{"id":276930,"date":"2024-10-14T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2024-10-14T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=276930"},"modified":"2024-10-12T06:00:35","modified_gmt":"2024-10-12T05:00:35","slug":"the-preposterous-nature-of-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/10\/the-preposterous-nature-of-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"The Preposterous Nature of \u201cReality\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

10 Oct 2024 <\/em>– It is not uncommon to be doing something seemingly innocuous when one is flooded with wild thoughts, musings that seem randomly meaningless, leading nowhere.\u00a0 Thoughts that think us.\u00a0 To dismiss them, however, is a mistake.\u00a0 For me, these unbidden guests usually visit me when I am out walking or lying in bed right before sleep.<\/p>\n

\n

Recently, as I was again walking across the meandering Housatonic River through the covered wooden bridge in Sheffield, Massachusetts, I found myself waylaid by the thought of the word \u201cpreposterous,\u201d which is usually understood to mean absurd, very silly, or foolish.\u00a0 Being happily eccentric and language obsessed, I thought of its etymology, which from the Latin means before-behind or before-after, which makes preposterous an absurd, nonsense word itself, which seemed appropriate to thoughts that were approaching me from the other side as I walked ass-backwards (my behind behind me) toward them.\u00a0 I wanted to see ahead to make sure I wasn\u2019t bushwacked by something more absurd than a word.<\/p>\n

For when I exited the bridge, I passed a plaque commemorating a reported UFO sighting by forty people and an alleged abduction on September 1, 1969 by Thomas Reed, who claims that when he was nine years-old he and his family were taken briefly aboard a disk-shaped flying UFO as they were driving down the dirt road between the corn fields and the marshes that I was approaching.\u00a0 While this strange, fascinating story is not the focus of my reflections, if it interests you, you can read about it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I mention it because of what the plaque evoked in me and the seemingly preposterous nature of Reed\u2019s claim and the weirdness of those of the many people who said they saw the same UFO.\u00a0 I am not passing judgment on them, for I believe those forty people saw something, but what they saw I do not know.\u00a0 I must admit I am glad I was not beamed up on my recent walk, for I wasn\u2019t dressed appropriately for such an encounter.<\/p>\n

What intrigues me about their stories is that they happened at a time very similar to today when the world seemed to be spinning out of control.<\/p>\n

In 1969, secular black magic was in the air as the U.S. war against Vietnam raged on, led by the \u201cpeace candidate\u201d in the 1968 presidential election, Richard Nixon.<\/p>\n

There was the counterculture\u2019s wide use of drugs (the CIA’s introduction of LSD, etc.), its turn to eastern religions and New Age esoterica, and the crisis of traditional religion as pagan practices were revived.<\/p>\n

There was the murder of Sharon Tate and others by Charles Manson\u2019s gang (deeply involved with satanism, Nazism, and occultism) in early August that was shortly followed by the Woodstock music mud festival, with both preceded by Apollo 11 to be followed by Seymour Hersh\u2019s revelations about the My Lai massacre.<\/p>\n

Throughout the year, and those preceding and following, the FBI\u2019s COINTELPRO, the CIA\u2019s operations CHAOS and MK ULTRA were in full force, spying on Americans, creating chaos and mayhem in minds and on the streets, a part of a vast effort at political mind control and disassociation of the personality through the most evil means.<\/p>\n

And \u201cironically,\u201d in December 1969, the U.S. Air Force\u2019s Project Blue Book \u2013 its decades long investigation of UFOs \u2013 was officially ended with the conclusion that there was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as \u201cunidentified\u201d were extraterrestrial vehicles or were in any way beyond the range of modern technological science.<\/p>\n

In October, as in before-after, the U.S. Department of Defense\u2019s ARPANET program \u2013 Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (now DARPA) \u2013 the predecessor of the Internet, made it its first communication between two computers.<\/p>\n

Then, as if to culminate a decade of assassinations and absurdity, despite a very vocal peace movement, in December, the Altamont music festival was riven by murder and mayhem, as if to imply, contrary to Don McLean\u2019s 1971 \u201cAmerican Pie,\u201d that this was the day the music died.<\/p>\n

The list goes on and on.\u00a0 Let\u2019s just say the times were psychedelic, as if society were on a non-stop bad acid trip and the CIA\u2019s takeover of the country was nearly complete.<\/p>\n

Jump ahead a half-century to today.<\/p>\n

Now we have the long-planned Internet \u2013 ARPANET\u2019s and the Pentagon\u2019s baby \u2013 and digital madness with conflicting narratives that are akin to acid-trips. \u00a0Mental dissociation at its finest.<\/p>\n

Nixon is long gone but his successors have carried on his ruthless Vietnam war policies in grand traditional style with the U.S forever wars (El Salvador, Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan\u00b8 Libya, Syria, etc.) , with war against Russia via Ukraine, its backing of the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians and aggressive war against its neighbors, the push for war with China \u2013 all leading to the greatest chance of nuclear war since 1962.<\/p>\n

The renewed media reports about UFOs (now called \u201cunidentified anomalous phenomena\u201d) and the Pentagon\u2019s denials are kept alive by technologues like Elon Musk, among others, in his recent jocular exchange with Tucker Carlson.\u00a0 You know, there are a lot of satellites up there but let\u2019s not discuss the Pentagon\u2019s mind control, the games it has being playing for decades to create fear.<\/p>\n

We have Artificial Intelligence (AI) and massive drug use far exceeding that of the 1960s that is officially promoted, as reality evaporates before and behind more and more people\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n

For the massive growth of mental problems, LSD, that old bad-ass standby, is now advocated by the mainstream media as excellent therapy, while the weaponization of disease with Covid propaganda spins along as the world awaits the promulgation of the falling leaf virus and the call to cut down all trees.<\/p>\n

Spying on Americans and censorship of free speech is the rule of the day, far deeper and wider than the most inflamed imagination could conjure.<\/p>\n

There is an electoral system in shambles that has become a running joke, at least for those who get it.<\/p>\n

MKULTRA mind control on a vast scale flourishes, despite all the denials, via the Internet and digital devices meant to confuse, promote doubt, and crazy speculation.<\/p>\n

There is the leitmotif that has persisted for 60 years, the continued decline and mockery of traditional religious beliefs together with the promotion of New Age \u201cspirituality\u201d tied to consumerism. Shopping being the real religion now.<\/p>\n

And lest I forget, we have the media and educational promotion of sexual and identity confusion under the guise of new definitions, such as the meaning of the word \u201cgender.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, there is no mass peace movement as wars rage, except for those college students protesting Israel\u2019s genocide of Palestinians and a few scattered groups.<\/p>\n

You can easily fill in what I have omitted because there is no doubt you feel this disturbing \u201creality\u201d of living in a society of screen spectacles and scrambled brains.<\/p>\n

In other words, social madness, the \u201cafter\u201d to \u00a01969\u2019s \u201cbefore\u201d \u2013 absurdity repeating itself, is the rule of the day, or more accurately, has been continuing for the past 55 years.<\/p>\n

A preposterous scene.<\/p>\n

Weirdness and Chaos are today\u2019s celebrity couple, as people are subjected to, and subject themselves to, smoke and mirrors and mind control through an addiction to cell phones, the perfect propaganda tool. \u00a0Just put your hand in your pocket wherever you are and \u201cthey\u201d are with you, in your hand, in your head, your constant companion, corrupting your mind and soul.<\/p>\n

