Customer Reviews

Escaping the Matrix: How We the People can change the world

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Richard K. Moore fell down the rabbit hole less than fifteen years ago. His Silicon Valley position allowed him to host one of the oldest online discussion community groups at http://www.Cyberjournal.org. The deterioration of the political system in the U.S. drove him to Ireland, but he continues to write, visit, and learn from the growing opposition to what he calls "The Matrix," that fabricated reality sold to Americans by the corporate press and politicians which has little correlation to the physical reality of those who bear the brunt of U.S and corporate policies.

I've known this stuff for years, and I know Richard, but I couldn't put the book down, once I started reading it. It very clearly, succinctly, paints a historical overview of the evolution of the system, and those who pull the strings and profit from war. Geopolitics, that game of control, domination over the world's resources is laid out, from World War I, World War II, to the bogus War on Terrorism, or the budding World War III, which many of us are trying to prevent.

The first half of the book is history and analysis, which few who have studied these subjects, would argue with. 9-11 and the Project for a New American Century, are not anomalies; there is a continuity, an extraordinary disregard for human life in the grand scheme of elite planning. While the reasoning and preparations for genocide might disturb some people, it is clear that the intent of the book is to thwart an agenda that enriches and empowers the few while devastating humanity and threatening the entire planet. The size of the problem needs to be grokked, before Richard addresses what he sees as the path for global transformation.

To support his vision, he also draws upon history, the history of cooperation, the long human history of hunter-gatherers who lived in harmony and with reverence towards the natural world. The anomaly/tragedy of humanity seems to be the success of a small violent minority who seem to have seized the reins from the "Civilization Project." How do they get away with it? How can the majority shatter the "Matrix," get their voices heard, and make the systemic changes necessary for us to survive as a species?

Richard mentions the processes which indigenous, egalitarian societies used- the talking stick, circles. If you have never actually participated in a circle, using a talking stick, it can be a profound, tranformative process. I remember the first time that I experienced using a talking stick, it was at a party, and a funny looking guy with a beard, named Tom Atlee, held up a rock, and started passing it around. Only the person holding the rock spoke, and everyone else listened. By the time the last person spoke, we were bonded by our words, purposes, intentions, and a non-profit organization was born. Since then I have organized a number of conferences, and have incorporated the talking stick, and circles into all of them. Richard credits Tom in his book and shares other processes that share the power of the talking stick, particularly, facilitated dialogue, and harmonization.

There are adversarial and collaborative meetings, according to Richard, and they have very different dynamics. Ideally, amongst a diverse group of people, what can emerge from collaborative meetings is where people find common ground, unity and respect one another's difference in recognition of a shared higher purpose.

Richard goes into quite a bit of process detail and tells how groups are working towards creating these spaces for dialogue, generating group wisdom, empowering people, and building upon that empowerment. One idea is citizen councils where random samplings of citizens get together and then thoroughly study complex issues and give the public their suggestions for solutions to the problem facing their society. This has worked successfully and there is currently a proposal to try this process to solve the election problems facing California.

I believe Richard offers an excellent vision on an important aspect of global transformation- the need for genuine, collaborative dialogue. I think it is vital and necessary, but it still might not be able to penetrate the Media Matrix which strikes me as one of our greatest obstacles. We need the voices to be heard on radio, on television, in music, in films, in the theater, throughout the culture, but perhaps simply generating the dialogue will allow us to penetrate the cultural space until all the voices are heard, all the issues raised, the Matrix is broken, and truth seeps into all conversations, and the real problems that we face can be publicly addressed, identified, and dealt with collectively.

I find Moore to be deeply analytical and original, not just reporting facts or giving a word-smith opinion.

In this new book, one gets a good look at how the actual political world works at the highest levels, and how the matrix of unreality is formed for us. And then going further after outlining the reality, Moore gives his solutions to this encompassing matrix.

A must read, giving much insight and cause to ponder. I can truthfully say that Moore's insights into the matrix have influenced my own thinking and approach a great deal.

I have a small basket of the most valuable tools and books that I refer back to and share with others who are looking to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. Escaping The Matrix is my newest addition, for which I am most grateful to the author Richard Moore.

Once I read the first page and sensed the pace wasn't slowing, I drank it down in big gulps. I was delighted by the clarity and rapid fire presentation of information, and his linking of the pieces to make the point - that we live in a world quite different from the one suggested to us by the corporate dominated media machine.

I can't praise highly enough, the synthesis of knowledge about the development of our human history and what we can now reasonably assume (based on present wisdom, research, and widely accepted facts) is the real world. That our society is being manipulated and managed by a few elite rulers is a hard pill to swallow when we are deeply embedded in the Matrix view, but we are stepped through the facts until it's obviousness is undeniable. The bibliography and list of resources at the back of the book, offers a plethora of excellent material to help you if you doubt this proposition. And understanding it is a helpful pre-requisite to the second half of the book which deals with some possible responses and discusses how we might become part of the solution - now that the problem is overwhelmingly clear.

If not as thrilling and liberating as peeling away the layers of illusion about the situation we are presently in, the second part has prompted me to go and search out more information, and some of what I have found excites me. In these latter chapters, Richard describes processes and tools, and proceeds to offer ideas about how these might be engaged to transform our society, from the grass roots on up. He paints a picture of a time when large numbers of people might come to that most valued, harmonious and hopeful disposition of "we the people."

While offering a few examples to whet our appetite, perhaps the examples we so desperately need are the ones that will be demonstrated by us.

The Big Picture context for our Crisis of Crises is impossible to introduce in a single book, but Richard Moore's "Escaping the Matrix" is a masterful attempt. He is not afraid to cite deception and conspiracy as the foundation of modern economies and governments. He briefly sketches the emergence of humankind and the partnership and dominator models of society. He outlines many forces and actions being taken by those who oppose the dominator model and proposes a "harmonization" process that could lead to peace and sustainable living. This book is highly recommended for those who need a brief introduction to the realities behind The Matrix, as well as those already knowledgeable of much of what is happening who will gain some new insights. The text could well serve as an outline for expanded dialog.

This book has jumped to the top of the transpartisan list. Together with All Rise and several of the other books on that list, it is an actionable practical formula for restoring the Republic and then spreading participatory democracy and moral capitalism--communal localized capitalism--to the rest of the world in a non-violent information-driven manner.

The "matrix" is the virtual unreality that governments and their corporately-owned media have manufactured to distract, imprison, enslave, and manipulate the majority of the public into dropping out of politics and failing to exercise their right to think, debate, vote, and oversee their representatives. I completely agree with Ron Paul when he says we need to dismantle this insolvent corrupt mess of a government, and reconfigure ourselves back to a Republic of, by, and for We the People.

Key themes in this world interconnectedness instead of separation; community sovereignty instead of federal sovereignty, distributed economics (no absentee landlords) instead of concentrated wealth, transformation and harmonization instead of adversarial, common sense judgments instead of special interest judgments, and finally, the reconstruction of social will to completely overpower, in a non-violent manner, the class war and globalized predatory looting of the commons that the central bankers have wrought on the planet.

This non-violent social transformation, according to the author, includes local empowerment, human liberation, participatory democracy, sensible economics, and cooperation on a global scale for mutual benefit of all.

The elite is fighting back, repressing dissent, even fully-funded logical dissent. ABC is deleting Ron Paul, who is winning his debates, and this is all I need to believe that we are winning. The revolution will not be televised, as Joe Trippi's book explains to well.

This is a transpartisan author who is quite correct when he says that history shows that we have a false manufactured reality being screened everyday, which is completely different from the real world. He also understands (see my list on Natural Capitalism) that predatory imperialism has deliberately kept the Third World poor and genocidal, with the explicit intent of looting their natural resources and getting as many of them as possible to die off--eugenics.

This author provides one of the finest summaries of how predatory capitalism has disenfranchised population, suborned governments, and "exploded the client" as Michael Lewis tells us in more detail in "Liar's Poker" and more recently, John Perkins' "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man."

He reviews the transition for competitive imperialism to collective imperialism, and has some very elegant detail on how the central banks have managed a succession of global "bait and switch," successively destroying, at great profit, the gold standard, the petrodollar standard, and now the United States of America. The banks, he tells us, are "the house" and profit regardless of the misfortunes of others, indeed, because of the manufactured misfortunes, wars, stolen aid, botched humanitarian assistance, and so on.

He has two revelations in this book that for me, at least, are explosive. First, that FDR approved eight covert actions against the Japanese with the intent of forcing them to commit the first overt act of war against the US. Second, that Viet-Nam was a known "no-win" war with a known ten-year trajectory and a known 50,000 projected dead. It was used to militarize the US on a grander scale, while enriching a handful of banks and corporations, all as the expense of the individual tax-payer.

He offers fascinating perspectives of how WWI and WWII were deliberately started (I have read other books in this vein, I believe the author's analysis to be on target), and he accuses Henry Kissinger, a known war criminal, of being the cause of the Middle East problems in his constant mis-representation and manipulation of the views of different parties for whom he was supposed to be an honest broker.

Banking, Oil, Covert Action, and Overt Intervention are the four pillars of what Derek Leebaert called "The Fifty Year Wound" and Chalmers Johnson, "Sorrows of Empire."

He tells us that in the 1970's the US elites concluded that managing consensus democracy was annoyingly complex, so they began moving toward police state capabilities with the use of big lies, among which I include 9-11, never investigated honorably. I believe that Dick Cheney, Rudy Giuliani and Larry Silverstein should be indicted, arrested, investigated, and interrogated with the same techniques they approved for use on others. Drugs and especially marijuana have been used to create a prison complex while the US Government has deliberately, as a covert action, imported drugs into the US for profit, using the drug czar to control the criminal competition. I am told that Ollie North personally supervised the loading of cocaine on to U.S. Navy vessels in Colombia, and this one of many leads I would like to see brought before a Grand Jury.

He tells us that the core elements of the elite plan are five: US-UK control of oil; neoliberal economics; WTO/IMF as economic assassins; police state powers; and the Pentagon as a big stick; on which see General Smedley Butler, "War is a Racket."

Key point by the author: culture (and social will) are the missing ingredient for activating the bottom-up Epoch B collective leadership and will of We the People.

He says that reform must be all or nothing. I agree. He says that representative democracy is an adversarial system that must be replaced by a fully participatory bottom-up collaborative system. Adversaries take their differences as a given, collaborators take them as a starting point for dialog.

He is at one with the author of "All Rise" and with Reuniting America's transpartisanship vision of dignity for all, and inclusion of all. An opinion can be debated but a person is always valid and not to be denied or excluded.

We can do this. He concludes with the best annotated bibliography I have seen, as relevant to our challenge in 2008.

All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (Bk Currents)
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street
Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything
War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It

Richard Moore's succinct analysis of history lifts the veil from our eyes to clear a path for social change. Similar to David Korten's perspective expressed in "The Great Turning", but spiced up with droll, pointed humorous remarks, he challenges the reader to "escape" from a worldview designed to enslave the average person into compliance with a facade of freedom and democracy that ultimately serves only a tiny, elite "ruling class".

He then walks the reader through his solution, empowered self-goverance beginning with direct relationships, with good descriptions of proven and effective dialogue and decison processes that build social capacity at the local grassroots level, which he refers to as "harmonization".

Excellent resource information is provided for those interested in assuming personal responsibilty for creating community that truly is of the people, for the people, and by the people.

In this easy-to-read book, the author uses the term "elites" many times. It is important to understand that most of us consider ourselves to be "elite" and therein lies the source of our problems. For example, most of us pay far more interest throughout our lives than we earn. Why do we do this? I would submit that it is simply out of ignorance and delusion. We have never stopped to think about it. This book helps us to start questioning the system and that is a good thing.

Like the earlier Two-Star reviewer, I am not sure that the "love-in" prescription put forth is the answer. We can easily delude ourselves into thinking that we are getting somewhere with meetings that give us a warm and fuzzy feeling -- until we step outside into the apathetic real world. What we have to do is create a scenario that is so attractive that it causes individuals to realize that the way we currently live and work is insane. Although it may seem counterintuitive, "We the People" have to go about this in a business-like fashion.

For many, The Story of B and other Daniel Quinn books serve as an introduction to cultural indoctrination. This book complements those books nicely.

I'll close with an excerpt from the last chapter in the book:

"This *necessity of personal transformation* myth can be seen as a vestige of the religious myth of *original sin*. The myth fails to recognize that the deficiencies in our current level of personal consciousness are due not to our inherent natures, but are largely the result of systemic conditioning. If the conditioning is removed, the path to personal transformation will be a far easier one."

As have many other contemporary authors of American dystopia, Richard does a masterful job characterising the problem and the key players. What does not satisfy, however, is the author's solution.

Every nation-state's governance has legal and historical context. In this aspect, America is *sui generis*. In other words, We the People can do things about our government, currency and credit that other populations cannot.

Most Americans who have performed due diligence have discovered beyond reasonable doubt that 75% of present federal activities, offices, programs, and regulations are, quite simply, ILLEGAL: beyond the powers that We the People enumerated to the federal government.

Yet federal players trundle blithely along anyway, arrogating to themselves pretty much whatever they can grab. After several generations on this federal juggernaut, a rational citizen asks why this is so.

