Existential Challenge of Detecting Today’s Big Lie
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 30 May 2016
Anthony Judge – TRANSCEND Media Service
Mysterious Black Hole Conditioning Global Civilization?
Introduction
If indeed there was a “big lie” conditioning the dynamics of global civilization, how might evidence of it be detected?
One classic reference is of course the propaganda technique cultivated by the Nazi regime. The expression “big lie” was allegedly coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf — about the use of a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”. The insight was notoriously applied by Joseph Goebbels, German Reich Minister of Propaganda, who declared:
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State. (Joseph Goebbels quotes)
One line of inquiry could of course be the manner in which worldwide invasive surveillance has been cultivated, as highlighted by the release of diplomatic cables by Julian Assange through Wikileaks, followed by the releases of Edward Snowden. This made it clear that the public has been systematically exposed to a lie — purportedly for its own good, as righteously claimed and understood by some.
Another line of inquiry would be that notoriously highlighted by Donald Rumsfeld, as US Secretary of Defense, with respect to the known knowns — togethr with the known unknowns, the unknown knowns, and the unknown unknowns. This has been expressed otherwise by the arguments of Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable, 2007). Although such matters may be known to many, or suspected, there is a special kind of constraint on there consideration in public discourse. Like the so-called dark web, this is the realm of the unsaid (Varieties of the “Unsaid” in sustaining psycho-social community, 2003). What is it that is systematically “designed off” the table of global discourse?
There is of course a case for exploring the hidden agendas of fundamentalist religious movements, whether Christian (Catholic or otherwise), Islamic, or Jewish. The Christian are empowered in this respect by the Great Commission. These and similar notions are the primary nourishment of conspiracy theorists who variously infer a big lie underlying the contrast between overt and covert agendas. So framed it is easy to be seduced by arguments for the existence of secret elites pulling the strings of global governance — possibly under the cover of prominent groupings of the eminent: the Club of Rome, the World Economic Forum, and other bodies, including their wannabe imitators.
It is intriguing to imagine the variety of ways today’s big lie might be disguised, perhaps most probably beneath claims in quest of the very reverse — emphasizing the positive at all costs, and deprecating questions framed as negative cynicism. Indications would then be offered by evidence of doublespeak, as separarately discussed (Enabling Suffering through Doublespeak and Doublethink, 2013).
All the words encapsulating the highest human values would then be skillfully employed as cloaks of stealth — education, health, security, peace, happiness, quality of life, and the like. These words are of course central to the discourse of world leaders and politicians and to the articulation of their promises and commitments. To want extent are they consciously or unconsciously exploited to protect the nature of today’s big lie?
One guideline for the inquiry could well be the so-called black holes which astrophysicists claim to exist, but for which evidence takes the form of inference in relation to theoretical consistency. As a particular kind of intangible dynamic, no black hole can be conventionally observed — according to the theories inferring their existence.
Curiously black holes are used as a metaphor for global public debt — readily ignored in consideration of global governance (Mark Hendrickson, The Black Hole of Debt, Forbes, 12 February 2016; Seth Lloyd, The Black Hole of Finance, Edge, 2016).
Is it possible that any big lie would take just such a subtle form, despite the power it exerts on its environment? Might this even be necessarily so — as a reflection in the psychosocial world of the most fundamental insight of creative minds in this period?
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