That not only has this been the major factor determining the intrinsic nature of human culture but it has become the single major perennial obstacle to social development; as well as the reason why humanity may never realize its innate potential for civilized, prosperous and peaceful existence created by the boon of intelligence; and, why it is becoming more and certain with each passing day that humanity will destroy the civilizations we have arduously and painstakingly constructed with the weapons of mass destruction that we have devised.
The movie embraced and promoted the viewpoint that the species could only change, would only be capable of the requisite change that would cause humanity to avoid this catastrophic future if it perceived that it was on the brink of a precipice, if a bare majority of human beings realized that our imminent destruction was a clear and present danger; as I watched the movie I realized that the quixotic, wholly unrealistic enterprise which has become my magnificent obsession during these past thirty years has been to communicate that such a precipice exists that only two dismal, wholly destructive, totally nihilistic alternatives loom in our future; either the slow and lingering death of the species precipitated by the fact that our mindless, selfish, irrational activities have eventually succeeded in poisoning the atmosphere of this planet and destroying its delicate ecological balance; or, the sudden demise and destruction of human civilizations the consequence of a nuclear holocaust.
To avoid and erase from the collective consciousness of the species the suicidal tendencies implicit in both of these alternatives I must interminably and fruitlessly continue to attempt to communicate against all the odds that I will be believed the impact, the continuing and pervasive impact of the world view that the newly emergent species Homo sapiens the latest evolutionary achievement of the genus hominid, was forced to embrace for survival; I have to debunk and erase from a bare majority of human beings in every social system the ubiquitous, wholly irrational belief that over the years humanity has managed to divest itself of the world view ‘might is right’ that it practiced, successfully practiced during the One Hundred Thousand years the species was languished in a ‘state of nature.’
I have to overcome the self centered, survival minded, blinkered perspective of human animals currently habituated and inured to a world in which there is instant coffee, instant communication and in which there exists supersonic aircraft capable of spanning the Atlantic ocean in less than three hours; I have the invidious task of attempting to inculcate the capacity to perceive social reality realistically and accurately in a world of men and women who have been deliberately and systematically conditioned by those who wish to interminably perpetuate reliance on coercion to motivate the other to be talking and never thinking animals over the past approximately Twelve Thousand years so that they would continue to unconsciously embrace and perpetuate the status quo based on the world view that ‘might is right.’
The fact is, the unavoidable and irreducible fact is, that some human needs, wants and desires can only be satisfied in conjunction with another human being, with the participation of another human being, the goading of sex is one such drive; and, the most facile, efficient and functional means of ensuring that drive reduction occurs is if a situation can be created and sustained in which the other who participates MUST do whatever is required, even if this meant paying the ultimate cost, to facilitate the drive reduction in the dominant participant.
After thirty years of engaging in this exercise in futility it is far past time for me to be indulging in diplomatic terminology or to be taking into account the tender sensibilities of my readers, it is time to boldly state that for all of history, of our undocumented or documented history the vast majority of human beings have been languished on a treadmill of suffering and despair and the engine driving this ubiquitous, pervasive social engine has been the need to invent and reinvent situations in which the weaker participant in social interaction MUST do what is required to satisfy the needs, wants and desires of the stronger entity, a pattern of social interaction based on the primitive drama of predation in which the prey sacrifices its all to satisfy the needs for energy resources of the territorial predator.
Without apology I say again that the design for human existence based on this paradigm is still immutably and destructively with us, it is alive and well today in it’s most unalterably malignant, inordinately vile and completely depraved form and continues to deny the vast majority of human beings the possibility of happiness.
I have referred to the satisfaction of the innate sex drive as part of my continuing and determined attempt to attempt to expose the dynamics, the inner workings of a model of social interaction whose intrinsic nature was determined by reliance on force to motivate the other, a pattern which produced among other powerful institutions what is popularly accepted today to be the oldest social institution, prostitution, since this provides the best illustration and demonstration of the inevitably tragic and replete and redolent with pain and suffering ubiquitous drama I am trying to communicate; which must be the ultimate, inevitable consequence of interaction in which the stronger actor utilizes the power at his disposal, the means which he is habituated to applying, which may be physical strength, economic power or social status to satisfy his need; and, the weaker participant has no choice but to submit to and endure this imposition and the destruction of personal autonomy to facilitate drive reduction in the other.
I am constrained to declaim at this juncture, that the development, the intellectual, moral and philosophical development I am promoting is that overt or covert forms of coercion should never be utilized to motivate the other, even though this is admittedly and incontrovertibly the most efficient means, the most popular and least demanding means of motivating the other, even though human beings have become habituated to utilizing this means over a period that has thus far spanned One Hundred and Twelve Thousand years - because in this model of social interaction the personal autonomy of the other is trampled upon, it reduces that other to the status of PREY; and, I suggest, this is, and has been the major dynamo generating social conflict for all of human history.
The difficulty I face in communicating this message in precept, so that it produces the requisite cultural development, is the fact that in effect what I am doing is attempting to break cultural habits and extinguish cultural imperatives that have been practiced, exceedingly successfully practiced for a period spanning One Hundred and Twelve Thousand years, more accurately, to break a habit that is the pernicious, malignant basis for a pattern of social interaction that has been exceedingly successfully practiced for as long as members of the species Homo sapiens have existed on Planet Earth.
I am engaged in, consciously and deliberately engaged in, attempting to communicate this sere and unpopular reality to a bare majority of human beings and so overcome the ultimate paradox and consummate irony of sentient existence; the fact that the adaptation that results in sentience, the rare and intrinsically valuable adaptation that results in intelligence, is only likely to occur prompted by the cataclysmic and extreme conditions that obtain as a new planet strives to attain ecological balance; yet to preserve this transcendent and most valuable capacity those who are the recipients of this unique on Planet Earth boon must eventually engage in the most difficult and transcendent enterprise any sentient being could contemplate, conceive or embark upon, the fundamental change of renouncing and rejecting coercion as the means relied on to motivate the other; and, becoming adept at utilizing positive reinforcements for that purpose.
A little more than a year ago for the first time at last an African American was elected to the highest office in this North American republic, to the most responsible and powerful executive position that exists in the United States of America, he was elected, for the most part, because he promoted positive changes - though he carefully declined to specify what changes he was in favor of, what changes he deemed necessary to very belatedly create a government of the people, by the people, for the people; thus, the notion of positive change was tarnished, denigrated and degraded to being nothing more than another slogan, another wholly opportunistic and corrupt political device which will never again have the power to galvanize the deservedly cynical and systematically deluded body politic in this nation - though this notion will forever be the harbinger, the only possible harbinger of a peaceful and prosperous future.
It will be perceived by future generations of Americans, as long as there are future generations of Americans committed to democracy, as no more intrinsically valuable, or meaningful, or valid than the other empty promises, the other failed prescriptions, for example, that of the first President Bush who proclaimed that there would be “No New Taxes;” but it is my dearest, most cherished hope that at the end of this essay on freedom that even a single reader will comprehend that what has been the greatest obstacle to creating a functioning democracy on Planet Earth has been the fact that all elected executives have perforce been agents of coercion determined culture; that whether they have been total, complete idiots like the second President Bush or have excellent academic qualifications and a high intelligence quotient like President Obama they are totally incapable of creating enduring positive changes because they all are driven by similar cultural imperatives; moreover, I hope that my accurate description of the genesis of human culture will galvanize individuals to embark upon the journey of discovery that will transform any individual with the will, courage and stamina to complete it from being a caterpillar, a blind agent of coercion determined culture into a beautiful butterfly that has attained the status of moral, civilized being.
What I am going to attempt to do is create the accurate description of the origins and development of human culture that will be the necessary prerequisite to finding solutions for the urgent, gargantuan social problems that the human species currently confronts by exposing the sere reality - that the practice of coercion determined culture inevitably produces an incapacity to solve social problems, to apply intelligence to social issues; and, exposing and resolving this ultimate conundrum will create the possibility of happiness for human beings who are willing to do what is necessary to overcome this inevitable and thus far unavoidable laming of their intellects and so become thinking animals and moral beings.
I have accepted the challenge implicit in the analysis of Messrs John Dollard and Neal E. Miller in their watershed work “Personality and Psychotherapy:”
The ultimate goal is to combine the vitality of psychoanalysis, the rigor of the natural-science laboratory, and the facts of culture. We believe that a psychology of this kind should occupy a fundamental position in the social sciences and humanities – making it unnecessary for each of them to invent its own special assumptions about human nature and personality. (Dollard 3)
And,
The notion of “abnormal” behavior misleads many people. They think it to be the study of persons entirely different from the rest of mankind. Practically all specialists agree now that such is not the case. The very same variables which are operating in an extremely degree in mentally ill people are present in people who are not ill. Neurotic people should therefore be seen rather as a population in which the study of higher mental life is especially convenient than as a group of people different in kind from others. (Dollard 5)
Those of my readers who are immutably addicted to instant gratifications, those dependent personalities who will only support prescriptions that require little or no effort on their part, e.g. “vote for me and I will set you free,” “no new taxes,” “change we can believe in,” who cannot divest themselves of the conditioning and indoctrination that enjoins them to perceive the existing human condition from the limited, blinkered perspective of their lifetimes, those opportunists who shed tears of joy or experienced ecstasy when President Obama was elected, or those of an extremely conservative persuasion whether of the Right or Left, or those who are culturally incapable to taking responsibility for their actions, all such have my permission to cease reading at this juncture - because these ideas are probably beyond your ken they can only evoke intense disquiet and discomfort in talking animals; this is not by any means an attempt to create and concretize what Karl Rove was so adept at manipulating circumstances and events to accumulating, a plurality, a majority of voters to win an election; it is an attempt to discover if sufficient members of the species Homo sapiens have progressed morally, intellectually, philosophically and culturally to the point where they can confront and overcome the ultimate paradox and consummate irony of sentient existence and so avoid self destruction and self annihilation.
I am seeking to discover whether there exists in any social system among the numerous and disparate societies that currently exist a bare majority that can confront and overcome the ultimate paradox and consummate irony of sentient existence that I have described and so join peace loving species that have split the atom and avoided destroying their civilizations with the awesome energies they have unleashed; and so survived to become space faring peoples.
There, I have provided the means for mindless, irrational, unimaginative individuals to consign me to the garbage can which is the ultimate and final repository of apparently insane, romantic dreamers; and, simultaneously provided a justification for not taking my decidedly iconoclastic notions seriously.
Is anybody left, is there anyone who was not covered in the foregoing? I really hope there is for on these few depends the survival of the human species.
What I am going to discuss in great detail is how the culture, the ‘conscious and unconscious premises for thinking and action,’ developed the means to interminably perpetuate itself and perpetuate a status quo that was based and thus far immutably determined by the need to embrace the world view that ‘might is right,’ that was instrumental in shaping, perhaps beyond human capacity to change, the design for existence whose ethos was competition, which relied on coercion to motivate the other, whose dominant roles were territorial predator and hapless prey.
Another major aim and thrust of this analysis is to expose how human beings became prone to a near unlimited capacity for self delusion, how they were conditioned to believe notions as fantastic and incredible as the notion that equality and equity can actually, realistically exist in social systems in which perennially ninety per cent of the wealth is controlled by five per cent of the population, which is the situation that currently exists in the vast majority of economies on Planet Earth, whether they be rich or poor, ostensibly democratic or authoritarian, with the ideological window dressing capitalist or communist, whether they are in concept Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Atheist.
I am going to suggest that the human race is being hoist on the petard of the very attributes that contributed most to Homo sapiens becoming the dominant species on Planet Earth, the fact that not only was it possible for them to transmit their culture because they had a capacity for spoken and written language but because they had the capacity for learning and innovation since they were not limited to behavior driven by instincts.
Absence of instincts An instinct is a relatively complex behavior pattern biologically fixed for a species. Nest-building techniques among birds are a familiar example: they vary between species but not within species. If man possessed such biologically fixed behavior patterns, they would limit his learning and his socialization; variation and change would then be impossible.
Man has biological drives rather than instincts. A drive such as hunger or sex, is an organic tension that is felt as discomfort or impulse but does not direct behavior to specific goals or in specific ways. A drive impels activity but does not determine it in detail. That man is activated by drives rather than by biologically fixed behavior patterns makes his needs amenable to social direction. (Broom 84)
And,
THE SYMBOLIC ORDER
Of all the animals man alone has culture, because only he is capable of creating symbols. Without symbols there could be social life, as there is among other animals, but it would be rudimentary.
A symbol may be broadly defined as anything that stands for or represents something else. The word “pencil” is a symbol; it may stand for the idea of a pencil or for a specific object. The meaning of a symbol is social in origin: meaning is given to a symbol by those who use it. Thus symbols are always man-made. While words are the most common symbols, acts or objects are symbols too, for example, a threatening gesture or a river that marks a boundary.
For the purpose of understanding culture, two kinds of symbols should be distinguished, the referential and the expressive. Referential symbols are denotative, they are words or objects that have specific reference; they are instrumental. “Portable typewriter” is a referential symbol; it is a convenient way of referring to a specific class of objects.
Expressive symbols are connotative. They evoke associations that are diffuse and open-ended rather than specific and limited. The word professor denotes who holds a position on a faculty, but the same word connotes a wide range of associations, not fully specified, suggesting authority, knowledge, and wisdom, or perhaps subversion and impracticality. “Cross” denotes a physical relationship, but it connotes religious martyrdom and the perspectives of Christianity. (Broom 52)
Why am I emphasizing the fundamental building blocks required for more than a superficial appreciation of human learning and motivation?
Because I am building a logical, rational structure that will support the fact that the cultural imperatives that have resulted in one third of Americans being illiterate or semi illiterate or in the Stimulus Package had their genesis in the world view formulated during the period during which the human race languished in a ‘state of nature,’ that the ‘conscious and unconscious premises for thinking and action’ that were embraced then by the newly emergent species, Homo sapiens has undergone very little change in the vast period of time that has elapsed since the momentous emergence of a species of the genus hominid that had a capacity for language and therefore for intelligence.
This fact is obscured by the fact that there have been very significant changes in our ability to manipulate the physical environment so that members of a species that in the distant, primitive past fearfully huddled in caves with simple tools warmed by small fires has developed a sophisticated technology created by a burgeoning scientific establishment; but it must always be the central theme of this study that what I am focusing is on the degree to which we have changed; or indeed, have not changed culturally, politically or socially.
What I am suggesting is that we have learned to manipulate the physical environment to the degree where we can send a man to the moon because our approach to this milieu has been rational, logical and empirical; and we have been irrational, illogical and have ignored the facts that together constitute the existing social reality in our approach to the social milieu; our approach to the physical environment has allowed us to create the accurate description of problems that is the necessary prerequisite to finding solutions; while our mental approach to the social milieu has been dominated by the attitude ‘beliefs are opportune they conceal interests,’ a mindset which has made us palpably and perennially incapable of solving problems in this environment, creating the invidious and awesomely pernicious predicament in which we currently find ourselves; of having devised weapons of mass destruction without the social and political development required to harness these awesome energies for peaceful purposes.
At this point I might as well grasp the bothersome, exceedingly contentious nettle of religion because the religious dogma, Christianity, that is currently the established religion and most popular compendium of beliefs among citizens in Western civilizations holds that human beings were created that they did not evolve; and, the attitude that underpins this system of beliefs constitutes the single most powerful dynamo generating the irrationality that lames the intellects of contemporary human beings.
What specifically is the problems is that acceptance of the Christian dogma requires that it be approached from the perspective of blind faith, so there is a concerted attempt embedded in social systems to condition and indoctrinate human beings to this mindset; but having adopted this means of processing information this is applied in the approach to all authority figures and institutions creating the credibility, the massive delusion that perpetuates the notion that ‘might is right’ which stripped of the illusions and wholly irrational beliefs that obfuscate and buttress it could never be acceptable to contemporary human beings.
The most debilitating and depraved component of this situation is that religious leaders are well aware of the overwhelming evidence that human beings evolved but continue to promote the Creationist version of undocumented history because it allows them to continue to collect tithes and exploit the fear and ignorance of their congregations.
If human beings, if two human beings were created in the image of an all knowing and omnipotent God, and soon developed the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong, this negates and destroys the logic of this essay.
This description of the genesis of the species is not only wholly irrational it is also contradicts and dispenses with the mechanism that has been, and is fundamental to the development of all organisms in nature, where it is universally and incontrovertibly observable that acorns produce mighty oak trees, where a chicken was once an egg, where a human infant over a period of years matures into an adult human being; in short where every organism is subject to growth and development, only in the Bible is there contravention and destruction of this fundamental process of nature on Planet Earth.
I might interject here a rule of thumb, whatever policies or initiatives are conceived and imposed on the passive, unresisting, confused, oblivious majority by powerful interest groupings that are consciously or unconsciously bent on perpetuating the status quo that ‘might is right,’ what would actually support function, what would produce virtuous circles to replace the vicious circles in which we are now perennially enmeshed, is if we could find the courage and will to do the complete opposite; for example, instead of the fiscal insanity implicit in the implementation of the Stimulus Package, what would succeed in revitalizing the economy would be if there was a Constitutional Amendment which required the government to balance the national budget, to spend what it earned and precluded deficit financing of that budget and exponentially increasing over time the massive intergenerational debt which is not only the greatest single obstacle to economic viability and growth currently; but which will also deny future generations of Americans the possibility of realizing their hopes and aspirations for an adequate quality and quantity of life.
The logic of this essay depends on the perception that a theory of evolution is the most credible, logical and rational explanation of the genesis of the human species based on the facts and empirical evidence currently available, that for a period that spanned approximately One Hundred Thousand years the newly emergent species Homo sapiens languished in a ‘state of nature’ and engaged in hunting and gathering activities for survival and were little different from other groups of predators except that these were generally physically better adapted and equipped for competing for existing energy resources; attributes which were negated by the fact that the human species were mentally better adapted and developed being able to harness fire, construct and use simple tools, and utilize language to communicate with each other.
What I am suggesting is that these human beings had not yet learned the difference between right and wrong, nor had they the slightest conception or awareness of the existence of ethics or of any moral value, a situation facilitated by the adaptation which wholly opportunistically is not given the weight and significance that should be afforded it, the fact that the human mind is divided into two compartments, the conscious and subconscious which allowed the human animal to simultaneously to have a capacity for intelligence; and, simultaneously to demonstrate the savagery and ferocity required for survival in the ‘state of nature,’ they were capable of being talking animals or thinking animals and civilized human beings; but the latter condition was an unrealized potential for the entire period that human beings existed in a ‘state of nature’ it would only realistically become a possibility after many millennia of learning and experience.
I am suggesting that to survive these primitive members of the human species had no alternative but to become adept at utilizing force and became habituated to using force for a period of that spanned One Hundred Thousand years; and, this habit, thus far immutably, has determined the intrinsic nature of human culture.
During that period, a span of time currently unimaginable to human animals whose average life span is sixty five years, similar to other existing groups of predators they killed interlopers who trespassed on to their hunting grounds, the area required to support the hunting and gathering activities of the tribe; they raided other tribes to kidnap females so that the group would not be burdened with too many defectives the result of inbreeding; they satisfied their innate sex drives with available females who were always capable of having sex by coercing them unless they were mated with a strong male who could protect them; the strong had the power of life and death over the weak; and, concepts like equity, equality, justice, freedom, murder and rape were completely inconceivable and entirely foreign to them.
One of the irrational attitudes I am contending with, buttressed as always by the Creationist view of the genesis of the species, is the tendency to opportunistically and wholly unrealistically believe that our primitive ancestors possessed even a vestige of anything that accurately could be labeled civility - they were not in any sense civilized no matter to what degree Creationists opportunistically want or need them to be, or they could never have survived to become the dominant species on Planet Earth.
What I am doing is redefining the conflict that has been from time immemorial the bane of human existence, a conflict that has been perceived as being between good and evil, as being between an omnipotent, all powerful, perfect being and one of his fallen angels who was totally evil and the personification of savagery with cloven hoofs and a tail; I am suggesting that the conflict was, and is, essentially and intrinsically a cultural conflict between the design for human existence determined by reliance on coercion; and, that would be produced by reliance on positive reinforcements for that purpose, between a culture based on the world view that ‘might is right,’ whose ethos was competition, whose dominant roles were territorial predator and hapless prey which produced attitudes, ways and thinking and patterns of behavior that were valid and necessary for the survival of the species then but which have become anachronistic and exceedingly dangerous with the invention of weapons of mass destruction; and, which must be replaced if the species is to survive with a design for human existence based on the world view that ‘right is might,’ whose ethos would be cooperation, which would rely on positive reinforcements to motivate the other.
This rational and necessary development is being resisted by those who wish to preserve their positions of status and privilege, their near absolute power; their capacity to satisfy their wants, needs and desires by imposing their will on individuals who must do whatever is required to facilitate this process even if it cost them their lives; and, exceedingly ironically and paradoxically the powerful, the small elites in every social system have the unqualified, mindless support of those whom they have conditioned and indoctrinated to blind faith over countless millennia, the wretched of this earth, those whose lives senselessly and needlessly have been sacrificed on the altar of expediency down the ages, those whom would benefit most from this very positive development.
Which was possible because their minds were divided into two compartments, so that they were capable, as are all members of the species, of acting impulsively, mindlessly and irrationally; driven by blind faith; or, rationally and intelligently - a capacity and duality which the strong have deliberately, systematically and interminably exploited by ruthlessly suppressing tendencies toward rationality in the majority to perpetuate the status quo that ‘might is right,’ but my wholly justified, righteous indignation is causing me to get ahead of myself.
During the approximately One Hundred Thousand years that humanity languished in the ‘state of nature’ a design for human existence was concretized, it was neither rational nor the result of intelligent deliberation because no human being was at that time capable of rationality, of intelligent deliberation; it was composed of instrumental responses to prevailing conditions and circumstances, to very unpredictable and extreme conditions and circumstances that moreover combined to create a powerful crucible of learning.
When humanity became capable of domesticating certain animals and grasses and so escaped the limitations on the size of bands of predators created by their being dependent on existing, available energy resources; and, began to construct villages, towns and cities mostly on the fertile deltas of large rivers; and, some individuals were liberated from activities required for survival and had the time to learn other skills, e.g. metalworking, mathematics and astronomy; members of the species had powerful habits which had been successfully practiced for an extended period of time in only one area that of culture - modes of feeling and acting that shaped and determined the nature of interaction not only with other human beings but with all other organisms as evidenced and demonstrated by the slavery animals are still subject to as they languish in zoological gardens and sea worlds in this the first decade of the Twenty First century.
In every other area human beings were almost completely ignorant, naïve and uninformed since their skills and knowledge about technology, about constructing tools and shelters were almost totally non existent, most of the mental equipment they could lay claim to were the beliefs, attitudes and ways of thinking which had been determined by the harsh and extreme conditions and circumstances to which they had been subjected in the ‘state of nature,’ all that they were habituated to was the design for existence which they had successfully practiced for that currently inconceivable period of time; which was based on the world view ‘might is right,’ whose ethos was competition, which had produced the dominant roles territorial predator and hapless prey, which relied on coercion to motivate the other.
From this perspective the ease with which human beings developed and embraced innovations in the physical environment is completely logical and understandable; as is the fact that the design for existence which they had successfully practiced in that crucible has endured down the ages with only minimal, mostly cosmetic, changes.
Absolutist regimes in which an absolute ruler had the power of life and death over his subjects, whose most popular and powerful social institutions were serfdom and slavery, in which the weak were often required to surrender their all, including their lives to satisfy the needs, wants and desires of the strong, were a logical, inevitable development, especially and specifically in the fertile soil created by the conflict between city and town dwellers; and, the mobile hordes of pillagers that were spawned by human populations with the domestication of the horse, human tribes which continued to hew to a nomadic existence depending on large herds of goats, sheep or cattle for subsistence.
This is the first unmistakable, incontrovertible example of the impact of the culture learned during the One Hundred Thousand years Homo sapiens languished in the ‘state of nature,’ of how this design for existence managed to perpetuate itself always aided and abetted by conditions and circumstances.
A few human populations, notably the Greeks, briefly engaged in flirtations with less autocratic and tyrannical forms of government; but these, I suggest, reinforce the logic of this analysis of cultural development because these more gentle forms of social interaction were generated by opportunism and necessity and were initiated and promoted by the powerful elite - galvanized by the need in the Greek experience for all adult males to participate in a form of military organization, the phalanx, a formation that required a great degree of cohesion and cooperation - because of the fact that on the strength of the phalanx depended the security of the polis.
It was not prompted by any human being doing what I have done, consciously renouncing and rejecting being an agent of coercion determined culture; but was initiated by and implemented by members of the elite while the majority of Greeks continued to be talking animals, acting mindlessly and impulsively out of the subconscious compartments of their minds.
This flirtation with more democratic forms of government lasted for more than two centuries among Greek cities, a period significantly longer than the period beginning near the end of the Third Decade of the Twentieth Century when prompted by the real threat of the Nazi/Nippon Axis and later by the threat of World Communism, a segment of recent history during which elites in Western civilizations have also opportunistically been motivated to do more than pay lip service to democratic principles and actually engaged in serious albeit intellectually lamed attempts to create functioning governments of the people, by the people, and for the people.
The point needs to be made and emphasized that this ancient flirtation was not prompted by renunciation or rejection of the world view that determined the nature of coercion determined culture; nor was the modern exhalations of freedom in Western civilizations prompted by conscious appreciation and rejection of the notion that ‘might is right’ but was an opportunistic response to existing circumstances and conditions, the habits inculcated in the human species during the time it spent in the ‘state of nature’ have never been extinguished, have never been erased from the collective consciousness of human beings for the most part because of the delusion that made us, and makes us unaware and oblivious to all issues that pertain to our reliance on coercion to motivate the other.
It might be meaningful at this juncture to create a greater appreciation and comprehension of the term ‘vicious circle’ by focusing on the genesis of the sequence of events and circumstances that is currently destroying the education product in the USA, a description which will also reinforce and give credence to the notion that there is nothing new under the sun, that what we doing is repeating the mistakes of the past, over, and over, and over, again driven by cultural imperatives.
When after a long drawn out, bitter conflict schools and colleges in the USA were integrated, white parents could not accept that black teachers should be able to apply corporal punishment to their children, so this means of preserving the order and discipline required for imparting knowledge was extracted from the Public School system, which produced a situation in which fewer and fewer students learned to read and do simple sums; which in turn forced teachers to engage in certain immoral, questionable practices so that it would appear they were doing their jobs.
Over time these depraved machinations spread through the entire Public School system and became institutionalized so that an ever increasing number of teachers were involved, but were protected from opprobrium and negative sanctions by the fact that the Teacher’s Union was the most numerically powerful political organization in the USA, precipitating the vicious circle which has become the noose strangling merit and function in this nation.
