In 1955, Solomon Asch, a
mentor of Stanley Milgram, performed an interesting experiment which
demonstrated the existence of a powerful force at work in groups ... a force
that likely had been suspected for many years but stood in need of empirical
verification. Ostensibly, the Asch experiment was a simple perceptual task.
Four lines were presented
on two viewing cards. One card displayed just one line, while the other card
displayed three lines.
The lone line on one of
the two cards was the ‘standard line.’ The three lines on the second card were of
different lengths, and they were the ‘comparison lines.’
Subjects were required to
judge which of the ‘comparison lines’ was a match for the ‘standard line.’ When
subjects performed the experiment in the absence of other people, they were
able to identify the correct match more than 99% of the time.
However, when other
people were present and involved in the task, some rather startling results
emerged. More specifically, if there were a group of five to seven people who
were all required to identify the correct match on any given trial, and if the
first five or six people (depending on the size of the group) misidentified the
correct match, the last person to give an answer quite frequently also misidentified
the correct match in one-third of the trials.
As it turns out, the
first five-to-six individuals in the experiment that provided answers to the
perceptual task were ‘confederates.’ In other words, those individuals had been
provided with a script by the people running the experiment which told the
confederates to intentionally misidentify the correct match on certain
occasions.
For each subject, there
were 18 trials that involved the perceptual matching task. In six of those
trials, the confederates answered correctly, while in the other 12 trials, the
confederates gave incorrect answers.
When those confederates
gave the correct answer, the experimental subject – the one who went last –
also would give the correct answer. Yet, when those confederates provided an
incorrect answer, then errors tended to be committed by the experimental
subjects.
Irrespective of whether,
or not, the subject gave a correct or incorrect response in such cases, their
body language and behavior clearly indicated that when they were faced with the
prospect of having to go against group opinion, the situation tended to be
stressful to them. Some people allowed the stress, and associated social
forces, to sway their answer.
Overall, 24% of the subjects
did not go along with the confederates during any of the 12 trials in which
incorrect answers were given by the confederates. 75% of the subjects went
along with the incorrect ‘judgments’ of the confederates at least one or more
times. 5% of the subjects followed the incorrect responses of the confederates
on each of the 12 instances in which the latter individuals gave incorrect
answers.
Collectively considered,
the subjects matched the incorrect responses of the experimental collaborators
one-third of the time. Some of the subjects who gave incorrect answers were
aware of doing so, but later on, when they were interviewed by the
experimenters, they indicated they didn’t want to ‘rock the boat,’ or create
conflict. Other subjects who gave incorrect answers subsequently claimed that
they were not aware of doing so and attributed their mistakes to poor eyesight.
Asch discovered that
there were different structural factors which seemed to impact the experiment.
For example, when the incorrect response of the confederates was not unanimous,
the number of subjects who would comply with the response of the majority
dramatically decreased to between 5 and 10% of the overall number of trial
responses involving incorrect answers -- down from the one-third percentage
noted earlier.
If even one confederate
gave a response that was different from the other confederates, subjects were
more likely to provide a correct match in the perceptual task. This was true
quite independently of whether, or not, the dissenting response involved a
correct match between the ‘standard line’ and the ‘comparison line’ ... in
other words, dissent rather than correctness seemed to be the deciding factor.
The Asch experiment
involved a simple, objective perceptual task in which the difference between
the incorrect lines among the ’comparison lines’ and the standard line was so
clear that subjects only missed identifying the correct match in less than 1%
of the cases. What if the task were something that was: More complicated, less
‘objective,’ while also being more emotionally and psychologically engaging?
The foregoing questions
were often asked of my students during the introductory psychology courses
which I taught. The same questions can be directed to the American public.
In 2003, Tony Smith, who
played basketball for Manhattanville College, demonstrated his disapproval of
the forthcoming invasion of Iraq by standing sideways rather than face the U.S.
flag during the national anthem. When he did this at the arena for an opposing
team, the people in the crowd began chanting: “Leave the country.”
In 1991, during the first
Gulf War, Marco Lokar, who was from Italy and played basketball for Seton Hall,
refused to wear the American flag on his uniform as an indication of his
opposition to the war. Some of the individuals who attended Seton Hall
basketball games exhibited behavior that became so abusive that Lokar actually
did leave America and returned to Italy.
