In the 1770s, London’s private banks developed the Bankers’ Clearing House where they could settle their debts to each other in one place rather than chasing payments across the city.
I think I've shared this piece from Foreign Affairs also written in 1941 with esc before. But not had feedback on it. I'll share it here again, hoping others will offer their insights. Foreign Affairs is the official publication of the Council on Foreign Relations. The American branch of Chatham House:
Excerpt from the end. Mind you this was in 1941, as war had already broken out on the European and Asian continents. Also when the "1941 British conference on ‘Science and World Order’ argued that scientific planning should directly inform how society is organised was held":
"Why was it that invention lagged before the liberal movement of the eighteenth century? Because it involved experimentation, work with the hands, dirty work. Also it was useful -- and anything that was useful or commercial was held in contempt by the nobility. When the business man and the inventor were freed from this aristocratic fetishism, machine after machine appeared, and with the machines came mass production and mass consumption of identical goods. Without standardization mass production is impossible. To have cheap, good clothes we must all dress more or less alike. To bring automobiles within the reach of millions we must have the assembly line. To live inexpensively in cities we must eat packaged foods, dwell in more or less standardized homes, bathe in standardized bath tubs, and draw water and gas from common reservoirs. Mass production has brought it about that the average life in New York is hardly different from the average life in Wichita. The same motion pictures brighten the screen, the same voices and music well out of loud-speakers in every town, identical cans of tomatoes and packages of cereals are to be found on all grocers' shelves, identical electric toasters brown identical slices of bread everywhere, identical refrigerators freeze identical ice cubes in a million kitchens. If gunpowder made all men the same height, in Carlyle's classic phrase, mass production has standardized behavior, pleasures, tastes, comforts, life itself.
Mass production and labor-saving devices have created a social crisis. We cannot have mass production and mechanization without planning. Engineers and their financial backers are planners. Dictators are planners. Whether they know it or not, most corporation executives and engineers are necessary totalitarians in practice. Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin clearly have the instincts of engineers. Their states are designed social structures.
Often enough we hear it said that mechanical invention has outstripped social invention -- that new social forms must be devised if we are to forestall the economic crises that are brought about by what is called the "impact of science" on society. Communism and Fascism are social inventions, intended among other things to solve the economic problems created by technological change under the influence of capitalism. They attempt to answer a question: Are the technical experts and their financial backers to shape the course of society unrestrained, and even to rule nations directly and indirectly, as they did in France, and as they do in part in Great Britain and the United States? The totalitarians say that a capitalistic democratic government cannot control the experts, the inventors, the creators of this evolving mechanical culture. They therefore have decided to take control of thinking, above all scientific thinking, out of which flow the manufacturing processes and the machines which change life.
But science is more than coal-tar dyes and drugs, electric lamps, airplanes, radio, television, relativity and astrophysics. It is an attitude of mind -- what Professor Whitehead has called "the most intimate change in outlook that the human race has yet experienced." If Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin are to rule, that scientific attitude will have to be abandoned when it conflicts with the official social philosophy. But if it is abandoned there can be no Newtons, no Darwins, no Einsteins. Science will be unable to make discoveries which will change the human outlook and, with the outlook, the social order. If the world wants to preserve science as a powerful social force for good the research physicist, chemist and biologist must be permitted to work without intellectual restraint, i.e. to enjoy the fundamental freedom of democracy.
The Marxists are right in maintaining that science has never achieved perfect objectivity. No scientist has yet performed an experiment without injecting himself into it. Yet there has been a brave and determined and continuous and on the whole successful effort to strip scientific investigation and theorizing of emotion, of personal predilection. From animism science passed to Newton's abstract "forces," and from forces (still anthropomorphic), to a mathematical conception of the cosmos and atomic structure. An essential to this progress has been that the scientist has not demanded that his theory be considered "true." He does not profess to know what the truth is. A theory must work. It is an expedient. When it ceases to work it is thrown overboard or modified. This method of merciless self-examination cannot be followed in a society where the result of each investigation is predetermined for extraneous reasons. Democracy flounders before it arrives at satisfactory solutions of its social problems. But it is better to flounder and progress than to follow the philosophy of a dictator and to remain socially and scientifically static.
It does not follow that under the Nazi or the Marx-Lenin dispensation there can be no science. What is likely to happen to science if totalitarianism prevails is revealed by the course of Egyptian art. In its earliest phases that art was fairly free; hence there was much experimenting, much striving for realistic modes of expression. When the priests took control of Egyptian life a dramatic change occurred. The ways of portraying the human being became stylized. For centuries the style hardly changed. Art had been frozen. And so must it be with research. There can be science and engineering under dictation; but it will be stylized science, engineering which does not progress."