To return to the description of the evolution of human culture - after One Hundred and Ten Thousand years streams of liberal, more civilized thought came together to produce the experience, the life of the man called Jesus whose experiences and sermons became the basis for the Christian dogma, a mere two thousand years ago a civilized ideology began to have a significant impact on human affairs - after a period fifty two times longer which was dominated by the world view ‘might is right’ and the design for human existence that was shaped and determined by this ideology.
Two thousand years ago the confluence of the ancient design for human existence that held that ‘might was right’ and the diametrically opposed ideas that held that ‘right is might,’ the notions of man’s equality before God which was to become the basis for the Christian dogma, produced an accommodation in which in concept human beings embraced the new, exceedingly innovative ideology but remained in precept agents of coercion determined culture.
It is of critical importance to the logic of this presentation to emphasize that this accommodation was facilitated and made possible by the fact that the minds of human beings were divided into two compartments, the conscious and subconscious; which allowed human beings to base their self esteem and notions of self worth on their adherence and participation in Christian rites and rituals, which they engaged in for brief periods on Saturday or Sunday mornings and paid lip service for the rest of the week during which period they engaged in behavior consistent with the imperatives and dictates of coercion determined culture which patterns of behavior they accurately justified and rationalized to the extent they were conscious of this inconsistency as impelled and being necessary for survival and which experiences and memories were for the most part consigned to the subconscious compartments of their minds.
This difference between concept and precept has widened over time into a massive delusion and bottomless chasm, an abyss which threatens to engulf all human aspirations for a future replete with civility, prosperity and peace; and threatens the very existence of the human species; it is the chasm beneath our feet as we negotiate a narrow, slippery path towards civility and true modernization that if ever a bare majority of human beings in the various and variegated social systems can become aware of it will prompt them to change, to embark upon the journey of discovery that will transform them from being caterpillars agents of coercion determined culture into beautiful butterflies of civilized human beings.
This chasm has become a literal Grand Canyon of culture always increasing in width and depth because this accommodation, to embrace values in concept while in precept continuing to be agents of coercion determined culture has been utilized in respect of the approach to all liberal, ethical ideologies that have been produced by conditions and circumstances; it has been utilized with respect of all moral prescriptions, socialism, democracy, communism, social welfare liberalism, existentialism, and all the others romantic liberating ideologies conceived to succor humanity from the treadmill of suffering and despair that coercion determined culture has proved to be, from the unalterably malignant, inordinately vile, and completely corrupt design for human existence precipitated and determined by existence in the ‘state of nature.’
The main component and powerful engine driving this treadmill being the vicious circle composed of embracing ethics and moral values in concept in the conscious compartment of the mind, while practicing patterns of behavior consistent with coercion determined culture awareness of which is consigned to the subconscious compartment of the mind; guilt the inevitable byproduct of this modus operandi being reduced by rituals, e.g. the marriage ceremony or by giving alms to the poor; or, by attending theaters or by watching television the modern form of guilt reduction which can be accessed and utilized by almost everyone.
The power source of this treadmill of the despair is the fact, the irreducible fact that coercion continues to be the most efficient means to satisfying innate or learned drives of the powerful, the model of social interaction based on the drama of predation in which need of the predator for energy resources is satisfied by the hapless prey as it surrenders its life remains inviolate and immutable in all social interactions; because a deluded humanity is blissfully oblivious and unaware that this is happening, if a confessed and unrepentant atheist may have the temerity to paraphrase the exclamation of Jesus in extremis, human beings always deserve forgiveness and are perennially guiltless for they know not what they do, their deluded state absolves them of all responsibility for their actions; and, extremely ironically or perhaps logically it is someone who does not believe in the supernatural who has stripped from his psyche layer by painful layer the totality of irrationality he was socialized to during the development of his personality who is doomed to futilely attempting to communicate to members of the human species that their very survival depends on their accepting responsibility for their actions and for the ultimate destiny of the human species.
What is the fundamental difference between the mental approach I espouse and that of the vast majority of human beings is that I am committed to accepting responsibility for all of my actions; and to achieve this end I am willing to endure being hooked up to a lie detector machine, renouncing my rights to self incrimination though it is certain that from such an episode I will emerge as what I am, a significantly less than perfect human being.
I am willing to do this because I KNOW that traditions, circumstances and conditions existing in the social system exist that combine to create a situation that allow any individual to get away with the most depraved, uncivilized behavior, that protect the individual from EXPOSURE, that the only thing that can preserve my exceedingly fragile morality is if I will not hone my ability to create rationalizations or justifications, or lie, or obfuscate, or stonewall, or use the technicalities created by shyster lawyers, or the power inherent in wealth or status, to escape responsibility for actions inconsistent with the dictates of my conscience because I know that it is only by telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth can I avoid my actions precipitating vicious circles for others, that this is the only way to create function, reduce conflict and precipitate virtuous circles in my life.
I know people can, and do get away with murder, with theft of millions of dollars, with rape, and continue to function because they know not what they do, I am aware that this is possible, that this is what is consistent with the intrinsic nature and imperatives of coercion determined culture but I chose peace and morality, not as a passport to heaven but to create a life more abundant for those who inhabit Planet Earth, I am willing to subordinate my individual needs, wants and desires to the attainment of the needs, wants and desires of the other and to the common good, the basis, the only enduring basis, for civility.
To demonstrate and prove what is currently culturally mandated I inflict on my readers in its entirety an Editorial that appeared in the Jamaica Observer on March 4:
No man is (worth) an island
Thursday, March 04, 2010
PRIME Minister Bruce Golding has taken the unprecedented step of putting the interest of one man above the interest of an entire nation. And history will not absolve him.
In his statement Tuesday to the Parliament, responding to the United States on the much too drawn out extradition request for Mr Christopher 'Dudus' Coke, the Tivoli Gardens strongman, Mr Golding seemed to have forgotten that politics is the art of the possible.
It is not possible to engage the United States, especially on a matter relating to allegations of criminal activities, and come out unscathed. This is not a fight to preserve Jamaican pride or even sovereignty. This is not a defence of a Jamaican national hero. This is not an enemy country that we are staring down. In fact, the US is our cherished friend and ally.
For Mr Golding to draw for the excuse that he is defending the Jamaican Constitution is pure hogwash. Neither the Jamaicans nor the Americans are buying it. There are just too many issues on which we have simply shamed our Constitution to now suddenly seem to be so concerned about upholding constitutional rights. Try telling the families of the seven girls who died at Armadale about their constitutional rights.
We, like most Jamaicans, are uncomfortable with the prime minister abrogating to himself and his minister of justice and attorney general the right to determine the outcome of a matter that should have been put to the test in the Jamaican courts.
Mr Golding should also remember that good old phrase: Two wrongs do not make a right. So even if the US illegally obtained information about allegedly illegal activities, that is not occasion for the prime minister to 'hold hard end'.
The prime minister made it clear he was willing to expend political capital in his defence of Mr Coke. That is a decision he should make in his personal capacity, not as head of a country. Jamaica cannot afford this potentially ruinous adventure.
Mr Golding needs to wake up and smell the coffee, hopefully one without caffeine. Already Jamaicans are joking that 'The ¹resident' has ordered the prime minister to speak on his behalf. Mr Coke, of course, is popularly referred to as 'The President'.
Even if it were not his intention, Mr Golding appears to be suggesting that Mr Coke is more important than the Jamaican nation; more important than our long established bonds of friendship with the United States; more important than the value of our biggest and most lucrative export market; more important than the fight against the international traffic in firearms and narcotics; more important, even, than the large number of Jamaicans killed by guns or destroyed by drugs.
We are sure, of course, that he could not mean it this way. Mr Golding is one of our brightest prime ministers yet. Perhaps, he was merely off on a temporary flight of fancy.
We have a piece of unsolicited advice for the prime minister: Sit down with Mr Coke and work out a timetable for his voluntary handing over to the US authorities. Then follow the case through to the very end, to ensure that he gets the full benefit of both Jamaican and American justice.
As I have tried to communicate on too many occasions the human species is without a future just the past happening over, and over, again as inconvertibly demonstrated by the following article that appeared in another Jamaican newspaper several years ago driven by cultural imperatives:
The individual referred to in the above piece that was published in The Star was the father of “Dudus” AND DIED UNDER VERY SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES WHILE AWAITING EXTRADICTION TO THE USA.
What I am promoting is the means, telling the truth as much as is humanly possible, as the only means to overcome the delusion which is the inevitable consequence of the practice of coercion determined culture.
And to tell the truth each individual must conclude that the other and the totality of other human beings are more important than his individual objectives and interests.
I believe that somewhere there exists a recording of President Obama engaging in completely compromising conversation with former Governor Blagojevich and I have no evidence of this except the flow of events that have denied us even the vestige of an attempt to create ‘change we could believe in,’ that this development was too delightfully low, so exquisitely timed to perpetuate the status quo that it is the only explanation that fits the facts, that the Obama Administration is gleefully extending employment benefits again and again, inculcating and indoctrinating the most susceptible segment of the work force to the notion that individuals can make a living without doing a lick of work.
Any and every species that develops intelligence, an adaptation that is only likely to occur as a planet endures the extreme and intense stresses, strains and upheavals as it strives for and eventually achieves ecological equilibrium, will only survive if it becomes adept at using force; and, if it escapes the limitations created by naturally existing energy resources, must eventually become aware of the existence of ethics and other moral values; and thereafter it is just a matter of time before that species confronts the ultimate paradox and consummate irony of sentient existence, it will only be a matter of time before the competition which is the ethos of coercion determined culture spurs the development of weapons of mass destruction and creates the abyss of self destruction that is now yawning at the feet of the human race.
I have been leading arguments which will cause me to be considered the ultimate iconoclast and destroyer of human illusions and delusions, I am doing my best to destroy the most cherished, sacred beliefs of Western civilizations and feel constrained, at this juncture, to create justifications and rationalize into the prosaic, ordinary confines of cause and effect certain critically important facts about the evolution and development of an ideology which I am certain will ignite intense animus and discomfort in the vast majority of human beings.
First and foremost I feel constrained to describe how I stumbled upon the means to rid myself of the delusion that I am now aware is the inevitable consequence of being an agent of coercion determined culture.
I made the decision to tell the truth as much as was humanly possible while drowning in the deep pit of depression occasioned by my imminent divorce, a situation made exceedingly more painful by the fact that I was myself the product of a broken home, an erstwhile, involuntary, immature victim who had sworn during the period that I myself was experiencing and impotently watching my siblings endure the most painful and debilitating components of this exceedingly traumatic experience that I would do everything in my power to ensure that my children would never be subjected to this horror - yet I had engaged in numerous affairs and infidelities made possible and facilitated by innumerable lies and deceits; and, emotionally and sexually neglected my significant other, this I guilty contemplated on that October day of the year 1975 was my contribution to this sad state of affairs.
Hence my decision to practice the discipline of truth, this was a hair shirt that my guilt prompted me to don, it was an attempt to atone for my many indiscretions and infidelities, it did not arise out of nor was it galvanized by some lofty, idealistic motive.
The first insight that proceeded from my practice of the discipline of truth was the realization of how stupid I had been to be unable to perceive what would be the inevitable consequences of sexually and emotionally neglecting a young healthy woman; moreover, I understood the reason why I had neglected her was because I had to justify and rationalize my infidelities by emphasizing and exaggerating out of all proportion her faults, and every human being who is an agent of coercion determined culture has faults this being an inevitable, unavoidable consequence of socialization to this design for existence.
If I had only known then that what was motivating me was the goading of sex, with the added attraction and stimulus of engaging in sex with new partners if I had only KNOWN what I was doing, I could have had the cake of my family, as well as eating it as I engaged in my extramarital affairs; but I had to justify my wrongdoing by emphasizing the character flaws of my spouse; and, over time and as my guilt accumulated as I engaged in more and more affairs, this opened an abyss into which eventually slipped all my hopes and aspirations for creating for my children and myself a permanent,enduring, well adjusted family life which was what I really wanted and needed.
This initial insight has been reinforced by my perception of every experience I have had since I began practicing the discipline of truth and became capable of thinking, of connecting the dots, of applying my intelligence to social issues, during this period I have become absolutely and immutably convinced that agents or institutions of coercion determined culture can only create vicious circles, that ultimately produce tragedy for its human agents; that virtuous circles are only possible, that happiness and function is only possible if, and this is a gigantic if, human beings can achieve the most fundamental and difficult cultural change conceivable.
I discovered, after practicing the discipline of truth for less than a year that the way I acted was diametrically opposed to what was my most passionate need and desire, to protect my children from the pain and dislocation that was the inevitable, unavoidable consequence of the divorce of their parents.
The Stimulus Package is certain to have the same long term impact on the American economy, one that is diametrically opposed to what is the stated objective of most Americans, the revitalization of this nation’s economy - yet no one perceives this to the degree that would required to averting this calamity.
The impact the Stimulus package has had is to ensure that there were no massive layoffs in national and state governments that the political hacks that form an ever increasing percentage of the bureaucracy after six decades of pork barrel government would retain their high salaries and benefit packages that they would continue to administer an increasingly corrupt and woefully inefficient system that grew out of elected politicians rewarding their supporters, those who did what was required to win an election, those who made donations, manned phones, distributed fliers, canvassed voters etc. by giving them preferential access to government jobs and contracts.
With these individuals the emphasis is not on serving the needs of the public by completing the contract on time and under budget, or, performing their jobs competently and productively, but winning elections; this is what will decide their destinies, something they have already accomplished that got them the cushy government job or contract; and, activities they will again be required to engage in, in say four years or so.