The 1991 Persian Gulf War
was predicated on a variety of disinformation and lies. First, the alleged
atrocities of Iraqi troops with respect to incubator babies in Kuwait did not
take place, but, instead, it was a publicity stunt dreamed up by Americans and
Kuwaitis in order, among other things, to persuade the United States Congress to
support hostilities against Iraq.
Secondly, prior to the first
Gulf War, Saddam Hussein asked the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq what the view of
America was concerning Iraq’s border dispute with Kuwait, and April Glaspie,
the ambassador, indicated that Arab-Arab conflicts – such as the one between
Iraq and Kuwait – were of no concern to the United States. Whether intended or
not, the communication was interpreted by Saddam Hussein as indicating that the
U.S. would not interfere with the dispute.
Thirdly, while it is true
that Saddam Hussein attacked and killed thousands of his own people, this is
not the whole story. In those attacks, he used biological and chemical weapons
which had been supplied to him by, among others, the United States.
When Winston Churchill advocated
the use of chemical weapons against Iraqis in 1920 that act, apparently, was
the action of a civilized country. When Hussein did so with U.S. assistance in
1988, this became evidence which demonstrated what kind of a pathological
monster Hussein was.
The act of gassing the
Kurds was pathological. However, the United States government was complicit in
that pathology, just as the British government committed pathological behavior
in the earlier case involving Iraq.
When Iraq served U.S.
‘national interests’ by engaging with Iran in an eight year bloodbath, the
United States government supported Iraq militarily and financially – except, of
course, in the little matter of the Iran-Contra scandal in which the United
States illegally sold arms to Iran in order to get cash to illegally help the
Contras who were fighting against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. When
Iraq began to go ‘off the reservation’ in 1990, by, among other things, seeking
to move the world away from using the U.S. dollar as the currency of last
resort, Saddam Hussein had to be schooled in the etiquette of world politics
... and, as is usually the case in those kinds of affairs, the lesson plan was
imposed on, and subsidized by, the people of Iraq rather than its ‘leaders.’
In 2003, Iraq again had
to be taught a harsh lesson. Despite having nothing to do with 9/11 and despite
having no weapons of mass destruction, Iraq was invaded by the United States –
euphemistically referred to as a ‘coalition’ – and much of the physical,
economic, political, medical, financial, and social infrastructure of Iraq was
destroyed ... twelve years later, Iraq is still trying to recover from the ‘dogs
of war’ that were unleashed by the United States upon that country in 2003.
The people who induced
Italian Marco Lokar to leave the United States in early 1991 and who wanted
Tony Smith to leave America in 2003 were like the subjects in the Asch
experiment. The former individuals who accepted or complied with the media
accounts concerning Iraq in relation to what, supposedly, was taking place in that country during
1991 or 2003 either suspected that they were not
being told the truth about Iraq but did not want to ‘rock the boat,’ or those
‘subjects’ were individuals whose judgment concerning Iraq was totally shaped
by the misinformation and disinformation which was being fed to the public by
the government . The U.S. government played the role of experimenters who were controlling
what was taking place in the lab (i.e., the United States arena of public
opinion) and who were inducing the confederate media to distribute propaganda,
disinformation, and misinformation to the public (i.e., the subjects).
Propaganda,
disinformation and misinformation don’t have to convince everyone in order to
be effective. If one has – in line with Asch’s much simpler perceptual task – a
third of the people who are willing, for one reason or another, to go along
with the stories being spun by the government and/or the media, then one has
created a powerful advocacy group for trying to impose – if not enforce --
certain kinds of ideas, values, and behavior on the rest of society.
Moreover, when
‘objective’ tasks are being engaged – for example, the line-matching task of
Asch’s experiment – the presence of even one voice of dissent can often be
enough to permit subjects to break free of the social influence of other members
of a group who are giving misinformation. However, when one is dealing with
issues – e.g., Iraq in 1991 and 2003 – that are difficult to sort out in order
to know where the truth might reside, the presence of dissent might only
complicate, if not confuse, matters.
When conditions of
ambiguity and uncertainty are high, many people often tend to adopt coping
strategies which are likely to entail the least amount of problems ... even if
such coping strategies tend to be flawed in various ways and even if the
projected number of problems is only apparent and not necessarily accurate. In
many political/economic issues, the least problematic path is usually to side
with ‘the way of power’ because that way has the capacity to inflict punishment
on those who are not prepared to ‘get with the institutional program.’
