Neo Codex

Weaponizing Mozart: How Britain is using classical music as a form of social control

2010-03-01T05:48:00.000-08:00

http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/24/weoponizing-mozart/

Brenday O'Niell
Reason.com
Fri, 26 Feb 2010 22:02 EST

In recent years Britain has become the Willy Wonka of social control, churning out increasingly creepy, bizarre, and fantastic methods for policing the populace. But our weaponization of classical music - where Mozart, Beethoven, and other greats have been turned into tools of state repression - marks a new low.

We're already the kings of CCTV. An estimated 20 per cent of the world's CCTV cameras are in the UK, a remarkable achievement for an island that occupies only 0.2 per cent of the world's inhabitable landmass.

A few years ago some local authorities introduced the Mosquito, a gadget that emits a noise that sounds like a faint buzz to people over the age of 20 but which is so high-pitched, so piercing, and so unbearable to the delicate ear drums of anyone under 20 that they cannot remain in earshot. It's designed to drive away unruly youth from public spaces, yet is so brutally indiscriminate that it also drives away good kids, terrifies toddlers, and wakes sleeping babes.

Police in the West of England recently started using super-bright halogen lights to temporarily blind misbehaving youngsters. From helicopters, the cops beam the spotlights at youths drinking or loitering in parks, in the hope that they will become so bamboozled that (when they recover their eyesight) they will stagger home.

And recently police in Liverpool boasted about making Britain's first-ever arrest by unmanned flying drone. Inspired, it seems, by Britain and America's robot planes in Afghanistan, the Liverpool cops used a remote-control helicopter fitted with CCTV (of course) to catch a car thief.

Britain might not make steel anymore, or cars, or pop music worth listening to, but, boy, are we world-beaters when it comes to tyranny. And now classical music, which was once taught to young people as a way of elevating their minds and tingling their souls, is being mined for its potential as a deterrent against bad behavior.

In January it was revealed that West Park School, in Derby in the midlands of England, was "subjecting" (its words) badly behaved children to Mozart and others. In "special detentions," the children are forced to endure two hours of classical music both as a relaxant (the headmaster claims it calms them down) and as a deterrent against future bad behavior (apparently the number of disruptive pupils has fallen by 60 per cent since the detentions were introduced.)

One news report says some of the children who have endured this Mozart authoritarianism now find classical music unbearable. As one critical commentator said, they will probably "go into adulthood associating great music - the most bewitchingly lovely sounds on Earth - with a punitive slap on the chops." This is what passes for education in Britain today: teaching kids to think "Danger!" whenever they hear Mozart's Requiem or some other piece of musical genius.

The classical music detentions at West Park School are only the latest experiment in using and abusing some of humanity's greatest cultural achievements to reprimand youth.

Across the UK, local councils and other public institutions now play recorded classical music through speakers at bus-stops, in parking lots, outside department stores, and elsewhere. No, not because they think the public will appreciate these sweet sounds (they think we are uncultured grunts), but because they hope it will make naughty youngsters flee.

Tyne and Wear in the north of England was one of the first parts of the UK to weaponize classical music. In the early 2000s, the local railway company decided to do something about the "problem" of "youths hanging around" its train stations. The young people were "not getting up to criminal activities," admitted Tyne and Wear Metro, but they were "swearing, smoking at stations and harassing passengers." So the railway company unleashed "blasts of Mozart and Vivaldi."

Apparently it was a roaring success. The youth fled. "They seem to loathe [the music]," said the proud railway guy. "It's pretty uncool to be seen hanging around somewhere when Mozart is playing." He said the most successful deterrent music included the Pastoral Symphony by Beethoven, Symphony No. 2 by Rachmaninov, and Piano Concerto No. 2 by Shostakovich. (That last one I can kind of understand.)

In Yorkshire in the north of England, the local council has started playing classical music through vandal-proof speakers at "troublesome bus-stops" between 7:30 PM and 11:30 PM. Shops in Worcester, Bristol, and North Wales have also taken to "firing out" bursts of classical music to ward of feckless youngsters.

In Holywood (in County Down in Northern Ireland, not to be confused with Hollywood in California), local businesspeople encouraged the council to pipe classical music as a way of getting rid of youngsters who were spitting in the street and doing graffiti. And apparently classical music defeats street art: The graffiti levels fell.

Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of an elite using high culture as a "punitive slap on the chops" for low youth has come true. In Burgess's 1962 dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange, famously filmed by Stanley Kubrick in 1971, the unruly youngster Alex is subjected to "the Ludovico Technique" by the crazed authorities. Forced to take drugs that induce nausea and to watch graphically violent movies for two weeks, while simultaneously listening to Beethoven, Alex is slowly rewired and re-moulded. But he rebels, especially against the use of classical music as punishment.

Pleading with his therapists to turn the music off, he tells them that "Ludwig van" did nothing wrong, he "only made music." He tells the doctors it's a sin to turn him against Beethoven and take away his love of music. But they ignore him. At the end of it all, Alex is no longer able to listen to his favorite music without feeling distressed. A bit like that schoolboy in Derby who now sticks his fingers in his ears when he hears Mozart.

The weaponization of classical music speaks volumes about the British elite's authoritarianism and cultural backwardness. They're so desperate to control youth - but from a distance, without actually having to engage with them - that they will film their every move, fire high-pitched noises in their ears, shine lights in their eyes, and bombard them with Mozart. And they have so little faith in young people's intellectual abilities, in their capacity and their willingness to engage with humanity's highest forms of art, that they imagine Beethoven and Mozart and others will be repugnant to young ears. Of course, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The dangerous message being sent to young people is clear: 1) you are scum; 2) classical music is not a wonder of the human world, it's a repellent against mildly anti-social behavior.

Why Psychiatry Needs Therapy

2010-02-27T07:33:00.000-08:00

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704188104575083700227601116.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

FEBRUARY 27, 2010
A manual's draft reflects how diagnoses have grown foggier, drugs more ineffective
By EDWARD SHORTER

To flip through the latest draft of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, in the works for seven years now, is to see the discipline's floundering writ large. Psychiatry seems to have lost its way in a forest of poorly verified diagnoses and ineffectual medications. Patients who seek psychiatric help today for mood disorders stand a good chance of being diagnosed with a disease that doesn't exist and treated with a medication little more effective than a placebo.

Psychopharmacology, or the treatment of the mind and brain with drugs, has come to dominate the field. The positive side is that many illnesses respond readily to medication. The negative side is that the pharmaceutical industry seeks the largest possible market for a given drug, and advertises huge diseases, such as major depression and schizophrenia, the scientific status of which makes insiders uneasy.

In the 1950s and '60s, when psychiatry was still under the influence of the European scientific tradition, reasonably accurate diagnoses still sat at center stage. If you felt blue, uneasy and generally jumpy, "nerves" was a common diagnosis. For the psychotherapeutically oriented psychiatrists of the day, "psychoneurosis" was the equivalent of nerves. There was no point in breaking these terms down: clinicians and patients alike understood "a case of nerves," or a "nervous breakdown."

Our psychopathological lingo today offers little improvement on these sturdy terms. A patient with the same symptoms today might be told he has "social anxiety disorder" or "seasonal affective disorder." The increased specificity is spurious. There is little risk of misdiagnosis, because the new disorders all respond to the same drugs, so in terms of treatment, the differentiation is meaningless and of benefit mainly to pharmaceutical companies that market drugs for these niches.

For those more seriously ill, contemplating suicide or pacing restlessly and saying "It's all my fault," melancholia was the diagnosis of choice. The term has been around for donkey's years.

All the serious disorders of mood were once lumped together technically as "manic-depressive illness"—and again, there was little point in differentiating, because medications such as lithium that worked for mania were also sometimes effective in forestalling renewed episodes of serious depression.

Psychopharmacology—the treatment of disorders of the mind and brain with drugs—was experiencing its first big push, and a host of effective new agents was marketed. The first blockbuster drug in psychiatry appeared in 1955 as Wallace Lab's Miltown, a "tranquilizer" of the dicarbamate class. The first of the "tricyclic antidepressants" (because of their chemical structure) was launched in the U.S. in 1959, called imipramine generically and Tofranil by brand name. It remains today the single most effective antidepressant on the market for the immediate treatment of serious depression.

In the 1960s an entirely different class of drugs appeared, the benzodiazepines, indicated for anxiety rather than depression. (But one keeps in mind that these indications are more marketing devices than scientific categories, because most depression entails anxiety and vice versa.) In the benzodiazepine class, Librium was launched for anxiety in 1960, Valium in 1963. Despite an undeserved reputation for addictiveness, the benzos remain today one of the most useful drug classes in the history of psychiatry. They are effective across the entire range of nervous illnesses. In one World Health Organization study in the early 1990s, a sample of family physicians world-wide prescribed benzos for 28% of their depressed patients, 31% of their anxious patients; the figures are virtually identical. In the 1950s and '60s physicians had available drugs that truly worked for diseases that actually existed.

And then the golden era came to an end. The 1978 article of British psychiatrist Malcolm Lader on the benzos as "the opium of the masses" would be a good landmark. The patents expired for the drugs of the 1950s and '60s, and the solid diagnoses were all erased from the classification in 1980 with the appearance of the third edition of the DSM series, called "DSM-III." It was largely the brainchild of Columbia University psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, an energetic and charismatic individual who had been schooled in psychometrics. But his energy and charisma nearly led psychiatry off a cliff.

Mr. Spitzer was discouraged with psychoanalysis, and wanted to come up with a new illness classification that would ditch all the old Freudian concepts such as "depressive neurosis" with their implication of "unconscious psychic conflicts." Mr. Spitzer and company wanted diagnoses based on observable symptoms rather than on speculation about the unconscious mind. So he, and members of the Task Force that the American Psychiatric Association designated, set out to devise a new list of diagnoses that correspond to natural disease entities.

Yet Mr. Spitzer ran smack against the politics of the American Psychiatric Association, still heavily influenced by the psychoanalysts. Mr. Spitzer proposed such diagnoses as "major depression" and "dysthymia," diagnoses that were themselves highly heterogeneous, lumping together a number of different kinds of depression. But the terms turned out to be politically acceptable.

So in DSM-III there was a lot of horse-trading. The biologically oriented young Turks got a depression diagnosis—major depression—that was divorced from what they considered the psychoanalytic mumbo-jumbo. And the waning but still substantial number of analysts got a diagnosis—dysthymia—that sounded like their beloved "neurotic depression," that had been the mainstay of psychoanalytic practice. Psychiatry ended up with two brand-new depression diagnoses with criteria so broad that huge numbers of people could qualify for them.

There was one more bow to psychoanalysis: DSM-III continued to make depression separate from anxiety (because the analysts thought anxiety the motor that drove everything). And in homage to several influential figures in European psychiatry, DSM-III brought in "bipolar disorder," a condition alternating between depression and mania thought separate from "major depression."

A word of explanation: The evidence is very strong that the depression of "major depression" and the depression of "bipolar disorder" are the same disease. Experienced clinicians know that in chronic depressive illness many patients will have an episode of mania or hypomania; it is implausible that such an event would change the patient's diagnosis completely from "major depression" to "bipolar disorder," given that they are classified as quite different illnesses.

These rather technical issues in the classification of disease had enormous ramifications in the real world. Bipolar disorder became divorced from unipolar disorder. And anxiety—the original indication for the benzos—became soft-pedaled because the benzos were thought, incorrectly, to be highly addictive, and anxiety became associated with addiction.

Major depression became the big new diagnosis in the 1980s and after, replacing "neurotic depression" and "melancholia," even though it combined melancholic illness and non-melancholic illness. This would be like incorporating tuberculosis and mumps into the same diagnosis, simply because they are both infectious diseases. As well, "bipolar disorder" began its relentless on-march, supposedly separate from plain old depression.

New drugs appeared to match the new diseases. In the late 1980s, the Prozac-type agents began to hit the market, the "SSRIs," or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, such as Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa and Lexapro. They were supposedly effective by increasing the amount of serotonin available to the brain.

The SSRIs are effective for certain indications, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and for some patients with anxiety. But many people believe they're not often effective for serious depression, even though they fit wonderfully with the heterogeneous concept of "major depression." So, hand in hand, these antidepressants and major depression marched off together into the sunset. These were drugs that don't work for diseases that don't exist, as it were.

The latest draft of the DSM fixes none of the problems with the previous DSM series, and even creates some new ones.

A new problem is the extension of "schizophrenia" to a larger population, with "psychosis risk syndrome." Even if you aren't floridly psychotic with hallucinations and delusions, eccentric behavior can nonetheless awaken the suspicion that you might someday become psychotic. Let's say you have "disorganized speech." This would apply to about half of my students. Pour on the Seroquel for "psychosis risk syndrome"!

DSM-V accelerates the trend of making variants on the spectrum of everyday behavior into diseases: turning grief into depression, apprehension into anxiety, and boyishness into hyperactivity.

If there were specific treatments for these various niches, you could argue this is good diagnostics. But, as with other forms of anxiety-depression, the SSRIs are thought good for everything. Yet to market a given indication, such as social-anxiety disorder, it's necessary to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on registration trials to convince the FDA that your agent works for this disease that previously nobody had ever heard of.

DSM-V is not all bad news. It turns the jumble of developmental syndromes for children into a single group of "autism spectrum disorders," which makes sense because previously, with Asperger's as a separate disease, it was like trying to draw lines in a bucket of water. But the basic problems of the previous DSM series are left untouched.

Where is psychiatry headed? What the discipline badly needs is close attention to patients and their individual symptoms, in order to carve out the real diseases from the vast pool of symptoms that DSM keeps reshuffling into different "disorders." This kind of careful attention to what patients actually have is called "psychopathology," and its absence distinguishes American psychiatry from the European tradition. With DSM-V, American psychiatry is headed in exactly the opposite direction: defining ever-widening circles of the population as mentally ill with vague and undifferentiated diagnoses and treating them with powerful drugs.

—Edward Shorter is professor of the history of medicine and psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Toronto. His latest book, written with Max Fink, "Endocrine Psychiatry: Solving the Riddle of Melancholia," is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

"Unplug the Signal"

2010-02-25T16:46:00.000-08:00

http://pupaganda.com/originals/Unplug_the_signal.html

Unplug the Signal: The Truth Will Not Be Televised
Nathan Janes
PUPAGANDA.com

A flow of information is constantly streaming from the television set; a bombardment of words and pictures. The speed at which this information is communicated makes it easy for the signal to take control, switching the viewer's brain to stand-by as information is absorbed without analysis or question. Today the television's constant signal shapes the conclusions of the masses and produces the collective norm. The signal prescribes what is news and what is truth through the words of so-called experts and authorities, gelding the consciousness and independent thoughts of those subjected to it. Through television, the masses can be made to accept the most monstrous distortions of reality. The signal is a chill wind of continuous oppression over the minds of the masses. It controls the management of society and culture, creating uniformity across all subjects.

The fuel for this vehicle of mass deception is a technique known as perception management where an array of psychological techniques are used to alter the truth, leading the viewer to a desired conclusion. Some call this spin or propaganda while others know it as lying. According to Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minister for Adolph Hitler, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it... It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State." Most of what can be found on the nightly news is nothing but advertisements selling more government and a false reality that benefits only those in control. Television is the dictator of information; newspaper and radio are the whisper campaign of the television's message.

It is expected that Americans will consistently prescribe to the doctrine of the television. It is subtly communicated that one should stay within the collective and never challenge the message, for doing so may be considered an aggression towards culture. The message is, "Be a good consumer; always obey authority; you know nothing; listen only to experts; be content and never question or express new ideas." This signal is being broadcast across millions of screens, indoctrinating the unconscious minds of those who choose this as their only reality. Self-censorship occurs when these individuals become so deeply indoctrinated that they are afraid to discuss any information outside the paradigm of television-created culture; they police their thoughts to ensure they won't conflict with this culture. Sadly, many people's reality today does not allow any outside information to process, instead it is written off as conspiracy or blatant lies. Our consciousness has been destroyed so much that fiction has become reality. An entire lifestyle of poisonous foods, pharmaceuticals, and fluoridated water are accepted as safe and sold to us at the cost of our health and well being.

Those of the establishment are using the incredibly powerful weapon of mass psychology as a method of controlling the minds of the masses and altering the behavior of individuals. Edward Bernays, a pioneer in the field of public relations in the 20th century, applied Sigmund Freud's theory of psychoanalysis to manipulate the masses by engineering consent. According to Bernays, "If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it." Advertisers and psychologists of the billion dollar culture creation industry manufacture trends through the proliferation of insecurities; and manipulating desires and emotions. These concepts are also employed to control how individuals think about politics, as well as the possibilities and limitations within society. Those welding power within our streams of mass communication market their plans into each generation as individuals adopt specific ways of thinking and never suspect that all the major events and trends within their lifetime are actually planned by an elite few before they are even born. In our society today, culture is created from the top down. Virtually all forms of culture are created by the ruling class to build a false sense of reality, ensure social compliance, and control the future course of cultural evolution.

Predictive programming is a tool used by the establishment to acclimate the public to new ideas, trends, beliefs, and threats. It is used through television by including certain situations or ideas within the plots of many fictional shows, familiarizing the viewer with these concepts no matter what they may be watching. When similar situations occur or like ideas are circulated in the world we think that these particular things are quite natural for we have unknowingly been made familiar with them through television. By viewing nearly any popular show on television, one can see the same propaganda that will be aired on the nightly news. Propaganda on a wide array of subjects has been interwoven into a great number of television shows. Just a few of these subjects include global warming, vaccinations, torture, terrorism, national security, the militarization of police, and the degradation of the family unit. Through predictive programming, television shapes culture and prevents individuals from asking questions.

Crisis' are created on a daily basis and broadcast across the airwaves to keep individuals in a state of panic and fear. Whether it be the threat of a pandemic or terrorism, the constant state of crisis has created a form of mental illness as we are slowly acclimated into an age of crisis. By using Hegelian dialectic, the television promotes the problem, guides our reaction, and presents the solution. The problem of terrorism was exclaimed, a strong emotional response was evoked, and it was stated that our rights need be sacrificed in order to protect us from the threat. We've lost personal sovereignty under the guise of terrorism; we're stopped and searched; we're watched by cameras as we go about our lives; and we're encouraged to spy on our neighbors. We have been trained to accept the life of a prisoner.

America is in a state of enlightened despotism where most individuals live only to satisfy selfish inner desires and remain ignorant of the state of the world around them. In most public places one can find a television transmitting propaganda around the clock ensuring the masses remain focused on trivial matters. From birth we take the world as it’s presented on television. We don't question it and any serious criticism of TV is becoming psychologically impossible in society. Who would suspect getting born into a world where everything around you is a continuous lie? The youth of today are convinced that the experts and personalities on television are the authority of credible information while parents and older generations are foolish with dated ideas. Children are conditioned to disconnect from what is truly important to their well being and instead focus on mindless trivia, sports, celebrity gossip, and buying an array of material things. They invest their psychological worth in fantasy characters on television while ignoring or even scorning individuals contributing to the betterment of humanity. They are discouraged from getting involved in their local community and often lack the ability to think independently or to resist corruption. As their children's minds are molded by television, there is barely a murmur from the public.

For over half a century, our society has lived under this signal of mental programming and conditioning. The message is clear: don't be a leader, don't engage in critical thinking, and don’t care about the people in your life. Until individuals become aware of the current information war, our standard of living and our liberties will continue to be degraded and we will continue to lose communities and meaningful relationships between people. Currently, pockets of resistance are beginning to spring up everywhere as some unplug the signal and regain control of their own thoughts. Informed individuals are canceling their cable and satellite subscriptions and instead spending time with their families and children while participating in meaningful experiences. They are seeking alternative news sources. They are reading about those who weld incredible influence over culture like Edward Bernays, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Charles Galton Darwin, Plato, Bertrand Russell, and Aldous Huxley. However, it is a continuous battle to educate the masses for the television remains our greatest threat to individual sovereignty and the largest obstacle to becoming a truly informed individual. Fortunately, unplugging from the signal is easy. The television can simply be turned off. Through doing so, you may realize nearly our entire world is now a hoax; things once known as truth are fake. We have been trained like dogs to be obedient to our television; our master has had our minds on a tight leash. Let us never forget the truth will not be televised.

Why We are Susceptible to Manipulation

2010-02-23T14:50:00.000-08:00

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/02/evolve-or-lose-our-humanity.html

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Biologists and sociologists tell us that our brains evolved in small groups or tribes.

As one example of how profoundly the small-group environment affected our brains, Daily Galaxy points out:
Research shows that one of the most powerful ways to stimulate more buying is celebrity endorsement. Neurologists at Erasmus University in Rotterdam report that our ability to weigh desirability and value doesn’t function normally if an item is endorsed by a well-known face. This lights up the brain’s dorsal claudate nucleus, which is involved in trust and learning. Areas linked to longer-term memory storage also fire up. Our minds overidentify with celebrities because we evolved in small tribes. If you knew someone, then they knew you. If you didn’t attack each other, you were probably pals.

Our minds still work this way, giving us the idea that the celebs we keep seeing are our acquaintances. And we want to be like them, because we’ve evolved to hate being out of the in-crowd. Brain scans show that social rejection activates brain areas that generate physical pain, probably because in prehistory tribal exclusion was tantamount to a death sentence. And scans by the National Institute of Mental Health show that when we feel socially inferior, two brain regions become more active: the insula and the ventral striatum. The insula is involved with the gut-sinking sensation you get when you feel that small. The ventral striatum is linked to motivation and reward.
In small groups, we knew everyone extremely well. No one could really fool us about what type of person they were, because we had grown up interacting with them for our whole lives.
If a tribe member dressed up and pretended he was from another tribe, we would see it in a heart-beat. It would be like seeing your father in a costume: you would recognize him pretty quickly, wouldn't you.
As the celebrity example shows, our brains can easily be fooled by people in our large modern society when we incorrectly ascribe to them the role of being someone we should trust.
As the celebrity example shows, our brains can easily be fooled by people in our large modern society when we incorrectly ascribe to them the role of being someone we should trust.
The opposite is true as well. The parts of our brain that are hard-wired to quickly recognize "outside enemies" can be fooled in our huge modern society, when it is really people we know dressed up like the "other team".
Wolf In Sheep's Clothing

Because of this hard-wiring in our brains from the days we lived in tiny tribes, we arehighly susceptible to false flag attacks.

Specifically, if government agents dress up like the "other team" and stage an attack on their own country, most people's "defend the tribe" hardwiring kicks in, so they rally around their leaders and call for the heads of the "other team".

Our brains assume that we can tell truth from fiction, because they evolved in very small groups where we knew everyone extremely well, and usually could see for ourselves what was true.

On the other side of the coin, a tribal leader who talked a good game but constantly stole from and abused his group would immediately be kicked out or killed. No matter how nicely he talked, the members of the tribe would immediately see what he was doing.

But in a country of hundreds of millions of people, where the political class is shielded from the rest of the country, people don't really know what our leaders are doing with most of the time. We only see them for a couple of minutes when they are giving speeches, or appearing in photo ops, or being interviewed. It is therefore much easier for a wolf in sheep's clothing to succeed than in a small group setting.

Indeed, sociopaths would have been discovered very quickly in a small group. But in huge societies like our's, they can rise to positions of power and influence.

As with the celebrity endorsement example, our brains are running programs which were developed for an environment (a small group) we no longer live in, and so lead us astray.

Like the blind spot in our rear view mirror, we have to learn to compensate and adapt for our imperfections, or we may get clobbered.

Grow Up

The good news is that we can evolve.

While our brains have many built-in hardwired ways of thinking and processing information, they are also amazingly "plastic". We can learn and evolve and overcome our hardwiring - or at least compensate for our blind spots.

We are not condemned to being led astray by Madison Avenue advertisers and ruthless dictators and scientific frauds and fundamentalists.

We can choose to grow up as a species and reclaim our power to decide our own future.

Mind Control for Dummies

2010-02-20T12:46:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGTzClbwkc8

Dollars for Death, Pennies for Life

2010-02-20T12:03:00.001-08:00

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/15

February 15, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Dollars for Death, Pennies for Life
by Norman Solomon

When the U.S. military began a major offensive in southern Afghanistan over the weekend, the killing of children and other civilians was predictable. Lofty rhetoric aside, such deaths come with the territory of war and occupation.

A month ago, President Obama pledged $100 million in U.S. government aid to earthquake-devastated Haiti. Compare that to the $100 billion price tag to keep 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan for a year.

While commanders in Afghanistan were launching what the New York Times called "the largest offensive military operation since the American-led coalition invaded the country in 2001," the situation in Haiti was clearly dire.

With more than a million Haitians still homeless, vast numbers -- the latest estimates are around 75 percent -- don't have tents or tarps. The rainy season is fast approaching, with serious dangers of typhoid and dysentery.

No shortage of bombs in Afghanistan; a lethal shortage of tents in Haiti. Such priorities -- actual, not rhetorical -- are routine.

Last summer, I saw hundreds of children and other civilians at the Helmand Refugee Camp District 5, a miserable makeshift encampment in Kabul. The U.S. government had ample resources for bombing their neighborhoods in the Helmand Valley -- but was doing nothing to help the desperate refugees to survive after they fled to Afghanistan's capital city.

Such priorities have parallels at home. The military hawks and deficit hawks are now swooping along Pennsylvania Avenue in tight formation. There's plenty of money in the U.S. Treasury for war in Afghanistan. But domestic spending to meet human needs -- job creation, for instance -- is another matter.

Joblessness is now crushing many low-income Americans. Among those with annual household incomes of less than $12,500, the unemployment rate during the fourth quarter of last year "was a staggering 30.8 percent," Bob Herbert noted in a February 9 column. "That's more than five points higher than the overall jobless rate at the height of the Depression."

Herbert added: "The next lowest group, with incomes of $12,500 to $20,000, had an unemployment rate of 19.1 percent. These are the kinds of jobless rates that push families already struggling on meager incomes into destitution."

The current situation is akin to the one that Martin Luther King Jr. confronted in 1967 when he challenged Congress for showing "hostility to the poor" -- appropriating "military funds with alacrity and generosity" but providing "poverty funds with miserliness."

Such priorities are taking lives every day, near and far.

Early this month, the National Council of Churches sent out an article by theologians George Hunsinger and Michael Kinnamon, who wrote: "What the Haitians obviously need most is massive humanitarian relief. They need food, water, medical supplies. They need shelter and physical reconstruction. . . . Over half of Haiti's population are children, 15 years old or younger. Many were already hungry and homeless before the earthquake hit."

But the warfare state, with vast budgets for military purposes, has scant funds for sustaining life.

These priorities kill.

Norman Solomon is national co-chair of the Healthcare Not Warfare campaign, launched by Progressive Democrats of America. His books include "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death." For more information, go to: www.normansolomon.com

The Information Super-Sewer

2010-02-20T12:00:00.001-08:00

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/15-1

February 15, 2010 by TruthDig.com
by Chris Hedges

The Internet has become one more tool hijacked by corporate interests to accelerate our cultural, political and economic decline. The great promise of the Internet, to open up dialogue, break down cultural barriers, promote democracy and unleash innovation and creativity, has been exposed as a scam. The Internet is dividing us into antagonistic clans, in which we chant the same slogans and hate the same enemies, while our creative work is handed for free to Web providers who use it as bait for advertising.

Ask journalists, photographers, musicians, cartoonists or artists what they think of the Web. Ask movie and film producers. Ask architects or engineers. The Web efficiently disseminates content, but it does not protect intellectual property rights. Writers and artists are increasingly unable to make a living. And technical professions are under heavy assault. Anything that can be digitized can and is being outsourced to countries such as India and China where wages are miserable and benefits nonexistent. Welcome to the new global serfdom where the only professions that pay a living wage are propaganda and corporate management.

The Web, at the same time it is destroying creative work, is forming anonymous crowds that vent collective rage, intolerance and bigotry. These virtual slums do not expand communication or dialogue. They do not enrich our culture. They create a herd mentality in which those who express empathy for “the enemy”—and the liberal class is as guilty of this as the right wing—are denounced by their fellow travelers for their impurity. Racism toward Muslims may be as evil as anti-Semitism, but try to express this simple truth on a partisan Palestinian or Israeli website.

Jaron Lanier, the “father of virtual reality technology,” in his new book “You Are Not a Gadget,” warns us of this frightening new collectivism. He notes that the habits imposed by the Internet have reconfigured how we relate to each other. He writes that “Web 2.0,” “Open Culture,” “Free Software” and the “Long Tail” have become enablers of this new collectivism. He cites Wikipedia, which consciously erases individual voices, and Google Wave as examples of the rise of mass collective thought and mass emotions. Google Wave is a new communication platform that permits users to edit what someone else has said in a conversation when it is displayed as well as allow collaborators to watch each other as they type. Privacy, honesty and self-reflection are instantly obliterated.

Tastes and information on the Internet are determined by the crowd, what Lanier calls the hive mentality. Music, books, journalism, commercials and bits of television shows and movies, along with inane YouTube videos, are thrust onto our screens and into national consciousness because of the statistical analysis of Internet crowd preferences. Lanier says that one of the biggest mistakes he and other computer scientists made when the Internet was developed was allowing contributions to the Internet to go unpaid. He says decisions such as this have now robbed people, especially those who create, of their ability to make a living and ultimately the capacity for dignity. Digital collectivism, he warns, is destroying the dwindling vestiges of authentic creativity and innovation, including journalism, which takes time, investment and self-reflection. And while there are a few sites that do pay for content—Truthdig being one—the vast majority are parasites. The only income left for most of those who create is earned through self-promotion, but as Lanier points out this turns culture into nothing but advertising. It fosters a social ethic in which the capacity for crowd manipulation is more highly valued than truth, beauty or thought.

While the severing of intellectual property rights from their creators, whether journalists, photographers or musicians, means that those who create lose the capacity to make a living from their work, aggregators such as Google make money by collecting and distributing this work to lure advertisers. Original work on the Internet, as Lanier points out, is “copied, mashed up, anonymized, analyzed, and turned into bricks in someone else’s fortress to support an advertising scheme.” Lanier warns that if this trend is not halted it will create a “formula that leaves no way for our nation to earn a living in the long term.”

“Funding a civilization through advertising is like trying to get nutrition by connecting a tube from one’s anus to one’s mouth,” Lanier says. “The body starts consuming itself. That is what we are doing online. As more and more human activity is aggregated, people huddle around the last remaining oases of revenue. Musicians today might still be able to get paid to make music for video games, for instance, because games are still played in closed consoles and haven’t been collectivized as yet.”

I called Lanier in San Francisco. He began by saying that he was not against the Internet, but against how it has evolved. He has sounded his warning, he said, because he fears that if we fall into an economic tailspin, the Internet, like other innovative systems of mass communication in human history, could be used to exacerbate social enmity and lead to an American totalitarianism.

“The scenario I can see is America in some economic decline, which we seem determined to enter into because we are unable to make any adjustments, and a lot of unhappy people,” Lanier said. “The preponderance of them are in rural areas and in the red states, the former slave states. And they are all connected and get angrier and angrier. What exactly happens? Do they start converging on abortion clinics? Probably. Do they start converging on legislatures and take them over? I don’t know, maybe. I shouldn’t speak it. It is almost a curse to imagine these things. But any intelligent person can see the scenario I am afraid to see. There is a potential here for very bad stuff to happen.”

And yet the utopian promoters of the Internet tell us that the hive mind, the vast virtual collective, will propel us toward a brave new world. Lanier dismisses such visions as childish fantasy, one that allows many well-intentioned people to be seduced by an evolving nightmare.

“The crowd phenomenon exists, but the hive does not exist,” Lanier told me. “All there is, is a crowd phenomenon, which can often be dangerous. To a true believer, which I certainly am not, the hive is like the baby at the end of ‘2001 Space Odyssey.’ It is a super creature that surpasses humanity. To me it is the misinterpretation of the old crowd phenomenon with a digital vibe. It has all the same dangers. A crowd can turn into a mean mob all too easily, as it has throughout human history.”

“There are some things crowds can do, such as count the jelly beans in the jar or guess the weight of the ox,” Lanier added. “I acknowledge this phenomenon is real. But I propose that the line between when crowds can think effectively as a crowd and when they can’t is a little different. If you read [James] Surowiecki’s “The Wisdom of Crowds,” he, as well as other theorists, say that if you want a crowd to be wise the key is to reduce the communication flow between the members so they do not influence each other, so they are truly independent and have separate sample points. It brings up an interesting paradox. The starting point for online crowd enthusiasts is that connection is good and everyone should be connected. But when they talk about what makes a crowd smart they say people should not be talking to each other. They should be isolated. There is a contradiction there. What makes a crowd smart is the type of question you ask. If you ask a group of informed people to choose a single numeric value such as the weight of an ox and they all have some reason to have a theory that is not entirely crazy they will center on the answer. You can get something useful. This phenomenon is what accounts for price fitting in capitalism. This is how markets can function. If you ask them to create anything, if you ask them to do something constructive or synthetic or engage in compound reasoning then they will fail. Then you get something dull or an averaging out. One danger of the crowd is violence, which is when they turn into a mob. The other is dullness or mundaneness, when you design by committee.”

Humans, like many other species, Lanier says, have a cognitive switch that permits us to be individuals or members of a mob. Once we enter the confines of what Lanier calls a clan, even a virtual clan, it possesses dynamics that appeal to the basest instincts within us. Technology evolves but human nature remains constant. The 20th century was the bloodiest in human history because human beings married the newly minted tools of efficient state bureaucracies and industrial slaughter with the dark impulses that have existed since the dawn of the human species.

“You become hypersensitive to the pecking order and to your sense of social status,” Lanier said of these virtual clans. “There is almost always the designated loser in your own group and the designated external enemy. There is the enemy below and the enemy afar. There become two classes of disenfranchised people. You enter into a constant obligation to defend your status which is always being contested. It is time-consuming to become a member of one of these things. I see a lot of designs on line that bring this out. There is a recognizable sequence, whether it is pianos, poodles or jihad; you see people forming into these clans. It is playing with fire. There are plenty of examples of evil in human history that did not involve this effect, such as Jack the Ripper, who worked alone. But most of the really bad examples of human behavior in history involve invoking this clan dynamic. No particular sort of person is immune to it. Geeks are no more immune to it than Germans or Russians or Japanese or Mongolians. It is part of our nature. It can be woken up without any leadership structure or politics. It happens. It is part of us. There is a switch inside of us waiting to be turned. And people can learn to manipulate the switch in others.”

“The Machine Stops,” a story published by E.M. Forster in 1909, paints a futuristic world where people are mesmerized by virtual reality. In Forster’s dystopia, human beings live in isolated, tiny subterranean rooms, like hives, where they are captivated by instant messages and cinematophoes—machines that project visual images. They cut themselves off from the external world and are absorbed by a bizarre pseudo-reality of voices, sounds, evanescent images and abstract sensations that can be evoked by pressing a few buttons. The access to the world of the Machine, which has replaced the real world with a virtual world, is provided by an omniscient impersonal voice.

We are, as Forster understood, seduced and then often enslaved by technology, from the combustion engine to computers to robotics. These marvels of humankind’s ingenuity are inevitably hijacked by modern slave masters who use the newest technologies to keep us impoverished, confused about our identity and passive. The Internet, designed by defense strategists to communicate after a nuclear attack, has become the latest technological instrument in the hands of those who are driving us into a state of neofeudalism. Technology is morally neutral. It serves the interests of those who control it. And those who control it today are ravishing journalism, culture and art while they herd the population into clans that fuel intolerance and hatred.

“A common rationalization in the fledgling world of digital cultures back then was that we were entering a transitional lull before a creative storm—or were already in the eye of the storm,” Lanier writes in his book. “But we were not passing through a momentary calm. We had, rather, entered a persistent somnolence, and I have come to believe that we will escape it only when we kill the hive.”

Copyright © 2010 Truthdig, L.L.C.

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

Selective Brain Damage Modulates Human Spirituality

2010-02-12T10:57:00.000-08:00

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/178869.php

Cathleen Genova
Medical News Today
Thu, 11 Feb 2010

New research provides fascinating insight into brain changes that might underlie alterations in spiritual and religious attitudes. The study, published by Cell Press in the February 11 issue of the journal Neuron, explores the neural basis of spirituality by studying patients before and after surgery to remove a brain tumor.

Although it is well established that all behaviors and experiences, spiritual or otherwise, must originate in the brain, true empirical exploration of the neural underpinnings of spirituality has been challenging. However, recent advances in neuroscience have started to make the complex mental processes associated with religion and spirituality more accessible.

"Neuroimaging studies have linked activity within a large network in the brain that connects the frontal, parietal, and temporal cortexes with spiritual experiences, but information on the causative link between such a network and spirituality is lacking," explains lead study author, Dr. Cosimo Urgesi from the University of Udine in Italy.

Dr. Urgesi and colleagues were interested in making a direct link between brain activity and spirituality. They focused specifically on the personality trait called self-transcendence (ST), which is thought to be a measure of spiritual feeling, thinking, and behaviors in humans. ST reflects a decreased sense of self and an ability to identify one's self as an integral part of the universe as a whole.

The researchers combined analysis of ST scores obtained from brain tumor patients before and after they had surgery to remove their tumor, with advanced techniques for mapping the exact location of the brain lesions after surgery. "This approach allowed us to explore the possible changes of ST induced by specific brain lesions and the causative role played by frontal, temporal, and parietal structures in supporting interindividual differences in ST," says researcher Dr. Franco Fabbro from the University of Udine.

