The Serious Disconnect in Modern Culture

Alcohol has ruled over human consciousness for thousands of years. It has been responsible for as much grief as ignorance and greed and that is saying something. People drink to loosen up. They drink to get free but do not consider what it is that they are setting free. Well, when you don’t know who you are to begin with, it can often be a surprise to see who shows up. I’m not inclined to let demon rum steal my soul.

In your self-considered ‘better circles’ people brag about how they can drink good whiskey as if that’s some indication of refined taste. The truth is that it tastes like shit. Even the finest Scotch whiskey, which the puerile ego consciousness believes to impart class and refinement to their, Afghan hound-like, posturing about among their fellows- tastes like shit.

Alcohol ruins your physical, emotional and mental bodies and drains your spiritual nature into the underworld. As I’ve said many other places before, more people die from alcohol each year than die from all illegal drugs in a century. Yet alcohol is legal. Why is it legal? It’s legal because it promotes guilt, which can be milked to high advantage in today’s cultures. It’s also legal because it assists in plugging the attention into the material aspects of this world and that’s good for business. It’s been called a social lubricant and it is but only certain aspects of a person can be shared under its influence. Sure... everyone has had a few bright moments on the stuff but overall... overall it is one of the most destructive things on Earth.

In these times, legal pharmaceuticals run a close second and they kill too. They kill and impair worse than illegal drugs and kill far more people. Why are some drugs illegal? They are illegal because they have the capacity to take you briefly outside the envelope of illusion that covers the world. They grant insight and often what one learns is that the world in which they live is a lie which they are compelled to participate in. Some illegal drugs such as heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine are also highly toxic and very pervasive. The latter shouldn’t come as a surprise since agents of governments the world over are engaged in their proliferation. They even create wars to increase their profits... in China... in Afghanistan.

There is a serious disconnect in any society that promotes the use of the most destructive chemical agents and ruthlessly suppresses the use of more benign agents. It’s not accidental. It’s all about control and the manipulation of the human consciousness through marketed illusions which track back to life on rails and shopping as an avocation.

Another serious disconnect is in the way we react to loss in our own lives as opposed to loss in the lives of others. Some woman loses a child by accident, by disease, by some medium and engages in her public and private grief. Yet she supports the killings in Gaza where the deaths were intentional, unnecessary and gratuitously performed for political gain. She has no feeling for so many dead women and children and no remorse for her culpability in these deaths. The woman is an Israeli so there is culpability, just as all Americans who have not spoken out against the unnecessary, manufactured wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are culpable. Here is yet another serious disconnect. Your pain is all important- put it up in lights and draw a crowd- the pain of others is not important especially if you are engaged in causing it from the noble motive of personal gain.

So many people have such high hopes for President Obama. I would like to share their enthusiasm since it has been some time since there was an American leader that one could feel good about. Unfortunately for me, I remember what he said before he got elected and I am listening to what he says now. I note that he is not ending the war in Iraq and that withdrawal will not be complete until the end of next year. A lot can happen in such a long period of time and my thinking is that that is the intention. One should remember the massive, permanent military installations that were built throughout that country. It also appears that the withdrawal is a big fat lie. Many of us know what the real problem behind the other problems is- and has been- but will Obama listen?

I note the people he appointed to key positions and I note the people he left in key positions that served the previous criminal administration. I note that he’s done nothing to reduce Israel’s power over the American political scene. Is this a sign of awakening or a red herring? How can he serve American interests if he is also serving Israeli interests? He can’t. As has been shown by their attack on the U.S.S. Liberty... their involvement in 9/11 and being the major force behind the push for the Iraqi War; keeping in mind that the Afghanistan war was caused by lies about who engineered and carried out 9/11, it is clear that Israel is an enemy of the United States. I know this, Obama must know it and ergo... Obama is a servant of anti-American, Israeli policies. But he talks good. He makes sweeping speeches that people can’t seem to remember are composed only of words. Time will tell what actions follow these words. Once again...; a disconnect between what we hear and what happens and does not happen; between reality and what cross-dresses in its place.

I watched a tape of the Academy Awards without commercial interruption but still saw the Coke logo come up repeatedly. We used to pour Coke on car battery connections to clean them. People drink this shit and worse. They pour aspartame down their gullets and smile at each other like they’re in a commercial somewhere. They eat food that has been seriously messed with and think they’re living the good life as they destroy the integrity of their physical system. The truth about this can be seen in all directions and studied in national health reports and rising insurance costs. The medical treatment they receive is designed and owned by the corporations that sell the by products intended to treat the conditions and at the bottom of it all you find that ill health is big business so generation of disease through the marketplace is a win-win situation; another serious disconnect.

