Cultural Critique, Social Engineering or ...?

[Cara]

When is a play, movie, novel, essay, sculpture, painting, etc. a cultural critique? When is it social engineering? Is it ever solely one or the other?

How is culture critiqued and shaped?

This thread is an exploration via example.


~~~~


A play from 1928, and its film version from 1931, German with English subtitles, The Threepenny Opera:


The Threepenny Opera[1] (Die Dreigroschenoper) is a "play with music" by Bertolt Brecht, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, The Beggar's Opera, and four ballads by François Villon, with music by Kurt Weill. Although there is debate as to how much, if any, Hauptmann might have contributed to the text, Brecht is usually listed as sole author.[2]

The work offers a socialist critique of the capitalist world. It opened on 31 August 1928 at Berlin's Theater am Schiffbauerdamm.

Songs from The Threepenny Opera have been widely covered and become standards, most notably "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" ("The Ballad of Mack the Knife") and "Seeräuberjenny" ("Pirate Jenny").
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Threepenny_Opera

A copy of the play is here: https://www.academia.edu/7003101/The_threepenny_Opera_Complete_ver._-_Bertolt_Brecht

And here is the 1931 film:
eUgkrlL8GkE

Brecht, the playwrite, was an interesting person and developed a particular approach to theatre which he called Epic Theatre:


Brecht developed the combined theory and practice of his "Epic theatre" by synthesizing and extending the experiments of Erwin Piscator and Vsevolod Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism.

Epic Theatre proposed that a play should not cause the spectator to identify emotionally with the characters or action before him or her, but should instead provoke rational self-reflection and a critical view of the action on the stage. Brecht thought that the experience of a climactic catharsis of emotion left an audience complacent. Instead, he wanted his audiences to adopt a critical perspective in order to recognise social injustice and exploitation and to be moved to go forth from the theatre and effect change in the world outside.[68] For this purpose, Brecht employed the use of techniques that remind the spectator that the play is a representation of reality and not reality itself. By highlighting the constructed nature of the theatrical event, Brecht hoped to communicate that the audience's reality was equally constructed and, as such, was changeable.

Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the "epic form" of the drama. This dramatic form is related to similar modernist innovations in other arts, including the strategy of divergent chapters in James Joyce's novel Ulysses, Sergei Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist "montage" in the cinema, and Picasso's introduction of cubist "collage" in the visual arts.[69]

One of Brecht's most important principles was what he called the Verfremdungseffekt (translated as "defamiliarization effect", "distancing effect", or "estrangement effect", and often mistranslated as "alienation effect").[70] This involved, Brecht wrote, "stripping the event of its self-evident, familiar, obvious quality and creating a sense of astonishment and curiosity about them".[71] To this end, Brecht employed techniques such as the actor's direct address to the audience, harsh and bright stage lighting, the use of songs to interrupt the action, explanatory placards, the transposition of text to the third person or past tense in rehearsals, and speaking the stage directions out loud.[72]

In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to "re-function" the theatre to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the "high art/popular culture" dichotomy—vying with the likes of Theodor W. Adorno, György Lukács, Ernst Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Walter Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger dubs him "the most important materialist writer of our time."[73]

Brecht was also influenced by Chinese theatre, and used its aesthetic as an argument for Verfremdungseffekt. Brecht believed, "Traditional Chinese acting also knows the alienation [sic] effect, and applies it most subtly.[74]... The [Chinese] performer portrays incidents of utmost passion, but without his delivery becoming heated."[75] Brecht attended a Chinese opera performance and was introduced to the famous Chinese opera performer Mei Lanfang in 1935.[76] However, Brecht was sure to distinguish between Epic and Chinese theatre. He recognized that the Chinese style was not a "transportable piece of technique,"[77] and that Epic theatre sought to historicize and address social and political issues.[78]
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertolt_Brecht

And this play echoes even today.... ever heard the "jazz standard", Mack the Knife? It's from The Threepenny Opera. Here is Louis Armstrong:

S-lHrDPjGfQ

A translation from the German lyrics in the play:

And the shark, he has teeth
And he wears them in his face
And MacHeath, he has a knife
But the knife you don't see

On a beautiful blue Sunday
Lies a dead man on the Strand*
And a man goes around the corner
Whom they call Mack the Knife

And Schmul Meier is missing
And many a rich man
And his money has Mack the Knife,
On whom they can't pin anything.