The group found that selective damage to the left and right posterior parietal regions induced a specific increase in ST. "Our symptom-lesion mapping study is the first demonstration of a causative link between brain functioning and ST," offers Dr. Urgesi. "Damage to posterior parietal areas induced unusually fast changes of a stable personality dimension related to transcendental self-referential awareness. Thus, dysfunctional parietal neural activity may underpin altered spiritual and religious attitudes and behaviors."

These results may even lead to new strategies for treating some forms of mental illness. "If a stable personality trait like ST can undergo fast changes as a consequence of brain lesions, it would indicate that at least some personality dimensions may be modified by influencing neural activity in specific areas," suggests Dr. Salvatore M. Aglioti from Sapienza University of Rome. "Perhaps novel approaches aimed at modulating neural activity might ultimately pave the way to new treatments of personality disorders."

The researchers include Cosimo Urgesi, Universita' di Udine, Udine, Italy, Istituto di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico Eugenio Medea, Pordenone, Italy; Salvatore M. Aglioti, Sapienza Universita' di Roma, Roma, Italy, Istituto di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico Fondazione S. Lucia, Roma, Italy; Miran Skrap, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria Santa Maria della Misericordia, Udine, Italy; and Franco Fabbro, Universita' di Udine, Udine, Italy, Istituto di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico Eugenio Medea, Pordenone, Italy.

Why Are Americans Passive as Millions Lose Their Homes, Jobs, Families and the American Dream?

2010-02-02T13:01:00.000-08:00

Why Are Americans Passive as Millions Lose Their Homes, Jobs, Families and the American Dream?
By Harriet Fraad, Tikkun
February 2, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145481/

This is the cover article for the January/February issue of Tikkun magazine. For more on the article and the magazine go here.

An unnatural economic and psychological disaster has struck America. Five contributors, each interacting with and shaping the others, have devastated the American moral, economic, psychological, and social landscape. Each is fed by related streams, but each contributes its own force to the disaster. The American dream in which each generation surpassed the previous generation in real wages has all but disappeared, along with dreams of an intact family, a steady job, a home, and an honest supportive community.

This article looks at each of five collaborators in the crisis in order to answer the following questions:

How did this happen? What forces are responsible?

Why are Americans passive as millions lose their homes, their jobs, their families, their hopes of justice, and the American dream?

Why do Americans remain disorganized at home while their European and Asian counterparts flood into the streets and strike in militant, organized protest? Why do others believe in their potential to reclaim their lives while we do not?

What happened is a result of at least five major, interrelated forces. One is a transformation of American morality, and with it the loss of belief that the social and political realms could be shaped by morality, ethics, and secular spirituality. Another is an economic depression. A third is a transformation of the family, which has been the foundation of American emotional life. A fourth is the decimation of Americans' social participation in all areas, from bridge clubs and PTAs to political parties. A fifth is the tranquilizing and numbing of the American population with psychotropic medications.

1. The Crisis in Morality and Social Ethics

Let us begin with the first of our contributors: American ethics, morality, and spirituality. The same forces that decimated our economic, psychological, and social landscapes have transformed our sense of morality and social ethics. The shared dream of an ethical, moral society that dominated the United States until the 1970s has systematically eroded. In the 1960s it was common to believe that morality and spirituality include a concern for all human beings, rich and poor alike. The biggest push against those social ethics began with Reagan's presidency in 1981. It continued in Reagan's second term and was reinforced by each president until its (we hope) final act in the presidency of George W. Bush.

Reagan's basic ideology was that people are poor because they lack incentives. He claimed that poor people's noble drive to get rich is eroded by social programs that permit them to survive or, in his term, "freeload." In this framework, income tax cuts increase the incentive to work and get rich, so all are expected to benefit from them. In 1980 the highest incomes were taxed at 73 percent. In 2009 those same high incomes were taxed at half that rate, 35 percent. Of course the percentage of tax on the highest incomes is actually even lower, since the wealthiest Americans can hire tax accountants to help them evade taxes. Reagan used his famous veto power to cut a huge range of social programs from biomedical research, to social security for disabled Americans, to clean water, to expanded Head Start. At the same time, he increased the military budget while decrying big government.

That pattern has been repeated ever since, which is how, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States went from being the most egalitarian western industrialized society in 1970 to the least egalitarian in 2009.

In addition, the Soviet model of socialism failed. It did not provide the kind and ethical societies that are part of a socialist vision. The mass of people believed that the Soviet Union was communism. Left-wing class analyses of the failure of Soviet Communism, such as Bettelheim's in the late 1970s or Resnick and Wolff's in 2002, were not widely read or embraced. Both of those analyses demonstrate that the USSR and its satellites exemplified class societies in which a bureaucratic class appropriated wealth and made crucial decisions affecting the lives of the mass of people. They explain that the USSR failed because it was not a communist society. It was not a society in which the people in each workplace decided what to produce, and also collected their own profits and decided together how to distribute those profits. Because these left-wing class interpretations were few and largely unembraced, a socialist or communist dream seemed doomed to end in rigid, bureaucratic, and undemocratic societies that were rejected by their own people. People lost faith in a secular dream.

Slowly there has been a transformation of our morality and ethics. Where our morality once required the United States to embody our ethics in the world and empower all citizens, it has shifted so that our morality now consists of requiring conservative personal and sexual behavior. Within that morality Clinton committed an impeachable crime by lying about having sex with an intern, while Bush and Cheney did not commit impeachable crimes by lying about the threat from Iraq and thus causing the deaths of over four thousand U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, or by torturing prisoners. It is not considered immoral to spend between six billion and twelve billion dollars a week on the war in Iraq while cutting school and social programs for needy families because "there is not enough money." The secular morality that made America a proudly democratic and egalitarian nation has deteriorated. We are experiencing a national moral, ethical, and spiritual crisis.

2. The Dying of the Economic Dream

A second contributor to American passivity is the economic crisis from which we are suffering. Let us look at our history in order to understand what happened. From 1820-1970, the United States experienced a unique period of ever-increasing prosperity. For 150 years, U.S. salaries rose together with ever-increasing worker productivity. For 150 years, each generation was able to afford a better standard of living than the generation that preceded it. That was the American dream.

Unlike their European counterparts, Americans did not enjoy working-class solidarity with other workers whose families and social organizations, unions and political parties were inflected by a history of overt class struggle fought as proudly permanent members of the working class. Europeans organized their working unions along political lines. They fought for better conditions as part of the ideology of long-term communist and socialist struggles for ownership and control of their workplaces.

The U.S. labor movement is not informed by a struggle for worker ownership of the businesses that produce U.S. goods and services. Decisions about what to produce and the right to appropriate and distribute profits are left to corporate boards of directors. Americans accepted the capitalist system in which each generation had relatively prospered. American labor fought for an increasing amount of income that would permit workers to consume more goods and services, a system in which each generation could move to jobs considered more prestigious and lucrative within the capitalist hierarchy. Blue-collar workers' children could become white-collar, and white-collar children could become professionals in the next generation (particularly if they were not just white-collar but white, period). U.S. growth permitted ever-increasing real wages and possibilities for consumption. Even in the Great Depression from 1929-1939, real wages, the amount that one could buy with one's wages, were able to rise because prices fell even faster than wages.

That ever-increasing prosperity stopped in 1970. By 1970 the introduction of computers, better telecommunications, and more efficient transportation enabled jobs to be outsourced to lower-paid workers overseas. Competing factories in Europe and Japan, which had been decimated by World War II, were now vying for U.S. markets. Then China emerged as a manufacturing giant. Competition reduced the U.S. share of both domestic and global markets. The outsourcing of American jobs to cheaper labor markets was not stopped by militant unions, which were unable to achieve the powerful "runaway shop" laws that were won in other nations. Nor did militant unions force the creation of a tight safety net to catch workers in financial distress.

For a long time, there was a relative scarcity of white male workers available for the jobs reserved for white males in America's racially and sexually segregated job markets. White male workers, who were accustomed to receiving increasing real wages and living a lifestyle of ever-greater consumption, could no longer support their families on their frozen wages. Americans' sense of self worth was in large part dependent on their net worth. They became increasingly depressed. Their sense of personal value was cut with their salaries. This happened as the advertising industry burgeoned. Advertising continuously and relentlessly sells consumption as the path to happiness. Consumption was undermined and with it stability, prosperity, and a sense of personal success.

3. What Produced the Crisis in Personal and Family Life?

Economic desperation pushed many more women into the labor force to increase money for the household. Previous to the 1970s, most white, nonimmigrant American women entered the labor force only in times of particular and urgent family need: upon divorce, or if a husband died, was ill, unemployed, or deserted his family. Women's labor outside the home provided some safety in times of emergency. In 1970, 40 percent of U.S. women were in the labor force, mostly part time. By the year 2008, 75 percent of U.S. women were in the labor force, mostly full time. Many women enjoyed the greater autonomy, variation, and creativity that jobs could provide. Many others were forced by economic necessity to work outside of their homes in routinized dead-end jobs with scarce assistance from governmental supports for day care, after-school programs, or elder care.

Women's work outside of the home helped to improve the standard of living for most families, but it did not compensate families for lost white male wages. Women's wage work imposes not only the obvious expenses of additional clothing and transportation, but also the costs of purchasing some of the goods and services that women previously produced at home free of charge, such as cooking, mending, cleaning, shopping, and child care. Those goods and services are crucial. Once they become commodified in the marketplace, they become expensive. The latest figures from Salary.com indicate that if a stay-at-home mother in the United States were replaced by paid domestic products and services, the cost would be $122,732 a year. The domestic products produced and services rendered by a mom who works outside of the home would cost $76,184 per year.

Even with women flooding into the labor force, families were still financially hurting. Working women had no time to perform full-time household labor and child care, and there was still not enough money for consumption. More money was accumulating at the top while the mass of Americans suffered from frozen wages. The wealthy then promoted the credit card to lend to Americans the money that they formerly would have earned in growing wages. Families became dependent on credit card debt. Since the interest rate on credit cards ranges from 15 percent to 25 percent, Americans descended into debt at record-breaking levels.

The living standard of Americans deteriorated psychologically as well. In American culture, women provide most of the emotional labor to make home a warm and comfortable place for men and children. It is women who usually arrange children's social lives and activities, from play dates to dental appointments. Women are usually the directors of adult social life as well. Indeed, women are usually in charge of emotional life for the entire family. The more women work outside of the home without social support in the form of child care programs and domestic help, the more stressed, overworked, and emotionally unavailable they become. Overwhelmed women have less energy for the roles of social director and organizer, as well as emotional and physical caregiver. Households are hurting emotionally. When Bush took office in 2000, he cut many of the already hobbled social programs that allowed families to survive. Families are in trouble.

Women are no longer willing to work outside of the home, do the lion's share of the domestic work, and simultaneously take care of their children's and husbands' physical and emotional needs largely unaided either by their husbands or by social programs. For the first time in American history, the majority of women are abandoning marriage. Women now initiate two-thirds of divorces. Half of first marriages and 60 percent of second marriages end in legal separation or divorce. These impressive figures do not include the many people who end their marriages outside of the legal system.

When men's emotional relationships with women break down, they have little intimate emotional support. Women usually count on other women to emotionally sustain them. Women still manage to befriend and support each other on a personal level in a way that few men can. These changes in households and family life are a third tributary to America's deluge of disaster. Americans have lost both the financial dream of ever-increasing prosperity and consumption, and also the emotional family dream of a stable family connected by a present wife creating emotional connection and domestic order. In short, Americans have lost what was the comfort of home.

4. Americans' Increasing Isolation from One Another

A fourth disaster is closely related. The freeze in U.S. real wages coincided with the beginning of Americans' increasing isolation from one another. Beginning once again in the 1970s, nearly all social connections between Americans declined. The decay in U.S. social life was an almost total phenomenon. It extended from inviting friends to dinner, to joining bridge clubs or bowling leagues, to volunteering for noncontroversial activities such as the PTA or Red Cross blood drives, to participating in more controversial activities such as working for a cause or a political candidate.

There was growth in social participation in evangelical religious groups; gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) groups; internet groups; and self-help groups. However, membership in self-help groups, America's greatest social participation growth area, was outnumbered two to one by drop-outs from bowling leagues alone, according to Robert Putnam's 2000 book, Bowling Alone, which I have drawn on for statistics throughout this section.

Several inconclusive theories have emerged as to why Americans have dropped out of U.S. social life and civic life.

Women dropping out of social activities because of working full time outside of the home accounts for only 10 percent of the overall dropout rate.

One might attribute U.S. social desertion to the phenomenon of busyness, but that too is an insufficient explanation. The average American watches four hours of television a day, which would be difficult to manage with an intensely busy schedule. The Internet may seem like a replacement for social interaction, but the Internet isolates people as well as connects them.

Extensive television viewing may be a culprit since more people relate to their television sets than to each other, and the heaviest viewing correlates to the least social participation. But surely this is a symptom as much as a cause of the problems that isolate Americans. I say this because extensive television viewing is reported by the viewers themselves as so unsatisfying that it leaves them "not feeling so good." Their descriptions portray it as an addiction that compels without satisfying. An overwhelming number of viewers watch for the purpose of distraction or entertainment. Television functions as an escape from loneliness, changed gender expectations, and looming economic disaster.

Perhaps the greatest reason is that Americans are psychologically and also physically exhausted. They have fewer vacations and longer workweeks than any of their Western European counterparts. Activity in society, including activity in politics, has become a luxury good for those fortunate few who have extra time and energy. The Left's natural constituency, the mass of Americans, is exhausted, disillusioned, and in despair. To add to their despair, the tremendous wealth at the top of society has been used to fund right-wing media outlets like Fox News, to name just one example. Right-wing media promote the idea that there is no alternative to the status quo. At the same time, the skewed distribution of wealth allows vast sums to be given to politicians who advance the fortunes of those who pay their way. Immense wealth is invested in weakening the regulations against enormous giving at the top. These developments increase the conviction that ordinary people make no difference in politics. They have no voice. The force of the Left is further weakened.

5. The Drugging of America

The fifth tributary that helped to create our deluge of disaster is both a cause and an effect of America's social breakdown. This is the numbing of Americans with psychotropic drugs. In 2006, Americans, who make up approximately 6 percent of the world's population, consumed 66 percent of the world's supply of antidepressants. In 2002, more than 13 percent of Americans were taking Prozac alone. Prozac is one of thirty available antidepressants. Anti-anxiety drugs, such as Zoloft, are so widely prescribed that in the year 2005, the $3.1 billion sales of Zoloft exceeded the sales for Tide detergent.

Many of these drugs, which are also called "cosmetic drugs" or "life-enhancing drugs," are diagnosed for loneliness, sadness, life transitions, or concentration on task performance. They have been "normalized" through extensive direct-to-consumer advertising and marketing to doctors who are financially rewarded for recommending them to colleagues. Regulations that once restrained the widespread promotion and sales of these powerful drugs have been relaxed to the point of near nonexistence. The United States is the only Western nation that permits direct-to-consumer drug advertising. We are also the only nation without price controls on drugs. Psychiatric drugs are so ubiquitous that the pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable industry in America, and antidepressants are their most profitable products.

What Can We Do?

The current disaster did not just happen with the recent burst of the stock market and housing bubbles. Americans somewhere knew for a long time that we could not pay our credit card bills or our mortgages. Somewhere, unconsciously, we had to know that disaster was approaching. We responded with denial, withdrawal, depression, and dissociation accomplished with the aid of extensive television viewing and preoccupation with scandals and celebrities.

Each of the five tributaries flowed together to drown the mass of Americans in debt, family dissolution, isolation, and drug-induced apathy. In response to the original questions that inspired this article, we now need to ask another question: what can we do about it? Americans may now be looking for change. They elected a president who promised change. That change has not happened. Where else can we look?

Capitalism needs and breeds consumerism. We are surrounded by advertisements for products. Ubiquitous advertising has a blighting side effect. The presentation of all human connection now carries a price tag for a branded product. Scenes of connection with a group of friends include, for example, Budweiser beer. The devoted mother is washing your clothes with Tide. The sexy woman, whom men want and women want to be, seems to come with the sleek Toyota. Ads appear whenever we turn on our computers or read newspapers or magazines. Product placement is present in almost every film. Television, America's mass entertainment, embraces product placement and explicit advertising directed to all ages. Capitalist consumerism coveys the message that relationships happen with and through products. There are too few scenes of people trying honestly to connect and surmount their real economic, social, and emotional problems through honest discussion and negotiation. We need more images of people who enjoy their connection and work through the difficult times involved in creating close, mutual, nurturing relationships. How do we manage to effect change within this environment? Where are the contradictions that create openings?

A Time When Noncommercial Values Are Attractive

One opportunity for change has emerged due to the recent capitalist collapse, which has intensified American suffering. People can no longer afford the brand-name products seen on TV. Their economic woes reveal the relentless hustling of now unaffordable consumer products. They try generics, unknown brands, and less consumption, and often find them just as good. This presents us with an opening to question. New, noncommercial values can form.

Since Americans are hooked on the mass media, and the media loves anything new, the Left can create media-attracting new actions. The anarchist group that formed around a book called The Coming Insurrection got full media attention when a well-publicized group jumped on stage at Barnes & Noble in New York for a spontaneous reading that began, "Everyone agrees it's about to explode." The action was widely covered for its novelty.

We can look to the four areas that have grown in the current social drought. They are, in order of their growth, self-help groups, internet groups, evangelical church groups, and GLBT groups.

Self-Help Groups

The largest self-help groups are Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. Alcohol and drugs have proved to be a personal and social disaster for millions of Americans, who cannot function on the job and suffer havoc in their personal lives due to these substances. Huge alcohol and pharmaceutical lobbies push these substances on individuals desperate for relief from their problems. The individual solution of self-medicating with drugs and alcohol-promoted so efficiently by capitalism-failed terribly. In the face of that failure, millions join together in small groups where they share their pain and suffering within a supportive, nonjudgmental collective that operates without salaries, advertisements, or financial charges. These twelve-step groups give the Left a window of possibility. We can add a thirteenth step to their twelve-step programs. We can add a step to organize against big pharmaceutical and liquor advertising, which profits on false promises. The Left desperately needs to address people's despair and give them support. We can learn to incorporate nonjudgmental personal and political support, as well as psychological and political dimensions, to Left groups where both nonjudgmental attitudes and psychological support have been sadly lacking. The Left has tried too hard to focus on being correct and not enough effort on reaching people where they are hurting. We need to listen to people without judgment as they do in twelve-step programs.

The GLBT Movement

We can also study the contradictions that helped to produce GLBT organizations. Advertising creates omnipresent images of happiness accessed though products that relate to sexual attractiveness. The sexy woman rides in the man's sleek new car. The virile man drives a big truck and smokes Marlboros. Multibillion-dollar industries such as the diet, cosmetic, and fashion industries promote products to enhance sexual attractiveness. Popular culture celebrates heterosexual coupling and family as ultimate happiness while avoiding mention of collective joys or homosexuality.

The GLBT movement works to include those in their identity group who are excluded from the grand celebration of personal couple happiness built around sexual pairing. The very pressure to channel complex desires into heterosexual coupling helped lead GLBT people to, as a group, articulate collective visions of resistance and envision new possibilities.

Since most families and relationships are breaking down, American people desperately need connection. Organizing creates connection. Collective dreams have a chance to replace the individualistic desires cultivated in capitalist America.

What We Can Learn From Evangelicals' Failures ... and Successes

Conservative evangelical groups create a collective vision and connection while celebrating capitalist success as God's blessing. They provide some of what people desperately need and the Left ignores, such as strong verbal support for important work in the home and a focus on the hard work of child rearing. Conservative evangelicals manage to accomplish this while sex role stereotyping that labor, as well as opposing every form of non-church-based material support that actually allows families to stay afloat. They typically oppose single-payer health plans, Head Start for all, sex education (unless abstinence-based), family planning, maternity and paternity benefits, minimum wage hikes, etc. In the end they cannot deliver the support that families need. The savior they pray to has not saved them from financial and personal desperation and divorce.

Evangelicalism's reduction of morality to personal morality and particularly sexual morality has an embarrassing side effect. Googling "evangelical scandals" results in 3,729,000 hits in five seconds. Evangelical scandals have resulted in reduced credibility. There is now an opportunity for the wider ethical spiritual morality of the community associated with Tikkun and left-leaning evangelicals connected to Sojourners who develop their social, economic, personal, and political morality, and who see political activity as an expression of morality taken into the world. We on the Left have an opportunity to champion our own moral, ethical, and spiritual vision to Americans who desperately need both morality and hope for a better world. Evangelical promotion of the centrality of personal connection and family gives the Left an opening to advocate material and psychological support for all kinds of families. The Left urgently needs a family program to address the mass breakdown of U.S. homes and families.

The evangelical groups can, ironically show us what we are missing. The failure of evangelical morality, which excludes social, economic, and political morality, may create an opening for a much-needed left-wing program of social, political, economic, and personal ethics and morality for which many hunger.

Internet Organizing

There are explicitly political possibilities afforded by the net. MoveOn.org and other political groups organize and mobilize through the Web. In Iran, members of the opposition evaded censors, communicated with each other, and aroused national and international support through Twitter and Facebook. The Facebook account of Neda Soltani's murder focused Iran and the world on the violent repression of Mousavi's supporters. That possibility exists here.

The four social growth groups springing up in America's desert of political opposition point out possible avenues for a Left that desperately needs direction. Let us return to our original questions:

Why are Americans passive as millions lose their homes, their jobs, their families, and the American dream?

Why do Americans remain at home, disorganized, while their European counterparts flood into the streets in militant, organized protests? How did this happen? What forces are responsible? We can see that the cycles of capitalism with its relentless need for consumer spending and capital accumulation at the top have devastated America. We can also see that unbridled capitalism has created mass suffering and then turned the rage of those who suffer against all who need governmental assistance and against additional scapegoats such as homosexuals, feminists, liberals, socialists, and immigrants. We can create new roads to reclaim this nation by organizing and activating the mass of Americans who know that the ostensible "recovery" will never return what they have lost. We dared to elect a president who championed change verbally, who campaigned on unity and respect for all, and who preserves the structures that destroyed our lives. En masse, we have turned to self-help groups, evangelists, psycho-pharmaceutical drugs, and sexual identity politics, which do not solve the multifaceted crisis in which we are drowning. America needs another way. Perhaps we can provide it?

Harriet Fraad is a psychotherapist-hypnotherapist in practice in New York City. She is a founding member of the feminist movement and the journal Rethinking Marxism. For forty years, she has been a radical committed to transforming U.S. personal and political life.

BEAUTY: The Mathematical Idea of Symmetry

2010-01-28T10:50:00.001-08:00

http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=5569

BEAUTY: The Mathematical Idea of Symmetry

I cannot claim to understand very fully the sense in which mathematicians use the concept of “symmetry.” It does seems to be in some meaningful sense kindred with the concept of symmetry that we use in other, more directly aesthetic contexts– a concept that figures prominently in the human concept of beauty. And so it seems quite possible that whatever is true of the mathematical concept of symmetry would also help to illuminate something meaningful about the nature and meaning of beauty. Just how that “something meaningful” should be understood, however, I don’t yet feel able to articulate.

The following is from the book, THE UNIVERSE AND THE TEACUP: THE MATHEMATICS OF TRUTH AND BEAUTY by K.C. Cole.

*******************

“Many of the most beautiful patterns created by nature and human nature have a great deal of symmetry– tiling patterns and decorative borders and snowflakes and daisies all take a simple pattern and rotate it or flip it or turn it upside down.”
(p. 176)

“The search for symmetry turns out to be a very effective tool for looking beneath superficial differences that camouflage similarities to find a more substantive, permanent meaning. Symmetry therefore lends a satisfying concreteness to the vague sense that there is beauty in truth and truth to beauty. So many of the things people admire are symmetrical: whether they are natural symmetries, like snail shells, or human-made symmetries, like codes of law that attempt to impose equal outcomes on both sides of an argument. [ABS: I'd have used Justice with her scales here to talk about symmetry in "codes of law," rather than this "equal outcomes on both sides of an argument.] It is nice to know that there’s a real quantitative connection between things we admire for aesthetic reasons and things that steer us toward a deep understanding of nature, including, perhaps, human nature.

“Scientists have known about this connection for a long time. Physicist Herman Weyl, who wrote the classic book on symmetry, puts it this way: “My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.” [AS: Is this really putting that same "it" in a different way?]

“Beauty in the mathematical sense is a lot more than a pretty face. It is a way of distilling the essence of things out of the messy mix that nature presents us. Edward Rothstein, trained both as a musician and a mathematician, writes that when we search for symmetries, we are ‘defining which aspects…we find essential and which aspects are irrelevant.’

…”‘What better way to get at the fundamentals of structure than by successive transformations to strip away the secondary properties,’ writes James R. Newman in The World of Mathematics, in a prelude to a section on symmetry.”
(pp. 173-174)

Brains can only manage 150 friends

2010-01-26T12:31:00.000-08:00

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-01/25/forget-facebook-friend-limits,-brains-can-only-manage-150-friends.aspx

Forget Facebook limits, brains can only manage 150 friends
By Mark Brown |25 January 2010

Take a glance at the Facebook groups or poke around prominent internet forums and you'll find plenty of rabid social networkers who want Facebook to lift their limitation of 5,000 friends.

But Robin Dunbar, professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University, has revealed that human brains are only capable of managing a scant 150 friendships; a number that hasn't changed throughout history, despite our modern fascination with Twitter, blogging and Facebook.

The professor developed this theoretical cognitive limit in 1990, naming it "Dunbar's number". He claims that the volume of the neocortex region of our brain, which is used for thought and language, limits us to managing social circles of around 150 friends.

Dunbar surveyed sizes of social circles from Neolithic farming villages to unit sizes in Roman armies, and studied non-human primates to arrive at Dunbar's number which, while no precise value exists, is commonly cited to be approximately 150 people. He also found that groups larger than his proposed limit would begin to deteriorate and splinter.

A social circle is defined by Dunbar as relationships where a person knows how each friend relates to every other friend.

He has since studied modern social circles, such as groups of friends on Facebook, and preliminary results show that despite massive friend lists, the same small groups still emerge. "The interesting thing," Dunbar told the Sunday Times, "is that you can have 1,500 friends but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people."

Dunbar does notice a gender difference, however. "Girls are much better at maintaining relationships just by talking to each other. Boys need to do physical stuff together," the professor said.

Dunbar's full study is due to be published this year.

Eleven Ways to Think Outside the Box

2010-01-20T10:21:00.000-08:00

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/01/19/Eleven-Ways-to-Think-Outside-the-Box.aspx

Posted by: Dr. Mercola
January 19 2010
Thinking outside the box is more than just a business cliché. It means approaching problems in new, innovative ways and conceptualizing problems differently. Here are 11 ways to beef up your out-of-the-box thinking skills.

1. Study another industry

Go to the library and pick up a trade magazine in an industry other than your own, or grab a few books from the library, and learn about how things are done in other industries.

2. Learn about another religion

Religions are the way that humans organize and understand their relationships not only with the supernatural or divine but with each other.

Learning about how such relations are structured can teach you a lot about how people relate to each other and the world around them.

3. Take a class

Learning a new topic will not only teach you a new set of facts and figures, it will teach you a new way of looking at and making sense of aspects of your everyday life or of the society or natural world you live in.

4. Read a novel in an unfamiliar genre

Try reading something you’d never have touched otherwise -- if you read literary fiction, try a mystery or science fiction novel; if you read a lot of detective novels, try a romance; and so on. Pay attention not only to the story but to the particular problems the author has to deal with.

5. Write a poem

While most problem-solving leans heavily on your brain’s logical centers, poetry neatly bridges your more rational left-brain thought processes and your more creative right-brain processes.

6. Draw a picture

Drawing a picture is even more right-brained, and can help break your logical left-brain’s hold on a problem the same way a poem can.

7. Turn it upside down

Turning something upside-down, whether physically by flipping a piece of paper around or metaphorically by re-imagining it can help you see patterns that wouldn’t otherwise be apparent.

8. Work backwards

Just like turning a thing upside down, working backwards breaks your brain’s normal conception of causality.

9. Ask a child for advice

Children think and speak with an ignorance of convention that is often helpful.

10. Invite randomness

Embracing mistakes and incorporating them into your projects, developing strategies that allow for random input, working amid chaotic juxtapositions of sound and form -- all of these can help you to move beyond everyday patterns of thinking into the sublime.

11. Take a shower

There’s some kind of weird psychic link between showering and creativity. Who knows why? So maybe when the status quo response to some circumstance just isn’t working, try taking a shower and see if something remarkable doesn’t occur to you!

Scientists Figure out the Cause of Brain Farts

2010-01-18T12:20:00.000-08:00

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/01/12/Scientists-Figure-out-the-Cause-of-Brain-Farts.aspx

Scientists Figure out the Cause of Brain Farts
Posted by: Dr. Mercola
January 12 2010

A “brain fart” is a term for an inexplicably stupid error in a straightforward task made by someone with abundant skill and experience. Everyone is prone to them. Neuroscientists call these episodes “maladaptive brain activity changes.”
The latest research seems to indicate that brain farts are a unique type of cognitive mistake. They have a predictable neural pattern that emerges up to 30 seconds before they happen.

Basically, your brain will take any opportunity to shut down some of its processing systems. Here’s the process step by step:

t-10 minutes

You’re daydreaming, and your medial temporal lobe subsystem, precuneus, medial prefrontal subsystem, and posterior cingulate cortex, which together make up the default mode network (DMN) are all active.

t-5 minutes

You confront a demanding task, such as driving home. Your anterior cingulate and right prefrontal regions, brain areas involved in attention, begin to activate, as do the cerebellum and the parietal, visual, and temporal cortices, which control the motor coordination you need to pilot through traffic. At the same time, the DMN deactivates.

t-30 seconds

Your route is extremely familiar. Your frontal lobes, bored by this habitual task, begin to power down. The retrosplenial cortex in the posterior section of the DMN begins to stir again. When the balance of activity between the DMN and the attention network reaches a certain threshold, you enter an error-prone state. You miss your exit off the highway.

t+5 seconds

Your frontal lobes fire up again at high levels in an attempt to compensate for the error. They return to a state of optimal performance, ready to work on a corrective action.

t+15 seconds

The stress of having made a blunder activates the limbic-hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, your brain’s “panic button.” You experience a surge of the stress hormone cortisol.

CHRIS HEDGES: “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle”

2010-01-18T07:03:00.001-08:00

A *MUST WATCH* VIDEO!!! EXPLAINS A LOT!!!

Use Hypnosis to Study Moral Judgment: The Role of Reason and Emotion

2010-01-17T06:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.NaturalNews.com/z027949_hypnosis_emotion.html

January 17 2010
Use Hypnosis to Study Moral Judgment: The Role of Reason and Emotion
by Steve G. Jones, M.Ed., citizen journalist

(NaturalNews) Many scientists and researchers often ponder the idea of moral philosophy. Where does moral judgment come from and how are the rules defined? Are moral judgments a result of reasoning through a particular situation or are they a result of an emotion and based on feelings? People can argue either position. However, recent studies have pointed towards moral judgment stemming from emotion and intuition rather than reasoning. One such study used hypnosis to show that moral judgment can be influenced with emotions.

Nado, Kelly, and Stich (2006) pondered both sides of the debate on whether moral judgment stems from rationality or emotions. There are research-backed responses to both. One argues that all judgments are based on some form of reasoning. Another argues that reason is the slave of passions. Researchers concluded that there is still a lot to be learned about moral judgment. The analysis of how people make their moral judgments is still a young debate and more research needs to be conducted.

Many researchers have focused on moral judgment coming from reasoning. However, a meta-analysis was conducted (Green & Haidt, 2002) involving both psychology and cognitive neuroscience research that focused on moral judgment. They discovered that although reasoning can play a significant role in moral judgment, there is more evidence that intuition and emotion determine moral judgment. They also found through brain imaging that many areas of the brain contribute to making moral judgments.

Wheatley and Haidt (2005) researched how hypnosis has an effect on moral judgment. In the study, 64 highly hypnotizable participants received a series of group-hypnosis sessions. During these sessions, participants were given a posthypnotic suggestion to feel disgusted when reading a particular word either `take` or `often.` Posthypnotic suggestions are designed so that the participant does not remember the instructions until prompted to remember.

Results of the research showed that when participants were asked to judge specific situations, they showed more disgust when the specific word was used in the description. When the word was present they rated moral transgressions as more morally wrong. The researchers concluded that intuition and feelings can influence moral judgments.

Although the topic of moral judgment is still up for debate, recent research shows advancement in determining what leads humans to make certain moral judgments. Hypnosis enables researchers to access the subconscious mind to help them understand the non-reasoning ability of the human mind. Hypnosis is a great tool to use in determining whether moral judgment is based on reason or emotions.

Sources

Greene, J. and Haidt, J. (2002). How (and where) does moral judgment work? Trends Cognitive Science, 6(12), 517-523.

Nado, J., Kelly, D., & Stich, S. (2006). Moral judgment. Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Psychology.

Wheatley, T. and Haidt, J. (2005). Hypnotic disgust makes moral judgments more sever. PSCI, 16(10), 780-784.

The Devil That is Desire

2010-01-16T16:07:00.000-08:00

I never did trust 'The Secret'. We live in an underworld where it takes more than positive thinking and *wishing* to achieve anything good...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Devil-That-is-Desire-by-Robert-Bonomo-100112-80.html

January 14, 2010
By Robert Bonomo

Why is that by merely wanting something, we somehow repel it. I doubt it would be possible to quantify this effect under laboratory conditions, but what human being wouldn't agree? You only have to really want something for it to all of a sudden become elusive. Late for work and need the bus to come quickly? Need a taxi to the airport? Have a job interview and really want them to call you back? Waiting for a phone call from a potential suitor? Somehow we know that all these situations are prime candidates for frustration and anger.

It may seem like superstition, but it is a fundamental truth in life that by attaching ourselves to an outcome we lessen or even significantly reduce our chances of happiness.

The religions of the Indian sub-continent have harped on this idea for thousands of years. The Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita and the Buddhist Sutras all continually focus on relinquishing desire and attachments to people, feelings and things. They tell us to not to attach ourselves to the outcomes of our actions, just act freely. They assure us that this is the path to happiness and even enlightenment.

While these ideas "feel" very Buddhist they are just as much Hindu, the mother of Buddhism. Houston Smith in his wonderful work The World's Religions writes eloquently how Buddhism was born out of Hinduism only to be slowly absorbed back into it on the Indian sub-continent.

There is one very simple and important question to ask about the teaching of non-attachment, is it simply a safer bet? By not putting your eggs in any basket are you simply assuring that none get broken? Is it in effect a coward's path? It is not. It is the path of death, of transformation and of spiritual growth.

Non-attachment goes much deeper than just "being okay" with what happens. The key to understanding the concept of non-attachment is to focus on what is attaching itself to things, people and ideas. Becoming aware of attachment is the beginning of true consciousness. The ego is what is attaches itself, it is the glue. There is no psychological pain, frustration, heartbreak, anger or hate that the ego is not completely responsible for. The path to redemption always begins with discovering that we aren't who we really we think we are. The hero is never really the child of his "parents", he always winds up being some else's child. This is mythologies way of indicating that we are not the ego.

Gautama Buddha began is spiritual path as a young prince with a beautiful wife and newborn baby. Many important seers predicted Buddha would be either a great king or a great spiritual leader. His father wanted him to be a king, so he sheltered Buddha from religious teachings and seeing anyone elderly or suffering. But at the age of 29 he accidentally saw a man dying, and Buddha became distraught. His young and beautiful wife would one day become old and decrepit and his new born baby would eventually taste death. This realization was too much for him, and he left everything to become a monk in the forest. Buddha had a major existential depression. The two paths were presented to him, and he, like all heroes, chose the path of death. So many spiritual traditions point out that there are two paths, and like Buddha, the truth lies on the difficult road.

Not to belabor the obvious, but our modern society puts so much time and energy into avoiding seeing and discussing death that we seem to be constantly running from it. One turns forty and becomes melancholy which turns into some plastic surgery, a new car, and a prescription for anti-depressants. Even our government bans photographing flag covered caskets because, God forbid, people might begin equating war with the death of young people. Death is the only teacher; it defines us, tempering our appetites and rage. It is our better half, and the more we try and escape it, the sillier, shallower and more pathetic we become.

Of course some depressions are entirely chemical in nature and need to be treated with medication. But many are simply existential crises which if treated with introspection, will inspire growth and spiritual development. Our avoidance of the tough topics has lead to an immature society. Look at the great debates of our times and you will see few if any mature voices above the fray. We have become a society of screamers, name callers and megalomaniacs. How else can one explain Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck leading political discourse in this country? A mature person must pass through "the dark night of the soul', and often more than once. It is unpleasant, eerie, foreboding and at times hopeless; but how can one be human without crossing that bridge? By trying to escape it we are running from our higher destines both individually and collectively.

Doctors need symptoms before they can cure, and people need symptoms to grow. Take romantic love for example. While it is surely one of the most wonderful feelings humans can have, only when it is lost do we actually learn and grow from it. People happily in love are like carefree drunks on a park bench. Only when their love ends can they hope to develop. Our society so longs to label and package things that it wants to take the great questions of the day and turn them into music videos. Hollywood, television, malls, pop-music, bestsellers and cheap gurus are tuning our minds into mush and our souls to silicone.

