Big Think

Conservatism is Unnatural

People look back on the societies of the past with a type of amused superiority. They wonder how we could have ever been so silly. Without even a consideration of what it means to live in a present as a product of its past, it’s as if they have no doubt of their perfection. Despite this commonality it remains difficult to affect change in this flesh bound paradigm. To have opinions different that the norm is to be branded as having some form of deficiency. People who currently look at the human condition with even minimal awareness can see it as lacking. Yet we do or are capable of nothing to facilitate any change. Why? Is it that we hide our alternate views from others for fear of persecution? Is it that the change that is required is too great to be formulated, packaged and distributed, except perhaps through the acceptance of a religion or other collective movement? Of course, you can’t start an alternate religion or political party either. Politicians who stir the pot don’t get voted in and if they do, they’ll shortly be killed by professionals just doing their job. Start a religion and you’re immediately reduced to a loony, likely to be killed by anyone and perhaps rightly so. You are, regardless, no less dead either way. So the most common way to affect change is to find how to change yourself and then share the knowledge with others, leading by example. The widespread individual shift becomes the social shift. (Enter the Author, Preacher, Teacher, Artist.) If ideas and concepts are understood in networks of relations, can an ideal series of correlations be achieved? Attempts to do so by outside influence are the domain of social engineering, whether or not those influences are clandestine. New paradigms in our understanding of the evolution of everything have led to the development of new concepts and the redefining of old ones. Continuously and with an increasing rate of intention there have been large scale shifts in "what people know." In, for example: psychology, technology, politic, economy, ecology, bio, chem, geo, socio, this list includes nearly every subject. Unfortunately, the surge of "society as an organism" thinking lends itself to find controls, whether or not it seeks them. We can then use these controls for our own detriment or gain. Interesting that by also studying other societal systems, like that of insects, we can see that there are illogical steps taken to cause systems of a counterproductive nature to fail, or force change. In other words, if an ant colony is getting too big it will sacrifice a part of itself for the good of the whole. That is not the nature of our conundrum for we, lest we forget, are the species that doesn’t always work in its better interests. We can, at the least, gain an ability to recognize when we’re being handed our hat. (Anti-Social Engineering...) In this chapter we will further diverge from the new-age or psychological efforts of those who lay claim to the pathway of Authentic Self. None of them removing their own blinders to look at sociology and history with a reasonable philosophical eye. We will begin to understand the influence of Social Norms as well as their difference from eXperiential Norms. (The S and the X are underlined to remind you that these are the terms under Paradigm in the philosophy generator.) In the generator, P is split into either X or S. This means that paradigms can be only from Social Norms or eXperiential norms. They have to be one or the other, they cannot be both. In symbolic logic the word "or" is expressed as a lower case "v" so we now can symbolize: P = (X v S) If it’s paradigm it’s either experiential or social. This is an idea old as Aristotle, we’re just redefining terms to examine a current phenomenon. Think of it as "either I eXperienced it myself or somebody told me so." (There is little room for arguing that "being told so" is, in itself, an experience. It is, but without the direct stimulation of the actual experience, you are without proof. We will cover this paradox in greater detail soon enough.) Change always waits until the last minute. Whatever shift is required will only occur when it becomes a necessity. In a natural system the preceding (repeated) statement is true. This means we can deduce that change is a necessity. If there is human interference then change can be created, destroyed, controlled, etc. It was this realization that caused the "first" Enlightenment at the last half of the eighteenth century. French philosophers, unhappy under what they considered the tyranny of their own leaders, "woke up" and started asking questions. "Why does the church have to be linked to the state?" "Why do our young men have to join the campaign or be labeled traitors?" "Why does one who has worked hard to gain stature fail and those who are merely born into it succeed?" "How did we get to this point?" To put it bluntly, the Enlightenment came from the realization of philosophers that "common" people didn’t have to be the way they were because anyone said so, yet they were. It wasn’t just the French, there was a vast uncorking of new ideas all over Europe, into Russia and carried over into the "New Land." Stemming from the growing ease of travel, the printing press, the chemical, medical and mechanical advances in industry and other conveniences, a new society of powerful people was created, the individual, the "person." Modern philosophy was born from realizing the quick, rampant influence of unavoidable change and shortly thereafter, secret philosophy came along too. For if the masses decide they are going to be aware, if they are going to literally revolt in the streets to get what they want, then control seekers must find a subversive way to tell the people what they want. And so now, in an American court, you put your hand on the Bible to pledge your honesty oath and church based movements elect presidents. We are, to this day, still trying to rid ourselves of this veil. During the Enlightenment questions were posed of the implications of mixing church and state in ways that go beyond allegiances in courtrooms and politic in sermons. There was the realization that it was morality legislated and categorization by belief. I like to imagine it this way, for thousands of years, peoples all over our lovely little planet have been experimenting with types of societies. After all that time, a system began to be duplicated, by desire or by force, that was able to have control of it’s people while giving them the opportunity to live happy, healthy, productive lives. The system was, in a word, "Money." ‘You use your skills to earn your living’ rather than, ‘you live off the flora and fauna.’ This system had been used for quite a while before the enlightenment turned it into the physical manifestation of the middle class. Controls move from the church to state. Money is worshiped. The lines blur. The difference between the old Enlightenment and the new is that we now are waking up from our subconscious servitude (social engineering) whereas during the Industrial Revolution we were waking up from our conscious servitude (serfdom.) We have now "caught up" to Philosophers of our past. Therefore, back then we learned that we were real individuals, that if any human had rights then we all them. Now we wake up to learn that we're being controlled with ideas, our rights aren't really ours and we are only allowed to exercise them within a fairly rigid framework , society. The powers that governed over this transformation sought out controls that could be accepted by the masses. They hid them in the morals of church, law, and the accoutre that complicates the logic of trying to correlate them. They set into church and state rules that made it seem we wanted to follow them, because it seemed right, even though we’re not sure why. For eg: In most countries it is against the law and it is morally wrong to kill a person. (Of course I mean a person who doesn’t "deserve" it, both religion and governments have people who kill in their names.) Just generally, Murder is Illegal and Wrong. I think a lot of you will agree with that, but why? Because it ends the life of someone who could have done good, been loved and will be missed. No! Stop it, don’t think that way, you’re categorizing him. By doing so you induce that there could be a circumstance where murder could be right if he couldn’t have done Good, been Loved and no one M2issed him. You’re completely missing the point as well as being illogical. (The M has the 2 after it because we have two terms symbolized by M.) [ M = ( W . I ) ] = [ P = ( L . M2 . G ) ] [ M = ~( W . I ) ] = [ P = ~(L . M2 . G ) ] ---------------------------------------------- M = P This rather complicated looking syllogism is nothing to be frightened of. The brackets group ideas together. You remember, the = creates the conditional statement "if... then." The dot . simply means "and." The squiggly minus sign, called a tilde, as you would guess, attaches negation. The first statement says, ‘Murder is wrong and illegal if the person is loved, missed and good.’ The second statement says ‘Murder is not wrong and not illegal if the person is not loved, not missed and not good.’ Common sense tells us that this isn’t true, so does the equation. The positives in the first statement, (W and I) as well as ( L, M and G) get cancelled out, like they would in any math solution, by the negation of themselves in the second statement. (~) All that’s left is ‘If it’s murder then it’s a person.’ Which, while being true, (with apologies to all other species and those who love them,) it in no way expresses our point that murder is wrong because the person killed could have done good, been loved and would be missed. Therefore, it is an invalid syllogistic argument. It doesn’t mean we’ve proven ‘murder’ right or wrong. It means that our ‘murder’ paradigm, built on the argument above, is invalid. If indeed this is what we believe, we have no explainable reason for thinking the way we do about murder. It isn’t about deservedness. "Rights" have been created. You’re judging things by standards that are going on three hundred years old, and they were based on standards that came from two thousand years ago. To say "Yeah, but it’s working so well," is to deserve a smack upside the head! So I ask you, if the man who was killed was a wife beating child molester would he then deserve to die? Of course not. He could be treated and go on to make amends with all those he hurt, even help others, so inclined, turn their lives around. Who are you, judge, jury and executioner? Yes actually, you are but you’re off the hook because you’ve been made that way. The decisions made in the establishment of the Establishment have decided who you are and what you believe. (Sanctioned killing is okay, murder is abhorrent.) Nature tells us that we can and will kill whatever we want. We know this is true. Consider believing what you’re shown, not necessarily what you’re told. These passages are neither an endorsement of murder nor an admonishment of religion. The statements are made in keeping with the overall theme of my theory that missing or misdiagnosing influence is dangerous. Is it natural or instinctual to know to allow certain impulses or emotions and suppress others because of a set of predetermined guidelines? If you answer yes, you’re buying into what they’re telling you. If you answer no, you’re denying all the evidence around you and within you. People today allowing and suppressing because of their paradigms. That means that in order to rid us of these binding perceptions we must consider all paradigms, even and especially disturbing ones. The reasons are twofold: Firstly, a healthy, open mind can only gain strength from that which makes it uncomfortable. (More on that later.) But we must also question every paradigm because the foundation of our personal natural instinct could be a fabrication. How are we, as individuals, supposed to know after thirty years, or a lifetime, or after three hundred years, or two thousand years if a particular set of guidelines have steered us well? Despite our ever quickening pace of advancement we are still idiots. What I know compared to what I don’t know could be expressed in the same ratio as my lifetime compared to the eternity before and after it. To contemplate the ancient concept of self with a being that is truly "not-self" without even the ability to conceptualize having rules put upon you is to perpetuate ignorance and demonstrate the absurdity of modern human existence. To even achieve the question requires a paradigm shift that instantly opens an endless stream of possibilities. Furthermore, paradigms once found, put the mind into the flow of enlightenment. It is this new modern enlightenment that will spread the understanding to the point of beginning to answer difficult questions, and undoubtedly pose new ones. This point is all but completely accepted by contemporary authors, be they ripe with opinion or strictly empirical. Because I have picked on Dr. Phil and Eckhart Tolle for being right for the wrong reasons, let’s pick on some others for being wrong for the right reasons. Dan Dennett is a philosopher and author. So is Andrew Cohen. They are at opposite ends of a spectrum. Dan’s position is summed up nicely by his opening comments at Beyond Belief 2 (an annual conference of scientists concerned with enlightenment.)9 He called it, "The difference between diplomacy and dishonesty." He said, "Excuse me Sir, but do you realize that your entire life has been constructed around you through a fantasy based belief structure and by passing it on to your children you are exacerbating a dangerous continuation of nonsense." Andrew Cohen, someone who specifically uses the term, "Authentic Self," claims to have insight to the ultimate causation. That is, where Dan will not give an inch on his Atheism and his distaste for the idea of faith; Andrew will neither yield his Theism nor his interpretations of God as the "act of creation, itself." To be fair to Dan Dennett would probably argue that he was referring to religion and not God specifically. To be fair to Andrew Cohen, he could be right. As I’m sure you are growing accustomed to, you and I can’t answer either men. The fact that we recognize our limitation is our reward. There can be no blinders on the open mind. Apparently it’s not enough for the new modern Philosophes to acquaint you with yourself, they want to push into the unknowable and declare the fantastic, most doing so vehemently. Despite the lack of comfort provided by the truly reality-based point of view, the empowerment of understanding validity outweighs the need for faith. Logically, you can no more disprove than prove God. Faith, however biased, is still welcome with your Assignee’s Prerogative, as it is your own. Have all the faith you want, just know that it’s faith. Be mindful of influence and determine it worthy or dismiss it as irrelevant. Herein also lies the beginning of appreciating the difference between eXperiential Norms and Social Norms. We’ve examined only one aspect of morality, murder, or more rightfully, killing. There are many more ill defined morals in our modern society from ancient times. Ideas like the sanctity or purity of places, people or objects. Automatic respect or reverence for authority figures is still expected from most human citizenry. Ideas of class, race or kin being of some worth or relevance to anything are all still prevalent. In fact, we use this standard of Fairness, Harm, Ingroup, Authority, Purity as the measuring stick of our sociological or moral makeup.10 It’s important that we understand the categories of this moral scale. This scale has been in development for hundreds of years and those who wish to follow it’s history