From: Linda Reed--PCC West Campus CSC <lreed@west.cscwc.pima.edu>
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 11:30:17 -0700 (PDT)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: TruthChapter - SPACE ALIENS HIDE MY DRUGS!!!
Message-ID: <009C9C11.75915C20.5@west.cscwc.pima.edu>
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TruthChapter -- SPACE ALIENS HIDE M DRUGS!!!
_____________________________________________

    OK, so it's a slow day and you don't have much going on.

  our sister is out of town for the weekend, your dog is
on the rag and your Visa is maxed-out. Thus, sex is not a
viable option for killing a little spare time (now a felony).

So what the hell...
  ou're going through the posts to the CypherPunks list and
you notice that the asshole who forged posts to the list in
your name (claiming that fucking two nine year-olds is just
as legal as fucking an 18 year-old) has spammmed yet another
chapter of the rambling, semi-coherent saga "The True Story
Of The InterNet" to the list.
  ou've read bits and pieces of the manuscripts (on company
time), every now and again (more out of boredom than because
of any socially or coupon redeeming content), and it bothers
you that the Author has taken concepts, themes and issues
that are important to you and put a bizarre, insane/inane
twist on them that somehow degrades and defiles them, in
spite of the fact that he sometimes supplies a remarkable
amount of documented facts and viewpoints from 'respectable
sources' in support of his vague claims and wild-eyed
theories.

    ou take great care to avoid being 'caught' reading the
manuscripts by others and you wouldn't dream of admitting
in public that you view them as anything but mindless
trash, but you keep finding yourself thinking about some
of the underlying views expressed by the Author of the
manuscripts.
    ou've begun to realize that what troubles you about
the 'True Story Of The InterNet' manuscripts is reflective
of what bothers you about the InterNet, in general, as a
Medium/Message--the ongoing battle between order and chaos
that reins supreme within a Virtual Reality where Jane and
Joe Average can avail themselves of the same technology as
Established Authority (TM) in the battle for your attention.

  Ms. Information Highway is a Eunuch who embodies the
divergent and seemingly contradictory yin/yang qualities
that would result from a cross-cloning of Walter Cronkite
and the BlondeBimbo that everyone tells the jokes about.
  It's like the 'science' of UFOlogy...the 'experts' in
the field often provide a well-documented trail of facts
and figures from recognized sources and authorities. The
problem, of course, is that the facts and figures are
used to 'prove' a wide range of Plausible Theories (TM)
ranging from highly-evolved beings with a superior
intelligence to humans, to Reptilian Nazis living deep
within the bowels of Mother Earth who are cultivating
SurfaceDwellers such as ourselves to provide a FoodFarm
for Alien GreyHound Tourists passing through on their
way to another galaxy.


  The Problem (TM) posed by the InterNet is Taoist in
Nature.
  The Total Access To All Information which is inherent
in the Physical Manifestation Of Virtual Reality which
we know as the InterNet opens a Dangerous Door Of
Perception leading to an environment within which we
have the possibility of being...free!
  The Freedom represented by Unrestricted Access To
Information comes from having the ability to exercise
one of the most basic of all human qualities, which is
to 'seek' knowledge in our quest for an expanding
evolutionary wisdom. The Freedom is to be able to
Search for Knowledge according to one's own personal
predilictions and desires, and to Choose from All
Available Information/Knowledge what one will use
as tools in building one's Perceived Reality.

  In a world where we have become accustomed to being
spoon-fed the information, perceptions and viewpoints
which comprise our Perceived Reality (by Officially
Recognized Authority), we suddenly find ourselves
faced with the possibility of using the technological
tools of the InterNet to direct our Attention/Perception
along vectors of our own choosing, rather than being
subjected to forced herding into the fenced pastures
and feeding pens designed by the Controllers to keep
us in an environment which is the most suitable and
convenient for their purposes.