The most important transitional crisis is undoubtedly middle age. It is the point where people either return to their youth, escaping the inevitable onslaught of time, or they take the courageous turn toward death and jettison the ego and material world for something much more profound and transcendent. Jung called it the process of individuation and was not interested in patients younger than forty, finding them lacking enough existential leverage to reach deep spiritual understanding.

So how did The Secret get it wrong? First, how did it get it right. The Secret is one of the most brilliant direct marketing pieces ever created. Like all good direct response work, it strikes at deep chords in the human psyche, greed and love (sex). The classical direct response piece, like its close relative the con scheme, always has its hook in easy money. The Secret puts most direct response work, and con games, to shame with its simplicity. Simply think you have a million dollars and you will have it. As you read this "divine revelation' over and over again, you are introduced to a series of gurus and inspirational speakers with websites galore ready to sell you all you need to be happy.

Basically, The Secret is a hundred pages saying "fake it till you make it" disguised as spiritual revelation, expertly packaged in a direct response piece promoting the products of a bunch of quacks. To top it all off, free distribution through social media on the Internet and you have a game changing piece of marketing. But apart from a very professional sales pitch, the sad thing about The Secret is that it promotes desire as a religious attribute. Don't look beyond desire for something more profound, embrace it and become one with it. Zen Capitalism.

By allowing desire to become the person all is be lost in the labyrinth of the ego, which blocks out all universal consciousness, leaving one in the dry barren place of anti-depressants, malls, cable television, McDonalds, golf clubs and of course The Secret.

The ego is a necessary element of human development. In order for us to separate from our mothers, our families, leave childhood and navigate the horrible adolescent years, we need an ego. We must make an exceptional effort to create a healthy stable ego that will feed our ambition, drive, self esteem, and allow us to make something of ourselves, find a partner and protect our loved ones. But once that process is complete, the second half of life should follow the reverse path, trading away ego for universal consciousness. The two are incompatible. The ego drags us out of infancy and childhood and finally, when we realize we are not the ego, that we are a reflection of something incomparably bigger, we must slowly allow the ego to crumble in the face of "the truth'.

In India, some men in their 50's, once their children are grown become Sadhus, ascetic wandering monks, leaving their work, status, family, in short, their egos, for the contemplative life. Some are even obligated to attend their own funerals, to reinforce the idea of becoming dead onto oneself. Many men in the west do the opposite, they find a younger wife, start a new business, and do it all over again, preferring too live two lives instead of one real one. This is the key choice in life, retold countless times in spiritual and mythological stories. The hero often has a choice between two paths, security (ego) and death (universal consciousness). Death is change; it's the formless void from which form emerges, the knife that cuts, the bullet that wounds. Only from the perspective of middle age can one see the folly of the ego while accepting it as the "game of life'.

But how sad is it to see mature adults falling into the games of the ego? The Osama Bin Laden's, the George W Bush's, the Kim Jong- il's, the Sadam Hussein's and Dick Cheney's of the world. Where is their maturity? Lost somewhere in the tremendous vortex of their egos. Egos must play out their scripts as Freud said, in business, politics and the arts, but under the watchful and restraining eye of responsible, spiritually mature adults. We should never let people lost in their egos pull the real strings. Nationalism, wars, environmental destruction, misery in places of abundant wealth are all products of the ego. Spiritually mature people don't let oligarchs, investment banks and corporations bath in fortunes while people close at hand live in poverty.

Modern life brings many difficulties along with its wonderful achievements. It's common now in the West to see couples having their first child almost exactly at the apex of middle age. It's difficult to look one's baby in the eyes and not feel the ego rise in rightful defense of the young family. Where is the time for the spirit to grow when there are mouths to feed, bills to pay and schooling to provide? How is the earth going to sustain wealthy 60 years olds consuming like 25 year olds? If we look at life in two parts, the first is spent in full service of the ego, raising offspring, making money, finding status, and the second is the elegant glide back into the universal from which we emerged. Unfortunately, too many people want part two to be a remake of part one, which in the end denies the greatest and most difficult fruits of life while devastating the earth and denying the world a mature, enlightened leadership. As Jesus told Martha, sister of Lazarus, who worried too much over the home, as opposed to her spiritual sister Mary. "Martha, Martha, Mary has chosen the better half, and it shall not be taken from her." What is the "better half"? It is the un-owned, un-possessed, un-speak able, un-identifiable, the void, all that is and ever was, the road less traveled, the Tao.

Of course, embracing the spiritual life is no easy task, if it where, the promise could not be so great. At mid life, people must face death and embrace it. It's much more comfortable to flee toward security, no matter how ephemeral it is. An adult must make a great leap of faith to not only accept death, but to embrace it, bath in the sublime nectar of impermanence, brevity, change and all that is transient. Only from this place is one able to see why we are unhappy in spite of our possessions, status, money, and unending consumption. By letting go of all that sustains us, and feeds the ego, we can finally feel the euphoria of universal consciousness. Almost all traditions point a big finger in the same direction, no matter what our background, one must only look up and you will see it hanging over you, pointing you somewhere, and if that place terrifies you, than you know you are on the right path.

Simple Brainwashing - Submitting to Group Pressure

2010-01-12T15:46:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIh4MkcfJA&feature=player_embedded

Controlling The Minds Of The Masses: How It Is Done And Why

2010-01-11T07:14:00.000-08:00

http://neithercorp.us/npress/?p=191

By Giordano Bruno
Neithercorp Press - 11/27/2009

“Mind Control” is a loaded term, often associated with science fiction and the fantastical by people who are not aware of its very real history. Images of Orwell’s “1984” or Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” are conjured; dystopic nightmare landscapes assumed only possible in pulp literature. What many people do not know or realize is that these books were based on actual ideas and theories that had been put forward by social and scientific elites for decades, and in some cases, centuries. The desire of the “ruling class” to understand the mechanics of the human mind has left a trail of misery dating back to earliest recorded history. It was not enough for them to subjugate the masses through force; the Elites wanted the people to accept their slavery, to integrate it into their psyches. They wanted us to be “thankful” for our servitude, for only then, would they truly be in control of the world.

To understand where this obsession with mind control comes from and how it works, we must first start at the beginning…

The Genius And The Horror Of Babylon

Babylon was the first of what we would now call “urban centers” or city states. Until Babylon, most of the human world lived in closely knit tribal societies composed of several families or “clans.” The Sumerians had set the first foundation stones in the formation of a new political and social architecture–the empire–but this architecture was not fully realized until Babylon.
Babylonian society achieved several things in the process of mass mind control, but its greatest accomplishment was taking the first step towards “centralization.”

With the construction of Babylon, the sovereignty and relative independence of the tribal system ended. Before this, many tribes were nomadic, laying claim to no specific plot of land, and surviving by hunting, foraging, and some animal domestication. This method of life is considered by most of us today to be highly primitive and ineffective (perhaps because most people know nothing about it), but it also had many merits. With Babylon came the centralization of tribes into the faceless and careless recesses of urban life. Agriculture on a large scale was introduced, not necessarily because it increased food production, but because it tied the people to the land indefinitely through an early form of feudalism (some scientists and historians question whether forced agriculture actually helped or harmed human society).

Instead of the tribal council of elders; a system of leadership based on experience and trust, Babylon gave rise to the first vestiges of “Royalty”– leadership based on nothing but heraldry and bloodlines. Ever since the Babylonian model was established, societies have deferred authority to centralized governments composed of men that have little if any legitimate respect or connection to the people they govern (with only a few exceptions in history). The rulers became almost faceless deities that cast laws and lightning bolts down on the masses from some unreachable Olympus, floating high above the toil and worry of the serfs and slaves. This mentality in regards to our government continues today.

Babylon also introduced the centralization of religion. Instead of a rich tapestry of many different tribal belief systems, all people absorbed into Babylon were indoctrinated into a single religious system. This religion was built on a “pyramid structure” in which the priests held incredible social sway. The secrets of their religion (often termed “mysteries”) were reserved for only those priests at the top of the pyramid. All others in the priesthood were carefully chosen and inducted through a series of “tests,” mostly psychological in nature.

This system of compartmentalization was the key to the priesthood’s control over the minds of the masses. Knowledge in fields such as mathematics, navigation, astronomy, and other early sciences, were kept from the commoners and slaves, giving the priesthood and the royalty incredible power over their subjects.

These methods were carried on by elites in various empires to come, and perfected by the ancient Egyptians, who found a way to combine the centralization of Royalty and Religion into the creation of “God Kings”; human leaders who were also treated by the masses as living gods.

The startling allure of early Christianity was probably in part due to the priesthoods of these empires and their abuses of the people. Christianity (at first) destroyed the paradigm of the pyramid structure in religion. It claimed no “mysteries,” and said that there should be no hidden and exalted order of priests, that all the beliefs and knowledge of religion should be open to everyone. Of course, this changed centuries later when Christianity was co-opted by the same elites they were trying to fight, but we will cover this in a later article.

The root methods of mind control were born in the ancient mystery sects of Babylon and Egypt. This is where symbolic structures in the unconscious, now called “Archetypes,” were first studied and utilized. This is where tactics such as “Pageantry” and early forms of the Hegelian Dialectic were first practiced. These same techniques designed thousands of years ago are still used today, but with new and frightening technological efficiency.

Archetypes: A Map To The Mind, Or Perhaps Even The Soul

Archetypes are structures of knowledge inherent in the human mind from the moment we are born into the world. They were first fully explored in a scientific manner by the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. Jung found during his decades of study into the unconscious mind that there within existed a series of symbols with built in psychological implications. These symbols were adapted by various archetypal structures that exist in our psyches from birth, and they are common to every human being regardless of environmental conditions, historical background, or cultural background, meaning they are universal. They make their home in our unconscious minds and are most visible in our dreams, art, and religions. In fact, all successful religions are built upon Archetypal Symbolism.

No one knows yet where archetypes come from, and how they are present in our psyches at birth, but the fact is, they are there. Here are some interesting articles explaining more on specific Archetypes and what they represent:

http://www.stenudd.com/myth/freudjung/jung-archetypes.htm

http://www.tnnweb.com/mds/majorarchetypes.html

Jung found that these symbols are deeply effecting when a person experiences them in their daily life. They tend to evoke intense emotions and personal connection. Those who are not aware of how archetypes affect them can be easily swayed or manipulated by archetypal events or imagery. Jung’s form of psychology was based around the idea that these inborn structures of information could be used to cure mental illness if patients were forced to examine themselves and their unconscious more closely. To this day, Jungian psychology remains far more effective in treating imbalances such as schizophrenia than any pharmaceutical ever marketed by mainstream psychiatry. However, Jung was startled early in his work to find that he was not the first to utilize archetypes as keys to opening doors in the mind. There had been others long before him…

A Scientific Basis For The Occult?

Jung continued to return to two ancient belief systems when looking for clues on how archetypes operate; Hermetics, and Alchemy. These systems existed in pre-biblical times, yet shockingly, seemed to employ the same methods of examining unconscious symbolism that Jung would stumble upon thousands of years later.

When the ancient and exclusive priest sects of Babylon and Egypt were practicing their rituals and symbolism to influence the masses, were they actually using an early form of Jungian Psychology? Was it possible that occult groups and their “magical” qualities were not really magical at all, but the expert use of archetypal symbols to manipulate the minds of their followers? Was this the great secret that they were trying to hide from the commoners?

A close examination of occult belief systems is very revealing. Occult symbolism matches and catalogs many of Jung’s archetypes perfectly. In fact, looking through the Arcana of a tarot card deck (and their meanings) is like looking through a list of symbols and themes Jung found to be common in the dreams of every human being:

http://www.schuelers.com/chaos/chaos7.htm

http://www.intuitivetarot.com/majorarcana.html

Imagine having the knowledge of archetypes and how they effect people emotionally 3000 years ago. Your ability to influence the minds of others would certainly appear to be nothing short of “wizardry!” Of course, just because the elites of old used archetypal symbols doesn’t necessarily mean they knew exactly what they were doing or why it worked, so let us jump ahead to the middle ages and the renaissance for more evidence…

Freemasons And The Use Of Archetypes

The occult practices of ancient Babylon, Egypt, and Greece, did not disappear after the deaths of those empires, but were carried on by secret societies throughout the Middle Ages, including the Rosicrucians, and the Freemasons. It is hard to say whether or not these societies are directly descended from the mystery schools of old, or if they simply adapted the same beliefs centuries later. However, the Freemasons themselves declare that they and their practices are directly descended from the religious orders of Babylon and Egypt:

“Masonry stands in this tradition; and if we may not say that it is historically related to the great ancient orders, it is their spiritual descendant, and renders much the same ministry to our age which the Mysteries rendered to the olden world.”

–Joseph Fort Newton, 33″ Mason, from his book “The Builders”

“Study of spiritual realities found in Masonry reveals that we have perpetuated and increasingly activated the essential principals of the ancient Mystery Schools which have existed from the very earliest times.”

–Foster Bailey, from his book “The Spirit of Masonry”

When entering Freemasonry, initiates must take the “Oath of Nimrod.” Nimrod is purported to be the first king of Babylon. This is admitted in their own literature, which you can see here:

http://www.freemasonrytoday.com/36/p12.php?printnice=yes

Oath of Nimrod
Apprentice Degree (1st).
I, _______, do in the presence of El Shaddai and of this Worshipful Assembly of Free Masons, Rough Masons, Wallers, Slaters, Paviors, Plaisterers and Bricklayers, promise and declare that I will not at any time hereafter, by any act or circumstance whatsoever, directly or indirectly, write, print, cut, mark, publish, discover, reveal, or make known, any part or parts of the Trade secrets, privileges, or counsells of the Worshipful Fraternity or Fellowship of Free Masonry, which I may have known at any time, or at any time hereafter shall be made known unto me.

The penalty for breaking this great oath shall be the loss of my life.

That I shall be branded with the mark of the Traitor and slain according to ancient custom by being throtalled, that my body shall be buried in the rough sands of the sea a cable’s length from the shore where the tide regularly ebbs and flows twice in the twenty-four hours, so that my soul shall have no rest by night or by day–
(Candidate Signs the O.B.)

Given under my hand and sealed with my lips, this day of 1913.
So help me El Shaddai and the holy contents of this book.

There are indeed many reasons why the present volume should be generously circulated among all classes of students of the Occult and Mystic, especially the members of the Masonic bodies.

The vast majority of Masons smile with derision when the term “Occult Science” is used in connection with the Mysteries but, despite this, if it had not been for the Occult Fraternities, Masonry could not have existed.

…

“All Masonry of the past dealt largely with the ethics and symbolism of the Ancient Mysteries. If the Masons of the present age will but seek for the spirit of the symbolism upon which the degrees are based, the grandest achievements in the knowledge and reconstruction will be possible and the mysteries concealed in the Greater Mysteries of Antiquity will be recovered to them.”

–Mason R. Swinburne Clymer, M. D., from his book “The Mysticism of Masonry”

“The universal sentiment of the Freemasons of the present day is to confer upon Solomon, the King of Israel, the honor of being their first Grand Master. But the legend of the Craft had long before, though there was a tradition of the Temple in existence, given, at least by suggestion, that title to Nimrod, the King of Babylonia and Assyria. It had credited the first organization of the fraternity of craftsmen to him, in saying that he gave a charge to the workmen whom he sent to assist the King of Nineveh in building his cities.

That is to say, he framed for them a Constitution, and, in the words of the legend, this was the first time that ever Masons had any charge of his science. It was the first time that the Craft was organized into a fraternity working under a Constitution of body of laws. As Nimrod was the autocratic maker of these laws, it necessarily resulted that their first legislator, creating laws with his unlimited and absolute governing power, was also their first Grand Master.”

http://www.lafayettemason123.org/pages/education.htm

The point here is, the Freemasons follow the teachings of the ancient mystery sects, and these sects dealt deeply in the use of archetypes. Therefore, the elites of today, many of whom are heavily involved in Freemasonry, would also be steeped in archetypes and their influence on the human mind. Here is an interesting article written by a Freemason on Masonry’s relationship to the symbols of the Tarot, which we discussed earlier:

http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/major_arcana_tarot.html

The best example of Elites using an archetypal image to manipulate the masses is also the most recent. The 9/11 false flag attacks present a highly organized and deliberate use of symbolism to force a particular emotional response from the majority of Americans.

I have often heard the question; “Why didn’t the elites just allow the planes to hit the towers? Why also use nanothermite (military grade thermite) to cause a near uniform demolition?”*

There is a very good reason for the use of demolitions on 9/11, but it is primarily psychological, and not strategic.

The Tower is itself a very powerful archetypal symbol. In dreams it represents a striving for knowledge and wisdom, or an accomplishment or progress in one’s own psychological development. The collapse of a Tower in a dream can represent a severe psychological break, a feeling of failure and disappointment, or even herald the formation of a mental illness such as depression or schizophrenia. In dreams, the archetype takes shape and then affects our mental state in our waking life. But what happens when an archetypal event is created right in front of our very eyes?
This was the main purpose of 9/11, and the need for demolitions to cause a total collapse. If demolitions had not been used, the WTC would have only partially collapsed, as it was designed to do in the event of an airplane strike according to the men who engineered the towers themselves. If a partial collapse occurred, the psychological effect would be muted. American’s reasoning and psychological defenses would not have been broken down, because the “Archetypal Event” would not have been complete. The towers had to collapse completely in order for the archetypal symbolism to be successful, allowing for easy manipulation of the masses. In fact, if the towers had been hit and they remained standing, I do not believe Americans would have been at all susceptible to the idea of war, and we would certainly not be in Iraq today, nor would we have accepted the formation of the Patriot Act, which gives the Executive Branch wide ranging and nearly dictatorial powers. This is the influence of archetypes when used by skilled practitioners for ill purpose.

But this is only the beginning…..

Freemasons And Sacred Geometry

It has been proven that our minds are hard wired with not only archetypal symbols, but mathematical and geometric understanding as well. We covered this in the first episode of our film series Sons Of Darkness, Sons Of Light.

Amazonian tribes in Brazil have been shown by recent studies to have inborn knowledge of geometry and mathematics their cultures had never been exposed to before. Also, in studies of baby’s emotional reactions to faces, it has been found that newborns recognize and prefer those faces which are mathematically symmetrical in bone structure. Meaning, babies who have never been taught mathematical concepts are born with the ability to recognize geometric shapes, and are affected emotionally by them! This inborn sense of geometry can even cause us to view some people as “physically attractive” and others as “physically unattractive”:

http://www.viewzone.com/faces.html

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but in fact, it would appear that our unconscious is already predisposed to gravitate towards mathematically sound forms.

Enter Freemasonry, and the practice of “Sacred Geometry.”

Sacred Geometry is one of the foundations of Masonry, and is the “spiritual” practice of mathematics. Made prominent in the time of Pythagoras and Euclid in ancient Greece, geometry and other mathematics were practiced as a form of religion, instead of science as we know it today. The shapes inherent in calculations like Pythagoras’ “Golden Rectangle” are used often and deliberately in Masonic buildings and even in art, like that of Leonardo Da Vinci. Here is an article written by a Mason on the subject:

http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/geometry_masonry.html

Freemasons are well aware of the psychological effect that certain geometric structures and images can have on the human mind, and these shapes and forms are present in all their buildings. Entire cities have even been designed by Masons using sacred geometry. For example, Washington D.C. was designed by the Freemason, Pierre L’enfant, and the deliberate Masonic symbolism used is obvious:

http://home.hiwaay.net/~jalison/after2.html

A good example of a building constructed using sacred geometry for psychological effect is the Christ Church, Spitalfields in London, made famous because it lay exactly in the center of the murders perpetrated by the infamous “Jack the Ripper.” It was designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, a Freemason:
From an architectural point of view, the church is very imposing and emotionally affecting, even frightening! It seems to draw the life out of its surroundings.

Imagine now the use of sacred geometry in other visual arts, such as media and film. Could certain geometric principles be used in media to evoke a specific emotional response from viewers, just like Hawksmoor’s churches?

Actually, they already are! Just read any book on visual marketing:

http://www.gmarketing.com/articles/read/147/Winning_Colors_and_Shapes_for_Your_Company.html

The use of archetypes and geometric symbols in a subliminal way brings us to another form of mind control, and yet another Freemason…

Mesmer, Hypnosis, And Subliminal Messaging

“…the real origin and essence of the hypnotic condition, is the induction of a habit of abstraction or mental concentration, in which, as in reverie or spontaneous abstraction, the powers of the mind are so much engrossed with a single idea or train of thought, as, for the nonce, to render the individual unconscious of, or indifferently conscious to, all other ideas, impressions, or trains of thought. The hypnotic sleep, therefore, is the very antithesis or opposite mental and physical condition to that which precedes and accompanies common sleep…”

James Braid, Founder of Hypnotism

Hypnotism, as discovered by Scottish physician James Braid, is a not necessarily a drifting of the mind into unconsciousness, but an extreme focusing of consciousness to a single point. This focusing of consciousness caused all other information gathered by the senses to be “overlooked.” Meaning, a person under hypnosis is so focused on a single point that their consciousness is unable to recognize other stimuli, making them highly suggestible. Because their entire consciousness is focused on one point, they do not realize that messages are being implanted, or information is being extracted by the hypnotist.

Braid’s work was directly influenced by the studies of Franz Anton Mesmer, a Freemason. Mesmer used a form of hypnotism, mainly as a method to make the sick believe they had been healed or cured. An entire school (some would say cult) of thought built up around Mesmer’s practices, and the term “Mesmerism” was born:

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Hypnosis+-+Franz+Anton+Mesmer-a01073990642

http://psychicinvestigator.com/demo/Mesmr2.htm

The use of hypnotism is directly linked to the study of subliminal messaging. Creating a state of hyper-focus on a simplistic point in a person’s mind allows for numerous messages to be sent into the brain without that person being aware:

http://www.mindpowernews.com/Subliminals.htm

Most people have heard of subliminal messaging in advertising, and the “25th Frame” tactic, which hides an image in the 25th frame of a video or film broadcast. The frame moves by so quickly that the message does not register consciously, but subconsciously, it is imprinted in the brain. Some people are easily influenced by this method, while others are not.

Television is perhaps the greatest hypnotic tool ever devised, allowing for intensive subliminal manipulation to occur. Think back to the last time you watched television. Remember any moments in which you lost all track of the world around you? Remember a family member trying to get your attention, yet you were “mesmerized?” Television causes the mind to settle into a narrow focus, much like hypnosis, making the mind open to suggestion.

This suggestion does not even need to come in the form of hidden images or reverse audio messages. It could be a carefully chosen talking point repeated several times in the same news broadcast. Even the scrolling “ticker” at the bottom of a FOX or CNN news program could be used to insert manipulative messaging.

Projects, government and commercial (same thing), still exist today which seek to streamline and perfect the use of subliminal messaging to control the human mind. In September of 2007, Wired Magazine published an article on Semantic Stimuli Response Measurements Technology, or SSRM Tek, being studied at the Psychotechnology Research Institute in Moscow. The laboratory’s stated goal is experimental use of subliminal messaging and suggestion to control the human mind:

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/09/mind_reading

Note the image below of the room used to experiment on subjects. Notice the symbolically geometric design, very similar to Masonic architecture:

The Psychotechnology Research Institute has been linked closely with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the DHS has even announced plans to award a sole-source contract to conduct the first U.S.-government sponsored testing of SSRM Tek. Their stated reason for wanting mind control technology: “to defend America against terrorists.”

Pageantry

One of the favored methods used by elites to effect people on a mass scale is Pageantry; the ability to create an entire environment that overloads the five senses and the unconscious mind with subliminal and archetypal messaging. The most successful example of expert pageantry is probably the formation of Nazi Germany, financed by elites from around the globe, including the Rockefeller Family through their company Standard Oil, as proven by the “Von Knieriem Documents” discovered during the Nuremberg Trials:

http://www.mazal.org/archive/nmt/07/NMT07-C001.htm

The entire Nazi ideology was founded on principles supported by the Rockefellers and other elites, along with the archetypal mythologies touted by the Theosophical Society. Numerous symbolic images like the Swastika (black sun) or the lightning bolt-like symbol for the SS (a rune symbol) were taken directly from occult history and used masterfully to build an environment rich in archetypes. Jung, who witnessed the transformation of Germany, despaired at the use of archetypes in the destruction of Europe:

“If thirty years ago anyone had dared to predict that our psychological development was tending towards a revival of the medieval persecutions of the Jews, that Europe would again tremble before the Roman fasces and the tramp of legions, that people would once more give the Roman salute, as two thousand years ago, and that instead of the Christian Cross an archaic swastika would lure onward millions of warriors ready for death — why, that man would have been hooted at as a mystical fool.”

–Carl Gustav Jung

Note: The video above proposes a German opposition to Masonry, however, the Thule Society of Germany and its symbolism is heavily linked to Masonry and this connection should be taken into account. Not all branches of Freemasonry are involved with the NWO, and not all Masons are aware of their organization’s dishonorable ties to the Elites. Some branches have even rebelled against the Elites in the past, such as those in the colonial U.S., who fought against the tyranny of the British monarchy. We will more thoroughly discuss Freemasonry and how it was co-opted by the Globalists in an article soon to be released.

Another purpose to pageantry and ceremony is to influence people to experience what Jung called the “Collective Unconscious,” an intuitive psychological network to which all people are unconsciously connected. Most of us are only vaguely aware of this connection, but the evidence of its existence can be seen in the identical archetypal symbolism of every culture at any point in history.

Almost every religion uses symbolic ceremony to create a collective experience of the unconscious. These ceremonies can help people to better understand themselves, and their relationship to humanity as a whole, however, such pageants can also be used to enslave the minds of an entire group through a collective sense of fear, guilt, and rage. This is why many of the ancient mystery sects of Babylon and Egypt used human sacrifice during ceremony.

It is normally written off by historians as zealotry and lunacy, but there is a very tangible purpose behind sacrificial ceremonies. The act of collective murder is incredibly invasive and can put an unbreakable stranglehold on the psyches of those who participate. Often, these ceremonies are meant to create a rift which allows people to ignore conscience; the intuitive and inborn force which helps us to find peace and balance. The witnesses and perpetrators of such an event are often bound emotionally for years or even decades after.

That is why the Global Elites of today still portray sacrifice in their pageants, like the “Cremation of Care” (cremation of conscience) ceremony at Bohemian Grove in Northern California, which many U.S. presidents have attended, including George W. Bush. Take note of the numerous references to Babylon in this ceremony, as well as the stone statue of Moloch, the Babylonian god of death and sacrifice:

Another elitist group that still uses sacrifice in effigy (perhaps real as well) is the Skull and Bones Society which holds in its ranks such well known politicians a George H.W. Bush, George W Bush, and John Kerry:

The idea that our world leaders even pretend to commit acts of human sacrifice should be extremely disturbing to anyone who understands the psychological implications of pageantry and mind control. No leader of men should be separated from his conscience.

MK-ULTRA

Perhaps the pinnacle of all exposed government sponsored mind control programs was MK-ULTRA, a multifaceted project spread across several countries utilizing every method of psychological manipulation mentioned in this article, as well as others not mentioned.

MK-ULTRA was a CIA based program started officially in 1953 and continued at least through the 1960’s. It employed scientists (some human rights criminals and murderers) smuggled from Nazi Germany after the war through Operation Paper Clip. The experiments of MK-ULTRA, under the supervision of men like Dr. Sidney Gottliebb and Dr. Ewen Cameron, often used unsuspecting people as guinea pigs, exposing them to forced drugging, subliminal messaging, and even torture. Some believe these experiments continue today under a different name. Here is a very well made video explaining the history of MK-ULTRA:

In the early 70’s, victims of these experiments began to come forward, and in response, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MK-ULTRA files destroyed. Only a bare skeleton of files remain to help us understand what really happened. You can view all of those documents here:

http://www.michael-robinett.com/declass/c000.htm

Project MK-ULTRA was first brought to wide public attention in 1975 as Congress was forced to acknowledge the numerous victims coming forward to tell their story. The resulting government “investigation” was mostly for show, and was organized by the Rockefeller Commission. No member of the CIA or any doctor employed by them was ever prosecuted for their crimes.

Defense Against Mind Control Methods

The first step in defending against manipulation is of course to first understand the methods used by manipulators to get what they want. After careful study, you should be able to easily pick out key phrases, archetypal symbols, subliminal messages, and other devices when you are confronted by them. It is interesting to examine these methods in depth and then go back out into the world of media and propaganda. You may be startled by what you see on the T.V. and in the streets that you did not notice before.

The other defense against mind control was actually realized by Carl Jung. Jung found that those people who used Archetypal Psychology for good, those who used it to understand themselves and their inborn qualities, were actually incredibly resistant to manipulation and subversion. They could not be caught in the fervor of an archetypal event, because they knew their own unconscious so well. These men and women were psychological mountains, immovable spires of mental strength that could not be changed and controlled by others. For those not yet self aware, the mind remains a subtle and mutable form, a delicate instrument that expresses the contents of the spirit, but hard to predict and defend. Knowing one’s self is the key to breaking from the poisonous circle of psychological manipulation, and to expel the habit of apathy that settles human beings into tyranny. To win liberty back from the clutches of elites, we must first WANT to be free, and the path to freedom begins in the minds and the hearts of men.

“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.”

–Adolf Hitler

Sheeple: Why They Are The Way They Are…

2010-01-11T07:05:00.000-08:00

http://neithercorp.us/npress/?p=182

By Giordano Bruno
Neithercorp Press

For years, perhaps even decades, the Liberty Movement or elements of it have been waging a relentless and arduous battle; a painful and sometimes demoralizing struggle with no end in sight. This battle has consumed some people’s lives with few victories to speak of, making them bitter and indifferent to the fate of their fellow man. I speak not of our fight with Global Elites bent on centralized control of every country in the world, but of our fight with the average know-nothing American; our next door neighbor, our fellow employees on the job, even our own family members. The very same people we have recently come to term “Sheeple.”

Part Of The Herd

For people in the Liberty Movement who are privy to so much background knowledge of world events, it is often tempting to immediately label those people who have not yet been exposed to the facts as “Sheeple,” but this is not always the case. At one point or another, every one of us in the movement were completely unaware of the big picture, or had only a very vague impression of what Globalists were and how they manipulate the political and financial underpinnings of our society. Were we also Sheeple? If not, then what set us apart from others who did not take the initiative to learn more?

The fact is, it takes more than simply “not knowing” to be a part of the herd. It takes a special kind of willful ignorance.

When members of the Liberty Movement were first confronted with the reality of the “New World Order” (termed by global elitists, not us), we perhaps scoffed at first, but our intuition told us to look deeper, and we listened. Sheeple, on the other hand, are people who are confronted with the truth consistently, perhaps even daily, yet make the internal decision to ignore it, to block it out completely, to consciously make the decision that they will not even consider the possibility of the information’s validity. In psychology this level of denial is often associated with mild to very severe forms of mental illness, and in a sense, that’s exactly what Sheeple suffer from. Let’s examine further…

Did You Build Your Own World View, Or Was It Made For You?

Do you actively participate in the expansion of your own world view, or do you just parrot the talking points you hear on your favorite television news channel? Take honest note of what opinions you express and how you express them. How often do you repeat word for word what you hear from others? How often do you say only what you think other people want to hear? How often do you actually formulate your own conclusions on a subject based on facts you researched for yourself, instead of heard from someone else?

The problem is that many American’s are barely involved in the making of their own perspective, and this reflects a complete lack of interest in their own self awareness. In order to create one’s own world view, one must take interest in himself. This sounds vain, but taking interest in ones self also includes one’s failings and weaknesses; a frightening prospect for some people. Many decide that the pursuit of self knowledge is either too much work, or too painful to face, and instead choose the “path of least resistance,” become apathetic, and allow their environment to tell them who they are and what they believe. This creates a level of suggestivity akin to hypnosis, and the results on a mass scale can be horrifying. In a society of apathy, whoever controls the expressed world view of the general environment controls the world view of the people in it. The Mainstream Media accomplishes this task spectacularly.

World view is a powerful psychological force. When it is allowed to set in stone, it can make a person wildly blind to the obvious. They could be confronted with the most irrefutable of facts, but if these facts lay too far outside their established opinion, their minds seize, as if mustering against invasion. Reactions can become visibly absurd, or even violent. When the presentation of solid information without malicious intent causes a person to actually feel physically threatened to the point of unchecked rage or clownish indignance, something in their psyche is highly imbalanced. Yet, society often treats this way of dealing with information as almost “normal”…

Positivism: Playing Hopscotch On The Way To Oblivion

Another mass producer of sheep-like people is a movement that is incredibly pervasive in recent decades yet rarely identified or subjected to honest examination. It goes by many names but I often refer to it as the “positivist movement.” Positivism* is touted by hundreds of self help gurus, personal finance advisers, health and diet yogis, and even politicians (Barack Obama). It is actually a twisted branch of the New Age Movement that sprang from the strange and spiritually awkward recesses of the Theosophical Society (an elitist organization). The Theosophists stole the idea from Zen Buddhism, and horribly misinterpreted it for Western audiences. A more visible outcropping of this system can be seen in the UN recognized religion of “Bahai” (also an elitist supported organization):

Its basic driving force is the belief that “positivity” is not only a psychological state, but a world view with sociological implications, upon which, a successful and meaningful life is built. Negative environmental situations were considered a “matter of perspective,” and thus subject to our state of mind. That is to say, positivists believe that if a bad situation exists in your life, instead of trying to fix it, you should “change how you look at it”. Obviously, this would not work so well for an Afghan family facing a predator drone bombing, or a Holocaust victim in an internment camp. Changing one’s “perspective” alone does very little to help the abhorrent nature of the situation. Whenever I hear the argument for Positivism, I think of the final scene in Monty Python’s “Life of Brian,” when the hero is nailed to a wooden cross while other victims sing “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life”.

The problem with Positivism is its assumption that there is no “ideal state,” that there is no point of balance, because we make everything up as we go along. This comes from the theory of the “Blank Slate” (long proven incorrect), which says that human beings are born devoid of any inherent knowledge or faculties. If we are blank slates, they argue, then there is no such thing as a “bad situation,” because we have no point of reference to judge whether something is bad or good. Therefore, they claim, all environmental situations are subject to your “perspective,” and as long as you believe a situation is “good” or “not negative,” then it will be so.

The psychologist Carl Jung proved beyond a doubt that the blank slate theory was absolutely inapplicable through his work on Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. He found that indeed there are many inherent psychological values and properties given to us at our very birth. These qualities included the capability for good (balanced), and evil (aberrant) behavior, as well as conscience, which helps us to determine which is which. Where these psychological properties come from is not yet known, but the fact remains that they exist. Because we have inborn oppositions (called “dualities”) in our psyches at birth, this means that there is a “point of reference” for positive and negative situations in our environment. When the reality of this is understood, the entire philosophy of Positivism comes crashing down.

Jung laughed and sometimes despaired at the ridiculous mish mash of philosophies the Theosophical Society threw together and marketed as their own “ancient wisdom”:

“I am convinced that the growing impoverishment of symbols has a meaning. It is a development that has an inner consistency. Everything that we have not thought about, and that has therefore been deprived of a meaningful connection with our developing consciousness, has got lost. If we now try to cover our nakedness with the gorgeous trappings of the East, as the Theosophists do, we would be playing our own history false. A man does not sink down to beggary only to pose afterwards as an Indian potentate. It seems to me that it would be far better stoutly to avow our spiritual poverty, our symbol-lessness (*of Western Culture*), instead of feigning a legacy to which we are not the legitimate heirs at all.”

Carl Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

What Jung is saying here is, the Theosophists, and the New Agers, have stolen belief systems from other cultures that their groups simply do not have the capacity to understand or relate to, and then applied them to our own culture in a slapdash manner. This is how we get strange movements like Positivism, which purports that we are all “blank slates” and there is no “right and wrong” yet at the same time argues that there is such a thing as Karma, and the collective unconscious, that we Realists ruin with our “negative vibes.” The beliefs are completely contradictory, yet in the mind of a Positivist, it is the ultimate wisdom.

The danger of Positivism is its ability to make people apathetic to tyranny and prone to Collectivism, or rejection of the individual. If tyranny is just a “perspective” which you can change simply by adapting how you relate to it, then why fight it? The terror of freedom-lessness is all in our minds….right?

The opposite of this would be the Realist’s position; that there are in fact many imbalances in the world as determined by our conscience, which is inborn. That we should never fail in pointing out these imbalances, regardless of whether or not this seems negative to positivists, so that we may then do something about them. We do not bow to the environment that others create for us. If it does not support the ideals of justice, honor, and truth, then it must be changed, not us.

The mistake often made by positivists is their accusation that by focusing on the negative in the world, Realists promote pessimism. However, pointing out what is wrong with society and the world is only pessimistic if you believe nothing can be done about it, which is actually what positivists believe. Realists know that something can be done about it. Ironically, if anyone has a nihilistic view of the world, it is the positivist, who thinks he can do nothing about his circumstances, and hopes against hope that his forced smiles and fabricated joy will somehow help him ignore his dire situation.