America is a debt based society so it will fall. Nothing is going to save it. Here’s what would now be called a prophetic look. Its demise is written into the practices that it follows to the profitable ends of those who milk it. This is why the looting is now taking place in a free for all frenzy that is the personal province of a few who ironically represent what their victims wish they could be ...in their ignorant dreams... and who tell them the same things they told them last time they took them to the cleaners... disconnect... disconnect.

America has destroyed its manufacturing base so the only place it can get the things it used to make is from other countries ...so how... tell me how can there be a financial recovery without a manufacturing base? And who caused this? The corporations did this in order to maximize their profits and they bought off all of the watchdog agencies along the way as we are now finding out. It is possible that the Ponzi schemes being uncovered are far more widespread than formerly believed. It truly is a house of cards. Has Obama and members of his administration come forth to state that all these high-end lawbreakers will go to jail? Meanwhile it is said that the torture and abuse at Guantanamo is more intense than at any other time because the psychopaths in their personal playground want to get their money’s worth before they have to move on to another area of industry.

Celebrities make fools of themselves, crying out for gay marriage while the nation crumbles. Banks finance luxury junkets and there is no shame. What do you get? You get great oratory made up of words you can neither spend nor eat. Does this qualify as a serious disconnect? And the shit hasn’t even hit the fan yet. What kind of madness, what epidemic panics of self interest are yet to display? And the video games continue, the television and radio play on and ghost money floods the Monopoly game, while the table beneath it smokes and burns from within.

Visible sings: ♫ I'm a New Age Twinkie ♫
'I'm a New Age Twinkie' is track no. 10 of 12 on Visible's 2007 album 'Almost A Capella'

The Lies that Shape our World

Would it be an exaggeration for me to say that I dread these Petri Dish essays? No... it would not. Some might think that Smoking Mirrors is over the top but that’s because a lot of people equate the truth with the spiritual equivalent of jock itch. They don’t mind hearing it but they wish it would go away afterwards and not require all that involuntary scratching. Then again, a lot of people believe that if they live between the toes of the world that all that bacterial activity will feed and care for them even if it’s feeding on them and ...you wind up with an osmotic athlete’s foot environment.

I may not be batting a thousand where the truth is concerned but I’m pretty good at spotting lies. Lies don’t compute... that’s the bottom line. Some of us have this condition. I assure you that this condition is nowhere near universal. Some of us have this condition that causes a severe irritation when we hear what appears to be a lie and our mind can’t help but endlessly probe at it like a wounded tooth. On a positive note, after awhile, those of us with this condition will manufacture a pearl; the philosophers stone... something... something.

Or... is it the other way round where the truth gets inside and begins to irritate all of the lies and eventually the lies become compressed the way coal eventually turns into a diamond? I have no idea about the process since I know the process is carried out by an oversight agency and we the recipients are only following along with Milton’s statement that, “They also serve who only stand and wait.” And we probably have to go blind to see that too.

You’ll note that you were required to make certain leaps of association in the preceding paragraphs so those of you who come directly to the main location to read can continue along and those reading this at other locations will note the hanky waving from the ship and please accept our commiserations and enjoy the open bar at the dock. It will remain open until the ship sails out of sight.

Lying is the sort of art that can only be truly mastered by those accustomed to telling the truth. If you don’t get what that means it probably means that you are one of those liars whose lies aren’t as effective as you would like them to be and that’s unlikely to improve. The ego seems to be somewhat involved in hampering this as well. There’s an inclination to imagine that you are dancing with the stars but you’re really dancing with Heather Mills.

The ordinary liar is equipped with a de rigueur blind spot that causes them to believe that their lies are universally believed when some people are merely being polite. Usually the people believing these liars are liars themselves and they all play in the tone deaf symphony that weaves the distorted courses of their lives. It’s like gardening. You can sow flowers and you can weed. You can sow flowers and weeds and weed. You can sow just weeds and some flowers will grow anyway and a point comes where you can’t tell the difference.

I read somewhere that 500 tons of dust falls on the Earth every day. If you want to experiment with the reality of dust falling, take a mirror and stand it outside somewhere and just leave it there. Eventually the image reflecting ability of the mirror will be lost. If I were speaking literally and being of a philosophical bent, I might wonder if the image seeking reflection wasn’t lost too. You see what I’m getting at? Polishing the mirror certainly helps with the comprehension end and in a spiritual sense, meditation accomplishes this. One way or another, it’s a good idea to clean the mirror, especially when the mirror is a metaphor.

I’m one of those people who like to practice something to see what the results are. Sometimes there is great advantage to be had in doing something new. Aleister Crowley- at a certain point in his career- would cut himself with a razor blade every time he said the word, “I”. I’m not suggesting you do this but he had a good point and it served him well in arriving at a particular state of consciousness where he could accomplish supernatural events. Alas... in his particular case the final results were mixed. I like to take a day and watch everything I say and see where I catch myself lying... shading the truth etc. Then you can study the situation on a deeper level and observe what caused you to lie.

