Why I go overtly

[Carsten Wiethoff]

Why I go overtly

When I told my wife that I joined a forum about secret politics which requires that you give your real name, she was worried. Anybody can find parts of what I think just by googling my name. As someone currently working in the aerospace/defense industry this could become an issue with my employer. It could make my friends and collegues react strangely. People could award me the title “Conspiracy Theorist”.
So be it.

To just state a few facts here:
I have never in my life had suicidal tendencies and I hope I never will.
I don’t have a weapon. If I get shot or stabbed or poisoned with Polonium it will not be a random event.
If I develop cancer or a heart desease, I pray that it’s from working too much.
If they find drugs with me, it’s laughable.
If I will ever fly an airplane into a building, I will not be on board.
Besides all that, I lead a normal life, and I want it to stay that way.
By giving my name I could get on a list. With my record of google searches and my amazon wishlist I am already on that list. Now everybody can find my name on that list, and that makes the difference. If something happens to me, there will be reason to be suspicious. And besides, there are some people around here that understand exactly what I mean. I am happy to be here.

19.8.2009 Carsten Wiethoff

[Ed Jewett]

Why I go overtly

... there are some people around here that understand exactly what I mean. I am happy to be here.

19.8.2009 Carsten Wiethoff

Welcome, Carsten... tip o' the cap to you.

I'm on the list .. have been for decades... happens when you speak out publicly... I share some of your concerns, but then I've already had the heart problems and although that tried to kill me (and did, for 3 minutes), on the whole it failed miserably.

I am happy to be here too...

So I write on....

I'd recommend reading "The Denial of Death"; it explains a lot about why things are going down the way they are. So embrace your mortality, and make your time here count for something and someone.

Breathe deeply, smile, laugh, dance,
make love to someone, empower someone,
and other things that infuriate them,
and tell them to :reddy:.

[Peter Presland]

A belated welcome from me too Carsten. Your post rung a few bells.

As George Orwell said, 'In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act' eh? - and it is indeed a sobering exercise to consider the fate of pretty well ALL revolutionaries through the ages. To the extent they pose a credible threat to established power structures (ie attract attention) they tend to be dealt with accordingly. In practice that ranges from social ostracism, through petty harassment and a stalled career right up to and including a premature meeting with ones maker.

I too 'took the Red pill', so to speak, relatively recently - maybe 6 or so years ago. Anyone interested can get a flavour of how it developed from my now more-or-less redundant blog.

I didn't know Ed was an Ernest Becker fan. Me too and I heartily endorse his 'Denial of Death' recommendation. Also 'Escape from Evil' which is shorter but a summation of all his writings and published postumously. There is considerable 'Jungian' expertise on this forum. In my view, Becker builds on Jung in a thoroughly accessible fashion and to the point almost of a fulfillment of the Freud-Jung continuum. Some find his stuff pretty bleak with its ruthlessly honest probing and exposing of core personal motivations; I found it marvellously liberating - the very embodiment of that hoary old biblical cliché, 'the truth will set you free', in fact, except that it does not require blind faith in anything.

[Carsten Wiethoff]

Thanks Peter.
Your quote reminded me that someone wrote "Work will make you free." ("Arbeit macht frei"). I think that is a clever lie.
Carsten

[Peter Presland]

I didn't know Ed was an Ernest Becker fan. Me too and I heartily endorse his 'Denial of Death' recommendation. Also 'Escape from Evil' which is shorter but a summation of all his writings and published postumously. There is considerable 'Jungian' expertise on this forum. In my view, Becker builds on Jung in a thoroughly accessible fashion and to the point almost of a fulfillment of the Freud-Jung continuum. Some find his stuff pretty bleak with its ruthlessly honest probing and exposing of core personal motivations; I found it marvellously liberating - the very embodiment of that hoary old biblical cliché, 'the truth will set you free', in fact, except that it does not require blind faith in anything.

Oops.Hope nobody got the wrong idea there.