All this juxtaposed history did not occur to me in specifics as I walked down the beautiful dirt road past the UFO plaque; it came to me in more general terms.\u00a0 But in a flash. \u00a0The particulars here recounted come from my having lived through the 1960s and my knowledge of history, the teaching of which has fallen into desuetude as universities have, in the words of the recently retired Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi, \u201cFor some time now, I have been both disgusted and horrified by the way higher education has developed into a cash register \u2013 essentially a money-making, MBA, lawyer-run, hedge fund-cum-real estate operation, with a minor sideline in education, where money has determined everything, where respect for pedagogy is at a minimum.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his book, Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World,<\/a> Jonathan Crary, sums it up nicely: \u201cOne of the foremost achievements of the so-called knowledge economy is the mass production of ignorance, stupidity, and hatefulness. . . . programmed unintelligibility and duplicity.\u201d<\/p>\n

A close relative of mine, a brilliant man, highly skeptical, scientifically inclined, and very logical, a guy who scoffs at wild claims that he subjects to careful analyzes, was recently on a flight into LAX airport.\u00a0 He had a window seat, and as the plane was on its long descent, the plane at approximately 15,000 feet, he saw a quivering disk-shaped object about 150 feet beyond the plane\u2019s wing.\u00a0 Startled beyond belief, he regretted not taking a photo of it before it was gone.\u00a0 As soon as he landed, however, he asked the pilot if he had seen it.\u00a0 The pilot said no, but it was probably a drone, which would make it a very high-flying drone indeed.\u00a0 My relative called me immediately to tell me.\u00a0 He said it was the size of a small car and it quivered like a quarter when dropped on a countertop.\u00a0 He said it looked like no drone he had ever seen, and though amazed, characteristically concluded that he didn\u2019t know what it was.<\/p>\n

I mention this because such sightings are not just the wild imaginings of people prone to believe anything.\u00a0 They are part of our current \u201creality,\u201d seen by many people but shrouded in mystery.\u00a0 Government authorities dismiss these sightings as figments of people\u2019s imagination or weather balloons, drones, etc.\u00a0 Any evidence to the contrary is dismissed, like so much else, as the conspiracy thinking of nutty people.\u00a0 In other words \u2013 preposterous, meaning absurd.\u00a0 This is part of the game of mind control that has been going on for decades, the effort to create social neurosis and confusion throughout society.<\/p>\n

I offer these thoughts because I was waylaid by a word \u2013 preposterous \u2013 that went to my head.\u00a0 If I have not kept to the subject, whatever it might be or whatever you expected, it is because, as the psychologist Adam Philips puts it, \u201cIn this picture digression is secular revelation, keeping to the subject is the best way we have of keeping off the subject.\u201d\u00a0 And so I will end with a few words from the great mystical and political poet, Czeslaw Milosz, a former Polish diplomat, who raises a question that cuts to the heart of our current dilemma.<\/p>\n

Most people are ashamed, Milosz has written, to ask themselves certain questions that the seething infinity of modern relativity has bequeathed us. Such relativity is at the heart of our modern spiritual crisis, which is also the political one. \u00a0Space and time have lost all dimensions; the experience of the collapse of hierarchical space and time is widespread.\u00a0 For those who still call themselves religious believers, \u201cwhen they fold their hands and lift up their eyes, \u2018up\u2019 no longer exists,\u201d Milosz rightly says.\u00a0 The map and the territory are one as all metaphysics are almost lost.\u00a0 And with its loss go our ability to see the advancing banner of the king of hell, to grasp the nature of the battle for the soul of the world that is now underway.\u00a0 Or if you prefer, the struggle for political control.<\/p>\n

What is before is behind or what is before is after.\u00a0 It is preposterous but it is true.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Edward J. Curtin, Jr., Ph.D. is a widely published author and a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. His new book is <\/em>Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies<\/a> \u2013 His website: <\/em>Behind the Curtain<\/em><\/a> – email: <\/em>edcurtinjr@gmail.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 edwardcurtin.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10 Oct 2024 – It is not uncommon to be doing something seemingly innocuous when one is flooded with wild thoughts, musings that seem randomly meaningless, leading nowhere.\u00a0 Thoughts that think us.\u00a0 To dismiss them, however, is a mistake.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":274660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[2166,70],"class_list":["post-276930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-reality","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276930"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":276931,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276930\/revisions\/276931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}