7/30 Call from Horace

I am awake due to all the slack notifications going off by my face at 8:30. But anyway, maybe it’s because you know how to relay messages quickly and accurately lol. Other than that, who knows why anyone ever gets singled out.

As for his message, I definitely understand what he’s trying to say but the fact is that no one of our lives is predetermined like he implied, therefore the choices we make everyday do matter! We are not robots; we have free will. And trust me I have done plenty of nothing like he suggests. I have done plenty of indulging myself in binge watching tv and eating tons of junk food but what I have learned from doing that in excess is that there are negative consequences from too much of anything. My health isn’t where I’d like it to be due to all the shit I’ve put into my body over the years and the more I sit in front of the TV the more I turn into this blob of nothing…I accomplish nothing with my day and I made no progress and there was really no purpose to my day. One day of binge watching and junk food is a great vacation but to do that everyday leaves no impact on myself or the world around me. That’s when I start to feel depressed and worthless, like I’m a waste of space. So Horace, that is why I leave the house.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by Candace.

OK so this is very much like saying that they are the “They” behind everything in the world. The HFCS and the television and everything else. Everything that’s designed to keep us lazy, depressed, broke, fat, etc. I didn’t think of the OSDM as *literally* being the guys at Bohemian Grove.

@pandace88 there is the idea though that a lot of these things exist by design to keep us powerless. Whether that’s the small amounts of sugar added to EVERYTHING in order to keep our bodies addicted to it, or the way we are manipulated subtly by television and internet content into voting or buying preferences, how entire groups of people can be convinced to vote against their own interests.

There is a sort of US become AI feel to that.

The idea of “predetermined destiny” vs yesterday’s workshop turning into a discussion on choice and value and what can make a difference is an interesting contrast.

If lives are predetermined, then nothing done yesterday matters. The money spent on water or beer, or money handed out or destroyed, nothing makes a difference because what we did was never our choice to begins with.

And if our lives are predetermined, does the power promised by The System matter? These two outlooks seem completely at odds with one another.

What’s next from Horace? “Everything’s already decided, nothing matters in your life, join the OOA”

Unless this is an attempt at negging, to push us closer to the system.

Regarding agency: We chose this experience. Heck, in the case of @bcbishop, @kevin and myself, we CHOSE to support Joyce and OSDM because we were choosing to support the experience they were providing.

Here’s what we know: We give them their power; they need us. We relinquish part of our agency to them to keep their clock wound, but we never forget we chose to be here. We chose to listen. Some choose to resist, that is their agency. Some choose to see where the rabbit hole goes, that is theirs.

Our actions don’t matter? Come on, Horace. You don’t really believe that. You learn more about us every day; data you crave though our varying decisions. And some of us are willing to give in to what you’re laying out for us. That’s a choice. Same as those who will rail against you. Show us what you’ve got, we’ll be listening.

I know I’ve done all of the the thing’s he’s said as well. I’ve binged watched aplenty, eaten more junk than I should, and can be the Queen of Procrastination. But, I still go to work every day, I still go shopping, do activities, just get out of the house when I can. I make my own choices on religion, politics, and life based on research and not just what one article or person tells me is right. Life just wouldn’t be interesting if I didn’t have any of these choices, or if I just let someone make them for me. I want to be independent and speak for myself on a lot of things. And I definitely don’t want someone like him making choices on my life for me. So no, Horace, I won’t accept the sweet embrace of your arms, I’ll stay in the embrace of the different sets of arms I’ve chosen for myself.

We always have agency.

It’s just that having agency, actually making use of it, requires effort. A lot of people don’t want to do the work that it takes to make a difference or get anywhere or be an active participant – they’d rather sit in sweet comfort in front of Netflix. It’s easier.

Horace is telling us to take the easy way out.

@maddyxxx is making us do the work, challenging us to do things we might not otherwise do

I’m an individualist at heart so I could not disagree with this further.

Human beings have freedom to choose. That’s what makes every wrong deed wrong, and every good deed good. We chose to do it. No one forced our hand to go one way or another.

We do tend to get bogged down with the idea that we have no choice, that we’re shackled by our surrounding world. There is always a choice, just not always with the best options.

I’m sure in the coming weeks a lot of decisions will have to be made. The question is if we have the constitution to free ourselves of the shackles.

This message seems to directly contrast with those of The System (“take what’s yours”) and what we were shown yesterday (“go make a difference”), so kind of weird coming from Horace. I’ve been assuming Horace has some control over The System, so this works in either two ways. Horace could be acknowledging that he thinks The System is bullshit and we have no choices. I think everyone here would disagree with that, we’ve all made choices as they relate to Noah and Sarah, iConfidant, Joyce, etc…

The other is that it is some kind of test. Will we make the choice to take what’s ours? He did ask why anyone would want to deal with choice.

These are the words of either a total jerk face, or a total jerk face who is just a little bit nervous. Hannah, what was your impression of his voice inflection? Could you tell if he was bored, irritated, entertained, etc?

