand that both the Motherland and the enemy in wars are ultimately the early mother, the question remains: what could possibly be the infantile origin of fantasies of the enemy as a poisonous blood-sucking monster?'

Order out of chaos -- '#1. Heroes are introduced in the ORDINARY WORLD, where #2. they receive the CALL TO ADVENTURE. #3. They are RELUCTANT at first or REFUSE THE CALL, but #4. are encouraged by a MENTOR to #5. CROSS THE FIRST THRESHOLD and enter the Special World, where #6. they encounter TESTS, ALLIES, AND ENEMIES. #7. They APPROACH THE INMOST CAVE, crossing a second threshold #8. where they endure the ORDEAL. #9. They take possession of their REWARD and #10. are pursued on THE ROAD BACK to the Ordinary World. #11. They cross the third threshold, experience a RESURRECTION, and are transformed by the experience. #12. They RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR, a boon or treasure to benefit the Ordinary World.'

'The precise details of the image of Christ on the Cross are all from childhood. Christ is shown as an infant (naked, except for swaddling-band loincloth), abandoned by Mommy (God), bound or nailed to a wooden Cross (the wooden board all infants were bound to during swaddling), with a crown of thorns (the painful head-shaping devices used on infants before swaddling) and with a bloody hole in his side (evidence of the childhood rape, vaginal or anal). Even the details of Christ’s life conform to routine childhood conditions. For instance, Christ got the bloody wound in his side, the subject of much theological concern, because his Father sent him down to be crucified—just as so many real fathers at the time sent their young children to their neighbors to be used as sexual objects—and the bad soldier stripped Christ and stuck his phallic lance into him—just as the bad neighbor stripped the child and stuck his erect penis into him.'

'The Dragon Mother Goddesses accurately embodied the infanticidal "infinitely needy mother who cannot let her children go because she needs them for her own psychic survival, giving her child the impossible task of filling her limitless void [and] engulfing them to prevent them from claiming a separate life for themselves." Every detail of the worship of Mother Goddesses has its origins in actual traumatic child-rearing experiences of antiquity. Most "Terrifying Mothers" had divine sons who were forced to commit incest with them, "every mother goddess having their son-lovers, Inanna and Tammuz, Isis and Osiris, Cybele and Attis, Aphrodite and Adonis." The religious rituals restaged accurately the maternal seduction: "Not only does the Mother Goddess love her son simply for his phallus, she castrates him, taking possession of it to make herself fruitful." Thus it is quite mistaken to call ancient sexual seduction rituals "Sacred Marriages." They are in fact "Sacred Maternal Incests."'

"One of the things that is very strong and powerful within the story is the degree to which the moral responsibility of God for Satan is evaded and avoided. It is the unexamined and unacknowledged pathology within the parent that creates the pathology of the child. If the parent is all-powerful, then the parent is completely responsible for the abuses of the elder siblings because the power of the parents could prevent that. But, of course, it is the very power of the parents that creates the abuses of the elder sibling because it is the unjust exercise of power over the elder sibling that trickles down to the abuse of the younger sibling. Parents unjustly claim omnipotence and all-power and claim they are in complete control of the family... but then when children rebel or act badly, the children are blamed completely. So parents claim all the power in the world when it suits them, and then take no responsibility when the children act badly. This is exactly the story of Lucifer."

"So for that to be the case then Lucifer would have to be angry at God but unable to vent his anger on God, and therefore must take it out against the stand-in for the younger siblings in this religious model: humanity. Satan was angry at God and God cast Satan down into Hell, and Satan knew that he couldn't fight against God because God was all powerful. And so God cannot be punished and therefore the children of God i.e., the younger siblings, must be punished: must be tempted, must be teased, must be tortured, must be brutalized, must be brought into the hell of Satan. If you are a cruel elder sibling, what you want to do is to use verbal abuse to break down and destroy the personality and self-esteem and security and happiness and self-efficacy of the younger siblings. Verbal abuse relies on the sanction of the victim: you have to accept the words in order for the abuse to stick. Satan is, in essence, a verbal abuser. Like vampires, he has to be invited in in order to do any evil."