The Idiocy Of “Intellectuals”

In the documentary “Manufacturing Consent,” Noam Chomsky talks about the “Professional Class,” the top 10% of educated people in the U.S., and how they are the most indoctrinated of all classes. He said that the establishment used the Graduate and Ivy League School apparatus as a sort of brainwashing laboratory, in which doctors, lawyers, and scientists, would be force-fed a carefully prepared diet of elitist propaganda which they would accept without question as un-erring truth. They would exit their studies believing themselves keepers of the historical direction of our age, and far superior in intellect to those not a part of their “exclusive” education. Indoctrinating the professional class was a simple way for the Elites to control a population, because the rest of us are taught to turn to the professional class for all our answers. By scripting the world view of only 10% of educated Americans, they could control the world view of the rest of the country.

Of course, Chomsky forgot to include himself in this assessment, and he is just as much an unwitting victim of elitist propaganda as any other person in the professional class, as his completely irresponsible and illogical comments on the pursuit of a new investigation into 9/11 show. Basically, his argument is that the powers elites derived from the 9/11 attacks are merely a side benefit which they “took advantage of” but that there is no evidence that they created the event to gain these benefits (which has been proven thoroughly incorrect by numerous scientific “professionals” not beholden to the system). He also claims that even if it was engineered by the elites, it doesn’t matter and is of no significance:

The illusion inherent in the professional class is that they “know more” than the rest of us. That they have access to knowledge we could never understand. But the reality is, all knowledge is available to anyone willing to look for it and learn it. The laws of physics, the laws of biology, the laws of society, are available to EVERYONE, not just a select few. Globalist puppets and shills often use the argument that we (the uneducated dregs) should “listen to the experts” when it comes to subjects such as 9/11, the private Federal Reserve, swine flu, the economic collapse, etc. Essentially, they are saying we should put all our “faith” in these individuals, and leave the truth to the professionals. However, being that these professionals are the most indoctrinated people on the planet, whose entire world view has been shaped by the establishment, they are in fact the last people we should be turning to for our information. Not to mention, not all professionals agree on every topic. Ironically, when a professional comes out against the establishment, they are immediately labeled as “not professional or knowledgeable”. This video of the makers of Loose Change utterly destroying the editors of Popular Mechanics in a fair debate illustrates quite nicely the Intellectual Sheep Syndrome at work:

The truth exists for everyone, but the only way for everyone to attain it, is to find it for themselves. Sheep leading sheep is not the way to enlightenment, but disaster.

The Fight Continues

The Liberty Movement has made incredible strides in the past couple years, and our numbers have grown rapidly in a very short period. The fight to educate the masses remains an uphill battle, but our perseverance is finally paying off. We must be careful in unwarranted generalizations, labeling anyone not aware of the facts as “Sheeple,” for this is not always the reality. There are still many out there in the world simply on the fence. They need more information, more effort than others, but conscience directs that it is our job as those who know the truth to warn those who don’t. True Sheeple may try to obstruct our progress, but this has been going on for years and they have not stopped us yet. Take comfort in this fact, and ask yourself; How could they possibly stop us now…?

*Special Note: The term “Positivism” used in this article should not be confused with Comte’s “philosophy of Positivism,” which has similarities and parallels, but does not contain the New Agey happy-go-lucky fruit filling like the Positivism we examine here. Thanks for your attention, and thanks for visiting us here at Neithercorp.

Are Progressives Depressed or Too Privileged to Produce Social Change? Or Are We Just Failing to Organize Effectively?

2010-01-07T13:42:00.000-08:00

Are Progressives Depressed or Too Privileged to Produce Social Change? Or Are We Just Failing to Organize Effectively?
By Don Hazen and Les Leopold and Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet
January 7, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/144982/

A few weeks ago Bruce Levine wrote a provocative article titled "Are Americans a Broken People? Why We've Stopped Fighting Back Against the Forces of Oppression." Levine suggested that many progressives and much of the general population may be so broken by the system that they've given up hope and become passive. He uses the metaphor of an abusive relationship, in which lack of hope and the sense that nothing matters make people passive instead of angry.

Levine, a radical psychotherapist practicing in Cincinnati, Ohio, has carved out a popular niche with readers, writing about psychological issues related to politics and change. Two of his most-read articles are "The Case for Giving Eli Lilly the Corporate Death Penalty" and " Has American Society Gone Insane?"

Longtime labor organizer and economic thinker Les Leopold, whose recent book The Looting of America was excerpted on AlterNet, took offense to Levine's article and wrote a response. While calling Levine's argument an eyeopener, Leopold wrote that he has not experienced the passivity Levine describes in labor unions and among progressives. Leopold insists that progress will come from the hard work of organizing: building infrastructure, connecting issues and thinking big. We can't count on people like Al Gore, who was passive after the 2000 election, and Barack Obama.

Levine crafted a counterresponse to Leopold. In his rejoinder, Levine made a case that there are two classes of progressives. One group is highly educated and relatively well off. They are often older, like Levine and Leopold, and do not have alienating jobs. They tend to enjoy certain privileges and have fairly good access to health care, etc. In another group are those who are truly hurting from the breakdown of the economic system.

Levine suggests that the more privileged progressives may be in denial about the difficulties that working-class people experience; young people who can't find jobs and are burdened by heavy debt from college loans; older people who saw a lot of their savings evaporate when the stock market fell or their companies ended their pensions.

Needless to say, some fundamental questions are being asked here. Are progressives collectively depressed and incapable of action, depleted by the relentless corporate machine? How much of progressive inaction is a consequence of how comfortable the progressive elite is, and the gap between affluent progressives and younger, less prosperous progressives; especially those who do not work in the nonprofit sector? How effective are the cherished, fundamental principles of organizing and social change against the power of the banks, health care corporations and tens of thousands of lobbyists? Is the basic organizing model no longer applicable? Does it need revision, or is it simply a matter of applying it more effectively and trying harder?

Like most important debates, there is no one truth, and Leopold and Levine both make important and provocative arguments. On the one hand, resources are not going to be more fairly distributed and corporations are not going to be held accountable unless there is more effective mobilizing with both grassroots pressure and in the electoral arena. But at this point what is the path to change? Especially when disenchantment with Obama seems to breed cynicism and withdrawal, rather than anger and action?

Is traditional organizing for social change feasible in the current environment? And how might it happen, especially given Levine's suggestion that elite progressives are too comfortable to be in the streets fighting for poor people or against wars with a voluntary army, which provide employment to many young people at a time when jobs are scarce.

While I admire Les Leopold's principles, I wish they were more effective at this point in history. And I do think progressives have minimized the class question. As a consequence, some of us have a hard time imagining, or perhaps don't want to think about, how hard it is for tens of millions of people in this country to just get by.

After all, most of us who have jobs in the nonprofit sector, in progressive media and philanthropy are well paid, or at least decently paid. Almost all of us have health care, and very likely dental and vision, and even extra goodies. With some notable exceptions there has not been widespread job loss in the nonprofit sector. People with college degrees in general are doing much better than the population at large.

AlterNet writer Adele Stan tackled this class disparity in "Shocking: High School Grads Twice As Likely To Be Jobless Than College Grads – and Right-Wingers are Profiting From Their Pain," underscoring the fact that college graduates in general fare much better in economic downturns and are therefore often unaware of the pain suffered by those without degrees.

It could be argued that many of us in the idea, media and funding industries live, operate and succeed in a bubble. We mostly interact with peers who are also well educated -- many at the best colleges -- and often have graduate degrees. Many of us boomers are incredibly privileged, even in comparison to our younger, well-educated brethren, because the cost of being educated and credentialed was so much cheaper 30 years ago. And of course many in our sector come from upper-middle-class families to begin with.

I know this scenario doesn't apply across the board, not even close. There are many people working in the trenches, battling tough issues, working with the poor, who are not privileged by any stretch of the imagination. But there is a major class gap in the nonprofit, media, philanthropic sector, and it may be having a significant impact when we wonder why change is so difficult. What is the solution to this possible dilemma? There is no easy answer. But thinking about it and reflecting on our lifestyles, our privilege, and how we spend and redistribute our hard-earned cash is certainly a place to start.

The three pieces by Levine and Leopold follow in order of the most recent -- Levine's response to Leopold's critique of Levine's original article. If this is a new discussion for you, and you want to start from the beginning, scroll down until you get to Levine's original piece. Assuming this back and forth provokes comments and varying opinions, we will produce a followup article with the thoughts and ideas from readers.

— Don Hazen

BRUCE E. LEVINE: 'A Response to Les Leopold: Comforting the Afflicted, Afflicting the Comfortable'

A friend in the clergy once told me, “I see my job as comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.” It is my experience that among progressives, there are both the afflicted and the comfortable. At different times in my life, I have been in each group and have found that my level of affliction and comfort affects my exhortations.

The afflicted know they are being screwed but feel that they have no voice, no platform, and that they are powerless to change their powerlessness. They may work at alienating, mindless jobs in order to hold on to their health insurance for the sake of a sick spouse or kid; or they may be hustling three poorly paying jobs to pay college loans, rent and a car payment, and have no time for activism; or they may be unable to find even a poorly paying, mindless, alienating job, and are helplessly watching the tsunamis of foreclosure and bankruptcy close in on them. Afflicted progressives include young people, older people, good people and smart people -- all feeling voiceless and helpless to end their helplessness.

While I have been in that afflicted group for part of my 53 years on the planet, in my last couple of decades, I have gradually been inching into the comfortable group. I grew up in a working-class neighborhood in New York City (Arverne in Rockaway) which both Democrat and Republican politicians fucked up into a jobless, impoverished, third-world wasteland, as powerless parents watched helplessly. Throughout my junior high school and high school years, I had that scared, helpless, powerless feeling that comes from worrying about my draft lottery number, and knowing that the bastards -- especially Kissinger and Nixon -- couldn’t care less if I was maimed or killed in Vietnam. Then in my 20s in clinical psychology graduate school, I felt like I had exchanged a wasteland neighborhood for a wasteland profession that was increasingly about manipulating, modifying and medicating alienated people to fit into an automaton society.

I no longer feel so powerless. I get to write articles for CounterPunch, AlterNet, Z Magazine, Huffington Post and other publications that give me a platform and a voice. If I actually got paid for these articles, I would be disgustingly comfortable. However, in order to make a living, I still must partake in shit-eating financial dealings with the health care-industrial-complex. But what I actually do in my practice itself is not alienating. So while I have burned too many professional bridges to allow for a comfortable prof job, I am far more comfortable than I once was -- and far less afflicted and demoralized than many other people. Comfortable enough to be helpfully afflicted by certain truths.

Years ago, I read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, and its most powerfully afflicting truth for me was not anything about distant U.S. history but something relevant to the present:

In a highly developed society, the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the system going: the soldiers and police, teachers and ministers, administrators and social workers, technicians and production workers, doctors, lawyers....They become the guards of the system....If they stop obeying, the system falls.

Zinn is absolutely right. Most of my clinical psychologist training was pretty much about socializing me to be a "guard of the system." So thank you, Howard, for that great affliction.

I don’t know how financially comfortable Les Leopold is, but I know that he has a platform, as I do. He writes for some of the same 'zines I do, and we have both published books with the same publisher. He also has what appears to be a non-alienating job as director of two nonprofit educational organizations (the Labor Institute and the Public Health Institute). So by my standards, Les is comfortable and should be able to handle some affliction.

Les begins his critique of my article with this: “I feel compelled to respectfully disagree with his basic analysis." Les then explains that "political action doesn’t fall from the sky; it requires deliberate political infrastructure." Who can disagree with that? Not me. The question is, why is powerful action not happening?

Les sees the answer in our "political infrastructures – our activists and leaders, our political parties – and not by analyzing "U.S. citizens’ at large." If Les is simply pissed off at the failure of activists, leaders and political parties, I have no quarrel with him. However, shouldn’t all of us -- including U.S. citizens at large – be part of the "political infrastructure"?

I am glad Les does not shame U.S. citizens at large, but I have trouble understanding why he doesn’t want to recognize the demoralization of many of them, understand its root causes, and then confront the institutional sources that break people’s spirit of resistance.

Les also makes the point that there are many Americans who don’t feel broken. He offers up the Tea Party folks whom he wishes were broken and passive, as well as progressive activists whom he celebrates. Again, of course there are some Americans who don’t feel broken and demoralized. The point of my article was that there are many, many Americans who do feel broken, and that comfortable progressives are doing a disservice by not taking this seriously.

Comfortable progressives often seem afraid to acknowledge the experience of helplessness and demoralization, as if acknowledging the existence of that state actually creates defeatism and sanctions inaction. Not true. People’s pain needs to be validated before they are receptive to any kind of suggestion. The good, smart people I know who are caught up in this state of helplessness are not moved to action by lectures about the history of successful movements and advice to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I wish they were so moved (that would be an easy fix), but more often those kinds of lectures are a turnoff.

Comfortable progressives must realize that while we've been in tough times before, there are certain forces in today’s society that may be making people – especially young people -- feel more broken and weaker.

I was able to get a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from public institutions between 1973 and 1985 without any parental financial support and without accruing any debt. Today, because of the dramatic rise of tuition, I would likely have a mountain of debt. I know for sure that if I had walked out into the job world with that mountain of debt, it would have been far less likely that I would have had the balls to "un-network" myself by calling out my colleagues on their diseasing-of-rebellion bullshit.

Les seems especially upset by the idea that truths don’t always set people free. Truths do sometimes set people free, especially when people are not broken. Certainly Tom Paine's truths in Common Sense energized many people. However, does Les think that African-American slaves on a plantation or Jews in a concentration camp could have freed themselves if only they had heard all the truths of their oppression? Les is too smart of a guy to actually feel that way. Encouraging liberation sometimes means offering compassion to people who, for the time being, have almost no chance to successfully resist.

“I will fight no more forever,” said Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce after the failure of his valiant effort to resist invading U.S. government troops. Certainly, Les can have compassion for Chief Joseph’s feeling of brokenness. This famous line in Chief Joseph’s surrender speech has become, ironically, an energizing rallying cry for many Native Americans. Chief Joseph’s statement is a powerful weapon that inflicts the pain of shame on the U.S. government for its attempts at genocide and subjugation of Native Americans.

Maybe some of America’s young people who feel broken do have just enough energy to march in front of the Capitol and the White House with signs and T-shirts saying, "You corporate whores win. You have fucked with our lives so much that we too will fight no more forever." Perhaps, for a couple of the corporate whores who have not yet become completely soulless (that leaves out soulless scumbags like Joseph Lieberman), this kind of shaming pain of a million kids would have some impact. Maybe not. Who knows? It would be an interesting experiment.

I am surprised that Les minimizes the value of small victories: “Levine's analysis offers a way forward that involves building 'morale' through 'small victories.' That's not good enough. The pursuit of the little ball right now, I believe, is a colossal organizing mistake."

While Les, thankfully, sees some value in small victories, he feels we have more important needs. He says, “We need more information, more truth, and I intend to do all I can to share what I can with you."

I get energized by small victories. I would be energized, for example, if the Nez Perce grabbed back, via cash or lawsuits, a few thousand acres of their stolen land. Could Les be even a little encouraged and energized -- and a little bit encouraging -- to a group of teenagers who successfully “collectively bargained" with their McDonald’s supervisor for 15 more minutes each day for a break?

Like Les, I too love truth. One of a writer's great motivations is discovering and telling the truth. Besides the egotistical motive of being perceived as insightful, the altruistic motive is that something good will surely come out of people knowing it. I wish my declaring the truth of people's personal abusive relationships or systemic corporate-governmental oppression was enough to set them free. However, the deeper truth is that these kinds of truths are often impotent and sometimes even shaming -- not exactly a great recruiting tactic. My point -- which many of the afflicted seemed to get and many who are comfortable did not -- is that many activists have become lazy, pursuing only easy truths.

What if the fact that we are getting screwed by the various governmental-industrial complexes is not a revelatory truth but one that, as singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen says, "Everybody knows”? What if the more important question is one that focuses on the forces in our society that are demoralizing us and what we can do about this so as to regain morale and energy?

Maybe it’s not only the job of my clergy buddy but the job of all of us to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Hopefully, each year we gain greater wisdom in making that afflicted-comfortable distinction.

— Bruce E. Levine

LES LEOPOLD: 'Bruce Levine Says Americans Are Broken: Is He Right?'

Bruce Levine’s thoughtful piece about why we’re not fighting back has hit a responsive cord among readers. I thank him for initiating this critical discourse about activism. In the spirit of open dialogue, I feel compelled to respectfully disagree with his basic analysis.

Political Action Doesn’t Fall From the Sky; It Requires Deliberate Political Infrastructure

Levine reminds us of how passive we seem to have been in the face of obvious injustices hurled our way. As he points out there was little to protest against the theft of the 2000 election by the Bush forces. He further points out that we are again missing the moment concerning health care -- that "despite the current sellout by their elected officials to the insurance industry, there is no outpouring of millions of U.S. citizens on the streets of Washington, D.C., protesting this betrayal." (I recently asked similar questions about the lack of protest against the current Wall Street rip-offs. See, "Have We Forgotten How to March?")

Why aren’t we in motion? His deeply disturbing analysis deserves a closer look:

U.S. citizens do not actively protest obvious injustices for the same reasons that people cannot leave their abusive spouses: They feel helpless to effect change. The more we don't act, the weaker we get. And ultimately to deal with the painful humiliation over inaction in the face of an oppressor, we move to shut-down mode and use escape strategies such as depression, substance abuse, and other diversions, which further keep us from acting. This is the vicious cycle of all abuse syndromes.

While this may describe individuals Levine has encountered, I can’t buy it as a political justification. I believe we can find more compelling reasons by looking at our own political infrastructures – our activists and leaders, our political parties – and not by analyzing “U.S. citizens" at large. These "abuse" brush strokes are too broad and cover up the detail we need to examine.

Mass demonstrations are almost always the product of hardcore organizing. (The major exceptions were the spontaneous riots that ripped through our country in the 1960s like the ones triggered by the assassination of Martin Luther King.)

Those who have been involved in organizing mass demonstrations know how much effort it takes. If the infrastructure to do all of this hard work is not in place, it’s an impossible task. Or if those who control the infrastructures (churches, unions, environmental groups, political parties, etc.) decide to sit it out, you won’t succeed very often. (Clearly, some moments are riper than others. In 1965, for example, the Students for a Democratic Society shocked themselves and everyone else when 50,000 turned out in Washington for their first anti-war demonstration. But it still took considerable resources that came from organized groups including the labor movement.)

Take the 2000 election that Levine uses as an example. The response from the Democrats and the Republicans was quite different. The Republicans flooded Florida with their top dogs who participated actively in the recounts. I can still recall Bob Dole glowering as he challenged every Democratic hanging chad. The Republicans also concocted faux demonstrations by flying in staff.

Meanwhile the Democrats relied on the legal process even though they could have organized massive demonstrations all over Florida. What did Al Gore, the leader of the entire party, do after the Supreme Court decision against him? Nothing. He meekly accepted the results and moved on. He refused to call us to join him for mass protests at the steps of the Supreme Court because he believed in the judicial process, however flawed. He refused to rock the system because he was so much a part of it.

You weren’t there and neither was I because of choices made by Gore and the Democratic Party, including its major constituent organizations. But I find it difficult to blame us or the American public for Gore’s lack of will. You know full well the Republicans would have fought to the bitter end. (Why don’t they suffer more from abuse syndrome?)

So rather than looking for the problem in the "American People" we should examine our failure to create and mobilize progressive infrastructures that have the wherewithal to organize large-scale protests (like the French seem to do with great regularity and success).

Do the Totalitarians Want Us to Know the Truth?

Bruce Levine offers an intriguing conjecture that totalitarians might be using the truth to beat us into submission, to further humiliate us into inaction: "Do some totalitarians actually want us to hear how we have been screwed because they know that humiliating passivity in the face of obvious oppression will demoralize us even further?"

To back up this point, he cites comments given by George W. Bush just before the 2000 election: "What a crowd tonight: the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite; I call you my base."

This remark, Levine believes, should have angered us to the point of mass upheaval. And because we did not rise up, he cites this as a sign of our abuse syndrome. Further, he believes this suggests that Bush and company may have understood that the truth could be used to "demoralize us even further."

Wrong example. The speech was given at the bi-partisan $800-a-plate Al Smith dinner in New York on October 20, 2000, a few short weeks before an election that everyone knew would be close. This was no ordinary dinner and these were not your typical stump speeches. The Al Smith dinner tradition requires the major candidates from both parties to lampoon themselves. (See CBS News.)

In this speech Bush certainly was not a totalitarian banging us over the head with the truth. He was banging his own head for a laugh, which he got. Had he been serious, you can be sure that he and his advisers would not want that line to get out to the public in swing states just before an incredibly tight election. That kind of truth would have cost him the election.

But more to the point, I don’t think that Levine or anyone else can identify one totalitarian who uses the truth to humiliate and subjugate those they rule. Think for a moment of two infamous American leaders who leaned toward the totalitarian -- Dick Cheney and Dick Nixon. Their passion for secrecy and flat-out lying were legendary -- from Watergate to weapons of mass destruction to outing Valerie Plame. Lying to the public was their weapon of choice.

The record of totalitarian régimes in Italy, Spain, Germany and the Soviet Union shows a consistent and willful disregard and hatred for the truth. In fact, those who dominated those regimes constantly undermined the truth and destroyed those who put it forth. Victims of abusive relationships may become further debilitated by the truth, but victims of totalitarianism hunger for the truth, and are willing to die for it.

Who Are These Abused Americans?

We should be cautious whenever creating and using a massive category like "broken Americans." When you push on it, it can shatter.

The broken Americans group certainly doesn’t include those in the Tea Party (whom I wish would be more passive). The abused also don’t seem to include the extremely vociferous followers of Rush and Beck. Those folks are opinionated and confident in their points of view. If anything, many of them come across more like abusers than abused.

Clearly, the beaten-down passive group does not include the tens of thousands who are active in their unions each day, fighting against incredibly long odds. It doesn’t describe those who have spent the past several years fighting for health care reform. It doesn’t describe MoveOn.org and the thousands of people who registered voters and got out the vote for Obama. Nor does it describe the gay and lesbian activists fighting right now for same-sex marriage. It doesn’t describe the tens of thousands who are struggling to protect a woman’s right to choose, especially in battleground states like Nebraska and South Dakota. Also the category of abused, passive Americans doesn’t describe the millions of environmental activists who are extremely effective on a range of issues from global warming to toxic waste. And it doesn’t describe the many who have made difficult life choices to build the new world of organic farming and other sustainable products.

The list of activist groups goes on and on (and my apologies for the many who are not mentioned).

More to the point, I don’t believe "abuse syndrome" describes you -- the person who is reading this piece right now.

Then who does it describe? Levine points to those subjugated by financial debt, those without health insurance, those living in social isolation in the suburbs and those who have been turned from citizens into consumers. This is an amorphous grouping that covers just about everyone, except for all the counter-examples we could easily provide.

Yet Levine is tapping into a strong current that runs through our political discourse. We sense a growing fatalism -- a feeling that significant change is not possible even when our most basic institutions are failing. We are frustrated that Obama seems less of a change agent than hoped for. We wish more of us would be willing to fight back. So the image of the "broken American" seems like a reasonable explanation and I’m sure many of us have run into people who fit this description. But I urge us to take care in extrapolating from those anecdotal accounts to a general political account of "the American people." We are far too diverse, and I hope, far too resilient.

Does the Truth Set Us Free or Subjugate Us?

Perhaps Levine's most eye-popping claim, at least for me, is that the American people may be so broken that the truth will not set us free.

You can understand why this would get to me. Going after the truth, however murky, is what I try to do. I write because I’m trying to share an analysis, a sense of reality that I hope is as truthful as possible, as well as empowering. I work closely with editors and fact-checkers by choice because I want them to keep me honest. It’s very easy to twist the truth, to write propaganda, to get lost in ideology, to subjectively slant the analysis. So it will take one hell of an argument for me to stop trying, and I will have a great deal of internal resistance to thinking that it’s not a good idea to share the truth with the public, even with that segment who might be in the "abused" category.

Levine's discussion puts us into a kind of Catch 22 because he quite obviously is sharing a truth with us. But if the truth doesn’t set us free, why is he bothering to write to us? Aren’t we also suffering from too much truth? (You have debts? You live in the suburbs? You're a consumer?) If we’re not the abused, then who are "we" and who are "they"?

"They" seem to be "elitist helpers" who use the truth recklessly. For example, he writes:

Elitist helpers think they have done something useful by informing overweight people that they are obese and that they must reduce their caloric intake and increase exercise. An elitist who has never been broken by his or her circumstances does not know that people who have become demoralized do not need analyses and pontifications. Rather the immobilized need a shot of morale.

But are Levine's readers and commentators the elitists or the broken? Do we need a heavy dose of Levine's "truth" or a "shot of morale"?

I vote for the truth, even Bruce Levine's provocative version. Because the alternative more often than not is not "a shot of morale" -- it is falsehood. If we are confused and immobilized, I’m willing to wager that the suffering is enhanced by being lied to again and again. We’ve been lied to about the economy. We’ve been lied to about Vietnam and Iraq. Lying is our public way of life. In fact lying and giving us a boost in morale often come packaged together -- I'm thinking of Reagan’s "Morning in America" and Contra-gate. I don’t think we know whether the truth will set more Americans free, because there has been so little of it coming from public officials.

But let me pose a more basic question to you: Do you find the truth empowering or debilitating? If you think the truth is extremely valuable, then what makes you so different from the rest of America? To me the very definition of elitist is someone who withholds the truth because he or she doesn’t think the other person can handle it. Democracy means that we have to handle the truth, painful or not, syndrome or not.

So What Do We Do?

Levine's analysis offers a way forward that involves building "morale" through "small victories." That's not good enough. The pursuit of the little ball right now, I believe, is a colossal organizing mistake.

Much of organizing for the past generation has focused on "small victories." Following the teachings of Saul Alinsky, community organizers were trained to produce small concrete results to keep those we organized from becoming discouraged. As the small victories mounted, some organizations like ACORN, the Industrial Areas Foundation and others would build up the victories to influence higher and higher levels of policy -- from the local schools to city minimum wage campaigns to state programs to provide health care for kids.

Many community organizers did not feel that they or their constituents needed any education about the shape of the entire economy or the role of Wall Street since their organizations were not poised to influence that level of policy. It seemed like a waste of time since the American economy was unlikely to collapse. The 1930s were long gone. (The WTO protests in Seattle seem like a major exception but that massive effort had considerable support from the labor movement, especially the Steelworkers.)

Our organizing strategy needs to be enlarged. We need both small victories and we need big picture agendas and struggles. When the economic system nearly collapsed, we didn't know how to respond, in part because we had ignored those questions for too long. The banking elites certainly knew how to respond; they engineered the largest transfer of wealth since slavery. To focus on small victories right now, I believe, will give bigger and bigger victories to the financial elites.

The Tea Party folks got it together in a hurry, but progressives seem at a loss. But that doesn’t have to be a permanent condition and it has nothing to do with abuse syndrome. Rather we have to relearn how to develop broad agendas and campaigns like progressives did to usher in the New Deal. Building an economic agenda with popular resonance won't come easy. But if we don’t challenge the very fundamentals of Wall Street finance, we will enter what I'm calling the "billionaire bailout society," where the wealthy get to amass vast riches, gamble to gain even more, and then use the rest of us as a piggy bank to bail them out when they lose. To me, that’s fundamentally abusive.

Here’s the rub. I suspect one of the reasons we’re not in motion is that we feel intimidated by the financial elite and their complex financial casinos. We don’t just need more morale. We need more information, more truth, and I intend to do all I can to share what I can with you. We need to build up our economic literacy so that we can duke it out with the big boys.

If I’m contributing to your abuse syndrome, I apologize. But I doubt that I am. I have the confidence that as we educate each other we will develop new modes of activism to challenge the beast. In fact, that may be our biggest problem. The old ways of protest don’t seem to fit our new realities, but we don’t yet know how to combine our many new communication tools to make our defiant voices heard. It may take a generation or two, but we’ll find a way, because ultimately we have no choice.

The truth may not set us free right away, but it drives us forward. And what else do we really have besides each other and the truth?

Let’s drink to that and to Bruce Levine for prodding us forward. Happy New Year!

—Les Leopold

BRUCE E. LEVINE: 'Are Americans a Broken People? Why We've Stopped Fighting Back Against the Forces of Oppression'

Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not "set them free" but instead further demoralize them? Has such a demoralization happened in the United States?

Do some totalitarians actually want us to hear how we have been screwed because they know that humiliating passivity in the face of obvious oppression will demoralize us even further?

What forces have created a demoralized, passive, dis-couraged U.S. population?

Can anything be done to turn this around?

Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not "set them free" but instead further demoralize them?

Yes. It is called the "abuse syndrome." How do abusive pimps, spouses, bosses, corporations and governments stay in control? They shove lies, emotional and physical abuses, and injustices in their victims' faces, and when victims are afraid to exit from these relationships, they get weaker. So the abuser then makes their victims eat even more lies, abuses, and injustices, resulting in victims even weaker as they remain in these relationships.

Does knowing the truth of their abuse set people free when they are deep in these abuse syndromes?

No. For victims of the abuse syndrome, the truth of their passive submission to humiliating oppression is more than embarrassing; it can feel shameful -- and there is nothing more painful than shame. When one already feels beaten down and demoralized, the likely response to the pain of shame is not constructive action, but more attempts to shut down or divert oneself from this pain. It is not likely that the truth of one's humiliating oppression is going to energize one to constructive actions.

Has such a demoralization happened in the U.S.?

In the United States, 47 million people are without health insurance, and many millions more are underinsured or a job layoff away from losing their coverage. But despite the current sellout by their elected officials to the insurance industry, there is no outpouring of millions of U.S. citizens on the streets of Washington, D.C., protesting this betrayal.

Polls show that the majority of Americans oppose U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the taxpayer bailout of the financial industry, yet only a handful of U.S. citizens have protested these circumstances.

Remember the 2000 U.S. presidential election? That's the one in which Al Gore received 500,000 more votes than George W. Bush. That's also the one that the Florida Supreme Court's order for a recount of the disputed Florida vote was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court in a politicized 5-4 decision, of which dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens remarked: "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law." Yet, even this provoked few demonstrators.

When people become broken, they cannot act on truths of injustice. Furthermore, when people have become broken, more truths about how they have been victimized can lead to shame about how they have allowed it. And shame, like fear, is one more way we become even more psychologically broken.

U.S. citizens do not actively protest obvious injustices for the same reasons that people cannot leave their abusive spouses: They feel helpless to effect change. The more we don't act, the weaker we get. And ultimately to deal with the painful humiliation over inaction in the face of an oppressor, we move to shut-down mode and use escape strategies such as depression, substance abuse, and other diversions, which further keep us from acting. This is the vicious cycle of all abuse syndromes.

Do some totalitarians actually want us to hear how we have been screwed because they know that humiliating passivity in the face of obvious oppression will demoralize us even further?

Maybe.

Shortly before the 2000 U.S. presidential election, millions of Americans saw a clip of George W. Bush joking to a wealthy group of people, "What a crowd tonight: the haves and the haves-more. Some people call you the elite; I call you my base." Yet, even with these kind of inflammatory remarks, the tens of millions of U.S. citizens who had come to despise Bush and his arrogance remained passive in the face of the 2000 non-democratic presidential elections.

Perhaps the "political genius" of the Bush-Cheney regime was in their full realization that Americans were so broken that the regime could get away with damn near anything. And the more people did nothing about the boot slamming on their faces, the weaker people became.

What forces have created a demoralized, passive, discouraged U.S. population?

The U.S. government-corporate partnership has used its share of guns and terror to break Native Americans, labor union organizers, and other dissidents and activists. But today, most U.S. citizens are broken by financial fears. There is potential legal debt if we speak out against a powerful authority, and all kinds of other debt if we do not comply on the job. Young people are broken by college-loan debts and fear of having no health insurance.

The U.S. population is increasingly broken by the social isolation created by corporate-governmental policies. A 2006 American Sociological Review study ("Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades") reported that, in 2004, 25 percent of Americans did not have a single confidant. (In 1985, 10 percent of Americans reported not having a single confidant.) Sociologist Robert Putnam, in his 2000 book, Bowling Alone, describes how social connectedness is disappearing in virtually every aspect of U.S. life. For example, there has been a significant decrease in face-to-face contact with neighbors and friends due to suburbanization, commuting, electronic entertainment, time and money pressures and other variables created by governmental-corporate policies. And union activities and other formal or informal ways that people give each other the support necessary to resist oppression have also decreased.

We are also broken by a corporate-government partnership that has rendered most of us out of control when it comes to the basic necessities of life, including our food supply. And we, like many other people in the world, are broken by socializing institutions that alienate us from our basic humanity. A few examples:

Schools and Universities: Do most schools teach young people to be action-oriented -- or to be passive? Do most schools teach young people that they can affect their surroundings -- or not to bother? Do schools provide examples of democratic institutions -- or examples of authoritarian ones?

A long list of school critics from Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, John Holt, Paul Goodman, Jonathan Kozol, Alfie Kohn, Ivan Illich, and John Taylor Gatto have pointed out that a school is nothing less than a miniature society: what young people experience in schools is the chief means of creating our future society. Schools are routinely places where kids -- through fear -- learn to comply to authorities for whom they often have no respect, and to regurgitate material they often find meaningless. These are great ways of breaking someone.

Today, U.S. colleges and universities have increasingly become places where young people are merely acquiring degree credentials -- badges of compliance for corporate employers -- in exchange for learning to accept bureaucratic domination and enslaving debt.

Mental Health Institutions: Aldous Huxley predicted today's pharmaceutical societyl "[I]t seems to me perfectly in the cards," he said, "that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude."

Today, increasing numbers of people in the U.S. who do not comply with authority are being diagnosed with mental illnesses and medicated with psychiatric drugs that make them less pained about their boredom, resentments, and other negative emotions, thus rendering them more compliant and manageable.

Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is an increasingly popular diagnosis for children and teenagers. The official symptoms of ODD include, "often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules," and "often argues with adults." An even more common reaction to oppressive authorities than the overt defiance of ODD is some type of passive defiance -- for example, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Studies show that virtually all children diagnosed with ADHD will pay attention to activities that they actually enjoy or that they have chosen. In other words, when ADHD-labeled kids are having a good time and in control, the "disease" goes away.

When human beings feel too terrified and broken to actively protest, they may stage a "passive-aggressive revolution" by simply getting depressed, staying drunk, and not doing anything -- this is one reason why the Soviet empire crumbled. However, the diseasing/medicalizing of rebellion and drug "treatments" have weakened the power of even this passive-aggressive revolution.

Television: In his book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978), Jerry Mander (after reviewing totalitarian critics such as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Jacques Ellul, and Ivan Illich) compiled a list of the "Eight Ideal Conditions for the Flowering of Autocracy."

Mander claimed that television helps create all eight conditions for breaking a population. Television, he explained, (1) occupies people so that they don't know themselves -- and what a human being is; (2) separates people from one another; (3) creates sensory deprivation; (4) occupies the mind and fills the brain with prearranged experience and thought; (5) encourages drug use to dampen dissatisfaction (while TV itself produces a drug-like effect, this was compounded in 1997 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration relaxing the rules of prescription-drug advertising); (6) centralizes knowledge and information; (7) eliminates or "museumize" other cultures to eliminate comparisons; and (8) redefines happiness and the meaning of life.

Commercialism of Damn Near Everything: While spirituality, music, and cinema can be revolutionary forces, the gross commercialization of all of these has deadened their capacity to energize rebellion. So now, damn near everything – not just organized religion -- has become "opiates of the masses."

The primary societal role of U.S. citizens is no longer that of "citizen" but that of "consumer." While citizens know that buying and selling within community strengthens that community and that this strengthens democracy, consumers care only about the best deal. While citizens understand that dependency on an impersonal creditor is a kind of slavery, consumers get excited with credit cards that offer a temporarily low APR.

Consumerism breaks people by devaluing human connectedness, socializing self-absorption, obliterating self-reliance, alienating people from normal human emotional reactions, and by selling the idea that purchased products -- not themselves and their community -- are their salvation.

Can anything be done to turn this around?

When people get caught up in humiliating abuse syndromes, more truths about their oppressive humiliations don't set them free. What sets them free is morale.

What gives people morale? Encouragement. Small victories. Models of courageous behaviors. And anything that helps them break out of the vicious cycle of pain, shut down, immobilization, shame over immobilization, more pain, and more shut down.

The last people I would turn to for help in remobilizing a demoralized population are mental health professionals -- at least those who have not rebelled against their professional socialization. Much of the craft of relighting the pilot light requires talents that mental health professionals simply are not selected for nor are they trained in. Specifically, the talents required are a fearlessness around image, spontaneity, and definitely anti-authoritarianism. But these are not the traits that medical schools or graduate schools select for or encourage.

Mental health professionals' focus on symptoms and feelings often create patients who take themselves and their moods far too seriously. In contrast, people talented in the craft of maintaining morale resist this kind of self-absorption. For example, in the question-and-answer session that followed a Noam Chomsky talk (reported in Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, 2002), a somewhat demoralized man in the audience asked Chomsky if he too ever went through a phase of hopelessness. Chomsky responded, "Yeah, every evening . . ."

