Thread by @petelincoln48

Great blog here, but in Swedish. You can translate it though. Below is a fascinating thread on the history of the making of our Dystopian nightmare

pharos.stiftelsen-pharos.org

Oliver Reiser was a philosophy professor from the University of Pittsburgh in the United States . He described in the 1930s and onwards the development of a worldwide thought membrane, the World Sensorium

A collective organism in which all mankind would be part of and be technologically interconnected.
This was based in part on H.G. Wells' ideas with a world brain as well as jesuit priest and later the evolutionary scholar Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's Noosphere.

This organism would be coordinated and governed by a world organisation/government and united by a common world philosophy and a universal belief system.

According to Reiser, this represented the reconstruction of the legendary Solomon Temple. But not physically in Jerusalem, but through a worldwide technological system of satellites, cables and antennas.

The method for achieving this was, among other things, the development of 'radio-eugenics'. This meant that evolution would be controlled to improve/upgrade human functions, behaviors and health with technological help.

This would give rise to a new superman. Mankind must now take the next step: the conscious control or guidance of human evolution.

Reiser called this vision Cosmic Humanism and the project went by the name prometheus-krishna. These thoughts were clearly inspired by the evolutionary principles of theosophy and Masonry in which man is alchemically transformed and achieve a godlike status or perfection

Reiser frequently published articles in theosophical Lucis Trust newspaper The Beacon.

In Reiser's vision, however, it would not be through individual-based and voluntary development work, but would be carried out collectively with technological and scientific help on all mankind, with or without their knowledge and approval

Reiser had been inspired by Alice Bailey's neotheosophy, telepathically dictated to her by "The Tibetan," Djwhal Kuhl.

In the foreword to Bailey's book Education in the New Age, Reiser wrote the following:

“… we need not only the political synthesis of a World Federation in which the Eastern and Western hemispheres function like the right and left lobes of man’s brain, with the seat of the World Brain

serving as the point of decussation of the planetary nerves, but we need also a planetary way of life, a planetary ethics , and a planetary way of feeling to supply the powerful drive we shall require for the great tasks that lie ahead of us.

Reiser also wrote that the screws needed to be tightened in the future world federation. What was in mind was a more controlled cybernetic system in which the individual would be subordinated to the collective world organism.

At the present time we have a loose world order, such as embodied in the present United Nations Organization.

Those who believe in the necessity for a world federation will want to foster the forces and agencies working toward political and economic integration, thus tightening up somewhat the loose order into a planetary federation of friendly people.

The grandiose plan was summarized in Reiser's last book Cosmic Humanism and World Unity, published posthumously by the World Institute think tank in New York.

The institute, located at united nations plaza, had been founded by timber magnate Julius Stulman with the aim of finding practical solutions to humanity's problems.
An office was also symbolically located in Jerusalem.

The founding had taken place after consultation from prominent scholars such as mathematician John von Neumann, Walter W. Stewart (chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation 1940-50) and Albert Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

The institute soon disappeared from the radar, but the editor (along with Stulman) of the World Institute's book series, the Hungarian system philosopher Ervin Laszlo, passed on the ideas to a larger audience after Reiser's death.

The network was large, international and operated on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Laszlo's 2001 book Macroshift (foreword by Arthur C. Clark, author of 2001 – A Space Odyssey)later presented a popularized version of Oliver Reiser's plan for the world.

The theosofish-oriented Laszlo was a member of the highly influential environmental think tank The Club of Rome formed in 1968.

A futuristic association of researchers, economists, business leaders and former heads of state with the aim of highlighting the challenges facing humanity and proposing solutions through scientific analysis, communication and recommendations.

In the 1970s, the Club of Rome began to sound the alarm about the downsides of industrialism and that the world's resources would not be sufficient if the world population and the world economy continued to grow.

Very early on, the climate threat appeared on their agenda (for example, board member Carroll L. Wilson compiled the report Study of Mankind's Impact on the Climate for the 1972 UN Environment Conference in Stockholm

There is no more opportune moment for radical change than in the aftermath of a world catastrophe. (Warren Wagar, World Future Society)

The club of Romes message of disaster was integrated into the context of solutions of the kind expressed by Reiser's utopian world civilization. An information technology revolution that would bring a peaceful world into balance. A resilient system of cybernetic central planning

Laszlo wrote the goals for mankind report (published in 1977) for the Club of Rome, where this message was preached. According to their computer models, this sustainable utopia would have an ideal world population of 500 million and be divided into interdependent world regions.

This message was also well integrated into the futuristic association World Future Society

Ervin Laszlo contributed as a referee to SRI International's Changing images of Man project at Stanford University in the early 1970s.

This, in turn, was part of the Explorations of World Order book series in which Laszlo acted as editor. SRI International was closely interwoven with the U.S. government, the Department of Defense and the CIA.

