"There was a thing called the soul and a thing called immortality." -Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
What if everything wrong with the world has owed itself to the same patterns for centuries and centuries?
You can almost fool yourself thinking that perhaps today's oligarchs learned all they needed to learn from history. The many repeated cycles of history demonstrate that they do not—or that those who cannot rise to those positions of total influence.
The notion of history as repeated fractals is at least consistent with the notion that the world's (the societal world's) primary problems extend from the game theoretic circumstances associated with the escape of the Kunlangeta from the balance of the evolutionary unit that is the tribe.
There is probably a reason why so many books are written about the quest for immortality, including a multitude of associated evils. Recall also how the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, was undone while on a quest to procure an elixir of immortality. The clever servant eunuch, Zhao Gao, of a state conquered by Qin Shi Huang in his quest to unite the seven states, turned the weaker Qin son against the stronger, eventually leading to the downfall of the Qin Dynasty.
Was there a sign?
The absurd lies shared among those loyal to the conspiracy: to point at a deer and call it a horse, and the resulting assassinations of those not willing to signal loyalty with the conspirators.
Hashishim (Assassins): Tools of the Kunlangeta
"Nothing is true; everything is permitted." -Creed of the Order of the Hashishin
It almost sounds like postmodernism. Coincidence?
We'll come back to that.
A modern video game has introduced this "Assassins Creed" to an audience of children and "adult-children", also. But this was history before it was fantasy, and we need to understand the degree to which the present reflects that history—or even operates on the same underlying machinery.
We derive the word "assassin" from the Hashishim who were a religious "sect" (cult?) of Shi'a Mulsims (or "Muslims" to those who reject this offshoot doctrine). Their modern equivalent may be the extremists who work to overthrow the governments of the Middle East for the purpose of establishing the governance of their own cult leader (if they can manage that). Though it may be more correct that a certain level of chaos provides cult leaders with their easier goals without having to bother with the governance part. I won't draw any conclusions, except to note that there seem to be a lot of corners of the world in which mafias of various kinds can and do rule only and exactly to the degree that they desire. The Yakuza of Japan may have been such an entity between the Shogunate and recent post-economic-bending (whatever you want to call the financially engineered stasis of Japan).
Who were the Hashishim?
As always, forgive my middling amateur understanding of history. So much as I may get details wrong, or misunderstand cultures of the past (or present), my focus is on the battle between those who strive for a Brotherhood of Humanity (a universe of worlds of nations of communities of tribes, or something like that) and the Kunlangeta, whose separation from the community body renders them toxic to everyone—themselves included, though their arrogance may blind them from that fact. Also, understand that as with many historical topics, various sources disagree on the specifics.
Forgive also the changes in spelling that are intended to give some historically evolving context.
From Britannica.com (emphasis mine):
In 1167 CE Benjamin of Tudela, a Spanish rabbi, visited Syria on a 13-year journey through the Middle East and Asia. His description of Syria includes what is probably the first European account of a group that would provoke horror and fascination in the West: the Assassins. Benjamin described a warlike sect, hidden away in mountain fortresses and obeying a mysterious leader known as the Old Man of the Mountain. Over the next two centuries, returning crusaders and travelers brought back their own stories, adding sensational new details to the legend of the Assassins. It was said that they were experts in the craft of murder, trained from childhood to use stealth and deceit, and that they were so devoted to their leader that they would sacrifice their lives for his slightest whim. Their fanatical determination was the result of intoxicating drugs or a brainwashing process in which recruits were kept in a paradisiacal garden stocked with fine food and beautiful women. It was from these legends that the word assassin soon entered European languages as a common noun meaning “a murderer, usually one who kills for politics or money.”
These Nizari breakaways with leadership of Persian origin carved out a series of desert castles in a desert kingdom, building a ferociously loyal force of hashshashin (hash shashin, or "drugged boys") through a particularly effective process. These boys, often bought from financially desperate parents, or plucked as unwanted urchins off the streets, were raised to be drones without agency. At the outset of manhood, they were intoxicated to sleep, carried into secret gardens of beauty, abundance, and willing whores where they were lavished for days with food, wine, sex, and drugs. Once again while asleep, they were ferried back out of the gardens to their castle dwellings, then told they had experienced visions of Heaven where Allah awaited them—if only they successfully performed their duties to their master.
How effective is such brainwashing?
When the ever-crusading English King Richard the Lionhearted "won" victory during the Third Crusade against Saladin's forces, he begrudgingly installed Conrad of Montferrat as the elected King of Jerusalem (elected by Crusade constituents of pre-Reformation Christianity) in 1192. A few short months later—even prior to the official coronation of the new King of Jerusalem—three hashashim disguised as young monks, trained like chameleons in the mannerisms of such a Christian station, filtered past Conrad's guard. Upon getting close, they quickly stabbed him to death in a brutal assault.
The hashashim killers were quickly captured, reportedly without resistance. They were tortured (flayed alive) before being put to slow, painful deaths, which observers reported as something like "joyfully waiting for death."