Jenny Towler was found
With a knife in her chest
And on the wharf walks Mack the Knife,
Who knows nothing about all this.

And the minor-aged widow,
Whose name everyone knows,
Woke up and was violated
Mack, what was your price?

And some are in the darkness
And the others in the light
But you only see those in the light
Those in the darkness you don't see

But you only see those in the light
Those in the darkness you don't see
From and more about the song here: https://www.thoughtco.com/mack-the-knife-lyrics-in-german-4076149

[shaberon]

That is a pretty good question.

A lot of times I look at the opposites. In my view, one of the most major, border-less, driving forces of peace is music. Of note, look at Monsters of Rock vs. Iron Curtain. The end.

From what I have experienced, it does not matter the country, Chinese, Brazilian, Swedish, whoever, they all have the ability to assemble us peacefully and make us leave our ego at the door.

From within music itself, it has always been friction of Underground vs. Corporate. So on the private side, there are definitely moneyed interests who like to control artists and run it like a business. On the governmental side, you tend to get the "cons" like that silly Tipper Gore, trying to critique things out of existence.

To call it "engineering" implies control, intent, and usually lack of knowledge of the audience. If "international music for peace" is also an attempt to instill values, change attitudes, and so forth, at least it is more open and works by voluntary participation.

There are examples of rioting around classical music, at performances of Beethoven, or some of the initial reaction to modern classic like Rites of Spring, and then of course France grabbing a piece of Tchaikovsky for a type of war march. The U. S. national anthem, lyrically, could be criticized as a bit overbearing, written by a drunk non-participant, who nevertheless was writing about 1812, which could be called a just war. If it had included a few lines about "Britain, keep your private central bank to yourself", then it would have been much more meaningful, but it just comes out more as "we like to shoot guns and worship the flag". It is not something I care to be around, much like the Pledge of Allegiance, another flag worship, written by a socialist in the 1930s and supposed to be accompanied by a palm-up salute otherwise similar to Nazi style.

Most art is probably a legitimate critique. Dante and Chaucer both critiqued Venice, which is the same force that H. G. Wells and Huxley later criticized. Wells was in the Fabian Society for five years, came out and soon wrote "Faults of the Fabians", which is less famous than his other stuff. I don't think Wells was ever "playing a reverse" or trying to get us to blindly follow the opposite. Huxley may have been more involved and perhaps closer to "predicting what was going to happen".

If someone wants to promote socialism, fascism, or extreme religious beliefs, I would have to say it is their right according to free speech. Engineering is "behind" that in the form of thought control, the selection of ideas, false histories, and so forth, more along the lines of "plain information" than art. Or, you don't generally find a death squad forming as a result of a song or play. The message or belief is already in existence, and they are merely celebrating it.

9/11 sawed radio stations in half, and forbid them to play anything that might have a "sensitive" word in it, and press them even further into the bland and generic. But this is a pile of "F. C. C. rules", and has little to do with a wave of musicians popping up to sing "we want you to believe the official story and fight back".

Some say it is engineering to prevent censorship, because then everything becomes perverse or degenerate. But if it is fair to allow fascist art, then it is fair to allow perverse art.

As a "bad example", I keep getting back to U. S. National Anthem. When it says "land of the free", that was, indeed, true at the time, considering the enemy was the central bank. But since that victory was surrendered, it would now actually be false. I believe it was a spontaneous, emotional composition, inspired by the tunes of drinking songs, not likely intended to galvanize the country around socialist flag worship. 1812 made the bank spend several years figuring out how to break in without that type of violence or war, so, in the long run, it was of immense benefit to them adjusting strategy, and the song has gotten flipped around to seem like a support of that system.

What may be worse is music used in advertising, something about a product. With enough of that, you find yourself at eleven at night having strange memories of things about dandruff shampoo or some car. Arguably, it is a type of art, although kind of "on its own plane". I never got much value from subconsciously repeating themes about fictional tv characters or stuff I don't need, and it takes a long time to clean out.

When you get to something like Michael Jackson told Epic to release Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" as a single, and then it becomes the hallmark of the "back masking" phobia, I don't even know what to call it any more. On one hand, you could say Mikey did some engineering by making the tune become immensely popular, and on the other, it seems difficult to maintain the world-wide popularity of cannabis has much to do with what happens when you play this backwards, or, the mind hearing everything backwards and always interpreting it and swallowing it whole as some eminent psychologists must have claimed.