Sometimes we lie out of habit. Sometimes we lie out of laziness. There are a lot of reasons why we lie. Many times we lie because we don’t know what we are talking about in the first place. Often we lie because we are after something that we’re not sure the truth will provide. I like to look at why that is too. I like to take something and look more closely at it until I see something else which leads to something else. For instance... take two opposite poles like hot and cold or good and evil. These poles create another pole and that pole winds up in opposition to another pole and so and so on. This can become exceedingly complex but it can also become very illuminating as well.

There are a lot of reasons given why a person shouldn’t lie. “It’s wrong” they say; which doesn’t stop ‘them’ from doing it either. We are told it is harmful. We are told that it is a sign of weak character and we’ve told a lot of things about this behavior that nearly everyone participates in every day. The real reason that you shouldn’t lie is that you always have to lie to yourself first and that is akin to suicide. If you lie to yourself you are going to be in a world of hurt sooner or later. Truth inevitably informs every lie of its presence and anyone connected to it and... depending on the degree of the investment... on that will depend the degree of suffering that attends it.

You’re probably wondering at this point where the hammer and tongs are; this being a Petri Dish offering. Maybe we should think of the velvet hammer in this case. Even a kiss can kill. When you tell the truth- inasmuch as that is possible in the medium of words- your words acquire power. You can see this in your own life... whether you are telling the truth or not, you can certainly see it in the lives of those who do tell the truth... even if their words only attain a greater meaning once they are gone.

Lying... like those endlessly replicating poles has the sure capacity to create a host of negative conditions that the liar generally is unable to associate with the compulsion to lie. There’s a bit of a conundrum here because we see that many liars are extremely successful in the world and they get that way due to the lies they have told in relation to the amount of people who hear and believe them. Thinking this is going to endure and thinking one could do worse than emulate them is short sighted. The opportunity of the moment carries no promise of perpetuity.

Many old liars are lying on or near their deathbeds as I speak. David Rockefeller comes to mind as does Henry Kissinger. You might say that they beat the game. Nothing has happened to them has it? Some imagine that nothing ever will. That sounds like a lie to me. It sounds like the truth to others. Like Pinochet and the vast procession of liars before him they will slip the knot just as Bernie Madoff expects to... just as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney expect to.

What I have observed is that the pursuit of the truth opens doors into other worlds. Lies do this too. We enter into these worlds and in both cases we may miss the moment of entry but we will not long be unaware of the changes in circumstance and terrain. Well, I’ve come to two and a third MS Word pages and so I must bind you adieu. We’ll be seeing each other again or for the first time here or somewhere else depending upon what it was we did and said that caused us to arrive there.

Visible sings: ♫ Fade Away ♫
'Fade Away' is track no. 3 of 10 on Visible's 2006 album 'Songwriter'
Lyrics (pops up)

Riding to the Killing Floor with Stupid by my Side

I often wonder how people can be so stupid and sometimes I wonder if I am not just as stupid by comparison to someone observing me from a higher platform. When I say ‘stupid’ I’m also saying ‘uninformed’ and ‘blind’ as well as ‘intentionally self abusive’ and ‘in full support of all agencies with intent to ruin the subject under discussion’. You can add in anything you think I may have left out because these have probably occurred to me too at some point or another.

When I say “stupid”, I’m talking about bone deep stupid hitting every branch on the stupid tree as they fall into the consciousness of a drunken rock at the bottom of a barrel of rotgut whiskey. This is the kind of stupid that can watch a video of themselves being humiliated in all of the ways of an imagination possessed by someone marginally stupid enough to have one who will... laugh at the person in the video while exclaiming, “Look at that stupid fool. How can he let them do that to him? He hasn’t got a clue.”

Here’s a form of stupid that I don’t get. I don’t know how long this race track is because I’m not stupid enough to want to go and find out but let’s say it’s a mile around. At the Daytona 500 that would mean the audience would sit in their seats watching human billboards drive their cars around the ring 500 times as if there were some point to the affair. You have to add in the hope and expectation of most of the spectators that at some point a car will go out of control and land in the stands where it will kill and/or injure a few dozen people and they will feel like, “it just doesn’t get any better than this”.

There is an impressive segment of the American public who is riveted on this enterprise and will actually watch it on TV if they can’t manage to attend the activity in person. The patrician end of this kind of stupid will watch golf on TV. I don’t have to wonder too hard how the psychopaths have accomplished the looting and destruction of the country. I don’t have to wonder too hard how these people are willing to accept anything that they are told as they worship Jesus in a Jumpsuit with advertising from his toes to his nose.

