Peace, non-violence, and Christian values
The control of information is based on a perceived need to control feelings and behavior. If people knew how bad things are, they would revolt, or commit mass suicide. Indeed, those are the very symptoms of despair and hopelessness. And people revolt in armed struggle only when they perceive that no other objections or protests are possible or effective.
Why, then, do "the authorities" want to keep people (including our leaders and the media) from learning, and thus changing their behavior, making better choices, being more "sociable", leading to a better quality of life, etc.? Some of us are working night and day for this, with total dedication, and we are regarded as fools. Why?
Maybe it's because we have "a negative attitude", and believe that "death is inevitable." I had an interesting experience last night, at a public lecture about peace good feelings, freedom and stuff. Actually, very little about freedom, except for the speaker emphasizing the total illegitimacy of coercion as a means of social interaction. No one, no group, no government has the moral right to force people to act against their will and conscience, etc. Especially as regards war and violence.
The very idea of a "military draft" (which we had, in this country, on and off for more than a century) is repugnant. The very idea of people being trained to kill and torture is obscene, in the deepest (non-erotic) sense.
It turns out Ms X (Or perhaps Mrs X, in her case, since she professed Christianity) has a PhD in Psychology, and has been in and out of the APA and the profession in general over these ethical issues. The irony is, she absolutely agrees with their resolutions and ethics code on this issue. Basically, the part of the lecture (and I guess it has 6 or 7 parts) that I heard was an elaboration of the APA rules involving its members participating in psychological manipulation (propaganda), or assisting military and "intelligence" forces in torture and interrogation policies like Gitmo, Rendition, etc.
Apparently, the speaker feared that the rules are not understood, nor is their intent. That would be to work to create a saner, healthier, happier, peaceful world. It was a fascinating presentation. I actually scrambled for a notebook I always carry (in case some great idea comes to me, I can write it down), and started taking regular college lecture notes. I didn't get very far, but I got some of the main ideas down.
One is "Altruistic Chagrin" - something sure to raise the hackles of anyone devoted to Ayn Rand, or otherwise “opposed to altruism” (which Rand defined in a rather convoluted way, distinguishing it from real benevolence). Basically, Altruistic Chagrin is Rand's "Never fail to pronounce moral judgment." It's a survival tool. Even if you don't literally "pronounce" it out loud, make it as a note to yourself.
"That guy is a real M-Fer." Stuff like that. Or, "Wasn't that a beautiful action [that a child took, sharing his toys, or kissing another child's hand as a token of affection - for which one 5-yr-old was famously charged with sexual harassment]?" Just the everyday judgments we make about people, politics, sports calls, or whatever. "We was robbed."
So, whenever you see people doing something horrible, irrational, exploitative, or whatever, don't just ignore it. Maybe you can't confront the person directly, but make him or her know that you are aware of what they are doing, and you strongly disapprove. That's Altruistic Chagrin. A very nice and useful concept, but again, it is utterly repugnant to our current "mind your own business" mentality. And there's a lot of that in any sort of libertarianism, I had to admit to myself, on further reflection.
I kept thinking of Seth Farber, a comrade in the struggle against psychiatric and other institutional tyranny. This lady should read his stuff, and the earlier work by Thomas Szaz on "psychiatric slavery," etc. She's very savvy about the academic game, and tries to use it in her favor, but that tends to backfire - something which any of us renegade thinkers and activists experience constantly. Better just to leave it alone. “Leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone...” Same with religion.
The question I wanted to ask her, but never got to in the press of other dialogue, was that she didn't mention the relationship (or lack of it) between professional codes of ethics, and actual statute and common law, torts, etc. which the state recognizes and enforces. Who is going to "enforce" the APA Code? And would that be a good thing? I don't think so, but that's a question she might want to consider further. Or perhaps she did in other lectures, which was the answer I usually got.
I want to give Mrs. X every credit for taking this on. She is especially concerned about the abuse of psychiatry and other medicine in the service of military conquest, torture, and other "black ops.”There's already some sort of professional organization along the lines of the "social responsibility" groups of Physicians, Biz, Educators, etc. In fact, this is all of interest to the educational and other public interest movements and organizations, as well as scientists and “policy wonks.”
It was especially "cognitively dissonant" for being held here in a town which hosts 150 nuclear-armed strategic missiles, capable of destroying as many cities anywhere in the world in less than an hour. I've had 30 years in the trenches, here, as a "peace activist" - I'm branded as one, in fact. Yet, I'd never laid eyes on this person, before, or heard her name, yet she claimed to be from here.
My first thought was that she's FBI or something, trying to infiltrate the local "movement." She needn’t have bothered. There's only about 3 of us, and we're always available for coffee. Many others have already been silenced by an official conspiracy to direct employers, service givers, as well as all government employees and military personnel to regard us with fear and hatred, for wanting to reduce military spending and the effects of militarization on our everyday lives... Of course, they call it “jobs” and “economic development,” which doesn’t conceal its real identity as the Doomsday Machine they described so well in 1950’s and ‘60’s movies and TV - Fail Safe, Dr. Strangelove, On the Beach, and the various live TV dramas, as well as later ones depicting the horrors of nuclear war.
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Here's some wisdom from Karl Popper which bears on these issues in a fundamental sort of way...
Karl Popper [Facebook group]
'In Popper's view, the philosopher should not be concerned with the subjective aspect of knowledge - that is, the dispositions that cause individuals to uphold a theory with greater or lesser strength – rather, with its objective aspect, which consists “of the logical content of our theories, conjectures, guesses.” If subjective knowledge presupposes the existence of a knowing subject, “Knowledge in the objective sense is knowledge without a knower: it is knowledge without a knowing subject,” since it disregards the personal dispositions and inclinations of individuals and assesses a theory independently of them.'
Stefano Gattei, “Karl Popper's Philosophy of Science – Rationality Without Foundations”.
The quotes from Popper come from “Objective Knowledge”.
12-12-13
Karl Popper
“I've called truth a 'regulative idea', because even though we have no criterion of truth, we have lots of criteria of falsehood. These criteria of falsehood are not always applicable, but we can very often find out whether something is false. This is why our search for truth is a critical search. We know, for example, that a theory must be false if it is self-contradictory. Actually, self-contradiction is the main criterion of falsity, because we try always in criticism to find out whether the thing to be criticized does not conflict with something else. I mentioned in my lecture the cross-questioning of people who give a report. I mentioned that bees have not found it worth while to cross-question a reporting dancing bee. Now, what is the purpose of cross-questioning? It is to catch the person being cross-questioned in some sort of contradiction, or in a statement that contradicts something which we think we know from some other source. This is the only real purpose of cross-questioning anybody. So contradiction is really the main thing by which we discover falsity, and then we know, at least, that the theory is false. Of course, we also then know then that its negation is true. But that usually does not tell us much, because the negation of a theory with a great informative content has always a very low informative content. The greater the informative content of a theory, the lower the informative content of its negation. So we don't get very much truth when we have refuted a theory, as a rule. But at least we know where the truth is not to be found, and we can go on with our search. So truth works in the main as a regulative idea in the search for truth, or in criticism.”
Karl Popper, 'Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem'.
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