I see Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the world-wide web, is calling for a labelling of websites to grade reliability, as a way of controlling cults and conspiracy theories.
Wrong, wrong, wrong on so many levels.
The freedom of speech argument doesn't need rehearsing here.
Who'd be qualified to judge the reliability of sites? Academics?
They have their own theories to promote, on which their career and livelihood depend.
Academic disciplines are increasingly narrow. As i pointed out in a recent post, there's no-one qualified to review a wide-ranging genius like Robert Temple. I doubt there's anyone currently working in academia to match his erudition.
Are most academics the well rounded, spiritually mature, great souls we should trust?
I wrote my book partly to draw attention to what i believe to be a neglected aspect of the human condition - but an aspect that has been a part of esoteric teaching. There are many areas of life where we believe what we do, not because we have carefully considered the arguments for and against and made a reasoned choice, but we have mapped onto very sparse scraps of evidence our widest and deepest beliefs about life and the way the world works.
I think this applies in many areas, but let's just focus on the area Sir Tim is talking about.
How many of us have considered in detail the evidence for and against a cover-up on the assassination of JFK or contact with aliens? There are lots of very long, detailed books on the subject, quite apart from the stuff on the Net.
For most of us, if we have view, I suggest, it's more likely to do with general beliefs about the way the world works.
Let me also take 2 examples from my book, which, almost by definition, operates in areas where the evidence is scrappy.
The death of Pythagoras in a building attacked and set fire to be a mob: this is not a mistake, as has been suggested, but one of the several, varying traditions that have come down to us. I chose the variant i did because it was the one taken up by the initiate Eduard Schure in a book endorsed by Rudolf Steiner, perhaps the greatest initiate of modern times.
Then my excellent German translator questioned a passage I'd written about Atlantean remains on Luneberg heath. She said the only prehistoric remains on the heath were very unimpressive. I had to make a snap decision, as the presses were ready to roll. I decided to keep it in. My source was Blavatsky, the great origin of the whole, historical impulse to make esoteric material exoteric of which my book is a small part. If she said Atlantean remains are there, I decided, they are probably still to be discovered/recognized.
Some cult and conspiracy material is evil. Much of it is anti-Semitic. Some of it wants to believe, for example, that Freemasons secretly worship Satan.
That is why I think the key thing is not to try to control the flow of evidence, but to try as individuals to be conscious of the philosophy of life you are mapping on to evidence. Are you choosing to believe with the best best part of yourself or the worst?
I strongly concur. Let ALL the information flow, don't censure it, and above all I'll decide for myself what to believe.
Posted by: Al | September 16, 2008 at 03:43 PM
-'labelling of websites to grade reliability, as a way of controlling cults and conspiracy theories' is to me similar to labeling books for similar reasons. I like fantasy, I like fact, non-fiction, conjecture, fiction, biography and sci-fi, philosophy and alternate views of history, art and conspiracy theory, mathematics, physics and poetry and even Hunter S. Thompson!...websites are small and large packets of information.
Of course if he gets into labeling...the ones with 'Don't go there, may be hazardous to your intelligence' will get the most hits! ;-)
Posted by: String | September 16, 2008 at 06:23 PM
. . . there's nothing wrong with some private individual or organization "grading" Web sites according to their own criteria. And nothing wrong with the rest of us treating such appraisals with the respect or contempt that they deserve.
But Lord forbid that the grading becomes the task of some government body.
Posted by: Lawrence Gasman | September 16, 2008 at 08:33 PM
JB, have you seen this?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5672009516679691710
Posted by: Al | September 16, 2008 at 10:22 PM
His call for website "grading" is not new and remains completely unworkable. Who would do it? Under what criteria? Who would pay for it.
I am reminded of this on a small scale in the horrid WIKIPEDIA. While it has set "academic" rules regarding citations and the type of "language" used the truth is that it is full of articles whose editors use these rules to push a certain point of view.
The language used in most "esoteric" wiki subjects is shocking in its obvious materialist/rationalist/scientific methodology bias.
