Web Dreamland

Something that you often see when reading about the upcoming doomsday, whether it is 2012 or any other of the hundreds of end of the world scenarios, is that the “current” time in relation to when the prediction was made is a time of great change and upheaval in the world.

We are at a time of crisis and opportunity in our world and it is clear that we must do something if we are to survive. - alltheones.net

Often times the author will make broad statements about how people are more depressed or immoral than ever before, how crime is rampant, natural disasters have become more frequent, and a host of other symptoms indicating that the world that we live in is on the brink of terrible doom unless something radical happens.

Unfortunately they rarely back up these claims with any sort of statistics or reasoning. How is it that the world today is in worse shape than during the dark ages or during the times of the great plagues or the 2 world wars? Is there really more crime now or is just reported more efficiently? How do you measure global morality?

The sad thing is is that they don’t have to back up their claims to get most people to believe them. People visiting doomsday websites or purchasing prophecy books have most likely already formed a belief or a suspicion that the world is coming to an end or is in some sort of crisis. When they then read something that seems to back up that belief, even if it is unsupported, they still are likely to believe it.

This is a well documented phenomena known as “confirmation bias", the tendency to accept ideas that support your already formed belief as fact and to dismiss evidence to the contrary. If your best friend was mugged you are likely to think “No one is safe from crime these days". Then when you see someone else write in their blog that “the world today is in danger cause crime is out of control” then you are going to accept that as fact cause you have already formed a belief along those lines. If you find another web page that indicates that crime today is in fact lower than in previous decades, you will most likely dismiss that idea cause it doesn’t agree with the belief you have already formed in your head. If you are presented with a chart that says that muggings are up, but overall crime is down, you will focus on the first point as fact and ignore the second point.

In simple terms - if you already believe something then you are less likely to objectively consider evidence that disputes that you believe.

None of this means you are stupid - everyone is subject to confirmation bias. The important thing is for you to understand that confirmation bias exists and if you read something that upsets you because it runs contrary to something you have believed for a long time that you step back and attempt to overcome this bias and rationally explore the evidence presented to you. Just because contrary evidence has been presented doesn’t mean that it is true. Investigating that evidence will only serve to help you understand things better, one way or another.

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their life. - Leo Tolstoy

The Story:
A long time ago some Chinese dude was out exploring with his students and came across this cave. Inside the cave was a bunch of stone containers that help 4 foot high or so corpses and hundreds of 12″ diameter disks. Local legends stated that even longer time ago an alien ship had crashed in the region and the natives had hunted them down and killed them, and then apparently built stone coffins for them and decorated their tomb with their stone discs for some reason. The discs were investigated by the Russians and found to have secret writing on them that detailed the above story.

The Truth:
It’s pretty much ALL bullshit except for the fact that there are countries called “China” and “Russia". The alleged discoverer of the disks never existed, the disks themselves only exist in photographs despite there having been “hundreds” of them in possession by various museums in Russia and China. Even the photographs are dodgy as the legend states that all of the discs were exactly 12″ across but the ones presented as photographic evidence are clearly much larger.

Where did this story even come from? Well put yourself in the shoes of someone who is writing a book about how aliens have been visiting the earth for like, ever, but you can’t find any actual proof of that. You do the only logical thing and make up some evidence, put the main actors in Russia and China, throw in a secret language and you have pure gold. This person is Erich von Damien, author of the “Chariots of Fire” book and its sequels. Erich made his living off of convincing people that there were lots of aliens around in ancient times, burying little clues here and there and making the Nazca lines for fun.

Now with such an obviously bullshit story you would imagine that it was quickly forgotten about after everyone read “Chariots of Fire". Unfortunately that is not the case. Like so many other lies, it is still being spread around today. Pretty sad because as lies go, this one is not even that interesting.

Further Reading.

In Dorchester, Massachusetts a rock was blasted out of Meeting House Hill, and after the explosion a mysterious metal pot was found in 2 pieces. The pieces were put back together and this artifact which was blasted out of a rock that is at least 100,000 years old was passed around to collectors and museums until it disappeared. The finding of a metal pot over 100,000 years old clearly indicates that there was intelligent life roaming around on the Earth long before recorded history even begins.

Sounds pretty convincing, especially if you throw in the fact that the original account was published in Scientific American. How much more credibility can you get than a magazine that has both Science and American right there in the freaking masthead? Disputing something published in Scientific American is like pissing in an test tube covered with American flags, it’s just something that is not done! This story must be true, and since that story is true then every other line of bullshit on whatever poorly formatted web page you found it on must also be true, right?

But hold on a minute, let’s do something crazy like looking at what actually happened. We can start by going back and actually reading the freaking article in Scientific “Disagree with us and your’re a Commie” American. I know it’s very small writing (people were a lot smaller back then) but zoom in or something and you can see it pretty clearly. I’m 40 and I can still read it, so can you.

The last paragraph, the part that is in the brackets, pretty much does our work for us:

1 - The article is a reprint from the Boston Transcript.
2 - The part in the brackets, which was written by Scientific American says that the reprinted story is probably bullshit.

“The above is from the Boston Transcript and the Wonder to us is, how the Transcript can suppose Prof. Agusis qualified to tell how it [the vase] got there any more than John Doyle, the blacksmith. This is not a question of zoology, botany, or geology but one relating to an antique metal vessel perhaps made by Tuba/Cain, the first inhabitant of Dorchester.”

No one can verify that the vase was actually inside the rock before it was blasted.

There was this huge explosion on the hill and when people were looking through the rubble they find a broken vase. Instead of thinking “hey, somebody left a vase on the hill a few years ago and we just blew it up,” they instead say “OH MY GOD, ANCIENT VASE!!” and run off to the newspaper.

