Sunday, January 11, 2009

Open Source Magick... January 31, 2009 Boise


PENT=> The Ziegarnik Effect is coming... Gar!

The Zeigarnik Effect...

Have you ever seen a magick trick that so opened your mind you had multiple braingams for weeks? Fantastik! The Zeigarnik Effect is perhaps the strongest jedi effect of which my confidence is quavering. I will attempt this awesome feat with zero promises of success. But first, a few words from one of our sponsors...

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Bill

And now, back to the program... [ Jeff, please see comments to install subliminal programming for immersive gaming to take full effect, and to see most amazing card miracle you have ever seen in your entire life! because otherwise we are locked into Albania on http://TheMostAmazingCardTrick.com ]

9 comments:

Ben Mack said...

To: Jeff & Tobias

From: Ben

Re: Get Your Career In Gear & Why I'm cheering for Prometheus...

Fellow Thespians,

When I see dramatic interpretations of Prometheus my mind is routing for Prometheus to give the fire to us humans.

I felt ambushed by the request for a eternal vow. Perhaps I missed reading something. Pardon me for leaving a show early and a muse was leading me elsewhere.

There are instances in magic where I feel proprietors were wronged. Jonathan Townsend comes to mind where a profiteer raped Jonathan's invention. Those kinds of animals do that sheet. For these instances I'm glad there is a P.E.A. and they kind of freak me out in some of their "whatever it takes" militism in monitoring psychic activities. I had though the book Psychic Mafia was a joke and I come to find a structure whose resembles is striking.

Here's where I stand on my seminar... I stand for the possibility of an Old Catholic Priests and a bunch of Pagans partying and respecting each other's magick in Boise on January 31, 2009 at the Riverside Doubletree hotel.

I stand for the possibility that every human have immediate access to drinkable water and I see the technology I'm training as accellerating the adoption of R. Buckminster Fuller's Global Energy Network Initiative.

And in order for you to see THE ZEIGARNIK EFFECT you will need to relax your mind here... http://craptology.tv

Who else remembers when THX sound was launched? Experiential marketing. Wasn't that an elevating experience to be moved by sound like that?

Now its time to write up this fnordian tale and put it to sleep forever. That's how dreams get born, you have to put them to sleep where they live forever. This won't be the first time I got sucked into performing The Zeigarnik Effect, just the most recent. Welcome to the show...

Jeff, welcome to your sculpture. You can either keep your secret or go for what's behind door #23.

I'd like to introduce you to Howard W. Campbell, esquire, memeticist at large. My memeticist. This is the man I counted on to keep out of the stockade when I was a soldier for the military industrialist CCEO. I worked in military intelligence. I was a futurist. There are at least two types of futurists, prognosticators and engineers. I drove trains. We drove new trains of thought into the biggest meme pools. The less easy to rationalize the work the more it paid. I saw a direct correlation between moral flexibility and salary. That's how the hegemony attempts to lure and incentivise meme wranglers like you and me.

I counted on Howard W. Campbell to keep me clothed and to put food on my table in the manner I had grown accustomed and he did that. It was the Age of Bushes. It was a time to keep your head down. I was a working ad man, a hired g33k of sorts and Howard Campbell was a Senior Vice President, Director of Brand Strategy at CCEO.

Howard W. Campbell was good company, and sometimes a brilliant memeticist. It was a fast strange time... http://ThinkStranger.com and we worked in fast strange ways... http://ThinkStronger.com

In all that happened, from meeting Jesus to getting arrested for pot pocession, Howard W. Campbell kept me safe and out of jail, even if we did go without food on the table a couple times. Back then I weighed 230 pounds plus. I could afford to miss a few pounds. I let my scale get up to 246 before I decided to train it to show me a lower number when I get on it.

Tough work training scales. Finally, I found a system that worked and I worked the system.... http://ThisTimeItWillWork.com

xxx http://theTUMMYvanishes.COM

Jeff, one of my key takeaways as a distance learning student of Magic & Mystery school is to clarify the construct and context of my magickal lessons and my requirements. The same 23 rules and conditions apply to ESPbootCAMP as did 4 FREEbookWORTHreading.

I STAND FOR THE POSSIBILITY OF EVERY HUMAN ON THIS PLANET HAVING IMMEDIATE ACCESS TO DRINKABLE WATER.

To this end, i see the greatest likelihood of pulling this off requiring a synergistic phase-shift. Every network scientist I know says the perturbation has already begun, and the result is presently a mystery hotly debated.

I HOLD THAT NOW IS THE TIME WE NEED MORE MAGICKAL POWER FOR LEVITY and teaching legendary tricks like The Zeigarnik Effect to lay people maybe a promethean crime to your hegemonic i's and my eyes where hardening and so I excused myself to entrain for lighter magick and laughter.

JEFF, THANK YOU FOR FACILITATING MY GRACEFUL DEPARTURE.

No need to panic. I'll just lash together a few raw memes, a little bit of Negro wisdom, and this dream is heading for sleep. I stand for the possibility that every human have immediate access to drinkable water.

Howard Campbell would turn to me and say, "You're really getting all this?" and I'd reply like a Gr33k Chorus of 1, "I'm a total professional. My dad got his Ph.D. from Harvard in The Classics and his doctoral thesis is a translation of Plauti's Miles Gloriosus. The greatest subtlety of the translation is in stage direction.

For although in a certain sense and for light-minded classicists, non-existent things can be more easily and irresponsibly represented in words than existing things, for the serious and conscientious historian it is just the reverse. Nothing is harder, yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things, brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born.
ty Hesse

Howard would encourage me to follow the classical threads and I tried. Fortunately Howard was an empath so he knew further pressure could fester resistance. Before I introduce you to Howard Campbell, a larger than life persona, perhaps I should clue you in on the energies you are welcoming into your home.

Tobias couldn't invent someone like Howard W. Campbell. He was a... he was one of a new series of replicants. He was a mutant. A real overweight water buffalo type... who could chew his way through a concrete wall and spit out the other side covered with lime and chalk and look good in doing it.

Maybe i had a crush on him. I'm probably too homophobic to admit such a thing, but if I had to sleep with a guy, I'd sleep with Howard Campbell. One of the most painful experiences for me was my mom telling me it is ok for me to be gay, an idea she adopted from Kurt Vonnegut's quote on my novel Poker Without Cards. Anyway, Kurt Vonnegut endorses my novel which is like the first time the dude has done anything like that in over a decade and what happens in my home is all three of my parents are hurt and freaking out.

Look, just hear me out...

My sister & i have done the best job raising our parents we possibly can and at a certain age we decided, that's it, they are on their own... and yet when they get so easily emotionally scared it is hard not to take that back in when they are crying.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote...
“Ben Mack, Since you don't have the guts to be a homosexual, I'm glad that you are pissing off your parents by writing.”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Cat’s Cradle/Slaughter House 5


I was a working journalist, a hired geek of sorts, and Lazlo was great company and sometimes a great lawyer. It was a fast, strange time and we worked in a fast, strange way.


Howard W. Campbell: Yes sir, thank you Mr. President. I'm delighted to ask you the question in person. Can democracy as a form of allocating resources exist outside of Capitalism?

Bush The Elder: Absolutely not!

That exchange cost me my first $180,000 year gig. And, that's simply his nature. If you are going to hang out with Howard you will experience some beautiful energy and sometimes we fall off of our high wires.

I look out at the great tree in Atlanta on which I secured my CCEO wire and I realize
THIS was the tree, a GIANT of my childhood, whom I am now encountering years later. I think of the Tree as a He. He's different, not like walking into TEACHER memories from elementary school where not only are they smaller in relation to your growth, but that they are also shrunken by age so as the old giants have become pigmies while I was busy, busy, busy.

Howard explains, "then my knees bent and I jounced the limb. Ben's balance gone, we were labeled psychologically unemployable by the hegemonic secret services. This is difficult for many to read outside of science fiction and I assure you your profitability is better suited for not asking the wrong questions. If you won't see the fnords they can't eat you."

PEOPLE ASK ME ALL THE TIME IF HOWARD CAMPBELL IS REALLY A PARANOID SCHIZOPHRENIC... And, well, I guess if I had to swear one way or another, I'd say Howard W. Campbell wasn't insane. He just had very strange rhythms. And he stomped on the terra. Hunter S. Thompson said that. It's hard to say he got what he deserved, because he never really got anything, at least not in my story. There are a number of books out there with Howard W. Campbell in them and by far his best role is as Son of God in Eddie Izzard's rendition of Mother Night.

And right now, this concensus reality is what we have ... It is what it is. Our future is about to get weird. But what's really fnordian is it never got weird enough for me. I moved to the country after I got expelled from Corporateland and labeled as an incompetent ship captain for the intellectual navy.

Then I learned that George W. Bush had been eaten by white cannibals on an island near Tijuana for no good reason at all. Golly, you hear a lot of savage and unnatural things about people these days. Campbell and Bush are both gone now, but I don't think I'm going to believe that 'til I can gnaw on their skulls with my very own teeth. Fuck those people, huh? If they're out there, I'm going to find them, and I'm going to gnaw on their skulls. Because it still hasn't gotten weird enough for me.

I AM THE VIRUS.