What its impact is on the economy is to contribute to creating the Nine Trillion dollar projected national debt which is a massive disincentive to investment, increased production and revitalization of the American economy - that members of the Obama Administration cannot perceive this is incontrovertible evidence that they are as blind as I was before I began to practice the discipline of truth; and, one more item of evidence that a massive delusion is the inevitable consequence of the practice of coercion determined culture.
The issue that has consumed my existence for all the years since early 1976, is how much truth must I tell to continue to know what I am doing, so that my mental acuity and problem solving capabilities will continue to increase as I struggle and strive to satisfy my needs for food, shelter and clothing in social systems whose design for existence is coercion determined culture.
This is, for me, an insoluble dilemma which I have been unsuccessfully struggling with for more than thirty years – if I were to do what is necessary to make a living, to attain and sustain an adequate quality and quantity of life I would soon lose the capacity to understand the consequences and implications of my actions, I would soon lose the capacity to KNOW what I was doing; but if I tell the truth and do the right thing it is inevitable that I will experience bouts of poverty, homelessness and the isolation and loneliness that is the inevitable consequence of these dread social diseases.
Attacking the sacred, completely irrational religious beliefs of agents of Western civilization can only worsen a bad situation and I am totally seized with the enormity of what I am attempting to do, I have always been seized with the magnitude of my dilemma but it is something about which I can do nothing, that only can be resolved by a bare majority of human beings in some social system, hopefully the one in which I reside, determining to tell the truth until they can overcome the laming of their intellects the inevitable unavoidable consequence of being agents of coercion culture; and, become capable of applying their intelligence to social issues.
One benchmark of belief and credibility established by the Christian dogma is that human beings must accept based solely on the report of one authority, the Holy Bible, that winged creatures of light formed a heavenly choir that announced the coming of a Messiah, an event which incredibly and mysteriously is not recorded in the reports of any other historian of the period.
Even the religious event reportedly experienced by Constantine some three centuries later, he is reported to seeing a heavenly vision that instructed him that under the symbol of the cross he would conquer, is more credible because this event is mentioned in more than one history of the period.
And then there is the matter of casual treatment of creation of sixty billion suns and their attendant planets in the Bible, all this rated was half a line:
18. And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also. (Genesis Chap 1, Verse 16)
The sixty billion suns were an afterthought in this description, from a rational perspective if the creation of Planet Earth required six days and each sun had five attendant planets, just five mind you, that would mean three hundred billion celestial bodies to create and if each required six days what we are talking about is something of a much greater magnitude than the afterthought, “he made the stars also.”
It is clear that the Bible is, at best, a poor, woefully inaccurate history of the Jewish people constructed by well intentioned but ignorant and clueless men.
If this documentation of human experiences had been inspired by an all powerful and all knowing God this would have had to have been reflected in what was written by those who were galvanized to produce this momentous and exceedingly popular document, but they instead have exposed their fears, their frailties, their abysmal ignorance and lack of knowledge of the physical milieu.
The issue is - am I trying to integrate into the fabric of social relations the knowledge that would create function and progress to replace the dysfunction and anomie that currently pervades social systems that have attempted to reduce the degree and extent to which coercion overt or covert can be applied to citizens, or, am I just an insane, unrealistic dreamer?
Am I a lone voice seeing the necessity for cultural change swimming alone against the tide of human history or one of the few rational voices able to perceive the existing social reality?
Gunnar Myrdal the noted social scientist who identified, specified and accurately described “The American Dilemma” at the outset of his watershed work the “Asian Drama” made a plea that has been largely ignored a plea that required scientists, seekers after truth to remove the beam from their eyes:
A Plea for a Sociology of Knowledge
Through the pursuit of social study, human beings and their interrelations in society, like other natural phenomena, are increasingly brought under scientific observation and analysis. What is scientific and can justify its being called “social science” is its underlying assumption that the way an individual in a society feels, thinks, and acts is not a singular and haphazard phenomenon but one with definite causes and effects. Contained in this assumption is the idea that if we had complete knowledge, every state or change of mind and body could be fully explained and related to every other phenomenon in the world. We would know not only how people feel, think, and behave, but why they feel, think, and behave as they do, and with what consequences for themselves and for others. Without ever approaching such total knowledge, we attack our problems on that assumption and organize our findings accordingly, in terms of observed regularity and causal necessity.
Proceeding along these lines, the social sciences are now penetrating every corner of society and every phase of human life. Taboos are gradually being broken down. Their destruction in order to rationalize common sense has become a major ail of Western social science. (Myrdal 5)
And,
Thus we economists and other social scientists are now studying intensively how people behave, and how they are motivated and then conditioned both by their inherited constitution and by their environment.
Only about the peculiar behavior of our own profession do we choose to remain naïve. How we as scientists operate in seeking to establish knowledge is largely shielded from the searchlight of social study. But, surely, though we are seeking truth, we are not less conditioned by our mental make-up and the society in which we live and work than are other men. Social scientists are human; some, as we know, are “all too human.” (Myrdal 6)
In a later work “The Challenge of World Poverty” Professor Myrdal registers an even more scathing criticism of the objectivity, biased thinking and irrationality of the decisions made by contemporary human beings under the heading:
CLEANSING THE APPROACH FROM BIASES
To reach rational conclusions on a policy program for the planning of development of underdeveloped countries we need – aside from relevant and significant value premises that are explicitly accounted for – a realistic conception of conditions in underdeveloped countries. It is my view that our conceptions of underdevelopment, development, and development planning as presented in most of the scientific and popular economic literature and, still more ominously, in the Plans of the underdeveloped countries, is heavily biased in a direction that is basically opportunistic. Our policy conclusions, therefore, are founded upon ideas about reality that are systematically, though unintentionally, falsified.
This should not be surprising. There is a tendency for all knowledge, like all ignorance, to deviate from truth in an opportunistic direction.
The fact that conceptions about reality, and ideologies and theories, are influenced by the interests as commonly perceived by the dominant groups in the society where they are formed, and that they so come to deviate from truth in a direction opportune to these interests, is easily seen and, in fact, taken for granted when we look back at an earlier period in history. But in our own intellectual endeavors we ordinarily preserve a naïve non – awareness about such influences working on our minds – as, indeed, people have done in every earlier epoch of history.
We believe – as they did and with equal firmness – that we are simply factual, basing ourselves on observation of reality when we think, argue and conclude. A first precondition when trying to unfetter our minds from biases in order to reach a truer appreciation of reality is to see clearly the opportunistic interests affecting our search for truth and to understand how they operate. In this attempt to overcome naiveté, a backward look becomes helpful. (Myrdal 3)
I am determined not to mince words but to create the accurate description of the problem that is the necessary prerequisite to finding solutions and to give meaning to that resolution I must bluntly state that the major cause of the tragedy unfolding in the USA is the opportunistic, biased, deluded thinking that has been the basis for the policies of the government.
It is as if the President, the Congress, the print and electronic media began to believe, out of an overweening and self serving opportunism, out of the desire to be politically correct the spin they put on their failure to know what they doing and used this spin to formulate policies that inevitably made a bad situation worst, this intellectual approach was the alchemy that created the catastrophe that this nation now faces, which is still not being taken seriously enough, there is still a tendency to be fiddling while Rome burns though all the gains of the past few decades have gone a glimmering.
I came here on the 22nd August, 1984 and after a decade began to sound the tocsin, to attempt to warn Americans of the impending tragedy, the catastrophe they were bringing down on themselves by their irrational, depraved actions; again and again I quoted Gunnar Myrdal and was comprehensively and contemptuously ignored by a nation that it was clear had not the slightest clue of the future destruction, pain and suffering they were inflicting on themselves; and, on future generations of Americans:
In the classic conception of drama – as in the theoretical phase of a scientific study – the will of the actors was confined in the shackles of determinism. The outcome at the final curtain was predetermined by the opening up of the drama in the first act, accounting for all the conditions and causes of later developments. The protagonist carried his ultimate fate in his soul, while he was groping for his destiny. In life, while the drama is still unfolding – as in the practical phase of a study, when policy inferences are drawn from value premises as well as from premises based on empirical evidence – the will is instead assumed to be free, within limits, to choose between alternative courses of action. History, then, is not taken to be predetermined, but within the power of man to shape. And the drama thus conceived is not necessarily tragedy. (Myrdal 35)
It is as if Americans were absolutely convinced that they were special, that none of the rules that governed cause and effect applied to them, that they had transcended the laws of supply and demand, that they could eschew hard work, that they could dispense with the notion that merit had any value, that truth and morality had any place in the scheme of things; and still remain the richest nation on Planet Earth and interminably lay claim to the status of superpower.
And, most lamentably, this mindset persists even though they have succeeded in destroying the middleclass, lost millions of jobs to nations with superior investment climates, and lost millions of homes to foreclosure.
I want to make it abundantly clear that there will be no recovery until this mindset; this freeness mentality is expunged from the nation’s consciousness.
What is the destiny of this American nation, founded so optimistically on the notion that all men are created equal? Is it obscurity and abject poverty? Is it destined to vanish from the world stage and be consigned to the rubbish heap of a has-been that never was a functioning democracy?
My problem is that I suspect that in the same way that President Obama has denigrated the notion of positive change by transforming it into a wholly opportunistic political device, the failure of the USA will result in the demise of democracy; and this dire outcome must be avoided whatever the cost.
So I must persevere and use all the mental acuity produced by telling the truth as much as humanly possible to create so accurate a description of the existing social reality that this will become a beam of light so intense that it penetrates the miasma of delusion that has been created during the past two thousand years by the ever increasing difference between concept and precept as human beings strove to fashion an accommodation between the Christian dogma and the sere reality of coercion determined culture, later between democratic ideals and the ideology that ‘might is right,’ and between the romantic ideals of socialists and communists and the ‘conscious and unconscious premises for thinking and action’ to which human beings became habituated during the One Hundred Thousand years that they languished in the ‘state of nature.’
To this end I inflict upon those determined readers who are still with me a description of the laming of intellect produced by intense societal conflict?
WHAT IS A NEUROSIS?
Most people, even scientists, are vague about neurosis. Neither the neurotic victim no those who know him seem able to state precisely what is involved. The victim feels a mysterious malady, mysterious because he is capable of acting yet he is unable to act and enjoy. Though physically capable of attaining sex rewards, he is anesthetic; though capable of aggression, he is meek; though capable of affection, he is cold and unresponsive. ‘As seen by the outside witness, the neurotic does not make use of the obvious opportunities for satisfaction which life offers him.
TO BE EXPLAINED: MISERY, STUPIDITY, SYMPTOMS
The therapist confronts a person who is miserable, stupid (In some ways), and who has symptoms. These are the three major factors to be accounted for. Why is he miserable, in what curious way is he stupid, and whence arise the symptoms? The waiting room of every psychiatric clinic is crowded with patients showing these common signs.
Neurotic Misery Is Real
Neurotic misery is real – not imaginary. Observers, not understanding the neurotic conflict, often belittle the suffering of neurotics and confuse neurosis with malingering. Neurotic habits are forced upon an individual by peculiar conditions of life and are not cheap attempts to escape duty and responsibility. In most cases the misery is attested by many specific complaints. These complaints or symptoms differ with each category of neurosis but sleeplessness, restlessness, irritability, sexual inhibitions, distaste for life, lack of clear personal goals, phobias, headaches, and irrational fears are among the most common ones.
At times the depth of the misery of the neurotic is concealed by his symptoms. Only when they are withdrawn does his true anguish appear. Occasionally the misery will be private, not easily visible to outside observers because friends and relatives are ringed around the neurotic person and prevent observation of his pain. In still other cases, the neurotic person is miserable but apathetic. He has lost even the hope that complaining and attracting attention will be helpful. However this may be, if the neurotic takes the usual risks of life he is miserable. He suffers if he attempts to love, marry, and be a parent. He fails if he tries to work responsibly and independently. His social relations tend to be invaded by peculiar demands and conditions. Neurotic misery is thus often masked by the protective conditions of life (as in childhood) and appears only when the individual has to “go it on his own.”
Conflict produces misery. Suffering so intense as that shown by neurotics must have powerful causes, and it does. The neurotic is miserable because he is in conflict. As a usual thing two or more strong drives are operating in him and producing incompatible responses. Strongly driven to approach and as strongly to flee, he is not able to act to reduce either of the conflicting drives. These drives therefore remain dammed up, active, and nagging.
Where such a drive conflict is conscious there is no problem in convincing anyone why it should produce misery. If we picture a very hungry man confronting food which he knows to be poisoned, we can understand that he is driven on the one hand by hunger and on the other by fear. He oscillates at some distance from the tempting food, fearing to grasp but unable to leave. Everyone understands immediately the turmoil produced by such a conflict of hunger and fear.
Many people remember from their adolescence the tension of a strong sex conflict. Primary sex responses heightened by imaginative elaboration are met by intense fear. Though usually not allowed to talk about such matters, children sometimes can, and the misery they reveal is one of the most serious prices exacted of adolescents in our culture. That this conflict is acquired and not innate was shown by Margaret Mead in her brilliant book “Coming of Age in Samoa” (1928). It is also agonizingly depicted in a novel by Vardis Fisher (1932).
