Academia Iluministă (31)
1) Departure
All human beings are confronted with problems. These come in two types: inner and outer. The outer are the external obstacles, laid by other people, which block our path. The inner are the internal obstacles that we have raised ourselves.
In the hero monomyth, the hero uses the crisis provoked by an outer problem to resolve his profoundest inner problems. The outer and inner problems are inextricably linked: the hero will not succeed with the outer problem if he fails with the inner. The harder the outer problem, the deeper inside himself the hero must go. The greatest acts of heroism demand the greatest self transformation. The supreme external challenges require heroes capable of being gods: those who can transform the whole world by transforming themselves.
The vast majority of people inhabit a comfort zone where they seek easy pleasures to make life pass “pleasantly”. They don’t confront any external problems in any meaningful way. They engage ego-defence mechanisms such as denial, displacement and projection to avoid facing up to their problems. They are scared of challenging authority, breaking free of social customs, separating themselves from the herd, departing for daunting destinations.
Ordinary people are afraid of hard work, of taking risks, of being unusual and setting themselves “unrealistic” goals. They are afraid of their own inner demons and refuse to look at them. Above all, they are afraid of attaining their Higher Self because that will change their life forever in the most radical way, and may result in the complete severance with their old, comfortable way of life.
All of us are called by our Higher Self, but most of us resist the summons. If we want to be extraordinary, we have to cut the umbilical cord that links us to everything trivial and ordinary, but most of us never raise the knife that will free us. We are refuseniks and cowards, the legions of the bland and banal. We are “last men” devoted to petty self-interest and trivial comforts.
Those who pursue the easy life will never achieve anything great. They will never be heroes. Our whole culture is geared towards taking the soft option, of gratifying ourselves as swiftly as possible, hence this is the ultimate anti-hero society. It distrusts and fears true heroes. It likes only comic-book heroes or those who do exactly what society regards as “good” (i.e. as defined by the ruling establishment).
But the hero never allows himself to be defined by others. He defines himself; he creates himself. Only those with the courage to find their authentic self will ever be genuinely authentic. We live in a fake and phoney world. We live in bad faith. We have a false consciousness. We are inauthentic. We desperately need to build a hero culture, a society of heroes.
It’s time to depart on the long, hard road to find our Higher Selves. It’s time to separate ourselves from the ordinary world that has ensnared us with its trivial concerns and easy, disposable pleasures that reach their sell-by date almost as soon as they are touched. It’s time to cross the threshold that separates the world of Common Day from the extraordinary world.
The hero’s path is right there in front of us, all marked out for us, yet it’s a path that few will be taking. You want an extraordinary life? Then what are you going to do that is extraordinary? You want to be a hero? Then do something heroic. Take that first step into the Unknown Country and begin the process of transforming yourself from base metal into gold.
The hero monomyth is the supreme act of alchemy that takes the prima materia (the primary material) – ourselves – and purifies and perfects it until it shines, glints and gleams like the gold of God.
2) Initiation
The hero’s true journey begins at the point at which he crosses the threshold separating the ordinary from the extraordinary world. Jim Morrison said, “There are things known and things unknown and in between are The Doors.” When the hero opens the door that takes him from the world of common day to the uncommon world, his life changes forever. One way or another, he will never be the same again. He is leaving behind the familiar to venture into the Great Unknown where there is no comfort zone, no safety net.
The sheeple stare curiously at the strange door that leads to the new world. For a while, it seems enticing but as they shuffle closer, saying “baa” all the while, the door exudes a terrible power. It creates an invisible force field that keeps away all but the finest members of the human race. Even to reach the door is an impressive feat. To actually go through it means you are capable of becoming God. You are ready to be initiated into the highest mysteries.
The sheeple watch in awe as the door swings open and the hero steps through. Instantly, he vanishes from sight, and the door swings shut once more. The sheeple turn away and go back to grazing. “Oh, we’ll be heroes in our video games,” they say. “Doing it for real is so much hassle. A virtual hero’s as good as a real one.”
The hero – on the other side of the door, the side that only higher humanity ever experiences – has nothing but his inner divinity to sustain and guide him. There are no sheeple here. There are no easy paths, soft options or lazy dreams.
You did not come here for instant gratification. You came to transform yourself from clay into alchemical gold. You have chosen the hardest path, the path that mercilessly punishes all weakness. The bones of failed heroes lie strewn everywhere. Almost all of the Grail Knights – mightiest and most magnificent of men though they were – perished here. If they couldn’t make it then who can? You seriously think you can accomplish the impossible?