Why after yesterday would Horace be suggesting that none of what we do matters? Is there a chance that he wasn’t in on yesterday’s events at all? @shankfx22 I agree that this almost doesn’t sound like a message to us. It wouldn’t be the first time we were put in the middle of their communication.

I wonder if we might be taking this too literally – and thereby missing the forest for the trees.

If Horace is a global string puller, he probably has a bit more finesse than just randomly calling people and saying “Go be ignorant because nothing matters; you’ll be happier that way.”

This is a guy that was (at least partially) behind an elaborate production (Tension) that was designed to trick us. Pushing buttons to elicit reactions is his game. Not telling people to do something in a way that would pretty much ensure they never will.

If yesterday was about agency, then this call can be read as Horace pushing us further towards that – just with a different manipulation technique. Anybody even remotely self-aware is going to respond to what he said to @shankfx22 with a middle finger and a “Hell no, I control my own fate.” We’re all doing it right now. This pushes us to remain engaged, and to demonstrate that we can impact the world around us. It underscores the true lesson of yesterday, after other issues steered the conversation in a different direction.

Horace plays the long game. We should be thinking the same way.

This guy fucking suuuucks. The System is an OSDM-sanctioned entity. Us taking part in Noah’s workshop yesterday was part of The Experience that The Investors have so graciously produced for us. Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing that Horace would prefer us to amuse ourselves with? He’s IN the system promos!

Horace, I’m sorry your son is a charismatic, loose-cannon of a guy. Are you regretting plastering his face all over your websites and unleashing his crazy to the world? You’re too late to try To dissuade us or discredit him. We all (for the most part) want in that hot tub.

I have to wonder why “you of all people” were chosen to get a message of non-agency delivered to. Is @bcbishop right, and Horace is trying to manipulate all of us, knowing that @shankfx22 is most likely out of all of us to rebel against the “you have no control” line? Or is she specifically being targeted due to her involvement with people who stand with the Resistance?

I think Horace and Noah are now in direct opposition to each other. They may be on the face of things “working together”, but it seems from Noah’s erratic confessions behind Horace’s back and Horace’s manipulative, patronizing attempts to promote dependency and despondency (if taken at face value, which is how I’m taking it) behind Noah’s are hinting to us that they are at odds with each other. I’m echoing a lot of people in saying I don’t like Horace and I like Noah…and it seems like they are preaching and representing two different things. It absolutely feels to me that Noah is leaving hints to us within the System. Like, the System may be co-operated by Horace, but it seems like he is trying to personally sway us in another direction without Horace knowing. There is definitely something going on between the two of them and I get the feeling Noah is in some form or another going rogue and that Horace is sensing this and trying to sway and threaten us into not being influenced by or helping Noah.

I go back to Noah’s story about replacing his father by manipulating the board of directors from his website: was that true? Seems like Horace is still very much in charge, of The Investors at least. And if Noah and Horace are in such opposition, why is Horace appearing in System promo videos alongside his son?

Seems like we are getting counter narratives to keep us guessing and open to manipulation from all sides. If we don’t know where people really stand, our choice to stand with them becomes less about our own agency and more the underlying machinations of those people that are guiding us to that position. We’re choosing based on what we think we know, but who’s providing the facts?

I go back to Noah’s story about replacing his father by manipulating the board of directors from his website: was that true? Seems like Horace is still very much in charge, of The Investors at least.

I’ve been thinking about this too – Horace seems like the kind of father who would let Noah believe he was taking charge… Only to turn around and prove that he was never in control and Horace was always pulling the strings. Too much game playing and toxic fathering going on. No wonder Noah is the conflicted and confused soul we know and love (or love to hate).

I think the subtext here, if one buys into the Jesus theory, is that Noah and Horace are Predeterminists. Noah is reluctantly so, and I think his actions are a rebellion against it, to make something of his life by making us make something of our lives. He is telling us we have agency and to use it. Horace says he is talking about his son, as far as his life being planned out. I think Noah knows he is to be sacrificed. Jesus prophesized his own death twice, I think.

Horace seems to infer that we do not have agency and to submit to The Matrix [even though sugar is sugar, and the high fructose corn syrup scare is just that, a scare with no scientific basis. But I digress].

And nobody really answered the question. Everyone is rejecting the question which I think is worth pondering. IF your life was predetermined, what would you do? Would single acts matter?

It sounds to me like there is a rift in philosophy here. Horace is a Predeterminist. Noah is…something else.

I’ve always found this an incredibly interesting topic of discussion. I believe that we DO have the power to change our own lives. That the decisions we make are indeed our own, that no outside power gets to make that choice.

BUT, and this is a big one, those decisions are absolutely swayed by outside sources. How we were raised, the events that occurred leading up to the decision, our morals and values (which are also shaped my our culture and environment). The final call is ours to make, but how we make that call is built on years and years and years of being shaped as a person.