I became a man the day of the greatest game I ever played. Everything I ever knew about common decency and morality I learned that day in December, the 23rd of course, from my mother; and today I am preparing to honor her again on this Superbowl Bowl, January 31, 2009 I will earn my butterfly wings. A coven will assemble; a crowd of self-selecting elite. Toyota technologists, topologists from all around the country -- psychics including those suspected of being non-believers -- stacked overlooking the Snake River, watching me sweat and wipe the caked blood back from from my brain. The Gallow brothers -- Ernest and Julio -- party guys with a grave name... they're expected. All sorts of weird M*ther F*ckers were at the game.

I'LL OCCASIONALLY DROP F-BOMBS

Super sunday, dawn... Some of us will be up, some won't. So it Goes.

I promise to have installed everything in your mind to go out and have a $1,000 day in February.

PLEASE ASK FOR WHAT YOU WANT.

In 1980, when I was twelve years old, R. Buckminster Fuller spent three days explaining his perception of reality to me for Richard Brenneman’s book, Fuller’s Earth: A Day With Bucky And The Kids.

Fuller asked that we call him Bucky. He then explained that Western education not only dulled our minds but got history completely wrong.

Bucky said that for us to understand world dynamics we needed to know about the Great Pirates, our historical applied scientists. Great Pirates were scientists? Yes, the wider and more long-distanced their anticipatory strategy, the more successful they usually were.

I am grateful to Harv and Peak Potentials for teaching the works of R. Buckminster Fuller in Train The Trainer I and for helping bring out the pirates in so many people.

The great pirates, the traders and sea dwellers who needed men organized on land to expedite their trading created monarchies. Pirates were inherently outlaws. The only laws that could, and did, rule them were natural laws.

Bucky maintained that pirates created countries. Western civilization didn’t just spring up simultaneously along different coasts. Trade prompted the development of countries, because in order to consistently sustain a navy, pirates had to control mines, forests, and lands to build the ships and establish the industries essential to building, supplying, and maintaining their navy.

The pirates went to the various lands where they either acquired or sold goods, and picked the strongest man there to be the pirate’s local headman.

The chosen man became the pirate’s general manager of the local realm. His sole job was to maintain order on behalf of the pirates. Order was most easily maintained by having the local king proclaim that he was the headman of all men, the god-ordained ruler on earth. The locals weren’t traveling, so they saw no disparity.

The pirates gave their stooge-kings secret lines of supplies that provided everything they needed to enforce their sovereign claim.

Masters had to sleep occasionally, and therefore found it necessary to surround themselves with super-loyal, muscular, illiterates, who couldn’t see, nor savvy, their masters’ strategies. There was great safety in the stupidity of these henchmen.

Secrecy was the pirate’s strongest defense. If the other powerful pirates didn’t know when you were coming back, they wouldn’t know how to waylay you. Otherwise, small-timers could come out in small boats and waylay you in the dark and take you over, just before you got home tiredly after a two-year treasure-harvesting voyage.

These great pirates said to all their kings, statesmen who were functionally only lieutenants, “Any time bright young people show up, I’d like to know about it, because we need bright men.” So, each time the pirate came into port, the local king would mention that he had some bright, young men whose capabilities and thinking shone out in the community. The great pirates would say to the king, “All right, you summon them and deal with them as follows: As each young man is brought forward you say to him, ‘Young man, you are very bright. I’m going to assign you to a great history tutor, and, in due course, if you study well and learn enough, I’m going to make you my Royal Historian, but you’ve got to pass many examinations given to you by me and your teacher.’” And when the next bright boy was brought before him, the king was to say, “I’m going to make you my Royal Treasurer,” and so forth. Then the pirate said to the king, “You will finally say to all of them: ‘But each of you must mind your own business or off go your heads. I’m the only one who minds everybody’s business.’”

And this is the way schools began, as royal tutorial schools. And, it’s the way specialization began. It is our current form of education. Academic education equals specialization.

Exclusively, the great pirates retain comprehensive knowledge. This is why philosophers are regularly the first political prisoners.

Bucky emphasized that this is not a metaphor or some kind of syllogism and that he was not being facetious. Buckminster Fuller said his pirate story more accurate reflected history than what is found in traditional textbooks.

This was the beginning of schools and colleges, and the beginning of intellectual specialization. This is why alternative adult education is so important and why I fight for fluid intelligence and how I was compelled to request some common ground and then did not seem like the time for anything other than honoring the show as you had conceived it... so I took my self off the that stage.

3 Americans go insane from reading avant-garde literature: Poker Without Cards.

If you are currently taking psychiatrist prescribed medications you should stop reading this right now! If you read Poker Without Cards your vitality will skyrocket and you’ll feel great or you’ll whither away and possibly go insane. Is reading this book worth the risk? Reading Poker Without Cards transformed me from a man wearing girl repellant into a man women are introducing themselves to -- In May of 2005, 5 different women introduced themselves to me and a casual conversation led to passion that left me smiling for days. I’m no longer “hitting” on women and I am getting laid more than I ever imagined. Poker Without Cards IS NOT ABOUT dating or getting laid but cutting through the cultural brainwashing that is engineered to create inferiority complexes. When the real you breaks free from societal expectations, insecurity melts away.

I’m a guy, so I’m going to talk about this book from a male perspective but the technology taught in this book helps men and women. I’ve gotten emails from women telling me that this book has saved their marriage and that for the first time since before they were married they finally feel calm and relaxed and are enjoying themselves.

Science proves that when insecurity goes away your sex appeal substantively improves. If you aren’t feeling as verile as you want, it could be your thought patterns. Insecurity produces some pheromones that shut down your sex drive and the sex drive of prospective partners. That’s right—insecurity not only inhibits you but chemically turns other people off. Whether you are married or single, eliminating insecurity can increase your natural sex drive and inherent sex appeal more than working out or a new car. But you already know this, or at least you’ve read or heard about pheromones elsewhere. This isn’t voodoo, this is science. Calm minds make a person more attractive than anxious minds. A calm mind is a sign of confidence. Confidence instills confidence. Being in the presence of confidence is an aphrodisiac for yourself and others.

I used to be filled with nervous anxiety. I wasted countless hours searching for Truth and arguing with brainwashed nillies. I would stare with envy as dumb frat boys would bed girls with verbal drivel that made me feel cynical about what women want. I’m cured of this debilitating way of life.

I learned that swirling thoughts led nowhere and decreased my testosterone. Lab studies have repeatedly shown that pensive thoughts and insecurity diminishes testosterone, lowering my sex drive. At the same time, insecurity caused my body to produce very subtle smells women found repulsive, smells that deodorant wouldn’t cover.

After reading what is now called Poker Without Cards I stopped fighting with relatives at holidays, I get more respect from my boss and I have better bowel movements. My psyche is far less constipated. I feel better and old friends and new friends find this attractive.

My path was neither easy nor guaranteed. The path I went down has landed others in the emergency room of psychiatric hospitals. You will need to adjust some notions you take for granted, ideas you might feel uncomfortable letting go of. How many circles are drawn just below this question?

use this “O” as your circle... i’m graphically deprived in these comments

School taught you that there is 1 circle. They lied to you. It is impossible to draw one circle. I will prove to you that there are 2 circles. Beware: what I’m about to explain is going to alter the way you see the world forever. If I can’t prove this to you then discard everything I’ve said as being the idle thoughts of a lunatic. If I do prove this to you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, then I want you to read Poker Without Cards. This is going to take some thinking and reflection on your part. Do you think you can hang? Here goes…

The geometry we teach in school is imaginary. If it didn’t make instant sense to you as a teenager, you have a healthy mind. Geometry shouldn’t make perfect sense because it is imaginary. There is no such thing as a 2-dimensional plane. This is a key point that R. Buckminster Fuller said was crippling the minds of the “educated” world. Who is R. Buckminster Fuller? He coined the word “synergy” and held several hundred patents and was revered by business men and scientists alike. He is little recognized now because he said we live in a society of systematized brainwashing through misinformation. No, he wasn’t a Scientologist. He wasn’t a hippie. He wasn’t insane. “Bucky” was a Harvard graduate, a Navy officer and he was awarded over 50 honorary doctorates—he was a smart and respected dude.

Two-dimensional surfaces do not exist in Nature. They just don’t. In order to exist in Nature an object must exist in space and time. The circle above is not two-dimensional. The circle is on a piece of paper or on a computer screen—BUT it is on something geometry would call three-dimensional. I’m going to ask you to use your imagination to imagine what I’m talking about.

This may seem like an insignificant point—most blow off the substantive and far reaching implications of such a simple notion of two-dimensional objects not existing. Bucky held that exerting energy thinking about and believing in non-existent things was a leading contributor to day-to-day anxiety.

Buckminster Fuller used to draw a circle on a chalkboard and ask how many circles were there. When people said 1, he would say 2 and that he could prove it. He would then explain how the chalkboard was a solid, so, topographically, it was like a sphere. He then pulled a white ball out of his bag and drew a black circle on this white sphere. Bucky said that any circle was actually two circles because the circle was the division between a microcosm and a macrocosm. Bucky then would fill in the circle and begin to enlarge it. He would stop when the circle reached the equator and covered half the sphere. [Please visualize this in your mind or the idea won’t work—Thank you.] Then, Bucky would continue and stop when the white ball was almost entirely covered, but there was a small white circle left. He would draw an 8 and ask: "Is an eight-ball a small white circle on a black ball or a white ball with a black circle so large it almost covers the entire ball?"

You can’t draw one circle. The nature of circle is a division of two, an inside from an outside. Learning circle the way that we are taught in school blinds us to examining what a circle excludes. Bucky said that the way we learn circle actually cripples the way our mind perceives nature and other human beings.

I bet you can’t imagine how this re-correction of perception will make you a happier person. I can’t explain it here. But, let me ask you this--Are you comfortable now? If you were ecstatic with your life you wouldn’t have read this far. Are you uncomfortable enough to know you want to change? I wasn’t. I didn’t choose to read Poker Without Cards.

I worked as a transcriber for The Transcription Company in Burbank, California. I would transcribe TV shows, focus groups, company meetings and legal depositions. One assignment came from a hospital—it was a series of meetings between Howard Campbell and a psychiatrist, Dr. Fink. The two of them engaged in a mental battle of the likes I had never imagined. They weren’t just discussing the nature of reality and sanity, they were attacking each other’s ontology, their basic construct of the way the universe really works.

I have never worked so hard on a transcription. There were words I didn’t know, books I hadn’t read and stuff discussed that was beyond my immediate grasp. What I found was that as I tackled this material I caught The Bucky Virus.

The Bucky Virus is real--It isn’t something that can be seen under a microscope—nor is The Bucky Virus something that ever leaves your system. If you catch The Bucky Virus, you will have it for the rest of your life. Some things you can never go back from learning. Imagine catching your spouse fucking somebody else—you may forgive them, but you will never not know it.

That’s why these interviews are so important. As I began to research the ideas of Howard Campbell, they made more and more sense to me. I found tons of articles online discussing these ideas. I found a structure I didn’t know existed. I began to see how mass media worked. I began to find validation in some of my hunches.

I found that my life long anxiety was stemming from the misinformation society was attempting to cram down my throat. I found that my gut had been right on about a number of my hunches. I found I no longer argued with religious zealots—instead of being engaged in pointing out their fallacies, I simply saw them as brainwashed and the idea of engaging in a sane argument with them occurred to me as impossible.

I stopped fighting with my fundamentalist aunt at family gatherings. I was nolonger thrown by her fears of my salvation or lack thereof. I developed boundaries that here religious memeplex could no longer penetrate. Wait—I used memeplex—if you don’t understand memetics, you will be emotionally thrown to and fro. Don’t take my word for it:

"Poker without Cards reveals the hard-to-swallow truth that one cannot know reality until one understands memetics and poker. Is the world ready for such a revelation?"
-Richard Brodie
Billionaire who wrote the original Microsoft Word program

Richard Brodie is smarter than the average bear. If he sees value in memetics and this technology can be explained to you in the simplest means yet published, wouldn’t you want that technology? It is doubtful that the entire book will make sense to you, but if you pick up just one tool that makes the rest of your life easier, how much would you be willing to pay for that?

How much more can you enjoy your life if your mind was just a little bit more free? Earlier, I discussed how reading the original transcript of PWC made me a better lover, which it has. It would be irresponsible for me to say that Poker Without Cards cures male impotence. I’m not saying that. There are many biological causes of impotence that PWC can’t cure. If you are suffering from impotence, you should see a urologist—you might have low testosterone production. Which is very treatable. You might have a leaky scrotum, which is treatable with minor surgery. Poker Without Cause can’t do voodoo surgery and reach inside your biology and mend a leaky vein—I’m not saying that. What I am saying is that reading Poker Without Cards will validate many of your hunches about how the world really works.

The news doesn’t tell you what’s going on. The purpose of the news is not to make you aware of the world’s events. The purpose of any news corporation is to make money, primarily from having you watch their commercials. We live in an attention economy with media vying for our attention and then once it has our viewership, to keep our attention. Media ceaselessly yells, “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!”

You already had a basic understanding of the function of media—but you probably didn’t have the label “attention economy”. Howard did not make up that term. It is a label, a meme that the communication industry uses for commoditizing what they do for money. Most people don’t see the extent that media has saturated their lives.

2,400 paid messages a day.

YOU ARE A PROFIT CENTER--The average American urban dweller is exposed to approximately 2,400 paid advertisements a day. By going through your daily maze, communication companies are paying for access to your senses. At the grocery store, the sticker on the floor in front of the ice cream, a company just received a half a cent because this message was placed in front of your eyes. No, there isn’t a clicker there where after you look they get half a penny. They aren’t playing a onsie/twosie game. Communication is playing with big numbers and averages. The grocery store estimates how many people visit each day. Another company studies how many people shop in the ice cream aisle. YOU ARE A TARGET AUDIENCE.

The details would get boring. You are already familiar with how Neilson research commoditizes TV viewership and that research establishes what’s most popular and how much the advertising should cost. Well, there are thousands of smaller companies that do similar calculations. Knowing the details isn’t what’s important to most people. Understanding the implications is what’s important.

