why sometimes it’s ok to disobey

i assume Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience to authority (& those of others) are known, but if not, wikipedia has some articles (try here & here) to start you off.

what no longer amazes me is how so many people heedlessly obey a perceived “higher authority.” yes perhaps nothing constructive would ever get done if we didn’t, but personally i see this subconcious kowtowing as mostly causing destruction anyway. think of the military. wouldn’t it be great if every one of us lackeys just refused to go off & kill people we’d never met? like that will ever happen. but it’s a thought.

in 1961, Robert J. Lifton described the brainwashing model of the chinese in the 1950s as follows (i):

• milieu control (controlled relations with the outer world)
• mystic manipulation (planned spontaneity–events are orchestrated or attributed to group’s power or omniscience)
• confession (confess past and present sins)
• self-sanctification through purity (pushing the individual towards a not-attainable perfection)
• aura of sacred science (beliefs of the group are sacrosanct and perfect)
• loaded language (new meanings to words, encouraging black-white thinking)
• doctrine over person (the group is more important than the individual)
• dispensed existence (insiders are saved, outsiders are doomed)

Margaret Singer noted these conditions present in mind control (ii):

• controlling a person’s time and environment, leaving no time for thought
• creating a sense of powerlessness, fear and dependency
• manipulating rewards and punishments to suppress former social behaviour
• manipulating rewards and punishments to elicit the desired behaviour
• creating a closed system of logic which makes dissenters feel as if something was wrong with them
• keeping recruits unaware about any agenda to control or change them

and in 2004, Anthony Stahelski described five phases of social pyschological conditioning (iii):

1. Depluralization: stripping away all other group member identities
2. Self-deindividuation: stripping away each member’s personal identity
3. Other-deindividuation: stripping away the personal identities of enemies
4. Dehumanization: identifying enemies as subhuman or nonhuman
5. Demonization: identifying enemies as evil

now, of course these principles are applied mostly to cults* & terrorists groups & Hitler’s regime. but i can see a lot of these traits blatently at work in our everyday lives (not to mention subliminals…)–in families, in social groups, in vocations, in government, in the military, and in society as a whole (local, national, and global). in essence, life itself is a form of mind control.

so the question is, which form of mind control is the least detrimental to your overall well-being? which allows you the most individual freedom? which allows you full & free access to all other manners of mind control out there? which allows you to choose your own form of mind control? and which doesn’t force its own mind control on others?

are we (in general) that frightened of refusing? of saying no? of acting of our own free will, especially when it goes against the familial/social/political/religious grain? i think we should try to act just so as often as possible. we don’t need permission to live our lives, despite opinions (conscious & not) to the contrary.

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this is very interesting. i have a friend that lives in chicago. she used to work for a large communications company while she was going to law school. she is very level-headed and not prone to such ramblings as mine. however…the company she worked for was bought by a bigger one, and subsequently all the top management personnel were replaced. oddly enough, all the replacements were scientologists! (they were open about this…) in fact, they had these little meetings that the rest of the staff could attend if they wanted to–not at all mandatory, they said. these meetings were essentially for the indoctrination & recruitment of the workers into the scientology cult (aye!). when my friend realized this, and refused to go, they fired her (remember how these meetings weren’t mandatory?) she, of course, knowing the law, said that they could not fire her for that reason. the response was that her life, should she seek legal retribution, would be made miserable….in effect, they would make sure she could never hold a job, and threatened harm to her & her family.

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now that the scientologists will soon be after me, i just want to mention how this kind of insanity is not limited to power-hungry religious hacks that think they are aliens (and many of our celebrities enjoy this kind of thought). no, no. it’s everywhere. maybe they don’t all believe they’re from another planet, but hey. the end results are the same.

the washington times is the moonies, by the way.

BIG BROTHER DOES NOT KNOW BEST. YOUR DOCTOR DOES NOT KNOW BEST. YOUR MINISTER/GURU DOES NOT KNOW BEST. YOUR PARENTS DO NOT KNOW BEST. YOU DO NOT KNOW BEST. I DON’T KNOW WHO KNOWS BEST. PROBABLY NO ONE.

*please remember that lots of things can be considered cults if you just read the definition…..including every major religion. ha-ha.

(i) Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China, Norton (New York City), 1961

(ii) Six Conditions for Thought Reform, by Margaret T. Singer, Ph.D., 1990.  

(iii) Stahelski, Anthony: Terrorists Are Made, Not Born: Creating Terrorists Using Social Psychological Conditioning, Journal of Homeland Security, March 2004

slipstream spinning

i have not had internet for a while and there are no convenient cafés offering wi-fi in the woods 

i do prefer fall, what little we have of it anymore. i always feel more like myself. 

though really i have not much to say at this moment. it is tiresome professing opinions and very trying hearing them. 

silence can be a very dear friend. 

but i will listen to the wind when she is speaking. that opinion i do not mind for it is truth untainted. 

“kaze yo watashi wa tachimukau
yukou kurushimi no umi e to
kizuna kono mune ni kizande
kudakeru nami wa hatenaku tomo . . .
kaze yo watashi wa tachimukau
yokou kagayaki wo mezashite
inori kono mune ni dakishime
samayou yami no you na mirai . . .
kaze yo watashi wa osorenai
ai koso mitsukedashite kiseki yo
kimi wo shinjite’ru yorokobi
arashi wa ai ni kizuku tame ni fuite’ru”  

--"Kiseki No Umi" / Maaya Sakamoto, from the anime series Record of Lodoss War  

and the water too. i will hear her. 

“well the lush separation unfolds you
and the products of wealth
push you along on the bow wave
of the spiritless undying selves.
and you press on god’s waiter your last dime
as he hands you the bill.
and you spin in the slipstream
tideless – unreasoning -
paddle right out of the mess.
and you paddle right out of the mess” 

--"Slipstream" / Jethro Tull, from the album Aqualung

furthering the electronic revolution

though i do not recommend all of william s. burroughs writings, i do suggest you peruse “the electronic revolution” (currently available as a pdf here and online in parts here: part 1 & part 2) ……something i’ve pondered over myself a few times.

ignoring his obsession with sex, you'll find he describes a quite interesting experiment. basically using the cut-up technique with video/audio/photos to affect other people’s moods & actions. a form of brainwashing perhaps? covert warfare of a sorts? or just plain revenge? maybe some fun too. if his experiments went as he said they did…..well, don’t you wonder what technology is capable of all these decades later? we are affected by every wave that passes through us–electrical, micro, radio, etc–what do each of these & the combination of these waveforms do to our mind-computer & body-machine? hmmmmmmmm? it’s certainly not nothing. just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there. you do turn on your radio & hear music. you do talk on your cell phone.

admitting what we don’t know

or, this is not inevitable!

one giant (perhaps staggering?) thought/theory that should be kept in mind is that life as we know it doesn’t have to be life as we know it. perhaps it could all be different. perhaps it could all change. even easily if we all agreed upon it. it wouldn’t be this anymore. it could be that. maybe we would like that better. maybe we wouldn’t. swirl it around a bit. what does the magic 8 ball have in store for us this time?

try again later.

ok then. if we aren’t prepared to acknowledge the idea that life can be different and can actually change, then let’s try admitting that we really don’t know everything. in fact there is a lot out there we claim to know or we present as cold hard facts, when in reality so much of it is merely theoretical. hypothetical. and when new ideas, new theories that contradict or leave in the dust an older tenet of science or medicine or __________ (fill in the blank), how can we say for certain that the new is wrong? or that the old is wrong? why can’t we simply admit their equal possibility until we can prove them utterly useless? we do not need a parental force to suppress or annihilate ideas & information in order to “protect” us from an upset of the status quo. if we cannot choose wisely for ourselves, then perhaps we should not be thinking so much at all.

what we must always remember, however, is how much our political, scientific, religious, medical, economic, etc. institutions have vested in us–the masses–completely bowing our heads to their tenets. if one day we all said “no more!”…..well, what then?

they say that those who wield the power write the histories and those that control the money control our lives. perhaps then we should start being more serious about alternatives to money, to histories, to power in a few “royal and divinely mandated” hands.

again these are just a few thoughts to tumble around in your mind. their possibilities are up to the many and not to the few for once.

for once.

something to be taken advantage of then?