What is the meaning of it all?

A crucial missing dimension that I see in the seemingly all-embracing narrative that makes up David Icke’s ‘big picture’ is that whilst he exposes a lot about what  has been and is happening in the world and also how - by what means - he has very little to say about the ‘why’ – the meaning of it all. The danger that results is one of reducing the entire historic development and rich diversity of human consciousness, civilisations, cultures, religions and philosophies, arts and sciences, symbol systems and social structures to a single, impoverishing ‘meaning’ i.e. an on-going pursuit for world domination on the part of a malign species or set of ‘bloodlines’ – in other words to yet another plain old simplistic narrative of which reduces the entire  meaning of human history to the old story of an on-going battle between good and evil - rather than to an immense, rich and multi-levelled learning process designed to ultimately lead humanity to a higher state of consciousness - even if only through learning by error and often in the hardest and most appalling ways. 

Another danger I see in Icke’s picture  is that by focussing so intently on the machinations, past and present of what he sees as the enemies of mankind and  its agents etc. he effectively buys into their own most fundamental belief what I call the ‘delusion of agency’. This is belief in an ego (the eye and ‘I’ of the pyramid) that can initiate and carry out actions in the world whilst being itself independent of action as such – for example whatever else is going on the world. Indeed what we call the ‘ego’ or ‘ego-consciousness’ is this very delusion of an independent and omnipotent agent or initiator of action both separate from and capable of ruling over the world and the actions of others i.e. that not itself being a part of that world, and therefore able to act upon and transform it without itself being acted on by it. Philosophers have long criticised this Cartesian concept of an individual ego or ‘subject’ of consciousness separate from and independent of its objects and of the world – but without need to symbolise this delusory separateness through idea of separate other-worldly or extra-terrestrial powers, forces or species and their ‘agents’.  

The problem however, is that for all his ‘connecting of dots’, Icke is not, in the last analysis, a thinker – for  he does not seek to conceptualise in a deeper way the larger picture or pictures he sees in those dots  – which hold a far deeper and richer meaning than the one he reduces it too. He is like someone who will look at a great piece of art and yet, rather than appreciating its sensual beauty, will reduce it to some symbol or symbols he detects in it that forms part of a ‘synchronous’ network of other symbols. Artistic balance, harmony and truth is the very opposite of just ‘connecting dots’, ‘colouring in’.  The danger however, of any world view based on observing ‘synchronicities’ is that – as David has found out – one apparent synchronicity leads to another, and then another.  The resulting picture however, depends entirely on the types of synchronicity that – just by focussing on or seeking – one inevitably finds. Thus someone who is convinced that he can read a hidden code within and  behind all numbers – whether car number plates, historic dates or by allocating numbers to letters and words, will inevitably find ‘evidence’ of this code everywhere - because that it what he has learned to look for. In this respect, however expansive David’s research has been, in some ways his search for and accumulation of 'synchronicities' in the facts he has amassed and ‘connected up’ is the very thing that can tend to impoverish and simplify the meaning he finds in them. In this respect, he and many others are like people rightly proud to have put together countless pieces of a huge jigsaw puzzle - one based on a wonderful and extraordinarily rich and deep work of art – but having done so fail even to begin to appreciate the rich and multi-levelled meaning of the great artwork (or philosophical treatise, or historical analysis) which the completed jigsaw reveals. Instead they see another picture entirely. This is a picture shaped by the connections they are seeking to make, as well as by the ‘delusion of agency’ that defines ego consciousness – an illusion that would have us believe that the art work - or any object, action or event in the world - can be ‘created’ or 'enacted' ex nihilo by the human 'ego' or 'I' - rather than emerging from a larger and deeper awareness transcending that ego. Again, the danger here is falling into identification with the basic delusion of the human ego and human ego-consciousness that is defines the egotistic ruling elites and cabals that Icke seeks to counter.

The basic idea of the ego as the initiator or ‘agent’ of all action and creation, leads to a picture of the world in which explanations of all the ills of the world are sought in form of some ultimate agent of action - for example a divinised super-ego in the form of a god (Jehovah) or fallen angel (Lucifer). Marx and many other great thinkers avoided this age-old mistake of seeing some individual, group or cabal as the key actors or ‘agents’ operating in the world – recognising instead that, for example, it is ultimately the capitalist system and the system of beliefs on which it is based that rules the actions of individual capitalists or their ruling ‘cabals’– not the other way round. It is of profound importance therefore to recognise that ruling elites of all sorts and throughout history – however one sees or conceives them – are as much a part of and as much ruled by the very system or world they appear to rule over, as they seem to actually rule over it. Yet when historic facts seem all too clearly and self-evidently to point to the world being ruled by particular agents  - by the calculated action of particular individuals, cabals or elites - this point (that they themselves are ruled by what they appear to rule) all-too easily forgotten. That is why, through the ages in which ego-consciousness became ever-more dominant - to the point of actually shaping the world  'in its image' like a God - individual, groups and communities of human beings have constantly sought to find a cause for any or all of their afflictions in the actions or agents some other individual or group – whether those of another class, caste, tribe, race, community or nation. 

Ego-consciousness, by nature always seeks the causes of events in otherness – in some  ‘foreign’, ‘alien’ or ‘evil’ alter-ego with which it must then do battle. The good-old  battle of ‘good and evil’ or ‘us’ versus ‘them’ then, is essentially the outward expression of an unconscious battle of ego versus alter-ego, or of ego versus some sort of super-ego in the form of a god or demonic ruling power. That does not mean there are not ruling powers, both groups and individuals, so identified with the ego and so egotistic as to virtually lack any positive human features whatsoever. That is also not to say that such ruling powers may not also seek to bolster themselves by a delusory identification with either a divine or a demonic ‘super-ego’. All the more important then, not to take their delusions of divine or demonic power seriously! For the only thing they can actually threaten is our own ego. That is also why it is so important to remember, with all the destruction being wrought on the world, nature and human beings  - today and in the past – that no individual, group or species consciousness can actually ever be destroyed, for all consciousnesses are, in principle, and unlike the human ego -  eternal. Since all species of life are essentially species of consciousness, no species can actually be wiped out by human beings – all that happens is that these species continue their existence on another plane, leaving our plane and planet impoverished. It is our loss more than theirs. On a bigger scale, the human race has wiped out itself and our planet many times – but that does not mean that even a single human consciousness was ever wiped out. Instead the human species – as a species of consciousness, simply withdrew to another plane in order to then start the human adventure again, by literally re-manifesting the planet and human race. If this happens again – as it might well do – not a single human soul or consciousness will be destroyed in the process – and something important will have been learned for future adventures in earth life and human consciousness.