Charlotte Iserbyt: Societies Secrets

[Charles Drago]

Perhaps.

Sounds like a comedy team.

Take my life ... please.

But the billing ... I would have hoped for alphabetical.

[Gary Severson]

Yes "Drago & Spinoza" sounds better, I agree.

[Gary Severson]

Ed, I just noticed that in post 38 in this thread you said you are familiar with the left since you were a member of the "old left". Someplace else in this thread you said you didn't know anything about Marxism. How could you be in the old left and not?

[Ed Jewett]

I guess, Gary, because Marxism didn't seem right for the left I was in. Or maybe I wasn't in the old left, maybe it was the left of the late 60's that morphed into a job, a career of sorts, marriage, parenthood, etc., during which there was little room left for grand debates about political philosophy. Maybe your left is far more left or extremist than the left I thought I was in. I didn't and don't subscribe to aggressive or violent actions, or even dialogue.

Is it that you want me to be a socialist or Marxist? Are you a socialist or Marxist?

Is it your purpose to divert the thread or my attention (or that of others) from the discussion of secret societies and their historical role? Is this content matter off limits as other content matter is off limits in other places and times?

[Magda Hassan]

I met plenty of CPUSSR people who appeared to have little to no idea about Marxism despite rising through the ranks.

Ed, don't take it as a personal insult if some one thinks you are a Marxist or socialist. It is a compliment even if not intended that way and I don't think Gary is baiting you at all. I know Americans are touchy about it though. Like a visceral reaction from the underlying cultural indoctrination.

And Gary, being a socialist can also be in your heart and not in your head. Ed is coming from his heart.

[Gary Severson]

Right Ed, the "new left" was the 60s and the hippie part was basically apolitical. Side by side with the hippies were the New Left Marxists like SDS etc. As far as diverting attention from secret societies I don't think that is what I am doing because in effect in this country you have to function in a secret society sort of way if you are a communist/Marxist/socialist. If you want to work you have to live 2 lives. Of course there are exceptions.

I guess, Gary, because Marxism didn't seem right for the left I was in. Or maybe I wasn't in the old left, maybe it was the left of the late 60's that morphed into a job, a career of sorts, marriage, parenthood, etc., during which there was little room left for grand debates about political philosophy. Maybe your left is far more left or extremist than the left I thought I was in. I didn't and don't subscribe to aggressive or violent actions, or even dialogue.

Is it that you want me to be a socialist or Marxist? Are you a socialist or Marxist?

Is it your purpose to divert the thread or my attention (or that of others) from the discussion of secret societies and their historical role? Is this content matter off limits as other content matter is off limits in other places and times?

[Ed Jewett]

Thank you, Magda. My experience and my reading suggests that coming from the hrit, the hara, and the self is the only functional way to approach things; otherwise you get twisted up in psycho-dynamic games, word games, intrigues, lies and secret nuances and understandings, all of which are sure -- over time -- to trip you up, screw you up, and screw you over. As for the cultural indoctrination, you are likely right on, from an educational POV, a social/cultural/mediated POV, from the fact that my father was a dyed-in-the-wool conservative Republican.

Gary, I'm not sure I was a hippie of the 60's, but I probably was. I didn't dive too deep, turned back east instead of traveling to Haight-Ashbury in the summer of 67, didn't understand or like the Grateful Dead for a very long time, sampled them later, liked some of the improvisational/jam nature of the music, dropped them in favor of more sublime things like Keith Jarrett, etc.

At the tale end of 1966, I was enrolled in a student ROTC unit that was a "wannabe" Green Berets outfit, volunteered as a writer for the student newspaper and as a news director at the student radio station where I heard and interviewed a lot of people in the middle of the ongoing daily debate (and protests), and roomed with a fellow who was a conscientious objector, a Christian, the son of a German engineer who escaped Nazism, and a member of SDS. He and I traveled with a group of kids to a famous event in New York which featured the burning of a draft card. One might say the room mate had a profoundly deep effect on me; one could call it transformational. He (with a final swat from my high school English teacher) convinced me to not volunteer for that ROTC unit again. Its activities and the results of its training seen in the flesh in another individual convinced me to turn away from war and violence of any sort. I named my first born son after him.

But in all that time (certainly two years at its most intense stage), I never once heard anything about Marx or Marxism or socialism beyond a simple mention. If there was a presence, it was not a strong one, or "marketed" very effectively.

The very idea that someone should have to have two lives strikes me as quite possibly destructive in a psychic, somatic way at a personal (internal) level; it is akin to self-compartmentalization, a very distant relative of disassociation, quite possibly a source of dis-ease. [Please assure yourself that there is no hidden inference in that statement.]

"All secret societies are conspiratorial factions aimed at achieving goals that, by definition, are contrary to the public interest as determined by citizens in an open society. As Madison says, no faction can be allowed to be a judge in its own cause, because his interest would certainly bias its judgment and corrupt its integrity. And, as Karl Popper says, freedom is impossible unless it is guaranteed by the state; any secret society that weakens the rule of law, creates inequalities among citizens by illegal means, or frustrates legitimate aims of Democratic policy weakens a democratic republic and its objective of guaranteeing freedom to its citizens. Logically, then, secret societies are threats to democratic societies.… The real threats to the American democracy… come from the misuse of political and economic power by an undemocratic wealthy elitist clique of materialist ideologues in secret cabals at the highest levels of Merrick in society."

I'm sure to draw the ire of Charles Drago when I point out that the author of the above quote is Ralph E Bunch
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Bunche ], an emeritus professor of the department of political science at Portland State University, who served 16 years his book review editor for the International Journal of Comparative Sociology. The quote comes from pages 70 and 71 in Millegan's "Fleshing Out Skull and Bones", in a short essay entitled "Secrecy in our Constitution: Whom Do They Serve?", and whose epigraph contains the following language: "The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings…" Bunch was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1963 for his role in the formation and administration of the United Nations. He served as contributing editor of the journal Science and Society: A Marxian Quarterly.

In 2004, Ralph Bunche was posthumously honored with the William J. Donovan Award from The OSS Society.

Gary, please take none of this as a personal attack on you or your beliefs or political leanings. Today, in this United States, we can get into a lot of trouble by simply growing our own vegetables in a front-yard garden, or by selling someone raw milk. You have heard of the many lists; I am probably on at least one of them.

The question postulated by Millegan in the preface to his edited "Fleshing Out..." asks the question "Do these secret societies create and play both sides in controlled conflicts to produce outcomes to further [the designs of a small unknown group?]" (Yes, he calls it the New World Order.)

The questions I have are simply these: How can an individual choose in a meaningful way a candidate for high office, the right economic or financial path for self or family, the right school to educate their child, or anything of meaning in life if it is already controlled by someone else for hidden designs and purposes? And what should an individual do in order to counteract this apparent truth?

[Gary Severson]

Ed ,you mention there was no very visible ref. to Marxism by your SDS roommate. At North Dakota in the late 60s I had Marxist professors. I spent time short times at Berkeley & San Diego State. Those places were even more steeped in Marxism especially Herbert Marcuse at SD State @ La Jolla. I'm not sure what you mean by your experience, i.e. just because you didn't run across Marxism it didn't exist in the student movement?

[Ed Jewett]

Yeah, I guess when I was in Iowa the summer after my freshman year trying to earn money to return to school, I should have hitch-hiked to Berkeley.

ex·pe·ri·ence/ikˈspi(ə)rēəns/
Noun: Practical contact with and observation of facts or events.
Verb: Encounter or undergo (an event or occurrence).

[Magda Hassan]

Pssst... I bet there are some in Ohio too :curtain: Just not advertising it.