Then there are things like this. Parents don’t want their kids to see water pipes in a shop window but they have no concern at all about liquor advertisements or the presence of liquor in the shops and on shelves in their homes. More people die from alcohol abuse in one year than die from drugs in a century but... when you’re stupid, this kind of thing slips right under the Radio Shack radar that they use for awareness. Tens of thousands of people are killed on the highway every year from drunken drivers and you are as hard pressed to find an example of a marijuana highway slaughter as you are to find an actual child suicide bomber but they’re sure they are out there. Stupid doesn’t need evidence. All stupid needs is to be told it is so.

Stupid thinks Paris Hilton is hot. Stupid tells their pinheaded offspring that they could be on American Idol. Stupid watches network TV and network news and though it is always the same shit, stupid thinks it’s a different day. Here’s an example of the kind of stupid that thinks poor taste is high art. This is the kind of person that will film themselves masturbating with a hair brush and then put it up on youtube thinking Hollywood will call. This is the same kind of stupid that will call the truth anti-Semitic while they drive with their eyes closed into bankruptcy and enslavement.

As part of a calculated dumbing down which didn’t even seem to be required, Disney decided to create a plague of performing Mouseketeer stupids about a decade ago who would become role models for the kind of stupid they wanted en masse in order to give you the conditions you see in the America of today. They’re hand in glove with the collective putsch to morph humanity into the beasts of the field; not that a whole lot was required at the time. Then they took the bimbo offspring of the world’s worst country western fashion-bot and turned her into the latest chicken on a griddle celebrity to light up the text messaging nitwits into an even lower spark of high heeled boys. All the sexual energy looking for sublimation into something higher got flushed down the toilet into a recycling septic tank that is used as the raw material for the products in the shops and the people on the screen; a nation of lumbering shit-golems gibbering nonsense in abbreviated tongues. It just doesn’t get any better than this.

So... it isn’t a bad thing that they’re losing their jobs and their homes. It isn’t a bad thing that their savings have disappeared and that the education system has turned into a disinformation process. It isn’t a bad thing that they are too stupid to live because even the possibility that their collective dreams might ever see the light of day is too terrible to contemplate. They’re living the Formica life with two faceless children and one nameless dog where despairs not a threat it’s the law.

The real and compelling evidence which the Synagogue of Satan has left as bleeding teeth marks all over their bodies goes unrecognized as they eat their own shit because they were told it was ice cream. The reptiles who ruined their country now vacuum up whatever is left in the broad light of day and they believe they’re finally going to turn the corner on that abandoned lot where the promise of a better world got bulldozed while they were on their way to Fat City. Well... they got to Fat City alright. Now the only sounds they can hear are their thighs rubbing together on their way to the icebox and the butcher’s knife on the whetstone.

The yardstick disappears when you try to measure this kind of stupid but there are things even worse than stupid. There is the legion of almost stupid and not quite bright that have worked intentionally to bring this all about because they believed that no matter what happened that the demons they served would take care of them. Sometimes they did it out of the fear of losing their positions and prosperity. They conspired to come up with new ways to enslave their fellows in the hope that the demons would reward them for their industry. Someone doesn’t seem to understand what comprises a demon. Of course... demons are but angels in disguise (after a manner of speaking) ...still... I wouldn’t want to have my destiny decided by the darkness that conceals the liberating light. When the human mind perverts reality then what really is becomes antithesis while stupid pats itself on the back.

An uncle of mine used to say, “Those who cannot hear must feel”. This got said when I was misbehaving. You might consider it a motto for these times. Those who cannot and will not hear and see will certainly feel.

I am sorry for these people. All of my personal industry is directed at some awakening that I am stupid enough to believe is possible. I make sure to use some portion of that to wake myself up too because I fear that I am also dreaming to some degree. I cry out in my dreams for an opening door; for some greater strength in the hand that shakes the shoulder... mine as well as everyone else. I hope that it won’t hurt too much and maybe that is the problem. What we see of civilization is humanity’s reaction to pain. Somehow they confused comfort with security just as they have confused notoriety with fame.

It doesn’t look good. Life has become a casual hookup with the escort service from Hell. Fools dine and dance in a cobwebbed banquet hall surrounded by grinning corpses in the light of accommodating lamps. You can see it all in real time as the moment approaches when another light goes on and they see where it is that they are.

All that effort... all the centuries of industry and faith... all the trials and sacrifice has led to this. What a terrible waste of such great potential. Crack another beer and celebrate your stupidity that brought you here.

Visible and The Critical List: ♫ Overweight Lover ♫
'Overweight Lover' is track no. 3 of 9 on Visible and The Critical List's 1993 album
'Jews from Outer Space'
Lyrics (pops up)