“Strange times
are these in which we live when old and young are taught
falsehoods in school...
And the person that dares to tell the truth is called at
once a lunatic and fool”
- Plato
Shadowboxing the Zeitgeist
We
are experiencing massive cultural change. In the
opening decades of the 21st century, these
changes feel as if they have
been abruptly and bizarrely imposed upon us, driven by
forces we do not, as yet, completely
understand.
This is indicative of a global
transformation
that is greater than we yet realize. Consequently, the
spirit of the times we are living in,
eloquently described in the Germanic tongue as: zeitgeist, is
getting stranger and stranger...
Zeitgeist (“spirit of the age” or
“spirit of the time”) is defined as the dominant set of ideals and
beliefs that motivate the actions of the members of a
society in a particular period in time. Sitting here
amidst
the Brave Noö World of global
information
and communication
technology & archaic ethnic
tribalism, the spirit of
the times seems to be increasingly
influenced by what can only be described
as: High
Strangeness.
High Strangeness... also known as High
Weirdness... is a signifier that a given situation
or event has, or is developing, properties that are peculiar, bizarre, and/or utterly
absurd. At
the
end of the 20th century, the term began to broaden,
illustrating the evolving, anomalous, cult-like nature of cultural
strangeness. Certain elements of society were beginning
to mutate...
At this juncture,
the discerning reader may ask: How did it come to
this? How did we get here? How could the situation get so weird? Good questions. Before delving further into
the ramifications of such... a quick retrospective on
the pop phenomenon known as, high strangeness.
High Strangeness can be described as
the predominant expression of a fringe or sub-culture, whose values and norms of behavior
differ... often substantially... from those of
mainstream society. These values stand in opposition to mainstream cultural
mores. High strangeness expresses the ethos and
aspirations of a specific sub-population during a
specific and well-defined era. When these fringe forces
reach critical mass, such weirdness can trigger dramatic
cultural change. As we shall see, there have been very
specific, seemingly innocuous moments and events which,
when combined,
were monumental in the incubation and proliferation of
high strangeness...
The reputed origin of the term High
Strangeness has been widely attributed to none
other than
Dr. J.
Allen Hynek, in his 1978 address to the United
Nations, where he gave expert testimony on the absurd,
inexplicable nature of the UFO phenomenon...
"Mr. Chairman, there
exists today a world-wide phenomenon... indeed if it
were not world-wide I should not be addressing you and
these representatives from many parts of the world.
There exists a global phenomenon the scope and extent of
which is not generally recognized. It is a phenomenon so
strange and foreign to our daily terrestrial mode of
thought that it is frequently met by ridicule and
derision by persons and organizations unacquainted with
the facts."
- Dr. Hynek, before the U.N. assembly, November 27th,
1978
Thus, since Dr Hynek's 1978 address to
the United Nations, the notion of
high strangeness has been inextricably linked to the
now vastly popular UFO/ancient astronaut/disclosure
movement. However, our
investigation into high strangeness goes a little
further back in time...
The Empire Never Ended
Our story begins on February 20, 1974.
While
recovering from the effects of sodium pentothal,
administered for the extraction of an impacted wisdom
tooth, science fiction novelist
Philip K Dick received a home delivery of
medication. When he opened the door, he was inexplicably drawn to the
delivery girl's golden necklace. He asked her about its
curious fish-shaped design. "This is a sign used by
the early Christians," she said. Dick would
later recount that
as the sun glinted off the gold pendant, the reflection
caused the generation of a "pink beam" that mesmerized
him.
Dick came to believe the beam imparted wisdom and
clairvoyance; he also believed it to be intelligent. In
the ensuing weeks, Dick began experiencing strange,
otherworldly
hallucinations…
"I experienced an invasion of
my mind by a transcendentally rational mind, as if I had
been insane all my life and suddenly I had become sane."
Aside from the "pink beam", Dick described the vivid
hallucinations as consisting of psychedelic, geometric patterns. Dick
referred to the intelligence he encountered as "transcendentally rational mind" as
"Zebra", "God" and most famously
as... "VALIS."
VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System) had been
described as one node of an artificial satellite network
originating from the star Sirius in the Canis Major
constellation. According to Dick, the Earth satellite
used the pink laser beam to transfer information and
project holograms on Earth and to facilitate
communication between an extraterrestrial species and
humanity. Dick claimed that VALIS used "disinhibiting
stimuli" to communicate, using symbols to trigger
recollection of intrinsic knowledge through the loss of
amnesia... thereby achieving gnosis.
Drawing directly from Platonism and Gnosticism, Dick
wrote in his Exegesis:
"We appear to be memory coils
(DNA carriers capable of experience) in a computer-like
thinking system which, although we have correctly
recorded and stored thousands of years of experiential
information... and each of us possesses somewhat different
deposits from all the other life forms... there is a
malfunction, a failure of memory retrieval."
It is this (computer-like) information system that we
have lost the ability to read. With this Gnostic code
scrambled, both ourselves and the world as we know it is
"occluded" ...cut off from the brimming "Matrix"
of cosmic information. Instead, we are under the sway of
the "Black
Iron Prison" (Dick's term for the
demiurgic worldly forces of political tyranny and
oppressive social control). As in Imperial Roman times, "The
Empire" is a psychological as well as a military
state. It exists as a mental construct, as a
psychopathic state of mind... as a system of control.