Our third example of conscious conflict shows anger pitted against fear. In the early part of the war, an officer, newly commissioned from civilian life and without the habits of the professional soldier, was sent to an Army post. There he met a superior officer who decided to make an example of some minor mistake. The ranking officer lectured and berated the subordinate, refusing to let him speak and explain his behavior. He made him stand at attention against the wall for half an hour while this lecture going on. The new-made officer quaked in fearful conflict. He detected the sadistic satisfaction which his superior got in dressing him down. He had never so much wanted to kill anyone. On the other hand, the junior officer felt the strong pressure of his own conscience to be a competent soldier and some real fear about what the consequence of assault might be. We met him shortly after this episode, and he still shook with rage when he described the experience. There was no doubt in his mind but that bearing strong, conflicting drives is one of the most severe causes of misery.
Repression Causes Stupidity
In each of the above cases, however, the individual could eventually solve his conflict. The hungry man could find nourishing food; the sex- tortured adolescent could eventually marry; the new officer could and did avoid his punishing superior.
With the neurotic this is not the case. He is not able to solve his conflict even with the passage of time. Though obviously intelligent in some ways, he is stupid in-so-far as his neurotic conflict is concerned. This stupidity is not an over-all affair, however. It is really a stupid area in the mind of a person who is quite intelligent in other respects. For some reason he cannot use his head on his neurotic conflicts.
Though the neurotic is sure he is miserable and is vocal about his symptoms, he is vague about what it is within him that could produce such painful effects. The fact that the neurotic cannot describe his own conflicts has been the source of great confusion in dealing with him either in terms of scientific theory or in terms of clinical practice. Nor can the therapist immediately spot these areas of stupidity. Only after extensive study of the patient’s life can the areas of repression be clearly identified. Then the surprising fact emerges that the competing drives which afflict the neurotic person are not labeled. He has no language to describe the conflicting forces within him.
Without language and adequate labeling the higher mental processes cannot function. When these processes are knocked out by repression, the person cannot guide himself by mental means to a resolution of his conflict. Since the neurotic cannot help himself, he must have the help of others if he is to be helped at all – though millions today their lives in strong neurotic pain and never get help. The neurotic, therefore, is, or appears to be stupid because he is unable to use his mind in dealing with certain of his problems. He feels that someone should help, but he does not know how to ask for help since he does not know what his problem is. He may feel aggrieved that he is suffering, but he cannot explain his case.
If it is not already clear I am making the case that American society is neurotic, it is experiencing high levels of conflict, it has symptoms high levels of crime, drug abuse, and divorce rates, as well as low levels of labor productivity AND THE PALPABLE INABILITY TO SOCIALIZE ITS YOUNG TO THE ATTITUDES AND APTITUDES REQUIRED FOR SOCIETAL FUNCTION. In solving problems in the physical environment it demonstrates extremely high levels of intelligence and creativity; yet it is stupid in certain areas specifically and particularly in the area of human motivation.
This neurosis was induced by reducing the degree and extent to which coercion in any form overt or covert could be applied to citizens without creating an alternative means of galvanizing the patterns of behavior necessary for societal function, order and progress.
My penchant for telling the truth and doing the right thing is taking the human species where it has never been before, into the world beyond relying on coercion to motivate the other, a world in which peace on earth becomes more than a romantic, unrealistic ideal but a real potential and possibility for human animals.
Until two thousand years ago the conflict between human beings and, between human beings and the other organisms that inhabited Planet Earth was external; but when members of the human species discovered ethics the conflict was internalized it began to be waged inside the mind, the intellect and emotions of every human being; in other words all human beings began to be afflicted by neuroses to some degree, this conflict became so intense that it began to seriously affect societal functioning and be apparent with the spread and strengthening of democratic principles and ideals and this resulted in significant reductions in the degree and extent coercion could be applied to citizens.
Approximately two thousand years ago the species discovered ethics and individuals began to experience guilt at applying coercion to the other, simultaneously; the weak began to be aware and identify that they were experiencing degradation, shame and humiliation; or more accurately, these drives could be labeled and these feelings were accepted as wrong by the majority of human beings.
All of this was a consequence of the struggle between the culture determined by existence in the ‘state of nature’ and the aspirations towards civility learned by human beings.
I have said that the power to satisfy drives by applying coercion, both its actuality and the threat of coercion, was the most functional means of achieving drive reduction; but over time the most cherished aspiration of human beings became freedom, the right of choice the right of personal autonomy.
So that what an individual wanted in satisfying his needs, wants and desires is that the other must do whatever was necessary to assist him to achieve this objective, simultaneously his most cherished aspiration was that his personal autonomy never, ever be compromised.
The right to self determination over time began to be so valued that to deny the right to chose to other human beings was inconsistent with self esteem and self worth but reliance on coercion was so deeply embedded in attitudes and institutions of every social system that individuals could not consciously apply it giving rise to the situation that I have described and to neuroses, which in certain situations began to affect function, such a situation being the reduction in the degree and extent to which coercion could be applied; or, any social or political force majeure or upheaval e.g. riots, revolutions, precipitating change in governments; or, for individuals the loss of the means to make a living, or, a major natural disaster that affected access to food and shelter.
Until a scant three hundred years in the past unlimited coercion was applied and was the engine that galvanized progress and was the basis for function and societal order, in the years since limits have been placed on the extent and degree that overt or covert coercion could be applied to citizens, as individuals, groups including minorities traversed the arduous journey from subject to citizen.
The point I am laboriously trying to make is that Americans were, and are oblivious in precept of the impact this reduction in motivation would inevitably have on societal functioning, no one can connect the dots to see that high divorce rates, the breakdown in family life, the inability to educate the young, low labor productivity; that all these problems are the result of low levels of motivation.
Further evidence of what I am suggesting is the near chaos that has been the experience in the nations that existed in relative peace and stability behind and beneath an Iron Curtain under the treads of Russian tanks and boots; and, the near chaos that occurred in the Balkan States and in Russia itself in the wake of the break up of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
It is clear, at least to me, that a level of conflict existed in every human being subsequent to the discovery of ethics but this did not affect the ability to function in that human being except in certain stressful circumstances, during periods of normality guilt could be reduced by engaging in rituals as I have described.
The same is true of collections of human beings, of nations and what I am describing is in its totality is the accurate description of the social reality that is the necessary prerequisite to the solution of social problems.
For example, if the problem in education in the USA is overcrowding in the schools, is the number of ethnic minorities in the schools, is the lack of equipment in the schools, the spin given to this problem by politicians who cannot describe the problem realistically because it would mean embarrassing and confronting the Teachers Union, this problem will never be solved as it has not been, it will continue to grow more and more serious and debilitating for the nation as a whole.
In the same way if the loss of jobs is caused by greed of investors, or lack of patriotism in investors, or, the immorality of capitalists, it too will never be solved as it never has been solved; but if, as I suggest, it is simply a matter of factors of production gravitating to locations where they receive the greatest profit; and, the cause of this is a cultural incapacity to overcome poverty and equality created by cultural traditions and imperatives diametrically opposed to the realization of democratic ideals and aspirations then the problem can be solved albeit by the extremely difficult enterprise of engaging in the most fundamental cultural change conceivable the substitution of positive reinforcements for coercion as the means relied on to motivate the other.
Last week CNN examined the fact that government in the USA is broken which I did not watch but I will bet dollars to doughnuts that in none of these programs was the issue of culture examined except in a generic sense; nor, was emphasized the contentious issue of human motivation.
In a country which was once committed to the profit motive, where a lot of people are aware in theory that factors of production move to the area in which these attract the most profit, there is little awareness of the critical importance of adequate levels of motivation to galvanizing patterns of behavior critical for societal function.
Nor is it understood the massive ambivalence affecting those who constitute the government whom to overcome poverty must preside over the liquidation of their hegemony and power, they must emancipate the poor which effectively means diminishing the means they have utilized from time immemorial to satisfy their wants, needs and desires a response which they are culturally incapable of, and will continue to be incapable of doing unless and until they consciously reject and renounce being agents of coercion based culture, a term that I have never succeeded in communicating to anyone which is nonetheless an accurate description and label for the design for human existence that the vast majority of human beings embrace in precept, whatever they are in concept.
That the degree and extent to which coercion could be applied to any individual was reduced without creating an alternative means of motivating the attitudes and patterns of behavior required for societal functioning, order and progress is proof by itself and in itself that the massive delusion that I have referred to exists.
Adequate motivation should be at the center of the discussion of how to revitalize the American economy, of how to improve the education product, of how to lower divorce rates, of how to resurrect family life from the doldrums in which it now exists, of how to actually reduce the cost of health care, that it is rarely mentioned or considered in the national dialogue is incontrovertible, undeniable evidence that there exists areas of stupidity in the collective American psyche.
Before further examining the genesis of this perceived delusion, the totality of areas of stupidly I would like to examine further in some detail the mechanisms of suppression and repression:
The Mechanism of Suppression
The mechanism of repression can best be understood after a brief discussion of a somewhat similar mechanism, suppression, that is a much more familiar part of everyday experience. A group of people are engaged in pleasant conversation at a party. Somehow the topic is introduced of people who have recently had strokes or heart attacks. Quite a few cases are known by different members of the group. This is a painful subject; it raises the general level of anxiety of everyone present. Finally someone says, “How did we ever get on this gruesome subject? Let’s talk about something else!” The topic of conversation is changed and everyone feels relieved. According to our principles, the reduction in anxiety should tend to reinforce the responses of making the suggestion and changing of the topic of conversation. In general this seems to be true; people tend to learn to avoid unpleasant topics of conversation.
There are apparent exceptions and it would be worthwhile to study these. Sometimes the reinforcement for talking about something unpleasant obviously lies in an invidious comparison with those who are unfortunate; at other times it may involve the indirect expression of aggression or factors such as those already discussed in the previous chapter under the heading of how a symptom may be reinforced in spite of being maladaptive.
The process of avoiding painful topics can be highly self-conscious and verbalized as it was in this example and is when one reminds himself not to talk to Mr. X about politics or tries to put the thoughts that prevent sleeping out of one’s mind by counting sheep. In this case the process is called suppression.
The same thing also tends to occur automatically. For example, there was a good deal of discussion in intellectual circles about the atomic bomb immediately after the war. This topic tended to arouse anxiety. Under present conditions of world politics, there seemed to be no practicable way to reduce this anxiety by making and following through any plan of action. Thus the anxiety persisted until the topic of conversation was changed. Often the change occurred inadvertently, without any verbal statement or thought about the desirability of change. Nevertheless the reinforcing effect of the reduction in anxiety was automatic so that the change tended to occur sooner and sooner until the atomic bomb was crowded out of many people’s conversations and thoughts.
When one is slightly worried or tense, sports, reading, and recreation help to crowd the painful thoughts out of one’s mind and thus tend to produce a reinforcing reduction in the painful drive. For example many people read in order to relax before going to bed and are more likely to read when they feel particularly anxious, nervous, or guilty.
Where changing to a new subject is a response to a verbal suggestion, as it was in the first example, another verbal suggestion can elicit a change back to the old subject. Many of the more automatic habits of changing the subject can also be reversed by motivations that are under verbal control. Thus a soldier may strongly dislike to discuss his combat experiences and have learned the habit of not thinking about them but can be made to talk about them if he wants to please the interviewer.
The Mechanism of Repression
Repression is similar to suppression except it is much more strongly motivated and is automatic; that is, the patient does not say “I want to repress this.” Because it is not under the control of verbal cues and is so strongly motivated, it is not within the patient’s power to revoke. The patient may try to remember but be unable to, just as someone who is afraid of high places may try to jump across a narrow gap at a great height but may involuntarily come to a halt at the brink. According to out analysis, repression is the symptom of avoiding certain thoughts; it is reinforced by drive reduction in exactly the same way as the symptoms that have already been discussed.
Some of the clearest examples of repression are the amnesias of men with combat neuroses. In these cases the therapists know the events have recently occurred and often can learn the specific conditions from the man’s comrades. They also know that the patient cannot remember these events; often they see him struggling hard to try to fill in the gaps. Finally they know that the amnesia is functional rather than organic because the patient can be made to remember by pentothal. In the light of these facts, there is no doubt about the reality of repression in such cases.
We would analyze the learning of this repression in the following way: During combat the soldier is being stimulated by many external cues. He is also producing internal cues by his perceptual responses, his labeling of the salient features of what is going on, and his thoughts about what he is doing. The traumatic conditions in combat attach strong fear to all these cues. This fear generalizes to other similar cures, and the stronger it is the wider it generalizes.
Later when the soldier starts to think about what has happened, his memories, or, to speak more exactly, his thoughts and the images they provoke, are cues similar to the ones that were present in combat. Hence these thoughts and images evoke extreme fear.
As soon as the soldier stops thinking about his experience in combat, the cues eliciting the fear are removed and the fear is reduced. This marked reduction in the strength of fear strongly reinforces the response of stopping thinking. In mild cases this produces a disinclination to think and talk about combat; in severe cases it produces a complete inability to think or talk about the experience.
We would expect the response of stopping thinking to tend to become anticipatory like any other strongly reinforced response. Therefore the patient should tend to stop thinking, or veer off onto a different line of thought, before he reaches the memory of the traumatic incident. He should learn to avoid not only thoughts about the fear-provoking incident but also the associations leading to those thoughts. (Dollard 199)
This, I suggest, is the approach that the vast majority of human beings in this nation and throughout the world who have been conditioned to apply to social problems; and, before I use the same authority to describe the mindset that I stumbled upon as a consequence of telling the truth as much as was humanly possible I want to expand on an idea which is essential to the logic of this presentation.
Earlier I spoke of human beings who perceived the social reality from the perspective of the blinkered experiences of their lifetimes a period during which individuals in Western civilizations have enjoyed greater freedoms and a better standard of living than at any time in human history.