FF - My question is, what would be the point in publishing this piece at that time? Given the macro environment, relationship of Science and Governance was growing. The piece concerned about science in the totalitarian state. Which is also what the biggest actors in the narrative of the history that esc is sharing that I view as largely accurate seem to have been in the process of establishing in the rest of the world, not just under a Hitler or Stalin. What usefulness did the American Chatham House see in allowing the article to be published at the same time? Drumbeat of war propaganda? The pretense of intellectual debate over the direction of scientific governance? A distracting feint to make readers believe scientific authorities in the US, UK were notably different than those in Germany and the Soviet Union? It's a seeming contradiction I struggle with reconciling.
It’s an advertisement for the ICSU printed at the precise time the science and world order event took place
That event stated that science should direct planning in the post war world, while the foreign affairs article says science should be free from political interference
Agreed Mike, but this all seems to apply to the global (western) financial system remodelled according to the western mindset. Where does the Global South and China fit into all this? It also relies on the abundance of low-cost hydrocarbon energy which we know is subject to EROEI (see Tim Morgan and Gail Tverberg).
Maybe I am reading it incorrectly, but I see the 'Public Banking Model' in China as a viable alternative: I also see that the current Iran debacle as motivated by the US dollar's failing dominance. I wrote: "The global financial order appears to be at the start of a measured but irreversible rebalancing. BRICS nations, collectively represent over 45% of the global population and 33% of global GDP, are methodically diversifying away from the U.S. dollar" https://austrianpeter.substack.com/p/the-financial-jigsaw-part-2-59-brics
Sounds awesome and can't wait! You're the reason I created account on Substack man. You're on another level. I often wonder from where you get your resources and whether you have a big whiteboard with all the dots connected ;) but then I realise it's all out there in the public. Pretty scary to think how the mob really mostly wants "bread and entertainment" and that's about it.
i recently realised what i'd been doing for 3 years:
"omfg i suddenly realise this is all essentially debugging of general systems theory.
i have essentially treated all of this as a huge general systems theory issue, with input-output analysis going wrong, leading to flawed cybernetic actuation.
How on earth are you able to generate this much concise work without sounding like AI slop? This note has a dozen stories within it. I imagine you typing 120 words a minute requiring very little editing, from sun up to sun down. I’m so curious about your missing “About” page…
I love it. My inner reference librarian throbs for all the precise yet warm, human attention pointed at what soooo many more thinking, feeling, caring folks need to have some clue as how we have arrived here. Thank you 🙏 your work is an incredible service.
And “those who define the (cognitive) standards”? What are their ethical principles and moral codes? Not only do they abide in a socioeconomic class far removed from mine — and arguably one’s “class” predisposes one to accept standards of right and wrong that don’t apply to the masses, the public — they also exercise (political-military-financial-ecclesiastical) power that is so outside of my experience that I might as well consider myself a different species from these powerful “definers”. Does this sound “black pilled”?
More great work. A couple small notes. There's no such thing as "fossil fuels", as that was just another psyop to give credence to the scarcity of petroleum products. I remember the 1970's rationing (although it was somewhat legit because they hadn't developed fracking technologies).
Of course they know petroleum reserves are not liabilities. The current constraint on 20% of crude supply will fundamentally collapse the economy if it continues for merely 10 more weeks. There's normally only 26 days of world wide supply (above ground). They have lost just 3 days worth (3 weeks at 80% demand). Ten more weeks and we will be at 13 days of supply. They know this, and my concern is this is all on purpose to implement the next phase of control. I sure hope not, the ugliness will be quite swift.
Never mind the banks and the rules, turn off the fuel and food wont get planted.
When scanning down the short summaries, it all seems like a logical rational plan to move humanity from its Balkanized silos of Bronze Age religions, sulking cultural identities clinging to romantic idealized past glories; and to smooth down outmoded think...for the efficent world of New Abundance!
It's almost as if some Higher Power or Admin decided to break some eggs benevolently ....altho the rubes wouldn't appreciate the script rewrites.
If I taken the 10,000 mile zoom out, like being a visiting anthropologist from another star system... I see the rise and fall of one civilization buried on top of the previous. Step by step things evolve in the most messy manner. It's a history of catastrophes and cataclysms.
I saw a pattern when the American West was opened to railroad development. The rapacioius profit driven entrepeneurs all rushed in acting from their personal selfish viewpoints.