All of humanity continues to be infected with this
thought-form virus. Consequently... The Empire Never
Ended.
"The Empire is the
institution, the codification of derangement... it is
insane and imposes its insanity on us by violence, since
its nature is a violent one. To fight the Empire is to
be infected by its derangement. This is a paradox:
whoever defeats a segment of the Empire becomes the
Empire... it proliferates like a virus, imposing its
form on its enemies. Thereby it becomes its enemies."
The above fascinating yet extremely odd narrative, marks
the inception of Dick's now famous contributions to the
lexicon of high strangeness. The Black Iron Prison has come to represent
humanity's unconscious state of psychological (and
spiritual) imprisonment.
Dick's iconic phrase: The Empire Never Ended,
represents the never-ending imposition of a system of
tyranny and oppressive psychological control, overseen by a worldly and spiritual
superclass.
Although somewhat obscure, these phrases are foundational
in the conspiratorial thinking of the subculture of the
fringe... of what has come to be defined as high
strangeness. Dick's Black Iron Prison would
inspire later fringe conspirators and spawn similar
notorious, if not nefarious mind-virus terminologies
such as:
Prison Planet. Yet at this point in the narrative, the strangeness had not yet achieved
critical mass.
Slack
In 1988, the most reverend and/or foul
prophet of the
Church of the SubGenius, Ivan Stang... published a
book compilation entitled: “High Weirdness By Mail
- A
Directory of the Fringe: Crackpots, Kooks & True
Visionaries.” The book examined many non-mainstream
or marginal cultural movements of the period. As the title would suggest, the
compilation was dedicated to an examination of “weird
culture” by actually putting the reader in touch with it/them,
by mail. The book would be divided into sections,
subtitled: “Weird Science, UFO Contactees, Drug
Stuff,” and other such categories. Each section
contained a variety of mini-articles describing
organizations. Each organization article concluded with
a mailing address and in some cases... the
organization's telephone number.
It is important to remember that during
this timeframe, high strangeness was as much a left-wing
“liberal” mind-blowing prank, as it was
right-wing “John Bircher” paranoia.
Dick's writings of the previous decade, while strange,
were considered merely science fiction. Other actors
of the era, such as Robert Anton Wilson
& Robert Shea, with their Illuminatus!
trilogy... and Greg Hill & Kerry Wendell Thornley's
Principia Discordia material, played significant
roles in the transmutation of the contemporary
zeitgeist. However... and arguably... High Weirdness
by Mail acted as a pivot point, wherein the
so-called normal culture took a turn away from the
conventional, toward the fringe... where the
concept of high
strangeness was to finally achieve critical mass within
the pop
cultural psyche.
Up to this point, the tomfoolery of high
strangeness was received warmly and with good humor by
left-wing hipsters, emerging cyberpunks, libertarians
and right-wing fundamentalists alike. Then, something
strange and unexpected occurred. Certain segments of the
population, who shall remain nameless, began to forget
that
all the high strangeness shtick was a joke. They began to
believe the prank. Add to this seemingly obscure and
tangential mix, the erosion of the Western Middle Class
during the close of the 20th century, and a clearer
picture of cultural and economic attrition begins to
emerge.
In the ensuing years, the apparent giving way of
the middle to the fringe, the “Widening
of the Gyre” to employ Yeats’
apocalyptic metaphor,
instilled a palpable angst within the shifting paradigm.
Widespread, fear-driven anxiety over the realization of
the rise of the
fringe, led to a completely unanticipated cultural
metamorphosis…
the
periphery quietly and subtlety began to supplant the middle! This
transformation drastically refigured the predominant
paradigm. Additionally, and in keeping with another
manifestation of high strangeness... the
hundredth monkey effect... those whose sensibilities once
occupied the middle, spontaneously re-aligned their thinking to
fringe-thinking… an understandable attitude
adjustment, given all the weirdness that had recently transpired.
Follow the White Rabbit In
1999, a
Wuxia inspired, noir infused science fiction action
film, created by the now-notorious Wachowskis, was
released by Warner Brothers. The film’s title:
The Matrix. The Gnostic
influence of the film's premise, echoed Philip K Dick's
1970s "Matrix" of cosmic information. The Wachowski's
illusionary Matrix construct was arguably
inspired, in part, by Dick's earlier vision, reaffirming
that...
The Empire Never Ended. In an early scene,
a black-clad computer hacker known as Neo falls asleep
in front of his computer. A mysterious message appears
on the screen: “Wake up, Neo.” To his amazement,
his hacked computer warns: “the Matrix has you”
concluding with the cryptic message: “follow the
White Rabbit.”
This reference to Lewis Carroll’s
Alice in Wonderland becomes a recurring theme in
the
Matrix. When our hero Neo meets the archetypical
Wiseman: Morpheus… he poses the film's pivotal question
to Neo: “I imagine that right now, you're feeling a
bit like Alice. Hmm? Tumbling down the rabbit hole?”
