RULE BY SECRECY

Rule by Secrecy, Jim Marrs, HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 2000, 410 pp

I heard about this book from my son. It is a wild and yet believable tale, based on a vast amount of research, about what is really going on here on Earth, about who is really running the world and about the origin of the human race. It is the ultimate conspiracy theory book and based on all I have learned in my life so far, I think it makes a lot of sense.

I can hardly expect that very many people in the world would take this book seriously. I think the information presented would be met with ridicule and scoffing; that readers would think he made it up. Marrs' data challenges so many cherished yet unexamined beliefs, both political and religious.

There is such a surfeit of information in these 410 pages that it was difficult to take it all in and sometimes the overwhelm of it all left me feeling bored. I know my world history better than I did ten years ago due to all the reading I've done, but this book showed me how much I don't know yet. So sometimes I found it difficult to track with the historical events that Marrs was putting into the context of conspiracy. However, he does show how every war in history was created by certain parties with the goal of making fortunes.

It left me with a new way of reading the news and interpreting world events. As many religions have taught, all is illusion. Truly in politics, wars, finance and even science, nothing is what it seems and every individual who thinks or hopes he or she is in charge of his or her destiny is probably kidding himself or herself.

What can be done if all this is true? Possibly nothing. As a prisoner faces his executioner, is it better that he truly knows what led him to that moment? Personally I believe that it is. Could he have changed the course of his life had he known all? Possibly not. Every human being has to pass through death at some point. But why not acquire as much knowledge as one can in a lifetime and keep alive in the world the hope that life is meaningful and that freedom is possible?