The hero immediately finds himself travelling downwards, into ever deepening darkness. The blackest and most forbidding mountains arise around him. The path is stony and painfully hard. He reaches the darkest of forests and hears the most terrifying noises…human screams.
Just as Dante did, the hero will have to open the gate of hell and venture into the Inferno where all of his deepest fears reside. On the other side, Paradise awaits, but how many can ever get there when hell itself stands between them and their goal?
Hell is the ultimate road of trials. Here you are subjected to every torment, everything from which you have fled in your ordinary life. Here you must reconcile all of the things that have troubled and disturbed you. You must encounter your Father and Mother and come to terms with them, not as their child, but as an equal adult who has put childish things behind you. You must confront all of the bullies who did you down, everyone who harmed you, all those who screwed you over. You must relive all of the things you fucked up in your life and understand why. You must encounter your anima/animus and resolve all the issues you have with the opposite sex.
You will encounter every demon, temptress, conman and monster. You have to overcome them all, and that means reaching into your own soul and summoning forth your Higher Self, that part of you that already has one foot in the divine order.
Your task, you now realise, is to replace your lower self with your divine self. Your lower self does not have a prayer of surviving in hell. Your lower self is weak, trivial, stupid, cowardly and soft. It wants easy pleasures and to fit in with the flocks of sheeple. Your Higher Self, on the other hand, is immortal and, when fully conscious, indistinguishable from God.
The gap between you and God is both infinitely wide and trivially small. Gnosis allows you to bridge the unbridgeable. Gnosis is ultimate intuition. Gnosis is about listening to the pulse of the cosmos. Gnosis is about separating your mind from the mortal world of ordinary consciousness and linear thinking and embracing the immortal and infinite world where everything is interconnected.
You must transcend yourself. You must reach for a miraculous ladder that disintegrates rung by rung as you climb it. There’s no way back. At the top of the ladder is another door, the one that takes you out of the darkness and into the infinite and eternal light.
What is the hero’s task all about? It’s about descending into your deepest self with absolute honesty and conviction, about getting rid of all the bullshit and delusion, all of the expectations of others that are fundamentally about them and nothing to do with you. It’s about asking yourself – “Who am I? What do I want? What really makes me tick? Do I have the courage to pursue my highest ambitions even though there is no guarantee of success, even though I will have to make enormous sacrifices and will become estranged from the sheeple who were once my friends? My status in their eyes may drop to zero. My family may disown me. The world will think I am mad. Yet how can I ignore my inner voice, the voice that tells me who I really am and of what I’m really capable?”
The hero is fearless, dedicated, irrepressible. He is self-defining and self-creating. He will not stop. He will not give in. He will do whatever it takes. That’s what makes him different from everyone else. They are incapable of making sacrifices. The hero knows that nothing great can be achieved without sacrifice. The hero must endure pain to enjoy the highest heights of human greatness.
The hero’s journey is always the same. He descends into the underworld where he must endure a ghastly ordeal in which his lower self perishes. Only then can the hero taste an astonishing spiritual rebirth where he is initiated into the higher mysteries. He takes hold of the sword of knowledge and with it he cuts through all unknown things and reveals their secret contents. He has penetrated to the Source.
At last, he is able to get to the top of the sacred ladder and open the exit door. The first sight that greets him is the great boon he has been searching for all his life – the Holy Grail itself. Is that a sight you want to see too? Then what price will you pay?
3) The Return
The hero has ventured into hell itself to discover the miraculous elixir that validates his existence and justifies all the hard choices he has made in life. He has overcome the most terrible obstacles and endured the most daunting ordeals. He has defied incredible odds and triumphantly seized his prize. But now he is faced with a fateful choice. Will he choose to stay in the extraordinary world and push on to heaven itself, or will he return to the ordinary world as a higher being who can help others to raise themselves up? Does he feel he has unfurnished business in the ordinary world?
In Hollywood movies, the hero almost invariably returns home. Yet to go back to the world of common day is fraught with danger. The forces that have been defeated on the way have regrouped and now they are intent on blocking the road home. Perhaps they can recover the elixir from the hero and steal his victory from him. Defeat at this stage would be catastrophic, undoing all the good that has been achieved.