  The Freedom is freedom from a Reality created and
governed by Official Government Pamphlets handed to us
in every area of our life.
  The Freedom is the freedom to peruse the colored charts
and diagrams provided by the Pentagon to lead us through
a maze where Gulf War Syndrome is an imaginary being that
is always just around the corner, and then to direct our
attention to the private WebSite of a Gulf War Vetran
who provides the details of his personal experience in
regard to the war and its effect on his or her life and
health.
  The Freedom is the freedom to read the wildly rambling,
nonsensical diatribes contained in the 'True Story Of The
InterNet' manuscripts and say, "Bullshit! I'm going to
check these wild-eyed claims out for myself."
  The Freedom is freedom to chaff and winnow the original
Seed Of Knowledge in a manner that suits your desires, and
to seek out InterNet venues and personas which make your
Quest for Knowledge more complete or efficient. The
Freedom is the freedom to change the direction or the
parameters of your Quest for a specific reason, or on a
momentary whim, solely to view your Perceived Reality
from the outside, in order to get a more objective view
of the WorldReality you have constructed.

  It is in this spirit that the 'TruthChapter' is being
dedicated.


    TruthChapter FAQ
    ----------------
1. What you are currently reading is *not* the TruthChapter.
2. The Author has not written, and has no intention of
  writing, the TruthChapter.
3. The Author is full of shit! Regardless of the ultimate
  level of personal and professional ethics that the Author
  brings to the manuscripts that pass through his or her
  space-time continuum of MuseDom, his or her attitudes,
  facts, figures, beliefs, values, etc., are completely
  irrelevant to your path in life, except to the extent
  that you, personally, evaluate and apply the concepts
  and ideas expressed for your consideration.
4. Writing the TruthChapter is *your* job! This is true
  whether you choose to participate in the activity which
  is described below in 'An Exercise For The Reader', or
  whether you choose to curl up in bed with Playboy, Time,
  The Wall Street Journal, Beer and Bloating In Lost Wages,
  or A Physically Manifested Expression Of Mind To Be
  Named Later.

=============================

TruthChapter FAQ Intermission

  Make some popcorn, grab a beer, and think about the
following...

  At some point in 'InfoWar - Part III of the True Story
Of The InterNet', there was a statement, quote, or some
reference documented reference to the Fact (TM) that,
during a period when violent crime statistics showed a
significant 'decrease' in violent crimes, that public
perception viewed violent crime as being very much on
the 'increase' (and a 'growing' problem).
  The reader of the manuscript has no way of personally
knowing whether the Author is passing along real, existing
facts and/or information in this regard, whether he or
she is lying in order to promote a private agenda, or
whether the Author dreamed or imagined the 'information'
during drunken drug-withdrawal seizures.
  The same concept holds true even if you can verify
through personal research that the fact/information came
from an established, respectable, documented source.
(i.e. - "Oswald acted alone." / "We, the jury, find
 OJ Simpson 'not guilty'." / "We, the 'civil jury', find
 OJ Simpson 'guilty'." / "We, the Court Of Public Opinion,
 made up our minds long before the trial began." /
 "The Mormon Tabernacle Choir acted alone..." )

  My point?
  The Author makes no bones about being a drunken, insane,
drug-addicted, infantile pervert. The fact that past and
present Presidents, Dictators, Titans of Industry, Media
Moguls, Religious Leaders, Politicians, etc., etc., ad
infinitum, choose to claim that they smoked pot but didn't
inhale, that they drank liquor but never swallowed, that
they had sex but didn't cum...
  Well, the bottom line is, "ou pays your money, you takes
your chance."

  Although the reality of the time-space continuum requires
that we develop structures and processes by which we can
navigate life's diverse paths, delegating many of our
daily thoughts, feelings and activities to pre-programmed
reactions and responses that are based on our previous
experience and analysis of life, we can never truly escape
the reality that 'Life is a crapshoot' and that failure to
exercise our capacity for conscious awareness results in
our becoming submerged in a robotic humanity/persona which
leaves us vulnerable to automatically travelling along the
path of least resistance.
  Our being Real (TM) is not a question of 'truthfully'
answering our employer's question in regard to our opinion
on the Vietnam war, whether our employer is the Pentagon
or the Peace Coalition. Gurdjieff once said that in one's
inner life, one is free to say, 'The King is shit!', but
in one's outer life, it is often wise to say, 'All hail
the King!'. Our being Real (TM) is mostly a question of
being aware of the difference between our inner and our
outer lives.

