Why Conspiracy Theories?

[slackk]

The book I'm talking about predates the film

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0963215809/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_b4xKFbJRAHG8Q

Although Hunter S Thompson is very much a brief interlude in the - frankly mental - story, I'd argue that a lot of the Qanon mythology is lifted straight from it. Then you have the overlap between him/adrenochrome forming part of the modern day theory.

There's a "banned" documentary on YouTube about the Franklin conspiracy but it is very far-fetched to actually buy into.

American paedo conspiracy continuum for you there

 

[catalog]

the roots of these stories go very deep, it's always been a current, or thread, but right now, it's very wide as well as being long, it's just fully opened up in the space created by the pandemic. there's a crisis of legitimacy

 

[luka]

they are universal stories i think, rooted in the collective unconscious but mainstream entertainment hollywood tv video games bring them to the surface sometimes

 

[Mr. Tea]

yes definitely 5%ers remaking language into their own etc. i love it. Arm Leg Leg Arm Head fucking genius. the roots of hip hop.

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth

There is (or used to be) an Afrocentrist bookshop in London that had a book in the window alleging that the Bible wasn't real but had been written by William Shakespeare. It was titled Holy Bible or Wholly By Bill?, which I thought was a fucking great pun.

 

[luka]

that is actually brilliant.

 

[luka]

there might be a grapejuice post about that centred on a specific psalm but maybe i read it elsewhere

 

[woops]

never overstood this stuff myself

 

[catalog]

luke and tea united over conspiracy puns - who'da thought?

yeah i'm sure ive read that grapejuice essay you are talking about, where he counts all the words or letters and the exact halfway one has something to do with shakespeare. must admit i stepped off grapejuice at certain points when the numerology/coincidences thing became a bit far fetched.

 

[luka]

 

[Mr. Tea]

luke and tea united over conspiracy puns - who'da thought?

yeah i'm sure ive read that grapejuice essay you are talking about, where he counts all the words or letters and the exact halfway one has something to do with shakespeare. must admit i stepped off grapejuice at certain points when the numerology/coincidences thing became a bit far fetched.

There are all sorts fundie Christian nutters in America who are mad into "Bible code" conspiracy theories. Now I can kind of see how this might appeal (to someone who was into that sort of thing) if you're doing it with the Torah or the Qu'ran, where it's supposedly not changed by a single letter over thousands of years - I mean Kabbalah is all about this, isn't it? - but these people are presumably using the KJV, which is an English translation of original Hebrew, Greek and Latin texts and is only about four hundred years old. So it's sort of doubly pointless.

 

[luka]

i dont know if its pointless necessarily. this is the interesting thing about Sausarre's mania from finding anagrams in classical texts znore (and jh prynne) mentions

 

[catalog]

KJ Bible is still pretty canonical tho, as texts go.

 

[Mr. Tea]

KJ Bible is still pretty canonical tho, as texts go.

Well yeah, but if all sorts of hidden codes were deliberately inserted into it by its authors, it's surely even harder to do that when translating existing texts than when writing them in the first place. And that's before you consider that most copies around these days probably use updated spelling.

 

[luka]

the idea is not that the codes are inserted by the authors its god, or the process which is the true author

 

[catalog]

Well yeah, but if all sorts of hidden codes were deliberately inserted into it by its authors, it's surely even harder to do that when translating existing texts than when writing them in the first place. And that's before you consider that most copies around these days probably use updated spelling.

i dunno about that, the updated spelling i mean. i think they try to keep that all pretty tight don't they? i mean, when you pick that thing up, the whole point is that it's pretty close to the original version

 

[woops]

yeah tea it doesn't stop being the word of god just cos its in a different human language, i thought you'd understand this stuff your a scientist after all?

 

[Mr. Tea]

i dunno about that, the updated spelling i mean. i think they try to keep that all pretty tight don't they? i mean, when you pick that thing up, the whole point is that it's pretty close to the original version

Well fair enough. My main point was that 21st-century America isn't that much further removed from ancient Israel than 17th-century England was.

And yes, I am resolutely refusing to get into the spirit of Biblical numerology, lol.

 

[luka]

Well yeah, but if all sorts of hidden codes were deliberately inserted into it by its authors, it's surely even harder to do that when translating existing texts than when writing them in the first place. And that's before you consider that most copies around these days probably use updated spelling.

This involves a new paradigm of language, one discovered in the Wake. Beyond Ferdinand Saussure's view of language, taken up by the structuralists and the post-structuralists, as being a synchronic network of difference is his disconcerting discovery of hidden anagramic layers of meaning throughout Latin and other poetry. From this, he reluctantly realized that the emergence of unintentional meaning might well up and be present within all texts. This is ALP. This is what is beyond the post-modern. https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/search?q=Saussure

 

[luka]

what PKD calls the plasmate.

 

[IdleRich]

i dunno about that, the updated spelling i mean. i think they try to keep that all pretty tight don't they? i mean, when you pick that thing up, the whole point is that it's pretty close to the original version

There are often differences. When I used to teach Muslim kids in East London a lot of them had memorised passages in the Bible that were different in different editions so they could quote them every time we had a theological debate - which was pretty much every day - and thus undermine the credibility of the Bible compared to the rigidly unchanged Koran.