If you want to feel hopeless, there are a lot of things you could feel hopeless about. If you want to sort of work out objectively what's the chance that the human species will survive for another century, probably not very high. But I mean, what's the point? . . . First of all, those predictions don't mean anything -- they're more just a reflection of your mood or your personality than anything else. And if you act on that assumption, then you're guaranteeing that'll happen. If you act on the assumption that things can change, well, maybe they will. Okay, the only rational choice, given those alternatives, is to forget pessimism."

A major component of the craft of maintaining morale is not taking the advertised reality too seriously. In the early 1960s, when the overwhelming majority in the U.S. supported military intervention in Vietnam, Chomsky was one of a minority of U.S. citizens actively opposing it. Looking back at this era, Chomsky reflected, "When I got involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement, it seemed to meimpossible that we would ever have any effect. . . So looking back, I think my evaluation of the 'hope' was much too pessimistic: it was based on a complete misunderstanding. I was sort of believing what I read."

An elitist assumption is that people don't change because they are either ignorant of their problems or ignorant of solutions. Elitist "helpers" think they have done something useful by informing overweight people that they are obese and that they must reduce their caloric intake and increase exercise. An elitist who has never been broken by his or her circumstances does not know that people who have become demoralized do not need analyses and pontifications. Rather the immobilized need a shot of morale.

—Bruce E. Levine

Don Hazen is the executive editor of AlterNet.

Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute and Public Health Institute in New York, and author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity—and What We Can Do About It (Chelsea Green, 2009).

Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist whose latest book is Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007). His Web site is www.brucelevine.net

Crystallized Thoughts

2010-01-04T08:54:00.000-08:00

2009 12 28
By Jennifer Palmer | RealitySandwich.com

The hypothesis that the focused intention of a group of people can affect ice crystals formed in water was pilot tested under double-blind conditions. This question is of interest to alternative medicine--especially for therapies involving intention, because the adult human body is made up mostly of water.

Approximately 2,000 people in Tokyo focused positive intentions toward water samples located inside a room in California. The group was unaware of similar "control" water samples set aside in a different location. Ice crystals formed from both sets of water samples were photographed, and the resulting images were blindly assessed for aesthetic appeal by 100 independent judges.

Crystals from the treated water were given higher scores for aesthetic appeal than those from the control water, lending support to the hypothesis that their creation was altered by the thoughts and intentions of the people in Tokyo.

Use Hypnosis to Research Creativity and Imagination

2009-12-28T16:54:00.000-08:00

http://www.NaturalNews.com/z027805_hypnosis_imagination.html

December 26 2009
Use Hypnosis to Research Creativity and Imagination
by Steve G. Jones, M.Ed., citizen journalist

(NaturalNews) Creativity is defined as the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc. Creativity is easy to define, but researchers often question how it can be measured and how people have different aptitudes for creativity. Hypnosis aides in the research of creativity, and it also allows psychologists to study the relationship between creativity and hypnotizability.

It is thought that hypnosis aides in the research of creativity. The state of hypnosis creates an altered state of consciousness; this makes hypnosis a good tool to use in the research of creative states and fantasy proneness. It is thought that hypnosis may lead to a breakthrough in understanding the origin of creative inspiration.

Bowers and van der Meulen (1970) performed a study involving 30 highly suggestible people and 30 participants who were not as suggestible. The study involved many tests of creative functioning including creative tasks, inkblots, and association tests. The results of the study showed that those who were more highly hypnotizable performed better in the creative tests. The study also concluded that women were more creative than men.

Another study was conducted to study the relationship between hypnosis and creativity. Hypnosis was used to measure the degree of effortless response to tasks involving creativity. The study consisted of students and writers who were asked to write while in a hypnotic state. The researcher also looked at the various creative styles of the participants. The results showed that more creativity was at its highest when there was no interference between associations and problem solving (Bowers, 1979).

Lynn and Rhue (1988) screened 6,000 students to find 780 participants in their study. They were divided into three groups based on their fantasy proneness. They were then compared based on measures of hypnotizability, imagination, waking suggestibility, hallucinatory ability, creativity, psychopathology, and childhood experiences. The researchers found that there was less of a link between fantasy proneness and hypnotizability than originally thought. This means that even those who are not creative are likely to respond positively to hypnosis. It was also found that those who were more prone to fantasy and creativity were not necessarily highly suggestible under hypnosis.

Although these studies differ in making a connection between suggestibility and creativity, all of the studies have made interesting conclusions involving creativity and hypnosis. The state of hypnosis allows researchers to study creativity in a non-invasive and natural way. More research should be conducted to learn more about creativity and imagination.

MRIs may reveal truth to promises

2009-12-26T04:59:00.000-08:00

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/23/mris-may-reveal-truth-to-promises/?source=newsletter_health_headlines

MRIs may reveal truth to promises
By Paul Christensen THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Your spouse promises to "forsake all others." An investor says she'll share the profits with her partners. A parolee maintains he's done with his life of crime.

Can you trust them?

Scientists from the University of Zurich say a specialized form of MRI may be able to answer that question.

Thomas Baumgartner and his team have used functional magnetic resonance imaging - fMRI - to tell whether someone intends to keep a promise.

In their experiments, volunteers pretended to be investors and financiers, and the scientists were able to predict which subjects would keep their promises to hand over money and which wouldn't. Those who intended not to keep their word registered increased activity in the areas of the brain associated with emotion and control.

Mr. Baumgartner, who holds a doctorate in neuroscience, says he thinks the discovery could help psychiatrists decide whether criminals should be paroled by measuring the likelihood they will break a promise not to re-offend. The technology also could be used in the investment market or in the detection of an unfaithful spouse.

He says he doesn't think it will be used that way anytime soon, however.

"For purposes like that, the technology is too expensive and the analysis much too complicated," he says.

In addition, questions have been raised about the reliability of fMRI as a measure of neural activity. FMRI determines which brain cells are active by responding to changes in oxygenated blood. This usually offers a good indication of neural activity, but it isn't always successful. Studies have shown that not all blood changes in the brain are related to neural activity.

A Dartmouth College team led by neuroscientist Craig Bennett used fMRI on a salmon and found that its brain registered humanlike emotional responses when shown a variety of stimulatory pictures. There was just one problem, however: The salmon was dead.

This Is Your Brain on Kafka

2009-12-23T05:47:00.000-08:00

By Tom Jacobs, Miller-McCune.com
December 22, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144757/

The befuddled tramps in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot are a poetic personification of paralysis. But new research suggests the act of watching them actually does get us somewhere.

Absurdist literature, it appears, stimulates our brains.

That's the conclusion of a study recently published in the journal Psychological Science. Psychologists Travis Proulx of the University of California, Santa Barbara and Steven Heine of the University of British Columbia report our ability to find patterns is stimulated when we are faced with the task of making sense of an absurd tale. What's more, this heightened capability carries over to unrelated tasks.

In the first of two experiments, 40 participants (all Canadian college undergraduates) read one of two versions of a Franz Kafka story, The Country Doctor. In the first version, which was only slightly modified from the original, "the narrative gradually breaks down and ends abruptly after a series of non sequiturs," the researchers write. "We also included a series of bizarre illustrations that were unrelated to the story."

The second version contained extensive revisions to the original. The non sequiturs were removed, and a "conventional narrative" was added, along with relevant illustrations.

All participants were then shown a series of 45 strings of letters, which they were instructed to copy. They were informed that the strings, which consisted of six to nine letters, contained a strict but not easily decipherable pattern.

They were then introduced to a new set of letter strings, some of which followed the pattern and some of which did not. They were asked to mark which strings followed the pattern.

Those who had read the absurd story selected a higher number of strings as being consistent with the pattern. More importantly, they "demonstrated greater accuracy in identifying the genuinely pattern-congruent letter strings," the researchers report. This suggests "the cognitive mechanisms responsible for implicitly learning statistical regularities" are enhanced when we struggle to find meaning in a fragmented narrative.

In a second study, participants were asked to recall situations in which they responded in very different ways, and instructed to consider the notion "that they had two different selves inhabiting the same body." They, too, did better on the letter-pattern task than members of a control group. "The breakdown of expected associations that participants experienced when arguing against their own self-unity appeared to motivate them to seek out patterns of association in a novel environment," the researchers write.

To Proulx and Heine, these finds suggest we have an innate tendency to impose order upon our experiences and create what they call "meaning frameworks." Any threat to this process will "activate a meaning-maintenance motivation that may call upon any other available associations to restore a sense of meaning," they write.

So it appears Viktor Frankl was right: Man is perpetually in search of meaning, and if a Kafkaesque work of literature seems strange on the surface, our brains amp up to dig deeper and discover its underlying design. Which, all things considered, is a hell of a lot better than waking up and discovering you've turned into a giant cockroach.

How Myths Can Kill

2009-12-22T15:41:00.001-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/How-Myths-Can-Kill-by-Robert-Parry-091221-47.html

December 21, 2009
How Myths Can Kill
By Robert Parry
Reprinted from Consortium News

Myths can be innocuous enough, providing pleasure and comfort to believers, for instance, the Jesus birth stories that are celebrated at Christmas or the legends of Abraham and Moses conveying God's promised land to the Israelites.

But myths can have a darker side when they are embraced as religious or ideological truths. A millennium ago, Christian Crusaders slaughtered tens of thousands of Muslims to secure the Holy Land for Christian pilgrims, and even today many Israeli Jews resist compromises for peace because of the legends contained in the Torah, or Old Testament.

Other Judeo-Christian myths have contributed to horrendous bloodshed. The crucifixion story in one gospel that of John shifted blame for the killing of Jesus from the Romans to his fellow Jews, contributing to centuries of vicious anti-Semitism culminating in the Holocaust. Most likely, John's story reflected a religious rivalry between early Christians and Jews and was a bid to appease the Romans by lessening their role.

Similarly, over the past century, Zionists who advocated a Jewish homeland in ancient Israel exploited the myth of the Diaspora, the supposed Roman dispersal of Jews from the Holy Land to be scattered throughout Europe. The Diaspora justified the return of European Jews to their "original" home, thus correcting a historical injustice.

However, research by Israeli historian Shlomo Sand and others indicates that the Diaspora never happened, that the vast majority of European Jews originated from the religious conversion of large tribes in Eastern Europe and Northern Africa more than a millennium ago, not from some mass exodus organized by the Romans after Jewish uprisings almost two millennia ago.

The research further suggests that most of the original Israelites remained in the Middle East. They either created strong Jewish communities across the region or converted to Islam. In other words, the Palestinians who have been displaced by the modern state of Israel were likely the descendants of the ancient Israelites, not the European Jews that emigrated after World War II.

In that way, when history replaces myth, powerful narratives can change shifting the sense of right and wrong, often bestowing greater humanity on a persecuted people, whether the Arabs killed by the Crusaders, the Jews persecuted in Europe, or the Palestinians displaced from their land.

Modern Myths

There also have been modern myths used to justify political decisions, whether on a grand scale or more narrowly.

For instance, grand theories about American "exceptionalism" have rationalized U.S. imperial interventions around the world, wars and covert actions that would have been condemned as aggression or even terrorism if carried out by some other nation.

A smaller myth, George W. Bush's "successful surge" in Iraq, contributed to President Barack Obama following a similar surge strategy in Afghanistan.

Though the "successful surge" myth in Iraq is now a cherished conventional wisdom in Washington, the actual evidence of why Iraqi violence declined points to many other reasons some predating President Bush's 2007 order to send in more than 20,000 additional troops. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com's "Explaining the Drop in Iraqi War Dead" and "Obama Pleases the Neocons."]

Another Afghan-related myth is the hard lesson supposedly learned from the U.S. abandonment of Afghanistan immediately after the Soviets departed in February 1989. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has cited that experience popularized in the movie "Charlie Wilson's War" to explain why the Obama administration must now stick it out there.

Accompanying Gates on a recent trip to Afghanistan, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd described how "Gates promised that America would not repeat its disappearing act of 1989. Flying from Kabul to Iraq, I asked him if " he was driven to war because of guilt at abandoning people we had promised to stand by.

""I don't feel guilt about it, but we made a strategic mistake,' he said. "And it wasn't just the Afghans. At almost the same time, we basically cut off our relationship with the Pakistanis. And the mistrust that exists today is a reflection of that action on our part.'" [NYT, Dec. 15, 2009]

However, as Gates well knows, there was no sudden disappearing act. Indeed, as the Soviets began pulling out in 1988, Gates as deputy CIA director was in the middle of policy discussions about what to do next.

The State Department was open to working with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev who favored a negotiated settlement to the war, followed by a coalition government involving remnants of the communist regime of President Najibullah and representatives of the U.S.-backed mujahedeen.

However, Gates championed the CIA faction that wanted to rebuff Gorbachev and rely on the mujahedeen to quickly wipe out Najibullah.

"Strung Up'

At the time, I was a Newsweek correspondent covering intelligence issues and I asked some CIA officials why the United States wasn't willing to just collect its winnings from the Soviet withdrawal and help patch Afghanistan back up as best they could.

One CIA hardliner responded to my question with disgust. "We want to see Najibullah strung up by a light pole," he snapped.

Gates was on the inside pushing a CIA analysis that Najibullah's government would fall promptly once the Soviets left, which their final combat units did on Feb. 15, 1989.

By then, Gates had moved from CIA to be President George H.W. Bush's deputy national security adviser -- and Gates's position carried the day.
Instead of collaborating with Gorbachev on a peace initiative or simply cutting off U.S. covert aid once the original goal of a Soviet withdrawal had been achieved, Bush signed a new finding that justified a continued war on behalf of Afghan "self-determination."

In the authoritative book on the Afghan conflict, Ghost Wars, author Steve Koll wrote that "throughout 1989, the CIA pumped yet more arms, money, food, and humanitarian supplies into the Paktia border regions where the Arabs [Osama bin Laden's group] were building up their strength."

With the CIA determined to oust Najibullah from power, U.S. officials also continued to press Saudi Arabia to continue its massive investment in the Afghan conflict. Only gradually did Congress reduce the level of U.S. funding, though it remained substantial more than a year after the Soviets left.

"For the period from October 1989 through October 1990, Congress cut its secret allocation for the CIA's covert Afghan program by about 60 percent, to $280 million," Koll wrote. "Saudi intelligence, meanwhile, provided $435 million from the kingdom's official treasury and another $100 million from the private resources of various Saudi and Kuwaiti princes. Saudi and Kuwaiti funding continued to increase during the first seven months of 1990, bettering the CIA's contribution."

Misjudgment

Contrary to Gates's expectation, however, the Najibullah government didn't fall easily. Using its Soviet weapons and advisers, Najibullah's regime beat back a mujahedeen offensive in 1990. Najibullah hung on and the war, the violence and the disorder continued ripping Afghanistan apart.

Gates finally recognized that his CIA rapid-collapse analysis was wrong. In his memoir, From the Shadows, he acknowledged that the State Department's analysis predicting a more resilient Najibullah army had proved correct.

Yet, by the time, George H.W. Bush's administration recognized that Gates and the CIA hardliners were wrong, it was too late to work with Gorbachev on a negotiated settlement. He was struggling to survive a challenge from communist hardliners before the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991 and Boris Yeltsin rose to power.

In his memoir, Gates revealed that he was well aware that the United States did not immediately abandon the Afghan cause once the Soviet troops left in February 1989.

"Najibullah would remain in power for another three years [after the Soviet pull-out], as the United States and the USSR continued to aid their respective sides," Gates wrote. "On Dec. 11, 1991, both Moscow and Washington cut off all assistance, and Najibullah's government fell four months later. He had outlasted both Gorbachev and the Soviet Union itself."

[By the way, Gates and the CIA analytical division that he helped politicize also missed the collapse of the Soviet Union.]

Najibullah's belated fall in 1992 may have brought an end to the communist regime, but it didn't stop the war.

The capital of Kabul came under the control of a relatively moderate rebel force led by Ahmad Shah Massoud, an Islamist but not a fanatic. However, Massoud, a Tajik, was not favored by Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, which backed more extreme Pashtun elements of the mujahedeen and funneled most of the covert aid to them.

The various Afghan warlords battled for another four years as the ISI readied its own army of Islamic extremists drawn from Pashtun refugee camps inside Pakistan. With the ISI's backing, this group, known as the Taliban, entered Afghanistan with the promise of restoring order.

The Taliban seized the capital of Kabul in September 1996, driving Massoud and his Northern Alliance into a northward retreat. The ousted communist leader Najibullah, who had stayed in Kabul, sought shelter in the United Nations compound, but was captured.

The Taliban tortured, castrated and killed Najibullah, his mutilated body hung from a light pole, just as CIA hardliners had envisioned seven years earlier.

Setting the Stage for 9/11

The victorious Taliban then imposed harsh Islamic law on Afghanistan. Their rule was devastating to women who had made gains toward equal rights under the communists, but were forced by the Taliban to live under highly restrictive rules, to cover themselves when in public, and to forgo schooling.

In the late 1990s, the Taliban also granted Saudi exile Osama bin Laden and his extremist al-Qaeda organization a safe haven when they were on the run from the United States angered over bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa and other terrorist attacks.

Bin Laden, who shared the Taliban's fundamentalist view of Islam, was welcomed back because bin Laden and his fellow Arab militants had collaborated with the CIA-supported Afghan rebels in their war against the Soviets in the 1980s.

By the late 1990s, however, bin Laden and al-Qaeda had a new enemy: the United States. The stage was set for the 9/11 attacks.

Though Gates is familiar with all this ugly history and even recounts some of it in his memoir he was happy to exploit the widely accepted myth of the immediate U.S. abandonment of the Afghan cause once the Soviets departed.

Today, the abandonment myth plays into Gates's desire for an escalated war in Afghanistan rather than serious peace talks aimed at bringing together a coalition government that would include some factions that might be very distasteful to the United States.

As with so many myths that prove useful to powerful interests, the Afghan abandonment myth also obscures the actual history, which if known would teach a strikingly different lesson.

If the American journalists traveling with Gates had understood that Gates and other Bush-I officials chose to continue the earlier Afghan war with visions of total triumph dancing in their heads, the reporters might have challenged Gates and argued that the real lesson of 1989 was that an imperfect peace can be preferable to an expanded war.

They also might have recognized that Gates's reputation as an esteemed Wise Man, who in the words of Washington Post columnist David Broder is "incapable of dissembling," is another myth. [For more on Gates's real history, see Consortiumnews.com's "The Secret World of Robert Gates."]

So, while myths whether ancient or modern can sometimes tell a pleasing tale, they have the capacity to get many people killed.

100,000 words a day that are changing our brains and ruining our concentration

2009-12-14T16:54:00.000-08:00

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1235547/The-100-000-words-day-ruin-concentration.html#

The 100,000 words a day that are changing our brains and ruining our concentration
By Fiona Macrae
13th December 2009

Having trouble concentrating on this story? It could be because your brain is bombarded with more than 100,000 words a day.

The average adult hears or reads 100,500 words a day, research shows.

And the 'day' takes into account only waking hours outside work - meaning the true figure is much higher.

Information overload: Talking on the phone and surfing the internet can see the average adult exposed to more than 100,000 words a day.

Researcher Roger Bohn estimated the amount of information people are exposed to inside and outside the home, for activities other than work.

Trips to the cinema, listening to the radio, talking on the phone, playing video games, surfing the internet and reading the newspaper were all factored in to create a 'snapshot of the information revolution'.

It concluded that the average adult was exposed to more than 100,000 words daily and 34 gigabytes of information - or a fifth of the storage capacity of a notepad computer.

There are concerns our brains are being overloaded and even that their structure is being changed by the flood of data.

Susan Greenfield, one of Britain's most eminent scientists, has repeatedly warned that social networking sites may be harming children's brains by shortening attention spans, encouraging instant gratification and making young people more self-centred.

Constant computer use may also be 'infantalising' the brain, making it harder to learn when things to wrong.

Professor Bohn, from the University of California, said: 'I think one thing is clear: Our attention is being chopped into shorter intervals and that is probably not good for thinking deeper thoughts.'

Oxford University neuroscientist Professor Colin Blakemore added: 'The brain can grow and increase in size depending on how it is used. Perhaps dealing with this new information will cause new nerve cells to be born.'

How fragile we are: Why the complexity of modern civilization threatens us all

2009-12-09T08:41:00.000-08:00

http://www.NaturalNews.com/z027694_complex_societies_civilization.html

December 9 2009
How fragile we are: Why the complexity of modern civilization threatens us all
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) The fragility of our modern human civilization did not become clear to me until I began living full-time in South America. As a resident of Vilcabamba, Ecuador, I've grown accustomed to the idea of knowing where the things I consume come from.

The water I drink, for example, comes from a hole in the ground that taps into a water table replenished by the clouds hanging over the Podocarpus National Forest to the East. I can make a logical connection between the clouds, the rainfall, and the water in my glass. And if the well pump fails, I know I can always carry a bucket to the river a few hundred meters away and scoop up virtually unlimited quantities of water that recently fell out of the sky.

During a recent trip to Tucson, however, I found myself hesitating when I turned on the kitchen faucet. I paused, marveling at the magic of this water which apparently appears from nowhere. And it's always there, reliable and uninterrupted. That's when I noticed myself asking the commonsense question: "Where does the water come from around here?"

I had no idea.

The realization astonished me. I lived in Tucson for over five years and yet the thought suddenly occurred to me that if the water stopped magically flowing out of these pipes, I had absolutely no idea where to physically find water beyond the bottled water in the grocery stores, and that wouldn't last very long.

Sure, I know where the rivers are in Tucson, but these desert rivers are bone dry river beds for all but a few days of the year. And yes, I know how to get water out of cactus, but it's hard work, and the water isn't pure water. Try to live off cactus juice for a few days and you'll end up with severe diarrhea (which is dehydrating).

This thought never hit me when I lived in America, but now it struck me hard: Life in many U.S. cities is extremely fragile. Much of the abundance and convenience of city life is pure illusion, conjured up by a system of underground pipes that deliver water to your home and another set of pipes that magically dispose of your flushed liquid waste. A set of wires brings electricity that makes your home livable (at the great expenditure of energy for heat or cooling), and cheap gasoline makes it possible for fresh produce to magically appear in the grocery stores that feed us all with food from who-knows-where.

Take away any one of these -- electricity, water, sewers, fuel, food -- and virtually every U.S. city becomes an urban death trap for all its citizens.

It's not just Tucson, either: The entire American Southwest is extremely fragile when it comes to supporting life. The same story holds true with Phoenix, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego and many other cities and towns of all sizes. The population currently living in the Southwest USA is far greater than what those geographic regions could support on their own: It is the mass-importation of water, electricity, food and fuel that makes life possible there.

And all those mass imports are extremely fragile.

The flipside of this problem exists across Northern USA and Canada, where extremely cold winters make these regions unlivable without the steady importation of heating fuel. Most Americans and Canadians would freeze to death in less than a week if left without some ability to heat their homes during a severe winter freeze. Very few people (in the cities especially) still have free-standing, non-electric wood-burning stoves or effective fireplaces that can keep them warm and alive during such an outage. Most of the younger generation has never even chopped wood! (And wouldn't know where to start if they had to...)

The illusion of progress hides the frailty of complex civilizations
As U.S. cities have become increasingly complex and population dense, they have simultaneously become alarmingly fragile. Just one small break in the supply lines -- or one severe disruption in a single essential input -- can ripple through the entire system, causing widespread catastrophe.

I found this difficult to see when living in the USA. Everything seems fine on the surface. The water always appears when you turn on the faucet. Electricity seems ever-present. Food is magically replaced on store shelves each night (apparently by sleepless Elves of some kind) and no matter how much gasoline you pump out of the gas station, it always seems to have more!

But what if these essentials stopped? Could YOU survive for even one weekend without store-bought food, water pressure in your home, fuel, electricity and internet access? Increasingly, the honest answer is simply "No".

(This isn't an article about survival, by the way. But if you're interested in the concept of "surviving and thriving," then check out the "surthrival" website of Daniel Vitalis at www.Surthrival.com )

Our modern world lacks redundancy
In the quest for complexity, specialization and profit, our modern civilization has completely forgotten about redundancy. There is almost no slack in the systems that deliver your food, fuel, electricity, water or consumer products. That means if something goes wrong, even for a little while, you'll need to depend on yourself to provide these things. Yet how many people have the ability to provide all these essentials for themselves -- disconnected from the grid -- for even as little as one weekend?

Very few, it turns out. And that leads to one giant, disturbing realization: When the next great disruption occurs, the vast majority of the population will panic. That's because they're unprepared. They have unknowingly bet their lives on the reliability of just-in-time delivery systems and complex infrastructure interdependencies. When the water stops flowing, or the electricity goes off, or the gasoline runs out, they literally will have no idea what to do.

The very idea that such a thing could happen will be entirely foreign to them. It's as if they've all been living in The Truman Show (a Jim Carey film, one of my favorites) then suddenly the veil is lifted and they're shown the real world. In the real world, water doesn't just automatically flow through your pipes. Fuel doesn't materialize into existence out of nowhere. Food isn't mysteriously teleported to your local store each night while you sleep. In the real world, food, fuel, energy and water all depend on a long, intricate web of interdependent processes, and there isn't a person living today who truly understands the complexity of those dependencies.

In essence, we are all living a civilization experiment. It's an experiment that asks the question, "What happens if we all become specialists and give up our redundancies in the pursuit of higher specialized production?"

The cost of specialization
Let me rephrase it more simply: A hundred years ago, almost everybody was a farmer. If your neighbor's garden crop failed, that was no big deal because you had some extra garden food to share with them. But as society became more "advanced" and complex, people became specialists: Forklift operators, grocery store checkout clerks, bank paper pushers, auto alarm installers, and so on.

Importantly, in this process they all lost the knowledge of how to grow their own food, or fetch their own water, or heat their own homes. Instead, they pursued their own narrow specialized skills and traded their time (and money) for bits and pieces of other peoples' special skills, some of which include delivering the essentials we all need to survive. A newspaper journalist, for example, doesn't need to grow her own food. She writes stories that farmers want to read, and in exchange, she eats some of the food they grow. The medium of exchange for all this is called "money," of course.

As you can see, however, this specialization results in the mass loss of basic living knowledge such as how to raise chickens, how to prune fruit trees or how to plant garden seeds. I'm actually forcing myself to re-learn many of these basic skills now in Ecuador, and I'm finding myself astonished at how little I really knew about living off the land...

This loss of practical knowledge sets up precisely the kind of situation I hinted at earlier, where a disruption in the complex systems that deliver our essentials results in the masses panicking because they have no clue what to do. They've never had to use live-off-the-land skills, so they don't even know where to begin.

Where can you find water within walking distance? How to build a water filter out of a plastic barrel, some sand and some old tree stumps? How do you repair a flat tire on a bicycle without changing the inner tube? How do you protect your garden veggies from insects or rodents without using chemical pesticides? These are the kinds of things that most people just don't know, and yet in a breakdown emergency, these are precisely the kinds of skills that are desperately needed. (They're the skills your parents or grandparents probably knew very well, but have since been largely abandoned...)

Skills matter
The upshot of all this is that it's a good idea to acquire some essential preparedness skills so that you don't find yourself a complete noob when the lights go out. And this isn't about acquiring just stuff (gadgets and the like), it's about developing skills and know-how. Skills beat stuff any day.

For example, by working alongside some of the locals I've hired in Ecuador, I've learned how to cut wire without a wire cutter. I've learned how to repair irrigation pipes without pipe clamps (just using bailing wire and a nail). I've learned how to build water troughs out of bamboo and how to make a decent roof covering out of dried sugar cane leaves. It's all the more curious given that I came to Ecuador from what people call an "advanced nation" (the USA) and yet found myself clueless in so many areas that are considered common knowledge by the people of this "developing nation" (Ecuador).

I can tell you this: In a prolonged crisis, rural Ecuadorians will out-live USA city-dwellers by a hundred to one. Many skills that we might consider "advanced preparedness skills" in the USA are everyday knowledge to the Ecuadorians I know. There is much to learn from these knowledgeable people.

Come visit Southern Ecuador some time if you'd like to learn more for yourself. In cooperation with the local tourism bureaus, I plan to cover several tourist events and destinations throughout Ecuador in 2010. Watch for those announcements here on NaturalNews. For starters, the primary cities / towns to visit in Southern Ecuador include Loja, Zamora, Cuenca and Vilcabamba, where I live.

Why I Appreciate Atheists

2009-12-03T09:33:00.000-08:00

Although I believe in many gods, I respect atheists as they are the first to point out the cruel mind and behavior of the god of the bible!

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-I-Appreciate-Atheists-by-Grant-Lawrence-091129-865.html

December 3, 2009
Why I Appreciate Atheists
By Grant Lawrence

The whole thing (belief in God) is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. — Sigmund Freud

I am not atheist or a nontheist. I don't pretend to know that God doesn't exist.

My mind at times is agnostic although my heart always tells me there is a higher power or some sort of magnificent, universal spiritual force that is open to all of us.

I think for the most part we have the wrong idea of God.

I believe that we share our life in God.

God, to me, is the divine ground of all being from which all of consciousness arises. God is our life and he/she/it shares in everyone's life experience and yet he/she/it is beyond our lives.

Once while out for a walk a couple of decades ago, for some reason I began paying attention to a little girl roller skating. I watched her as she played happily but then suddenly I had this profound inner knowing that there was also this presence that was watching and experiencing everything that little girl did. Then, I realized that spiritual presence was not only in that little girl experiencing her life, but it was in everything and was everywhere including in me. I had this profound feeling of this presence in me and out of me. It was in everything watching and experiencing me and in everything else from everywhere. But the knowing of this divine presence quickly faded.

After years of trying to come to a greater understanding of that 'little girl experience while out for a walk,' I am sorry to say that I can't say much more than this presence seemed a part of us yet beyond us. This presence seemed to be keenly interested in every aspect of life and yet it was also outside of what we know as our life. The Bhagavad Gita talks about the knower, and that knower being a part of creation and yet something more. This idea of God portrayed in the Hindu Classic is the closest I have come to some understanding of what I think God may be.

I relate this experience because I think it shows where I am coming from concerning my spiritual beliefs and experiences.

Although I have some personal beliefs and experiences with spirituality that lead me to believe in a Divine Universal Consciousness outside of any particular body, place, or time, I do enjoy atheism and atheists.

I enjoy atheist arguments. I enjoy their wit and their perspective. I appreciate how atheists expose ignorance and hypocrisy.

I firmly believe that many people are atheist precisely because of their profound sense of compassion and humanism.

I can't speak for all atheists but I can offer some impressions.

It seems that atheists are often more attune to the the suffering and death that exists all around us and they firmly believe that there can be no loving God(s) that would allow this. That is probably one of the first sentiments that moved many atheists to the position that there is no God(s). They likely moved from this feeling for life and its hardships to the search for an understanding of God(s). When they found no satisfying evidence for a God of the great religions they had to be brutally honest with themselves.

From my experience, most atheists are critical and rational thinkers. They apply that reasoning to the search for God and find a 'false belief' that has led to so much death and destruction throughout history in the name of that 'false belief'. The atheists reject a life of faith in God because they try to be honest, and their thinking doesn't bring them to that conclusion. Unlike most spiritually minded they don't generally cover up inconsistencies in reasoning and evidence with faith.

I have found atheists to be much more heroic in their quest for truth than nearly all of the 'true believers.' Their search for truth has led them to a life of no God(s) and that can be a fearful position to take for those with less strength of character.

But, for me, the greatest service atheists offer is what they have done for society. Atheists have done a fine job of exposing frauds, fraudulent doctrines, and beliefs.

Here are just a few of the great atheists that have tackled the lies of history sold us as truth.

-Voltaire

-Rousseau

-Thomas Paine

-Karl Marx

-Sigmund Freud

-Albert Einstein

-George Orwell

-Noam Chomsky

In truth, the list could go on and on. Obviously there are evil and nasty atheists. But the point is that if it weren't for these great atheist thinkers, humanity would be suffering under even more brutality and ignorance than what presently exists.

People are a gullible bunch. They want to be true believers and let others do thinking for them. But we know that people lie all of the time. We also know that the greater the power and the bigger the institutions the greater the lies. In fact, these institutions are empowered by the 'Big Lies' that they tell and that people believe. Especially in religion, here we have the Big Lies supposedly coming from God himself. The true believers can never bring themselves to question God unless that belief in God or his institutions is offering them extreme pain.

But atheists throughout history have been brave enough and honest enough to question the Big Lies of God. If it weren't for their genius and bravery, we would all be enslaved right now by ecclesiastical power along with corporate and governmental power. Unfortunately, being free of one out of the three is the best we can do right now. I guess atheists can't do everything for us.

Still we can, as a people, reach for that same sense of honesty, courage, rationality, and critical thinking that has been displayed by atheists throughout history to tackle those forces that shackle us from our own ignorance and irrationality. But it does require that people move beyond the True Believer mode and into a brave new world of critical thinking.

So I not only appreciate Atheists, but I also admire them for their character and bravery. I admire them for their thinking skills and their sense of honesty.

I, for one, am thankful that we have people that are as committed to truth and honesty as atheists and not afraid of where that truth and honesty may take them. Even if that commitment to truth and honesty has brought them a great deal of societal condemnation, atheists for the most part have been brave enough to make a stand using their reasoning and critical thinking skills.

For those of us that have some belief in God(s), we have a lot to learn from atheists.

Hollywood, the macabre

2009-11-30T07:28:00.000-08:00

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KK25Dj02.html

Nov 25, 2009
Hollywood, the macabre
By Chan Akya

Having managed to catch up with my reading of whatever passes for the printed news media over the past few days, thanks to a hectic travel schedule and the attendant time wasted in airport lounges, there is something of cognitive dissonance with respect to various popular culture aspects of the West if a random sample of visits to the US and Europe are any indication.

Earlier this year, I mused about Anglo-Saxon countries (the US, the United Kingdom and Australia) discarding many long-held principles with a view to recovering from their current state of economic malaise (see Principal over principle, Asia Times Online, June 6, 2009). At a very basic level, I suspect but cannot conclude that these countries have started on the slippery slopes of racism, corruption and axiomatic socialism as responses to economic decline.

Following the questions raised in that article and therefore suggesting a certain degree of predetermined conceptions on my part, I read the reviews of various Hollywood films that have reportedly taken the global box office by storm over the past two weeks.

Newspapers and television, no strangers to either mass hysteria or hyperbole, especially when they happen to belong to the stables of Rupert Murdoch, have latched on gleefully to these films as an extension of a cultural phenomena; citing a communal bridging that apparently accompanies the screening of these films. I shudder to consider what kind of communal gathering would go on across the aisles of apocalyptic films or those suggesting a different kind of immortality to what religion suggests; but perhaps that's just me.

These films, 2012 and The Twilight Saga: New Moon, may well represent the utterly vacuous end of the mass market for culture in the US and across Europe; but commercial lightweights they have not been. Access the website for the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) and one can see the box office collections of these films: while 2012 managed to collect US$108 million in the US in the first two weeks since its release, The Twilight Saga reportedly collected $141 million in its opening weekend alone (ranking it as the third-biggest opening of any film in recent history).

So there is at least $250 million in reasons for me to wonder aloud about the cultural aspects of these films. Let me clarify though - this article isn't a movie review.

Essentially, the job of reviewing films on the basis of production and acting should be handled by those who have viewed them (which I have not, nor do I intend to), leaving others who have read about them to ponder about the motivations of those who enjoy these types of films and are willing to fork out good money in the middle of a recession to do so.

Consider the notion behind 2012. While there has been no shortage of Armageddon movies from Hollywood, they have inevitably focused on the arrival of an external agent: whether it is a deadly meteor (in films like Armageddon and Deep Impact) that some courageous humans attempt to thwart by firing missiles or some such into them; or alien visitors (in films like Independence Day and War of the Worlds) who inevitably come up against resourceful humans intent on fighting them off.

In effect (or special effects, which are heavily used throughout the film to the complaints of critics - exactly what did they expect instead?), these films were about either heroism in the face of adversity or redemption through actions above and beyond the call of mundane duty. All that though appears to have changed with the notions behind 2012, for this is an end-of-the-world scenario where humans are completely helpless against a ground that shifts quite literally from under their feet.

Then there is The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which is based on the Twilight series of books by American author Stephanie Meyers. Apparently a phenomenon among teenage girls, although honestly I had no idea that this demographic actually read books, the Twilight series ("saga" to use the Hollywood term) deals with a human's fascination for undead of all kinds, with vampires and werewolves competing for a girl's heart. No not that way; they apparently actually want eventually to be more than friends with the lady.

Reading through the entertainment pages of the printed media, I did come across some articles that pointed out the similarities between the Twilight franchise and a host of vampire-related television series in the US and Europe. While barely 10 years ago the television phenomenon was that of a cheerleader-turned-vampire killer ("Buffy"), more recently the vampires have themselves assumed the central roles in series such as True Blood. I am disadvantaged by not watching any of these, but then knowing what the storylines entail would involve watching these bits of television - akin to willingly jumping into a swamp.

I find the notion of the undead being an aspirational choice to teenagers rather distasteful. Barely a few generations ago, when Bram Stoker's Dracula was first written, the idea of the nosferatu was enough to send shivers down the spines of viewers. When made into a film it became a classic horror movie, not a teenage romance flick for one thing.

The inherent evil associated with remaining immortal was essentially enough to set aside the ideas of romance or some such. Vampires and other undead creatures such as werewolves achieved their transformations by the simple act of doing the unspeakable. Murder of innocents and drinking their blood was not considered a "cool" feature of one's existence.