"In family we have: parent, younger siblings and elder siblings. And in the state we have: government, citizens and corporations. So how does this model fit with religion? God is the parent, in particular, the father and the Virgin Mary is the child's conception of a mother because children don't know anything about sex and can't conceive of their mother having sex. So God's are the parents. And humanity is, of course, the younger siblings. So who are the elder siblings? The abusive elder sibling in religion is the Devil. Elder siblings, from the perspective of younger siblings, are produced by the Gods/parents. Lucifer was created by God as a lesser, independent being. Abuse against a younger sibling is the result of unactionable rage against the parent: You feel humiliated by the parent but you cannot act against them because the parent is too strong, therefore you must take your rage out on the innocent, younger sibling."

'A chalice (from Latin calix, cup, borrowed from Greek kalyx, shell, husk) is a goblet or footed cup intended to hold a drink. In general religious terms, it is intended for drinking during a ceremony. In Christian tradition the 'Holy Chalice is the vessel which Jesus used at the Last Supper to serve the wine.' -- Mmm, magic mushroom juice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_muscaria

Genes-of-Isis: '“The prime example of the relation between the serpent and the mushroom is, of course, in the Garden of Eden story of the Old Testament. The cunning reptile prevails upon Eve and her husband to eat of the tree, whose fruit ‘made them as gods, knowing good and evil’ (Gen 3:4). The whole Eden story is mushroom-based mythology, not least in the identity of the ‘tree’ as the sacred fungus....” – John Allegro, “The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross” -- The first stage of the mushroom is considered male as it looks like a penis. Then the stem pushes the ball/uterus/breast up out of the egg. As the arms of the mushroom cap open to the sides, it’s as though the female aspect opens from the male “rib.”' -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_muscaria -- Poisoned chalice

'A boy discovers an incredible and gruesome world of monsters under his bed. Storyline: A child meets the monster that lives under his bed. He even becomes one of his best friends. Soon the child discovers a whole new world of fun and games under his bed where pulling pranks on kids and other monsters is the main attraction.'

'"I know most Americans like to believe there are selfless, ultra-intelligent operatives like me out there watching over everything from an underground control room," said the Rhodes Scholar Navy SEAL national security official who for the past 10 years we have all mistakenly presumed to be an actual human being. "Unfortunately, though, I'm not employed by the U.S. government, I'm not working at all hours to foil terrorist plots, nor am I part of some secret network of sharp, capable agents, because no such network exists." "And again, neither do I," the imaginary man added.'

'We do not control our fate; we just influence it. We are programmed by those who raised us, not as a villainous happening; just normally in the course of events, because of who they are and what they know, or don’t know, and what happened to them, or didn’t. We all know this in part; but we retain our belief in the conscious power of intentionality as the agency that runs our personal psychic experience. When it is emotional memory that runs it, convincing us beyond any reasonable doubt that the past is still running our life, though the characters doing it have changed; yet they’re behaving just like people have always treated us, good or bad, making the past still true in the present. This spurious assumption is seldom examined; tragically one has to regard them selves as “mentally ill” in order to qualify for the learning opportunity of reexamining their assumptions – what we call “psychotherapy” – in order to explore, and improve upon their parent’s programming.'

'When the dominant story-telling of a society becomes disconnected from its reality, then the sociopolitical narrative has lost its hold. When people cease to believe, or when the dominant social themes grow too ludicrous and are unbelievable of themselves, then the organizational "glue" of society begins to fail. What is the American narrative these days? It used to be one of individualism, entrepreneurship, family and community. The mythos was agrarian and frontier-oriented. But the elite succeeded in the 20th century, when it was most untrammeled, in swapping these verities for woman's liberation, big government militancy and welfarism, military and civil policing and anti-free-market activism. Now in the era of the Internet, with collapsing economies and an inability to manufacture believable dominant social themes, the elite has nowhere to turn. It is a victim of its own success. Hollywood's distress signals a larger one.'

"In all these tales, a depressed life of dumb chores and crushed opportunities gets magically transformed into an 'heroic' – and always violet – adventure when an older man comes and takes you away. All this is just designed to make you want to go to war when the State comes to kidnap you. Real heroism is, however, something very different from what is always portrayed. Real heroism is something you can achieve now, today."