And yet WIKI is quoted all over the net as a "reliable" source of information.
Mind you, perhaps a grading system on websites might be a good thing. The very moment a label is stuck on a website by "authority figures" stating it is untrue or a conspiracy people will come a running. I am reminded of the 70s and 80s when media types in the UK would hope that Mary Whitehouse would complain about their programming knowing it would boast their ratings :)
Posted by: Me | September 19, 2008 at 06:24 PM
PS: this is a very British thing don't you think? New Labor's little "nanny state". People are to stupid - and perhaps this is true in some degree - to tell the difference between "truth" and "fantasy". A society where the "silly" general public need to be guided to think "rationally"
But what of newspapers? What of the fantasies perpetuated by the SUN, The Mail, The Express, etc. Are these articles also to be graded?
Posted by: Me | September 19, 2008 at 06:29 PM
Lol...it all depends on just 'who' you are writing for and also 'who' would be grading eh?
Posted by: String | September 19, 2008 at 06:50 PM
Big Sister is watching you all XD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzKp2PeXeWI A good video interview of Hancock discussing LSD, Shamans and more for all you who are interested!
Hello again, 'Me'!
Posted by: Nick | September 19, 2008 at 09:58 PM
I think you're probably right, Me. There's something quite British about this control-freakery. The British army ran something called Big Ears during the Troubles which enabled them to listen to every phone call that had taken place in the country for over an hour before any terrorist attack.
Posted by: jonathanblack | September 22, 2008 at 10:42 AM
I'd like to say that, i have just finished The Secret History of the World and found it to be a truly remarkable book, if not only for how you have successfully managed to thread together such a concise narrative from a broad range of knowledge and information.
I've found reading it to be incredibly rewarding and informative, and on a personal level it has challenged me, but also tied up some loose ends and expanded on others.
So i was delighted to find that you also have a web presence!
Your absolutely right, the management and monitoring of any kind of information or opinion on the web is plain wrong, we should not dumb down peoples beliefs or perceptions of the world and everyone should have the right to apply (if necessary) their own filtering systems upon this almost oceanic amount of information available on line.
Prescriptive thought seems more and more to be the order of the day and i guess it was only going to be a matter of time before there was an attempt to do this towards content on the internet.(do a search for internet 2)
The cult of the expert pun is exactly right in so far as giving the right to someone who takes a microcosmic view of a subject and then allowing them to manage something that might offer a more macrocosmic view, would be a mistake.
Being someone who is willing to consider and has experienced other perspectives on this reality, i have looked at and read a lot of what is conveniently termed "conspiracy theory" and to be honest i've not come across anything that i would consider evil.
Some are just presenting their research in the way that Foucault might, although in far cruder language haha. As long as people are inspired to question a lot more, then that can only have beneficial consequences for all our internal development. Is this the main bone of contention for Sir Berners-Lee?
.
As for some view points being anti-semitic, I'm aware that, that criticism is usually attributed to David Icke' writing and, from what i have read, he most definitely believes that "shape shifting reptilians from the fourth dimension" are the issue not jewish people. So really he is talking about the spirit realm.
Your book does go some way to offer a different perspective against the current Freemasonry bashing that exists on some "Conspiracy" websites, so maybe an article tackling this issue specifically may be worthwhile considering.
Anyway, an amazing book, i've got quite a reading list ahead of me, however yours is calling me back for a second read.
Have you ever read Jean/Hans Gebser' The Ever-present Origin?
P.s
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the writing contained within the link below. It was posted recently on the Above Top Secret web site by someone claiming to be from a family lineage dating beyond antiquity to Atlantis (the lucifer group). It is an offering of what the person terms "A window of Opportunity" whereby forum members can have questions answered by someone who claims to be a messenger.
This link is from the original forum: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread402958/pg1
And this is a collated version of the forum thread: http://home.comcast.net/~readingnews/Hidden_Hand.html
Anyway, good look with your present research and experience'
Breathe in Breathe out
Very Best wishes
H
Posted by: harry | November 06, 2008 at 12:41 AM
No offence but that Above top secert q&a is the biggest pile of.... rubbish I've ever come across
Posted by: Nick | November 21, 2008 at 11:07 PM
Ha Ha... No offence taken Nick.
