Seizing the Zeitgeist

We live a world today where people really don't believe or trust anything or anyone. All facts are manipulated or false. Everyone is part of a tribe and holding a certain opinion automatically makes part of one camp or another. There is no middle ground, no room for individuality.

Whether we like it or not, we're in the centre of an ideological war.

If, for example, I express a negative opinion about Brexit, I am a communist remainer who's a traitor to his country. If I express a positive opinion regarding the current incumbent of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I am a racist and ignorant backcountry hick who married his cousin and has too many guns who is a traitor to his country. On both sides, the same extremity of opinion is common.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong but, technically speaking, one can only be a traitor or accused of treason during wartime. It used to be OK to hold an opinion. Some of my best friends were those I could dehate long into the night with and have the contest end because both parties got bored, realising no opinion would be changed tonight.

Stalemate.

That was OK and we remained friends afterward because the debate was the whole point, not the winning.

So; the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the time...

I feel every generation is looking for answers and think it's odd that we have access to all the information in the world (sort of) at the touch of a button yet appear less certain than before the internet existed.

People who are less informed still insist on an opinion which is, of course, their absolute right but it is not fun to debate any more!

Therefore that's it boiled down "do not educate yourself, listen to me, not to him!"

Listen to Me, Not to Him

Let's think about that for just a minute.

We are told that these are the unquestionable facts of X and anyone who believes otherwise is the enemy of everything we stand for.

To me, that's downright dangerous talk!

No-one is my enemy for simply disagreeing with me; they're an opportunity to learn.

"If you cannot defend the position in opposition to your own, you have no right to defend your opinion"

So said my politics lecturer at university and he would often divide us up randomly to debate topics, you'd occasionally defend the opinion you espoused or you'd attack it with equal vigour. That's how you learned, he said, and became a better debater. It's like chess, if you can anticipate what your opponent will say before he says it, you'll already have your pieces ready to defend against it when the attack comes.

It was a decent mixed metaphor when you've thought about it a bit.

The Human Herd

In The Chronicles of Enoch, the Fallen are convinced that humans evolved from herd animals and not apex predators as they claim.

Sammael puts it like this;

"They're like sheep's and cow," his Italian accent deeply exaggerated. "They not like to stick up the head and be noticed as different."

Individuality is not encouraged, he who stands out and separates herself from the herd gets spotted by the lurking predators and usually becomes their lunch.

Except, in our case, the predators are other humans.

They might be the rich, the religious, the others/different-looking ones, the other religion we don't understand; it depends which herd you've joined, which army you signed up for.

Asmodeus

So, Asmodeus was born.

He has his secret "cave of technoarcania" in his hidden house where he takes Julian for his "education". We learn how this education goes throughout The Chronicles of Enoch : Preludes. One chapter at a time, more of their conversation is revealed; more of Asmodeus' plan and the terrifying scope thereof.

Boiling it down and excising spoilers; he's been running, creating, manipulating, steering, inventing, and managing every single internet conspiracy currently in fashion. He's built computers to run the code, spiders to crawl the internet, bots to drive this or that herd in the right direction...Julian sees it in person but still cannot take in the sheer scale of it.

Asmodeus isn't running a side, he's running both of them and pitting them against each other. He is not, perhaps, as Lucifer thinks, weakening the Fallen's enemies, he appears to be helping them; feeding them just the right nugget of information at just the right time.

Or is he? Might that information be one of those truths which tastes so sweet it must be real yet it turns out to be made that way, artificially? You don't know for sure but he does...

Divide The Herd, Then Pick Them Off at your Leisure

Let us just say that there really is some secret organisation bent upon dominating the world for their own nefarious ends. Just for the sake of argument, OK?

Let's just say that the predators live in shadowy rooms in secret places and wear dark suits. Let's say they don't show their faces to the daylight much, that the day is sensible enough to avoid the dangers inherent in attempting to illuminate them. It tried it one time but quickly learned a sharp lesson in discretion.

Let's say there are a couple of hundred of them and seven billion of us.

The only way they can survive and florish against such several-million-to-one odds is simple; keep them divided.

Keep them jumping at shadows, fighting phantoms and each other. Why not be really clever while they're at it?

You could, with your power, your influence, and your unlimited resources and wealth, crush all suspicion, discourage definitively belief in shadowy people secretly running the world; people, in fact, a lot like you doing exactly what you're doing...

Or you could use what appears to be an inherent human trait and give them someone to oppose, invent other secret societies, aliens, UFOs; conspiracies galore and scatter some evidence around for them to find. Evidence which contains a grain of truth to make it compelling. Then all you have to do is quickly and unequivocally deny it. Give a few people unimpeachable proof then violently silence them and make their proof vanish.

Always leave a few crumbs behind, of course. Then repeat with the opposing point of view. In fact, why just stop with two?

If, like Asmodeus, you have all the time in the world and have a desperate need of a hobby, why not saturate the market so hard that nobody knows what to believe any more?

Keep them so divided they won't even see us when we're standing right amongst them with that knowing smirk that always makes them feel uncomfortable.

Humans have an incredible talent for using stories to make the things they fear and don't understand just vanish right before their eyes.

They call it common sense but they doubt even that.