Plenty of art is anywhere from influential to outright manipulative, but, on the artist's part, it seems to me to hardly ever amount to engineering on the level of "plans from behind the scenes" which can almost exclusively only be used by dominant institutions.

[Cara]

This is a thought-provoking critique. Derrick Jensen (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derrick_Jensen) questions the significance of the prevalence of the sociopath hero in popular culture.

I’m not sure about all the premises of his argument but he draws out some interesting streams of thought. The main question he explores is: what can be inferred about who we are as a society from the media/art/culture that we create and consume?

_fN_TTApN5w

[T Smith]

This is a thought-provoking critique. Derrick Jensen (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derrick_Jensen) questions the significance of the prevalence of the sociopath hero in popular culture.

I’m not sure about all the premises of his argument but he draws out some interesting streams of thought. The main question he explores is: what can be inferred about who we are as a society from the media/art/culture that we create and consume?

_fN_TTApN5w

I think the saying "no government can exist without the consent of the governed" (I believe it was Locke who coined the phrase) applies here. That is, expressions of culture, art, entertainment, etc., exist at the pleasure and desires of culture in a demand vs. supply type relationship. I don't think art and entertainment shape culture as much as culture embraces art and entertainment. The former has a social engineering element to it (and probably plays some symbiotic part of the dynamic), but it is more likely the ladder produces art and entertainment per the path of least resistance. In other words, we are rife for this type of entertainment; it's what we want to consume...

That said, the question remains: why do we embrace sociopaths as our cultural heroes? The author of this opinion piece seems to be suggesting art and culture, e.g., insensitivity to violence, misogynous aggression against women, etc., are products of culture that propagate sociopathic tendencies; I would argue this is not an accurate correlation. Rather, art and entertainment directly serves to reconcile in our psyches and subconsciousness the very modus operandi of the rules that govern our society at large; we live in a society that is sociopathic by nature; that is, our our debt-based money system, while not intellectually understood by all, affects all of us at a visceral level; our culture itself operates via the principals of slavery and is a system governed by sociopaths; the controllers of our world who (that?) exist in the shadows and project a false matrix of propaganda-charged reality in order to confound, manage, and ultimately cull us and/or feed off our collective energy is also a system governed by sociopaths. All of this doesn't even consider the democide, genocide, and perpetual wars and violence waged against the masses by the sociopathic social structure at large. For whatever the reason we live on a prison planet that is ruled/governed by sociopaths. Is it any wonder we unconsciously adopt these type of characteristics in our hero worship? On some visceral level, people want to understand the world around them and want to understand the dynamic of the the principals that formulate our reality. And that's why we embrace sociopaths as our heroes...

For those of us who binged watched Breaking Bad, relating to the character Walter White is a perfect example. One might ask (as the author of this video has), why would one glamorize a character who has no redeeming qualities? But that's actually not true. Walter White's redeeming quality is his smallness; in that sense, he is just like you and me. He is a small and helpless person and he is a victim of a much larger reality on all levels. He is but a feather flowing haplessly atop of a powerfully moving current. His character's lot is a metaphor of all of our lots. Yet when he outsmarts his "controllers", so to speak, and puts himself in situations that control the current (even as he makes dubious and immoral choices) we cheer him on. We want him to defeat the river and manipulate the powerful flow that carries him helplessly along no matter how uncomfortable some of those choices make us feel. It's dark--and yes, we do feel uncomfortable cheering him on--but sometimes it just feels good to flip off those invisible forces that seemingly have no empathy whatsoever....

[grapevine]

_fN_TTApN5w

If you haven't yet watched this video I can recommend it for lots of 'ah-ha' moments and much food for thought. The presenter talks about the rise of the sociopathic hero and you can see how this has manifested over the years in the competitive search for something different, a new slant to captivate a willing but demanding and easily-bored audience. One such hero we can all identify with is Dirty Harry, right, because he only goes after the bad guys, and perhaps we identify less with the Sopranos, but it's OK because they're only killing other killers and bad people. And then we come to Walter White in the Breakin' Bad series, which imo is the best series ever made for many reasons, not just the rollercoaster ride and great plot line. Who could be more of an anti hero than downtrodden, passed-over and dying Walter White, who we see morph into a psychopathic killer over five seasons? While I found myself recoiling from him I still wanted him to win.

