On August 3rd RTF member Sue Wali delivered a presentation titled ‘From Cybernetics to the Counter Culture and the New Age Movement to the Oracle of AI’.

I asked Sue to write up a description of her class which is featured below: The West experienced seismic cultural shifts from the 1950s through the 1980s marked by the rise of counterculture and new age movements. This led to an unprecedented overturning of traditions, norms, values and social attitudes. This was not an organic movement, but was implemented and led by British secret intelligence agencies and social engineers to bring about a deep restructuring of Western civilization through the mass manipulation of society. We will explore some of the ideas and people who played a role in this remaking of Western culture and to what end.

Norbert Wiener founded the field of cybernetics based upon the idea that the system – biological systems, the human brain – could work like a mechanical system, and that you can reprogram it, give it goals and a purpose. With the ‘man as machine’ metaphor as their basis, a group of Tavistokian aligned British socio-cyberneticists came together at the Macy Conferences with a diabolic mission to create the ultimate engineered society.

Many of the psychological warfare and mind control tactics studied by Gregory Bateson and other ‘controllers’ would be turned on an unsuspecting public to socially engineer the Counter Culture Movement of the 60s.

The next phase of this operation was to shape a new spiritual movement that could be manipulated and used to nudge the public towards aligning with the United Nations Vision of One Humanity and acceptance of a planetary governance structure. With the Rockefeller financial backing of ideas around a new planetary culture, collective consciousness and a Nature based ethics, the New Age Movement was launched in the late 70s and into the 80s.

We will explore the tenants of the esoteric spiritual traditions and practices that were introduced through the New Age Movement and to what purpose and effect.