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I just feel obligated to quote the novel 1984 here: There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.
So from a fictional sense, we’ve already addressed that complaint. People are intentionally kept poor, ignorant and miserable because that’s how the Party demonstrates its power, and their only purpose is to continue to be in power, for its own sake.
(But, in a real-world, GQ sense, I’m there with you, leahcim. The idea that everything has been masterminded by a giant conspiracy that perfectly covers up its own tracks… there’s certainly no human organization that could ever pull that off.)
The power principle of bread and circuses speaks against that. It too is played out in the societies of this Earth, as has the other set of principles you mention.
A spoiler, unfortunately, of a pertinent Stanislaw Lem novel, the name of which escapes me.
[spoiler]
I can’t remember which Stanislaw Lem novel it is, but the brunt of it is that successive layers of apparent well-being–freedom, pulsating cities and enormous countryside regions–is revealed to be successive layers of hallucinogenic drugs. Only a priveledged few wield the fantastic power of administering the drugs. Here, as usual, Lem pulls a fast one on social-technological issues: he portrays the leaders as anguished and sympathetic the people, doing their best to shield them from what otherwise would be a horrible plight.
The big spoiler of the end of the novel:
Ultimately, IIRC (decades since i read it), after stripping induced reality-layer by reality-layer, the populace is revealed to be stacked on top of each other like sardines in a cesspool of industrial pollution. A thought-provoking novel, like all of his, but a truly frightening and horrifying one as well.[/spoiler]
The real question is who do those we work for work for?
Turtles.
Gotta serve somebody.
If the universe is to God like a molecule is to us then billions of years would be nothing more than a routine lab experiment. We are likely in a petri dish full of universes that is being monitored for life forms much larger than us, we will likely never be discovered.
Fascinating.
And what are your thoughts on this hypothesis?
Agreed.
Look at how the government works. You probably know the mayor and town council of your local government, although none of them are famous people. Your state legislators and governor are better known. Congress and the President are all household names.
But the conspiracy claim is that there is a higher level above these guys. But this level, while it’s much more powerful, is invisible for some reason.
Why? If these guys are so powerful, why are they hiding? Why aren’t they living in castles and being addressed as God Emperor of Earth?
Throughout history, the more powerful somebody is, the more famous they are. Being known for being powerful is a large part of the basis of power.
So if no supreme ruling group can be seen, the most likely explanation is that they don’t exist.
That’s a really good point, Nemo. Anyone that powerful wouldn’t need to hide.
Maybe it is Cecil, what with him being so smart.
He is not hiding, he is explicitly telling us that he is the world’s smartest human. If it isn’t aliens it has got to be Cecil.
So… Cecil is an Anunnaki?! 
That explains why there are NO pictures of him! :eek:
The best topic in GQ in like forever.
I don’t know if I would give it that high of a rating.
But I will concede, that it’s a damn good topic. 
Not in hiding? Then why won’t he tell us his real name?
All names are Cecil’s.
We’re all living in a computer simulation.
The simulation fnord is being run by the Group Of Developers.
Can I request they reprogram my life to make it more glamorous and sexy? Plus I’d like to be thinner.
Not to mention They Live.
Agreed. But seeing as that is no fun at all, a few months ago I pondered how we could make this Illuminati thing work, at least in fiction. The first step is to posit a low-mana world, as opposed to the zero mana world we have now. The organization needs to be both secret and powerful, but not so powerful that secrecy is unnecessary. So they have to have some sort of Achilles Heel.
They Live! provides one scenario: the Illuminati are mind altering aliens that fear insurrection if their secret is leaked. My fave is that they are a cabal of creatures immune to aging and disease who fear capture and dismemberment. So they hire… Ninjas (secret ninjas) who do their bidding, pulling strings and accumulating favors. An hereditary clan serving a near-immortal cabal.
I find it amazing that people just seem to be content to go about their lives without even thinking about the fact that nobody has any idea as to who (what) we are, what we are doing here and how we got here. Certain religions will tell you they have the answer , but if you pin them down, they will have to admit that they really haven’t spoken to God and they actually don’t know what is going on.
One thing that I notice is that we do seem to have a tremendous drive within us to create more of us and do things for “the children”, but these same “children” eventually grow up and have offspring of their own whom they nurture and sacrifice for and it goes on and on and on…, but to what end???