'The series is the culmination of over 30 years of research into the history of the Mystery Schools, Secret Society Networks, Assassins, Freemasonry, Nazism, and the New World Order. Over the course of the series, Cooper gives an extensive background of the occult history and origins of secret societies throughout history and up to the present day.' -- http://mystery-babylon.org/psychology.html

'Pandora had been given a large jar and instruction by Zeus to keep it closed, but she had also been given the gift of curiosity, and ultimately opened it. When she did so, all of the evils, ills, diseases, and burdensome labor that mankind had not known previously, escaped from the jar, but it is said, that at the very bottom of her jar, there lay hope.'

Al-Qaeda™ The Musical, Al-Qaeda™ Special Edition DVD Boxset, Al-Qaeda™ World Holiday Tours, Al-Qaeda™ 'Terror Tots' Training Camp, Make Me A CIA Operative, Osama-Factor, Al-Qaeda vs Celebrity Big Brother 3, Cell Swap, Al-Qaeda 360™ Terror Cell - Frag Online, Al-Qaeda For Men™, Al-Qaeda For Men™ Extra Strength, Al-Qaeda™ Fluoride-Free Afghan Mountain Bunker Mineral Water. "Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda!" WHEN IS THIS FAGGOTRY GOING TO END?!

'The daily life we perceive with our senses is not reality. Quantum physics has shown that space and time are illusions of perception therefore our bodies cannot truly be a reality if they occupy this space... Our true consciousness does not exist in our brains or in our bodies.'

'The Thunderbolts Project offers remarkably simple explanations for 'black holes', 'dark matter', the electric sun, comets that are NOT made of ice, planetary scarring and many other 'mysterious' phenomena. It proposes that much of the currently observable phenomena of deep space can be intelligently explained by already known principles of electricity. High school students get it immediately. A doctorate in higher math is not required. This extraordinary new theory also redefines ancient history, linking rock art images carved in basalt 5,000 years ago with identical images found only in Hubble photographs of deep space or in photographs of recently declassified high-energy plasma discharge experiments generated in a billion dollar lab.' -- Spiritual = Electrical

'Jesus of Nazareth, 33, was a gentle soul who enjoyed forgiveness, performing miracles, and dying for the sins of mankind. He is survived by Jesus Christ.'

7 Core Concepts of Transmedia Entertainment: #Drillability #Mythology: Continuity vs Multiplicity #Immersion & Extractability #World Building #Seriality #Subjectivity #Performance -- On mask play in transmedia activism: "It's a way of taking transmedia back into society and trying to change the world using a shared mythology that shapes our experience." Example: Anonymous [V for Vendetta] vs The Church of Scientology -- It's getting a bit too easy to point to something and say 'transmedia'. HJ: "The best transmedia story of the last few years has been Barack Obama." http://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/the_revenge_of_the_origami_uni.html

"I wanted to be able to do an occult comic that didn't portray the occult as a dark, scary place, because that's not my experience of it. I don't think it's the experience of many occultists. Why would we want to be occultists if that meant that we had to spend our lives in a dark, scary place? Utilizing my occult experiences, I could see a way that it would be possible to do a new kind of occult comic, that was more psychedelic, that was more sophisticated, more experimental, more ecstatic and exuberant. In Jim and Mick and Jeremy I've obviously found people who were exactly right for the book, that have shared my vision of it, and have added their own bits to that vision. So Promethea is about as perfect an expression of the occult as I could imagine doing in a mainstream super-hero comic book." — Alan Moore in The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore, pg 188.

'The series has been both criticized for acting as a mouthpiece for Moore's religious beliefs and praised for the beauty of its artwork and innovation regarding the medium itself. Regarding the first claim, the series is, by Moore's own admission, didactic: "there are 1000 comic books on the shelves that don't contain a philosophy lecture and one that does. Isn't there room for that one?"'

'Learn the incredible secrets of the esoteric traditions hidden within the manifold layers of signs and symbols in [America's] infrastructure: symbols that for many represent the secret destiny of the world's greatest nation.'

'Learn the incredible secrets of the esoteric traditions hidden within the manifold layers of signs and symbols in [America's] infrastructure: symbols that for many represent the secret destiny of the world's greatest nation.'