should also look up David Hume, Lawrence Kohlberg and Elliot Turiel. Harm/Care Fairness/Justice Ingroup/Loyalty Authority/Respect Purity/Sanctity The five categories are the Definition of the Domain of Morality by Elliot Turiel.11 They are referred to as the "Foundations of Morality." To be most concerned with a particular single branch or group of branches points to your morality. The stronger the assignation of importance to the beginning of the list, the more left leaning, liberal, democratic, etc. you are. You are a two foundation person. The more importance you assign to the latter three the more right leaning, conservative, authoritative, etc. you are. I’m sure we can agree that the utilization of judgement where Fairness and Harm are the standards is much more logical and productive than using the considerations of Ingroup, Authority or Purity. In fact, the latter three paradigms should be almost entirely dismissed, most are antiquated and spent. Ingroup leads to nepotism, racism, classism. How many of us have helped a friend do something illogical? Authority is weighed well by many still, despite murderous cops, self-serving politicians, and abusive priests. Purity doesn’t refer to the wholeness or correctness of something, but it’s deemed worth. Questions of Sanctity are of value. The Dome of the Rock is one of the most traveled to places on the planet. It is a manmade structure where people come to pay homage to a meteorite. Were they able to, the pilgrims could pick up any rock build a temple around it and assign the same purity to it. They can’t because they’ve been instructed that this rock is special and deservedly so. In fairness, this last point is why I say we should all but dismiss Ingroup, Authority and in this case, Purity considerations, for what if I am wrong and someday an irrefutable force proves to me that the rock is ‘special.’ Furthermore, Ingroup facilitates family responsibility and cultural comfort which are not unhealthy. There is also Authority in the Universe as there is Purity, I just haven’t found either yet. I know they exist because their opposites are so prevalent. (I wish to point out, just for clarity, that my singling out of any one religion, God, artifact or geographic location are for illustrative purposes only.) It seems, therefore, that Nature is left leaning. If considering Ingroup, Authority and Purity is far less important that considering Fairness and Harm, society is in a state of illogical, counterproductive denial. We now begin to just see the tip of the iceberg now, breaking above the water. The monster begins to take shape: Individuals are more to blame than society is more to blame than we. Except that, for the most part, we’re doing what we’re told. If we can accept that Nature’s default is that of an open, flexible, dynamic system, then we should be able to accept that we are working against it if we are not doing the same. It’s a coincidence that as we move from the moral/political left to right under the philosophy generator we get away from paradigms that are eXperiential and into those that are Social.   If we know that we have been socially engineered to be the way we are, then the forces that made us that way, want us that way. So why do they want us to work against nature? Does that mean we have been programmed to fail? Why? What else have they programmed us to do? Who are these people? These are also the questions of the new enlightenment, but they are not being asked by the spiritualists and the social psychologists. They are being asked by the two philosophers present...   the conversation continues at anti-socialengineering.com … Read More

October 13, 2009   |  In Politics & Policy

Anti-Social Engineering, Assignee's Prerogative and Authentic Self

    “The larger a society or confederacy, the greater the amalgamation of collusive factors - which is typical of every large organization - the more aggravated the moral and spiritual degeneration of the individual.”     -Carl Jung“   The absurd depends as much on man as it does on the world. For the moment it is all that links them together. It binds them one to the other as only hatred can weld two creatures together.” “The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”     -Albert Camus _____________________________________       I am attempting to reclaim the term "Authentic Self" in the name of Science. To be specific the sciences of psychology and philosophy. I am reclaiming it from Dr. Phil, Eckart Tolle, Andrew Cohen and anyone else who currently uses the term outside the empirical. My thesis is that Authentic Self may be achievable satisfactorily through psychology, at least to the point of dealing with the psyche. Without due philosophical consideration to the social causation of the "Unauthentic Self" through purpetuated societal norms,  we are dismissing a larger problem and losing the opportunity to solve it. We can't see the fire for the trees. Dr. Phil and folks like him are dealing with individual problems. They "put out" individual fires without acknowledging the overall forest fire that's about to take over. This results in the perpetuation of the problem. The following is taken from my website where you can read my post far to lengthy to host here. You will also find