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Secret_Societies.txt
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1996-07-08
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From the Radio Free Michigan archives
ftp://141.209.3.26/pub/patriot
If you have any other files you'd like to contribute, e-mail them to
bj496@Cleveland.Freenet.Edu.
------------------------------------------------
Secret Societies?
>From: cj195@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (John W. Redelfs)
The following is an extract from the article "Secret Societies" in the
1971 edition of ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA.
SECRET SOCIETIES, any of a large range of membership organizations or
associations having secret initiation or other rituals, oaths, grips
(handclasps) or other signs of recognition.
[...] With all their diversity of type and origin, secret societies
have certain characteristics of structure and function in common and
some of their ceremonials reveal surprising similarities.
[...] STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION.--Secret societies are made up, ipso
facto, of persons presumably oriented toward similar ends, and these
ends usually manifest the characteristic differentiatin secret
societies from all others--that is to say, the ends are secret.
Moreover, admission to membership almost always involves the explicit
obligation to preserve such secrecy, and penalties for its violation
are likewise explicitly stated. The explicitness involved may
sometimes apply only to the members of the society, for secrecy may be
so complete that even the existence of some societies are not revealed
to outsiders; revolutionary, heretical and similarly subversive
societies are cases in point. More frequent is partial secrecy: the
existence fo the society is publicly acknowledged or even proclaimed,
as by the Ku Klux Klan (q.v.) in the U.S. after the Civil War and again
in the 1920s and the 1950s and 1960s; at least some of the ends are
made generally known; parts of the society's ceremonial are performed
openly; and public co-operation with other groups having fundamentally
differing ends may occasionally be undertaken.
[...] Many secret societies operate through a system of degrees of
progressively higher rank in which secrets are revealed step by step.
Initiation is therefore hierarchical; members at the higher levels are
more fully aware of the ends pursued by the society than are those at
the lower. Consequently, secrets of recognition are graded. That is
to say, although there is ordinarily a grip, password, ceremonialized
greeting in question and answer form, esoteric phrase, or secret jargon
serving many of the purposes of a special language that distinguishes
even the lowest initiate from nonmenbers, the society has secrets
within secrets. Those more fully initiated make every effort, by the
use of special names, ordeals or revelations, to set themselves apart,
on the one hand, and on the other to stimkulate the lower ranks to the
effort necessary to reach the exalted degrees.
The sedulous preservation of higher secrets serves several other
purposes. For instance, beginning initiates are thereby impressed with
the necessity for silence. Not only is this the case, but the art of
remaining silent without giving offense to fellow members at lower
levels is imparted by direct example. This is especially important
when the "final truth" and the real ends of the society are known only
to those in the more advanced degrees, and even more so when, as in a
few societies, the supreme leaders remain unknown to the rank and file
membership. An essential technique in all of this is that secrets
remain unwritten, so far as possible; they must therfore be transmitted
verbally in a master-pupil situation.
[...] An astonisihing number of secret societies, when thoroughly
investigated, can be shown to have ceremonials testifying to common
origins or, at the very least, remote historical connections.
---=== end of extract ===---
I highly recommend this article to anyone wanting to understand secrect
societies better. There is much more than I have extracted here of
interest to one seeking additional knowledge about secret societies.
How is anything know of secret societies if they are so secret? Why
someone "spills the beans," of course. How can anyone know if the
informant is telling the truth? Ahhh...that is a problem. What is to
prevent a secret society from giving to some member the task of
pretending to defect from the society and spreading misinformation?
Who knows?
What is the point of this exercise? I'd like all to know on
alt.conspiracy that there are secret societies. A secret society could
exist within the Council on Foreign Relations and Ted Frank wouldn't
even know about it. Neither would Chip Berlett. And even if he did
know about it he wouldn't say so.
>From: f_gautjw@ccsvax.sfasu.edu
I think a lot of people have trouble accepting the basic concept of
conspiracy theory because of the type of logic encountered. By their
very nature, conspiracies can seldom be "proved" in the same sense that
a theorem in geometry can be proven. Lacking such deductive iron-clad
proof, many minds discard the available evidence and throw out the
whole conjecture. "Proof" of the existance of a conspiracy involves
various pieces of overlapping evidence whose intersection suggests a
high probability of collusion towards some particular goal. If the
names of the same individuals are cropping up in connection with
certain shrouded activities followed by certain similar rare events
over a long enough period of time, then a high probability of
conspiracy may indeed be there. But one can only "prove" such a
hypothesis in a statistical sense; i.e., given enough information one
might establish to a reasonable mind that there is a 99.9% likelihood
that the mice are indeed after the cheese.
I find it unreasonable that anyone would discredit the basic idea of
"conspiracy theory" although there are obviously those who do it. I
certainly don't find it unreasonable that one might discredit any given
conspiracy theory as we all read the data differently. I ask myself:
Why would anyone discredit the basic concept of conspiracy theory? Are
any of the theories presented on usenet sensitive enough and accurate
enough and receiving broad enough circulation to warrant attention from
any conspirators? Certainly darkness hates even the faintest glimmer
of light. Could someone's attack on conspiracy theory in general [or
against particular important conspiracy theories] be part of a
conspiracy? Could they be on the payroll for this? Could such a
conspirator be unwitting and not think of themselves as being part of a
conspiracy but instead accept the myth that they are doing mankind a
great service by helping to mid-wife a great new age. Is the "New
World Order" far enough along where its proponents can finance
propagandists to tailor articles and rebuttals for specific needs or
does it have enough volunteers who've bought its line and spew forth
its dogma. Certainly its proponents would prefer to usher in such an
era with the appearance of positive social evolution rather than have
an uninformed misled public realize it has been jammed down their
sleeping throats.
If there were such a conspiracy by anti-conspiratorialists, how would
we ever know? We could only suspect. We might see a strange
overlapping of events that gives that high probability intersection
mentioned and then see a barrage of plausible smokescreens and shouts
of "paranoia". We only have to watch an occasional clerk at the market
make change to realize that some in our society are indeed innumerate
and could be expected to have great trouble with a type of logic that
involves concepts of probability.
-Joe Gaut
------------------------------------------------
(This file was found elsewhere on the Internet and uploaded to the
Radio Free Michigan archives by the archive maintainer.
All files are ZIP archives for fast download.
E-mail bj496@Cleveland.Freenet.Edu)