Henry II of Champagne (sometimes Henry I of Jerusalem) quickly married Conrad's widow, Queen Isabella, attaining a role of governance of Jerusalem. Accounts vary, but Henry's curiosity led him in travels East to discover the hashashim leader of the day, the Da'i al-Kabir ("recruiter to the greatness"; other names are sometimes used in historical reference for the Old Man in the Mountain). According to tales, this Da'i al-Kabir ordered loyal young men to leap over 100 feet from towers to their deaths to impress Henry, and even offered to perform an assassination as a show of faith between them.
History of the hashashim gets murky through the centuries. Unsubstantiate accounts of assassinations performed by this group dot European, Middle Eastern, and South Asian history. This is unquestionably due to their secrecy. There are accounts of hashashim living among the rival Islamic Sunni branch centuries after firm accounts of the existence of the hashashim, but requiring strict secrecy in their missions. There are places from North Africa to the Indian subcontinent where various forms of the term "hashashim" are used to describe "degenerates", but it is unclear (to me) the extent to which such a pejorative is correctly used in identification of something like a cult network.
It is noteworthy that the U.S. interrogation program centered around Guantanamo Bay detainees continued long after CIA agents administered techniques most people (not adhering to a legal playbook) describe as torture continued after the CIA admits they did not believe such interrogation produced true or actionable intelligence. Was the goal of the Guantanamo program to test the limits of loyalty among those who might be members of such modern cults? To what extent were those 780 prisoners connected in community with modern-day suicide bombers who gladly take their lives to ascend to some conception of glory in the afterlife?
Nothing is True; Everything is Permitted
In the debate between philosophy and action that rages among all powerful cultures, this is the road necessary for a hierarchical power base—a most perfect chain of command with one brain and many arms. And it should surprise no one that this dictum takes place among some subset of the Shiite Muslim branch that considered itself the social justice underdogs. We are talking, quite literally, about social justice warriors.
It may be worth zooming out and observing the similarities between the Sunni/Shiite split, and the Right/Left split (or how it was twisted through modernism-to-postmodernism-to-post-truth evolution).
How much of the difference is in the belief of the influence of community as technology (does that describe the Sunni and the conservative West?) vs. bloodlines/genetics (does that describe the Shiites and the intellectual progressives?)?
Is this a struggle between hierarchies where the leaders serve the people vs. those where the people serve the leaders?
How did social justice warriors come to fill the ranks of the West (or anywhere else), and why?
Are obtuse Western leaders largely some forms of drones of production similar to hashashin design?
Is this how a world revolution happens, where those whose actions have no boundaries try to subvert all communities?
Is mass formation really a sudden problem, or just one that the upper-middle-class community-oriented thinkers are forced to frame now at this moment because they're existentially forced to confront it?
Don't get me wrong—I'm glad this can of worms got cracked open. But having grown up in a cult that fostered violence, and spent the first half of my life watching societal patterns often congeal into forcible untruth in ways I could at least partially relate, I'd really like for the bigger picture to remain open for deeper understanding. We will not achieve a balanced and lasting prosperity for humanity without a greater discussion on the broader elements of controlled psychosis in society.
Where Does China Fit In?
I'm kicking that can down the road, at least partially, but am researching and thinking a lot about it. There are overly simple explanations in the public sphere of discussion to which I cannot commit. China is huge, and until very recently still erupted here and there into riots involving hundreds of thousands of discontent serfs until really just the past several years. There is no more "one China" than there is "one West" or "one Islam" or "one global team" with respect to both conflicts that we have discussed in this brief article and the many more that we haven't.
But it is clear that the Han elite have consolidated more in China just as it is clear that Western elites have consolidated considerable amounts of the capital and institutions of the West. What does that mean?
Has the elite billionaire globalist class made a deal with elements of China who provide outlets for human experimentation in the pursuit of CRISPR (not to mention dangerous bioweapons research, ahem)? The billionaire tech class certainly seems to be investing a great deal in such pursuits?
Would handfuls of madmen in the sciences tell them what they want to hear whether the prospect of adding another 20 years of quality life is five years away or 500 to rake in the millions of dollars floating around in that ecosystem? That would cement those people and their spheres of influence to some serious lies, wouldn't it?
Are many of the Kunlangeta of the West simply enamored by the lure of immortality, and thus oddly aligned by chance with the hashashim? Is this where they boldly cross the line to total admission of being unmoved by vast human suffering, so long as it stands between them and their goals?
Are the Kunlangeta actively "training" a new era of hashashim? Are those selling them on visions of immortality actively training a new era of hashashim?
And are they committing dynastic suicide at the behest of scientific conartists giving them a glimpse of paradise?
I wish I had as many answers as questions, but I hope I've moved some people to explore those questions further, along with me.
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after. Eccl 1:9-11
What we are dealing with is the greatest betrayal of trust that has ever happened in human history. Short overview of what happened, how it happened, and possible directions where things might progress into.
https://mellob33.substack.com/p/trust-and-betrayal-how-to-destroy