'Learn the incredible secrets of the esoteric traditions hidden within the manifold layers of signs and symbols in [America's] infrastructure: symbols that for many represent the secret destiny of the world's greatest nation.'

"LET THESE BE GUIDESTONES TO AN AGE OF REASON. MAINTAIN HUMANITY UNDER 500,000,000 IN PERPETUAL BALANCE WITH NATURE. GUIDE REPRODUCTION WISELY—IMPROVING FITNESS AND DIVERSITY. (UNITE HUMANITY WITH A LIVING NEW LANGUAGE [Science]). RULE PASSION—FAITH—TRADITION—AND ALL THINGS WITH TEMPERED REASON. PROTECT PEOPLE AND NATIONS WITH FAIR LAWS AND JUST COURTS. LET ALL NATIONS RULE INTERNALLY RESOLVING EXTERNAL DISPUTES IN A WORLD COURT. AVOID PETTY LAWS AND USELESS OFFICIALS. BALANCE PERSONAL RIGHTS WITH SOCIAL DUTIES. PRIZE TRUTH—BEAUTY—LOVE—SEEKING HARMONY WITH THE INFINITE. BE NOT A CANCER ON THE EARTH—LEAVE ROOM FOR NATURE." -- Still doesn't solve the problem of the psychopaths.

'Chiron originally appears in Greek mythology as an exemplar of wisdom and learning, tutoring many of the legendary Greek heroes including Achilles, Jason, Theseus, and Hercules. He meets his end at the hands of Hercules who, during a skirmish with unruly centaurs, accidentally wounds Chiron with an arrow poisoned with Hydra blood. Being immortal Chiron can’t die, but lives in agony until he selflessly barters his immortality for Prometheus‘ freedom...'

MEMORY HOLE. DOUBLEQUICKWISE!!! THIS WARN YOU!!!

'Despots are not afraid of individuals. They're afraid of populations. But the ideal American hero is a loner, and hence, a loser. We celebrate the Cowboy, incapable of cooperating with anyone, and hence no threat to those in power. Action movies are full of them--lone Rambos and Bonds, blasting away at the enemy, heroic in the movies, utterly ineffectual In real life. (As symbols, of course, they're very effective in persuading the ovine to smoke, be paranoid, and carry guns). -- As Putnam observed in his book Bowling Alone, voluntary associations in the United States have been on the decline for many decades. There are many reasons for this, but the rise of strongly anti-democratic media is certainly one. The freedom individuals have in our society is something to be treasured, but the moment individualistic ideology begins to cripple our ability to cooperate in order to achieve common goals, authoritarian rule is only a whisper away.'

'“On Wall Street,” writes Ho, “‘smartness’ means more than individual intelligence; it conveys a naturalised and generic sense of ‘impressiveness,’ of elite, pinnacle status and expertise, which is used to signify, even prove, investment bankers’ worthiness as advisers to corporate America and leaders of the global financial markets.” Sheer cognitive capacity is only part of it, for smartness also involves “being impeccably and smartly dressed” and possessing “quickness, aggressiveness, and vigour” in the “continued aggressive striving to perpetuate [one’s] elite status.” Doubtless the people creating formulas for new financial products could appreciate the mathematical brilliance of Stephen Hawking, but he might lack the flair, adrenalin and cupidity to count as really “smart”. -- Wall Street’s decisions are smart because smart people made them – and necessary, since no other player in the economy is really capable of judging otherwise.'

'Like all great religions, the franchises have mysterious histories, preserved in decaying books and obscure pamphlets. The thread that unites all of them is an overarching tale of social outcasts who find holy books that show them the light, and lead them to secret congregations where mystical debates and opinions are exchanged. Converted by these ancient books, the earliest fans began to build the franchises that would transform their visions of other worlds into the pillars of new belief systems. In the end, religious fervor is good for the pocketbook of the culture industry. The more we worship, the more we are willing to pay for action figures, for DVD box sets, for expensive reissues and signed first editions. These things are trinkets for our shrines, outward signs of our devotion. And like all religious objects they are dosed with a symbolic meaning that goes way beyond their unbroken plastic seals. They ward off what hurts us in the world. They promise better things to come.'