I know that these kinds of q&a's have cropped up on the internet before and i personally don't have enough knowledge to confidently test the things that this person was stating.
But of course if the intuition has smelt a rat then so be it.
I was mainly interested to hear if someone could contest his alleged knowledge, hence directing it towards JB.
The motives for these kinds of posts interest me also: is it ego...wild imagination...or an assumed knowledge.
Not sure if you looked at the ATS link or the collated one, but on the ATS link there were many people attacking the writer' stated position, but in such a flippant way that their arguments lacked the substance to truly challenge him. On the other hand maybe it was deemed un-worthwhile to do so.
But others who bought it completely, also bothered me.
Best Wishes
H
x
Posted by: harry | November 29, 2008 at 10:21 PM
It may well be ego . . . youtube is rife with mini - "revelation" factories that have devoted followers of the shadows they through about.
Posted by: Nick | December 02, 2008 at 09:28 AM
The cult of the expert
In order to cope with insecurity, fear and a desperate need for certainty we need experts to tell us how things really are. These experts get the official seal of approval from governments, popes, top scientists, the medical board, the law lords etc. etc. Standards must be defined, upheld and defended. Uncertainty equals a loss of structure and ultimately leads to anarchy.
At least this is how it looks.
For example during the troubles in Northern Ireland some people, I cannot say how many, were framed and falsely imprisoned. (If you don't remember this episode in recent british history watch "In the Name of the Father"). Why??? In order to placate the british public, outraged and screaming (the outrage and screaming in fact led by a satanic press) and claiming to seek justice, as the word vengeance would obviously unmask the press for who they really are. Also consider the Bush-Blair media spearhead to launch the war in Iraq. The experts apparently knew of the weapons of mass destruction.
The point is to restore law and order and thereby public confidence. And the result justifies the means. Better to imprison or kill innocents and restore public confidence than to leave matters open.
What we see here is a total abuse of power and the corruption of justice. Certain powerful individuals and groups of individuals claim to act for the benefit of the whole group and hold social cohesion in great esteem but in fact manipulate events for their own selfish ends and betray not only the fact that they think most people are stupid and not to be trusted but they fundamentally mess with people's basic right to think for themselves.
The powers that be are deeply nervous of a people developing its consciousness. Much is done to keep people enslaved through materialism, burocracy and the lowest common denominator atheism or its counterpart rampant religious fundamentalism; and the experts in cahoots with this demonic process to snuff out imagination, creativity and expansion of consciousness and development of the intellgence of the head and the heart.
I studied Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge 30 years ago and had the feeling then that many basic ideas and dates concerning human evolution and civilisation were completely wrong. Many new facts have come to light since then and the edifice is slowly but steadily crumbling. Thanks ever so much to people like Jonathan Black, Graham Hancock and others who raise questions and show how other points of view may be more valid. Once you take spirit and intuition out of any investigative process you're heading for trouble as you're left with a dead philosophy.
We should not pretend that people are basically stupid and fearful and therefore need to be told certainties even if we know them to be false.
I believe that people are fundamentally intelligent and that we must appeal to and help raise this intelligence. That's how consciousness overall is raised. It starts in the home and at school. For example the Waldorf Schools, based on Rudolph Steiner's ideas, try to develop children's creative faculties and build up their self-confidence.
Socates is attributed with saying that "I know that I know nothing". It is through this personal modesty and willingness to keep an open mind that deeper and more meaningful insights may be gained.
The experts who know all are a dangerous lot willfully leading mankind into prison. False certitudes keep us in servitude, preventing caterpillars from ever evolving into butterflies.
Gerry
Posted by: Gerry Rixen | December 09, 2008 at 03:43 PM
Nicely said Gerry, very insightful.
Prehaps you too should also open a blog?
You seem to have some good points
--Nick
Posted by: Nick | December 10, 2008 at 11:23 PM