Is our fate already decided? Or is it truly in our hands to decide? Little of column A, little of column B.

Free will has always been a given for me, but lately, since I started reading Alan Moore’s Jerusalem (which is all about how everything is predetermined and free will doesn’t exist), I’ve felt almost like I don’t want to believe in free will. There’s something comforting about the idea that none of your choices matter, because they’re not really your choices and there can be no other outcome. That said, I tend to agree with Bryan. Horace’s uses of words like “television” and “high fructose corn syrup” suggest to me that he’s being facetious, that it’s a sort of reverse psychology. Unless that’s what he wants us to think, and it’s reverse reverse psychology.

@larry Well, hmm, to actually answer the question…what would I do if every one of my choices was already predetermined, down to my choice of coffee or tea for the next sixty years? It would be quite dark. How do we define self? I think we define ourselves by the choices we make. We pick favorite colors, favorite meals, favorite music. “I am this person who loves this, goes after this, is friend to this person, believes in this thing, is hoping for this, does this in her free time, prefers this over this”. I think we take for granted how much of our self identity comes down to the very little decisions we have started making about who we are as people from the time we were very young. If you lose you sense of choice, you lose your sense of self. What happens when you lose your sense of self-ness? I think suicide follows that :/ Well, actually, no, because even suicide would be a choice. I think you’d just sink into a state of vegetation, which it sounds like Horace is into 😮

• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by Cassandra.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by Cassandra.

It would be much easier if you would all realize that your actions simply don’t matter. You have NO POWER AND YOU NEVER WILL

False.
That is all.

Predetermination is a lousy thought.
To think that none of the choices we make will ever truly be our own is hogwash as far as I’m concerned.
While certain things may be predestined to some degree, I will never buy into the idea that every single thought and action we ever have is already decided.

I prefer to think of it like forks of possibility. The main “storyline” of life and our collective timeline may have limited options but I feel that while some paths may be predestined, it’s the little choices that are made that determine which fork our collective timeline goes down.

Apathy is what Horace seems to be calling for. Of course the one “pulling the strings” would attempt to ensure that all their little marionette’s danced to the tune they play.

I also like the reverse psychology theory. Perhaps in knowing the rebelliousness of some of the participants, this was an attempt to actually break apathy rather than encourage it.

Mmmmm. High fructose corn syrup. It goes well with hormone fed beef or arsenic laden chicken prepared with glyphosate ridden GMO vegetables fried in GMO extracted canola oil. Make sure that you stay away from that nasty cold pressed coconut oil. Peer reviewed studies funded by the canola industry say it’s bad so it must be true.

If your entire life was predetermined for you, if you had very little choice of where you would end up in your life and if all of your beliefs were predetermined and molded for you, would you still believe your life had purpose or that your actions on any single day meant anything at all?

Analyzing – This seems to me more of the generic “you were made for this one purpose” which in this case, and going with the theory, that Noah’s destiny is to be sacrificed. Also going with the family “business” and whatnot, but that seems less relevant right now.
It’s strange because wouldn’t your purpose be pre-determined, such as we speculate Noah’s to be? Isn’t that in and of itself, purposeful? It’s strange to me that he said this, cause even if he sees Noah’s life as something to throw away- it still serves a purpose.
Personal Answer – Yes, I believe that your life COULD still mean something. If you were given a hard death date, you could use that time to do what makes you happy (selfishly with corn syrup) or you could do what Noah is doing and affect other’s lives. Make them better. Which is an incredible thing to do.

Putting this quote here –

“There will come a time,” I said, “when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever die anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten all of this”—I gestured encompassingly—“will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.

Yes, in the grand scheme of things, everything we do will eventually not matter because one day our entire race will be gone. And some people fixate on that, and think less of what lives can be. Other people ignore that, and try to make whatever mark they can on the world they know in the moment.
This relates back to when I was being sacrificed in ascension, and I was asked to say my final goodbyes. Besides pissing them off because I wasn’t being emotional enough- my interaction with the other sacrifice (plant) after @nothenrygale and Andrew (people who asked me the question) left seems relevant to this.
She asked me if what I said was true, and if I didn’t actually care if I died. I told her, honestly, it was true. And this reasoning is because I have done enough in my life, affected enough people, to be at peace with dying at any moment. That’s what I thought my life was made for, and I reached my goal. That’s why I was so comfortable being a sacrifice, and not affected by the thought of not saying goodbye to anyone. But that’s a personal thing, I don’t expect anyone else to feel the same way.

Also I wanted to mention, @shankfx22 that I feel like it’s too much of a coincidence that the only people who Horace called were you and I; and when everyone was deciding BOS or Joyce (before The System came back in all of its glory) we were the ones that said Team Noah.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by Kortney. Reason: fucked up which hannah

@kortneydarling That moment fucked me up GOOD. I was honestly surprised by your response and thought I was being set up to see how I’d react. Hearing your explanation here it makes perfect sense now.