Then again, perhaps I am missing a sociological point about these films, namely what makes the central characters aspirational in the first place. In both 2012 and Twilight, the type of elite carry the day due to the natural advantages of being rich or undead; for it is they who get to avoid the normal emergencies of human existence, such as a flood or death.

Better authors than Stephanie Meyers have handled the subject of immortality of course. JRR Tolkien, in the Lord of the Rings, reveals the elves as the immortal side of humans with goblins as their natural antithesis; much as Orcs are to humans. The culmination of the book though is to throw the elves into a tragic exile when the power of the one ring is lost in the fires of Mordor. In essence, the human circle of life and death becomes the normal, with the immortals being banished to other places.

Therein figures the key part of disconnect with the modern versions of vampire tales and Armageddon. There is no apparent moral dilemma involved in the act of aspiring to be a part of the undead or to belong to a rich group of people who get to house themselves away from the Armageddon. It is as if the notion of a role model has been reversed from the ones persevering for the human existence to the ones who are somehow above the fray.

I have to admit though that it is possible Hollywood hinted on a sublime track in all these films: namely their collective expectation of the end of human civilization on this planet. Doomsday films are filed away under "entertainment" but a constant repeat of scenes featuring heavenly deluges that wash away the New York skyline must be getting old hat unless some part of the narrative rings true with the American or Western psyche by now.

Away from the messages, hidden or otherwise, there could be a facile explanation for these films from Group of Seven - if not strictly American - economic trends. A famous article in a recent issue of Rolling Stone magazine termed the investment bank Goldman Sachs the "giant vampire squid" choking off the greater economy. With bankers and financiers now in the position of enemy number one in the zeitgeist, perhaps Hollywood has jumped into the act.

It is entirely possible that the undead in Twilight may be working for investment banks by day: after all, with all the dark liquidity pools, tunnels of funding from central banks and secret arrangements galore, it is not as if banking practices ever truly come to light. Thus, our teenage American heroine could simply be aspiring to become a banker in essence; and thus achieve a semblance of immortality (in terms of bad behavior at least) that goes with the territory.

As for 2012, forget the narrative about Armageddon; for it is more likely to be relevant if one considers that the Federal Reserve as well as other central banks may hold interest rates at near-zero levels until that year. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke hinted in as many words that the first rate hikes could only be due in that year; a sentiment that has been echoed by multiple other central bankers. The film then could simply be hinting that the current global financial crisis will recur with pent-up wrath in that year.

Or am I giving Hollywood way too much credit for intelligence?

Talking to Ourselves: How Consumers Navigate Choices and Inner Conflict

2009-11-28T13:12:00.000-08:00

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091117161210.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Talking to Ourselves: How Consumers Navigate Choices and Inner Conflict
ScienceDaily
Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:00 EST

From simple decisions like "Should I eat this brownie?" to bigger questions such as "Should my next car be a hybrid?" consumers are involved in an inner dialogue that reflects thoughts and perspectives of their different selves, according to the authors of a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Shalini Bahl (iAM Business Consulting) and George R. Milne (University of Massachusetts) studied the multiple perspectives that exist within consumers and explored the ways they navigate inconsistent preferences to make consumption decisions.

The authors conducted a study combining in-depth interviews, multi-dimensional scaling, and metaphors to identify some of the voices that engage consumers' minds. They used "dialogic self theory," which differentiates between the "Meta-self" and multiple selves. According to the authors, multiple selves have unique perspectives and speak from different positions with relatively independent voices, while the Meta-self reflects a distanced neutral perspective.

"In our analysis of relationships between two selves with different worldviews and consumption preferences, we discovered a unique relationship in which one self offers a non-judgmental acceptance of another self's opposing views and behavior, and in doing so brings peace and equanimity in a situation involving opposing preferences," the authors write.

At other times, one self will take over and dominate, which can lead to inner conflict. One finding exposed a "desirable self," which can promote positive consumption behaviors like exercise and hard work. However, when allowed free reign, this self can push consumers to overstretch their limits and end up with physical injuries or burnout.

The authors believe this study can help marketers and other agencies that are trying to promote more mindful consumption choices. "By understanding the different voices in consumers they can promote communications that model consumers' inner conflicts and present different dialogical strategies like negotiation, coalition, compassion, and compartmentalization that will help them navigate conflicts to make better choices."

Journal Reference:

Shalini Bahl and George R. Milne. "Can Talking to Ourselves Help Us Navigate Inner Conflicts?" Journal of Consumer Research: June 2010.

The Secret History of Our Time: The Pope and Satan, War and the Anti-Christ, Revelations and the Last Days

2009-11-27T05:41:00.000-08:00

http://www.richardccook.com/2009/11/25/the-secret-history-of-our-time-the-pope-and-satan-war-and-the-anti-christ-revelations-and-the-last-days/

The Secret History of Our Time: The Pope and Satan, War and the Anti-Christ, Revelations and the Last Days

Author’s Note: In order to come up with an accurate understanding of today’s world crisis it is necessary to start looking at it from the spiritual dimension. This essay attempts to do so, using sources acquired during many years of study.

By the latter half of the 19th century, say at the time of the great Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893, many visionaries saw mankind poised to enter a Golden Age of peace, prosperity, innovation, and progress. The reason, of course, was the Industrial Revolution, especially the relatively recent harnessing of electricity and what that could mean in terms of bringing the benefits of science and technology to bear on raising standards of living and improving the health, longevity, and culture of the masses. Most promising was the possibility that all the new ways of harnessing the hidden forces of nature could allow everyone the leisure to enjoy life, not just the privileged few.

We know that it did not work out that way. Along with skyscrapers, the telephone, airplanes, and automobiles came the horrors of the 20th century, with its wars, revolutions, genocides, and pestilences. There also came the exploitation of the earth and its resources, especially petroleum, for the enrichment of wealthy minorities in the most heavily-armed nations and the development of arsenals of weapons eventually capable of wiping all life off the planet.

Today we seem to be in a late stage of these tragedies, with the U.S. military poised to complete the armed conquest of the earth through a continuous series of assaults against the nations of the Middle East followed by even bigger targets.

It is obvious that the ultimate enemies are Russia and possibly China, both nuclear powers growing in economic strength. (See “Former Soviet States: Battleground for Global Domination” by Rick Rozoff, Global Research, November 23, 2009.) What precisely is to be gained by the American policy of world military supremacy no one seems to be able to define very clearly.
The leaders of America seem to think it is good and righteous to be able to say to every other nation of the world: “We will rule over you or destroy you.” But I would like to suggest that there is no difference in an ethical sense between this and the highwayman’s command to “Stand and deliver.”

If an individual person projected such attitudes, he would be treated as a dangerous psychopath, perhaps even criminally deranged. Some might even suggest the person was under the influence of an evil force, especially if he had no real need for other people’s property, being already the richest inhabitant of the neighborhood. Those with a religious bent might say he was possessed.
I would agree with this judgment. I would say further that the only way truly to understand the history of our time would be to postulate a metaphysical approach, where the forces of good and evil come into play.

Let us begin to seek an explanation by referring to a little-known incident that is said to have taken place within the Catholic Church.

During the late 19th century, the Church, led by Pope Leo XIII, the third longest-serving pontiff in history, attempted to bring Roman Catholicism up-to-date with respect to the rapid development of science and technology by humanizing and moderating the excesses of industrial capitalism. Pope Leo also favored peace among nations, along with fairness for all economic classes.

Pope Leo’s famous encyclical, entitled Rerum Novarum (Of New Things), published in 1891, marked the founding of the modern Catholic social justice movement while rejecting extreme collectivist economic doctrines. According to Wikipedia, “It supported the rights of labor to form unions, rejected communism and unrestricted capitalism, while affirming the right to private property.”

But at the time Pope Leo published Rerum Novarum, he had already experienced a vision of things to come of an entirely different and deeply disturbing nature. As described in the Catholic on-line Michael Journal:

“Exactly 33 years to the day prior to the great Miracle of the Sun in Fatima, that is, on October 13, 1884, Pope Leo XIII had a remarkable vision. When the aged Pontiff had finished celebrating Mass in his private Vatican Chapel, attended by a few Cardinals and members of the Vatican staff, he suddenly stopped at the foot of the altar. He stood there for about 10 minutes, as if in a trance, his face ashen white. Then, going immediately from the Chapel to his office, he composed [a] prayer to St. Michael, with instructions it be said after all Low Masses everywhere.

“When asked what had happened, he explained that, as he was about to leave the foot of the altar, he suddenly heard voices – two voices, one kind and gentle, the other guttural and harsh. They seemed to come from near the tabernacle. As he listened, he heard the following conversation:

“The guttural voice, the voice of Satan in his pride, boasted to Our Lord: ‘I can destroy your Church.’

“The gentle voice of Our Lord: ‘You can? Then go ahead and do so.’

“Satan: ‘To do so, I need more time and more power.’

“Our Lord: ‘How much time? How much power?’

“Satan: ‘75 to 100 years, and a greater power over those who will give themselves over to my service.’
“
Our Lord: ‘You have the time, you will have the power. Do with them what you will.’

“The prayer Pope Leo XIII decreed be said at the end of Low Mass was: ‘Saint Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle; be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into Hell, Satan and all the other evil spirits, who prowl throughout the world, seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.’ Pope Leo’s vision, of course, is strikingly similar to the power granted Satan by God in the Book of Job.

The 75-100 years of Satanic power Pope Leo foresaw through his vision would, at its greatest extent, take the world through the year 1984, halfway through the Ronald Reagan presidency in the U.S. It would have encompassed World Wars I and II, the Great Depression, and the Cold War. It would have included the assassinations of U.S. Presidents William McKinley and John F. Kennedy, along with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy.

Little did Pope Leo know that during these terrible times the Church he served would also largely fall under the sway of the Enemy, along with all the mainstream Protestant churches, the independent evangelical churches, and most of the other religious and civil institutions of the so-called civilized world. All would abandon to a large extent their apostolic calling through compromises with modern forces of economic exploitation and military power.

But even if the reign of Satan ended in the mid-1980s, the momentum would have continued, encompassing the start of the current phase of worldwide warfare, beginning with the attacks on Nicaragua, Grenada, Angola, Panama, and Iraq during the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush presidencies, along with the fall of the Soviet Union resulting from U.S. economic warfare in the 1980s and early 1990s. Then in the late 1990s came the destruction of Yugoslavia by U.S. bombing, followed in 2001 by 9/11 and today’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

By the turn of the 20th century, the Satanic clouds were indeed gathering. By 1900, a conspiracy consisting of various European elite groups such as the Illuminati, Freemasons, and Zionists, had begun to take over the world through control of the British Empire. Their vehicle was Cecil Rhodes’ Round Table, financed by theft of the gold and diamond-rich South African provinces from the Dutch Boers. To secure their loot, the British locked up the Boers in the world’s first concentration camps.

One of Rhodes’s objectives, as stated in a series of wills starting in 1877, was “the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire.”[1] Rhodes’ chief executor was his fellow Freemason, Lord Nathan Rothschild.

The Masonic lodges of England and France were particular hotbeds of imperialist political agitation.

These groups, which I’ll refer to simply as the Illuminati, using a term common today,[2] moved swiftly to seize control of the U.S. as the 20th century unfolded, succeeding in 1913 through passage by the U.S. Congress of the Federal Reserve Act. Also in 1913 Congress approved the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, authorizing the federal income tax that would be needed to pay interest on the large national debt which the Federal Reserve System was intended to generate. As had been done with Great Britain and the Bank of England, the financial system was to be collateralized by mortgaging America’s future through the nation’s tax system.[3]

The method by which the Illuminati gained financial power was usury, or the collection of compound interest on lending, a practice the medieval Church had outlawed. But by the 20th century, the Church had begun to define usury as “excess” interest of which they themselves enjoyed substantial profits through the massive investments of the Vatican Bank.

To illustrate the diabolical nature of usury, economist Michael Hudson, in an article entitled “The Mathematical Economics of Compound Rates of Interest: A Four-Thousand Year Overview, Part I,”[4] cites a book written in 1902 by German economist Michael Flürscheim, entitled A Clue to the Economic Labyrinth.

Flürscheim drew a strong distinction between the ability of physical capital invested in scientific production to create goods of value and the manner by which finance capital expropriates the resulting wealth through interest-bearing debt.
Hudson elaborates:

“To illustrate this point, [Flürscheim] composed the following allegory to illustrate the dynamic at work:
“Many ages after man was driven from Paradise and told by the Lord ‘to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, mercy began to prevail. A loving angel was sent down by the Great Master, charged with the task of lightening the burden. The angel’s name was Spirit of Invention. He began his work by teaching man to make useful tools,’ to tame animals, mobilize water power, air and wind power, fire and steam power to drive machinery.

“’It seemed that at last the golden era had come of which men had dreamed for ages past, without ever hoping to attain it, without trouble, with almost no exertion, except that of wealth for the satisfaction of wants which, in former times, even the richest did not know or dream of.’ But ‘that envious spirit, that fallen angel, Satan, who once before, in the shape of the serpent, had driven man from Paradise by seducing him to sin,’ was jealous and angry that his own empire would soon be over forever.

“Among the follies of man, one little imp, called Interest, managed to attract Satan’s attention. ‘”What is the matter with you, Interest?” he asked the saucy imp. “You don’t seem to be so dejected as your comrades are?”‘

“‘Why should I be dejected, master?’ replied the spirit, ‘Am I not one of your favorite soldiers? Haven’t I always been victorious under your august guidance?’”

“But Satan answered sadly, ‘Alas, You are no match for the Spirit of Invention.’ The imp, however, volunteered to demonstrate his prowess in a duel.

“‘You little imp! Fight the powerful angel who is defeating all my army?’ laughed Satan.”

“‘Yes, I alone; provided, of course, you allow my son, Compound Interest, to help me.’” He explained with regard to the goblins of technology, that “Instead of their being a source of blessing to mankind, I shall make them the producers of untold misery – worse than ever man suffered from thy hands.” So, “Satan let him have his way. The battle of giants began.”

“In the beginning the angel laughed, for, though twenty squares were passed, no noticeable diminution of his forces was perceptible. Demon Interest said nothing, but attended to business, quietly doubling his army on every succeeding square. At the thirtieth square the angel ceased to laugh, and soon saw he was lost.

“‘I despised you, little fellow,’ he signed despairingly, ‘and I am punished for my vanity. I see there is no use fighting against you. Demon Interest is more powerful than the Spirit of Invention. I am your slave. Command your servant!’

“‘I am the only servant of my great master,’ dryly replied the demon. ‘Here I see him coming. He will give you his orders.’

“And Satan gave his orders. He commanded that the angel was to continue in his work with all his troops, which were to be increased with all possible exertion, so that humanity – which did not know the nature of the antagonist it had to fight against – would always keep in fresh hope of final success when the new troops were forthcoming. But as fast as they appeared, Demon Interest was to send forth a larger army to capture the new forces, to enslave them, and – instead of their benefiting man – make them increase the slave-chains which weigh him down.

“To the surprise of the king [whose kingdom was being destroyed], this series of doublings “produced an amount larger than the treasures of his whole kingdom could buy. It is this kind of chess-game which capital is continually playing with labor.” The remarkable growth of compound interest would “soon swallow products, capital, the earth and even the workers.”

Here ends the parable, one which contains deep metaphysical truths, for compound interest embodies a power of nature comparable to nuclear energy. When the Illuminati took over the U.S. through the Federal Reserve System, Satan now had at his disposal, through banking, what was becoming the most powerful economy on earth. There followed World War I, by which an alliance among the British crown, that nation’s aristocratic classes, American bankers, Freemasonry, and international Zionism exploited the flower of youth of Europe and America as cannon fodder in order to destroy four great empires. Three of the empires were Christian: the German and the Austro-Hungarian, both largely Roman Catholic,[5] and the Russian, whose religion was Orthodox Christian. The fourth was Islamic: the Ottoman.

America was stampeded into the war by the banker-owned press, even though President Woodrow Wilson treacherously ran for reelection in 1916 on the campaign slogan, “He kept us out of war.” However, the Democratic Party that nominated Wilson in 1912 and again in 1916 had become heavily infiltrated with both Zionist and socialist influences, the latter deriving in part from the Socialist Labor Party founded in New York in 1876. This party was the second oldest socialist political organization in the world, being founded only four years after the Communist International made New York City its world headquarters.
It was the socialists and Masons who were the biggest boosters of Wilson’s entry into the war. In France, World War I was a project run virtually single-handedly by the Paris Grand Orient Lodge. Nowhere on earth did hatred of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Catholicism overflow with such venom as in the French Third Republic.

During World War I, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration in favor of the founding of a Zionist state in Palestine. This eventually became the nation of Israel. Many British Jews who had become assimilated within British society opposed Zionism, as they believed it grew out of a ghetto mentality that would prevent Jews anywhere in the world from living at peace with their neighbors. Their misgivings were prophetic.

The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia was also financed by the Illuminati, led by the American Schiff, Warburg, Morgan, Mellon, Carnegie, and Rockefeller interests. The headquarters for their funding of the Bolsheviks was in the same building as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.[6] After the Russian Czar abdicated in 1917, Trotsky, who was in exile in New York, traveled at Illuminati expense with a contingent of communist followers to Russia to help Lenin overthrow the provisional government.

Bolshevism was the work of the Russian Jewish intelligentsia who killed over twenty million Russian Christians in their obliteration of the Czarist empire. This is a travesty the Holocaust “industry” never mentions. During the Russian Civil War Trotsky was commander of the million-man Red Army. He explained his philosophy as a leader of men in his Autobiography:
An army cannot be built without reprisals. Masses of men cannot be led to death unless the army command has the death-penalty in its arsenal. So long as those malicious tailless apes that are so proud of their technical achievements—the animals that we call men—will build armies and wage wars, the command will always be obliged to place the soldiers between the possible death in the front and the inevitable one in the rear.[7]

Although the Western bankers wanted control over the Soviet Union’s banking system and the Rockefellers desired dominance over the Baku oil fields, Stalin, after coming to power when Lenin died and Trotsky lay ill, largely pursued an independent course. Double-crossing the Illuminati by establishing “socialism in one country,” rather than promoting the worldwide revolution Trotsky demanded, Stalin proved too hard a nut to crack. Trotsky, whose real name was Lev Bronstein, was assassinated by a Stalin agent in Mexico in 1940.

So the Illuminati, working through the Zionist financiers, brought on the Great Depression through a contraction of credit starting in 1929, then arranged for the rise of Hitler in Germany. The idea was to let Stalin and Hitler destroy each other. The plan for U.S. entrance into the World War II met with resistance from American patriots like Charles Lindbergh, but the Illuminati, with President Franklin Roosevelt’s connivance, manipulated the U.S. into war against Germany, Italy, and Japan anyway.[8] FDR now found “Uncle Joe” Stalin his ally, along with British arch-imperialist Winston Churchill of Great Britain.

During World War II the Zionists actually helped Hitler bring about the Jewish Holocaust in order to create sympathy for the foundation of the state of Israel. We now know the astounding facts that the Zionists conspired with England to block the escape routes of Jews who wanted to flee Europe and even helped the Nazis police the concentration camp system.[9]

Again the point is made that the Illuminati created both communism and fascism. The two are mirror images of each other, just different names for the all-powerful State run by a self-appointed elite with a single goal: power.

After World War II, the Illuminati created the nation of Israel in 1948 through a terrorist assault by the Zionists on Palestine. Meanwhile, Jewish scientists had developed the A-bombs that President Harry Truman dropped on Japan.

The Illuminati next used the tremendous post-war power of the U.S. national security state in order to create the Cold War to fend off the Soviet Union, whose power had multiplied through Stalin’s victory over Germany and the huge sacrifice of Russian lives this victory required. They killed the Kennedy brothers in the 1960s and have produced the last 30 years of world conflict, leading to the 9/11 false-flag attacks in New York and Washington and today’s phony “War on Terror.”

A decade earlier, the Illuminati took command of Russia after the “fall” of the Soviet Union in 1991. During the decade of the 1990s, under Russian Freemason Boris Yeltsin and the Jewish-Russian “oligarchs,” that nation was looted of its financial and resource wealth.

The plan may have included not only dismemberment of the Soviet Union but of Russia itself. According to a book published in Russian by Oleg Platonov entitled Russia’s Crown of Thorns- Secret History of Freemasonry” 1731-1996 (1996), the biggest part of Siberia was even to have been handed over to the United States.[11]

But the plan has evidently been thwarted by a resurgence of Russian nationalism. While Yeltsin handed on his authority to Vladimir Putin in a surprise move in 1999, Putin, as did Stalin in the 1920s, has now begun to restore the independence and economic power that were stolen from Russia during Yeltsin’s misrule.

In fact, the failure of the Illuminati to fulfill their longstanding dream of completely destroying Russia is probably the most significant geopolitical fact of the last half-century. As a result, the homeland of Orthodox Christianity still exists,[12] and nuclear-tipped Russian missiles remain aimed at all the major Western cities, where the Illuminati elite reside, as well as at Israel.

The U.S. has retaliated by expanding the membership of NATO to include Poland and the Baltic republics, staging “color revolutions” to take over former Soviet republics like Ukraine and Georgia, and trying to gain as allies the former Central Asian republics like Kazakhstan. Russia is increasingly portrayed in the Illuminati press, as was the Soviet Union during the Cold War, as the enemy of world peace. But with Russia moving closer to the European Union and becoming a major supplier of natural gas and oil, the world balance of power may have decisively tipped from the Western Hemisphere back to Eurasia.

The new battleground appears to be Iran, the last Middle Eastern nation not completely under Illuminati control. The continued demonization of Iran by media outlets like the Washington Post and New York Times is clearly intended to prepare the ground for a much larger Asian war that would likely be accompanied by totalitarian repression in every nation of the world. And the run-up to world genocide through planned programs of famine, pestilence, epidemics, and de-industrialization via the global warming scare, would be the seeming accompaniment. At the same time, there seems to be a glimmer of realization that an attack on Iran by the U.S. and/or Israel, could be suicidal for both in the long run, especially if it leads to world war against Russia, China, and maybe even India.

Whatever the outcome, what is evident is that we are continuing to witness the workings of Satanic evil on a worldwide scale. Even if, according to Pope Leo’s vision, Satan’s reign has come to an end, as stated earlier, the momentum continues.
The focal point of Satanism on earth today is the U.S. military-industrial-intelligence complex, with its allies in Britain, Israel, and the other NATO nations.

This complex is a death cult engaged in torture, assassinations, mind control, destruction of nations and peoples, and confiscation of all the resources of the earth. Among its roots is Nazism, which itself was a Satanic cult that was incorporated into the American CIA after World War II when a host of Nazi mass murderers were spirited into the U.S. from Germany to form the core of Western intelligence operations against the Soviet Union. The CIA was run by members of Yale University’s Skull and Bones, itself an Illuminati death cult said to have been founded by white Protestant males with money from New England’s Chinese opium trade in the early 19th century.

Today the Illuminati cult intends to complete its conquest of earth, destroy much of the useless human population, enslave the rest, and likely enjoy itself to the end of time in drugged debauchery, just as its leaders among the elitist class already do on a regular basis. Planning among the cult for World War III is well-advanced, even though Russia thwarted the earlier plans for it to be dissolved during the events of the 1990s.

The cult is doubtless frightened because it knows that Russia possesses enough nukes to obliterate all major Western elite strongholds and will do so if pushed too far. Nevertheless they will be moving out soon because they know time is no longer on their side. There are indeed plans to impose martial law within the U.S. and other Western nations and lock up all those perceived as still capable of independent thinking. According to one of my informants:

“I’m a retired Correctional Officer….. I was recently talking to a friend of mine named M- who still works at the prison I was at prior to my retirement. M- told me of a recent conversation he had with an officer at this same prison who is also in the National Guard. The officer told M- that they (the National Guard) were presently training to put people in ‘Re-education Camps.’ I asked M- if he was sure that was the term the officer used? M- said he was absolutely certain that the guard used the term Re-education Camps.”

At this stage of the discussion it is fair to ask whether there is anything else going on that might provide a counterweight to the ruination of the world and mankind. If there is a God, what is He doing to right the wrongs that have been done? If there are people of wisdom who are supposed to be guarding and protecting humanity, where are they?

And where are the angelic forces, the beneficent spirits, some embodiment of decency and goodness? For the believers in our midst, where are the saviors of mankind? Where is Jesus Christ when we need Him? Where is Mohammed? Buddha? Vishnu? Are they nowhere to be found in mankind’s darkest hour?

Let us call these forces of goodness and light the influence of esotericism. Some claim that all esoteric influences are evil and Satanic and that the Illuminati itself has esoteric origins.

This is profoundly false. There have been threads of hidden teachings throughout human history that have continuously led individuals to the highest realization. These influences have produced all genuine world religions. They produced the Mysteries of ancient times. They were at the core of different spiritual teachings during European history, including those of the Knights Templars, the Rosicrucians, and the Renaissance schools of art and philosophy.

But teachings degenerate over time, and unscrupulous people get hold of them and try to use them for selfish purposes. The result is black magic, sorcery, even devil worship. The Illuminati are a black magic cult. So is Skull and Bones. So were the Nazis. So are the CIA, the Mossad, MI6, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, the Tavistock Institute, and many other organizations that try to use power or wealth or knowledge or related means for the control or destruction of others.

An intense form of black magic is practiced by the mainstream media through use of psychological manipulation for purposes of propaganda or commercialism. In fact the entire Western ruling elite is a black magic death cult with its own perverted rites of initiation. As indicated earlier, what characterizes these people above all is their universal addiction to drugs and sexual promiscuity or perversion.

But genuine esotericism has also been at work in the world. One form of endeavor has been through the transfer of the hidden knowledge of man’s spiritual evolution from centers in the East that have been overrun by war or revolution to individuals, groups, and secret schools in the West.

This happened when Russia was destroyed by the Bolshevik Revolution. The esoteric spark was carried to Paris and London respectively by the Caucasian-Greek spiritual master G.I. Gurdjieff (1866-1949) and his Russian pupil P.D. Ouspensky (1878-1947).

In the 1920s the Indian Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927) and his brother Musharaff Khan (1895-1967) brought the secrets of Sufism to America and Europe, founding a school that continues today. British journalist Paul Bruton (1898-1981) spent years in remote places of Egypt and India and wrote a series of books on his discoveries, including accounts of the famed Indian master Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950).

In the line of yoga, Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) came to America in the early years of the 20th century to teach Vedanta. He was followed by Swami Yogananda (1893-1952), author of the celebrated Autobiography of a Yogi, who founded the Self-Realization Fellowship in California.

There were others. In the 1960s, followers of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1918-2008), the Beatles’ guru, brought Transcendental Meditation to the West. The Kriya Yoga movement of Swami Muktananda (1908-1982) put down roots in upstate New York. Another great India master who influenced many Westerners was Papa Ramdas (1884-1963). Others were Sri Anirvan (1896-1978), Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950), Krishnamurti (1895-1986), and Meher Baba (1894-1969) More recently the female Indian masters Karunamayi, Amachi, and Mother Mira have founded movements in the West, as has the famous yogic meditation master Shivabalayogi.

When the Chinese took over Tibet most of the Tibetan lamas fled to India and the West, including the Dalai Lama, the Gwalya Karmapa , Chögyam Trungpa (1939-1987), and many others. Tibetan Buddhism has transformed the consciousness of the West in many profound ways.

The list could go on. Other streams of thought and practice have been Zen, Chinese Taoism, and the hidden teachings of many groups of native peoples in North and South America, Australia, Africa, Asia, and even within Europe among the Celtic and Nordic peoples. And within the Christian tradition there have been spiritual masters emerging as well, such as Joel Goldsmith (1892-1964) in the U.S., Padre Pio (1887-1968) in Italy, Eckhart Tolle (1948-) of Germany, who teaches in the U.S. and Canada, and Mother Teresa (1910-1997). Another important esoteric teacher was Austrian Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925).
I have been told that work is also ongoing on the astral plane. One powerful individual, for instance, has been hard at work with astral entities to stop the American plan of conquest.

Has all this happened by design? The answer, undoubtedly, is yes. No one in the world today who sincerely seeks inspiration or instruction on finding the path to the Higher Self and God can fail to encounter it. “Seek and ye shall find,” has never been more true.

And yet a person must persist and eventually find truth in his own heart, mind, and soul, because that is where God truly resides. If the travesties of the 20th century have demonstrated one thing, it is that God is not to be found in the world, at least the world that we see on TV and in the actions of its celebrities and leaders. No one out there is going to help us.

All help, rather, is to be found within. Then, once found, it is up to us to put it into action through our courageous efforts to
help others as we encounter them in daily life.

As stated in Matthew 25: 31-46 (King James Version):
“When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
“And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
“And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
“Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
“For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
“Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
“Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
“When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
“Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
“And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
“Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
“For I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
“I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.”
“Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
“Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
“And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.”

The importance of these words in human history cannot be exaggerated. For 2,000 years they have been the standard by which nations, churches, rulers, economic systems, and political creeds have been measured. It was these sentiments that created modern civilization, imposed some semblance of decency on public and private life, and made it possible to walk down the streets of most parts of the world in peace and safety.

“These conditions have been disappearing over the last century. If we look at the theft of trillions of dollars by the rulers of Wall Street over the last decade, along with the relentlessness and viciousness of the U.S. war machine and the disgusting violence and filth of modern mass culture, we can feel the impact of how far man has fallen.

To repeat an earlier theme, it’s happened, above all, by the replacement of the values found in the New Testament and other religious scriptures by the Satanic banking system that exploits and destroys humanity through application of interest-bearing debt. And this has taken place, not because of any power inherent in falsehood and error but by the acquiescence of humanity itself to its own enslavement.

Let us now turn to what has been said about the “Last Days,” the “End Times,” and the “Apocalypse.” Many people today have a deep sense of dread that things cannot go on as they are. This may be one reason those with the means to do so are hoarding as much of value as they can lay their hands on. They want to be safe. The collective unconscious is clearly fearing a final calamity, as evidenced by films such as 2012. Is some great battle between good and evil about to take place? Is the earth to be either transformed and/or destroyed?

There has been, for instance, an enormous amount of discussion and speculation among various Christian denominations about the prophecies in the Book of Revelations. I think that virtually all of what is being said is merely conjecture, often used by the commenter to bolster his own sense of being among the elite that is supposedly going to come through the predicted tribulation unscathed.

At the same time, my own sense is that we are indeed in the Last Days. While I cannot prove it, I believe the Anti-Christ of legend exists and has been on earth working his evil will for the last 40 years. I believe it is he who is behind the final battle now being prepared by the U.S. military and its remaining perceived enemies. I believe the U.S. military is working directly for the Anti-Christ. But I do not believe it is necessary for me to name that person. I will say, however, that he is not Jewish.
For an interpretation of the Last Days I turn to another great spiritual master, one little known in the U.S. but who taught prominently in France for 40 years. This is a man named Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov (1900-1986). He was a Bulgarian Christian, Slavic by race, and, according to his personal testimony, heir to an ancient line of spiritual teaching that is descended directly from St. John of Patmos, author of the Book of Revelations. I never met him but visited one of his disciples in Connecticut in a house where he stayed during his only visit to America. The honorific title Omraam comes from the time he visited India and received initiation from the half-legendary Babaji.[13]

Aïvanhov wrote no books, though his teachings are voluminous. All existing accounts consist of transcripts from his lectures. One such volume is entitled The Book of Revelations: A Commentary (Editions Prosveta: 1991). The book is 190 pages long and virtually impossible to summarize. So I will quote a few passages in the remainder of this essay, urging readers to get hold of the book and read it if you can find a copy. I believe it is one of the most important books in existence in relation to the events of today.

First, let me point out that according to Aïvanhov, The Book of Revelations was given to St. John on Patmos by that mysterious figure in Biblical lore known as Melchizedek. Identified as the King of Salem, Melchizedek appears in the Book of Genesis to Abram (before he became Abraham) and bestows on him the bread and wine that foreshadow the communion elements given much later by Jesus to his disciples at the Last Supper.

This is what Aïvanhov says about Melchizedek:
“Of all God’s representatives it is Melchizedek who has the most important role to play on earth. All decisions and instructions concerning the destiny of mankind come from him. All the high Initiates received their instruction from him: Hermes Trismegistus was an aspect of Melchizedek and Orpheus, Moses, Pythagoras, Buddha, and Zoroaster—all the greatest Initiates were taught by him: even Jesus. It was Melchizedek who sent the three Magi, as representatives of his kingdom, to bow down before Jesus, because Jesus was the incarnation of the Christ-principle, of the Word made flesh…. Jesus, therefore, received instruction from Melchizedek. St. Paul states this very clearly when he explains that Jesus belonged to the order of Melchizedek: ‘So also Christ did not glorify himself to become High Priest, but it was He (God) who said to him: “You are My Son. Today I have begotten you….You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”‘…Melchizedek, who reigns over the destiny of the world, is an aspect of Christ, the Cosmic Principle. This is what St. Paul means when he says that he was ‘made like the Son of God.’ There must always be, somewhere on earth, a divine fire whose flames are never extinguished, and this is precisely the task of Melchizedek: to keep this fire alive. He is this fire and all those who are ready to do so can light their own flame from his.”

We can see from these passages that no matter what evil may befall the earth, God, through Melchizedek, is watching, biding his time, and available to those who are seeking safety and salvation. God has not abandoned the world. The Anti-Christ may appear to be all-powerful, but it is not so. Certainly it is a time for testing. We may not see why God is putting the world through such agony. But the situation is still under control.[14]

Another passage from Revelations Aïvanhov interprets as follows:
“Indeed, the Devil is about to throw some of you in prison, that you may be tested, and you will have tribulation…. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.”

Aïvanhov himself was imprisoned by the French during World War II. He was from Bulgaria, which was allied with Germany, and was falsely accused of being a Nazi along with other crimes. He was acquitted, released, and retained as pupils many people he had met in prison.

Aïvanhov speaks of acquiring a heavenly name as a sign of initiation:
“Every man and woman has a name that was given to them by their parents when they were born but, more often than not, this name does not mean much. The name a person receives from Heavenly entities, however, corresponds exactly to what he is: it is a faithful expression of his deepest reality. And, in truth, only he can really know it, for it is an integral part of that reality.”
So we should all strive to live in such a way that we may receive our heavenly name. We do this, according to The Book of Revelations, by “overcoming.” Aïvanhov says:

“The Spirit also says, ‘To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His Throne.’ There is no throne other than that of Leo [sign of the Lion], on which is seated the Sun, Christ. Symbolically speaking, Christ is the Sun, the heart that pours out its blood—its love—into the universe. And this means, therefore, that he who overcomes hatred and death (inner coldness) will reign on the throne of God.”
Much has been said by commentators in reference to the calamities of modern times represented by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. This is what Aïvanhov says:

“The four horses with the four Horsemen on their backs are a symbol of the cataclysms ordained by the four great Angels of the elements on high, for these Angels are so powerful that the merest sign from them sets in motion other forces which devastate the face of the earth. Why can’t human beings understand that everything they do entails certain consequences and that they cannot continue to transgress the laws of nature and interfere with the work of the elements with impunity? By their actions and, also, by their thoughts and feelings and their anarchical attitude, they exasperate the forces of nature and, in the long run, these forces react and move to restore order. Nature is not something inert and insensate, and human being don’t have the right to do whatever they please with her; when they exceed the bounds of what she is prepared to put up with, she retaliates.”

No doubt this passage includes abuse of the laws of nature by the military and intelligence agencies in developing every more powerful and terrible weapons of mass destruction, as well as through inflicting pain and degradation on their fellow human beings by means of torture, propaganda, psy ops, etc. “God is not mocked,” and retribution is sure to come. But in the end, when the dust settles, love is certain to win out. Aïvanhov says:

“Christ is the Divine Lamb, the spirit of love that attracts, draws together and sustains all things. And it is He, this spirit of love, that is the bedrock and foundation of creation; it is He that sacrificed himself so that the matter of creation should be impregnated with the divine fluid of his blood. It is He that is the unifying bond, the link, the cement that ensures the cohesion of the universe, that binds together all the atoms, molecules, and ‘letters’ of this immense Book. Everywhere, in the stones of the earth and the stars in the sky, it is this love that holds the structure together. Love is the most powerful force in the universe and this is why love alone is worthy to read the secrets of the universe.”

Aïvanhov speaks of women and their supreme role:
“Never forget that the Kingdom of God on earth can only be brought into being by women, for only woman possesses the matter needed to embody it. What a lot of mental attitudes still need to be changed!”

Hearkening back to the start of this essay which cited Pope Leo’s vision, following is the passage in Revelations 12:7-10 that speaks of the war in heaven:

“And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.”
Commenting on this all-important passage, so relevant to events today, Aïvanhov says:

“There have always been men in the world who have had the courage to throw themselves into a struggle to the death against the dragon but, to this day, none have vanquished it, for this battle is not the province of human beings: they have neither the stature, nor the breadth of vision, neither the power nor the methods required to defeat the dragon. Only a Heavenly entity, the Archangel Michael, is capable of conquering the dragon….When the time comes, the Archangel Michael will rise up and, with the help of his army of angels of light, will conquer the dragon and bring about the victory that human beings have never ceased asking the Creator for. This is why we should ally ourselves with him and ask him to protect us and allow us to work with him in order to strengthen his victory. Light will triumph over darkness: this has been foretold and it will be so. Why not have a share in that triumph by dedicating your energies to light, goodness, and brotherhood every day?”