I've just found out that the above is chiseled in stone in the entrance Hall of the CIA's Langley HQ.

Duh.

Is that REALLY true?

[Ed Jewett]

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/3108/...oadau3.jpg

No harm done, though ...

[Myra Bronstein]

Related thread here:
http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...php?t=2053

[Myra Bronstein]

Why I go overtly

When I told my wife that I joined a forum about secret politics which requires that you give your real name, she was worried. Anybody can find parts of what I think just by googling my name. As someone currently working in the aerospace/defense industry this could become an issue with my employer. It could make my friends and collegues react strangely. People could award me the title “Conspiracy Theorist”.
So be it.

To just state a few facts here:
I have never in my life had suicidal tendencies and I hope I never will.
I don’t have a weapon. If I get shot or stabbed or poisoned with Polonium it will not be a random event.
If I develop cancer or a heart desease, I pray that it’s from working too much.
If they find drugs with me, it’s laughable.
If I will ever fly an airplane into a building, I will not be on board.
Besides all that, I lead a normal life, and I want it to stay that way.
By giving my name I could get on a list. With my record of google searches and my amazon wishlist I am already on that list. Now everybody can find my name on that list, and that makes the difference. If something happens to me, there will be reason to be suspicious. And besides, there are some people around here that understand exactly what I mean. I am happy to be here.

19.8.2009 Carsten Wiethoff

Thanks for posting this Carsten. When I first joined JFK discussion forums I was ambivalent about the requirement to use first names. I still am. I can understand the stated reasons, yet I don't know if the stated reasons are the actual reasons (excepting this forum). There are clear pros and cons.

So I'm curious, if people were starting a deep politics type/JFK forum today with no precedent of using real names and it could be run however you'd like, would you opt to use real names or not?

[Myra Bronstein]

I didn't know Ed was an Ernest Becker fan. Me too and I heartily endorse his 'Denial of Death' recommendation. Also 'Escape from Evil' which is shorter but a summation of all his writings and published postumously. There is considerable 'Jungian' expertise on this forum. In my view, Becker builds on Jung in a thoroughly accessible fashion and to the point almost of a fulfillment of the Freud-Jung continuum. Some find his stuff pretty bleak with its ruthlessly honest probing and exposing of core personal motivations; I found it marvellously liberating - the very embodiment of that hoary old biblical cliché, 'the truth will set you free', in fact, except that it does not require blind faith in anything.

Oops.Hope nobody got the wrong idea there.

I've just found out that the above is chiseled in stone in the entrance Hall of the CIA's Langley HQ.

Duh.

Is that REALLY true?

What it actually says at Langley is "the truthiness will set you freeiness."

[Ed Jewett]

I appreciate both sides of this question. Anonymity has its obvious benefits, and using one's name has its obvious drawbacks. But there is something to be said for authenticity, for standing up for what you believe in, or standing out for what you stand against.

Earlier today I ran across these tidbits, from Philip Zimbardo's "Situationist Perspective on the Psychology of Evil: Understanding How Good People Are transformed Into Perpetrators":

Environmental Anonymity Breeds Vandalism.
It is possible for certain environments to convey a sense of anonymity on those who live or behave in their midst. Where that happens, the people living there do not have a sense of community. Vandalism and graffiti may be interpreted as an individual's attempt for public notoriety in a society that deindividuates them. ...…

[E]nvironmental, societal conditions [may] contribute to making some members of society feel that they are anonymous, that no one knows who they are, that no one recognizes their individuality and thus their humanity, makes them …."


“Please consider this Zimbardo homily that captures the essence of the difference between dispositional and situational orientations: “While a few bad apples might spoil the barrel (filled with good fruit/people), a vinegar barrel will always transform sweet cucumbers into sour pickles -- regardless of the best intentions, resilience, and genetic nature of those cucumbers.” So does it make more sense to spend resources to identify, isolate and destroy bad apples or to understand how vinegar works, and teach cucumbers how to avoid undesirable vinegar barrels?”