When 'Ramtha' devotees notice JZK’s act leaking through... Confirmation bias steps in and scuttles critical thinking
Confirmation bias is the tendency to favor information that confirms one's beliefs rather than the facts..
However, not all RSE followers are suffering from this horrid condition.
For those feeding off JZ Knights table and lording it over others, its more a lust for power, fueled by predatory greed and indifference.
Perhaps a mental disorder also?
David
Confirmation Bias: 3 Effective Cures | Head Smart | Global Cognition
Christopher Cook | July 23 2014 / Western Free Press
C’mon, JZ Knight . . . How Many Accents Does Ramtha Have?
Introduction
JZ Knight is a cult leader best-known for channeling “Ramtha,” a 35,000-year-old enlightened soul from the lost continent of Lemuria. She has been involved in numerous scams and controversies. Most recently, she has become infamous for a series of racist, anti-Catholic, and anti-Semitic statements caught on video during presentations to her followers at Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment. She is a major donor to Democrats, who have repeatedly taken her contributions in spite of full knowledge of her controversial statements and history.
Of course, the political angle here is of interest. The double standards at work in this country are amazing—if Knight were a donor to Republicans, her racism, insanity, and serial fraudulent activities would be national news, and it would be career-ending for any politician who did not immediately disassociate himself from her.
But there is another angle as well. If there is any such thing as enlightened souls from lost continents who have wisdom to impart, it seems highly unlikely that JZ Knight is channeling one, or has ever channeled one. The odds are far greater that she has simply discovered a way to bilk enlightenment-seekers of their money, and to drink lots of wine in the process.
If Knight is making the whole thing up, then her followers deserve to know and make an informed decision about their continued adherence to her cult. And I believe that her video presentations contain evidence that points in that very direction. The answer is right there, in Ramtha’s voice.
An Easy Discovery
JZ Knight is the poster-child for a dubious distinction. She proves—and has been proving for decades—that no matter how inane you sound or how demonstrably phony you are, if you start a cult, people will trip over themselves t0 empty their pockets into your bulging (probably offshore) bank accounts. Still, you would think that her followers, who have included celebrities like Salma Hayek, Linda Evans, Mike Farrell, and others, would have been able to spot the simple inconsistency that I, with only a few minutes of research, just discovered.
While investigating Knight using the simplest of Google searches, I ran across Knight’s 1985 appearance on the Merv Griffin Show. Watching it, I immediately noticed something striking: Ramtha’s accent in 1985 is decidedly different from “his” accent in videos from later years. So I started watching other videos of Knight channeling Ramtha and discovered that Ramtha’s accent is, in fact, highly variable.
Let’s do a quick survey, shall we?
1985: Ramtha sounds like a cross between Marvin the Martian and the Pankot Palace dude from Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom:
Fast forward to 2009, and we find that Ramtha’s accent has changed . . . a lot:
As you can see, the difference between 1985 and 2009 isn’t subtle—it’s chasmic. But there are also inconsistencies within the 2009 appearance above, from moment to moment.
At 0:09, Ramtha is sounding rather South African. (Curious, since Knight was channeling him in South Africa at that time . . . unconscious mimicry, perhaps?)
However, if you were hoping to at least find a new consistency in Ramtha’s new accent, your hopes are soon dashed. Seconds later, Ramtha/Knight lapses back into the rather lame imitation of a generic English accent that characterizes much of his/her speech. Then, at 0:22, on the word “computer,” Ramtha/Knight sounds positively South African again. But only for a moment . . .
. . . because at 0:29, the glottal stop at the end of the word “got” comes across positively cockney . . . or perhaps more like someone from south-central Connecticut, right around the town of New Britain (“New Bri!ain” said with a glottal stop where the T should be, natch).
Knight quickly lapses back into her lame, quasi-English accent, but then, for no apparent reason, at 0:40, she trills the r in “brain.” She doesn’t trill all her other Rs, but for some reason, she does there.
Of course, by now, the reason should be obvious: Knight is trying to give Ramtha an accent that is different than her natural American accent, but she isn’t very good at it. In fact, I recently saw a middle-school performance of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and most of the kids’ accents were way better, and way more consistent.
But the fun does not end there. By 0:46, she’s South African again, for the word “part” in “part of the brain.” (Note that this time, she does not trill the R in “brain.”) A few seconds later, when she says “peels its information off,” all accents are gone, and she sounds American again—the lax vowel sound in “off” sounding a touch like western New York or somewhere in the upper midwest. Soon, she’s back to trilling her Rs again—but just on “brain.”
Then, at 1:29, when she tries to pronounce “corpus callosum,” it all just pretty much falls apart. What was that she called it? The Copa Calypso? Isn’t that where my wife and I went for our honeymoon?
At this point, I was going to move on to the next video, but being a glutton for punishment, I stayed with it and I’m so glad I did, because I came across a real gem. Start around 1:39 and then listen to the word, “whatever” at 1:44. For a moment, Knight stops channeling Ramtha and instead channels a Valley Girl with partial amnesia who has awoken to find herself a member of a gang of toughs in a dead-rough part of London!
Finally, notice in the 2009 video how “Ramtha” seems to be able to talk about really technical stuff, and yet occasionally drops the direct article before words like “computer,” as if it’s some strange technology unknown to the immeasurably ancient Ramtha.
Consistency, its seems, is not Ramtha/Knight’s strong suit.
Fast forward just two years, and things change again. For the first 50 seconds or so, it looks like she’s forgotten that Ramtha has any accent at all! Then, rather suddenly, right there around 0:52, it’s like she remembers that it’s an act, and she’d better stop phoning it in. Quick, the rubes from Marin County are on to you! Start selling Ramtha again!
And so she does, until she says, “I refer them to Wall Street, and to the bankers,” at around 1:48. Halfway through that sentence, it begins to fall apart again, until she hits the word “bankers.” At that point, she’s American as non-GMO apple pie, Chevrolet bailouts, and concussion-free football.
Then, at around 2;18, Ramtha takes a quick jaunt over to Ireland for “no one can take dat from you.” Suddenly she’s turning what would be the interdental TH sound in “that” into a something approximating the alveolar flapped T one might hear on a T’ursday on Dame St. in Dublin.
In 1985, she sounded like a somewhat goofy, quasi-enlightened swami who learned to speak English in a British school in Colonial India. A quarter century later, Ramtha is a hate-filled drunk whose accent is almost completely gone.
I cannot keep doing this, because if I laugh any harder, the neighbors are going to call the cops. Just keep watching the videos, and Ramtha will take you on a journey that spans the globe, from South Africa to South Bend, from Ireland to Aukland, from Australia to England, India, Jamaica, and beyond. The message is clear: In the decades that JZ Knight has been bilking guru-wannabees, she hasn’t gotten the least bit better at faking accents.
Draw your own conclusions as needed.
C’mon, JZ Knight . . . How Many Accents Does Ramtha Have?
Christopher Cook | July 23 2014 / Western Free Press
http://www.westernfreepress.com/2014/07 ... mtha-have/
http://www.globalcognition.org/head-sma ... as-3-cures
Confirmation bias - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias