It’s hardly instigated the mind-blowing epiphany – the realisation that it’s all fake – which the proponents of Discordianism had originally intended.
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.
This guy is actually fairly ignorant of the history. The Illuminatus! Trilogy was a parody of conspiracy literature and was released in 1975. There were hundreds of books about the freemasons and the illuminati going back to the 18th century. There was a whole anti-Masonic political party in the United States in the 19th century. In particular, the book parodied the John Birch society.
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.
Yes, and even the idea of a parody of conspiracy literature wasn't all that new at that point. Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49" had been published in 1965 and the group it describes, the Trystero, is the Illuminati in all but name.
I think the Illuminati, and other conspiracies, are so popular because it's comforting to believe that someone, no matter how megalomaniacal, is taking actions that lead to a higher purpose. The thought that nobody is really in charge - that there is no higher purpose - can be pretty damned scary and isolating.
Bill Cooper's Mystery Babylon radio series from the late 90s is archived online and was intended to act as an in depth primer >40 hours. Quigley's books are freely available from his wikipedia page:
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.
Its not like wealthy, powerful, privileged people could actually get together and forge some kind of sinister plan to expand their wealth power and privilege - Right?
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.
They pretty obviously can and do. However, explanations of world events quickly get ridiculous when it's posited that there's one such group in charge rather than multiple ones in conflict/competition.
In an interview RAW was asked what could be the cause of the popularity of the Illuminati conspiracy. His answer was three-fold:
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.
And if I may be so bold to add a fourth reason, gossip has always been a form of social currency. It feels good to be privy to secrets and have information that other people do not have. Gossip on the internet is a supercharged version of this, the best gossip going viral. Couple this with an increased access to information and gossip by the middle and lower class: Old governments were much more able to keep their secrets from the middle and lower class. The media was much more controlled by those in power. Journalists in my country still refuse to write about certain secrets and conspiracies concerning politicians and royalty. But plenty of bloggers do. This reinforces the beliefs in conspiracies, especially if it later turns out to be validated by the old media.
All you are really saying is, people belive in something (because its hard to believe in nothing). That doesn't explain the type of believe they hold.
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.
The real reason for the prevalence of conspiracy theories: some of them turn out to be true!
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.
The phrase "conspiracy theory" was coined by the CIA. [1,2] It is one of the greatest counters to the exposure of secrets ever invented. This article is a good example of why it is so effective. Who's going to question the authority and veracity of the BBC?
What re-initiated the conspiracy theory was an Anti-Semetic Illuminati book written by William Carr in 1958 which linked it to the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers.
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.
Like any organization, big or small. You will always have people with more influence and visibility at the top.
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.
It's a shame that the author has effectively written out RAW's co-author, Robert Shea: he's not even named, mentioned only in passing as "another Playboy writer".
Hehe, KLF is gonna rock ya! They are supposed to respawn this August, so I am curious what would happen (after a 23-year hiatus). I am pretty sure Scooter will ape them again though...
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.
They're justified and they're ancient and they drive an ice cream van...
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 (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!
Adam Gorightly, author of a couple of books about Kerry Thornley, has been documenting the early days of discordianism at Historia Discordia. Lots of gems from era, info on various Illuminatus Trilogy related things, etc, on that site.
On the one hand, this is a fascinating fnord look into the history; on the other, how much should we believe the sources? It's presented as a factual article, but it would be the very essence of Discordianism for at least one of the named sources not to exist at all...
Great, so how do I tell my old pastor who made us watch hours worth of illuminati exposes In pop culture which relied on a lot of sharp shooting fallacies?
This is a series of non-sequiturs. There's no conspiracy theory that has ever been devised, from "they're putting chemicals in the water that turn the frogs gay" to "Hillary Clinton is an interdimensional demon who eats babies" that you couldn't defend with similar logic.
So, my mother went to high school at a boarding school in Albuquerque, NM.
Unfortunately, the school burned down sometime in the '50s-'60s. This turned out to be a problem when she tried to take college classes in the '70s-'80s for career advancement purposes. No transcripts.
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.