My 14-year-old son recently began reading Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a novel I was very fond of when I was his age. If memory serves me well, Bradbury’s tale of book-burning firemen served as the gateway to what became a mini-obsession with dystopian fiction during my early teen years.
At that time, and for a long time afterward, I was thoroughly convinced that totalitarian power structures depended largely on their ability to control and censor information. Put another way, totalitarianism could only exist if and when it had obliterated and outlawed all information that threatened its own narrative. The practices of past totalitarian societies—the National Socialist Kulturkampf or Soviet oppression —lent great support to this conviction.
Like most in the West during the Cold War years, I firmly believed that personal, spiritual, and societal freedom depended almost entirely on the free flow of information. Take that away, and totalitarianism of one form or another was guaranteed to follow.
I no longer subscribe to such views. On the contrary, current circumstances in the West have revealed that totalitarianism can establish itself quite effectively without obstructing or interfering with the free flow of information all that much.
Yes, censorship, bans, and witch hunts have occurred and still flare up occasionally; however, when it comes to information, the situation in the West today bears little resemblance to the hardcore repressive regimes of the twentieth century or those depicted by the likes of Bradbury or Orwell.
Instead of banning and destroying information, our present-day totalitarians saturate the world with it. Although it officially frowns upon and, in some cases, prohibits and sanctions certain books, texts, and information sources that go against its narratives, the current totalitarian power structures in the West allow access to such books, texts, and sources, provided the individual is willing to do the legwork to attain such knowledge.
A motivated individual in the West can find any book, text, or article written by anyone at any time without too much effort or interference and, notably, often without having to pay for it, which is an entirely different topia than the ones depicted in the most famous dystopian novels.
That should provide a pause for thought.
Present-day totalitarianism does not seem to fear secondary thinking in the same way its predecessors had. If it did, it would not permit the vast oceans of information sloshing around the world. Being able to access information that unmistakably reveals the corruption and evil of the current System has little to no effect on its power structures, operations, and functioning. On the contrary, subversive information usually serves to feed the System in some manner. More often than not, it seems to strengthen rather than weaken it.
Our current totalitarian world not only tolerates information, but it also actively promotes its proliferation and dissemination, the point of what can only be described as information overload. I am of the conviction that this active promotion of information overload stems from nefarious spiritual motivations.
The alienation of modern man represents near-total submersion in the representational world, made all the more acute by the ever-increasing disconnect between Reality and representations of Reality.
This disconnection marks the virtual obliteration of primary thinking in favor of secondary thinking. Put another way, for modern man, secondary thinking via externally received symbolic information is reality because he is virtually incapable of connecting with reality in any other way.
Modern man now regards the symbols, language, and other representations used to shape, fashion, give form to, or describe as reality itself, both de facto (as in matter of fact) and de jure (as in legally and officially recognized).
Simply put, information used solely at the level of secondary thinking is now synonymous with reality.
The war we are in is fundamentally a spiritual war, not an information war.
Many recognize and understand the totalitarian push to control the narrative; however, they fail to discern that the core problem is the exclusive and obsessive focus on engaging with narrative through secondary thinking, thereby keeping consciousness firmly entrenched in representational reality as reality (or, in keeping consciousness locked in the Information Age and its related thinking).
Our present-day totalitarians are not simply striving to control information and secondary thinking; they want to ensure human consciousness remains trapped in a state of information overload and secondary thinking.
I suspect that at the deepest, most fundamental level, our totalitarian rulers and the demonic forces they serve welcome information opposition to their secondary-level information manipulations because it keeps human consciousness firmly fixated on representations as reality rather than on Reality.
Thus, keeping people engaged in information wars not only helps to distract from the spiritual war but also helps to hinder the further development of human consciousness.
Winning the spiritual war and connecting with Truth and Reality does not and cannot boil down to being informed, an essentially passive state in which one allows the external to shape, fashion, give shape to, and teach reality via representations presented and accepted as Reality.
I am not implying that the representational is dispensable.
On the contrary, it is vital, but only when we understand that it serves as a go-between and not a final destination. In this sense, the representations the good info warriors provide are far superior to the information promulgated by the likes of the WEF, which serves more as a go-nowhere rather than a go-between. Yet representations on the side of good can only do good if they are treated as intermediaries — that is, used to orient and/or connect to Reality.
That connection to Reality happens beyond the representational, in the realm of primary thinking — the realm of non-representational direct-knowing originating from and connecting to the primal self. Although representational, secondary thinking can inspire, motivate, and guide individuals toward primary thinking, it cannot substitute for primary thinking.
Present-day totalitarianism does not fear information; it fears thinking, especially the primary kind.
Note: Some of the above is a rehashing of previous thoughts on secondary thinking.
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