Is Social Engineering another form of Mind Control? I'm sure there are differences but only in the way it's administered, social engineering being somewhat slower and (arguably) much more thorough.

Like many parents, I remember losing influence over my children when they first went to school with many a "But teacher said . . ." over the dinner table, invariably contradicting something I'd said. Not important in itself, but looking back, isn't this where it starts, the beginning of the end (see my forum slogan below).

Aren't we all indoctrinated to some degree, whether it's current affairs, religion, cultural differences etc? Mostly it doesn't matter but when it comes to ideas that we don't like, like for instance the age of consent in some countries, we become hostile and when our own families are attacked feel downright murderous. What has become so obvious from the reactions to Charlie Kirk's horrible end is the huge gaping divide and there's one of Bill's threads to the effect of Does Anyone Ever Change Their Minds . . .? where sadly the answer is (nearly always) no.

So is it School, Peer Pressure, University, the Illuminati, Yuri Besnmenov/Russians, the Zionists, the Fabians etc? In short it's all of those and probably more.

What if anything can bring us together?

I'm not a True Christian in that I can recite the Bible to prove a point but I do feel with my very being that the Ten Commandments are probably the best basic rules for living harmoniously together. Sadly many of us break them every day and it's amazing that they are still relevant, which makes you wonder whether collectively we're all a lost cause. A reminder:


You shall have no other gods before me
You shall not make for yourself a graven image.
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Honor your father and mother.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet.

For completeness and interest there are others that didn't make the cut:

You shall not oppress the stranger
You shall not bear a grudge
You shall love your neighbor as yourself
You shall not covet your neighbor's wife
You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk
You shall not take interest from your brother
You shall set aside the first fruits of your harvest
You shall not make a tattoo or cut your body for the dead
You shall not eat leavened bread during Passover
You shall not allow a sorceress to live

[shaberon]

What if anything can bring us together?


That is the mission of Orthodoxy, which is how I would have to respond to the way you put that.

Firstly, in general to the rest of the post, think of it as socially engineered differently.

It is a system of principles rather than of authority.

Although it was primarily designed with Jews in mind, it would also apply to someone like me. It cannot declare a state religion, enforce conversion, or grant itself any preferred status, or diminish the rights of non-members. What it does is to exert influence in an advisory role. That is, it handles the personal and social issues of the populace, and negotiates with the king or whatever kind of ruler it would be. It may have been moderately successful with some of the Paleologues and Byzantine Humanism.

And so there have been several times I have asked if anyone knew of an outbreak of peace and they don't seem to.

Well, it has answers, that will work for me because I am following the Edict of Ashoka:


Dharma Qst Eusebia


So what I have to do is figure out what part of the page everyone is on.

This is from about three hundred years back in the pre-Christian era. Therefor, the Greek meaning would be common to -- and I have grounds to presume the statement may be the cause of -- Beehive City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harran:



Harran was founded at some point between the 25th and 20th centuries BC.

The Harran University underwent its golden age in the 8th century, particularly under the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (r. 786–809). Many prominent scholars of this time were educated at the university in subjects such as mathematics, philosophy, medicine and astrology. The university was also an important site for translations of documents from Syriac and Greek into Arabic and Harran flourished as a center of science and learning.

The local Harranian religion continued to develop as a blend of ancient Mesopotamian religion and Neoplatonism and Harran remained notorious for its strong pagan traditions long into the Islamic period. The city retained a highly heterogenous population that practiced many different religions. Some adopted syncretistic faiths tolerable by the Muslims, others continued to honor the old deities of ancient Mesopotamia and Syria, and some primarily worshipped the stars and planets. The Harranian pagans considered themselves the heirs of ancient star-worshipping civilizations such as Babylonia, Greece, India, Persia and Egypt. In addition to pagans, Harran was also home to Muslims, Christians, Jews, Samaritans, Zoroastrians, Manicheans, and other groups.

The Harranian moon cult of Sin proved to be enduring and lasted long into the Middle Ages, known to have existed as late as the 11th century AD.


