The accidental invention of the Illuminati conspiracy
bbc.com
bbc.com
The article doesn't emphasize this quite right.
The key insight of Discordianism is that all of human society is "fake". If you can kick it, it's real; if you can't kick it, it's exactly as real as Eris is -- which is to say, the way people behave is in accordance with the way that they truly believe.
The first level of Discordianism is to think that Discordianism is a joke.
The second level is to realize that it's true.
The third level is to realize that it's a joke that teaches you that everything that exists in and shared between minds has the same ontological basis: Discordia, Islam, Christianity, the US Federal Reserve System, Google -- they all exist because people believe that they exist and behave in ways that indicate that belief.
Just amazing stuff. And a massive piss take on the post modern novels of the day. Kallisti!
M2: Indeed! But do not reject these teaching as false because I am crazy. The reason that I am crazy is because they are true.
GP: Is Eris true?
M2: Everything is true.
GP: Even false things?
M2: Even false things are true.
GP: How can that be?
M2: I don't know man, I didn't do it.
The real innovation in the book was how freely they mixed and matched conspiracy theories from the left and right to turn them into a gigantic ur-conspiracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_Quigley
It's relatively harmless and in good fun. Saying there is nothing there betrays ignorance on the source material. If anything I'm prone to believe some of the conspirators are behind the dissemination of the theories, if only to draw a little attention and recognition from a largely disinterested general public.
You work for money right? How does this scale?
If that would be possible there would be clear signs of it all over the world. It would require great effort not to notice it.
There is too much information nowadays. Life's truths used to be simple: USA good, Russia bad. You adopted the political views of your parents. Men worked and women stayed at home. Your favorite news station was always right. Too much information and fast change leads to a cognitive overload. One protection mechanism to not lose touch with reality and filter the large amounts of information, is to create very simple truths. One of these truths is that there are rich powerful people behind the curtain controlling everything.
Second, with the rise of the internet and search engines, it means that if you have an idea of a conspiracy, no matter how far out, there is likely a website already documenting it. Everyone can feel like an expert after a few hours of internet research. The barriers to publish your views on a conspiracy have vanished: always resulting in a few websites out there that confirm your hunches. For instance, if you perform research on vaccines, and start out as biased against them, you will likely stumble on a lot of a websites that tell you exactly what you want to hear: vaccines are bad and used by the governments to control their people.
Finally, there simply are a lot of rich and powerful people conspiring behind the scenes to move society in a certain direction. Just one example was the P2 lodge [1] in Italy, also called a "state within a state". It is unlikely that the queens of this giant collection of ant hills we call humanity have stopped conspiring. It just happens under a different name than the Illuminati. Symbolically, the Illuminati stood for rebellion against the church and royalty, in favor of monetary power and reason. That's a role for capitalists and scientists now.
While anarchy has to be the default assumption, its hardly the commonly accepted notion of the status quo. It seems much more comfortable to assume that everything is in order of a personally profitable higher purpose.
Whereas conspiracies are usually attributed to a lack of moral and socially intollerable consequences.
I mean, how are conspiracy theories comforting instead of scary? Instead, conspiracies and anarchy alike are scary because of a lack of cooperation.
See the recent LIBOR conspiracy.
Hundreds if not thousands of people knew about it, yet it never leaked until some chance emails turned up during discovery of some other financial malfeasance.
[1] https://projectunspeakable.com/conspiracy-theory-invention-o...
[2] http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-23/1967-he-cia-created...
We need some approach like Not Sure talking with plants.
Also the conspiratorial aspects were real but represented how the Jesuits behaved in 18th century Bavaria. The Illuminati was modeled off the Jesuits and the Rite of Strict Observance, a controversial Masonic lodge that falsely claimed the Freemasons were attributed to the Knights Templar.
The Illuminati ended in 1793 but did have some connections to the moderates of the French Revolution through Bode, Bonneville and Thomas Paine.