Morpheus proceeds to offer Neo a chance to wake up from
the illusion that is the Matrix: “This is your last
chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take
the blue pill… the story ends… you wake up in your bed
and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the
red pill… you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep
the rabbit-hole goes.”
This encounter between characters in a film, denotes the
turning of a dark corner in the very real world of contemporary
high strangeness.
This was the moment when “going down the rabbit hole”
entered the lexicon of the fringe. No longer did this
reference conjure the whimsical world of Carroll’s
Alice… nor did it even convey the psychedelic
connotation of Jefferson Airplane’s
White Rabbit. At the dawn of the new millennium, the term
“rabbit hole” was
now evocative of computer surveillance and impending
Artificial Intelligence... was now synonymous with an emerging
networked global conspiracy. How deep the rabbit hole
went, was indicative of how far the conspiracy reached.
Conspiracy Culture Internationale Not long ago, if a commentator
spoke of a Shadow Government or the Deep State, let
alone the Kennedy assassinations, fake moon landings or
the Roswell incident, he or she would have been promptly
labeled a fanatic, a kook, or worse… a conspiracy
theorist. With the rise of 21st century identity politics and the
unsettling evolution of what has been called the “new
media” ...conspiracy theory has become legitimized… has
gone mainstream. Conspiracy theory has long been
associated with the political right-wing... hence the
recently and widely reported rise of the
Alt-right, by pop-media.
This is a narrow, misleading interpretation of the rise
and the impact of what the editorial staff at
Tek-Gnostics call:
Conspiracy Culture Internationale.
The rise of conspiracy theory as a
mainstream phenomenon is driven by a pervasive mistrust
of government and political institutions, the
commoditization of science, and the rise of a multi-national corporatocracy. This mistrust is shared by liberals and
conservatives alike… alt-right and
noö left. It goes
beyond the political, the national, to the very fabric
of modern global culture.
Conspiracy Culture Internationale is
indicative of the current state of high strangeness. It is a
darker, more paranoid manifestation of such. In a way,
it is a strangely
predictable outcome of the unprecedented quickening of
cultural change. It is a symptom of... a byproduct
of our cultural acceleration, moving away from the 20th
century print culture, toward a digital, 21st century,
luminous screen culture. Again, the question must be
asked: how could the situation
have gotten so weird?
The Sacred
Foole
It is a mad, mad world. There are many events in life…
often tragic… that cause needless suffering. When we
witness the horror of man’s inhumanity to man… the
senseless atrocity… the comedy of errors that is the
hallmark of modern bureaucracy… we can either laugh or
cry. For at the end of the day, there is a fine line
between tragedy and comedy. But it is precisely in how
we react to these events that our character is truly
tested. Our reaction in these moments of tribulation is
also our opportunity for personal growth, both as
individuals and as a species.
These
tragic events, exacerbated by the nefarious deeds of the
powerful few, those who the “occupy
movement”
labeled the 1% (whom we label:
American Archons), are the
very real instigators and perpetrators of our planetary
woes. At this most critical time, we choose to make fun
of these seemingly un-stoppable forces… precisely
because it is either laugh or cry in times such as
these. We believe that by poking fun at those
responsible, we diminish their power… even in the face
of the horror. By making fun of the American Archons, we
counteract fear with mirth… we offset horror with humor.
We “engage the enemy” with our very irreverence.
We enjoin violence with vaudeville.
Let us not forget that the observation and
identification of high strangeness began as a
joke... a prank.
It has been said that fools rush in where
the wise fear to tread. Do not underestimate the power
of the fool. We believe that what this
planet needs, at
this most critical point in time in our spiritual and
planetary evolution… are fewer fear-driven
reactionaries… and more fools. This may sound crazy but
it was none-other than the jester… the lowly yet sacred
fool… who could ridicule the king without fear of
beheading. None but the fool dare speak the truth… It
has also been said that humor is a sign of intelligence.
Lord knows that the evil bastards who run things do not
possess a sense of humor. Pity… for a little laughter
goes a long way… and in the final analysis… as we have
mentioned elsewhere… if you don’t have a sense of humor…
it’s just not funny anymore… BAZINGA!
the
end of the 20th century, the term began to broaden,
illustrating the evolving, anomalous, cult-like nature of cultural
strangeness. Certain elements of society were beginning
to mutate...
Dick came to believe the beam imparted wisdom and
clairvoyance; he also believed it to be intelligent. In
the ensuing weeks, Dick began experiencing strange,
otherworldly
hallucinations…
that
all the high strangeness shtick was a joke. They began to
believe the prank. Add to this seemingly obscure and
tangential mix, the erosion of the Western Middle Class
during the close of the 20th century, and a clearer
picture of cultural and economic attrition begins to
emerge.
unsettling evolution of what has been called the “new
media” ...conspiracy theory has become legitimized… has
gone mainstream. Conspiracy theory has long been
associated with the political right-wing... hence the
recently and widely reported rise of the
Alt-right, by pop-media.
This is a narrow, misleading interpretation of the rise
and the impact of what the editorial staff at
Tek-Gnostics call:
