Reddit reviews Secret History Of The World

has anybody read this book ?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-History-World-Jonathan-Black/dp/0857380974

i read it last year it was quite interesting.

Are we the illuminati ? at times I dont feel very illuminated and my ideas and thoughts on the world seem to be at odds with many people i meet.

i often get asked where Im from and my reply of Earth seems to annoy/offend many...

You might be intersted in this

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-History-World-Jonathan-Black/dp/0857380974

I found it a ball ache of a read but sounds like it might be right up your street

>The noise, industrial, and esoteric circles are filled with people who have pretensions of knowing things about history, sociology, religion, philosophy, etc. But all they know is tiny smattering of fringe trivia. Robust knowledge on any of the topics they claim interest in is rare, and they have a stripped down cartoon view of history shorn of any and all context. It can be useful and enlightening to examine the fringes and the extremes and learn things about society from those, but a lot of people seem to ONLY be interested in the fringes and the extremes. To the point that they have no idea how it interacts with the larger social conversation or its place in this historical dialectic.

I would definitely agree here. The problem I think is not just that focus on the extremes; you can make good art out of the extremities of human experience, it's more the lack of depth, of any sort of intellectually serious engagement. I mean, there's two types of people interested in the occult and it's history; there's people who read books like this and this, and there's people who read books like this and this. The same with any 'dark' topic; murder, sexual fetishism, war and genocide, and so on and so on; the lurid and extreme attracts lurid and extreme writing, often penned by Garth Marenghi like characters who've 'written more books than they've read'. You need to be able to hack through the bullshit, and a lot of that comes, as you say, from having a knowledge of the broader history. I mean, I say this as someone who has made art books about true crime and the occult, for full disclosure.

> (and one single in particular, and you might know which one I mean) have REALLY put me on edge.

As you're American, I'm going to guess Klan Kountry, which I haven't heard actually. I only have a couple of their albums; unfortunately not only are they obviously either fascists or tasteless, they're not actually very good. Anenzephalia is a little better. Actually, looking at the details of that release, I can definitely see why you'd steer clear. In fact, most of the stuff on Tesco Organisation is kind of second rate, and I've heard bad things about the label generally. As for Deutsch Nepal, I'm really not sure; I've never read much about them, but the name seems to be a possible nod to Nazi mysticism, plus there's the use of swastika-like imagery on the covers of A Silent Siege and Erotikon. It's not that much, compared to some of the others, but enough perhaps.

> He would probably find it even more strange that he's so admired by a person like me who does My Little Pony fanart.

Now that, I'm sure s/he'd get completely; GPO knows the ins and outs of fannish obsession with h/er Brian Jones thing. Read the liner notes to Godstar: Thee Director's Cut sometime if you get a chance.

>I so agree. Coil...I used to be obsessed with them, and from 1999-2001 tried to gather up as much of their discography as I could. I think most of it is in my closet right now since our apartment doesn't have a lot of places to store cd's. One of my goals is to eventually go back and get as much of their complete discography as I can. I've been fascinated with them ever since I was in high school and read an interview in Trent Reznor in which he discussed how much they influenced his music. Something about what he said intrigued me, and when I finally heard them I was entranced.

My obsession goes back a similiar way for me, though I'm a touch younger than you I think...I started listening to Coil just in time for Jhon's death, but not that I could actually get to see them, which I will probably always regret. The footage of those late gigs... and of course the recordings...can you imagine having been there in the audience during the recording of ...And The Ambulance Died in His Arms? Just thinking about it gives me chills. I think they were just a perfect musical duo; Christopherson had a very sophisticated and innovative approach to electronic music, and Balance just had that...intensity. I think that's something that so many of the pale imitators in industrial and related things miss. It's one thing that has always made the best Current 93 stuff stand out to me as well; especially listening to some of the best live recordings, it's clear that, whatever else you might think about Dave Tibet (nutter, crypto-fascist, can't sing, too Christian, not Christian enough) he's really not phoning it in. His performance is so utterly demented and broken at times (Black Ships Ate The Sky is a great example) that personally I can't help but be compelled. Maybe that's a bit of a trick, but I don't think so.

>these guys actually knew a lot about art and music history, and understood a lot about modern art and why it was important. Even a guy as abrasive and intentionally silly and lo-fi as Monte Cazazza, I'm pretty sure, actually went to art school.

Yeah, Cazazza definitely went to art school; such an overlooked hero of early industrial for me. I love how damned entertaining he makes his cartoon misanthropy; If Thoughts Could Kill is a great song to listen to on the bus on a rainy morning. And of course, GPO and Cosey Fanni Tutti had been doing gallery shows and performance art as COUM Transmissions for years before TG was even a thing.