  My definition of a 'truthful' person is one who does
not lie to others more than he or she lies to oneself,
except as necessary.
  As far as when it is 'necessary' to lie, and what it
is 'necessary' to lie about...that is a matter of personal
conscience for every individual. It is dependent on one's
personal wisdom and understanding, as well as on their
beliefs and values in life.
(i.e. - It is up to each individual to decide whether
 they are comfortable with lying when the Gestapo ask
 if they are hiding Jews in the attic.)

  In a world where there is increasing pressure to conform
completely to a constantly narrowing societal paridigm, it
is important to resist sinking into a primordal swamp of
group consciousness that submerges our individual creative
spirit, or spark of life.
  I regard it as an absolute anathema to the human spirit
that opinions of OJ's guilt or innocence is split so
radically along racial lines, far beyond what differences
in social exposure and experience alone would dictate
among people of thought and reason.
  Everyone who was present when Nicole Simpson and Ronald
Goldman were murdered, raise your hand...
  Although it is encumbent upon us, in our daily lives, to
judge ourself and our life based on the best possible
information, to the best of our ability, we too often tend
to do so from a perspective of a biased, angry mob outside
of the courtroom, than from a perspective of a juror sworn
to high standards of objectivity in viewing our own life
and our personal knowledge/belief systems.

  The tragedy of the OJ trial was that the blatant racism,
corruption and lack of professional ethics of those who
are employed to be objective, unbiased investigators made
it impossible for an objective juror to place a man's fate
in the hands that gathered the evidence.
  The tragedy of life's trials is that there is so much
intrigue and subterfuge in our environment, as a result
of private and group agendas driven by human weaknesses
and character defects, that it is now a monumental task to
analyze and evaluate the information we receive, in order
to feel confident in our ability to structure our beliefs
and pre-programmed reactions and feelings in a manner that
will allow us to feel our spiritual integrity has remained
intact during the process.


  The point I am leading up to is that it is difficult,
yet exceedingly important, to overcome our human foibles
and our tendency to become robotic Sheeple in the present
societal environment which puts great pressure upon us
to abandon freedom of thought and spirit, in the interest
of the comfort of conformity.
  We live in a society where we are required by law and
custom to nod our belief and approval when our elected
political leader says, "Read my lips...no new taxes!",
even though there is not a person on the face of the
earth who doesn't understand it is a meaningless lie.
  It doesn't matter whether it is the political arena,
the religious arena, the media, the press, the justice
system, or whatever--The Lies Flow Like Water! We have
become so numbed by the assault on the Truth that it is
an easy task merely to fall into a deep slumber where
we cease resisting the constant attacks on our inherent
sensibility and our desire for increased knowledge and
wisdom.

  Gurdjieff posited that it is 'impossible' for a human
to 'consciously do evil'.
  Although the truth of this is most easily seen in the
group descent into unthinking madness that was epitomized
by the rise and fall of the Third Reich, I believe that
it is equally true in the smaller areas of daily life,
where we learn to robotically 'fool' ourselves, often
in the interests of survival, into believing that it is
Right, instead of merely Expedient, to believe that
requiring certain ethnic groups to sit at the back of
the bus is 'the way it is', instead of consciously
maintaining awareness that it is Wrong, if that is our
true personal feeling and belief.

  It is my belief that Right & Wrong (TM) have little
or no meaning without a Conscious Objective Awareness
that can only result from an individual having the
freedom to explore all of the information and experience
that life has to offer, without unreasonable, intrusive
censorship from various elements of their environment.
  Which brings us back to...the TruthChapter...

