“Morality is herd instinct in the individual.”- Friedrich Nietzsche”Can you tell right from wrong?” This is the kind of question we ask our children, but do we ourselves have a ready answer to it? We use this question to determine whether someone who commits a crime is more or less guilty depending on their intent and state of mind. The question assumes that right and wrong are real and tangible constants, and moreover that the human mind is capable of recognising them for what they are.

All tribes operate according to a set of rules – however rudimentary or unspoken. These are its morals, and they extend to each of its members, but they have no effect beyond the close-knit community of the tribe. Like medieval knights, constrained to treat each other according to the laws of chivalry but free to abuse the peasants at will, members of a tribe look out for themselves and for their own, but have no interest in the moral codes of other rival tribes. Such a morality is fundamentally amoral, since it treats “right” and “wrong” as subjective and inconstant. To this extent, tribes are inherently amoral.

Whatever we may choose to think of our own powers of self-determination, the groups to which we belong have a lot to do with how we see the world. We conform to the same social and presentational norms as those shared by other members of the group, and we subliminally accept that our standards for dress, politeness, register in addressing others and so on are all conditioned according to some objective moral constant. We measure the way we feel about others in terms of how closely they conform to this imagined norm, and the illusion is perpetuated by the fact that it is accepted by all members of the group. Any exchange of views within the group requires that all parties espouse the same fundamental moral views – evidence of a shared mindset which we might label “groupthink”.

That this supposed norm is a myth should now be clear, but it is nonetheless the kernel around which groups form and operate. In order to maintain the distinction between those who are members of the group and those who are not certain rules must be laid down, and at the heart of these there must exist the illusion of an absolute. The reasons why any group adopts a particular moral code may seem logical, but they are in fact merely convenient. We judge others not according to the standards of their group, but of our own, and those who do not conform to the arbitrary standards upon which we insist are rejected as adversaries hostile to our way of life.

There are such objective constants as “right” and “wrong” that transcend all we do and think – I am not denying that. What I do deny is that it is possible for any tribe to define them without missing some of the nuance and complexity which they require. Our regulations, therefore, are not predicated on right and wrong but on arbitrary definitions thereof. The claim that our laws are righteous, moreover, elevates them to the status of something to be worshiped, making the lawyers the high priests in a religion which elevates arbitrary definition to the status of fundamental truth. In the end it must be up to the individual to define for himself what is right and what is wrong, and it is his prerogative to do this whatever the tribe might argue to the contrary.

John Berling Hardy helps people free themselves from the grand illusion perpetrated by the players. For more of his writings please visit www.playingtheplayers.com

As you look around you, do you ever get the feeling that something is going on? Have you ever suspected that some gargantuan joke is being played, and that there are some people who are having a great laugh at our expense?

How about the idea of an artificial framework imposed on our existence – imposed, moreover, not by any god or gods, but very ordinary human beings with a knack for controlling people and a sense of how to influence our society? These people are the cream of the crop when it comes to manipulating our impulses.

Our world is encapsulated in a matrix, an artificial structure, which has been imposed upon us all. However, if this is the case, how can it be so resilient? How can it survive all the tumultuous rises and falls of civilizations and empires throughout we have experienced over the last several millennia? The answer lies in its being firmly rooted in three basic aspects of human nature.

The first characteristic is the search for authority. Although we all possess the capacity for free thought, most of us prefer not to use it except as a last resort. Most of the decisions we think we are making consist of little more than a reaction against our surroundings. Thus our daily routines have less to do with choice and more with convenience and necessity: we must eat, work and interact with others, but we generally avoid making any dramatic decisions.

We live life exchanging one trance for another. Each activity, each environment, is associated with a different set of conditioned responses. The moment we encounter anything out of the ordinary, it forces us to wake up out of our trance and fully engage our minds. This requires effort, and we only do it when we have to. This innate tendency towards parking our minds in one trance or other is critically important in understanding how we are seduced by the players into buying into the grand illusion that conceals the game.

In the absence of original and independent thought our minds have become empty, and the Players have taken advantage of this state by hypnotising us to think in a particular way. They have achieved this through the medium of suggestion, since any more direct assault on our minds would surely provoke a response. As it is, we have been lulled into a false sense of security which forces us to open our minds to their manipulations and accept their mythology for our reality. All the myths designed by the Players are bound together under the auspices of one great meta-myth: the Linearity myth. This prepares the ground for a mental takeover of society which has occurred on so fundamental a level that most people go about their lives having not the slightest inclination that it has taken place.

If we are to understand this artificial reality we must accept that it is impressively intricate. So closely are the myths connected that it is almost impossible to isolate and discredit a single one without dealing with all the others at the same time.