And yet if the world’s call is insistent enough, the hero has no choice but to battle his old foes once more, even though they may be worse than ever. He may have to defeat the leader of the enemy forces, the quintessence of the opposition to everything he stands for, before he can reach the exit that leads him back home.
The hero is plagued with doubt. Can he triumph all over again against even greater odds? He is reassured that he now has the elixir to help him achieve the impossible, but when he crosses back over the threshold separating the ordinary and extraordinary worlds, will the elixir lose its potency? Will it be of any use in the ordinary world? Will it fade away in the harsh light of ordinary day? Will the unheroic, ordinary people accept its value? Perhaps it will demand too much of them. Will they reject it, and him with it? He may find himself ostracised, banished to the ends of the earth.
Yes, the elixir may prove a curse rather than a blessing. It may rouse enmity in the ordinary world. And perhaps it may demand that his final task is none other than to sacrifice himself for others. For the land to be healed, it’s often the case that the sacred king must die. Nothing will grow again in the Waste Land until the hero has nourished the ground with his precious elixir – which may be his own blood.
Yet the hero has made his decision. He has resolved to change the world, and he will allow nothing to get in his way. He is a world-historic figure, a man of destiny, one of the handful of men and women capable of breathing the air of the gods. He knows what it means to be free, to be the master of two worlds. He has joined the deities at the summit of Mount Olympus. Ordinary mortals lie far below, like ants, yet he has given his solemn word to help them scale the heights too and join him in a new, higher world.
Your attention please.
This is not a rehearsal.
This is not a drill.
This is your life.
Make the most of it.
Become a hero.
Bring the ultimate cosmic journey – your journey – to its appointed end.
Become God.
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The Secret Order of M-Omega:
Foreword by Magus.
MANY OF THE GREAT ENDEAVOURS – the undertakings that shape the destiny of humanity begin with a fanfare, with pomp and circumstance, with marching bands, cheering crowds and the official approval of the “great and good”. But others begin unheralded, unsung and uncelebrated in the invisible undergrowth of the world where the talents of those not born into privilege go unremarked, undeveloped, unsought and unrewarded. Yet silent whispers in the cold night can become resounding shouts in the midday sun, shouts that topple proud kings, mighty nations and all those who believe themselves invulnerable to the “ordinary” people so far below them on the ladder of “status”.
What is the best possible world? It is the one where humanity has maximized its potential through the maximization of the individual potential of each and every person on earth. No one can be neglected. Every contribution is precious and unique. The chain is only as strong as the weakest link, so that weakest link must be adamantine if the chain is to be unbreakable. Everyone needs to be raised up, not just those born into privilege.
Humanity as a whole must strive to reach its fullest potential, to express the divine destiny that awaits all those, no matter how humble, in whom the spirit of God resides. Yet humanity is mired in trivia, greed, selfishness, narcissism and violence. Most human beings are servants, slaves, worker drones and paper shufflers, leading lives of “quite desperation”. Their potential is left to rot because it does not serve the needs of the Elite, who are interested only in themselves and the acquisition of ever greater power and wealth, of ever greater separation between them and the “masses”.
The Movement, and its inner core – the Secret Order of M-Omega – is the whisper that will change the world, that will be heard in every cave and mountain top, every island and lake, every remote corner where only the wild winds go. The Movement owes no debt to the past. It’s not weighed down by traditions. It’s a new enterprise for a new age. It’s free to be what it wants, free to define itself, free to create itself. The Movement can shape the world anew. It can be the beacon that illuminates the darkness.
The Movement is a spiritual, philosophical, political, radical, artistic, scientific, mathematical, religious, technological, economic and creative undertaking. It embraces all of the ingredients required to transform humanity.
If the world is the mirror of God and humanity is God’s reflection then God will recognise himself only when humanity has attained its omega point of perfection. The Secret Order of M-Omega has begun the long journey to humanity’s final destination – divinity. To indivisible communion between God and the human race.
The ultimate quest requires the finest knights, those imbued with courage, determination and supreme merit, those in whom the divine glow is already visible. The Secret Order of M-Omega can be the vehicle for humanity to travel to the glittering celestial plane. Only the finest may join its ranks, and it is then their sacred task to elevate everyone else.
May Abraxas bless this new secret society. May he assist it to illuminate this benighted world. May he confer upon it the greatest of all destinies, that of finally liberating the human race from the long, unendurable darkness. So, are you ready to change the world? Are you ready to become God?
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The Meritocracy Party:
“Today, Friday, 19 October, 2007, saw the birth of the Meritocracy Party. Daybreak has come and the light looks brighter.” –The official launch of the Meritocracy Party
The Meritocracy Party campaigns to replace democracy with meritocracy. Democracy has become the single biggest obstacle to the rise of the most meritorious. In the USA, no matter your talents, you cannot become President unless you have access to vast wealth to fund your campaign. In Great Britain, social mobility – the opportunity to improve your social standing – has gone into reverse. If you are born into a poor family you are statistically almost certain to remain poor, regardless of your merits. If your parents are rich, you can start looking forward to a prosperous future, again regardless of your merits.
The Meritocracy Party seeks to remove the link between parental wealth and children’s outcomes in life, and to eradicate nepotism and cronyism, the dual drivers of privilege. The Meritocracy Party is “viral”. You don’t need to join anything, seek anyone’s permission, go to any meetings or pay any money. If you’re broadly in tune with the meritocratic ethos, all you have to do is go out and spread the word.
The world can be changed: conversation by conversation amongst intelligent people.
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The following material concentrates on the British political system, but the same arguments apply in every country. The idea is to have a Meritocracy Party in every country of the world, all of which are affiliated to create the first global political Party. With global capital relentlessly forcing down costs (people’s pay) while increasing their own profits, only a global political response will suffice. Whatever country you are in, start building the meritocratic future.
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The Facts.
(Source: Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making by David Rothkopf.)
● The world is controlled by a global elite of approximately 6,000 people.
● 94% of them are men, and their average age is 60.
● 2% of the world’s population own 50% of the world’s wealth.
● 1,100 billionaires have double the assets of the world’s poorest 2.5 billion people.
● The world’s 50 largest financial institutions control a third of the world’s assets.
● The world’s 250 biggest companies generate sales of about a third of the world’s GDP.
Very few of this super-rich elite are elected. Many have attended privileged schools, colleges and universities. Many belong to exclusive clubs and societies. Many inherited great wealth and many just happened to be present when great assets became available (as in the case of the 36 Russian oligarchs). Many have strong family and religious links. Many are close friends. They control practically everything worth controlling. They don’t listen to us, and they don’t care about us. So, the choice is simple. Let’s do nothing and go through life like peasants bowing to feudal kings. Or let’s stand up to the elite and take what is ours. It’s time to replace the system that oppresses us. Democracy is the global elite’s main instrument of political control of the masses – their brilliant trick to make us think they are ruling on our behalf. Meritocracy, the antidote to corrupt democracy, will eliminate nepotism and cronyism. It’s time to change the world we live in. It’s time for meritocracy.
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Are you leading the best life of which you are capable?
The Five Tests.
Are you about to take a big decision? How do you know it’s the right one? Here are the five tests:
● The Eternal Recurrence Test – this thing you are about to do: if you had to watch yourself performing this action an infinite number of times, would you still go ahead? If so, do it. If not, don’t.
● The Movie Of Your Life Test – this thing you are about to do: would you want it to be in the movie of your life, the scenes that show you at your very best? If so, do it. If not, don’t.
● The Gravestone Test – this thing you are about to do: would you want it recorded on your gravestone after your death? If so, do it. If not, don’t.
● The Mirror Test – this thing you are about to do: will you be able to look at yourself in the mirror afterwards and feel proud of what you have done? If so, do it. If not, don’t.
● The “Others” Test – this thing you are about to do: will you be happy for others to know all about it? If so, do it. If not, don’t.
If you obey these five tests, you will never perform any acts of which you are ashamed. You will never lie and cheat, you will never be a slave to others and you will never do pathetic, unworthy things. You will take pride in everything you do. You will be happy for others to know about your life. Your life will be the best it can be. Your life will be your personal masterpiece, sculpted by you to perfection.
In fact, there is really only one test: the first one, Eternal Recurrence. Are you proud enough of the thing you are about to do to wish it to be repeated endlessly? If so, you will be delighted for it to be in the movie of your life, you will be proud to have it recorded on your gravestone, you will be thrilled to look at yourself in the mirror afterwards, and you will be eager for the whole world to know what you have done. You will have complete self-respect and you will command the respect of everyone who knows you. You will be a person who has lived life absolutely on your own terms, and not slavishly and humiliatingly followed someone else’s path.
All other tests – such as those of religion (e.g. the Ten Commandments), the laws of your society, the expectations of family and friends – are one hundred percent irrelevant. If you obey the Law of Eternal Recurrence, you are a person of merit. Welcome to the Meritocracy Party. You have found your true home.
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The Race you can never win (unless you’re one of “us”):
You’re the fastest runner in the world and you take your place at the starting line for the most important race of your life. You look up the track and see some obese guy in a suit standing five metres from the finishing tape. You complain to the race organiser but he tells you to mind your own business and concentrate on your own race. You think it must be some bizarre joke and it will all get sorted out later. The starting pistol sounds and you set off, running faster than you ever have in your life. But no matter how fast you run, no matter how good you are, you’ll never beat the fat man, puffing, panting and waddling his way to the finishing line.
Fattie wins the gold medal, and receives the adulation of the crowd. Two attractive blondes throw themselves at him. Everyone tells him how brilliant he is. He says he owes it all to God and his loving family who bought him a place at the best of schools and paid a million dollars to allow him to start five metres from the finishing line. The crowd cheers and demands that the winner’s parents be allowed to stand on the podium alongside their brilliant son. A reporter asks father, mother and son what they think of the second-placed athlete who broke the world record but still lost. They all shrug and say in unison, “Well, he’s not a member of our family, so who cares.” The crowd, full of like-minded families, rises to acclaim them. “If only we could all be like them,” they sigh. The world-record holder goes back to his housing project and dead end job. His colleagues tell him he’s a loser, and turn their backs on him.
Welcome to the anti-meritocratic world, this world. What are you going to do about it? Will you stand back and watch while cronyism, nepotism, the old school tie, the private club, the right university, the right accent, the right background, the right secret society, the right religion, the right family, destroy merit so that their chosen ones can prosper at your expense. It’s time to smash the conspiracy. Break up all the mechanisms that allow privileged groups within society to rig the system in their favour and penalise anyone who doesn’t belong to their insidious cliques.
The Meritocracy Party seeks to ensure that everyone, as far as possible, starts the race of life from the same starting line. Then we’ll see who the fastest runners really are; who deserves the medals, who should justly receive the acclaim and the rewards. At the moment, “who you know” (nepotism and cronyism) is vastly more important than “what you know” (merit). How often do we hear the mantra, “Networking is the fastest way up the ladder.” Meritocracy will push over this toxic ladder. From now on, demonstrable talent, not your social connections, will be the fastest way to make progress in life.
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“Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.” –Pascal
“I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind free from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree.” –Erasmus
“When I picture a perfect reader, I always picture a monster of courage and curiosity, also something supple, cunning, cautious, a born adventurer and discoverer.” –Nietzsche
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Is it possible for you to succeed in life?:
Do you think you have a fair chance in life? Do you think that any opportunity is open to you, and you simply need enough talent to seize it? Think again. Society is organised around the systematic denial of equal opportunities to the vast majority of citizens. People from working class backgrounds are relentlessly discriminated against in order to provide enough scope for middle and upper class individuals to permanently secure all of the best jobs. The inept child of wealthy parents has drastically better life chances than the most talented child from a housing project.
The irony is that most working class people are accomplices in their own subjugation. They buy into the ludicrous myth that the only thing holding them back is themselves. They are presented with a few examples of working class people making good and they conclude that all is well with the system. They have a National Lottery mentality. “It could be you,” runs the marketing slogan, and millions of working class people dutifully rush out to buy their tickets. It’s beyond their comprehension that although it could be you, it’s close to certain that it won’t be you. Every week, they fall for the same trick. They’re being taxed for their stupidity, for their escapist fantasies, for their inability to understand basic statistics. The powers-that-be don’t maintain their dominance by being foolish. They deploy sophisticated, and not so sophisticated, psychological weapons to deceive the masses. Allowing a lucky few of the working class to succeed is one of their main strategies. It could be you, they whisper like Sirens. But, as with the Lottery, it won’t be.
It’s time to wake up. See the game for what it is. Understand what’s really going on. The working class are like the helpless humans in The Matrix, imagining themselves free but in fact in the worst of prisons. The artificial intelligence that controlled The Matrix knew exactly what was required to delude its victims. For “controller” in our society, read middle and upper classes. They are the puppet-masters, the illusionists, the grand deceivers.