=============================


TruthChapter FAQ (continued)
----------------------------
5. The Medium Is The Message... The information that comes
  into our range of perceptive attention is shaped, shaded
  and molded in a manner dependent upon the medium of
  communication by which it is transmitted.
   This is true whether the Information is transmitted by
  genetics, analog or digital emmissions, is a moving and
  flowing energy, or is captured in a static, stable form.
  Fish find their way back to their birthplace by a different
  method than humans because of the difference in the mediums
  by which they receive the necessary information.
6. Salmon don't have to show a passport to an armed fish
  representing the Stream Government. Salmon don't have to
  have approval of the Church of Salmon in order to spawn.
  Salmon don't get a ticket for swimming on the wrong side
  of the stream, or for swimming too fast.
   Big fish eat little fish...in one gulp. They don't nibble
  them to death with Fish Taxes. They don't drown them at
  the stake for believing the earth is round. Fish are not
  as 'smart' or 'creative' as humans--they do not mentally
  build Empires out of Imaginary Sand Castles In The Sky
  and then eat each other in an argument over what color
  to paint the walls.
7. If Salmon could write, they would probably write a FAQ
  with Facts, instead of embellishing the information with
  vague, semi-rational references that seem to be putting
  a confusing spin on their World Of Perceived Reality for
  no other reason than fear of falling off if it ceases
  turning.
<EOFAQ>


  OK, so instead of using the TruthChapter FAQ to provide
you with accurate, unbiased information with which to
construct your own WorldView (TM), I ended up getting a
little carried away, using my Substance Abuse Enhanced
Creativity (TM) to try to suck the reader into a WorldView
constructed by myself for the sole purpose of making it
the Reader's turn to buy the next round of drinks.
  Although you might regard this as merely another 'proof'
of my freely admitted diabolicallity (don't bother looking
it up in the dictionary), it is my contention that you are
only fooling yourself if you are of the belief that you
can take the facts/opinions of *anyone* at face value,
without asking questions such as:
  "Had Saint Peter already signed a BookDeal with a Bible
   publisher before authoring the Epistles which he asks
   us to take as fact, based on Faith?"
  "Did Moses have inside information that there were vast
   reserves of oil in the Promised Land?"
  "Did Job belong to an S&M cult?"
  "Was St. John the Divine 'on something' when he had his
   'Revelation' <snicker-snicker>?"
  "When Jesus performed his 'miracles', did he work with
   scantily clad, sexy assistants, in order to divert the
   attention of the crowd?"

  The point I am trying to make is that, even in the arena
of religious belief, there is a difference between Faith
and a Lobotomy. Likewise in the arenas of Politics, Family,
Business, Sports and Relationships.
  For example:
"WaterGate FAQ" by Richard Nixon
"Curfew Time FAQ" by our Mom & Dad
"MicroSoft FAQ" by Saint William Gates
"Sports FAQ" by Jimmy the Greek & Marge Shott
"Relationship FAQ" by A Pregnant Woman Who Claimed To Be
                   On The Pill And Now Demands ou Marry Her
"TruthChapter FAQ" by A Cheap Drunk To Be Named Later


  In the interests of using the True Story Of The InterNet
manuscripts as a vehicle to increase the Reader's ability
to analyze and evaluate the proffered 'information' in a
manner that utilizes the evolving technological tools of
the medium by which the manuscripts are being disseminated,
the Author is making freely available the information with
which he was planning to generate/construct a chapter with
the title, 'son of The Mother Of All Chapters'.
  By providing the Reader with the information gleaned from
the InterNet for constructing the 'son of The Mother Of All
Chapters', as well as revealing HisOrHer's secret designs
and hidden agendas culminating in the final, manifested
form of the chapter, the Author is offering you, the highly
esteemed Reader of the 'True Story Of The InterNet', an
opportunity to InterActively Participate in the process of
the construction of your personal News & Entertainment
Paridigm.