'"History, unendingly revised and reinterpreted, is seen upon examination as merely a different class of fiction [...]. Still, it is a fiction that we must inhabit. [...] All that remains in question is whose map we choose, whether we live within the world's insistent texts or else replace them with a stronger language of our own." --- ... Moore understands that in order to change history one must become a part of history, and thus engage in a kind of human sacrifice, as much as he would like to imagine some other way. -- "There's no space and there's no time. It's just as easy for you to think about what you were doing this morning as Victorian street scenes. You can go there instantly. You can imagine a scene from ten years in the future." Idea Space is the medium through which human consciousness draws connections across space and time, finds meaningfulness in the immediate through its mediation within larger contexts. -- Fiction is how reality is made...'

'"Little Red Riding Hood" is a famous fairy tale [folk tale] about a young girl's encounter with a wolf. The story has been changed considerably in its history and subject to numerous modern adaptations and readings. -- The tale makes the clearest contrast between the safe world of the village and the dangers of the forest, conventional antitheses that are essentially medieval, though no written versions are as old as that. -- The antagonist is not always a wolf, but sometimes an ogre or a ‘bzou’ (werewolf), making these tales relevant to the werewolf-trials (similar to witch trials) of the time (e.g. the trial of Peter Stumpp).'

'OK, the cover is badged as a 'Lost' product, so the artifice is partly lost, but still. Generating an ISBN for the book; creating an author; having an actual book written (it's out in May); all relatively straightforward for an enterprise on this scale. All of this creates an entry in a new data-space: in this case, the Amazon database and user experience. This is the producers of the show (presumably) actually using the identifiers of other operations to provide coherent hooks for interaction around their product. Comments, discussions, tags - all could follow. How long before there's a Driveshaft CD available? (A while, I hope. Though it looks like there was a faux Myspace account for Driveshaft at one point.) One half expects the Sawyer character to turn up as an actual Flickr user, posting images from the beach, or more likely, selling bits of charred aircraft on eBay. This isn't so much product placement as identifier placement.' -- Metacontent

'Abstract: A video game method and system for creating games where ideas have consequences, incorporating branching paths that correspond to a player's choices, wherein paths correspond to decisions founded upon ideals, resulting in exalted games with deeper soul and story, enhanced characters and meanings, and exalted gameplay. The classical hero's journey may be rendered, as the journey hinges on choices pivoting on classical ideals. Ideas that are rendered in word and deed will have consequences in the gameworld. Historical events such as The American Revolution may be brought to life, as players listen to famous speeches and choose sides. As great works of literature and dramatic art center around characters rendering ideals real, both internally and externally, in word and deed, in love and war, the present invention will afford video games that exalt the classical soul, as well as the great books, classics, and epic films—past, present, and future.' -- Amen

'Mental resilience relies in part on exactly this kind of autobiographical storytelling... The investigators found that the third-person scenes were significantly less upsetting, compared with bad memories recalled in the first person. “What our experiment showed is that this shift in perspective, having this distance from yourself, allows you to relive the experience and focus on why you’re feeling upset,” instead of being immersed in it.. The emotional content of the memory is still felt, he said, but its sting is blunted as the brain frames its meaning, as it builds the story. The way people replay and recast memories, day by day, deepens and reshapes their larger life story. ...new research is giving narrative psychologists something they did not have before: a coherent story to tell. Seeing oneself as acting in a movie or a play is not merely fantasy or indulgence; it is fundamental to how people work out who it is they are, and may become.'

'More than any other people I have met, Americans fear loss of uniqueness. Yet you and I are not unique in the least. Despite the American yada yada about individualism, you are not special. Nor am I. Just because we come from the manufacturer equipped with individual consciousness, does not make us the center of any unique world, private or public, material, intellectual or spiritual. The fact is, you will seldom if ever make any significant material or lifestyle choices of your own in your entire life. If you don't buy that house, someone else will. If you don't marry him, someone else will. If you don't become a psychologist, lawyer or a telemarketer, someone else will. We are all replaceable parts in the machinery of a capitalist economy. "Oh but we have unique feelings and emotions that are important," we say. Yet I venture to say that none of us will ever feel an emotion that someone long dead has not felt, or some as yet unborn person will not feel.' -- *gulps a gritty red pill*

#1: The Secret Cabals Working Toward a Global One-World Government -- "Contemporary events, such as the controlled demolition of the economy and purposely failed U.S. foreign policy are seen as the latest necessary steps toward the inevitable global police state. Even elements of the UFO and ET technology cover-ups can be traced back to this unification conspiracy theory as the power elite use all tools at their disposal to refine the technologies needed to control a global population. In one way or another, according to traditional conspiracy theorists, all lessor conspiracies are traced back to this singular but complex theory that is to conspiracies what string theory is to physics."