On the individual level, there is the narcissistic trance. The underlying presumption of this trance is that we experience ourselves as being the nexus of the universe. Instead of seeing ourselves as part of a whole, we experience the whole as an extension of ourselves. Only pure narcissists, such as the players, experience the world literally in this way. For the rest of us, who are merely narcissistic, it represents a bias, which is in the background of our thoughts all the time. This bias is subtle, but nevertheless, extremely potent.

Narcissism has become the defining feature of the world a we know it over the last several decades. It is the sine qua non of man in the twentieth and twenty first centuries, defining how we see ourselves and each other. So great is the grip which narcissism now holds over society that most of us don’t even think about it as we conduct our day to day lives – it is simply there, in the background, controlling everything.

Moreover we have now reached the stage where narcissism itself is no longer seen as reprehensible, but as something to aspire it. It is the idol of the Players, and therefore serves as our idol too. We have become a community of idle idolaters, each aspiring to embody that “enlightened selfishness” which was the philosophy Adam Smith expounded as the justification for an acquisitive outlook in which greed has come to dominate over need.

So much for the myth of narcissistic supremacy. Now we must turn our attention to the tribal identities perpetuated by our society. Human beings, who are naturally social creatures, tend to define themselves as members of a group or groups, and to organise themselves accordingly. Every group to which we belong has some impact on the outlook of its members, and it is fair to say that our group affiliations more often than not come to define who we are and the views we subscribe to.

The next level is the societal trance. This is a collection of related myths, which frame the worldview of society. Examples of this are the myth of scarcity, law and order, the sanctity of science, etc. Individually, these myths can be challenged, but taken together they are daunting.

At the heart of it all is the Myth of Linearity, which claims that they world is governed and outcomes determined according to a set of inflexible logical rules. It holds that everything is interdependent, and as such unites all the other myths and legitimises them with the stamp of “fact”.

We have been too long now in the dark; too long victims of these trance-states. It is time to case off the dominance of the myth-smiths and reclaim authority over our own destiny. What they will look like no one can know, but I for one am all for finding out!

John Berling Hardy reveals the secrets of the rich and famous. For more of his writings please visit www.playingtheplayers.com

When the Catholic Church was first faced with evidence that the planets of the solar system travelled round the Sun and not the earth they were faced with a choice. To accept the revolutionary but nonetheless accurate theory propounded by the Florentine Galileo Galilei, or to reject it and cling to their own outdated vision of the world. They chose the latter.

Now, it seems the tables have turned and science, or rather conventional science, has replaced the Church as the guardian of orthodoxy. An example of this is the contention that, unless something can be measured and quantified, it does not exist. Extra sensory perception provides us with a good example. A phenomenon for which there is strong anecdotal evidence is dismissed as charlatanism, simply because it does not lend itself to being readily simulated under laboratory conditions. By extension, anything that is not measurable is treated as non-existent.

The problem with this method is that it cannot account for some of the most important elements of the world as we know it. Science has no explanation for kindness, nor for dignity, nor love. In spite of this, all but the most extreme proponents of science agree that these things are real and tangible, if not measurable.

Consider now the way in which the rich and the powerful justify their methods by means of constant recourse to a litany of so-called facts. These need not be objectively true; they need not even be provable. What matters is that they are presented as irreproachable, and that they therefore come to be accepted by the speaker’s audience as undeniable and fundamental. Note also how every society on earth has its own individual set of “fundamental” facts.

This supreme conceit of the modern scientific establishment is reminiscent of the inverted logic used by the Inquisition when determining the piety of one of those brought before it. The accused would be tied down and then submersed in water. If they were able, through some divine intervention, to survive, then it was considered proof that God had spoken and they were innocent. In the event that nature took its natural course and they drowned, it was seen as a testament to their guilt. It was a no lose proposition for the Church. If the accused died, the legal system was validated. If they should survive the ordeal, then it was declared a miracle and it provided the Church with a public relations triumph.

The bias towards the tangible – that which can be proven by use of the scientific method – may be found in the way we treat the supernatural. Although the term refers specifically to those phenomena which are without natural explanation, the term is increasingly used to refer to anything and everything not rationalised by our contemporary science. This we cannot justify on grounds of logic. If a higher order exists it must control all things which we experience – both natural and supernatural. To suggest that one is validated by the laws of science while the other goes unexplained, existing outside their remit does not answer so many questions as it poses. All this merely goes to show how limiting our reliance on science really is.

So why do we rely on it so heavily? It is because human nature fears what it does not understand. If we cannot explain something, then it stands to reason that we cannot control it, and this makes us seem weak. To admit that we have limitations is to undermine the supremacy of the human – the doctrine upon which our society is predicated. How is it such a struggle for us to admit that there are some things we simply cannot know or understand?

John Berling Hardy reveals those critical truths which they will tell you at business school. For more of his writings please visit www.playingtheplayers.com