helpful, educational links that help me illustrate my argument: http:www.anti-socialengineering.com       Human ability to interfere with our own ideas gives us the unique power to work against ourselves or defy what nature would likely do. It doesn’t seem logical when stated as such, nevertheless, to date, we are the only species we know of to act in this way. Through my interests, hobbies and eventually my studies since 1995 I have come to understand at least a part of why this has happened, how it works and what can be done to help facilitate the necessary corrections. I am not alone in claiming this feat, there are many books, films, classes etcetera that can help you find peace, understanding, knowledge, strength, God, whatever it might be that you find yourself lacking. There has been self-help type books and seminars for thousands of years. The philosophy generator should prove to be more of a habit of consideration than a recipe for success. Success is a matter of opinion and we are primarily concerned with fact. This is of a different sort of “self-help” type information, it doesn’t promise to give any warmth, hope or even strength. It is quite probable that some readers may even become upset with the understanding that can be achieved by the following chapters, for it is within you that you must find it. ...and we, you and I, my friend, are a mess!           This is a primer that, in plain and efficient language, with a tireless commitment to reason, can provide you with nothing less than an original point of view. A way to find a place to come from that will, if you need it to, change the way you experience everything. A new standard by which you can measure truth or worth and thereby decide smartly, or not at all. After we’ve established the standard, we will use it to re-examine our realities. Other “procedural manuals” are composed by authors often specializing in one discipline. Many of these fine lessons illumine my chapters. The difference being that we will be examining these lessons from both sides of the story and ultimately from within ourselves.          The term “Authentic Self” is valid and there is certainly a very real opportunity to make money by selling pathways to it, but the definition being touted by its proponents is inaccurate. So you have Dr. Phil talking about Authentic Self as “who you were created to be instead of who you were taught to be...” (from his website.) You may have seen Eckhart Tolle, spiritualist and author on the Oprah Winfrey show teaching that our ego’s are products of our experiences and possibly should not be trusted, certainly at the least scrutinized. Both basically the same argument, ‘you are a product of your paradigms and they require evaluation.’ It turns out that we agree with each other, even to the point of creationism. But the problem with many of these works is that there is still a leap of faith insisted upon us. Not that my issue is that Dr. Phil uses the word “created,” (he could after all mean ‘biologically created,’) or that Mr. Tolle goes on to re-interpret the New Testament Bible to apply validity to his theories. I’d be guilty of wearing the same blinders as they if I were to argue with them and I’m not here to take anything from anyone.  (Neither of us can prove or disprove the existence of God.) Is a classical psychotherapist’s opinion any more valuable than a spiritualist if the topic is the human worth of globalization with centralized governance?          The individualistic approach of the new age self-help movement, also denies much of the source of our self-defeating behaviour, namely societies influence. It’s important to stress that I am not claiming that the tenets of any particular faith are invalid, I’m arguing that the requirement of faith in order to explain fact is. (Besides, you’re going to find that even the facts are very strange...)        You are now, and will remain eternally, entitled to believe whatever nonsense you like. You’re going to do it anyway. You can’t help it. It comes at you from all angles, twenty-four hours a day. Don’t bother trying to blame T.V. or other modern distractions for the consistent barrage of often questionable information. It’s been this way for all of recorded history. This is right, this is wrong, this was bad, this will be good, you are this, I can’t be that... Only the delivery vehicles have changed. It is now systemic. It is automatically ingrained, as you are, after your birth, by practice and by influence, dragged unhappily away from purity and into reality. As are your children, as are your grandchildren, until someone, perhaps the black sheep, says “No!”         Have you ever thought about why it is that “reality” must be taught? Furthermore, why is it that what we learn is so very often different from what we use? Who decided that the lessons we receive are better than the pure existence we are borne into? Have you ever wondered about the origin of the rules: how or why a particular, seemingly unconscious moral finds it’s way to be expressed through your personality? Do you have the courage to take a long look at ideas that go directly against what you’ve come to understand as truth? Can you summon the foresight to imagine that you are not, in fact, fully in charge of your thoughts, then contemplate what that means? These are not light questions and shouldn’t be thought of as such. They are extremely and equally powerful personal affronts. They are akin to the great questions of all time, “Why are we here?” “Is there a God?” “Is there a purpose?”      