In Borg We Trust?
Clearing the Barrier Cloud thru a good name
by Brian Wright
Yes, for my polite friends who resist the acknowledging the 900# Gorilla, here comes yet another column on noting and slaying the black beast. But it's in a positive vein and I promise not to accuse you who deny the obvious—or at least readily apparent—of being immoral or stupid.
In fact, the great majority of you are simply 'tardy adopters:' uncomfortable disagreeing with deep nationalistic conventions. Either that, or manifesting the archetypical American child-consciousness... as one writer puts it:
"We Americans are the ultimate innocents.
We are forever desperate to believe that this time
the government is telling us the truth."
Conscious Cause or Haphazard Accident?
The basic analysis stems from a determination of whether a) the great forces of politics and economics in modern industrial and post-industrial societies reside in a human fabric of conscious planning and causality (and caused or planned by whom?) or b) society moves forward as kind of an egalitarian soup... the contents of which are dictated by all the individual people working and trading, learning what it takes to survive and prosper.
The latter model is consistent with Adam Smith and the "Invisible Hand," which let's not forget is a concept pertaining to free societies.
[We do not live in a free society; Congress commits treason on a daily basis.]
My studying and reading convinces me of the "Good Joe Premise," namely that 95% ±5% of the human race—when observed at the neighborhood level in which decent social conventions and moral/religious codes are accepted—will not aggress, will not "hit, steal, or lie," even if such aggression will not be found out and/or will not be punished. The reader may perform a thought experiment judging whether the premise applies in his own neighborhood. It's fairly self-evident. I use this Good Joe Premise in my book the Barrier Cloud to show the natural humanity of the Sacred Nonaggression Principle (SNaP), thus its practicality as an ideal for society.
Yet, as I also point out in the Barrier Cloud, what we find globally is anything but societies that practice or accept the SNaP. In particular, coercive government(s) rule the roost. And most populations are stuck in either blind obedience to state authority or harshly compelled obedience to that authority. My timely interest is my own society, an America founded in rebellion against arbitrary state authority and for the natural freedoms of the individual. Why has the United States descended into a police state?! [Congress has just passed an extension to the Constitution-busting Patriot Act overwhelmingly (275-144 House, 72-23 Senate).]
Why wholesale aggression by the state against the American people?
Enter the Borg
As I write in the Barrier Cloud, "If the nonaggression principle is so natural to the human species, why, when we look around, even (or especially) at our own country, do we find so much aggression in the world? {In the 20th century alone, governments managed to kill more than 100 million individuals.} ... clearly, some impediment or obstacle has been placed in the way of the appropriate human destination. Let me picture the obstacle in the following diagram:
"We may think of this generic barrier cloud as the longstanding mysterious 'something' interfering with the human ideal. So what is the barrier and where does it come from? We know that something has been interrupting the flow of living human energy toward the positive social outcome of the simple NaP. What?
"Then I proceed to identify the external cause of the Cloud as the conscious and coordinated actions of a small ruling minority of psychologically diseased people who have coalesced into ruling hierarchies through the ages—stealthily and secretly. Their biological purpose: to systematically direct and appropriate the creative/productive effort of psychologically normal humans." [The internal cause (not the subject of this column) enables success of the external cause: it is the perpetuation of social-conformity functions of a common primitive brain circuitry, known as the limbic system... aka the 'blind obedience to authority' system]
For the past several years I have been trying to develop a good term for this external cause of the Barrier Cloud, or rather for the <central controlling entity> that has emerged in modern times to execute the plans of the small minority of humans who suffer from the Disease of the Power Sickness. Many words have emerged: the Money Power, the Plutocracy, the Pathocracy, Alien Space Lizards, Power Elite, and so on. But it wasn't until I read and reviewed Phil Garlington's book, Rancho Costa Nada, that his term Borg—used by the Demented Vet to describe the authority that everyone in 'Samland' blindly, blithely obeys—answered my prayers as the perfect name for a) the Men of the Power Sickness and b) the central mind-controlling entity they have developed to enslave normal humans.
People will write many books about the Borg, but for now simply
accept that it is real and that, for many it is the intellectual and moral authority they uncritically accept... with crosses a-flashin' and flags a-flyin'. This is how many would put their loyalty (sung to the tune of the 23d Psalm):
The Borg is my shepherd; I shall not doubt.
It walketh me thru airport ray guns and gropeth my junk
It maketh me to bow down with tribute
So da boogey man lemme be
And leadeth me onto the Sacred Path of Podness
Yea, as I sing the Spangle in packed sports stadiums
I question not the Holy Borg, nor its special ops
For the Borg art with me... always... soon
in chip form
Let its wondrous weapons tear asunder the Different Ones
Anointing my patriotism with the blood of children
Surely goodness and mercy shall attend my choice to plug in
And I shall dwell quietly outside the BorGulag walls forever
Just a first stab. For those still mystified by the meaning of the Borg, simply substitute "your <enter name> central government, the financial oligarchy it serves, and mainstream sources of misinformation"
in the above verse. I'll have more to say and to use about the Borg term as time goes by. What occurs to me now, as a spiritual journey, we need not a Revolution against the PTB (powers that be/Borg) rather a Disconnection. With consciousness it's time to let the Borg go.