If the subjects in the
Asch experiment refused to go along with the disinformation and misinformation
being supplied by the confederates, no physical or financial or political
penalty would be imposed on them. The situation tends to be quite different in
the world beyond the psychology lab.
Moreover, in the Asch
experiment, none of the confederates overtly interfered with any of the
subjects as they were making their judgments about which of the ‘comparison
lines’ matched the’ standard line.’ If, on the other hand, a person were
besieged by the comments and behavior of others who were seeking to influence
one’s judgment – as often occurs in real life -- this might affect not only the
process of arriving at a judgment but, as well the character of that judgment.
-----
There are a variety of
conditions that tend to increase the likelihood that the phenomenon of
compliance will occur. For instance, the more attractive a group’s status is
perceived to be, the more likely it is that an individual will become
vulnerable to going along with the group view.
Groups that are perceived
as being powerful, influential, wealthy, patriotic, or winners are very
attractive to many people – quite irrespective of whether, or not, that group
is dedicated to truth or justice. In addition, to be considered an ‘outsider’
in relation to those sorts of groups is a very difficult psychological and
emotional situation with which to deal ... circumstances that many people try
to avoid.
Furthermore, if one lives
in a culture in which one is, from an early age, socialized to have respect for
certain standards/values/ideas, then this condition tends to render people more
inclined to comply with the standard of judgment to which the surrounding group
gives expression. In fact, despite the prevailing mythology that the United
States is all about individualism, there is a very strong set of social
currents in the United States – sent in motion quite early in life – that is intended
to inculcate a deep, sometimes unquestioning, respect in the generality of people
in relation to so-called ‘leaders’ – whether governmental, educational, legal, medical,
scientific or corporate in nature.
Another factor affecting
the issue of compliance involves the issue of the degree to which one’s
behavior is observed by others. We all engage in various forms of consequential
calculus in which we attempt to estimate the social risks and benefits for
behaving in certain ways ... especially when we know that such behavior might
be observed by other people.
Moreover, when people can
be induced to feel insecure or incompetent in various ways, the likelihood
increases that those people will become inclined to comply with group values
and standards. This factor can become quite significant when the issues being
considered are uncertain, ambiguous, or complicated, and someone uses that sort
of uncertainty or ambiguity to attack another person’s sense of security or
competency concerning those matters in order to induce the latter individual to
comply with the perspective of the group.
Finally, the likelihood
of someone’s being willing to adopt the group perspective increases in
situations where an individual has not made any previous commitment to a given
position. In other words, the default position for many people who really don’t
know much about a given subject area or who haven’t thought about those issues
very much often tends to coalesce around the group perspective ... which is why
propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation can be so effective in shaping
people’s ideas, views and values with respect to current events ... events that
people have not had much of an opportunity to learn about or reflect upon in a
way which is independent from the influence of vested interests.
The basketball fans who
riled away at Tony Smith in 1991 and Marco Lokar in 2003 were the experimental
subjects whose ideas had been shaped not by facts but by a variety of social
forces that had been set in motion by a group of experimenters and their
confederates – namely, government, the educational system and the media. Those fans were merely doing what they
had been unthinkingly induced to do by an array of social forces that shape,
color and orient the everyday lives and understanding of millions of people
across the United States.
All war is an exercise in
terrorism. The object of war is to induce one’s opponents – whether soldiers or
civilians – to become so psychologically overwhelmed by the horror of
destruction, or the threat of destruction, that they will surrender ... there
is a reason why the opening salvoes of the 2003 Iraq were referred to as ‘shock
and awe.’
Everyone who participates
in, or supports the conduct of, war is a terrorist. They all wish to strike
terror into the hearts of their ‘alleged’ enemies.
One of the enduring
campaigns of propaganda, disinformation, and misinformation undertaken by
successive governments of the United States – as well as most, if not all,
other countries – is to persuade citizens that when one goes to war, one will
be fighting evil, injustice, and oppression, and, yet, the inherent nature of
war – no matter what the underlying intentions are claimed to be -- is to give destructive
expression to the very horrors it is intended to combat. In addition, the
issues and circumstances that lead to war are almost invariably a function of
the manner in which the respective ways of power on all sides of a conflict
have greased the skids toward armed conflict.