There are tangible answers to be found within this new awareness. Not that anyone but you could decide upon them but everyone deserves the opportunity to understand themselves and their environments. If the veil of other people’s ancient thoughts and opinions can be known it can be made transparent. Then you can, perhaps for the first time in your life, make up your own mind. The word ‘philosophy,’ like a lot of words, has more than one definition.  We are concerned with mainly three: 1.) A person “does” philosophy by logically examining ideas with fair but critical eye. (Reasoning.) 2.) A person “has” a philosophy, an outlook, a position, an opinion on any particular subject. (Paradigm.)  3.) Calmness in temper and judgement. (To be philosophic is to be contemplative.)         In a way, The Matrix, as depicted in the Wachowski brothers’ trilogy of films, is true. Not that humans are full grown embryonic batteries fulfilling some necessary mechanistic energy need, rather that humans go through the motions of life, barely contemplating the steps we take. We never mind at all why we take them. That is not to say we don’t plan things. We do, despite our plans not necessarily being in our best interest. Yet even our plans are not our own, in most instances. Within this “Matrix,” there are forces that, by being aware, are able to have some form of control, or more precisely, a usable understanding of the true nature of reality. Unfortunately, I’ve not yet figured out how to warp time or space like Neo and Agent Smith, (see next book.) I can tell you that most modern humans are in a near constant state of trance and you can use nifty “Jedi mind tricks” in your daily lives.         The popularity of the ideas expressed in the Matrix films, the paranoia epitomised at the Y2K non-phenomena and the events of September 11th, 2001 are social manifestations of forced paradigm shift. The term “paradigm shift” was coined by Thomas Kuhn. It is used to describe a broad stroke “changing of minds” on any given idea. For instance; Before air travel was common the idea of getting from Europe to America in one day was unthinkable.  These paradigm shifts can also be different ways of exposing the lack of control we have over our own existence. In the Matrix films, every human, thinking he or she is alive, is actually a computer program with all the events of a life predetermined. At midnight January 1st, 2000, no planes fell out of the sky, no bank machines started spewing money due to the roll-over of “old” computer clocks. Almost nothing out of the ordinary happened. Yet, it was all we could talk about, millions of dollars were spent preparing for it and millions of dollars were made selling the fear of it. In Manhattan, on September 11th, 2001 a lot of minds were changed all over the world on a good number of ideas. Since that day, minds continue to change and be changed to such a marked degree that it may someday be hailed as the largest contributor to the new enlightenment.    Exciting, isn’t it?         The place where many of your decisions are made is built from concepts that have been exposed to you. Some things you will have decided upon but for a large part, you know things because somebody wanted you to. Accepting this as fact is a good and necessary start. However, it is as liberating as it is frightening to take the next step and ask, “Is it right?” This is where the argument currently begins and ends. For you will fight forever with the demon and angel on your respective shoulders trying to separate ideas or ideals with the confusion that clouds your mind from years of indoctrination. Herein lies an unfortunate Human truth: Until there is a drastic change not only in what we think, the way we think as well as the way we learn to think, the deciding over ideas/ideals will remain left to opinion, be it falsely developed, socially engineered or naturally exposed. It was this belief, through my discovery of self, what self entails and by my own curiosity that I began to discover what I might come to believe if left to my own devices. Is that not our ultimate goal? To make up our own minds and trust the decision?      It’s important that we understand the significance of the concept of Paradigms for five reasons: 1.) We can understand our thoughts are formed by associations. 2.) We can examine the constructive associations of our paradigms and evaluate their validity. 3.) We can assign or re-assign importance or value to our paradigms using Assignee’s Prerogative. 4.) We can reclaim identity through the formulation of our own, original opinions. (Authentic Self.) 5.) If the examination exposes previously unconscious paradigms, you have by definition, discovered at least some of your Authentic Self.      Or: ‘If exposing Paradigm creates Authentic Self and Evaluation is the key to exposing paradigm, then Evaluation is the key to Authentic Self.'   continued at http://www.anti-socialengineering.com … Read More

September 21, 2009   |  In Identity