The middle language in the Edict is Aramaic, and, some form of Indian business in Syria was taking place, which this is not the only possible outlet of. There is similarly the canal-built Mari ca. 2,300 B. C. E.. Some three thousand years later, Orthodoxy did not "exterminate" these pagans, it simply gained so much momentum that everything else faded away.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Harran_2015.jpg/1024px-Harran_2015.jpg



Further along, although Alexander the Great may not be everyone's favorite person, his legacy was phenomenal. In the intellectual sense, he opened a corridor through west Asia that led to an era of Greco-Iranian syncretism. This continued through the Parthian Empire.

Now, on the western arm of this conversation, there is an attempt to meld Abrahamic tradition; this is Hermetism.

On the eastern arm, I consider myself the inheritor of the Pax Kushana (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Kushana):



The Kushan Empire was located on the meeting points of the Sasanian and Parthian empires, Han China, and the various Indian kingdoms to the east. French historian Alain Daniélou states "For a time, the Kushana Empire was the centerpoint of the major civilizations". The peace and prosperity brought by the Kushan Empire resulted in new styles of art and coinage, and strengthened the Indo-Roman trade links.


That's entirely correct, this aggregate had been going since before 2,000 B. C. E. into the freaking Roman Empire and then by the 600s it simply evaporates.

From that point, I, personally, am following a continuous Dharma discussion, and I look in the other direction in the 300s there are influential texts where we see Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians mutually damn each other. I studied the arguments, and, they're not particularly profound or interesting, but they are quite hostile.

We were talking to

Herakles and Tyche

which makes it very difficult to suddenly be confronted with some new dispute of the neighbors.

The main meaning of Dharma is quite similar to what I have learned of the way Orthodoxy is supposed to shape things, and so I am compelled to mention in the 600s:

King Harshavardhana (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harsha)



The peace and prosperity that prevailed made his court a centre of cosmopolitanism, attracting scholars, artists and religious visitors from far and wide. The Chinese traveller Xuanzang visited the imperial court of Harsha and wrote a very favourable account of him (as Shiladitya), praising his justice and generosity.


Literature produced about him describes a massive gathering of all kinds of spiritual seekers. These include what we understand to be St. Thomas Christians. And then I find there are intrigues about Thomas in his native land. But as far as we know there is an Apostolic Church in India with of course no records from ancient times until this mention in an exceptionally well-written play, and I believe they enter the historical epoch as taken into the Chaldean concord.

I don't believe in any legendary figures, I believe in Ashoka and Harsha. That they actually manifested something that brought benefits to beings.

In perhaps more familiar terms, following the outgrowth of the, eh, Roman Empire, what do we come up with.

Here are a couple of things that came up around the 1600s:


Iroquois Confederation

Peace of Westphalia


And that has been "secretly" forbidden ever since, a Westphalian Peace. Grief comes from the notion it begins to respect national sovereignty.

What were the terms of this discussion?


A king may choose to be Catholic or Protestant.


That, to me, does not seem like a particularly advanced form of discussion. At least it was some kind of basis of equality and leaving each other alone. After this quit working, almost all subsequent Peace Treaties have a detectable flaw of some kind, something that will lead to failure.


In the 1750s, Persia or Iran stopped attacking outside its borders.


But, like a dying gasp for air, there finally is one relatively modern example, Franz Josef (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Joseph_I_of_Austria) of Habsburg Austria:



He concluded the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, which granted greater autonomy to Hungary and created the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. He ruled peacefully for the next 45 years.

That was the last chance to provide an alternative to what we have. World War One was the dismemberment of the Bank of Austria for the benefit of the Reichsbank, of which the U. S. Federal Reserve is nearly a line-by-line copy.

That's the largest and closest example I can come up with. I personally have seen a letter written as late as 1910 by some ordinary Austrian who was absolutely delighted about Franz Josef. He had to handle not just the Hungarians, but something like around ten ethnicities who did not necessarily like each other. Since that time, we don't know any true relief. It might be a good lesson to look into how this worked, due to the limited examples.

I personally don't follow Christianity because I don't reach the same conclusions.

The first thing I would run into as the teaching of Jesus comes from the Gospel of Luke where he is referring to a Greek scroll of Isaiah. In so doing he does indeed announce something important:


Aphesis


which is the Jubilee, a system of debt forgiveness. This has been reduced in the translations to "sin". That's not the context of this term. He was speaking of a known social issue and then goes on to the Spirit.