People do, I believe,
have a right (and this is inherent in the basic notion of sovereignty that has been developed through the postings of the last year, or so) to repel direct attacks against their own lives
or the lives of their family and community. However, whether, or not, that kind
of a right is exercised, or should be exercised, is a separate matter, and, in
addition, the idea of preventative war – that is, attacking a country simply
because one believes that country might, at some point in the future,
constitute a threat – does not qualify as an instance of being directly
attacked since it is entirely hypothetical in character.
Moreover, the conceptual slope between
self-defense and the terrors of war is a very slippery one. Once a course of
action is undertaken, preventing it from destructively spreading in all
directions in uncontrollable and unimagined ways can become a very difficult,
if not impossible, process.
Who would have thought
that the simple expression of an opinion – for example, standing sideways
during the playing of the national anthem or refusing to wear an American flag
on one’s uniform in order to oppose the terror which was to be unleashed upon
the Iraqi people – should be so upsetting to people who live in the
land of the free consisting of – allegedly -- the most knowledgeable,
compassionate, friendly, humane, understanding, and caring people to ever grace
the face of the Earth. On the other hand, falsehood tends to give rise to a
great deal of untenable ugliness, and the perpetrators of falsehood,
propaganda, disinformation, and misinformation understand this fact very well
... indeed, they count on it, for this is one of the fundamental methods
through which the way of power controls what is, and is not, permitted to take
place in society.
-----
The idea of
‘brainwashing’ found its way into the public lexicon in 1950. Edward Hunter
wrote an article for the Miami News,
and during the article, he used the term to give expression to the Chinese idea
of ‘hsi-nao’ or ‘cleansing the mind.’
Hunter was attempting to
alert people in the United States about an insidious social and psychological
process that, reportedly, was being used by the Chinese in order to alter the
way people thought, felt, and behaved. According to the article, the way in
which people were induced to join the Communist party was through the technique
of brainwashing.
What the article did not
say is that Hunter worked for the CIA. He was a specialist in issues of
propaganda, and he was using a scare story about Chinese brainwashing as a
Trojan horse for introducing his own set of mind- and attitude-shaping
techniques into the public arena of America.
Hunter wanted his readers
to begin to engage information concerning world events through his filters
rather than through those of the Chinese Communists. However, irrespective of whether
one is an operative of the CIA or of the Chinese Communists, when a person uses
techniques that are designed to prevent people from critically reflecting on a
given situation or intended to prevent those individuals from becoming aware of
how they are being subjected to forces of manipulation, the methods are abusive
and reprehensible.
Although the idea of
‘brainwashing’ often has become entangled in a mythology which tends to
attribute rather magical, all-powerful, irresistible properties to the process,
the bottom line is that ‘brainwashing’ is one possibility among an array of
processes which have the intention of altering people’s ideas, values, beliefs,
sense of identity, and behavior. ‘Propaganda’, ‘indoctrination’, ‘advertising’,
‘conditioning,’ ‘socialization,’ ‘training’, ‘therapy’, ‘marketing’, ‘framing,’
‘the media’, ‘interrogation,’ ‘torture,’ and ‘education are related ideas
because all of the foregoing terms have one thing in common – they are
attempting to affect the way the ‘target’ audience – whether one person or many
-- understands and engages the world.
Many accounts of
brainwashing emphasized the physical means that were used to try to break
people and render them emotionally, psychologically and behaviorally malleable
with respect to whatever a ‘subject’s hosts’ wished to impose on that
individual. For instance, those accounts often spoke about: Sleep deprivation;
being required to adopt stress positions for extended periods of time; exposure
to stimulus overload in the form of repetitive, loud, annoying sounds; being
subject to sensory deprivation; the use of heat and cold to wear down
resistance; reduced calorie intake, and so on.
However, physical abuse does
not necessarily constitute an inherent component of any attempt to bring about
changes in another’s person’s beliefs, values, ideas, and behaviors. One also could
bring about those sorts of changes through not only manipulating people’s
vulnerability to factors involving: Social contact, approval, consensual
validation, sense of identity, hope, guilt, ambition, group pressure, self-interest,
anxiety, uncertainty, reward contingencies, and emotional dependency but, as
well, by manipulating the nature of the information people are given in order
to form judgments that generate behavior.
Edward Hunter, the
aforementioned journalist/CIA operative used nothing more than carefully
constructed information as his preferred technique of inducing changes in his
reader’s perception about themselves, China, Communism and America. The process
of education does something very similar in nature.