Aïvanhov also talks at length about “the new heaven and the new earth” and the Heavenly City, the celestial Jerusalem. But I will leave most of that to the reader’s own discovery. Let me close this summary with the following prophetic words:
“Mankind will never entirely disappear. Don’t worry about it: human beings are very tough; they can survive anything! On the other hand, there are certainly going to be all kinds of cataclysms and upheavals; we are truly at the end of an era. This is why you have to get ready to enter the new heaven and walk on the new earth.”

So what exactly lies ahead and when will it happen? Well, I am not a prophet and have no specific predictions to offer. But it seems obvious that it makes no sense to look to the larger society or to a government under the control of the criminally insane for assistance. It is time for people to help themselves, and, since I began to study these things 40 years ago, it has meant to me the formation of groups that can develop their skills enough to be self-sufficient.

But such groups must have a spiritual foundation. They must seek their inspiration in prayer, meditation, and consensus decision making. Otherwise, they will be subject to domination by those who seek power, control, or their own survival before that of others. I believe the best places to seek guidance are through the scriptures of the world’s great religions.

As Joel Goldsmith has said, what the world needs now is not a new religion but a sense of inner peace, calmness, and healing. Like Aïvanhov, I do not believe God intends to wipe humanity from the face of the earth. But clearly there will be great tribulation. It’s time to prepare. Let’s do so expeditiously but cheerfully using the tools at hand.

In the meantime, I believe that people can find safety from the worst of collapsing conditions simply by turning away from the materialistic viewpoint. Materialism derives from what metaphysics calls “carnal mind.” This is seen in the allegory found in yoga teachings where a person sees a rope on the ground and recoils in horror because he thinks it’s a snake. Another name for it, used by Goldsmith, is “universal hypnotism,” of which our interpretation of the world we are convinced we live in is composed. It’s this “carnal mind” or “universal hypnotism” that defines Satan as found in the allegory of the Garden of Eden. Returning to the 1884 vision of Pope Leo XIII, an interpretation is that, for whatever reasons, mankind was about to be subjected to an intense period of materialistic thinking.

The Fall of Man is therefore defined as the dualistic state of consciousness where God is seen as separate from material creation. Man in his foolishness believes in the material creation, fears it (i.e., sees it as a snake), and thinks he can use it for selfish ends, whereas in his original innocence he already has God-given dominion over all creation but only as he exercises it through love as God’s good steward. In dualistic consciousness, the outer world is seen as having power apart from God. This is the fundamental delusion. In reality, only God, as divine consciousness, has power. But man, as having that spark as well, can allow God’s presence and power to be expressed through him.

It’s now time, perhaps, to regain this sense of innocence, love, and stewardship. For guidance, see especially Joel Goldsmith’s book, The Thunder of Silence. In deep meditation, these truths are realized. Freedom in God-realization is seen as man’s natural condition to which we now must return.

© Copyright 2009 by Richard C. Cook
[1] Prof. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment.
[2] See especially Henry Makow, The Illuminati: The Cult that Hijacked the World (Silas Green, 2008).
[3] Later the U.S. government’s gold supply at Fort Knox was also mortgaged to cover public debt held by the Federal Reserve. Its value has been held at the 1972 price of $42 an ounce which vastly reduces its worth if the government ever has to redeem it for payment of debts. It’s as though, if a person had to sell his house in 2009, the government would only allow him to collect what it was worth in 1972.
[4] See http://michael-hudson.com/.
[5] Germany, of course, also had a large Protestant population.
[6] Eustace Mullin, The World Order.
[7] Wikipedia. This may be compared to the statement attributed to Henry Kissinger that, “Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.”
[8] Future U.S. Senator Prescott Bush, father and grandfather of presidents, was one of the Wall Street tycoons financing the rise of Nazi Germany from his position as partner in the firm of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. BBH is the oldest privately-owned bank in America. An interesting historical site is its building at 1531 Walnut Street in Philadelphia. BBH began as a merchant banking firm in Liverpool and opened its first U.S. branch in Philadelphia in 1818.
[9] Makow, op.cit.
[11] See http://www.henrymakow.com/oleg_platonovs_freemasonry_in.html.
[12] In the book cited above Platonov notes that “[The] Russian Orthodox Church always condemned Freemasonry as a form of Satanism.” Platonov continues: “Freemasons have always been the evil enemy of humanity, still more dangerous as they tried to cover-up their criminal activities with a veil of deceitful arguments about spiritual growth and charity. Yet awful crimes committed by Freemasons put them outside of law.”
[13] Babaji is named as the guru of Yogananda’s teacher Lahiri Mahasaya in Yogananda’s book Autobiography of a Yogi.
[14] There is a teaching within Sufism that the reason for the population explosion and the huge number of people who seem to die without hope is so that millions of disembodied spirits who have been trapped in the psychic realm can escape and return to the cycles of physical incarnation. According to this teaching, this is the true identity of the djinn of Islamic lore.

Are power and compassion mutually exclusive?

2009-11-26T14:14:00.001-08:00

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2008/12/17/are.power.and.compassion.mutually.exclusive

Are power and compassion mutually exclusive?
e!Science News
Wed, 17 Dec 2008 09:23 CST

The fact that many cultures emphasize the concept of "noblesse oblige" (the idea that with great power and prestige come responsibilities) suggests that power may diminish a tendency to help others. Psychologist Gerben A. van Kleef (University of Amsterdam) and his colleagues from University of California, Berkeley, examined how power influences emotional reactions to the suffering of others. A group of undergraduates completed questionnaires about their personal sense of power, which identified them to the researchers as either being high-power or low-power. The students were then randomly paired up and had to tell their partner about an event which had caused them emotional suffering and pain. Their partners then rated their emotions after hearing the story. In addition, the researchers were interested in seeing if there were physical differences in the way high-power people and low-power people responded to others' suffering; specifically they wanted to test if high-powered individuals would exhibit greater autonomic emotion regulation [or respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) reactivity]. When we are faced with psychological stress, our RSA reactivity increases, resulting in a lower heart rate and a calmed, relaxed feeling. To measure RSA reactivity and heart rates, all of the participants were connected to electrocardiogram (ECG) machines during the experiment.

The results, reported in the December issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reveal that individuals with a higher sense of power experienced less compassion and distress when confronted with another's suffering, compared to low-power individuals. In addition, high-power individuals' RSA reactivity increased (as indicated by lower heart rate) as they listened to the painful stories; that is, high power participants showed more autonomic emotion regulation, which buffered against their partner's distress.

Analysis of the participants' final surveys (where they rated their thoughts about their partners) revealed that high-power individuals reported a weaker desire to get to know and establish a friendship with their partner. In other words, powerful people were not motivated to establish a relationship with distressed individuals. This idea is supported by the fact that the distressed participants reported less of a social connection with high-power partners compared to low-power partners. The authors suggest that powerful people's tendency to show less compassion and distress towards others reinforces their social power.

These results do not just apply to how powerful people react to strangers; the authors note that this study "suggests that high-power individuals may suffer in interpersonal relationships because of their diminished capacity for compassion and empathy. The many benefits enjoyed by people with power may not translate to the interpersonal realm."

Brain scans and neurotrash

2009-11-25T12:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/neurotrash/

Denyse O'Leary | Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Brain scans and neurotrash

It's the ultimate branding strategy. Just slap "neuro" before a word and the goofiest speculation becomes respectable science.

The notion that "the mind is what the brain does" is catching fire in academia, especially in the trendy area of neuroscience. In other words, you -- your personality, your most intimate self, your dreams, your convictions -- are electrical circuits sparking in your gray matter. Recently, New York Times pundit David Brooks informed us that:

When you go to an academic conference you expect to see some geeks, gravitas and graying professors giving lectures. But the people who showed up at the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society's conference in Lower Manhattan last weekend were so damned young, hip and attractive. The leading figures at this conference were in their 30s, and most of the work was done by people in their 20s. When you spoke with them, you felt yourself near the beginning of something long and important.
That did not fill me with confidence. We'd notice the same thing on a fashion runway. Fashion runways are long and (commercially) important too. But is the consequence good, bad, or irrelevant?

To me, quite honestly, the whole "neuroscience" attempt to explain humanity sounds like a fad. I was involved in a big neuroscience project that lasted several years. So I know what I am talking about when I say that the use of neuroscience to cure social ills is not a workable idea.

In fact, it sounds like the century-old eugenics craze (In that case, a desire to fix the world through controlling who is allowed to have babies). What am I to make of statements like

I'm free to speculate that this work will someday give us new categories, which will replace misleading categories like 'emotion' and 'reason.'

Why are those categories misleading if they have worked for humans for many thousands of years?

First, everyone believes in something, whether it is the workplace union, the local football fan club or the Catholic Church.

A recent neuroscience study didn't find that there was any important difference between the brains of "believers" and "unbelievers."

Among humans, there aren't any unbelievers, unless they are genuinely too stupid that you couldn't tell them from cows. But that's unlikely.

Oh wait! Even a cow believes in something. She believes, totally, utterly, adoringly, in fresh green grass and is not slow to testify to her belief either. She just scarfs it up - and just try leading her away from it.

Humans believe in ideas, not grass. That should make a difference.

If the young, hip neuroscientists can't explain that, then they have not made the connection that would justify the lauds they are currently given.

However, one really interesting new development that deserves attention is that even "skeptical" publications are becoming very justifiably skeptical of all this neuro-nonsense -- a healthy response, surely, under the circumstances.

For example, Here, at New Humanist, in an article titled "Neurotrash", Raymond Tallis (dubbed by The Economist one of the world's top living polymaths) rallies the neuroskeptics as follows:

Hardly a day passes without yet another breathless declaration in the popular press about the relevance of neuroscientific findings to everyday life. The articles are usually accompanied by a picture of a brain scan in pixel-busting Technicolor and are frequently connected to references to new disciplines with the prefix "neuro-". Neuro-jurisprudence, neuro-economics, neuro-aesthetics, neuro-theology are encroaching on what was previously the preserve of the humanities. Even philosophers - who should know better, being trained one hopes, in scepticism - have entered the field with the discipline of "Exp-phi" or experimental philosophy. Starry-eyed sages have embraced "neuro-ethics", in which ethical principles are examined by using brain scans to determine people's moral intuitions when they are asked to deliberate on the classic dilemmas. Benjamin Libet's experiments on decisions to act and the work on mirror neurons (observed directly in monkeys but only inferred, and still contested, in humans) have been ludicrously over-interpreted to demonstrate respectively that our brains call the shots (and we do not have free will) and to point to a neural basis for empathy.
Well, exactly. Neurotrash.

We like to sing to our children, "The cow jumped over the moon." Reality: Cows never even considered putting a cow anywhere near the moon. People did consider putting a man on the moon. And then those people had a lot of work to do, work that cows wouldn't understand. And the people did it.

Unfortunately, neurotrash may not always be harmless nonsense in marketing departments about what color of car people choose. Increasingly, in the form of neurolaw, it is catching on in the legal profession, in the same way that lie detector tests did decades ago. What happened there was that some people learned to fake results -- people who may well have committed serious crimes. Who knows how many others were damaged by false results when they were innocent?

A serious ethical question also erupts as to why the accused's brain should be scanned anyway. It is not a crime to think about a crime, only to act outside the law. Even if a brain scan showed the accused was thinking about it, that would never prove he did it. Lots of employees hate their boss and wish the boss would just drop dead. If you scanned their brains... well, let's say it's better not to go there. Very few employees actually commit a violent crime against the boss, so the brain scan evidence -- even if reliable, which it probably isn't -- is not worth gathering.

Also, we must consider traditional principles of law. Under English common law, if a person cannot be convicted on the external evidence of their intent and actions, that person cannot be convicted. Period. It is too bad if the prosecution team loses, even when morally certain that the accused is guilty. But that is an incentive to improve their procedures in normal ways.

The really scary prospect for neuroscience is that it will be used to "improve" us. You can already find policy wonks speculating about second-generation social engineering projects under the guise of "progressive humanism". Now that we "know" that that morality is hard-wired into our neurons, perhaps we can use science to make us all nicer people. One of Tony Blair's advisors recently contended that "brain and behaviour research is reframing political debates".

I'd like to propose a radical idea. Why don't the neuroscientists and progressive humanists stop hyperventilating and chill out for a while. Let them reflect on the fact that a hundred years ago phrenology, the "science" of analysing behaviour by putting a tape measure around a skull, was all the rage. Until they can account for the difference between the mind and the brain, their research might not be worth a hill of beans. In fact, it might just be, in the words of Raymond Tallis, neo-phrenology.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

Unearthed Files Include “Rules” for Mass Mind Control Campaign

2009-11-25T09:16:00.000-08:00

http://www.infowars.com/unearthed-files-include-rules-for-mass-mind-control-campaign/

Unearthed Files Include “Rules” for Mass Mind Control Campaign
Jurriaan Maessen
Infowars
November 25, 2009

Hacked into by a person or persons unknown, the unearthed material out of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit’s main server reveals a 62 megabyte zip file confirming that which was already blatantly obvious, namely that the data has been fudged to convince unsuspecting audiences that ‘the debate is over’.

Futerra’s “Rules of the Game.”
The intruded central computer was not only filled to the brim with obvious and attempted ostracizing of scientists who don’t blindly follow the leader, the files also reveal that the folks of the IPCC made use or considered making use of a disinformation campaign through a ‘communication agency’ called Futerra.

The agency describes itself as “the sustainability communications agency” and serves such global players as Shell, Microsoft, BBC, the UN Environment Programme, the UK government and the list goes on. The co-founder of Futerra, Ed Gillespie explains:

“For brands to succeed in this new world order, they will have to become eco, ethical and wellness champions.”

The document included within the climategate treasure-chest is called ‘Rules of the Game’ and shows deliberate deception on the part of this agency to ensure that the debate would indeed be perceived as being settled. When facts do not convince, they reasoned, let us appeal to emotions in order to get the job done.

Outlining the ‘rules of the game’ in regards to climate change communication strategies, Futerra considers these rules as a “first step to using sophisticated behaviour change modelling and comprehensive evidence from around the world to change attitudes towards climate change.”

“We need to think radically”, proclaim the authors, “and the Rules of the Game are a sign that future campaigns will not be “business as usual.””

First Rule as outlined by Futerra is called “Blowing away Myths”. Pressing the point that any company wishing to sell global warming must be cautious in using the fear-card:

“Fear can create apathy if individuals have no ‘agency’ to act upon the threat. Use fear with great caution.”

Arrogantly stating to “Forget the climate change detractors”, the document goes on to say that “Those who deny climate change science are irritating, but unimportant.” Futerra also stresses that “There is no ‘rational man’” and “Information can’t work alone.”

The second Rule all should abide by is “a new way of thinking”. “Once we’ve eliminated the myths”, the report goes on to say, “there is room for some new ideas.” These include:

A d v e r t i s e m e n t
“Climate change must be ‘front of mind’ before persuasion works”, Futerra says. “Currently, telling the public to take notice of climate change is as successful as selling tampons to men” and “people don’t realise (or remember) that climate change relates to them.”
Another one: “Use transmitters and social learning”. Futerra proposes targeting ‘trendsetters’ to persuade people to acknowledge climate change as a genuine threat to them: “people learn through social interaction, and some people are better teachers and trendsetters than others. Targeting these people will ensure that messages seem more trustworthy and are transmitted more effectively.”

Under the header of the third ‘Rule’, “linking policy and communication” it is stated that “everyone must use a clear and consistent explanation of climate change” and “government policy and communications on climate change must be consistent.” Indeed. If the lie is to be sold effectively, they must all communicate the same lie. How to best sell it?

-“Create a trusted, credible, recognized voice on climate change.”

-“Use emotions and visuals: another classic marketing tool: changing behaviour by disseminating information doesn’t always work, but emotions and visuals usually do.”

It seems that people have been listening. The advertisement of global warming is thick with apocalyptic visuals, ranging from polar bears crashing to their doom and a large family of hurricanes plaguing the continental United States.

Last but not least, the old Edward Bernays-trick is being proposed, the power of repetition:

“The communications must be sustained over time: all the most successful public awareness campaigns have been sustained consistently over many years.”

Indeed they have. The good news is that with the unveiling of the recent e-mails and documents the lies are being exposed in such a quick pace, the propaganda will be hard pressed to keep up.

How the Brain Filters Out Distracting Thoughts to Focus on a Single Bit of Information

2009-11-23T12:53:00.000-08:00

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091120000140.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

How the Brain Filters Out Distracting Thoughts to Focus on a Single Bit of Information
ScienceDaily
Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:00 CST

The human brain is bombarded with all kinds of information, from the memory of last night's delicious dinner to the instructions from your boss at your morning meeting. But how do you "tune in" to just one thought or idea and ignore all the rest of what is going on around you, until it comes time to think of something else?

Researchers at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience and Centre for the Biology of Memory at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have discovered a mechanism that the brain uses to filter out distracting thoughts to focus on a single bit of information. Their results are reported in 19 November issue of Nature.

Think of your brain like a radio: You're turning the knob to find your favorite station, but the knob jams, and you're stuck listening to something that's in between stations. It's a frustrating combination that makes it quite hard to get an update on swine flu while a Michael Jackson song wavers in and out. Staying on the right frequency is the only way to really hear what you're after. In much the same way, the brain's nerve cells are able to "tune in" to the right station to get exactly the information they need, says researcher Laura Colgin, who was the paper's first author. "Just like radio stations play songs and news on different frequencies, the brain uses different frequencies of waves to send different kinds of information," she says.

Gamma waves as information carriers

Colgin and her colleagues measured brain waves in rats, in three different parts of the hippocampus, which is a key memory center in the brain. While listening in on the rat brain wave transmissions, the researchers started to realize that there might be something more to a specific sub-set of brain waves, called gamma waves. Researchers have thought these waves are linked to the formation of consciousness, but no one really knew why their frequency differed so much from one region to another and from one moment to the next.

Information is carried on top of gamma waves, just like songs are carried by radio waves. These "carrier waves" transmit information from one brain region to another. "We found that there are slow gamma waves and fast gamma waves coming from different brain areas, just like radio stations transmit on different frequencies," she says.

You really can "be on the same wavelength"

"You know how when you feel like you really connect with someone, you say you are on the same wavelength? When brain cells want to connect with each other, they synchronize their activity," Colgin explains. "The cells literally tune into each other's wavelength. We investigated how gamma waves in particular were involved in communication across cell groups in the hippocampus. What we found could be described as a radio-like system inside the brain. The lower frequencies are used to transmit memories of past experiences, and the higher frequencies are used to convey what is happening where you are right now."

If you think of the example of the jammed radio, the way to hear what you want out of the messy signals would be to listen really hard for the latest news while trying to filter out the unwanted music. The hippocampus does this more efficiently. It simply tunes in to the right frequency to get the station it wants. As the cells tune into the station they're after, they are actually able to filter out the other station at the same time, because its signal is being transmitted on a different frequency.

The switch

"The cells can rapidly switch their activity to tune in to the slow waves or the fast waves," Colgin says, "but it seems as though they cannot listen to both at the exact same time. This is like when you are listening to your radio and you tune in to a frequency that is midway between two stations- you can't understand anything- it's just noise." In this way, the brain cells can distinguish between an internal world of memories and a person's current experiences. If the messages were carried on the same frequency, our perceptions of the world might be completely confused. "Your current perceptions of a place would get mixed up with your memories of how the place used to be," Colgin says.

The cells that tune into different wavelengths work like a switch, or rather, like zapping between radio stations that are already programmed into your radio. The cells can switch back and forth between different channels several times per second. The switch allows the cells to attend to one piece at a time, sorting out what's on your mind from what's happening and where you are at any point in time. The researchers believe this is an underlying principle for how information is handled throughout the brain.

"This switch mechanism points to superfast routing as a general mode of information handling in the brain," says Edvard Moser, Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience director. "The classical view has been that signaling inside the brain is hardwired, subject to changes caused by modification of connections between neurons. Our results suggest that the brain is a lot more flexible. Among the thousands of inputs to a given brain cell, the cell can choose to listen to some and ignore the rest and the selection of inputs is changing all the time. We believe that the gamma switch is a general principle of the brain, employed throughout the brain to enhance interregional communication."

Can a switch malfunction explain schizophrenia?

People who are schizophrenic have problems keeping these brain signals straight. They cannot tell, for example, if they are listening to voices from people who are present or if the voices are from the memory of a movie they have seen. "We cannot tell for sure if it is this switch that is malfunctioning, but we do know that gamma waves are abnormal in schizophrenic patients," Colgin says. "Schizophrenics' perceptions of the world around them are mixed up, like a radio stuck between stations."

Our Maniacal Optimism Is Ruining the World

2009-11-23T09:54:00.000-08:00

Barbara Ehrenreich: Our Maniacal Optimism Is Ruining the World
By Anis Shivani, In These Times
November 23, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144114/

In her new book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (Metropolitan/Holt, October 2009), Barbara Ehrenreich traces the origins of contemporary optimism from nineteenth-century healers to twentieth-century pushers of consumerism. She explores how that culture of optimism prevents us from holding to account both corporate heads and elected officials.

Manufactured optimism has become a method to make the poor feel guilty for their poverty, the ill for their lack of health and the victims of corporate layoffs for their inability to find worthwhile jobs. Megachurches preach the “gospel of prosperity,” exhorting poor people to visualize financial success. Corporations have abandoned rational decision-making in favor of charismatic leadership.

This mania for looking on the bright side has given us the present financial collapse; optimistic business leaders -- assisted by rosy-eyed policymakers -- made very bad decisions.

In These Times recently spoke with her about our penchant for foolish optimism.

Anis Shivani: Is promoting optimism a mechanism of social control to keep the system in balance?

Barbara Ehrenreich: If you want to have a compliant populace, what could be better than to say that everyone has to think positively and accept that anything that goes wrong in their lives is their own fault because they haven’t had a positive enough attitude? However, I don’t think that there is a central committee that sits there saying, “This is what we want to get people to believe.”

It took hold in the United States because in the ’80s and ’90s it became a business. You could write a book like Who Moved My Cheese?, which is a classic about accepting layoffs with a positive attitude. And then you could count on employers to buy them up and distribute them free to employees.

AS: So this picks up more in the early ’80s and even more so in the ’90s when globalization really took off?

BE: I was looking at the age of layoffs, which begins in the ’80s and accelerates. How do you manage a workforce when there is no job security? When there is no reward for doing a good job? When you might be laid off and it might not have anything to do with performance? As that began to happen, companies began to hire motivational speakers to come in and speak to their people.

AS: Couldn’t this positive thinking be what corporate culture wants everyone to believe, but at the top, people are still totally rational?

BE: That is what I was assuming when I started this research. I thought, “It’s got to be rational at the top. Someone has to keep an eye on the bottom line.” Historically, the science of management was that in a rational enterprise, we have spreadsheets, we have decision-trees and we base decisions on careful analysis.

But then all that was swept aside for a new notion of what management is about. The word they use is “leadership.” The CEO and the top people are not there so much to analyze and plan but to inspire people. They claimed to have this uncanny ability to sense opportunities. It was a shock, to find the extent to which corporate culture has been infiltrated not only by positive thinking, but by mysticism. The idea is that now things are moving so fast in this era of globalization, that there’s no time to think anymore. So you increasingly find CEOs gathering in sweat lodges or drumming circles or going on “vision quests” to get in touch with their inner-Genghis Khan or whatever they were looking for.

AS: The same things are happening in foreign policy. We’ve abandoned a sense of realism. You had this with Bush and also with Obama, although he is more realistic. Is there a connection between optimism and the growth of empire?

BE: In the ’80s, Reagan promoted the idea that America is special and that Americans were God’s chosen people, destined to prosper, much to the envy of everybody else in the world. Similarly, Bush thought of himself as the optimist-in-chief, as the cheerleader -- which had been his job once in college. This is very similar to how CEOs are coming to think of themselves: as people whose job is to inspire others to work harder for less pay and no job security.

AS: Would you say that Obama is our cheerleader-in-chief?

BE: I haven’t sorted it out. He talks a lot about hope. And as a citizen I’d rather not hear about “hope,” I’d rather hear about “plans.” Yet he does strike me as a rational person, who thinks through all possibilities and alternatives.

AS: You write about the science of positive thinking having taken root at Ivy League universities. It’s amazing to me that a course in happiness at Harvard would draw almost 900 students.

BE: That was in 2006. And these courses have spread all over the country -- courses in positive psychology where you spend time writing letters of gratitude to people in your family, letters of forgiveness (whether or not you send them doesn’t matter), getting in touch with your happy feelings, and I don’t think that’s what higher education should be about. People go to universities to learn critical thinking, and positive thinking is antithetical to critical thinking.

AS: You have written a lot about Calvinism. Is it correct to say you have a deep problem with Calvinism?

BE: In exploring why America became the birthplace of positive thinking, I come up with an explanation that is quite sympathetic to the early positive thinkers. Positive thinking initially represented a revolt against the dominant Calvinist stream of Protestantism in America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. That kind of Calvinism was driving people crazy, literally. To think that you were a sinner, that your entire existence for all eternity would be one of torment in hell. It caused depression. It caused physical ailments. It was a nightmare. So you got some people in the early- and mid- 19th century that said, “Wait a minute, things aren’t so bad.” Ralph Waldo Emerson would probably be the best known example.

AS: Couldn’t you go back farther to the Enlightenment -- the ultimate optimistic philosophy? Our founding fathers were very informed by that. Is that a kind of optimism that you endorse? And ultimately what’s different between the pursuit of happiness as a manifestation of optimism and the current optimism that you’re talking about?

BE: When the founding fathers undertook the Revolutionary War, they didn’t say, “We are going to win because we are visualizing victory.” They knew perfectly well that they could lose and be hanged as traitors. It took existential courage to say: “We are going to undertake this struggle without knowing whether we will win, but we’re just going to damn well die trying.”

AS: So, where does this shift come from?

BE: The shift had a lot to do with down-sizing, when corporations grabbed onto it as a means of soothing their disgruntled workforce. The alternative is realism. Let’s think about what’s actually going on: let’s get all the data we can; see what our options are; and figure out how to solve this problem. It sounds so trite and simple-minded, but that’s not how the thinking has been.

AS: Is the progressive movement infected by bright-sidedness?

BE: Progressives are not immune to this. I remember Mike Harrington [a founder of the Democratic Socialists of America] as a public speaker and he always, always ended on an upbeat note. No matter what was going on, he would end by saying there was a huge opening for the left. Today, I don’t know if we can do it. But we have no choice but to try.

AS: You mean we need to have optimism, but grounded in reality?

BE: I don’t call it optimism. I call it determination. One of the things I’ve devoted so much time to has had to do with poverty, class and inequality. Those things are not going to go away in my lifetime, but it won’t be for my lack of trying. And that’s a different kind of spirit than optimism.

AS: Some will say your approach is rational, incremental and just not exciting. How would you respond to that?

BE: I don’t think mine is an arid, overly intellectual approach. Consider what we’re up against on the economic and environmental front. Huge numbers of people are not getting by. There are the ecological threats to the human species. Let’s do something about it. What could be more irresponsible than to say, “If we just think it’s going to be alright, it’s going to be alright.”

Morality vs. Material Interests

2009-11-17T13:32:00.000-08:00

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196912-Morality-vs-Material-Interests

Morality vs. Material Interests
Paul Craig Roberts
Information Clearing House
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:52 EST

Myths of Our Time

It is conventional wisdom that it was the draft that ended the Vietnam war. According to this explanation, cowardly college students subject to the draft and their unpatriotic families, forced an end to the war. This is Karl Marx's explanation. Material interests, not empty morality, are said to have brought the war to an end.

That fact that in those days the US still had an independent media of sorts that sometimes framed the war in moral terms is ignored. Are we sure, for example, that the film of the naked little girl running in terror down the road burning with napalm was ineffectual in arousing moral opposition to the war? Are we certain that it wasn't an aroused moral conscience that brought about the end of the war but was college students' fears for their lives and limbs?

If we ascribe ending the war to material interests, it makes ending the war look as unworthy as the war itself.

Yet, virtually every conservative columnist, commentator, newsperson and politician, as well as today's antiwar protesters and apparently the Pentagon, believes that a military draft would reduce Americans' toleration for wars because of body bags coming home to middle and upper class parents. Apparently, the lower class doesn't mind its kids coming back in body bags.

Those in thrall to this explanation, which derives from Marx's materialist explanation of history, do not notice that Vietnam was our longest war. It apparently took almost forever for the material interest of students and their parents to realize itself and stop the war.

Why are we afraid to say that the war stopped because American troops and the American population got tired, offended even, from killing women, children and noncombatants? Vietnam had not attacked the US. The US had interjected itself into a civil war in a far off place, as it has done in Afghanistan.

By invading Iraq the US started a civil war between Sunni and Shi'ite. In Pakistan the US has started a civil war between the religious tribal population and the secular US puppet state. In Palestine the US started a civil war between Fatah and Hamas.

One continuously reads from those Americans opposed to America's wars of aggression that the wars are possible because they don't affect Americans, just those few who sign up for the voluntary military. Thus, there are insufficient material interests at stake to stop the war. This is a common explanation for the weakness of the antiwar movement.

One could argue instead that it is the triumph of Karl Marx's materialist thinking that has made moral protests impotent. What is morality? You can't weigh it, define it, measure it. It can be dismissed as the whining of material interests. In contrast, material interests, such as lives, limbs, and bank accounts are real.

For whatever the reason, morality has shown itself to be an impotent force in 21st century America. Americans show no remorse at over one million dead Iraqis and four million displaced Iraqis due entirely to an American invasion based on lies and deception. The lies and deception are now well proven. Yet, there has been no apology for the horrors that Americans inflicted on Iraq.

Afghanistan is another example. Intentional lies conflated the Taliban with al Qaeda and "terrorists." The diverse peoples in Afghanistan who were first ravaged by Soviet bombs are now ravaged by American bombs. Weddings, funerals, children's soccer games, people waiting for fuel or food, people asleep in their homes, people attending Mosques have all been murdered and are murdered routinely by US and its NATO puppets.

Each time civilians are murdered, the US denies it, only to be contradicted every time by the evidence.

Why is the president of the United States contemplating sending yet tens of thousands more US troops to kill people in Afghanistan?

The answer is that the United States is an immoral country, with an immoral people and an immoral government. Americans no longer have a moral conscience. They have gone over to the Dark Side.

Humanity has endeavored for millennia to control evil with morality. In the American "superpower," this effort has collapsed and failed.

The United States needs to be censured for its immoral behavior, not have that behavior rationalized as being in its material interests.

What Will It Take to Break Our Trance?

2009-11-17T12:36:00.000-08:00

http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/11/what-will-it-take-to-break-our-trance/

What Will It Take to Break Our Trance?
Doug Page
Dissident Voice
Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:21 EST

We are rapidly returning to the uncivilized Law of the Jungle. We will soon live in a world where brute force rules. It is not only the disabled, widows, children and orphans who are vulnerable to the cruelties of this jungle. We all are. We have been brainwashed with incessant slogans like "Get the government off your back," and "Keep more of your own money... oppose all tax increases." Our dominant, false ideology tells us that every function of government must be privatized, so that governmental functions can be performed with business-like efficiency. (We are not told that the real reason for privatizing is to give capitalists yet another opportunity for making short term profit.) The very concept that we humans might work and cooperate together to protect ourselves from Jungle dangers and to meet our common needs is shunned as "socialism," as if that were something evil. The capitalists have brainwashed themselves, and they have brainwashed us. They along with the rest of us hope and assume that the common good will somehow automatically take care of itself, if they think about the common good at all. Each capitalist must be concerned only with his own private profit and cannot be concerned with the common good lest some competitor captures his profit making opportunity. We are a nation of millions of brainwashed individualists, living, working, and acting under false perceptions of reality as if we were all "Manchurian Candidates." We have forgotten that government is the only effective institution that we have to protect us from the brute force of the Law of the Jungle. If we do not very quickly awaken from our trance, and act together in a cooperative human community, millions of us will perish.

Ironically, most wealthy capitalists will themselves be destroyed in this looming Jungle.

Capitalists need government almost as badly as we do, but they will not admit it. As Adam Smith taught long ago, capitalism and capitalists can survive only with a rule of law controlling private property rights and business promises, a government to enforce those laws, and a certain level of morality. He cannot be concerned with the common good lest some competitor captures his profit. Capitalist ideology thus prohibits capitalists from protecting their own common good. As we see from the daily news, no capitalist will speak out in support of regulation of Wall Street. Capitalists say that they will discipline themselves, but they have not, can not and do not.

We ordinary citizens and voters cling to an illusory idealistic assumption that we retain the right to govern ourselves, and that if we only work hard enough in the political process, we can change things through the ballot box. We cling to this false deadly assumption despite the vast accumulation of evidence that our political process is totally dominated and controlled by approximately 5000 very wealthy individuals acting through their ownership of their corporations and their mainstream advertising agencies, TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines. Thus in these desperate times, our government has given Trillions of our tax dollars to the big banks of the wealthy without any conditions, while our government has given little or nothing to create jobs for us. This money controlled government can afford to give Trillions to the wealthy, but this government cannot afford to provide VA hospitals and medical care for everybody. We citizens and voters are kept quiet and non-rebellious because of our own brainwashed state, fueled by our addiction to consumer goods, electronic gadgets, computers and TV.

Part of the trance and delusion is maintained by liberals. My definition of a "liberal" is one who vaguely wants a civilizing government and to make things right, but only if it does not deprive him of his standard of living. Thus a liberal will protest wealth inequality, the corruption of our elected leaders by money, imperialism, wars abroad, torture, rendition, and civilian collateral damage, but a liberal will not rebel, stop work, strike, picket, vigil or boycott. A liberal knows at some level that his material well being depends ultimately on these very evils that he protests against, specifically including torture. A liberal, like a conservative capitalist, cannot face the fact that he himself is in a dangerous suicidal trance. So he does not challenge the trance either.

Even under the best of circumstances, we have limited time and interest in governing ourselves. Our civic impulse is in very short supply. We see this in the low voter turnout and in the superficial slogans that lead many voters make up their minds. We see it also in political parties, local governments, charities, clubs and unions where aggressive individuals rise to power, and the ordinary person does not bother to attend meetings or to vote.

The blunt truth is that we are now ruthlessly governed by these few wealthy individuals who have accumulated their vast fortunes. One might almost say that we are "ungoverned," but of course we are taxed to benefit these rulers, and to pay for their losses on their risky financial investments. The government is operated and controlled by and for these few wealthy individuals. For all practical purposes, it is if we are ruled by a selfish greedy king who rules us and taxes us for his own pleasure and his own benefit. This "king" has his royalist earls, dukes, nobles and toadies in the form of Presidents, Senators, elected officials, journalists, college professors and economists who fawn around him. These toadies tell the "king" what he wants to hear (however insane and stupid) hoping for his favor and crumbs from his table. President Obama himself is such a toady to the "king." Obama's economic advisors, former Harvard President Larry Summers and University of California Professor Christina Romer are perfect examples of such fawning advisors to the "king." They study and report only what the "king" wants to hear.

The truth is that our capitalism and our self governing democracy are beyond repair or reform. Both are terminal, and dysfunctional. Our material well being is rapidly falling, and it will fall much further. Our trance prevents us from dealing with the death throes of capitalism, with the few wealthy individuals who control democracy with their wealth, with diminishing reserves of oil and gas, and with deadly global warming. This is not to say that we will find it easy to make changes even if we become aware of our trance. We will have to attend meetings and vote. We will have to accept a lower standard of living because of the depletion of oil and live like Cubans. Other civilizations in the past have fallen into dark ages because those in power did not recognize the falsity of their political-economic-cultural ideas, and did not take corrective action in time. Millions of us are destined to starve and those who do survive will be serfs allowed to grow a little food on the estates of the very rich. This is inevitable, unless we awaken and face the truth very soon.

Doug Page is a retired lawyer for unions, a former Democratic politician, and a life long observer of government, unions and business. He can be reached at: dougpage2@earthlink.net

How to Break the American Trance

2009-11-17T12:35:00.000-08:00

http://www.alternet.org/story/14506/

How to Break the American Trance
Doris "Granny D" Haddock
Alternet
Wed, 27 Sep 2006 12:00 EDT

On January 1, 1999–at the age of 89–she began a 3,200–mile walk across the country to demonstrate her concern for the issue, walking ten miles each day for fourteen months.
If we Americans are split into two meaningful camps, it is not conservative versus liberal. The two camps are the politically awake and the hypnotized.

The following is a speech given by 92-year-old Doris "Granny D" Haddock, who walked across the U.S. in 1999-2000 for campaign finance reform. She made this speech to Citizens for Participation in Political Action in Boston, on Sept. 27, 2002.

******************************

I want to begin by congratulating you for all the work you do. I know it is often frustrating work. You are blessed to be able to see ahead to a world of cooperation and peace -- a world of justice and sustainable economies and meaningful democracies. You wonder why others cannot or will not see these things or reach out for them, and why they in fact oppose the obvious good -- why they take the part of the oppressor, the blindered war horse.

I would like us to take a few moments to consider why this work is so hard, and what we might do to move toward our common dreams more rapidly and with greater joy.

