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Thursday, September 18, 2008

What are Fnords?

I occasionally refer to fnords, and some people have asked for clarification.

I literally mean fnords in the sense of Discordianism or "The Illuminatus! Trilogy". They are secret hidden messages that are pervasive in all media. Evil fnords help keep people enslaved so they don't question their false beliefs. A lie must be continually repeated in order for it to stick.

I also mean fnords in the sense of the 1988 movie "They Live!" I literally have the special power of those magic glasses. When I'm paying attention, the fnords stand out in boldface. It's depressing to see them all the time. I only see them when I'm consciously looking for them, or it's a particularly blatant fnord. "They Live!" is worth watching.

There are both good fnords and evil fnords. The evil fnords are the ones that help people complacent and docile. The evil fnords help reinforce everyone's pro-State brainwashing. The good fnords are clues that help people figure out what's going on. The movie "The Matrix" is an example of a good fnord. A lot of adult swim Japanese anime contains good fnords. For example, "Bleach" has a certain level of libertarian/anarchist themes. In one story arc, the protagonist saves someone who was sentenced to death for a minor offense. Fiction writes have discretion that nonfiction writers lack. Good fiction writers occasionally have elements of truth in their stories.

There also are the evil fnords that people like the idiot manager use as mind control tricks. For example, the idiot manager says "I'm interested in feedback", but his body language makes it clear he is not interested in feedback. People who don't notice will say "He's a good manager. He's looking for feedback." Some people call these mind control tricks "Neuro-Linguistic Programming" (NLP). These idiot manager tricks only work due to pervase pro-State brainwashing. Idiot manager tactics are totally transparent to me, while almost nobody else notices them. They are a type of fnord.

Here are some evil fnords I noticed recently.

There's a car commercial were the driver picks up a bunch of elderly nudists. There's an evil fnord "nudity is disgusting". It wasn't a car commercial! It was a "nudity is disgusting" commercial!

During coverage of the recent hurricane, there was talk about the government helping victims. The evil fnord is "People need the State to deal with emergencies!" I can't start my own "help people prepare for disasters" business.

Occasionally, there is a story of a prostitution ring being broken up by police. That story contains an evil fnord "Prostitution is a crime!" None of the coverage of the story addresses "Is prostitution really a crime?" Similarly, coverage of a raid on drug dealers contains an evil fnord "Possession and sale of some drugs in a crime!" The "news" coverage has an unstated hidden assumption. The "news" story is a fnord saying "Prostitution is evil!" or "Certain drugs are evil!"

There is occasional news coverage of a "mental illness" patient who stopped taking his medication and then committed a crime while struggling with withdrawal symptoms. This is an evil fnord saying "The 'chemical imbalance' theory of mental illness is not nonsense."

When I watch CNBC coverage of the financial markets, there are lots of evil fnords. "You should trust professionals to manage your money for you!", "The stock market is a good long-term investment!", and "Only fools invest in gold!" are common evil fnords on CNBC.

All coverage of the upcoming Presidential election is one big evil fnord. "The outcome of the election matters.", "Your vote matters.", and "Obama and McCain are the two most qualified people to be President." are all evil fnords hidden in election coverage.

There are hidden diamond commercials. Whenever a woman in a sitcom or movie gets excited about her diamond engagement ring, that's a fnord saying "Diamonds are valuable! A man who doesn't buy his woman an expensive diamond ring is a cheapskate!" Due to the DeBeers cartel, diamonds are not the same type of investment as gold and silver. The supply of diamonds is artificially restricted, raising prices. Extensive marketing campaigns create demand for diamonds. The long-term expected return from a diamond investment is less than that of a gold or silver investment. The resale value of a diamond is much less than the retail price. The bid/ask spread for gold and silver rounds/bars is low.

Here are some good fnords I noticed recently.

There's a Nextel commercial where a bunch of firemen are efficiently holding a legislative session using their phones. That's a good fnord saying "Politicians are useless scumbags. A group of firemen could do a better job."

When I watch the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert occasionally ad-libs some good fnords. Sometimes, he asks a weird question to his guest that indicates an underlying suppressed truth. He also refers to "Lord Xenu, the alien puppemasters, and the Illuminati". Is that a joke, or is it true?

On both the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, on September 16, there was a suggestion that the recent financial crisis was secretly caused by aliens. Aliens have usurped control of the economic and political system to implement their agenda for a New World Order. Is that a joke, or is it true?

There's a Capital One Bank commercial where giant pushpins come out of the sky and destroy things. The fnord is "Banking is property destruction!" (That one was so subtle that I'm probably the only person who noticed it.)

The recent Flash Gordon series wasn't that good, but it did have some fnords. If you replace "Ming controls all the water" with "Ming controls all the money", then the anti-State message is clear.

Movies like "The Matrix" or "They Live!" are fnords.

It's obvious where the evil fnords come from. They're part of the human enslavement Matrix. They're created by PR firms. The evil fnords help reinforce people's pro-State brainwashing.

The good fnords are secretly planted by the alien overseers. When a writer is attempting to be creative, the alien overseers may influence their thoughts. A fiction writer has discretion that a nonfiction writer lacks.

There are two types of fnords. There are the evil fnords, which reinforce pro-State brainwashing and help enslave people. There are the good fnords, which are hints that help people figure out what is happening.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it more likely that good fnords are created by accident, or subconsciously, than by alien intervention. In order for aliens to be causing or assisting the creation of good fnords, we would have to assume that aliens exist and have the technology to plant suggestions in people's brains, and that they want humans to break out of their slave thinking. But if that were the case, they could simply alter the thinking of evil people directly. (or everybody still in slave mode, but I think removing the evil people from the equation would cause everybody else to break out by removing the constant reinforcement).