The master planners sat back, let the kids thrash their turf wars out...waiting for the bankruptcies...and then swooped in and consolidated the pieces. Ruthless. But were we ultimately better off with this rapid expansion of communication and trade ways? Generally I'd say yes. So I wondered if Nature tends to harness the avarice of conquerors to break old molds and move things down the line.
When I read the complainers I like to ask: what period in time would you prefer to go back and live in? I can't really think of one that offers me the advantages I have today...even with all the corruption boiling to the surface and being exposed like festering rot?
I believe in Cycles and that this period (6,000 years) is the winter of our decompostion; that the centralization of power actually IS from a Higher Power, that is evolving earthlings towards leaving the planet...but first, we've got to leave the Bronze Age wounds behind, and if many can't get along in the sandbox...the Lord will employ His dumb agents, the Rotten Shield hereditary morons et al, to kick some ass.
Either we get our shit together, or we don't deserve to go further.
If you haven't, try the chiquita's at prometheanaction.com where they drill down on the British employment of the Empire throughout time. They are of the LaRouchian wing of things, but they are hard to argue with.
Excellent summary, as always. Thank you 🙏
I think I've shared this piece from Foreign Affairs also written in 1941 with esc before. But not had feedback on it. I'll share it here again, hoping others will offer their insights. Foreign Affairs is the official publication of the Council on Foreign Relations. The American branch of Chatham House:
Science in the Totalitarian State
Foreign Affairs, January, 1941
https://web.archive.org/web/20181125112623/https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1941-01-01/science-totalitarian-state
Excerpt from the end. Mind you this was in 1941, as war had already broken out on the European and Asian continents. Also when the "1941 British conference on ‘Science and World Order’ argued that scientific planning should directly inform how society is organised was held":
"Why was it that invention lagged before the liberal movement of the eighteenth century? Because it involved experimentation, work with the hands, dirty work. Also it was useful -- and anything that was useful or commercial was held in contempt by the nobility. When the business man and the inventor were freed from this aristocratic fetishism, machine after machine appeared, and with the machines came mass production and mass consumption of identical goods. Without standardization mass production is impossible. To have cheap, good clothes we must all dress more or less alike. To bring automobiles within the reach of millions we must have the assembly line. To live inexpensively in cities we must eat packaged foods, dwell in more or less standardized homes, bathe in standardized bath tubs, and draw water and gas from common reservoirs. Mass production has brought it about that the average life in New York is hardly different from the average life in Wichita. The same motion pictures brighten the screen, the same voices and music well out of loud-speakers in every town, identical cans of tomatoes and packages of cereals are to be found on all grocers' shelves, identical electric toasters brown identical slices of bread everywhere, identical refrigerators freeze identical ice cubes in a million kitchens. If gunpowder made all men the same height, in Carlyle's classic phrase, mass production has standardized behavior, pleasures, tastes, comforts, life itself.
Mass production and labor-saving devices have created a social crisis. We cannot have mass production and mechanization without planning. Engineers and their financial backers are planners. Dictators are planners. Whether they know it or not, most corporation executives and engineers are necessary totalitarians in practice. Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin clearly have the instincts of engineers. Their states are designed social structures.
Often enough we hear it said that mechanical invention has outstripped social invention -- that new social forms must be devised if we are to forestall the economic crises that are brought about by what is called the "impact of science" on society. Communism and Fascism are social inventions, intended among other things to solve the economic problems created by technological change under the influence of capitalism. They attempt to answer a question: Are the technical experts and their financial backers to shape the course of society unrestrained, and even to rule nations directly and indirectly, as they did in France, and as they do in part in Great Britain and the United States? The totalitarians say that a capitalistic democratic government cannot control the experts, the inventors, the creators of this evolving mechanical culture. They therefore have decided to take control of thinking, above all scientific thinking, out of which flow the manufacturing processes and the machines which change life.
But science is more than coal-tar dyes and drugs, electric lamps, airplanes, radio, television, relativity and astrophysics. It is an attitude of mind -- what Professor Whitehead has called "the most intimate change in outlook that the human race has yet experienced." If Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin are to rule, that scientific attitude will have to be abandoned when it conflicts with the official social philosophy. But if it is abandoned there can be no Newtons, no Darwins, no Einsteins. Science will be unable to make discoveries which will change the human outlook and, with the outlook, the social order. If the world wants to preserve science as a powerful social force for good the research physicist, chemist and biologist must be permitted to work without intellectual restraint, i.e. to enjoy the fundamental freedom of democracy.
The Marxists are right in maintaining that science has never achieved perfect objectivity. No scientist has yet performed an experiment without injecting himself into it. Yet there has been a brave and determined and continuous and on the whole successful effort to strip scientific investigation and theorizing of emotion, of personal predilection. From animism science passed to Newton's abstract "forces," and from forces (still anthropomorphic), to a mathematical conception of the cosmos and atomic structure. An essential to this progress has been that the scientist has not demanded that his theory be considered "true." He does not profess to know what the truth is. A theory must work. It is an expedient. When it ceases to work it is thrown overboard or modified. This method of merciless self-examination cannot be followed in a society where the result of each investigation is predetermined for extraneous reasons. Democracy flounders before it arrives at satisfactory solutions of its social problems. But it is better to flounder and progress than to follow the philosophy of a dictator and to remain socially and scientifically static.
It does not follow that under the Nazi or the Marx-Lenin dispensation there can be no science. What is likely to happen to science if totalitarianism prevails is revealed by the course of Egyptian art. In its earliest phases that art was fairly free; hence there was much experimenting, much striving for realistic modes of expression. When the priests took control of Egyptian life a dramatic change occurred. The ways of portraying the human being became stylized. For centuries the style hardly changed. Art had been frozen. And so must it be with research. There can be science and engineering under dictation; but it will be stylized science, engineering which does not progress."
FF - My question is, what would be the point in publishing this piece at that time? Given the macro environment, relationship of Science and Governance was growing. The piece concerned about science in the totalitarian state. Which is also what the biggest actors in the narrative of the history that esc is sharing that I view as largely accurate seem to have been in the process of establishing in the rest of the world, not just under a Hitler or Stalin. What usefulness did the American Chatham House see in allowing the article to be published at the same time? Drumbeat of war propaganda? The pretense of intellectual debate over the direction of scientific governance? A distracting feint to make readers believe scientific authorities in the US, UK were notably different than those in Germany and the Soviet Union? It's a seeming contradiction I struggle with reconciling.
It’s an advertisement for the ICSU printed at the precise time the science and world order event took place
That event stated that science should direct planning in the post war world, while the foreign affairs article says science should be free from political interference
The two are entirely aligned.
The ICSU is a science clearinghouse
Thank you for the time shift perspective. I read it through today's eye.
🌹
Agreed Mike, but this all seems to apply to the global (western) financial system remodelled according to the western mindset. Where does the Global South and China fit into all this? It also relies on the abundance of low-cost hydrocarbon energy which we know is subject to EROEI (see Tim Morgan and Gail Tverberg).
Maybe I am reading it incorrectly, but I see the 'Public Banking Model' in China as a viable alternative: I also see that the current Iran debacle as motivated by the US dollar's failing dominance. I wrote: "The global financial order appears to be at the start of a measured but irreversible rebalancing. BRICS nations, collectively represent over 45% of the global population and 33% of global GDP, are methodically diversifying away from the U.S. dollar" https://austrianpeter.substack.com/p/the-financial-jigsaw-part-2-59-brics
My colleague, Dr. Gerry Brady has a good grasp of the current financial affairs. He is of the view that CBDCs are not viable: https://austrianpeter.substack.com/p/bankers-hate-cash-supply-of-cash?r=hkcp6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I hope that this is helpful for judging where we appear to be going.
You provide the most thorough commentary I have found anywhere, thank you.
Magnificent summary. We are to be subject to ‘development’; from disciplining sovereign states to colonising sovereign individuals.
you will receive 'development' if you abide our 'standards', derived from the 'ethic'
if you refuse, the flow of money will promptly stop
Where is the problem-correcting feedback-loop?
Short feedback loops (time & distance) usually work best.
Without this prompt and informed error-correction outputs are likely to diverge from intentions, and more so over time.
That's the AI recursive loop in action. After enough iterations the original prompt is unrecognisable
Great essay. Could you make one about Iran and how it serves the global elite? That would be interesting to read!
.... first, i need to update Project Sunrise, then I will get to Iran...
https://escapekey.substack.com/p/project-sunrise?utm_source=publication-search
Sounds awesome and can't wait! You're the reason I created account on Substack man. You're on another level. I often wonder from where you get your resources and whether you have a big whiteboard with all the dots connected ;) but then I realise it's all out there in the public. Pretty scary to think how the mob really mostly wants "bread and entertainment" and that's about it.
no, just pattern recognition.
i recently realised what i'd been doing for 3 years:
"omfg i suddenly realise this is all essentially debugging of general systems theory.
i have essentially treated all of this as a huge general systems theory issue, with input-output analysis going wrong, leading to flawed cybernetic actuation.
holy moly."
https://t.me/c/2210881734/14266
Will check! Yes it's not that complicated. People are too comfy and dormant to act beforehand. Or too tired from slaving into the system.