Alas, the average American today is irrational; 'educated' in government schools, he may read three books from high school graduation up to his dotage. Even the slowest wit can grasp blatant, multi-trillion-dollar corruption parading across D.C. and Wall Street today. It distills to a simple aphorism: *As long as Taxpayers pay, Taxspenders spend.*

I should think that Mr. Moore will appreciate that there now an estimated 67 million non-filers in America, including law-abiding, diligent Nontaxpayers like myself. Not only do we understand basic economics and human nature; some of us Nontaxpayers have studied the Tax Code and found it surprisingly constitutional. The law is fine, if only the IRS and the corrupt Congress that it works for, would tell the truth about what it says. Of course, they'll not kill the goose!

Thus, I go much further than Richard Moore has done. I believe that that first We the People must play defense: financial embargo of Congress, post haste. Shut off the spigot at your bank accounts NOW.

That defensive tactic is what the Tax Honesty movement is about; already tens of millions strong. On my American Glasnost site, I demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt -- citing from the Tax Code, Internal Revenue Manual, Code of Federal Regulations, US Supreme Court rulings, Black's Law Dictionary, Sutherland's Rules of Statutory Construction, and former IRS personnel including one commissioner and the only official Historian of the IRS -- that the agency is totally corrupt, and that Tax Honesty is the lawful, ethical, practical way to embargo the domestic enemies of the US Constitution with no lawlessness, bloodshed, or even ill will.

But to truly turn the tide, We the People must go on offense.

In at least 535 American cities and towns next Independence Day, with what is being called the "America Again!" project, citizens can hold a rally in the hometown of each and every member of the Congress. At that annual rally, the citizens read their congressman or senator his/her "report card", read the "America Again!" Declaration aloud, along with a list of their own politician's high crimes, together with very specific legislation that we demand be passed, to put an end to said crimes.

We the People demand that the legislator either support the reform legislation, or be indicted in his/her own STATE court for multi-trillion-dollar fraud and conspiracy on each and every count we can dig up. In most cases, the criminal indictment taken to the State Grand Jury will be QUITE long.

You see, more books about "the matrix" won't cut it at this hour of the day. We are well aware of the enemy's existence and ys, they've been at it since at least Lincoln's time. But impeachment is far too little to stop these crooks. Orange jumpsuits and leg shackles from their STATE Penitentiary, and losing all they own to State confiscation -- will send a powerful message to D.C. and to the world: no one is above the law in America.

For those who may think that this project turns constitutional law and original jurisdiction on its head, see Jefferson's KY Resolution and Madison's VA Resolution, both of which posit this very thing. When the federal creature slips its leash, ONLY We the People and our Sovereign States enjoy original jurisdiction to judge the infractions and apply remedies. Unfortunately, we've muddled along for 145 years because Dishonest Abe's "War to Enslave the States" was terribly effective at creating a monster nowhere contemplated by the framers.

Jefferson and Madison offered the constitutional principle (that Richard Moore nowhere hints at); but neither of those great men offered a tactical plan. The America Again! project is such a people's plan; actually a re-empowerment of the Sovereign States, rather than some Jacobin rebellion.

We the People need to stop rehashing the problem. We can -- and must -- begin merely ENFORCING THE LAW. However many conspiracies are smoldering beneath veils of secrecy, we still have a U.S. Constitution and constitutions in all our sovereign States. As no other place on earth, the people retain a very real recourse in law, if we will only take it every Independence Day! The project is described at America-again (dot) blogspot (dot) and then com.

Taxpayers must understand that Taxspenders will continue to rape them raw as long as they self-assess, sign under penalty of perjury, and allow Congress to skim 35% of their paychecks for their illegal schemes and scams. We will continue to have counterfeit currency printed by an illegal banking organisation until we DEMAND real monetary reform (the America Again! project offers specific legislation developed by two independent constitutionalist monetary research think tanks).

Mr. Moore gives an enligthening assessment of the domestic enemies of the Constitution, and the foreign ones -- who have operated since time out of mind to enrich themselves and enslave all Americans. Well, 67 million of us aren't filing and paying a cent anymore; we did our homework. And now it's time to enforce the law!

The original idea of this republic was that Sovereign States retained most powers and granted relatively few to the federal power. This is still the LAW. Every mercantilist and shrewd politician has known for centuries how to milk Taxpayers, and Obama & Co know "the Chicago Way" of doing the milking, as Taxpayers will increasingly experience.

Richard's book is an enlightening look at the players, but Jefferson and Madison suggested that We the People hold all the cards in this game.

I suggest we begin to play them.

David M. Zuniga, P.E.
Founder, STIRLING Education
Author, "This Bloodless Liberty" (Available early 2010)
Web host, American Glasnost and America Again! (on Blogspot)

Everywhere we hear the gripes of society and the human condition. Many can outline the ill's of today - that's easy. It takes much more fore thought and shear bravery to actually explore and propose solutions.

Expand your view of the world - whether or not you agree.