cloudbusters: the friendly skies

Forget rain dancing and prayer. Call cloud busting a different sort of appeal to nature. It is something like a Rube Goldberg apparatus meeting a Marcel Duchamp ready-made. It completes the mundane task of restoring an equilibrium in nature through rather banal objects linked to get a practical function. The problem with all these ideas such as Reich’s orgone engineering and orgone energy is that it puts technology into conflict with the aesthetic rules of the past; the fixed set of do’s and don’t that were established by the high priests of society like an Egyptian cult.

As such, it become easy to ridicule a man like Reich since technology lends itself to connecting aesthetics and sarire; we don’t question our own DNA’s capacity to adapt but rather how technology both embraces us and threatens the individual. This was satired qute cleverly in Jean Tinguely kinetic sculptures and at a theoretical and conceptual level in Marcel Duchamp with his sophisticated ready-made, Large Glass and New Piece , the conceptual interface that formed “the shock of the new”; a kind of shot across the bow that art and trchnology could not be isolated from everyday life and a Walter Benjamin pointed out, the democratizing potential could be both revolutionary and emancipatory.

Reich foresaw that his cloudbuster could puncture holes in the sky and produce extensive precipitation even monsoon or tornado conditions if manipulated by an unskilled person both on a technical and spiritual level. That is, the cloudbuster is an apparatus by which the atmosphere is restored to a condition of self-regulated functioning and not a weather changer that is antagonistic and aggressive towards nature. Philosophically it rubs onto the space of Spinoza and theism. Perhaps. There does exist a concept of atmospheric self-regulation, but whetehr we humans are sufficiently self-regulated ourselves, and liberated from emotional armoring to deal with these forces is and can be questioned.  We tend to be more cloud seeders than cloud dreamers.

( see link) …While many methods have been proposed for weather control, few have been quite as peculiar as the cloudbuster invented by Austrian psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich. This device manipulates Orgone Energy, a cosmic life force which also happens to hold clouds together. It resembles the chi of traditional Chinese belief and has yet to be detected by orthodox science. The cloudbuster is a set of hollow tubes pointing to the sky and “earthed” by a connection to water. It can supposedly form or disperse clouds and cause or prevent rain. Reich’s theories attracted considerable media attention. In 1953, blueberry farmers in Maine offered to pay Reich if he could end a drought that threatened the crop. Reich set up his cloudbuster and operated it for just over an hour; the next morning it started raining, and the crop was saved. Sceptics suggested this was coincidence.Read More:http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2011/jul/06/weatherwatch-cloudbuster

ADDENDUM:

( see link) …Over the last decade or two, Reich’s findings on the existence of a powerful atmospheric energy continuum, which underlies most weather phenomena, have been verified and strengthened. Reich’s invention, the cloudbuster, has been used to break many droughts, and on occasion, to even bring rains to deserts. We know the cloudbuster has a powerful influence, and this has been proven out in any number of systematically-undertaken experiments. When properly used, it can trigger the genesis of large isolated storms, or even entire frontal systems, which can quench parched lands and change a stagnant atmosphere back to its more natural sparkling character. The technique has the general capability of affecting jet stream movements and steering large storms; even hurricanes may be diverted. Cloud cover can be increased to generate widespread rains, and possibly reduced to dry up rains during times of flooding. Fogs can be lifted or created. In skilled hands, the instrument has a variety of effects which can benefit a region, primarily in restoring natural cycles of rainfall to areas of drought or desert. There is evidence cloudbuster-produced rains have a more basic pH, thereby reducing the acidity of rainfall, or it can be used for smog-reduction more generally. However, there is a dark side to all of this, in the potential mis-application and distortion of Reich’s findings….

There currently are two major methods by which Reich’s works are being distorted today, and both fall under the category of what Reich called the Emotional Plague of Mankind, or more simply the Emotional Plague (EP). One is exemplified by the more rigid, protective aspects of the human character, which often casts a suspicious eye towards anything new. This approach kills new findings by attacking them with outright lies, and then repressing them, or simply stomping them to bits, using censorship or Police State tactics. People suffering from this first type of disorder tend to be attracted into high government positions, or into top influential spots in public media or scientific organizations, where they can do a lot of damage to anyone who innoce

comes through their doors offering some new idea or invention which can benefit humankind. This is like the leftist New Republic magazine which attacked Reich with smears, which then provoked similar EP characters as in the US Food and Drug Administration, which used the Big Lie and legal “dirty-tricks” to persuade unsuspecting courts and policeman to “get Reich” and smash him down.

The other method for tearing down a new, disturbing discovery is more devious and hidden, less direct and straightforward, and therefore much more difficult to deal with. This method pretends to be a friend of the new discovery, but is actually secretly at work to kill it. This is done by diluting the discovery with peripheral issues, or injecting it with “friendly lies”, until it is devoid of any power or strength. Parallel to this, the new finding has its core elements cut away, particularly those of a more socially-challenging nature. Proponents of this latter method often pretend to be friendly towards Reich’s works, even though they have ripped the guts out of it. These pretenders also engage in attacks against anyone who does not accept their watered-down or pirated and distorted version as the truth, especially against those who dare to criticize them. Publicly, they may actually spread wild exaggerations, half-truths, or blatant distortions, which are designed, consciously or otherwise, to invoke rational skepticism among professionals and officials who might actually be able to open doors and apply the new discoveries in a rational manner. Instead, the mystic exaggerators attract groups of uncritical salvation-seeking followers, even as new and more extremely wild and unsupportable claims are made. Reich’s work then becomes inappropriately associated with totally crazy things, such as the “chemtrail” claims, or the David Icke fairy-tale novels about “shape-shifting space aliens”. It gets all mixed up with huge government conspiracy theory and other things which go well beyond the rational concerns about air pollution or even the rational examination of ufo phenomenon. And this, of course, obstructs progress in manner that is almost as efficient as censorship, as wherever a serious scientific inquiry about Reich’s work is made in a professional organization, they have already heard about the “crazy Reich” a long time earlier, and nobody wants to hear anything more about it. …. Read More:http://www.orgonelab.org/sobuildaclb.htm