Quote from: TPTB_need_war on August 04, 2015, 09:55:46 AM

P.S. username18333, yes democracy is a plutocracy and usury is symbiotic with the Industrial Age economics. Both are what I believe will be eliminated by the Knowledge Age, as I have already explained ad nauseum in this thread and in the Economics Devastation thread. This thread is supposed to be about practical solutions to the coming totalitarianism, not a redundant spamming of a pet theory for an anti-money (non-)solution. You can choose to live in your fantasy world of theology and existential philosopy (not to say that isn't interesting or relevant but you are inserting it into the wrong thread). My understanding is that the creator of this thread and many readers would prefer to talk about how to live in this tangible world?

(Red and blue colorization mine.)

A "rugged ascent" (Plato) immunizes one against the Plutocrat's Kyōka Suigetsu.

Quote from: Plato, _The Republic_ (514a‒5d), 380 BCE

Next, said I, compare our nature in respect of education and its lack to such an experience as this. Picture men dwelling in a sort of subterranean cavern with a long entrance open to the light on its entire width. Conceive them as having their legs and necks fettered from childhood, so that they remain in the same spot, able to look forward only, and prevented by the fetters from turning their heads. Picture further the light from a fire burning higher up and at a distance behind them, and between the fire and the prisoners and above them a road along which a low wall has been built, as the exhibitors of puppet-shows have partitions before the men themselves, above which they show the puppets. All that I see, he said. See also, then, men carrying past the wall implements of all kinds that rise above the wall, and human images and shapes of animals as well, wrought in stone and wood and every material, some of these bearers presumably speaking and others silent. A strange image you speak of, he said, and strange prisoners. Like to us, I said; for, to begin with, tell me do you think that these men would have seen anything of themselves or of one another except the shadows cast from the fire on the wall of the cave that fronted them? How could they, he said, if they were compelled to hold their heads unmoved through life? And again, would not the same be true of the objects carried past them? Surely. If then they were able to talk to one another, do you not think that they would suppose that in naming the things that they saw they were naming the passing objects? Necessarily. And if their prison had an echo from the wall opposite them, when one of the passersby uttered a sound, do you think that they would suppose anything else than the passing shadow to be the speaker? By Zeus, I do not, said he. Then in every way such prisoners would deem reality to be nothing else than the shadows of the artificial objects. Quite inevitably, he said. Consider, then, what would be the manner of the release and healing from these bonds and this folly if in the course of nature something of this sort should happen to them: When one was freed from his fetters and compelled to stand up suddenly and turn his head around and walk and to lift up his eyes to the light, and in doing all this felt pain and, because of the dazzle and glitter of the light, was unable to discern the objects whose shadows he formerly saw, what do you suppose would be his answer if someone told him that what he had seen before was all a cheat and an illusion, but that now, being nearer to reality and turned toward more real things, he saw more truly? And if also one should point out to him each of the passing objects and constrain him by questions to say what it is, do you not think that he would be at a loss and that he would regard what he formerly saw as more real than the things now pointed out to him? Far more real, he said.