Some of you may be old enough to remember the Reagan Administration. Mr. Reagan and those around him believed in a very new kind of American hero. This new hero was a business hero -- not the fellow who built up a family furniture store on Main Street and supported the Little League and the Scouts; this new hero was not the woman who worked late hours to create a successful travel agency, nor was this new business hero anything like any of the hard-working Americans who built-up our middle class, advanced our standard of living and gave us the resources and leisure for the proper civic life of a democracy, with its leagues and Rotaries and Lions and Elks and VFWs and party conventions and all that glory.

No, the Reagan business hero was the corporate takeover artist.

Any regulations that might get in the way of these ruthless new capitalists were removed -- removed so that reptiles of uncommon greed and brutality might rule the earth, which they now nearly do.

What soon happened was that ALL corporations of medium size or larger had to look over their shoulders. How did a corporation protect itself in this environment from a hostile takeover? It had to close down any factories that were not earning obscene profits. Never mind that a factory had served a town well for a century, or that it provided a healthy and regular profit for its stockholders. If it seemed to be underperfoming by the new hypergreed standards, or if it could be closed in favor of opening a foreign plant that provided a slightly higher rate of return, then, in this new atmosphere, the company was derelict in its duty to its stockholders if it did not ruthlessly act.

Perfectly good and profitable factories were closed. Benefits to employees everywhere were attacked, and staffs were downsized, outsourced, computerized, downsized again, outsourced again to temp agencies that paid no health care or retirement, and on and on until America became a very different place. The gap between rich and poor is now wider than at any time in our history.

It is still a wealthy nation for many people, but poverty is on the rise, and those with jobs find themselves so overworked trying to make ends meet that there is little time for family or for the joy of living. Indeed, there is very little joy left in American life. Workers are not loyal to their companies, because companies treat them like expendable slaves, with no dignity or assurance that hard work will result in advancement or security.

We are living in the harsh world invented by a handful of corporate raiders whose values were completely foreign to the fairness and moderation that had so long served as the proper foundation of American success and the American dream of plenty for all. They were not a new kind of person, for there have always been among us a few reptilian hearts of uncommon greed. What was new was the political permission they received for their rape and rampage, which continues.

And so a new world devolved as if from a virus. The new business hero, a Horatio Alger on crack, did very well. The new model CEO derived from that moment -- the ruthless mercenary who would come in to reorganize a company and render it takeover-proof by rendering it inhumane. This executive was worth millions per year, we were told. In this way, a Darwinian system of corporate survival assured that the most carnivorous, rather than the most responsible, would rise to lead our most powerful commercial organizations. And if you need an explanation for Fox News or Enron, this is the history you need to remember.

These superwealthy predators now, through their political patronage, control both political parties. They control Congress and the White House. They control elements within your state house. They are not particularly smart people, as their current agent in the White House clearly demonstrates.

Here is how the takeover of corporations became the corporate takeover of American democracy: To get along and move up in one of these right wing business organizations, you have to be like the boss. The people working under you will then want to be like you to get along themselves. In Fox News, even reporters in local regions are told how to slant each story hard to the right. There is no pretense of journalism within the organization. And many people stuck in those jobs, who got into journalism with the idea of doing legitimate journalism, are sick to their stomachs every working day.

In this way, the right-wing leanings of a few people have distorted entire industries, including television news. Political leaders are quickly infected in this trickle down reptilism -- trickling down from the people who write the checks for political campaigns and who control political news.

And the reptilism trickles down further, to the weaker minds listening to talk radio or silly enough to spend too much time watching cable television news -- people who buy the lies, who are simply suckered into forking over their own political best interests to the con artists who attempt to pick their pockets at the same moment they are pointing out others who, they say, are the real trouble makers. About 25 percent of our people are susceptible to this kind of con, and they then give us problems by standing against any reasonable reforms. They have been spiritually twisted by the cheap poison of a hundred Rush Limbaughs into the angry, unthinking agents of the superrich.

On my long walk across America, a man driving a garbage truck told me that the biggest problem facing America today was the inheritance tax. I didn't have to ask him if he had a radio in his truck.

I remind you of all this because it is important to know that the reason our reforms are difficult is not because Americans are split into two camps, conservative and liberal. It is not like that at all. There are lots of conservatives and liberals in America, but we are not the two sides of the divide. True conservatives in our country don't have many political leaders to look to with respect. Among the last was Barry Goldwater. He believed that the government had no business in our bedrooms. He believed that a woman and her doctor didn't need the government's help in deciding her important issues. He would have laughed and then, I think, become very, very angry at Ashcroft's attacks on the Bill of Rights and his citizen-against-citizen snitching system. Goldwater believed that the only issue of importance regarding gays in the military was whether or not they could shoot straight.

What we are seeing now from the far right is not conservatism at all. It is fascism: the imposition of a national and worldwide police state to enforce a narrow world view that enriches and empowers the few at the expense of the many, and that gives no respect or honor to other cultures, ways of living, or opinions. To call that conservatism is a crime against the memory of America's great and true conservatives, who might think that government ought to be less involved in life than we old liberals would concur with, but who nevertheless stood for the core American values that today's right-wing leaders undermine at every opportunity.

We Americans are not split into liberals and conservatives. In fact, if you are running for office from the center, or from left of center, just do a better job of demonstrating how far right-wing your opponent is, and you will win more and more votes. You will win them from the vast number of people, most especially urban women and professional men, who identify themselves as Republicans for old time's sake, but who are very uncomfortable when forced to look squarely at the far right positions of many candidates running under the flag of the Grand Old Party. Given moderate alternatives, they will vote for them. That was exactly the truth that Clinton understood and exploited so brilliantly. He understood that Republicans are conservatives but the Republican Party is not. If you want to reflect upon how well he exploited this insight, remember that Hillary was a Republican when he met her.

If we Americans are split into two meaningful camps, it is not conservative versus liberal. The two camps are these: the politically awake and the hypnotized -- hypnotized by television and other mass media, whose overpaid Svengalis dangle the swinging medallions of packaged candidates and oft-told lies. It is all done to politically prolong the open season on us -- open season indeed, as the billionaire takeover artists bag their catch for the day. And in their bags are our freedoms, our leisure, our health care futures, our old age security, our family time, our village life, our family-owned businesses on Main Street, the middle class itself, and our position of honor and peaceful leadership in the world.

Once we understand what we are up against, and where the meaningful dividing lines truly run, our lives as reformers can be easier because we shall know how to proceed.

How to break the hypnosis is then the question. It is easy.

Pull any contractor out of his white pickup truck, turn down the talk radio blaring from it, and ask him, "Government good, or government bad?"

His glazed eyes will widen. "Government bad!" he will say.

Ok, good. You found one to play with.

Now, ask him what the town might do to make it safer for kids to get to and from school, and around town when they're not in school, without getting killed by traffic or getting in trouble. He will have a million ideas. Good ideas. He has no clue that he is being government -- if government is what happens when we get together to solve our common problems and to make life better for our communities.

You have broken his trance.

When a proposition is on the ballot, people talk about the mechanics of the idea, and the hypnosis is largely circumvented. You see quite progressive ballot propositions passing in otherwise quite unprogressive states. Why? Because people are problem-solvers at heart, and they enjoy it. They want to participate and be helpful and accepted as valuable players. It takes a lot of hypnosis to overcome that instinct, and a lot of hypnosis is what we have had. But we can get around it.

Government agencies, of course, have been the communitarian's worst enemies. Anything that smacks of bureaucratic rudeness or pushiness or counterproductive stubbornness does nothing but damage the idea that government is us -- we the people acting together to solve our problems as fellow citizens. That brand of government really needs to be stamped out whenever it shows its pinched, gray face. That is what can be done and must be done to prepare the ground for what must come next, which is a new engagement of citizens with the issues of interest to them in their communities. We should begin in our high schools. During the years from 13 to 19, lifelong civic values are formed.

We should start with our younger people. As community leaders, we should work with the popular history and civics teachers in our high schools to bring the issues of the day and the issues of the town into the classroom -- not to propagandize but to openly invite students to learn, research, and offer advice to the community on a wide range of issues. This is where the hypnosis falls apart. This is where democracy finds its feet again.

This summer I asked America's independent community radio stations to get involved with those same teachers in our high schools, to make students into community reporters and commentators. I reminded these indy news stations that they have the technology and the dramatic missions young people crave. I said young people will never become robots if they are enlisted in the cause of truth at an early age.

What we do in schools, we must also do in colleges and then in the general community. But if we only have the means to focus on the high schools, that is enough. These young people will be voting in only a few years. If we support their increased civic engagement as they move through college and into the community, we will have raised an army of citizens immunized against corporate hypnosis. Our victories for needed reforms will come naturally. With an engaged and informed citizenry, who knows what good we might do, and what great civilization we might yet again move toward?

True conservatives and liberals unite! Bring your issues and your opinions to our young people, and create a new expectation that they will get involved, get informed, and form a view of themselves as problem-solving citizens of a democracy. Our differences from the left or right are nothing compared to the differences between the politically awake and the hypnotized drones of the new colonialism that now stalks and shreds our civilization.

I urge you to think young, to link with moderates on the other side of the fence, and to approach the schools and teachers who can help you connect your young, rising citizens to the issues that will shape their lives.

If you believe that human beings, in addition to all their other instincts, want to help create and live in a happy, creative and cooperative world, then you must believe that people are to be trusted in their politics so long as they are encouraged to study everyone's experience and study the competing points of view -- and so long as they are raised with enough love and security to be capable of empathy. We need not force a liberal agenda on our society, any more than we need force our political opinions on our children. We can enjoy life instead of banging our heads against the old walls. If we encourage an awake thoughtfulness, democracy and justice will have all the victories our hearts can handle.

Doris "Granny D" Haddock, 97, lives in the woods between Dublin and Peterborough, New Hampshire, made famous as Our Town by Thornton Wilder. She was born January 24, 1910 in Laconia, New Hampshire and attended Emerson College before marrying James Haddock. Doris raised two children during the Great Depression and later she worked at a shoe company for twenty years. In 1960, Granny D began her political career when she and her husband successfully campaigned against planned hydrogen bomb nuclear testing in Alaska, saving an Inuit fishing village at Point Hope. To read more of Doris Haddock's writings, visit GrannyD.com

Signature of consciousness captured in brain scans

2009-11-15T09:25:00.000-08:00

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18150-signature-of-consciousness-captured-in-brain-scans.html

Signature of consciousness captured in brain scans
2009 11 13
By Anil Ananthaswamy | NewScientist.com

A telltale signature of consciousness has been detected that takes us a step closer to disentangling the brain activity underlying conscious and unconscious brain processes.

It turns out that there is a similar pattern of neural activity each time we become conscious of the same picture, but not if we process information from the image unconsciously. These contrasting patterns of activity can now be detected via brain scans, and could one day help determine if patients with brain damage are conscious. They might even be used to probe consciousness in animals.

"It's very exciting work," says neuroscientist Raphaël Gaillard of the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the work. "The use of a reproducibility measure to disentangle conscious and non-conscious processes is genuinely new." Gaillard has previously shown that coordinated activity across the entire brain is one of the signatures of consciousness .

Consistent signals

So far, efforts to find a brain signature of consciousness have focused on the intensity of neural activity, how long it lasts, and whether signals tend to be synchronised across different regions of the brain.

"We were looking for something other than the intensity and duration of the neural activity that characterises conscious neural processing," says Aaron Schurger of Princeton University in New Jersey, who led the new work.

He and his colleagues hypothesised that when the brain is presented with the same sensory input – a picture, say – time after time, then conscious awareness of the picture should produce similar neural activity each time.

Conversely, if the sensory input did not enter conscious awareness, it should produce different brain activity each time because there would be other subconscious processes going on at the same time.

Invisible pictures

To test this hypothesis, Schurger and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the brain activity in 12 volunteers who were asked to look at a series of images – some designed to elicit a conscious response, others a subconscious one.

The researchers invoked conscious processing simply by showing volunteers pictures of faces or houses. To invoke subconscious processing, the researchers presented volunteers with so-called "invisible stimuli".

These consist of two drawings, of either a house or a face, one shown to each eye. Crucially in each pair, one drawing is in pale orange on a pale green background, the other is the same drawing with the colours reversed. When the brain is confronted with such seemingly contradictory visual inputs it reconciles them by creating a yellow patch. So the volunteer consciously sees nothing but yellow, though the brain has subconsciously processed the face or house.

Probing anaesthesia

A set of fMRI recordings of subjects' temporal lobes backed up the team's hypothesis: each time a house or face was consciously processed by an individual, the resulting patterns in brain activity were similar. When the same image was processed subconsciously, the researchers found that the patterns of brain activity were much more variable. "Neural patterns were more reproducible when the drawings were seen consciously compared to when they were not," says Schurger.

The team thinks that reproducibility – the replication of similar neural patterns in the brain each time it becomes conscious of the same sensory input – gives us clues as to what consciousness is.

It could also be used in the future to tell if someone in a coma is conscious, or probe the consciousness of people under anaesthesia, something that also isn't well understood.

Operation Mind Control 2007

2009-11-10T11:11:00.000-08:00

http://www.tenntimes.org/stories/mind-control/

Operation Mind Control 2007
Tenn Times
Fri, 09 Nov 2007 12:07 EST

On August 19, 1975, an article I wrote was published in Modern People as part of a 26-part series, and soon became a ticking time bomb that would be translated into more than seven languages and would be quoted in several books on mind control, including the classic Operation Mind Control by Walter Bowart, founder of The East Village Other, a radical underground newspaper.

The story of Operation Mind Control and how it was immediately suppressed, bought up and destroyed by the CIA is an astounding story of its own. It disappeared from libraries, book stores and even the publisher's (Dell Publishing) warehouses. Bowart went into seclusion not too long after and would not discuss it. Had he been threatened, shut up? The world would never know.

Bowart called me 1975 or 1976 and I spoke with him at some length, then forgot the matter and went on with other things in my life until, in 1978 I saw the book in a Nashville bookstore and promptly snatched it up - not because I was interviewed for it, but because it was a topic I was intensely interested in for my own research.

In fact, it didn't even dawn on me that this was the book until I was skimming through it on the way back to the car and ran across my own name in the index.

Today that $1.95 paperback sells for hundreds of dollars on eBay - IF you can even find a copy.

In 1967 a writer (a major network anchor believed to be either Walter Cronkite or Chet Huntley) wrote a strange book called Were We Controlled? (New York University Books) under the pen-name of Lincoln Lawrence. That book, too, has become extremely rare.

It was the first published reference to something called RHIC-EDOM (Radio Hypnotic Intra-Cerebral Control - Electronic Dissolution of Memory).

"Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." - President Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (1913)

It told the strange story of a major fraud in the futures market that was timed to make its perpetrators hundreds of millions of dollars because of its timing to their advance knowledge of the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963.

It was very similar to the millions made in short-selling by knowledgeable insiders in the few days prior to the World Trade Center destruction of Sept. 11, 2001.

More intriguing, it claimed that Oswald was a "Manchurian Candidate," a double-agent sent by the CIA to the Soviet Union as a "defector" and then turned into a mind-controlled Soviet agent through a surgical procedure.

Lawrence claimed, though, that the "sleeper agent" Oswald was not created by the Soviet military but by an international cartel of commodities merchants who made millions when the U.S. stock market crashed upon Kennedy's murder.

Like the fictional "Manchurian Candidate", Oswald "can be used years later with no realization that [he] is even being controlled!

The EDOM process erases the memory or, in some cases, will delay the "sleeper's' perception of time so that events appear to have happened either long before or after they actually happened.

I knew that the process was a bit complicated for the average person to understand, so I sought to simplify it after I ran across the same references to RHIC-EDOM in a 350-page CIA report I had been given a look at it (I was not allowed to make copies but did take notes). I myself have been programmed, with my consent, to protect the identity of my source and if subjected to hypnosis or currently available techniques, will claim that I made the whole thing up, despite verified CIA documents that support the story.

Even now, 30 years later, I have come under strong pressure to reveal the sources and have been called "a fraud" for not doing so. Tough!

Rejection massively reduces IQ

2009-11-08T14:19:00.001-08:00

http://www.blindcanadians.ca/publications/index.php?id=531

Rejection massively reduces IQ
Emma Young, Blackpool
Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians
Fri, 15 Mar 2002 03:22 EST
A.E.B.C. Editor's Note: This article is reprinted from New Scientist, March 15, 2002. http://www.newscientist.com

Rejection can dramatically reduce a person's IQ and their ability to reason analytically, while increasing their aggression, according to new research.

"It's been known for a long time that rejected kids tend to be more violent and aggressive," says Roy Baumeister of the Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, who led the work. "But we've found that randomly assigning students to rejection experiences can lower their IQ scores and make them aggressive."

Baumeister's team used two separate procedures to investigate the effects of rejection. In the first, a group of strangers met, got to know each other, and then separated. Each individual was asked to list which two other people they would like to work with on a task. They were then told they had been chosen by none or all of the others.

In the second, people taking a personality test were given false feedback, telling them they would end up alone in life or surrounded by friends and family.

Aggression scores increased in the rejected groups. But the IQ scores also immediately dropped by about 25 per cent, and their analytical reasoning scores dropped by 30 per cent.

"These are very big effects - the biggest I've got in 25 years of research," says Baumeister. "This tells us a lot about human nature. People really seem designed to get along with others, and when you're excluded, this has significant effects."

Baumeister thinks rejection interferes with a person's self-control. "To live in society, people have to have an inner mechanism that regulates their behaviour. Rejection defeats the purpose of this, and people become impulsive and self-destructive. You have to use self-control to analyse a problem in an IQ test, for example - and instead, you behave impulsively."

Baumeister presented his results at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society in Blackpool, Lancashire, UK.

Toddlers and TV sets don’t mix

2009-11-08T11:20:00.001-08:00

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/toddlers_and_tv_sets_dont_mix/

Kevin Ryan | Thursday, 5 November 2009
Toddlers and TV sets don’t mix

The folly of trying to teach babies by plonking them in front of a television has finally been confirmed.

The house that Mickey Mouse built is taking a hit. The Walt Disney conglomerate that spans from Hannah Montana to most of Hollywood and from ESPN to sprawling worldwide resorts is giving up ground. It is minor turf, but still Walt and Team Disney’s lawyers are not used to losing.

Since 1998, Disney’s "Baby Einstein" videos and DVDs has been aggressively marketed to parents of young children intent on increasing Junior’s intelligence. For ten years, children from three months to three years (the target group) have been glued to screens and the Disney Empire has raked in millions. A 2003 study found that one-third of all American babies aged between 6 months and two years had been exposed to a Baby Einstein video. Disney’s success has spawned several competitors who promise to give Junior a leg up in the music world, the sports world and maybe even the world of making millions with phony promises.

But the spurt in grey matter hasn’t materialized. Folks at the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood have been pressuring Baby Einstein for evidence that their materials were anything more than electronic baby sitters. Turning up the heat, the American Academy of Pediatrics, concerned with all the time infants are spending transfixed before television sets, has recommended no screen time. Under pressure, then, the Disney marketers are dropping the word "educational" from their advertising and providing refunds to disappointed parents.

While the $15.99 cheque from the Disney empire may appease the saddened parents of dull-eyed, TV-addicted kids, will this sop solve a larger problem? Will it lead parents to get more balanced goals for their children?

The quest to increase one’s IQ or intelligence quotient has been the goal of both serious scientists and scammers for some decades. By and large, the scientists have given up on IQ quick-fix increases, but the scammers are still roaring around. IQ, the measure of our capacity to learn, appears, however, to be quite stable, and while very poor nutrient and lots of screen watching can suppress it, there is not much parents can do to boost Junior’s score.

Unquestionably, it is a worthy goal to want one’s offspring to be knowledgeable and have a head full of useful facts, theories and ideas. So, too, is the parental desire that their children attend the very best schools and become truly educated adults. The Baby Einstein route and its cousins, the increase-your-IQ-in-ten-easy-lessons course, sadly will not get us there. They are bogus elixirs for anxious and perhaps lazy parents. Even worse, they distract attention from the royal road to improving a child’s chance to become educated: developing his or her CQ.

CQ stands for Character Quotient, a scientific term especially ginned up for this article. While it admittedly reeks of ersatz Baby Einstein-like promotion, CQ actually is a stand-in for one of our world’s most enduring truths: character is destiny.

Each of us has a character and each character is different. Our characters are the sum totals of our habitual ways of response to life’s events. They are the totality of our good and bad habits, our personal virtues and vice. As we ramble and shamble through our days, we develop patterns of waiting until the last minute to get things done. Or of never failing to pass on a juicy piece of gossip. Or unreflectively stepping in to help someone in need. Or of telling the unvarnished truth even when it hurts.

These habits are the markings on our character by which we are known. Rarely do we recognize our own character, but it is all too apparent to our spouses and co-workers. "He’s a generous guy, but he just can’t finish a task!" "She’s a toothache to be around, but she is the go-to gal when you want something done."

Each of us is ruled by and defined by our habits. However, while the habits of our adult years get increasingly resistant to change, the habits of childhood and adolescence are quite plastic. While this statement may seem like a magnificent platitude, the question remains, why do so few parents and educators focus their attention on habit formation?

Instead of anxiously planting Jack and Jill in front of the television screen, the good parent should help them acquire habits such as persistence, self-control and diligence. These are the habits which define good students and treasured employees. A character marked by these habits knows how to set a goal and get a job done, whether it is acing an exam or getting a scholarship.

The root of "character" is the Greek word "to engrave." Parents can do a great deal to help a child groove good habits, but at a certain point the job of engraving a character must be shifted to the young person. Convincing a young person of the significance and importance of crafting his or her character is, though, the central duty of parents. The work of character building is slow and long, but the rewards for both parent and child are monumental.

The key to how to increase one’s CQ has been known by wise people throughout history. Aristotle told us that a man becomes brave by doing wise acts and honest by doing honest acts. However, before Aristotle, Confucius captured the essence of character formation in a short poem:

Sow a thought. Reap an action.
Sow an action. Reap a habit.
Sow a habit. Reap a character.
Sow a character. Reap a destiny.

Kevin Ryan founded the Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character at Boston University, where he is professor emeritus. He has written and edited 20 books. He has appeared on CBS's "This Morning", ABC's "Good Morning America", "The O’Reilly Factor", CNN and the Public Broadcasting System speaking on character education. He can be reached at kryan@bu.edu.

The Forever War of the Mind

2009-11-08T11:09:00.001-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/opinion/07cleland.html?pagewanted=print

November 7, 2009
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Forever War of the Mind
By MAX CLELAND

“EVERY day I was in Vietnam, I thought about home. And, every day I’ve been home, I’ve thought about Vietnam.” So said one of the millions of soldiers who fought there as I did. Change the name of the battlefield and it could have been said by one of the American servicemen coming home from Iraq or Afghanistan today. Wars are not over when the shooting stops. They live on in the lives of those who fight them. That is the curse of the soldier. He never forgets.

While the authorities say they cannot yet tell us why an Army psychiatrist would go on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood in Texas, we do know the sorts of stories he had been dealing with as he tried to help those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan readjust to life outside the war zone. A soldier’s mind can be just as dangerous to himself, and to those around him, as wars fought on traditional battlefields.

War is haunting. Death. Pain. Blood. Dismemberment. A buddy dying in your arms. Imagine trying to get over the memory of a bomb splitting a Humvee apart beneath your feet and taking your leg with it. The first time I saw the stilled bodies of American soldiers dead on the battlefield is as stark and brutal a memory as the one of the grenade that ripped off my right arm and both legs.

No, the soldier never forgets. But neither should the rest of us.

Veterans returning today represent the first real influx of combat-wounded soldiers in a generation. They are returning to a nation unprepared for what war does to the soul. Those new veterans will need all of our help. After America’s wars, the used-up fighters are too often left to fend for themselves. Many of the hoboes in the Depression were veterans of World War I. When they came home, they were labeled shell-shocked and discharged from the Army too broken to make it during the economic cataclysm.

So it is again, with too many stories about veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan ending up unemployed and homeless. Figures from the Department of Veterans Affairs show that 131,000 of the nation’s 24 million veterans are homeless each night, and about twice that many will spend part of this year homeless.

We know of the recent failures at Walter Reed Medical Center, where soldiers were stranded in substandard barracks infested with rats while awaiting treatment. I was in Walter Reed myself at that time seeking counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder, which, ignited by a barrage of Iraq headlines and the loss of my United States Senate seat, had simply consumed me.

I never saw it coming. Forty years after I had left the battlefield, my memories of death and wounding were suddenly as fresh and present as they had been in 1968. I thought I was past that. I learned that none of us are ever past it. Were it not for the surgeons and nurses at Walter Reed, I never would have survived those first months back from Vietnam. Were it not for the counselors there today, I do not think I would have survived what I’ve come to call my second Vietnam, the one that played out entirely in my mind.

When I was wounded, post-traumatic stress disorder did not officially exist. It was recognized as a legitimate illness only in 1978, during my tenure as head of the Veterans Administration under President Jimmy Carter. Today, it is not only recognized, but the Army and the V.A. know how to treat it. I can offer no better testament than my own recovery.

Weeks before the troubles at Walter Reed became public in 2007, my counselor put it to me simply. “We are drowning in war,” she said. The problems at Walter Reed had nothing to do with the dedicated doctors and nurses there. The problems had to do with the White House and Congress and the Department of Defense. The problems had to do with money.

When we are at war, America spends billions on missiles, tanks, attack helicopters and such. But the wounded warriors who will never fight again tend to be put on the back burner.

This is inexcusable, and it comes with frightening moral costs. There are estimates that 35 percent of the soldiers who fought in Iraq will suffer post-traumatic stress disorder. I’m sure the numbers for Afghanistan are similar. Researchers have found that nearly half of those returning with the disorder have suicidal thoughts. Suicide among active-duty soldiers is on pace to hit a record total this year. More than 1.7 million soldiers have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Imagine that some 600,000 of them will have crippling memories, trapped in a vivid and horrible past from which they can’t seem to escape.

We have a family Army today, unlike the Army seen in any generation before. We have fought these wars with the Reserves and the National Guard. Fathers, mothers, soccer coaches and teachers are the soldiers coming home. Whether they like it or not, they will bring their war experiences home to their families and communities.

In his poem “The Dead Young Soldiers,” Archibald MacLeish, whose younger brother died in World War I, has the soldiers in the poem tell us:“We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.” Until we help our returning soldiers get their lives back when they come home, the promise of restoring that meaning will go unfulfilled.

Max Cleland, the secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission, was a Democratic senator from Georgia from 1997 to 2003. He is the author, with Ben Raines, of “Heart of a Patriot: How I Found the Courage to Survive Vietnam, Walter Reed and Karl Rove.”

Humankind's future: social and political Utopia or Idiocracy?

2009-11-08T10:45:00.000-08:00

Roland is a good friend of mine! I think in the future (if we have one) that he's going to be named one of the best writers of this generation!

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Humankind-s-future-social-by-Roland-Michel-Trem-091101-248.html

November 6, 2009
Humankind's future: social and political Utopia or Idiocracy?
By Roland Michel Tremblay

By some coincidence in the last three days I read Men Like Gods of H. G. Wells and watch the films Idiocracy, City of Ember and WALL-E. They all deal with humankind's future, a very bleak future that could possibly become the ultimate Utopia or perfect world, not before another world war, the extinction of humanity, and survival of a few humans to come back to Earth from space, or emerging from underground to start anew. Is this what we can expect of our future, imminent self-destruction?

Should we be planning colonies and ship them into space or below ground, like, right now? Is it because we feel the end of humanity is fast becoming, that we are far reaching the end of all our broken institutions, that suddenly the topic of our future, or lack of it, is so pro-eminently featured even in children's films? The topic is not new, H. G. Wells' discourse in Men Like Gods is so up to date with what is happening today, even though it was written in 1923, that one must believe nothing has changed socially and politically for the last 100 years.

We don't trust the government, any reasonable mind does not trust organized religion, we feel betrayed in a world where no one is working towards a better humanity for everyone, where most likely huge corporations including financial institutions control everything, without a thought for anyone's well-being.

We have to admit that our morals and ethics' record on this planet has already passed the custody threshold many times over, this record shows no sign of getting better. So much for H. G. Wells' Utopia, we will need another 3000 years to change our ways of thinking and our ways of going about things socially and politically. After a few revolutions, civil wars and world wars, no doubt.

In the film Idiocracy, based on the idea that the strongest in nature will always be in power and go on to procreate over the more intelligent ones or nerds, we end up with a future where civilization has forgotten everything, a dumb down humanity. We still have technology and what remains from the past, but no one can fix it. So planes crash all the time on the streets whilst no one cares, watching TV instead on their Toilet-La-Z-Boys.

The richest company is one selling weird fizzy energy drinks and they are mostly in charge of dictating our lifestyle and the government, to the point were they killed every plant in the world, watering them with this toxic drink. The American President is a Black Rock Star who has no clue what to do to save this world, but knows how to entertain the nation, in a world craving reality TV, fights and destruction. In some ways we might already be living in that kind of future, to a lesser degree perhaps.

In WALL-E it is even better. We have already self-destructed, humanity is all dead except this trash robot called WALL-E who still cleans our mess, what remains of humanity. They were clever enough to send a spaceship into space with a colony of people who would be coming back once the world war was over. However that war was a mass extinction event (what can you expect in the nuclear age?) and they were told never to come back. And so they remained traveling in the universe for 700 years, until such time that one plant is found on Earth and a probe goes back to the ship to let them know it's time to come back to Earth. So they end up coming back and presumably build a better world.

It is nevertheless a very bleak future. Not only the human race self-annihilated, but on top of it the future of humanity on that ship are all obese people who can't even walk, laying on their anti-gravity bed-chairs, plugged into the Internet or television permanently, to the extent that they barely notice the world around them, all that publicity choking their little spaceship. Once again the famous drink is on the menu, as it is their sole food.

The City of Ember film starts with the end of the world. A group of scientists built a city underground and gave them a box that will open in exactly 200 years. These are the instructions to come back to the surface once the final world war is over, and so they can start as a new humanity. 200 years of corruption later within their little underground village, two teenagers have to fight to discover the way out of their failing city.

In these three films there are still a government, a strong hierarchy, authority and law enforcement officers, whether they are humans or machines. The films are about a vision or version of our future, just before or right after humanity self-destruct.

In a way it is about corruption, isolation, individualism, living within our own bubble universe, festering in entertainment whilst the technology and robots replaced the slaves and the servants, whilst all around us we cannot see that everything is decaying and that our lifestyle has already destroyed the planet. We don't even need another world war at this point, global warming will finish us off fairly soon. We can no longer reverse it, our days on Earth are numbered. With any luck I might witness the end of humanity within my lifetime.

This is not even being alarmist, this is being realistic. Now you understand my despair, I cannot lose myself in frivolities, like this TV series called Life After People, whilst some people are working so hard to destroy the planet at any cost, through doing nothing ecologically and promoting exploitation and wars. There must be a limit to their greed for wealth and power, a limit prompting us to stop them somehow.

In Men Like Gods of H. G. Wells, a book that inspired Brave New World of Aldous Huxley, Mr. Barnstaple is a political writer from the left who passes virtually just where I live in real life, Hounslow, continuing towards Slough and Maidenhead. He suddenly vanishes into Utopia right in front of Windsor Castle. He is accompanied by the Conservative Leader, the Secretary of State for War, a Priest, Lady Stella and Lord Barralonga (the aristocracy), and some servants/chauffeurs.

They find themselves in a world where there is no more government, no police force or prisons, but is still some sort of New World Order, where they decided to eliminate most of the population as to make this world sustainable. There are now about 200 million inhabitants on Earth and there are no more social classes or big cities. It does not take long for the Secretary of State for War, the Conservative Leader and the Priest, to plan a take over of Utopia to recreate the hell we're living in right now.

These Utopians are from a parallel universe similar to ours but they are 3000 years more advanced in the future, living in a perfect socialist world governed by everyone and no one in particular. Where there is no more money, you take what you need and there are plenty of resources to go around in such a loving and peaceful world of equal human beings. They walk naked, there is no more marriage, they sleep with whoever they want in total freedom. No jealousy, no pettiness, no competition. The scientific world does not work against each other for profit or recognition, they work together humbly and reach results much faster than we could ever hope to.

H. G. Wells seems to hope that perhaps in time we will reach that kind of balance in the world. Not before a world government takes hold of the world, and some Big Brother State gets to know everything about everyone, in a world where at least we could trust the government, or after larger revolutions, a world where no one ever lies. And you remain, at the end of this novel, wondering if this could ever come true, if somehow this Utopian world could ever exist without actually rapidly becoming our new nightmare.

So what is our future? A Utopia or an Idiocracy? I don't mean the future we all wish for, but the one we can realistically expect if we continue on the same trends we follow today. We are still very warlike, going to war without much provocation, still stealing natural resources of others. We are still about taking advantage of human beings, exploitation, using them for our own personal benefit, and it even applies to us being the servants of the richer people of this world.

A Nuclear Third World War is inevitable at this time, quite soon we could predict, quite rightly. And if somehow humanity ever shows suddenly a strong desire to see real change happen, to liberate itself from the ones who still have a strong hold on them, in a world where we all know there's never been a real democracy to speak of, we may consider a massive civil war or revolution is on the way at some point in the future. Maybe after such nightmarish events we will be in a position to recreate a better world, if there is anyone left to recreate such a world.

H. G. Wells is quite clear that no sudden change ever worked in the past history of those utopias. Instead he believes that it is only through small changes, hard working authors and thinkers like his Mr. Barnstaple, people going ahead to help humanity on their own without waiting for a government who is not willing" only then in time the world changes into this socialist utopia, or at the very least something better for humankind than what we are witnessing today and have been for many centuries. Should we not have finished with all these struggles by now? Is there really any kind of evolution in this world? We're all so tired, don't we deserve peace and happiness?

So let's work in the details, let's identify everything that does not work or work well, anything that does not profit everyone instead of the few, and see how we can change the world slowly in time to benefit humanity as a whole. If we do not, in parallel of those who are in power, build our own institutions for humankind, we will never even get a glimpse of what this world could truly be like, living in harmony, peace and happiness.

Oh, I had enough of Idiocracies, I really need an instant Utopia. I practically live in Slough, an armpit of a place, it is where they filmed The Office, our miserable existence that caught America by storm, they must have recognized themselves in such misery. Windsor Castle is just around the corner. I wonder, maybe if I take the car down that same road as Mr. Barnstaple did in Men Like Gods, I might too find myself in Utopia. I'm not sure I have the patience to wait 3000 years for a better world where there is at least hope. Better be shipped immediately into a parallel universe, before the planet goes up in flames.

***

“Without irony, this life would hardly be worth living.”

Roland Michel Tremblay

http://www.themarginal.com/destructivism.pdf

Culture Influences Brain Function, Study Shows

2009-11-01T05:32:00.000-08:00

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080111102934.htm

Culture Influences Brain Function, Study Shows

ScienceDaily (Jan. 13, 2008) — People from different cultures use their brains differently to solve the same visual perceptual tasks, MIT researchers and colleagues report in the first brain imaging study of its kind.

Psychological research has established that American culture, which values the individual, emphasizes the independence of objects from their contexts, while East Asian societies emphasize the collective and the contextual interdependence of objects. Behavioral studies have shown that these cultural differences can influence memory and even perception. But are they reflected in brain activity patterns?

To find out, a team led by John Gabrieli, a professor at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, asked 10 East Asians recently arrived in the United States and 10 Americans to make quick perceptual judgments while in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner--a technology that maps blood flow changes in the brain that correspond to mental operations.

Subjects were shown a sequence of stimuli consisting of lines within squares and were asked to compare each stimulus with the previous one. In some trials, they judged whether the lines were the same length regardless of the surrounding squares (an absolute judgment of individual objects independent of context). In other trials, they decided whether the lines were in the same proportion to the squares, regardless of absolute size (a relative judgment of interdependent objects).

In previous behavioral studies of similar tasks, Americans were more accurate on absolute judgments, and East Asians on relative judgments. In the current study, the tasks were easy enough that there were no differences in performance between the two groups.

However, the two groups showed different patterns of brain activation when performing these tasks. Americans, when making relative judgments that are typically harder for them, activated brain regions involved in attention-demanding mental tasks. They showed much less activation of these regions when making the more culturally familiar absolute judgments. East Asians showed the opposite tendency, engaging the brain's attention system more for absolute judgments than for relative judgments.

The results are reported in the January issue of Psychological Science. Gabrieli's colleagues on the work were Trey Hedden, lead author of the paper and a research scientist at McGovern; Sarah Ketay and Arthur Aron of State University of New York at Stony Brook; and Hazel Rose Markus of Stanford University.

"We were surprised at the magnitude of the difference between the two cultural groups, and also at how widespread the engagement of the brain's attention system became when making judgments outside the cultural comfort zone," says Hedden.

The researchers went on to show that the effect was greater in those individuals who identified more closely with their culture. They used questionnaires of preferences and values in social relations, such as whether an individual is responsible for the failure of a family member, to gauge cultural identification. Within both groups, stronger identification with their respective cultures was associated with a stronger culture-specific pattern of brain-activation.

How do these differences come about? "Everyone uses the same attention machinery for more difficult cognitive tasks, but they are trained to use it in different ways, and it's the culture that does the training," Gabrieli says. "It's fascinating that the way in which the brain responds to these simple drawings reflects, in a predictable way, how the individual thinks about independent or interdependent social relationships."

This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and supported by the McGovern Institute.