Since the dawn of time, there has been a global conspiracy, and its nature never changes. The conspirators are the rich and powerful and their aim, their only aim, is to maintain their wealth and power indefinitely. Only on the rarest occasions, when their hatred of the masses, their greed and contempt, have reached fantastic proportions (such as in France in 1789 and Russia in 1917), do they slip up. Are they on the cusp of slipping up again? The wealth of some individuals is obscene, and their conspicuous and arrogant spending a constant provocation that will in due course receive an appropriate response.
The Meritocracy Party promotes a single rule: that people should be judged entirely on their own merits and not those of their parents or any other individuals or groups with which they may be related or associated. The Family is the anti-meritocratic institution par excellence since it cares only about its own interests regardless of the objective merits of the family members. Parents of inept children will think they have done their job perfectly if they secure wonderful jobs and lifestyles for their unmeritorious offspring. Their “accomplishment” is that they have massively damaged the interests of the State, they have ensured that incompetence is ingrained in society, and they have guaranteed all of the ills from which our nation surely suffers.
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Regression to the Mean: How the Super Rich Defy Nature:
Taller than average parents tend to have children shorter than they are. Shorter than average parents tend to have children taller than they are. Genius parents tend to have less intelligent offspring. Stupid parents tend to have children that are more intelligent. Gamblers enjoying fantastic winning streaks tend, in the long run, to lose their winnings. Gamblers, on terrible losing streaks, would, if they were able to continue playing, win back most of their losses. Welcome to the great stabilising force of nature: regression to the mean. Without it, we could breed freak populations of giants and dwarves, humans with the intelligence of gods and others with the intelligence of goldfish. “Lucky” gamblers might win the wealth of nations, and losers, if they could stay in the game, run up national debts. Without regression to the mean, stable society would disintegrate.
Wherever you see regression to the mean seemingly being subverted, you know trouble is near. There’s one element of our society in which regression to the mean is defied to a dizzying degree: wealth. The rich just keep getting richer, and nothing ever reins them back in. Equally, there are billions of poor people on earth who will never acquire any meaningful wealth. How can such an unfair distribution of wealth have come about? How can it be so ruthlessly sustained? It seems to defy all logic. Yet there’s nothing mysterious about it.
In any fair, unrigged system regression to the mean will occur. When regression to the mean is seen not to operate then you have certain proof that mechanisms have been put in place to prevent a fair outcome. Capitalist democracy, with the family at its core (for “family” read nepotism and cronyism), is the precise vehicle in the West used to perpetuate unfairness. Meritocracy is the antidote. In a meritocratic society, every family will enjoy its day in the sun.
Regression to the mean guarantees it. There will be no more great dynasties wielding their power, wealth and influence for centuries. Don’t you want to have your chance, based on your merit?
If wealth could be equated with height then most of us would be the size of ants, while the super rich would be as high as mountains. Do you think that’s healthy? As an ant, you wouldn’t even be able to contemplate the size of the super rich. And they wouldn’t notice if they stood on you and crushed you to death. And, in your heart, aren’t you already aware that you’re invisible to the super rich? They couldn’t care less about you. As far as they’re concerned, you don’t exist. Just as we only notice ants when they crawl over our hand on a hot day, so it is with the super rich and us.
Never forget that they didn’t get where they are by talent. They are the beneficiaries of a rigged system. You, by playing along with it, perpetuate it. A word to the wise – wise up, suckers!
Imagine a super-rich person going into a luxury restaurant. No one looks at him. No one acknowledges him. No one takes his jacket. No one shows him to his seat. No one offers him a drink. No one gives him a menu. No one serves him any food. If no one does anything for him, his wealth is meaningless. Wealth is an illusion that you choose to reify i.e. to make it solid, tangible. Wealth is nothing more than an arrangement between people. The essence of this arrangement is that poor people choose to accept that they are deficient in this imaginary substance (money). They acknowledge that the wealthy can supply it to them and they eagerly pursue it because then they will become less “deficient”. Yet the whole system is merely an elaborate set of transactions in a fantasy currency. The arrangement can be broken at any time if sufficient numbers choose to opt out. The ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes, the most famous of the Cynics, held wealth in contempt. In a world of Diogenes’s, the illusion of wealth would dissolve.
But the beneficiaries of the money arrangement – the wealthy – do everything in their power to maintain the illusion. They are the Wizards of Oz, and they aren’t going to let anyone see behind the curtain. If you rejected their arrangement, they would be no different from you. So, don’t blame anyone else for your poverty and their wealth. If you choose to sign up to an arrangement that guarantees you a subservient role, what right do you have to complain? The wealthy are right in concluding that you’re a loser and a failure because only an idiot signs up be a slave when, at any time, he can choose liberty instead.
You should accept the money arrangement only if you get a fair slice of the pie. It’s well known that the vast majority of assets in any country are controlled by a tiny percentage of the population. Why not eat from a different pie, where you get more than a few crumbs. Vote for the Meritocracy Party.
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Meritocratic Aims.
The Meritocracy Party aims to replace consumerism with high culture. We wish to place ideas above money, aesthetics above shopping, community over the “I’m all right, Jack” ideology. Private property leads to private lives, dislocated communities, suspicion and competition between neighbours. We are not allies, we are enemies. How do we heal the rifts between us? We have to reduce the importance of the main focus of division between us: lust for money.
The Five Meritocratic Principles.
1) NO NEPOTISM
It’s not who your parents are, it’s who YOU are.
2) NO CRONYISM
It’s not what others can do for you, it’s what YOU can do.
3) NO DISCRIMINATION
Sex, race, religion, age, background are irrelevant. Talent is everything.
4) EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES
You start from the same point as everyone else, and you go as far as your talents take you.
5) REWARDING MERIT
The highest rewards for the highest achievers.
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Goals.
1) To implement the five Meritocratic Principles.
2) To abolish the monarchy since it contradicts the first Meritocratic Principle. In a monarchy, the only thing that matter is the identity of your parents. In a meritocracy, your parents are irrelevant. The advent of meritocracy is accompanied by the automatic abolition of the monarchy. No meritocrat would seek the ‘permission’ of a monarch to govern.
3) To abolish the House of Lords (the House of Cronyism), which contradicts the second Meritocratic Principle since it’s the product of patronage. In a properly constituted meritocratic system, there is no requirement for a second House.
4) To abolish Party Politics. Political parties are irrelevant in a meritocratic system. Parliament will be populated entirely by independent, meritocratic MPs with no set political affiliations (other than their commitment to meritocracy).
5) Each independent MP is selected on the basis of their merit relating to their field of expertise. So, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is selected from amongst practising economists (and will be elected only by other economists). The Secretary of State for Health will be someone who works in the health field (and is elected only by health workers); the Secretary for Defence will be from the armed forces; the Foreign Secretary a serving official in the Foreign Office; the Secretary of State for Education a serving teacher/headmaster/
6) The Prime Minister will be elected by the MPs from amongst their number. Every five years, there will be a general election in which every MP has to seek the endorsement of their voters, or be replaced.
7) To abolish Cabinet Collective Responsibility. The principle that people should promote views with which they privately disagree is absurd and ipso facto brings politicians into disrepute. Why haven’t they resigned if they disagree with a policy? How can they defend a position that they themselves don’t believe in? If they publicly support a policy they privately reject, they are hypocrites.
8) Critiques of government policy will be provided by select committees of MPs. Special committees comprising scientists and philosophers may also be used, chosen because of their critical-thinking abilities and their expertise in challenging assumptions. Committees of artists, entrepreneurs and designers may also be called upon. Pressure groups will be given a prominent voice too since meritocracy welcomes close scrutiny.
9) To abolish the ‘moralising’ approach to politics (what’s ‘right’ and what’s ‘wrong’ – the politics of principle) in favour of the scientific method (what works and what doesn’t – the politics of pragmatism).
10) To increase Inheritance Tax to 100%. No one should be able to posthumously transfer an advantage to another person of their choosing. The state should acquire all of the assets of the deceased and should reinvest them to advance the public good, particularly via education.
11) Education is the bedrock of merit, and should be accorded the highest importance in the meritocratic state. The current education system is a demonstrable failure and should be overhauled in every respect. Our education system is designed to produce shoppers (these being what capitalist democracies require to sustain their economic model). True education is the opposite of shopping. It liberates the mind, not the credit card.
12) To promote the ideas of the most radical, freethinking, independently minded philosophers e.g. Nietzsche, Baudrillard, Rousseau, Diogenes, Camus, the Situationist International.
13) To provide community-based alternatives to the family (based, for example, on the Kibbutz model) so that if a family fails, its members can be nurtured in a different, constructive and productive environment of psychological and educational well-being.
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