Barbelith Underground > Creation > Barbelith Film Script

ynh

So lets say the breakdown point, where the model gives up, is Reagan’s election or re-election, The release of Star Wars an the inauguration of movie-merchandising, or the publication of Chaos by James Gleick which gave the general public a new understanding of reality.

quote: Originally posted by Nick:
Someone is trying to rework the human programme...who? How many groups? What do they want? (I love grant's brainwashing-addicted controllers...)

The eventual discovery should be that, armed with new information, every individual is attempting to rewrite the programme, but groups of concentrated interest are interfering. They’re at each others’ throats because they believe they’re competing when it’s actually a democratic caucus that’s causing the unpredictability in general.

It would actually be weird if there weren’t some fascist-types involved. I’d love to see Reagan’s PR/Ad folks in on it: the people who made the “Some people say there’s a bear in the woods” ad who were weaned on very cynical politics. Reagan once sat down with them, saying: “I heard you were selling soap, and I thought you’d like to see the bar.” These folks want control, in a Burroughsian sense. They had access to the population/behavior models while the Gipper was in office and were shocked when it failed; they’re now trying to reassert meaningful action by developing control words, fast-cut advertisements, emotive music (like in The Demolished Man, the stuff that sticks in your head.) They’re actively attempting sci-fi stuff because they’re getting desperate and they have funding. They’re invested because they can’t do their job without predicting results.

Second group could be grant’s compromised resistance, a sort of shadowy Planetary-like body whose employees may even still think they’re saving the world from tyranny. They could actually be run by a group of Nobel laureates, populist musicians, Tim Leary… They’re going for the whole “free your mind” route whether you like it or not. They want to eliminate hate and intolerance at all costs, and they want to increase mental capacity. The compromised group is working toward something resembling the end of Childhood’s End, for lack of a suitable referent. What they don’t realize is that the breakdown of the model is because their superficial populist goal has been achieved, and the deeper control goal is doomed to fail. They have the model(s) because they’ve been infiltrated. Their successes using leaked information have disabled their critical thinking about where the money’s coming from.

Third group is pragmatic, classless, and anarchic. Managers of group activities rotate in a semi random fashion and get access to the behavior models one of the founders swiped from discussions available on SUNET when it was relatively hot math and being openly shared in the U-Cal community. They were using the models to control their own agents – subtle changes in environment and media to key public action from their members. Everything these people did looked spontaneous, and many actors are basically unaware or unaccountable for their actions, which include strengthening unions, land preservation, any number of things. They’re the newest group in the pod and had really only just finished testing the effectiveness of the models when they stopped working. They have big plans, and want to get on with them.

[ 29-06-2001: Message edited by: [Your Name Here] ]