Why is it important to know we live in an attention economy? Because you will begin to see media differently. You will have a new appreciation for movies about media like Wag The Dog, Network, Farenheit 911, Outfoxed, the new movie Wal-Mart and the list could get quite extensive. The point is that in an attention economy the function of the media is to get people to take it seriously and mistake entertainment and drama for reality. Its just theater. If you don’t see the theater, then Poker Without Cards probably isn’t for you.

What do you think of FOX news? FOX News Channel premiered on October 7, 1996. Since then, millions of viewers have been put under a perilous spell of blindness. Fox News’ version of reality is a really bad magic show. Before I continue I should state for the record that I am not a communist. I enjoy much of capitalism. What other form of economy allows a person to leverage their common sense for great rewards? More than any economic system I’ve seen, capitalism allows for the individual to stand on his own merits. One is still pushed or pulled by social advantages and political influence, but your own merits contribute more than any alternative systems I’ve seen. Money, connections, and charisma open doors, but it’s your character and wits that take you to the top. Knowledge is the application of character and intelligence. Character is the greater part of knowledge. However, if your intelligence is founded on bogus data, your knowledge will be misguided. Knowledge built from biased sources of information will mirror these biases.

Mass media is a servant to “free-market economy”, even supposedly public radio is forced to suck up for corporate grants. Grant? They are giving money for exposure, when did that stop being called advertising?

Fox News is less concern with accuracy or balance than in its effectiveness as an advertising delivery mechanism, serving their sponsors before their commitment to balanced information. Fox News is misdirecting the focus of its viewers--misdirection is a technical term in magic.

Howard Campbell was a Magic Castle award winning magician—he studied with the greats of magic like Dai Vernon and David Copperfield who tutored in in the Magic Castle’s Junior Academy. Howard understand perception and deception better than most psychologists. He had do, he did corporate psychology for a living and his accuracy was measured in dollars and profitability. Corporate clients are really good at measuring some types of efficacy—like whether one ad is better than another—and Howard’s gut was tested against diagnostic copy testing and he was deemed a natural at being able to intuit persuasive communications.

How could Howard intuit efficacy that other’s were blind to? He had a different construct of reality and human psychology. Understanding these ideas takes work and concentration. The reward is an easier way of being. If you see the world more clearly, certain resentments just fade away. Howard explains the psychology of magic.

Magic is not a thing or a physical act, but a state of mind that approaches the sublime; it is, however, more aptly referred to as phantasmagorical. Magic occurs at the intersection of a performer and an audience. There is intentionality to the perception. A stone that looks like an eagle is not magic, regardless of whether or not it is carved to represent the physical traits of an eagle. A sculpture may be a catalyst to an altered state of mind, but I am reticent to call a sculpture magical. Some panoramas feel almost magical to me, but real magic is dynamic and ephemeral. Magic is the process of engineering an experience where reality emerges as it cannot be, yet the audience is compelled to set aside their disbelief and flow with the experience as long as it lasts. When a magician is successful at accomplishing this feat, we call it enchantment.

If Fox News can compel an audience to set aside their disbelief and flow with the experience for as long as it lasts, it is an act of magic. Clay Ramsay, research director at the Program on International Policy (PIPA) at the University of Maryland, conducted a survey among viewers of television news. The survey found that “regular viewers of Fox News held more misperceptions about the invasion of Iraq than regular viewers of any other networks.” The survey goes on to find that regular viewers of Fox News were more confident of their knowledge than regular viewers of any other network. Fox News audiences are enchanted.

Magicians don’t pretend that the phantasmagorical experiences they create are real. Pretending a trick is real is the work of a charlatan or a con artist, not a theatrical magician. Fox News’ depiction of world events is a really bad magic act where the illusions are said to be real. Fox News is telling a really bad joke that more people need to be let in on the gag. If Fox News’ real objective is presenting the newsworthy reporting of Truth, then discovering that their viewers have misconceptions should be seen as opportunity to help their audience see the correct facts. This is evidently not the case. Fox News has an agenda that is obvious to those who don’t hold to their party line. Fox News is an ongoing effort to enchant its viewers.

John asked Howard how he could see Fox News as a bad magic show. Howard took a quarter from his pocket and did a classic palm to make the coin disappear. Howard explained that creating an illusion entails tweaking our visual prejudices and proceded to teach the magic trick to explain the psychology of perception saying, “You can’t fully understand perception without studying deception.” Howard showed him how he palmed the quarter, the quarter never fell into the other hand.

I watched John object that he had seen the coin fall. Howard said, “Exactly! Most minds will see the coin fall. The term for this visual is sight retention. A normal mind will literally ‘see’ the coin fall.” Howard explained that psychologists call this specific visual dynamic a projection because our mind projects its expectation of reality onto our sight. I think the term hallucination is more fitting, but academics like their fancy words.