For example, one
technique used by the Chinese Communists would require people to participate in
their own process of transformation. The individuals running the conversion
process would not only force people to listen to various lectures, but, as
well, the ‘leaders’ would require the participants to respond to those lectures
both verbally and in writing.
Those responses either
would be critiqued by the leader of the group or the various members of the
group would be induced to criticize one another with respect to those
assignments. In addition, the foregoing process would be repeated, and
individuals would, from time to time, be required to demonstrate to the leader
of the group that this or that principle had been mastered.
The foregoing arrangement
sounds an awful lot like compulsory education. Students, under threat of
punishment, are required to attend daily lectures and engage those lessons in a
manner which is pleasing to the group leader – usually referred to as a
teacher.
Children are put in
competition with one another to win the favor of the teacher and other
administrators. Students are often encouraged to criticize one another.
Lessons are repeated
through seemingly endless homework assignments which must be mastered in
written and verbal formats. Tests are given to ensure that one is learning what
is being demanded of one in a way that meets with the approval of the teacher.
If one does not please
the group leader in any of the foregoing tasks, one is subject to disciplinary
treatment. Or, one is ridiculed in front of the other students ... a technique
used to great effect by the Chinese Communists.
A student’s sense of
personal worth and identity -- just as is true in a Communist re-education
program -- is constantly under pressure – both by the teachers and
administrators, as well as by other students. The individual is constantly
being pulled and pushed in different directions by a variety of social,
psychological, and emotional forces ... all intended to induce individuals to
become compliant with respect to someone else’s agenda – that of a group
‘leader’, and/or a student ‘leader’, and/or a community ‘leader’, and/or a
religious ‘leader.’
Surely, someone might
object, there is a huge difference between what goes on within the American
educational system and what goes on in, say, a Communist re-educational
program. For instance, American students learn about the truth, whereas the people
in the Communist system learn falsehoods.
I’ve never seen the study
which demonstrates, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the foregoing is true.
People in America, in their own self-serving manner, assume this to be the case,
but they can’t prove it.
One can talk about the
many atrocities of: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, or any number of other
Communist leaders – and I have never been a fan of Communism, feeling, among
other things that much of its theoretical framework (e.g., historical
materialism), along with its social excesses, are, respectively, neither
tenable nor justifiable. However, unfortunately, one also can match the
foregoing atrocities with the many instances of American terror which have been perpetuated
in relation to, for example: Indians, Blacks, women, poor people, Hiroshima,
Tokyo, Dresden, Hamburg, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Iraq, Iran,
Central America, and Palestine.
Millions of innocent
people within, and beyond, the United States have not been killed and
brutalized by Americans for the sake of truth – which even if this were so (which
it is not) would be unacceptable – but, rather, innocent people have been
slaughtered for the sake of: Power, control, resources, profits, and
terrorizing whole populations. However, Americans are socialized and educated to
believe that what Tony Smith did in 2003 – protest an unjust war in Iraq– and
Marco Lokar did in 1991 – protest an unjust war in Iraq – and what I did in
1968 – protest an unjust war in Vietnam -- are despicable betrayals of American
values, while the destruction of innocent people and societies by Americans is
an exercise in glorious patriotism that is making the world safe for democracy.
Welcome to the world of
Orwell’s Newspeak, where ‘peace’ really means war, ‘freedom’ actually means oppression,
and ‘truth’ stands for that which is false. However, because all too many
‘teachers’ and ‘administrators’ in the American educational system are fluent
in the language of Newspeak, they have become like the ‘confederates’ in the
Asch perception experiment that was discussed earlier and, therefore, are
engaged in manipulating students – knowingly or unknowingly – through
disinformation, misinformation, and outright falsehoods on behalf of those in
government and commerce who are in control of the experimental lab called
America.
Why is education
compulsory in America? Or, perhaps, the question should be phrased somewhat
differently – namely, why are governments the agencies that are making
education compulsory?
There are many arguments
which can be advanced with respect to why learning is important. Indeed,
learning is at the heart of the basic right of sovereignty which involves
having a fair opportunity to push back the horizons of ignorance concerning the
nature of existence.
However, a process of
education that is compelled by state governments tends to be a different
matter. That kind of a compulsory system is intended to serve the political,
economic, social, and/or religious agenda of those who are in control of the
way of power that renders education a compulsory activity, and, therefore,
whatever learning takes place within that system is not necessarily about
pushing back the horizons of ignorance concerning the nature of reality or
one’s relationship with reality but is, instead, a function of the interests of
the way of power.