I did not like the books I saw that told empires to crush each other, but, as a first scriptural teaching, I would take that as a Dharma. That is to say, he spoke what was already known and agreed to since at least the Code of Hammurabi. He is speaking in very real terms about how the world works and good vs. evil. But guess what. That's not what sold the Bible to the Greeks. They already had this in Tacticus 400 years prior. That is what Resurrection is for.

I personally lose interest there.

The explanation was immortality was the same thing as given by the Olympians, in a way that was more accessible.

Therefor, in my view, this page one of Jesus, so to speak, in Luke, probably is a historically valid representation and makes perfect sense seen as such. But what has come through is a weak, watered-down form of Greek that does not uphold the understanding, on this and many things I suppose.

From what I can tell, Orthodoxy and Islam never persecuted Harran, but participated as equals. Over time, our most recent example is probably Austria. So, yes, this has been done. It can be done. There is some extra-Biblical study, which attempts to trace and suggest that Jesus may have been Parthian royalty; I am not sure, but what is technically correct about his mission if successful, he would have become a Greek Tyrant. The dry definition of it is "to come to power outside the normal legal method" with usually the context "because the people are revolting against an unjust ruler". That is to say, for example, an assassination performed for the sake of bloodline inheritance would also create a tyrant, but these instances are few and generally short-lived because there is no popular support. The Greek realpolitik is that leadership is going to pass to whoever offers the Aphesis. If you are a usurper, this will grant you public support. Of course it means you had better actually do it, otherwise, it will happen again, to you.

Therefor, for him to do what is seen in the passage from Luke would be a little dangerous. He tried to defy cycles of predatory finance. This is not a surprise because it is a quote of Isaiah. In conventional understanding, it is how you would tell a Good or Bad King. But the post-Roman west has some other concept of monarchy, which is the opposite saying people are bound to a divine ruler in subjugation.

That is the opposite of Dharma and so at this point we are talking about very different social engineering.

But this was the point of the original aggregate. We find bad examples such as the Mycenean Palace System and the Vedic Panis and recurring examples of a predatory class, Oligarchy -- which itself does not create or produce, but consists in gaining influence to grant itself favors.



Tyche (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyche) is Fortuna or Agathodaimon, the goddess of Your City:


...by the time of Vologases I (51 AD), the only Greek imagery used on coins was the goddess Tyche, who continued to be represented on Parthian coins for the next 200 years. In later imagery, Tyche provides the Khvarenah or projection of divine rulership in Zoroastrianism to the worthy king.

Silver Tetradrachm of Vologases I Enthroned king Vologases I facing left, receiving diadem from Tyche, standing with sceptre. AD 55-56

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Silver_Tetradrachm_of_Vologases_I_Enthroned_king_Vologases_I_facing_left%2C_receiving_diadem_from_Ty che%2C_standing_with_sceptre._AD_55-56.jpg


In Alexandria the Tychaeon, the Greek temple of Tyche, was described by Libanius as one of the most magnificent of the entire Hellenistic world.

Three Tychai at the Louvre:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/F0478_Louvre_Trois_Tyches_Ma590_rwk.jpg/960px-F0478_Louvre_Trois_Tyches_Ma590_rwk.jpg

[Kryztian]

_fN_TTApN5w

Is Social Engineering another form of Mind Control? I'm sure there are differences but only in the way it's administered, social engineering being somewhat slower and (arguably) much more thorough.



Yes, I think so. Not just the movies and TV programs that are mentioned here, but in news events, and in the way they are covered by our fractured media. And I think it is tied in to the mind control that divides "left" from "right". Look at how liberals ignored the Epstein/Maxwell story when it implicated Clinton, but now are quite interested in it since it implicates Trump, or how many American Conservatives weep for Charlie Kirk but have no empathy for the hundreds of thousands dying in Gaza. It seems empathy can only happen if it is supported by confirmation bias, usually surround political issues. I think we are being conditioned so that we will show either empathy or indifference depending on how well the victim and perpetrator reflects our political ideology. And we end up with a left and a right that see the other side as socio-pathic and see themselves as the true empaths. And there is no finer example of this phenomena than right here on the forum - I read what some of member posts have to say about their fellow human beings and then I glance at the masthead of the page where it says "... where all lives matter ..." and I have to wonder is that really true?