I am constrained to emphasize that this may not be enduring, that this was precipitated by the threat of Nazi domination and the threat of World Communism and may not endure; further, that the only way to ensure that there is a long term commitment to create societies based on the ideology ‘right is might’ is if the human species confronts the ultimate paradox and consummate irony of sentient existence that I have described and move beyond irrationality and the blindness created by the laming of their intellects.
To expand this concept even further, even the pretend democracies of Western civilizations in which there have been serious attempts to legislate morality and reduce the extent and degree to which coercion in any form can be applied to citizens, are in the minority currently on Planet Earth; and, in China very likely the next superpower, or, which in fact is the only current superpower an individual in charge of quality control was executed for failing to do his job, a harbinger of what the future holds for the human species if democracy is discredited as has been the attempt to create ‘change we can believe in’ under the stewardship of the Obama Administration.
And while the description of the mechanism of repression is fresh in our mind I would like to examine some consequences of the laming of our intellects, most importantly and critically, that it destroys the desire to adapt, to progress.
For example, Christianity has been the major religion in Western Civilizations for Two Thousand years yet there are very few Christians in the various denominations; moreover, these organizations have adopted the attitudes, ways of thinking, and patterns of behavior of western culture to a greater degree than they have changed this design for human existence as evidenced by the fact that Roman Catholic priests have abused minor male children and instead of being transparent about this criminal activity this Church has been engaged in a cover up and in paying off victims; even as I write a Roman Catholic Bishop in Ireland is under siege for his part in this cover up.
From a rational perspective prostitution is prostitution no matter when the money is paid, if money is paid for sexual services when these are rendered or for that matter coerced, it is little different for paying for such services after a judgment awarding damages to victims by a court, or if millions of dollars are paid to forestall court actions, it is still prostitution; and, it still reeks of the notion ‘might is right’ if the penalty for the sexual abuse of minor male children is money with which the Roman Catholic Church is amply supplied from the collection of tithes.
Further, even a cursory examination of the operations of churches whatever their dogma reveals that there are as venal and money grubbing as any commercial company, though they pay no taxes.
Christianity has failed abjectly to overcome poverty and improve the lot of the wretched of this earth, this is indisputable and the failure is a direct consequence of a failure to create ideas adequate to the existing reality.
The same could be said of democracy, it has failed for the same reason, to fulfill its early promises to address and overcome poverty.
This attitude, the tendency to persevere with failed initiatives is a ubiquitous and pervasive characteristic as we continue to fight a war on drugs; and spend billions of dollars annually to prosecute a war that it is patently obvious that we have lost.
The same is true of education, what was the richest nation in the world has proved incapable of educating its young, but cannot accurately describe the problem so the secular decline in the education product continues apace.
This would cause us to conclude, if we were collectively capable of rational and logical conclusions to comprehend that in concept we want to create a functioning democracy, that in concept we want to educate our young, to prosecute the war on drugs; and become Christians so that we will achieve eternal life; but in precept what we are really about is perpetuating the status quo based on the notion that ‘might is right’ and the destruction of the education product, the use of drugs, the failure of democracy; and most of all the failure of Christianity are necessary components to achieving this end.
We need to take this analysis further, when the rights of citizens were paid more than lip service; and, these rights began to be supported in the legal system detectives in major metropolitan areas with some justification could claim that justice had become a merry go round for as soon as drug dealers and other offender were incarcerated shyster lawyers would have them back on the streets so in these circumstances why not accept the gigantic bribes offered by these dealers in illicit substances?
The point I am making is that the justifications and rationalizations that permitted law enforcement personnel, detectives and judges, to be on the ‘sheet’ and act diametrically opposed to their sworn oaths to serve and protect, also made these individuals incapable of being the check and balance required in a functioning democracy.
If this analysis also applies to members of the teaching profession it will begin to be clear the difficulties and obstacles that exist to creating ‘change we can believe in’ and why the corruption that everyone is aware exists within the Washington Beltway cannot be reduced, it is because this is a cultural problem, not confined to any individual, group or class or any geographic area; but is a problem deeply embedded in the attitudes and institutions of coercion determined culture.
The most meaningful lines of poetry I ever wrote declaim:
Where lies brawl on a barren, which to believe.
In the news, in the pronouncements of politicians, or business or religious leaders, or anyone involved in the interminable and unending competition for power and advantage is anyone seriously trying to create the accurate description of the existing social reality that is the necessary prerequisite to the solution of social problems or they justifying and rationalizing their actions or putting the organization they represent in the best possible light?
Is not clear that representing an individual or organization as perfect, while criticizing and finding fault with those competing organizations can never produce the accurate description of social reality required to overcome the massive problems we face?
For example, at different times I have admitted to a deep respect for the achievement of the Israeli people, I have boasted of being trained in that country; at other times I had the temerity to state that the Jews are stealing Palestine from the Palestinians while the world looks on blinded by the fact that Jews control international banking institutions.
In a world in which Democrats never criticize their party, or Republicans their party, in which Catholics find nothing but virtue in that religious organization, in which this is true of supporters of any and every organization, the objective view should not only be refreshing it should be absolutely persuasive, especially when it is reinforced by the fact that on so many occasions I have accurately predicted the future; that it is not is another incontrovertible proof that the delusion no one admits to actually exists.
The popular belief is that if only we could eliminate the corruption that exists within the Washington Beltway we would be able to overcome the urgent social problems that beset this nation; this perception is completely false the fundamental problem is a design for human existence, an ancient design for human existence that is unalterably malignant, inordinately vile and completely depraved.
Always in my quest to become a moral being I have been a minority of one, two years after I began working for Esso West Indies Limited in their Kingston Refinery I became the only, the one and only individual who worked on shift who was not pilfering gasoline.
I was even more isolated when I left that well paying job to become a Union Officer employed to the National Workers Union, industrial relations peace and harmony in precept depended on accommodations reached between employers and union leaders, the basis for this accommodation was the fact that the employers controlled the means to win elections, in terms of financial contributions; and the most powerful unions were the power bases of the two major political parties; the other component of this accommodation was that union officers were paid salaries that they could barely subsist upon; and, again employers were able to provide access to a better quality of life.
In this milieu my uncompromising integrity was a two edged sword, I was popular because the workers I represented received justice, but in contract negotiations because the means relied on to improve the quality of life of workers was redistribution of the wealth as opposed to creating wealth - as I performed this component of my job I was accused of prosecuting strikes to the last drop of the workers’ blood, this comment being made by no less a person than my boss, the then Island Supervisor of the National Workers Union, Senator Carlyle Dunkley.
This situation became so intense as to be unbearable and unsupportable as the policy of then Prime Minister Michael Manley that the Government should own and did come to own ‘the commanding heights of the Jamaican economy’ created a situation in which the Government employed more and more union members and I was the Negotiating Officer for significant numbers of workers employed in Public Utilities.
I do believe that my sojourn in Israel was prompted by the need to ensure that I would be absent during negotiations with the Public Utility that had the monopoly on generating electricity island wide as for any other reason.
But it was while sitting in the small park in Tel Aviv that contained the sculpture that memorialized the lives lost in the Munich Massacre, a basalt figure carved out of black stone that depicted the eternal struggle between good and evil, that I made the life changing decision to tell the truth as much as was humanly possible no matter what the consequences were for myself or for others for the rest of my life.
It was during my stay in the land of the Bible that I was trained to be a catalyst of cultural change and was exposed to the ‘modernization ideals’ created by Gunnar Myrdal and the approach to positive development that he espoused; and, most importantly it was impressed upon me that positive change was possible as I observed the desert blooming and toured models of positive development e.g. Ashdod that exemplified what could be achieved but the implementation of comprehensive, integrated programs of development.
Given my intense romantic idealism I could be excused for believing based on these fortuitous turn of events and circumstances, buttressed by a vision of my future I had over a decade earlier that I would lose everything of economic, social and emotional value in my life and travel to foreign country and become involved in a struggle to change the world, that I was the Other Comforter prophesied by Jesus:
16. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever.
17. Even the Spirit of truth,; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. (St John Chapter 14)
On the completion of my course of study at what was then the Afro Asian Institute I returned to Jamaica and witnessed the impact of positive reinforcements, of an open ended system of rewards in the only project for which I had sole responsibility and for which I played the role of Change Agent.
The successful implementation of that project was facilitated by an extremely innovative system of rewards created by members of the management of Esso West Indies Limited which had two components, the first being the successful translation of the hourly rate traditionally paid to workers into a tonnage rate.
The second component was the unprecedented revelation by the Esso management that they hired the Motor Vessel “Caribe” for $1200/hr and further that any demurrage costs that resulted from increases in the loading rate above the norm of eight tons per hour would be shared equally among the gang of stevedores.
Galvanized by this system of rewards the gang of stevedores who were also members and owners of the precooperative that was formed and subsequently registered to be the legal contracting entity in the operation, eventually attained a loading rate of twenty four tons per hours, and latterly loaded the Motor Vessel at a rate of thirty two tons per hour, a development more spectacular because the “Caribe” was loaded by American stevedores in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with a cargo similar in every respect at a rate of thirty six tons per hour, the closest Jamaican productivity has ever been to the productivity demonstrated by their American counterparts.
Also as this drama of unrivalled, unprecedented functionality unfolded in this microcosm of Jamaican society, a conflict bordering on civil war raged in the superstructure; and, a not insignificant number of the stevedores, who were seasonal workers and engaged in other activities some covertly criminal when there was no ship at the dock to be loaded, were frontline fighters for the two political tribes engaged in that conflict but submerged their differences to achieve this incredible, Herculean feat.
Moreover, not only did unparalleled cooperation result from the application of the open ended system of rewards between the members of the two political tribes contending for power in the decade of the Seventies on the island of Jamaica, I was also privileged to observe an significantly increased level of cooperation and trust develop between members of the management of a transnational Company; and, the members of the Cooperative.
Any objective examination and scrutiny of that halcyon, troubled period in my nation’s replete and redolent with tragedy history will reveal that I was extremely adept at creating tsunamis of industrial unrest in the interests of workers, that a near unlimited reservoir of mistrust, resentment, perceived exploitation and animus existed among the working class that I had successfully tapped on several occasions, a working class that I was openly courting because I believed that I would only be happy, that I would only overcome the difference created by uncompromising morality; and the isolation and loneliness this precipitated – if I could garner the support, adulation and love of a million Jamaicans.
Imagine my shock when I discovered in a meeting that this reservoir had been emptied by the Esso management by their just and equitable treatment of the group of stevedores.
This new level of harmony and cooperation was again demonstrated by the reduction of pilfering by the stevedores and their cohorts of the cans of lube oil which could very easily be translated into cash.
Formerly this transfer of this eminently salable material had been accomplished by individuals in canoes who congregated around the Motor Vessel whenever it was in port; I had observed this practice and knew that it was a nettle that I would have to grasp but this became unnecessary when any action on my part was preempted but opinion leaders among the group whose influence significantly reduced but never completely erased this evil.
I was so impressed by this development that I decided to experiment with positive reinforcements, to see what impact this would have on my personal, private interactions with other human beings.
It is said that every society has a cultural focus, a sphere of existence that is of paramount importance; if each individual also has a cultural focus or Achilles heel then for me that would be my relations with the opposite sex.
The reason I would assign to this is the fact that I was abandoned by my mother as I approached adolescence and discovered as I endured that tumultuous and chaotic period of my life that girls could provide the contact, the affection, the intimacy that was so lacking in my life; and, even as I strived to satisfy my burgeoning sex drive I was ambivalent because I was also trying to satisfy my need for affection.
It is this ambivalence that made me a hopelessly incurable romantic seeking an ideal a dream of love that has never come true, it was this ambivalence that restrained, idealized and injected a note of unrealism into my attempts to satisfy my lust.
My significant other as I began to approach the epiphany in my life that was precipitated by my decision to adopt positive reinforcements as the means I relied on to motivate the other was Latha Yvonne Anderson, the mother of my third child.
She had a habit of reading before going to sleep; and, when I desired sex I was wont to fuss with her to put the book down and focus on satisfying my needs resulting in relations that were unfulfilling and unsatisfactory.
I decided on another approach as an initial excursion into interaction based on positive reinforcements, instead of pressuring her I became affectionate and did things I knew turned her on, at some point in these proceedings she closed her book, went and performed her absolutions and returned to engage in sexual relations that convinced me of how totally inadequate coercion in any form was.
As time passed I refined this approach as I became more and more adept at utilizing positive reinforcements and passed a point of nor return one evening into the Turntable Club when a woman with whom I had been patient and caring took hold of me, said it was time for us to leave, took me to her bed where she literally screwed my brains out.
Thereafter, again and again, was demonstrated to me the difference between the willing participation of the other; and, what had been the story of my past life, the grudging, coerced participation of the other.
I passed another milestone in my journey of discovery when I became capable of being faithful, which became possible when I decided to extend the discipline of truth to the issue of infidelity, when I decided that I would report of incidents of promiscuity to my significant other as soon as they occurred without fail.
With the capacity for total fidelity came the realization that I had overly emphasized the faults of females to justify and rationalize my promiscuity; moreover, I saw with emancipating sight the extent to which the need to dissemble and obfuscate had affected my ability to commit to the women that I had chosen; and, became capable of loving another human being.
But even as I was achieving this moral and philosophical development my penchant for telling the truth and uncompromisingly doing the right thing was making it impossible for me to make a living, I began to experience periods of want and poverty which was impossible to inflict on women, to have them share; and, to satisfy my sex drive I was reduced to having relations who were more and more wholly incapable of sustaining the type of relationship I yearned for.
And my practice of the discipline of truth had caused me to be able to identify evasions, lies and deceits for what they were, a capacity enhanced by the fact that I was myself more and more habituated and more and more capable of total fidelity.
Once I observed it, once I witnessed the body language of a human being as they dissembled I was immediately aware in the future whenever they were dissembling, an ability incompatible with my economic circumstances that made me incapable of supporting the long term relationship or courting a woman who was mature enough and well enough adjusted to participate in a relationship based on honesty and truth.
So I decided to abstain from sex and soon discovered that this was impossible, that what was possible because the goading of sex had the same properties as food deprivation, that it would not could not be interminably denied, that what was possible was that I could in this dimension of my life I could reject and renounce the roles of predator or prey only if I masturbated precipitating yet another milestone in my journey of discovery.
And I was well aware of the consequences, the dire consequences of this sacrifice:
Example of the problem of masturbation. Masturbation presents a special problem to the therapist because it is a response that frequently occurs and produces a marked reduction in drive but is not the socially most desirable form of sexual adaptation. It is an inferior form of adaptation because it removes one of the strong rewards from marriage which seems to provide the best all round basis for personal adjustment.
If the patient has too much fear to try any heterosexual responses, masturbation may be good as the first step toward the goal of normal sexual behavior. When the patient first tries masturbation, the orgasm produced in this way will reward the general attempt to try sexual behavior, help to define the goal, and give the patient a good chance to discover and extinguish some of his fears of sex. We will expect this extinction to generalize and tend to weaken the fear motivating the inhibition of heterosexual behavior. On the other hand if the therapist shows any signs of disapproval at this stage, he will strengthen the patient’s fear, and this fear will tend to generalize to all forms of sexual behavior.
If the therapist allows masturbation to become established as more than a transitional habit, it will become so strongly reinforced that it may be hard to abandon. Furthermore it will tend to keep the sex drive so low that the heterosexual responses never can become stronger than their inhibitions. Finally, the patient may be having undesirable phantasies during masturbation. Associating the strong sexual reward of the orgasm with the cues involved in these phantasies may increase his appetite for childish, perverse, or extramarital sexual outlets. (Dollard 387)
Perhaps the greatest sacrifice I have made deliberately and with malice of forethought directed at myself is to chart a course of action that would mean that a dream of love I have cherished since adolescence will never come true, more than the poverty, the homelessness, the shame and humiliation, and the loneliness I have suffered in my attempt to create a world in which incidents of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man were a rare exception rather than the rule, this has occasioned pain beyond relief.
All this to keep a promise I made to two small children who were already dead, who could never know the lengths I have gone to in the attempt to build a fitting memorial to their meaningless, senseless deaths.
It might be helpful to examine the depth of my commitment to this promise when set against the empty promises of politicians, especially of the most recent recantation of our current President who has proved that all he is capable of changing is the address of his office from the Capitol to the White House.
And I knew exactly what was in store for me as evidenced by a poem I wrote in 1976:
These hands may shape
After these eyes water, straining to see;
This mouth has tasted, the acid of defeat;
These ears have heard, the last, despairing cry;
Of a body, broken, on the rack of life.
These hands may shape,
Out of this gestalt of poverty, degradation
and desperation;
A form of perfect beauty;
And find PEACE.
I state again for emphasis that coercion determined culture perpetuates itself by making it impossible for any individual to satisfy any drive without playing the role of predator or prey.
I have abstained from sex with women from 23rd April, 1993, a period spanning sixteen years, and, I make this point not to shock or enlist the sympathy of my readers, those who are still with me but to introduce the fantastic notion that the only way that I could have learned about the intrinsic nature of human culture is by telling the truth and doing the right thing; and despite being incapable of satisfying any drive, any normal human need, want or desire continue to function and analyze my experiences as well as avoiding being interred in any of the custodial institutions in which those who dare to be different, to which any individual who dares to reject and renounce coercion determined culture is, sooner or later, consigned.
I am constrained to reiterate that not only are we socialized to embrace the unalterably malignant, inordinately vile and completely depraved design for human existence that is coercion determined culture as children, as we learn not to be snitches and the other lessons that impel us to consign memories of our own inadequacies as well as those of others around us to the subconscious compartments of our minds, that teach us to suppress and repress material, to embrace moral values in concept even as we continue to be agents of coercion determined culture in precept; but this conditioning continues in adulthood where as a seal is rewarded with fish when he competently performs the trick being taught by his handler, we cannot satisfy any drive without playing the role of predator or prey, we are inevitably consigned to existence replete and redolent with poverty and want unless we are prepared to endure the delusion and laming of the intellect that is the inevitable consequence of the practice of coercion determined culture.
I have never encountered anyone who was aware that telling the truth increases mental acuity, in the same way that I never met any colleague in the refinery who could resist the temptation to pilfer gasoline; or, any telephone international operator who had successfully resisted the temptation to provide access to friends to long distance calls for which they were not billed.
Keep in mind that I represented the workers employed to the Jamaica Telephone Company for two years; also relevant is the fact that Frank Serpico never encountered any detective in the city of New York who was not on the take.
How can we spend billions of dollars annually on the war on drugs yet these illicit substances continue to easily available everywhere; and, we do not adapt we do not change our modus operandi in the face of this failure?
How can it be that in what was once the richest nation in the world we are incapable of educating our children, precipitating a situation in which one third of all Americans are illiterate or semi illiterate?
How can it be that we are oblivious of the need for motivation, that we have reduced the degree and extent to which coercion in any form could be applied to citizens – without creating an alternative means of motivating the patterns of behavior necessary for societal order, functioning and progress?
How are we oblivious of the fact that the low levels of motivation is the cause of the dysfunction in ever social institution, it is the cause of low labor productivity, of high rates of divorce, of the breakdown in family life, of the inability of the government to govern?
There is only one explanation for this dire situation; that is that the foregoing is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth; that the accommodation that I referred to actually occurred creating an ever increasing chasm between concept and precept which has become a massive delusion that is shared by all members of the human species, EXCEPT FOR ME.
For the majority for most of human history scenes that produced intense fear as described in the description of the experience in combat zones were commonplace, individuals were consigned to the rack for daring to state that the heresy that the world was round, executions were public and Highwaymen in the accepted cradle of democracy were left to rot on highways and byways as object lessons for those who might be tempted by their circumstances to engage in that gainful, illegal employment.
It is most dangerous to confuse the freedoms currently available in Western civilizations with enduring liberty or social development, or utilize this as the basis to assume that coercion determined culture is less virulent, that it is less a monolithic powerful presence in the lives of the vast majority of human beings.
There are now forty three million illiterate or semi illiterate Americans based on certain unconfirmed reports, to me this is the locomotive, the powerful locomotive that is leaving the station of pretend, opportunistic democracy behind and taking the human species back to a future in which as in the past, as is the experience in most countries worldwide, human beings are easy prey because they were and are denied access to education.
Further, I wish to suggest that the majority of contemporary human beings are Christians because they were exposed to that dogma at such an early age, during that period when they were most susceptible to indoctrination, when they had not developed the means to edit information inflicted on them, it could not be because it has worked for it has not, it could not be because we are any nearer to creating societies in which ‘right is might’ because it is patently and unmistakably obvious that we are not, could it be that the Christian Church is just another agency perpetuating the status quo that ‘might is right,’ like the Democratic and Republican Parties in the USA?
Much is said about brainwashing in Communist countries, little is said about the brainwashing and indoctrination that the young in Western civilizations are subjected to.
Having attached these codicils to the wisdom of my authority, my Bible if you will, let us return to the different mindset that I am suggesting that I have adopted; and which would produce function and the enduring social development that would produce a viable future for the human species the first step towards this being, towards accomplishing the requisite cultural change being rejecting and renouncing the mechanisms of suppression an d repression and embracing a diametrically opposed approach to social reality:
FREE ASSOCIATION – PERMISSIVENESS AND THE COMPULSION TO UTTER
Repression interferes with the neurotic’s higher mental processes and prevents him from using these effectively in solving his emotional problems. This repression was learned in a social situation in which fear, shame, or guilt were attached to certain spoken words and generalized from them to thoughts. In therapy a new type of social situation is created, the opposite of that responsible for the learning of repression. In this new type of social situation the patient is urged to say whatever comes into his mind and to be especially sure to resist suppressing those words that he finds himself afraid, ashamed, or reluctant to say. As the patient says words that provoke fear or shame, the therapist does not punish him or show any signs of disapproval; he remains warm and accepting. In this way, the fear, shame, and guilt attached to talking about tabooed topics are extinguished. This extinction generalizes from speaking to thinking. It also generalizes from the painful but not completely repressed topics that are discussed to similar topics that could not be discussed because they were repressed. As the drives motivating repression are weakened by such generalization, it becomes possible to talk about those additional topics that had been weakly repressed, and another cycle of extinction and generalization is initiated. Thus repression is gradually unlearned under permissive social conditions that are the opposite to the punitive ones under which it was learned. This is the general outline of the procedure; the specific steps will now be discussed in more detail.
New conditions permit new learning. We may ask why does the patient not unlearn repression for himself and shake off its hampering effects alone? The answer seems to be that the ordinary conditions of social life favor the learning of repression and favor maintaining it in those who have already learned it. Unless some new circumstances can be brought to bear on the problem, the patient will continue to live his distorted life until its end without relief from neurotic tension.
The therapeutic situation which Freud hit upon after considerable trial and error (Freud, 1924, Vo. I, pp. 225 – 254) is arranged so that anxiety can be steadily weakened by extinction. As anxiety is reduced, the repressed sentences gradually become articulate. This situation is different from that of childhood in that it is vastly more permissive of free speech and free naming of emotional factors. The constricting conditions of childhood learning are reversed.
Free Association: the Compulsion to utter
The first of the new conditions of learning imposed on the patient is that of free association. Under the rule of free association the patient is required to say everything that comes to mind immediately, to resist and abandon the etiquette of the ordinary conversation. He is not to reject any thought whatever, be it trivial, personal, embarrassing, obscene, aggressive, or fanciful. The patient is to try hardest to say that which is most difficult. He is to resist the ordinary constraints of logic, and he is not to try for a connected narrative account. If imageal responses occur, he is to describe them since they may be the cues to which emotional responses are attached by primitive mechanisms. In short he is to say immediately what comes to his mind, using his voice to describe what occurs on the stage of the mind much as a radio announcer might give a play-by-play account of a game to his unseeing audience.
The rule of free association is not a mere invitation to speak freely. It is an absolute obligation which is the foundation of the therapeutic situation. It is a compulsion which has some of the rigor of any compulsion. This rule defines the “patient’s work” which is to drive ruthlessly through to the pronouncement of sentences which may evoke a sickening anxiety. The rule is a force which is applied against the force of neurotic fear. (Dollard 241)
At this point I would like to interject the observation that the man called Jesus developed a gigantic intellect because all the foregoing was encapsulated in the maxim “the truth will make you free.”
Also the ritual of the Confessional that is based on the following is very similar and must have been critical to preserving the mental health of human beings down the ages who live is social systems so oppressive and repressive to be inconceivable to anyone alive today:
1 John 1:9 (NIV) If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Again for emphasis I am constrained to make the point that the permissiveness demonstrated by the ruling elite in the postwar period of the Twentieth Century was opportunistic, a response to the threat of Communism, not in any way indicative that the cultural change that I am promoting has occurred but it did have a trickle down effect and impacted all aspects of human existence.
Social class differences The two types of socialization are not randomly distributed in society, but are correlated with social – economic level and education. For many years there was debate over whether blue-collar workers or the middle class were more repressive in socializing their children. Some of this disagreement seems to have reflected historical changes in middle-class socialization, and perhaps romantic images of working-class warmth and “freedom.” However that may be. The evidence indicates that repressive socialization is now more characteristic of the working class. Participatory socialization is more likely to be found among middle-class families where in recent years the trend in parent-child relations has been toward greater permissiveness and warmth.
When asked what a good mother does, middle-class mothers emphasized understanding the child, relating lovingly to him, and making sure that he is happy and contented. Working- class mothers stressed keeping the child neat and clean, training to regularity, and getting him to obey and respect adults. (Broom 101)
As I have stated before I am a product of a broken home and this was one of too numerous to mention positive circumstances in terms of my being able to be capable of the world view that ‘right is might.’
After my mother migrated to the USA my father continued to do what he was habituated to do before she left, after work he joined his friends at some watering hole and he never came home.
I grew in a middle class household and had access to a good education but he word permissiveness does not begin to describe my situation because I was on my own as far as the forces that shaped my world view from a very early age.
The essential difference between my poor self, and I am one of the poorest people so the pun is intended, is that no one has ever been able to cause me to believe anything by applying a sanction or offering a reward.
For example, the so called Christian Church caused human beings to believe, or, pretend to believe that the world was flat because if anyone voiced that heresy he, or she, might find themselves on the rack or suffering some other exquisite torture up to and including being executed.
Let us together look at life in Seventeenth Century England a mere four hundred years ago in what is popularly accepted to be the cradle of democracy:
Convicts provided another steady source of white labor. The harsh feudal laws of England recognized three hundred capital crimes. Typical hanging offences included: picking a pocket for more than a shilling; shoplifting to the value of five shillings; stealing a horse or a sheep; poaching rabbits on a gentleman’s estate. Offences for which the punishment prescribed by law was transportation comprised the stealing of cloth, burning stacks of corn, the maiming and killing of cattle, hindering custom officers in the execution of their duty, and corrupt legal practices. Proposals made in1664 would have banished to the colonies all vagrants, rogues and idlers, petty thieves, gipsies, and loose persons frequenting unlicensed brothels. A piteous petition in 1667 prayed for transportation instead of the death sentence for a wife convicted of stealing goods valued at three shillings and four pence. In 1745 transportation was the penalty for the theft of a silver spoon and a gold watch. One year after the emancipation of the Negro slaves, transportation was the penalty for trade union activity. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that there was some connection between the law and the labor needs of the plantations, and the marvel is that so few people ended up in the colonies overseas. (Williams 12)
Certain ideas are implicit in this essay that it might be helpful to make explicit, first of all, I have written this same essay in that it had the same message and often used the same authorities on numerous occasions but this is different because the American ship of state is now navigating the reefs and shoals of bankruptcy for the very reasons that I have been warning about, the doom that I started proclaiming in 1996 is now coming to pass; and, I entertain the hope that a bare majority of individuals in this nation are more amenable to considering the inadequacies I have listed again and again; for example, that hard work is essential to the creation of wealth, as is merit and MORALITY.
So I am pulling out the stops and trying to create a form of perfect beauty, one that comprehensively and in great detail covers all the bases, even if that means inflicting on my readers, I do hope I still have some readers, lengthy quotes from authorities; especially I am quoting authorities in the hope of convincing someone, anyone, that these are not my ideas, they are ideas, many adduced by AMERICANS, that have around for a long time but which are now relevant to the crisis that now confronts us; and, no longer can be ignored as the boring advice of theorists and academics.
I want someone, anyone to appreciate that when I refer to Seventeenth Century England the implication is that if the adults, the subjects in that nation had not yet begun the arduous journey for subject to citizen, consider the plight of the children of that nation, how constricting, the degree to which they were treated as easy prey.
When I refer to the differences in approach by members of disparate social classes in the USA I am attempting to reinforce the point that attempts to create a functioning democracy in this nation were opportunistic, that even these increases in permissiveness had a different impact, an elitist impact so that some groups benefited more; further I am trying to communicate how fragile the plant that is democracy is from the perspective of its impact on the human species; that it only the elites in North America, Europe and Australia that have IN CONCEPT really have any idea of what democracy implies and that the decline in the education product in the USA will become a locomotive reinventing the good old days of Absolutism.
Moreover, if the laws were oppressive in England consider the state of rights in Russia during this period, or France, of Spain; we do not need to delve to closely into the situation of personal autonomy among individuals who lived in China or in any of the Middle Eastern countries where women were routinely stoned to death for committing the sin of adultery.
Suppose the conclusion implicit in the foregoing is accurate, that all the human beings on Planet Earth continue to be agents of coercion determined culture in precept whatever ideology they embrace in concept?
Let us examine what this means when taking into consideration an incident in which I was personally involved.
I have said that no sanction, legal or otherwise, has ever been applied to any human being for pilfering gasoline since that valuable product began to flow into tanks constructed specifically for that purpose at the end of 1963; this observation also applies to the period after the refinery was purchased by the Government of Jamaica and Petrojam replaced Exxon as the corporate entity operating the refinery.
But that is not to say that nobody was ever caught stealing gasoline, in fact I was not only present when Clive Sang was observed by the Customs Officer whose motorcar was licensed “AD 1” but I drove that individual’s car into the refinery and relieved him on the Control Board while he went to fill his tank of gasoline.
I was never questioned as to my role in this incident because when I drove up to the gate Clive pretended to be his brother Herman who was the Shift Supervisor on duty and authorized the entry of the car into the gated compound.
Further, it was common knowledge, if unofficial knowledge that I never, that I was the only refinery technician who never engaged in this practice.
Clive was caught but never punished; but some time later he was called to a meeting with a high ranking member of management who advised him that because of this incident he had no future with the Company and it were best he resign quietly which he did.
I say again for emphasis that during the period from the end of 1963 onwards all shift personnel have pilfered gasoline without any legal sanctions being applied.
I want to state further that during the period that I attended the Davie Campus of the Broward Community College every Instructor but two engaged in questionable practices that permitted students who were unqualified to pass a wide variety of courses.
I refer again to the experience of Frank Serpico, a detective in New York, which indicates that most, if not all the detectives in that city were on the ‘sheet.’
What I am trying to prove is that every human being has a price, that every human being if the opportunity presents itself will act corruptly, that immorality is a ubiquitous cultural characteristic, that the belief that most human beings are honest is wholly irrational and totally inaccurate, in my experience in, and outside, the workplace; and, I need to state again that for six years I was a Union Officer representing workers in varied and variegated enterprises, that a search for an honest individual would be an exercise in total futility, if I am not counted and I began to be close to being completely honest in the last decade.
For example, in the last few years despite my attempting to be scrupulously honest, I have connected the television in my room to both the cable and the internet without advising the Company providing those services which would have resulted in a charge for so doing.
The point I am so laboriously making is that corruption is more widespread than generally believed among groups of human beings; among teachers, detectives, judges, politicians; and, among ordinary men and women.
The word more widespread does not do justice to the abyss I am arguing exists between concept and precept in human societies but what I am counting on to create an appreciation of that chasm is the fact that every reader who is still with me, who has not concluded that I am completely insane, has facts available to them.
In the schools you have attended, in the churches or other social organizations you are a member of, on your job, how many honest men or women are there, how many are above participating in corrupt practices?
I have written this essay more than a hundred times, the fundamental message has not change; that all social problems would disappear if a bare majority of human beings told the truth and did the right thing as much as was humanly possible; what has changed is that more and more it is clear that society, without an adequate level of coercion is becoming more and more dysfunctional.
My only hope is that before I die one of these essays will catch the eye of a bare majority of human beings somewhere; they will see the role played by reliance on coercion in shaping and determining human culture and in precipitating the poverty, hunger and suffering that deny the vast majority of human beings the possibility of happiness.
But I have another faint hope, that someone among the elite will break ranks; and, when I saw the editorial in the Jamaica Observer I discerned immediately how it could be manipulated to cause the earth to stand still, to cause human beings to break with their primitive past and belatedly exist the ‘state of nature.’
I believe that corruption is widespread among politicians nationwide, that the wiretapping of telephones would not only trigger the impeachment of Governor Blagojevich but of the vast majority of practicing politicians.
I believe that that incident was used to, in the vernacular, slow the roll of President Obama; and, that if he were to confirm this, if he were to accept the healing powers of the compulsion to utter he would perform a unparalleled, completely unprecedented service for the human species, he could cause the Planet Earth to stand still; and, by redeeming the notion that there can be functioning governments of the people, by the people, for the people – all he has to do is accept that this nation is vastly more important then the reputation of any one man, he could shatter the delusion that has denied, and is denying the wretched of this earth the possibility of happiness.
I want every one of my readers to appreciate that I am not in any way or in any form repressed, my intellect is not lamed; and, that allows me to be rational and intelligent in my approach to any and every issue.
I can state that I would never have been able to make this contribution to the survival and to creating a future for members of my species if I had been blessed with a large penis, but the fact that my maternal grandfather was full Chinese and that I am six feet and one inch tall with a body that weighed more than two hundred pounds, that of a heavyweight fighter, emphasizes my lack of endowment.
I remember with a clarity undiminished by the passage of time my intense humiliation at the laughter this evoked in a young boy in Dragon’s Gym where I was learning to box, I do believe that he was “Shrimpy” Clarke who was later to make a name for himself in the lightweight division but his unconcealed disdain ensured that my brief career as an amateur boxer was very prematurely ended.
What is the fundamental issue here, it is that human beings can be made to believe anything if by believing or pretending to believe they are rewarded or avoid some sanction, in anticipation of a promotion a man will allow his boss to have sexual relations with his wife, to keep her job a woman will submit to lust of her employer, every human being has a price and for many after the first compromise the price is lower and lower until eventually every semblance of independence or morality has been erased.
The difference with me probably because of some lack in my socialization is that I cannot be conditioned; I cannot be made to believe anything based on anticipation of reward or to escape punishment there is just not enough poverty, or homelessness, or loneliness, or degradation in the world to compromise my principles.
I continue to see things as they are despite the jobs I have lost for telling the truth and doing the right thing, the bouts of being homeless are to me badges of honor proof of my integrity, that no matter ‘how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll’ I would never, never accept the senseless, meaningless deaths of the two small children who died in the Fire at Orange Lane, that to create a fitting memorial to their lives I will never cease trying to change the world into one in which incidents of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man become the exception not the rule as these are today.
What I am positing is that the human species adopt a new, rational design for existence which relies on positive reinforcements to motivate the other; that to facilitate this very positive development a bare majority in every social system must become aware of the value of telling the truth and doing the right thing by actually experiencing that this will overcome the laming of their intellects and allow them to apply the gift of intelligence to SOCIAL ISSUES as against applying this only to problems that exist in the physical universe.
Reward and punishment play a part in all learning, but one rather than the other may be stressed. Repressive socialization emphasizes punishing wrong behavior, participatory socialization rewards and thus reinforces good behavior. In toilet training, for example, parents may be on the lookout for mishaps to admonish; or they may ignore mishaps and concentrate on praising instances of self-control and compliance.
If the modes of socialization are compared with the laboratory conditioning of animals, repressive socialization is similar to administering an electric shock to an experimental rat when he takes a wrong turn in a maze. Participatory socialization is like giving the rat a pellet of food when he selects the right path. Both forms of conditioning extinguish “wrong” behavior, one by the negative act of punishment, the other by the positive act of reward. (Broom 100)
Many of the quotes including the foregoing were culled by me for an introductory text in Sociology with adapted readings written by Leonard Broom and Philip Selznick which was first published in 1955, another text that I am relying on is “Personality and Psychotherapy” by John Dollard and Neale Miller which was copyrighted in 1950 yet these ideas have had little more than a cosmetic impact on the practice of coercion based culture; which is further reinforcement of my argument that innovations in social sciences are adopted in concept while in precept the practice of coercion determined culture continues unabated to rabidly and malignantly impact human affairs.
The point I am making is that this design for human existence produces a quality and quantity of life that is fundamentally inequitable and unjust, one that no modern individual would admit to being an agent of; one that can only be perpetuated and sustained if the agent does not know what he, or she, is doing, if the agent is unconscious of the dire consequences and inevitably tragic implications of what he is doing yet it was practiced, successfully practiced for One Hundred and Ten Thousand years and created habits deeply embedded in attitudes and institutions that could not be easily extinguished.
I would even concede that the ethos of competition worked in terms of creating rapid technological development; but this situation contained the seeds of destruction in the form of weapons of mass destruction.
We have attempted to turn the other cheek and establish the equality of all men before and omnipotent god, we have engaged in violent revolutions to change the ownership in the modes of production, we have without success tried to create governments of the people, by the people, for the people yet none of the these ideologies has had any significant impact on a seemingly irreducible fact, that for every moment of history human societies have benefited a small elite while the majority experienced poverty; what I am suggesting is that reliance on coercion to motivate the other has produced tragedy and without it we are becalmed incapable of social development; but just as it has produced poverty, misery and suffering that which is diametrically opposed positive reinforcements will produce the means to create social systems replete and redolent with prosperity and peace; and, in attempting this all we have to lose is the chains that encumber our psyches that have proved more durable and enduring than the shackles that were struck from our bodies with the emancipation of slaves.
I am suggesting that if we can make the rational choice of rejecting and renouncing coercion as the means relied on to motivate action, in one fell swoop we could create a culture of child rearing that would not produce intellects that are lamed by repression, a design for human existence in which individuals would not be constrained but liberated; and, so be able to apply their intelligence to social issues.
We would disable the engine generating conflict between individuals, groups, and nations and create the level of cooperation that would create a viable, prosperous future for the human species.
We would increase exponentially, liberate and HARNESS the creativity and energies of citizens to national plows and create the productive capacity necessary for producing an adequate quality and quantity of life for all citizens.
We could create the possibility of happiness for members of the human race.
I enjoin and entreat human beings everywhere to join me in the transcendent enterprise of creating peace on earth and goodwill among men by creating open ended systems of reward for all actors on the human stage.
I ask you to follow my example of forgiveness and charity based on the certain knowledge that the practice of coercion determined culture produced legitimate grievances for individuals, groups and nations which must now be overcome, not be repressing these, but by confronting these and so moving beyond the ‘state of nature’ in which ‘might is right’ and ushering a new, civilized era predicated on the notion that ‘right is might.’
Let us do our very utmost to bring about a day when the Earth really, actually stands still socially and politically, a day when we divest ourselves of the attitudes and institutions that we learned in the ‘state of nature’ by realizing that these why we are denied the possibility of happiness and enter a brand new world, a world replete and redolent with peace and prosperity.
Bibliography
Sociology, A Text with Adapted Readings by Leonard Broom and Philip Selznick, Fourth Edition, a Harper International Edition published in 1968.
Personality and Psychotherapy, An Analysis in Terms of Learning, Thinking and Culture by John Dollard and Neal E. Miller published by the McGraw-Hill Book Company Inc. copyright 1950, Third Printing, November 1965.
Asian Drama, An Inquiry Into the Poverty of Nations, A Twentieth Century Fund Study published by Pantheon a Division of Random House Copyright 1968,
The Challenge of World Poverty, A World Anti-Poverty Program in Outline by Gunnar Myrdal Copyright 1970 originally published by Pantheon Books in 1970.
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