The hysteria and exposure of the Illuminati, which was a rationalist secret society fighting for Enlightenment ideals, inspired countless other revolutionaries and secret societies, many Communist in nature.
One of the most famous, was the conspirator, revolutionary and Freemason Philippe Buonarroti. Then there was the OTO and Aleister Crowley, which really had no connection to the Illuminati.
In the 1920s, Milner's Kindergarten did engage in the Cecil Rhodes secret society promoting the Imperial Federation and Round Table movement. That did become the Royal Institte of International Affairs and the Council on Foreign Relations. It was modeled on the Illuminati, but again that was the structure of the political secret society of the Vatican (Jesuits).
Lord Rothschild was involved with Rhodes and Milner but he was against Imperial Federation. Mayer Rothschild was not involved in the Illuminati (all the members were made public) but a few Illuminati members were affiliated with him.
But their philosophy was more akin to Thomas Jefferson and their structure just a political device to promote classical liberalism.
The Illuminati was against the occult, but did reference the Alumbrados and Illumines of France. The core of all the esotericism is mainly from the 14 & 15th century where writers merged ancient Greek philosophy with Jewish mysticism.
The conspiracy today is more an affront to classical liberalism, with ultra wealthy people believing in economic integration. The Establishment today is the complete opposite of what the Illuminati were fighting for.
Remember that the term Illuminati stems from the Latin word "illuminatus" which means "enlightened". I don't believe when people mention the Illuminati today that they're referring to the same Bavarian Illuminati historians reference but rather a new generation of the "enlightened". If pay close attention you're starting to see this today in tech as some of the industry veterans start to get closer with politicians and the Government through lobbying and advisory roles. The Illuminati concept often falls into the old "Us vs. The Man" mentality. Zuckerberg went through the same issues with privacy and now he's positioned to be a Global Leader.
Hate to break it, but the Illuminati in some form does exist through various social clubs and organizations. I'd say it's not as direct as people position it but those groups definitely have an influence on world events and the future of our everyday lives.
Anyway, over here in Ingolstadt the original Illuminati were nothing like what Deus Ex depicts; it was mainly a club of nerds competing with another club of nerds called freemasons; the latter group making fun of the former that their "secrets" suck and only the first few levels had some "secrets", the rest had none. Simply a silly game that people took way too seriously out of boredom. They then practiced the art of spying on each other and as the mutual mistrust developed, they later disappeared.
The KLF (and Bill Drummond in particular) are truly inspirational in how they engage with popular culture while still being deeply conceptual artists. And have a ton of fun.
John Higgs' book on them is a good read. It goes into detail about the illuminati and Robert anton wilson (fun fact: Drummond did the set design for the play mentioned in the article).
The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1780226551/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_I....
The KLF (Kopyright Liberation Front) had a hand in creating music genres such as trance, acid house, ambient; the song "What Time Is Love?" is arguably the most remixed song ever (you can even see Armin performing it in Greece). They took a retired US country singer and made her sing about an ice cream van, then a Deep Purple singer to spoil America's 500th anniversary, and used a grind-core band while firing blanks from M16 during Brit Awards. They did the wicker man burning, obviously to popularize Burning Man in Europe. They deleted their back catalog in order not to allow anyone to re-release their music and burned the only million they got from their music.
Upon closer analysis and research, this all is so improbable it obviously couldn't be an accident, so there must be somebody behind them making all this happen! I know who that is, it's the Illuminati v2.0!
Don't forget the contract signed on the side of a hire car and subsequently pushed off a cliff. Or mysterious rites on the Isle of Jura...
Ahem.
Illuminati came out in the early '80s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminati_(game)).
You might not act on the urge as Woody Allen:
“I'd never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member.”
The illumaniti exists and it's at the top of the pyramid.
But they are just like you and me, the only difference that they (or their ancestors) climbed up first.
What do they see? No step to climb higher only others below clambering up.