"They’re all over there laughing at us. It sucks. My whole life, I have been raised thinking that America was the best country on the planet, but I think it might have all been a lie. Maybe we were just really good at branding. Feel like we just control what it means to ‘be cool’, but we might not even have that n e more. Because of the internet ‘coolness’ doesn’t really have a ’source’ and the brand can exist anywhere with no point of origin. Sad about the economic crisis, and how AZNs have been smarter than us about saving ‘money’ and only spending what they have. I think America is beautiful. We’ve had a good run, but maybe we’re not as special as we thought we were. Kinda sad. I still feel ‘cooler’ than a lot of foreigners, and like smarter. Should I h8 azns and hold them responsible for the destruction of my country? Or should I move out of the USA and move to an authentic city like Paris/Beijing/Tokyo/Cairo?"

"The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time. -- Squeezing the oligarchs, though, is seldom the strategy of choice among emerging-market governments. Under duress, generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk—at least until the riots grow too large."

Bacnkground on the Watchmen transmedia marketing campaign -- 'Some of the ideas we pitch feel like complete no-brainers. Others are submitted more in hope than expectation. When we sent Paramount our first pass at treatments for various 3-minute videos, each offering a different view into the world of WATCHMEN and the alternate reality in which it is situated, it never really occurred to me that several months later I’d be able to sit here and show you this…'

'In this episode, the Imperial aspirations of Margaret Thatcher were examined. The way in which Mrs Thatcher used public relations in an attempt to emulate Winston Churchill in harking back to Britain's "glorious past" to fulfil a political or national end.'

'This episode examine[s] how the various national memories of the Second World War were effectively rewritten and manipulated in the Cold War period.'

"In their research, the authors found that for brands to affect behavior, they need to be associated with behavior that the subjects already found desirable. So the secret to avoiding having brands manipulate us, perhaps, is to aspire to be no one." -- No. One.

'... consistency is a tyranny. It gives power to rapid fans who define their fandom by their knowledge of the narrative. Some of these people are not cocreators of the narratives. They are jailers, constantly vigilant for any, even unimportant inconsistency. On the other side, the newcomers look at the detail of a narrative enterprise like Lost and think to themselves, "there's no way I can catch up."'

"The Game Director of Spore and man behind The Sims franchise, Sim City (and the list goes on) holds a killer speech on the evolution of gaming, innovation and story telling in games at this years GDC in San Francisco."

"The US government has begun a project to develop ways to spot terrorists who are using virtual worlds." -- I think we know precisely where all the *real* promoters of terror are.

"Maximizing shareholder value at the expense of all of the other stakeholders is bad for business and bad for capitalism. It drives a wedge between those who create the economic value -- the employees -- and those who harvest its benefits."

"Euphrosyne, Aglaea and Thalia - who were said to represent beauty, charm and joy. The Graces presided over banquets and gatherings primarily to entertain and delight the guests of the Gods."

"Evolution is real and science points to the existence of God." You know that spark that set off the Big Bang and all that stuff? Well, that's God, that is. Yeah, I know! Amazing, huh? Like, totally blows my mind, maan! So cool. God. Bang! High-five, dude

"Advertising's genius is that it sells stuff by reframing reality not by telling us about it... even in a world of transparency and integrity we'd still all love to hear some crazy, imaginative myths."

On creative briefing... "Crafting screenplays, much like planning... It is the act of separating one tiny piece from the rest of the universe and holding it up in such a way that is appears to be the most important, fascinating thing of this moment."

"If you are in the myth-making business, you don’t need design. You need a great ad agency. But if you are in the authenticity and integrity business then you have to think design."