Its sociology department, the Center for the Study of Social Policy, was established in 1968 by the U.S. Office of Education with the aim of "exploring alternative future possibilities for the society and their implications for educational policy."

The center then began studying "World Macro Problems" to come up with a plan on how the world needed to evolve to meet the challenges of the future and change people so that he better lived up to the demands of the post-industrial era.

These ambitions, which showed great similarities to the ideas of the Club of Rome were then included in changing images of Man

The project was led by futurists SRI’s Willis Harman and O.W. Markley. According to their analysis, the future could take two different paths.

Technological extrapolationist image:

“A technocratic and centrally planned society with an expert/elite government in which citizens' leisure time has been institutionalised and behavioural modification techniques are used economically, politically and socially.

Society is characterised by an increasing urbanisation and migration to megacities.”

Evolutionary transformationalist image:

“A balanced, political and economically decentralized society with less technology and more leisure time where behavioural modifying techniques are used sparingly except when deemed necessary by the group.

Financial equalisation with the reliance on holistic expertise and greater participation of citizens in planning. Technological and scientific development is adapted to the new "moral" paradigm. With this comes a greater awareness of the world we are part of.”

These two "images" constituted the two opposites of the dialectical game. It was then a matter of navigating correctly to minimize the negative effects during the transition.

They then presented an action plan to governments, companies and foundations to lead humanity to the desired utopia with social engineering.

However, changing images of Man expressed the following warning:

“Methods of regulation that severely reduce individual freedoms could be welcomed in the face of severe disruptions. We could quickly or, more likely, gradually emerge into the kind of society that Bertram Gross (1970) has termed "friendly fascism.

This is a fascism that "will come under the slogans of democracy and 100 percent Americanism ... in the form of an advanced technological society, supported by its techniques-a techno-urban fascism, American style"

The fear was that Laszlo's and Willis Harman's ideal society would be kidnapped by the industrial elite to be unilaterally transformed into their "technological extrapolationist image."

Rather, there would ultimately be some kind of merger of the two visions of the future. In any case, some kind of authoritarian reaction was considered necessary even to manage the transition to the desired post-industrial society (evolutionary transformationalist image).

Regulation and restraint of behavior will be necessary in order to hold the society together while it goes around a difficult corner.

The more there can be general understanding of the transitory but inescapable nature of this need, the higher will be the likelihood that a more authoritarian permanent regime can be avoided.

In order to make people put up with the transition, a vision was also needed that a better society would emerge after the difficult time.

The funder of Changing Images of Man was the Charles Kettering Foundation. One of the Trilateral Commission's early financiers and a close partner of the Rockefeller sphere.

The project can be said to have formed part of the trilateral plan to (with the help of SRIs futurists) create The Technetronic Society.

In this, New Age would be an important element. As authors Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince write in their book Stargate Conspiracy about the project at SRI:

“The only resource for those in positions of power and authority was for them to actively hijack the belief systems that underpinned this social unrest, moving it in whatever direction gave them the greatest advantage and retaining their control over the masses.”

Paul Raskin, PhD from Colombia University in New York and later a member of the Club of Rome,started the Pole Star Project in 1991 w/ The Stockholm Environment Institute'sdirector Gordon Goodman with the aim of investigating scenarios for the creation of a planetary civilization

This was coordinated by raskins tellus institute. Goodman had previously, on behalf of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, written the chapter on energy and climate in the 1987 Brundtland report – Our Common Future.

The work was transferred after a few years in the Global Scenario Group where the starting point was to find out how a global ideal society could be realized based on UN Agenda 21 (est at the Rio meeting in 1992) and Earth Charter (16 commandments for a sustainable world).

The project received support from Earth Charter Committee Chairman Steven Rockefeller and was funded by UNEP, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Nippon Foundation.

Through a historical analysis, Raskin (who was a member of the Earth Charter Committee with Steven) and his co-authors assumed that the future could take three different paths:

1. Conventional Worlds -- development is going on as before by embracing corporate market solutions. Either through economic growth, deregulation and privatisation (Market Forces) or through government-led reforms that create a green economy and eradicate poverty (Policy Reform).

2. Barbarization – the current system is unable to cope with social, economic and environmental crises. In one case, it means an authoritarian response to the crises in which the elites protect themselves in enclaves while poverty reigns outside.

In the second case, a complete system breakdown of environmental disasters and collapsed social institutions.

3. Great Transitions – new values and institutions are created based on quality of life, solidarity and sustainability. This was Raskin's model scenario, the New Sustainability Paradigm, embracing global interdependence + a humanist, diverse and ecological planetary civilization

I’ll continue this in another thread covering the evolution of the plan into the 21st century