I won't discount it as a possibility, (perhaps they can only alter thinking under a specific set of circumstances), but I'd still say it's much more likely that good fnords are created subconsciously.

For example, the one with the protagonist saving somebody sentenced to death for a minor crime. The writers probably don't notice that people who never hurt anybody are essentially (or literally) being sentenced to death every day. But humans are basically good, and the writers are no exception. They recognize that unjust punishment is immoral and should be stopped, even if they can't see the unjust punishment around them.

Anonymous said...

Or perhaps, there is an element of the Illuminati that want people to break free.

FSK, you seem to be making the assumption that *all* anonymously rich people are evil, instead of merely *most* of them.

I mean, if the "Supreme Leader of Humanity" were unopposed, he should have been able to complete his agenda long, long ago. Right? So what if there are people working to thwart him/her? That would explain the internet and the good fnords as well as a few other things.

(I am making the assumption that anyone who would want to have supreme control over everything is inherently evil. "Good guys" are ok with decentralization of power, because they know they can count on trust and respect from the peopleto bind the society together.)

m said...

I have seen some good fnords, but then realized they potentially are disguised as good fnords before. I'm not really sure. Is that good Fnord telling us about an upcoming economic collpase really trying to "warn us", or perhaps does the fnord imprint on the collective unconscious and together brings about it's occurence?
Is the Matrix really a good Fnord? Or is it just a reinforcement that although we are alerting you to the fact that you are awake, if you do in fact "wake up" you'll have a tube and hole in your back, you'll find you're not really "human" you're controlled by aliens, you'll have bugs crawling inside your body, and if you believe on of the others who were "awakened" you'll wish you "told Morpheus to shove that pill up his @$$"

Meanwhile, the whole time Neo has a blank facial expression, as if those in the matrix can experience emotions, but being truely alive and awake will make you feel numb... nothing to see here

Perhaps they're both good, perhaps they're both bad?
Is it really a way to "warn us" when we see something like Alice in Wonderland on the chess board as we are all pawns to the game, or is it reinforcing our own enslavement?
Or perhaps the mixture of good fnords and bad is like the study down on labrats where they shock the first group of rats where they press the button, they give the 2nd food, then the third is random at first, and then finally the randomness is cut from the third and all that is left is shocks. In addition there's a 4th group where first it's all food, then it's all shocks. The finding is that the 1st group gets shocked and doesn't press the button again, the 2nd group gets food but realizes that the food will always be there, so they stop. 4th group of rats learns that "something has changed" and stops after awhile.
But the third group fails to understand what is going on, or has learned that if they endure enough shocks they will get it. So they try again and again, and eventually the shock is turned on for good and the rats will eventually shock themselves to death. The Rats have beome addicted because they don't know what to expect. As humans we become addicted to advertisments, movies, media, etc.... perhaps it's because there are good fnords and it's what keeps us going to the movies to be programed like good little sheep?

sid said...

A very important fnord that probably deserves a separate story is "the state is to its citizens as a parent to his children" or briefly "the state acts like a good parent"

This is probably rarely stated explicit but is often implicit. The words fatherland and motherland are perhaps less used in English than in other languages(still 6-7 million hits in Google) . But everybody knows the terms "the founding fathers" and "mother Russia".

The Fnord is is reinforced by things that the state does for groups of people that remind of the things parents do, like for example

giving food, shelter to their children
educating the children
looking after the grandparents
giving presents to the children
entertaining the children
looking after the children's health

Parents can do these things themselves or pay others to do them just likethe state does

This makes it seem even more plausible the Fnord is true

However in more important ways it is the reverse that is true:

Children relate most of the time in a parasitic way to their parents
But it is the state that has a parasitic relation to the citizens.

Now the thing is, when peopele accept this fnord, there are a lot of assumptions about parenting that can now unconciously be applied to the relation between the state and the citizens:

children should respect their parents (even if they don't deserve it) ;this is very old and powerful
parents should keep their children from harming themselves
it is good to keep children ignorant of the way the world really works
it is wrong to lie except when parents do it
children should obey the rules even if they don't yet understand/approve them
you can't leave children by themselves
children can't take responsibility for their own health, parents have to do it
children can't take responsibility for their own money, parents have to do it
children can't take responsibility for their own security, parents have to do it
parents have the monopoly for violence
children's wrongdoings must be punished
children's wrongdoings should be judged mostly by their intentions, less by the results
hyperactive children should be drugged
children (adolescents) can get very rebellious, but that's just a phase caused by hormones
parents and their children love each other
children shouldn't talk to strangers
parents want everybody to report what their child says does

(replace children by citizens and parents by the state)
I am not saying all above statements reflect good parenting, that's another story. Possibly some are evil fnords by themselves, some good. Ideas about parenting are evolving just like ideas about what a state can and should do. Probably they are influencing each other.
For example if most parents start to microchip their children with GPS, it will become OK for the government to do this with certain groups of people.

It could also be that "you have to be a good parent" is an evil fnord. One could think that spending a lot of time with your kids and working to pay for all their needs leaves parents little time to start a revolution. Parents can be more vulnerable to state terror: not only can their kids be taken away or killed, they can be themselves imprisoned or killed leaving their children without a parent. (more likely, they can lose their job and their ability to provide for their children, or the children are bullied in school when the parents are attacked in the media).

Still, I think being a good parent is good for promoting healthy (mentally and physically), independent thinking children. This is not in the interest of the state. Good, awakened parents can homeschool their children or help their children resist indoctrination in schools. By the way i find a certain type of school, sudbury schools, very inspiring: http://www.sudval.org/

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