  The reality of the time-space continuum dictates that we
must apply our time and resources in gathering and analyzing
the information by which we construct our WorldView in a
manner that best utilizes the tools at our disposal to
shape, color and mold available information, including
taking advantage of the MiniPre-Fab Realities that are
offered to us by our fellow RealityBuilders.
  Although Manufacturing Reality can be done with greater
quality control and efficiency through the sharing of
our individual Reality Products, basic economics dictates
that there are often HiddenCosts associated with believing
RealityAdvertising claims that something is 'free', in
the overall scheme of things.
  There is little difference between being a HeatedSpoonFed
Heroin Addict and in being a SpoonFed News/Information/
Entertainment Junkie. Once you are hooked, the price goes
up, and you end up on Information Welfare and still having
to steal your own integrity in order to pay an increasing
price for a diluted/cut product, in order to feed your
habit/need with an inferior product.
  The TruthChapter is being presented as an opportunity
to explore the possibility of weaning yourself to a
realistically supportable level of addiction to incoming
information in order to strike a balance between suffering
the pangs and arrows of outrageous fortune, in the course
of your evolution, and becoming Irrevocably Comfortably
Numb through overuse of the current OpiateOfTheMasses.

  Despite the fact that the inspiration for the process of
completing 'son of The Mother Of All Chapters' was largely
the result of the Author having his computers and notes
stolen by Officially Recognized Authorities (TM), as well
as HimOrHer descending into a depressing, primordial pit
of dysfuntional drug withdrawal, this does not, in reality,
automatically preclude the possibility that the LoftyGoals
professed by the Author in regard to the purpose of the
TruthChapter *could* be true...


An Exercise For The Reader:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. Read 'Son.doc' in order to familiarize yourself
  with the all-too-predictable paranoid conspiracy
  theory slant that the Author had planned to put upon
  the information gathered for the assembly of the
  'son of The Mother of All Chapters'.
   The Son.doc attachment is an incomplete preliminary
  summary/first-draft of the 'son of The Mother Of All
  Chapters', as envisioned by the Author.
2. Read 'ThePlot.txt' in order to get the general gist
  of the Spin that the Author had planned to put on
  the analysis and evaluation of the information that
  had been gathered.
3. Read 'FDR.doc' and 'FDR2.doc' to familiarize yourself
  with the building blocks with which the Author had
  planned to construct 'son of The Mother Of All Chapters',
  as well as HisOrHer notes regarding HisOrHer personal
  knowledge and experience that could be added to support
  HisOrHer's personal WorldView.
4. Write the fucking chapter yourself!
5. Disseminate the chapter to whomever you please, in any
  manner you please. (e.g. - snailmail to your mom, email
  to the CypherPunks Distributed Mailing List, or as an
  email reply to those who bless you with 'Make $$$ Fast!"
  UCE/Spams.)


 "The Answer To Noise, Is More Noise!"
 ~ CypherPunks Chief SpokesPerson #238

  Fuck the Author!
  Fuck Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, America's
Most Wanted, Paul Harvey and A 'No Loitering' Sign To Be
Named Later!
  Write your own goddamn chapter and tell it the way that
*you* see it.

  Fuck TruthMonger! *BE* the TruthMonger.
  Put your own accurate or inaccurate spin or twist on the
'son of The Mother Of All Chapters' information base. Add
to it with items gleaned from your own research, or from
your own personal accumulated knowledge and experience.
  Throw all of the provided information out and completely
write the chapter from scratch, with the same theme or a
different theme.
  Write the chapter, type the chapter, or just think about
how you would approach writing the chapter in order to make
manifest the expression of the knowledge and wisdom that you
have to share with your fellow Prisoners Of A Group Reality
as to how to best break the Chains Of Free Thought wrapped
around our brains by the Reality Police.

  Don't use your physical tools merely to receive and to
retransmit Noise.
  Create Noise!

  If anyone complains or criticizes your Noise, fuck 'em!
  ou're the TruthMonger!
  ou're the Author of 'son of The Mother Of All Chapters'.

  Don't lose any sleep over the whining of ignorant pissants
who are unable or unwilling to accept the fact that your world
is flat, and that's the way GoDoG intended it to be.
  Intelligent people, like oursleves, know the world is flat.
  That's the Truth (TM).