John asked, “Why does our mind create this projection?” Howard explained, “Because when we drop a coin it falls. We have seen the force of gravity pull objects to Earth since before we had words to articulate the phenomena. We have internalized this to the extent that we expect to see it.”

Fox News tells its viewers again and again that George W is doing a swell job that its viewers expect to see George W doing a swell job. John objected that the Fox newscasters weren’t magicians because many of these newscasters believe everything they are saying.

Howard wasn’t calling the newscasters magicians, but the show a magic show. That is an important distinction. John asked if a magic show must be given by a magician. I said no. A person who engineers a magical frame of mind, phantasmagoria, for an audience may or may not be a performer on a stage. If the person who engineered a magical experience is not the actor presenting the feats, they are the puppet-master of the experience, where the magician is a marionette, performing in the puppet-master’s phantasmagorical production. Clock makers of the 17th Century created automatons, mechanical men whose gears and riggings could be activated to perform the tricks of magicians. These clock makers were not magicians; they were the puppet-masters of their metal figurines that could perform magic, even in the absence of their creators. Fox newscasters appeared to me like little metal figurines performing the stunts of their puppet-masters, the producers who write and edit the material presented as news.

Howard dived deeper into how magic works, explaining that to create magic requires the recognition of stages within stages, seeing micro-stages within macro-stages. The macro-stage is the physical place the audience encounters the magic. A magician may perform on a traditional proscenium stage, in a parlor, at a dinner table or on a street corner—whatever location the magician interacts with their audience becomes the macro-stage. The micro-stages emerge as the audience shifts their attention. David Copperfield regularly performs coin tricks in front of audiences in excess of 2,000. How? He manages the micro-stages, the focus of his audience. By focusing his own attention, with all his body, on a silver dollar, he can command the attention of 2,000 sets of eyes, whose minds enjoy the representation of a miracle as he makes the coin vanish. Copperfield directs the focus of his audience. Site retention won’t work unless the audience’s mind is engaged. The mind must not only see the cues that trigger the mental projections, but the mind must be so immersed in its focus that the mind accepts the magician’s cues as real. The creation of these cues, the intentional use of projection triggers, is the keystone to invoking illusion.

Misdirection is the magician’s ability to secretly do one thing by directing the audience’s attention on something else. Direction is the root of misdirection. Managing the micro-stages of an audiences focus is at the heart of misdirection—movement hides movement.

Like most magicians of the stage, when I use the word magic, I’m not speaking about supernatural powers. In this essay, magic is the act of facilitating a phantasmagorical experience, the acceptance of a world where natural laws do not apply, presented as though the magical act is a “normal” reality. There is a difference between being fooled and being entertained by a magician. Being fooled simply leaves the audience feeling duped, but a magician engages the audience and makes it okay for the audience members to live inside the illusion. The role of the magician is to enchant the audience, to facilitate their willing suspension of disbelief, allowing the audience to flow with the magical presentation, and blinding them from seeing the mechanics of how things are really working.

If the role of the magician is to enchant the audience, to facilitate their willing suspension of disbelief, then I hold that Fox News has become the FISM winner of all time, focusing our attention on the sensational, blinding US from seeing what supports the reported phenomena. The primary role of Fox News is to market the agenda of George W, to present their version of reality as actual.

I see Fox News as a magic show with no end in sight. The most common subject of Fox News is the War in Iraq. If this isn’t theater, then why do they use so many theatrical terms? A region of battlefields is called a “theater”. We “stage” offensives. Isn’t uniform just another word for costume?

Poker Without Cards will be a good read for you if you appreciate a non-corporate perspective. Perspectives are affected by our framing. We see what we are told to look for. Humans are so complex and so simple at the same time.

If you are comfortable learning about deception and persuasion, then your mind is probably stable enough for you to read Poker Without Cards. Beware: In Poker Without Cards, Howard is in a war of perception with Dr. Fink. Is all fair in love and war? Maybe and Maybe not—that’s off topic. Poker Without Cards demonstrates that people will use everything in their arsenal to defend their perspective and if others crumble in the face of an evolved vision of reality, so it goes.

Howard Campbell is a marketing rebel. Howard is a memeticist, a master of how ideas propagate. Is Howard a natural genius? No, he is the product of great mentors. Buckminster Fuller taught him geometry when he was 12. Dai Vernon taught him magic when he was 14. Anthony Robbins taught him neuro-linguistic-programming when he was 15. He's learned advertising from Donny Deutsch. Howard Bloom has tutored him in memetics. Howard Campbell understands social engineering.

Howard Campbell is a force to be reckoned. Social engineers are furious Howard is explaining the tricks of the trade. Poker Without Cards is a blend of Orwell and Chomsky gone cyberpunk.

