Originally posted by Frosty
I think the ideology of these conspiracist is taken way too far out of context, as if money is a supernatural force that has the ability to turn
everyone into a slave or a zombie. Money is no more than a middle man used to exchange goods.
I think you have a misconception about "conspiracists" here, as you put it...We already
know that money is just the middleman in an economic
system. Just as we already
know that the real conspirators are the ones who have placed so much value & importance on that economic system are
really the same ones who
control the flow of money, even though the money itself has no
real value to it whatsoever. Most of us have
already been where you
are now & have researched & contemplated what info we've found...And have been doing so for years.
In my example, I'll use myself (Ego notwithstanding
). I've done so in other posts throughout the years I've been attending these forums (Look
me up in the Members List to see how long I've been here), but all of those snippets of my background are scattered: I'll make an attempt to
reproduce the most important of those snippets here, just so that you have an idea of how one of us got here.
In my teen years (Way back in the early 1970's, mind you), I've always had a thirst for knowledge...Even before that, in my Grade School years, I
was a voracious reader. But the standard school system was boring to me because, for the most part, didn't teach the subjects that I could find
"useful". What need does the Science class have for making students experiment with the timing of water filtering through various grain-sizes of
sand?...Boring & useless...Only if I had wanted to choose to become a geologist or a farmer would this kind of information been useful.
And yet, even through all of this, I also had a strange feeling that "something" was missing that could let me figure out "what's really going on
in the world". TV News shows never really contained any useful information...Even documentary shows had certain limits on what they could teach. I
thirsted for more than that.
During my High School years & beyond, I sought to educate myself...To fill in the gaps that public school missed, but due to the lack of any real
guidance, I could only take "pot-shots" at information sources. I had no real guide on
how to learn what it was that I wanted to know. My
blind search led me to history, because if I had such trouble figuring out what the world really
is, then perhaps history could teach me
how
we got here.
In my research, I learned how history, politics, religion & even geography all ties together to produce a "cause & effect" in human society down
through the millenia. My initial studies brought me to the ancient civilizations...Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia...All of them the soil from
which human civilization took root. These became the seeds & base-stones from which everything happened in the following years in my life...But even
so, I was still not "awake"...I still didn't see
how & why all of this research was important to the world of today.
Then, a few years after high school, still without any sense of direction, I joined the Navy. Well, the Rate that I got into was a small, very
exclusive type of job...It required being qualified for security clearance merely to enter the A School for my Rate. But after A School (& then C
School after that), I got to my first duty station. After a couple of years, I came to realize how much "office politics" played a role in my Rate
(& indeed, all Navy-wide). When I observed first-hand how "politicians" engaged in such subversive, self-demeaning boot-licking, butt-kissing,
backstabbing, acts to gain such small advantadges over others...
That's what finally woke me up!
As a point of reference in time, my Term of Service ended just mere months before "Daddy Bush" started Gulf War 1...
That's when all the pieces of my life of experience, research & knowledge suddenly all fit together...The initial epiphany, if you will. From my
early years when my German Grandfather told me about how he fled before Hitler's rise to power & what he knew about Germany's economy, politics &
power-mongers, which I never really understood at that age, all the way to my Dad saying that the first Bush in Office was "worse than the other
guy", to seeing the effects that the Nixon Administration had on this country, to my "new awareness" while I was in the Navy...It just all added
up!
That's when I took my own studies away from the world of the past & began seeing events of today in a whole new light...It was still
years
before I discovered ATS. I've been posting here ever since. When you can say that you've spent as much of your life as people like Thomas Crowne,
myself & many others at ATS have with learning, researching, growing & evolving with the modern world, then that's when you can step out of the
"philosophical" stage & into "Understanding"...From there comes "Rage & Anger" & from there comes the "Desire to Change" the world into
something a bit better by the time you leave it or to change yourself to fit that mold. From the tenor of the beginning post for this thread, I
presume Aim is still in that "epiphany" stage...Which, personally, I experienced in 1987. For you, Frosty, I'd guess you're in that mid-stage
between "Philosophical" & "Understanding"...The stage of "Questioning".
I'm still trying to free myself (My
mind is free, I'm just waiting for my ass to follow) from the "system" of oppression in the USA, but
I'm beginning to think the only way to do that without compromising my principles is to win the lottery...
...To gain some measure of
comfort & (more importantly,
security) while I continue my mission to assassinate ignorance.
Okay, I'm starting to get the keyboard-equivalent of writer's cramp, so I'm stepping down off my soapbox now...
[edit on 18-7-2005 by MidnightDStroyer]