How on earth are you able to generate this much concise work without sounding like AI slop? This note has a dozen stories within it. I imagine you typing 120 words a minute requiring very little editing, from sun up to sun down. I’m so curious about your missing “About” page…
um... its an executive summary of, essentially, what i've spent 3 years documenting...
I love it. My inner reference librarian throbs for all the precise yet warm, human attention pointed at what soooo many more thinking, feeling, caring folks need to have some clue as how we have arrived here. Thank you 🙏 your work is an incredible service.
cognitive - evaluative - behavioural.
that's what's worth understanding. really understanding. because it runs through everything.
once you grasp it, then you should study how it recurses. once you grasp that, you can essentially decode the 'new world order'
it's not that complicated. they just hid it well. really, really well.
“they just hid it well.” Thanks for your sleuthing!!
np
remember: the (evaluative) clearinghouse is not ultimately in control
those who define the (cognitive) standards are
And “those who define the (cognitive) standards”? What are their ethical principles and moral codes? Not only do they abide in a socioeconomic class far removed from mine — and arguably one’s “class” predisposes one to accept standards of right and wrong that don’t apply to the masses, the public — they also exercise (political-military-financial-ecclesiastical) power that is so outside of my experience that I might as well consider myself a different species from these powerful “definers”. Does this sound “black pilled”?
what? they couldn't care less about ethics and morality.
ethics and morality are meant to keep you in check, not them.
More great work. A couple small notes. There's no such thing as "fossil fuels", as that was just another psyop to give credence to the scarcity of petroleum products. I remember the 1970's rationing (although it was somewhat legit because they hadn't developed fracking technologies).
Of course they know petroleum reserves are not liabilities. The current constraint on 20% of crude supply will fundamentally collapse the economy if it continues for merely 10 more weeks. There's normally only 26 days of world wide supply (above ground). They have lost just 3 days worth (3 weeks at 80% demand). Ten more weeks and we will be at 13 days of supply. They know this, and my concern is this is all on purpose to implement the next phase of control. I sure hope not, the ugliness will be quite swift.
Never mind the banks and the rules, turn off the fuel and food wont get planted.
cognitive - evaluative - behavioural.
think - judge - control.
Laitman is the ego used by Rothschild psychos
Blessings and appreciation from Sydney Australia.
When scanning down the short summaries, it all seems like a logical rational plan to move humanity from its Balkanized silos of Bronze Age religions, sulking cultural identities clinging to romantic idealized past glories; and to smooth down outmoded think...for the efficent world of New Abundance!
It's almost as if some Higher Power or Admin decided to break some eggs benevolently ....altho the rubes wouldn't appreciate the script rewrites.
If I taken the 10,000 mile zoom out, like being a visiting anthropologist from another star system... I see the rise and fall of one civilization buried on top of the previous. Step by step things evolve in the most messy manner. It's a history of catastrophes and cataclysms.
I saw a pattern when the American West was opened to railroad development. The rapacioius profit driven entrepeneurs all rushed in acting from their personal selfish viewpoints.
The master planners sat back, let the kids thrash their turf wars out...waiting for the bankruptcies...and then swooped in and consolidated the pieces. Ruthless. But were we ultimately better off with this rapid expansion of communication and trade ways? Generally I'd say yes. So I wondered if Nature tends to harness the avarice of conquerors to break old molds and move things down the line.
When I read the complainers I like to ask: what period in time would you prefer to go back and live in? I can't really think of one that offers me the advantages I have today...even with all the corruption boiling to the surface and being exposed like festering rot?
I believe in Cycles and that this period (6,000 years) is the winter of our decompostion; that the centralization of power actually IS from a Higher Power, that is evolving earthlings towards leaving the planet...but first, we've got to leave the Bronze Age wounds behind, and if many can't get along in the sandbox...the Lord will employ His dumb agents, the Rotten Shield hereditary morons et al, to kick some ass.
Either we get our shit together, or we don't deserve to go further.
Great work, thank you 🙏
Remember Mary Poppins?
esc wrote: "...it's not that complicated. they just hid it well. really, really well."
I wonder how many of those who worked to create and build the structure were aware of the Big Picture?
outside rothschild and rockefeller? probably not many
World Crime Syndicate for sure 🙃
esc, that sure is some mondo-boffo, top-drawer dot connecting -- Man Plots Coup Against God! -- what could go wrong?
Thank you!
no, thank you!
If you haven't, try the chiquita's at prometheanaction.com where they drill down on the British employment of the Empire throughout time. They are of the LaRouchian wing of things, but they are hard to argue with.
Have a wonderful day!