The main point of this you need to take away is the fact that people quote this story as coming from the Scientific American, which it did not. It came by way of the Scientific American after being reprinted in order to question the authenticity of the vase and the qualifications of the finders. People are taking the article out of context in order to give weight to their “ancient civilizations” stories so you will buy their books.

Just to be clear, I am not saying that the possibility of there being ancient pre-man civilizations is impossible, I just want to see real proof and evidence, not made up stuff.

Let’s say you want to come up with some crazy stories to tell people in order to play a prank on them or perhaps get them to buy some of your books. You want it to be believable, so you’re going to have to make it sound official or at least convincing. What’s the best way to do that?

1 - Government Leaks
The first thing you want to do is connect your story to the government. But you can’t just say ‘the FBI is selling pictures of me in the shower to Perez Hilton’. You have to make it sound like you found out about it from a former government source. So you will say ‘a former FBI agent got pissed off at the way I was being treated, so he up and left the FBI after stealing my personal files’. So now it is not YOU that that thinks that Perez Hilton is watching you in the shower, it is some former FBI guy, and since he used to be in the government, he can be trusted. Note that if you said he was still in the government then your whole story is ruined - current members of the government are all liars, former members are all saints.

2 - Native Americans
From the POV of your average non-native American, Native Americans are a font of knowledge about all things spiritual and cosmic. If some dude from jersey told you that he saw a wolf chasing a black rabbit and this meant 6 more months of winter you would laugh your ass off. But if a Native American told you the exact same thing, you would be buying a warm coat and mittens right away. Bonus points if the Native American in your story is a chief or a tribal elder. It’s not necessary though, your Native American could be the tribal idiot and people will still eat it up.

3 - The Bible (sort of)
People, even some non-Christians, believe that if something is in the Bible then it must be true. Even if they don’t think it’s true they will often pretend that they think it’s true so you won’t label them a heathen. Unfortunately whatever line of bullshit you are trying to sell probably wasn’t mentioned directly in the Bible. However, that works in your benefit oddly enough. Just because your theory on Space Badgers conquering the earth in 2012 wasn’t mentioned by Jesus in the gospels, there are literally dozens of other books that almost made it into the Bible but the editors thought were lacking in depth and character development so they got left out. Just claim that your Space Badgers are actually in the Book of Jibjab, which was left out of the bible by (insert a Pope here) cause it would be too horrifying and people would stop believing in God or some such. Also make sure that you mention that the Book of Jibjab is only available in Sumerian - people eat that shit up.

4 - Science
Most people didn’t understand science when they were taught it in school, but a lot of the terms they heard stuck with them so if they hear you using science jargon they sort of remember then they will believe you. ‘DNA’ and ‘genetics’ are pure gold in bullshit stories. People have no trust of DNA whatsoever, and anyone working with it must be up to something really nefarious. All they remember is that DNA is the building block of life, so that must mean it is some powerful stuff and anyone who understands it better than them must be a genius - most likely evil.

5 - Crystals
It was discovered that crystals, most notably quartz, could be used in all sorts of electrical things. They are a rock that can be used to build radios and all sorts of other cool stuff. It only stands to reason that if a crystal will respond to electricity then it will also respond to whatever bullshit energy source you want to make up. If a crystal can be made to resonate so that you can listen to a radio, then it only makes sense that you could use your astral energy to make the crystal resonate which gives you access into the 5th dimension. If you want to use a crystal to listen to NPR you have to have the right size and shape of crystal joined with a very specific electrical circuit that is then attached to a device that converts those vibrations into sound. If you want to use a crystal to connect to the aliens in the 5th galaxy of RA you just grab the closest one and hold it to your head while repeating some bullshit mantra that the visitors to your psychic booth will just love.

There are other factors you can use in your story or product to make it sound more convincing, but we will cover those another day. The 5 I have presented to you should form as a good solid foundation to whatever book or line of bullshit product you are trying to sell. Just remember that for every 1000 people who can see straight through your bullshit - no matter how insane - there will be 1 who totally believes you.

Today I stumbled up on the saga of 4 men who journeyed into the heart of Zimbabwe in an attempt to break the hold of evil over the country. Extensive research has been conducted and it has been determined that dark forces of some sort have established a net of evil power over nearly the entire country, disrupting the health, welfare, and water supply for the residents of that country. Therefore an expedition was attempted whereby the evil net would be broken with the power of Orgone and other methods.

A few units of Orgone placed around your yard can protect you from aliens, mind control, remote viewing, and demons. The amount positive orgonic energy attracted by just a handful of orgone blasters is quite large. The power of orgone is trumpeted all across the web, so what happened to the expedition is quite troubling.

In addition to car and boat troubles, the members of the expedition also came under arrest and were falsely accused of sabotaging a dam in Zimbabwe. They spent a month in jail, Zimbabwe jail, while the local authorities tried not to look ridiculous for arresting 4 men carrying around boxes full of aluminum shavings encased in epoxy resin.

There are differing accounts of the journey, but they were carrying anywhere from 500-1000 english pounds of orgone. With so much positive orgonic energy around them, how could they have such bad luck? How powerful indeed must the forces of darkness be that they can so easily bat aside basically a 1000 megawatt generator of Orgone. Or perhaps the orgone that they used was sabotaged from the start. It would not be so hard to believe that perhaps the crystals or the resin that was used to make the Orgone was tainted at the source by the FOD long before the expeditionary team received it.

At any rate, the men are home now from all accounts, and the Zimbabwe government looks like a bunch of idiots. I am glad the men made it home safe, and I hope they investigate what might have caused such negative energy to cloud their journey before it could even really get going.