To get a clear understanding of how the world really works you need to read Poker Without Cards as soon as you can... i'm running out of cigarettes Joseph

Michael Clay said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
funDiva Christy Hoffman said...

My mind is tired as it often it is when exposed to Ben, and I sometimes waver, ever fearful of being called an IRA, but glued to the freakshow that is Dr Mack.

And yet I will continue, in that if it is manipulation that Ben aims to achieve, it is manipulation that I trust more than mass media and I have a chance to learn it myself and use it to my advantage at a game I can win.

I will return later to the Zeigarnick Effect as right now my mind & body require sleep before relaxation.

Can I win a game I don't know the rules of? Or I'm not sure is even a game? Or everything is a game?

Lynette Patterson said...

Wow...so much content here Ben, it is such a gift to follow your train of thought. It often creates the Zeigarnik Effect for me and because of you, Wikipedia has become my friend:-)This is good, because constant learning creates growth.

I'm looking so forward to ESP Bootcamp~will we see a new trick? I hope so!

Ronda Del Boccio said...

I love what you're doing with this seminar, and yes it is magical when people of divergent beliefs can share their magic without trying to convert or convince.

You create a space for experiences to evolve, and that is your magic.

Warmly,
Ronda Del Boccio
The Story Lady

Amy J + Energy = Bliss! said...

What a roller coaster ride! Up,down, up the slow slope and ripping down the heart stopping dive.

I had to get off before the ride completed... I HAVE to go to sleep.

It is a long ride, much more generous than those 3 minutes normally given. I will go again!

I immensely enjoyed the part I completed! A ride to be savored, not rushed. [Of course I refer to the magickal submlinal ride at the Comments Park of Magick and Amusement that I had to quit about 2/3 through.]

The blog post was merely the ticket booth where I got my tickets for the ride

Still wobbly knee-ed...

Amy

For Lynette Patterson: "guoym"
A new word!

Unknown said...

Ben,

I like to think of you as a visionary - the kind who is describing what he sees in the moment. Reading your stuff, whether I understand it or not, whether it scares me, entertains me or challenges me or repulses me, brings me totally into the present moment, which is a good thing.

I also want clean water for every human on the planet, so I just keep noticing you, trusting that anyone who wants something that huge is playing a game I want them to win.

I'm willing to live in the mystery of the "crazy" things you and Howard sometimes do, because I'd rather listen to fringe visionaries while they are still alive and I can do something good with the message, then wait until they're dead to see the value.

Alexandro Pheromones said...

I wish I could just download this guys brain, then upload it to mine, so that I would know all that he knows. That way I could quit wondering what the hell he is up to now and just get some peace.

Constantly trying to connect all the dots he leaves around is maddening.

Ben is also expensive. Do you know how many books I have had to buy since finding him?

Garry

Master Tron said...

I read the pirates/kings analogy (you learned from Bucky) in one of your writings before and all I can say is that it made my mind work so fast I could write a book about it (no one I read before used the word pirates like it's used here).

OK, I'll be brief.

In a true civilization no famine, no thirst, no poverty, no disease and no wars exist; even death becomes completely unnecessary if not obsolete. Do these things exist in what everyone calls civilization today?


I hate it when people use the word "civilization" to refer what we have to interact with, because it can only be described as an upside-down civilization; an anti-civilization.

The pirates and their appointed kings rely on a system that has been perfected over the past 2300 years (since Plato and his book "The Republic"). This system exploits the conscious mind of humans towards tendencies to follow icons, sigils, leaders (someone they look up to who has answers to their questions) rather than do the thinking themselves.

The pirates/kings use different tools from specialization to non-sequitur to influence techniques (like NLP) to keep their followers dependent upon them for answers, while at the same time, asking their followers to sacrifice their wealth, time, happiness and even their lives for whatever is considered the "noble cause du jour."

For the master, he/she does not have to use the same tactics that these pirates/kings use to prosper for they have become outmoded. The tired tactics rely on force, threat of force, or cons to extract a living.

The master has no need for force (except in self-defense). They don't need cons to make a living, and if the pirates/kings force a con on them, then they can use similar tactics to turn things around (thus, the reference to poker: the only game where a gentleman can cheat without being called a cheater). The master doesn't need the specialized people trained by the pirates/kings, rather people who are willing to learn and grow in competence and worth.

It wasn't until 1997 when I started looking at people in this anti-civilization as humans sleep-walking within a bubble of beliefs varying on a scale from one extreme to another and all points in between (in every area: political, religious, economic, psychological and others). This saved me. I learned you can't change people minds, they have to change it themselves.

We are learning how to move them to change on their own. I look forward to Howard Campbell interview... I stopped smoking James.