Under the provisions of
the Philadelphia Constitution, education is not an enumerated power of the
federal government, nor is it prohibited to the state governments. The 9th
and 10th Amendments indicate that: (a) The enumeration in the
Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage
others retained by the people; (b) The powers not delegated to the United
States, nor prohibited to it by the states, are reserved to the states
respectively, or to the people.
While states – within
determinate limits -- might have the power to implement and administer
educational programs, there is nothing in the Constitution which indicates that
states should either have exclusive authority over education or that they
should have the right to compel people to be educated. To give states priority
in the matter of education, would be to “deny or disparage” other rights – in
violation of the 9th Amendment -- that are retained by the people
but which have not been enumerated in the Philadelphia Constitution, and as
well, giving states exclusive priority in the matter of education would also be
in violation of the wording of the 10th Amendment which indicates
that whatever powers are not delegated to the federal government or prohibited
to the states are reserved for the states “or to the people.”
People have a legal standing
within the context of the amended-Constitution that is independent of the
states. In fact, the first ten amendments – that is, the so-called Bill of
Rights – are entirely about the rights of people. The 10th Amendment
does not suddenly deprive people of rights or power but, rather, indicates that
either: (a) the states – considered as one expression of ‘We the People’ --
have certain rights reserved for the people of those states, and/or (b) the
states, considered as agencies acting on behalf of the people, as well as the
people considered apart from the states, both have a legitimate claim with
respect to those powers that are not delegated to the federal government or
prohibited to the states.
If the term “states” in
the Tenth Amendment meant precisely the same thing as “or to the people,” then,
the amendment is unnecessarily repetitious unless it was confirming that the
ultimate owners of the sort of powers that are being alluded to belong, first
and foremost, to the people. In other words, either the 10th
Amendment is unnecessarily repetitious, or a distinction is being made which
confirms that irrespective of whether ‘people’ are considered as part of a
state, or considered independently from the state, they have certain powers
which are reserved to them and which government -- of whatever kind -- cannot
take away.
Since the phrase “or to
the people” was suggested by (according to some) Roger Sherman and, then,
accepted without discussion by the other people who were in attendance during
the process of forging the first ten amendments, one cannot be quite certain
what the individuals participating in the 1790 discussion had in mind. However,
the fact is that -- in a very important sense -- what they might have thought
is irrelevant because there is no non-arbitrary argument – that is, an argument
which can be proven to be true beyond a reasonable doubt -- that can be
advanced which shows why anyone in twenty-first century America is obligated to
act in accordance with what people In 18th-century America thought
about things.
People have the right to
have control over their learning process because this is inherent in the nature
of basic sovereignty which pre-dates the Philadelphia Convention, the Philadelphia
Constitution, the ratification process, and the Bill of Rights. Everyone has
the right to have a fair opportunity to push back the horizons of ignorance
concerning the nature of reality, as well as one’s relationship to that
reality, and a learning process that is organized and compelled by governance –
whether federal or state -- will not necessarily ensue such a fair opportunity
because that educational process will tend to be biased by the interests of its
own ‘way of power’ rather than ‘the way of sovereignty’ which is in the
interests of the individual.
As noted earlier, the 9th
and 10th amendments of the Philadelphia Constitution can be
understood in a way that is consistent with the nature of basic sovereignty
outlined above. However, if someone wishes to argue that the foregoing sort of
meaning is inconsistent with what the Framers intended (and one would like to
see the argument for that sort of perspective), then one can counter with the
fact that people of today do not need to be bound by what those people intended
since the dimension of obligation associated with that sort of an intention
(whatever it might have been) cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be
incumbent on the people of today.
Like the Chinese
Communist process of re-education – which is a way of power -- the notion of
compulsory education in America – which is also a way of power – is intended to
force people to be complicit in their own conceptual and ideological conversion
in order to serve the purposes of ideologically-driven governance. The way of power – whether Chinese or
American in character – does not want people to be in control of their own
learning processes ... people must be ‘educated’ in accordance with the hermeneutical
template set down by the ‘way of power.’
-----
In 1967 Martin Seligman
and Steve Maier conducted an experiment at the University of Pennsylvania. Like
the experiments performed by Stanley Milgram (memory/learning/punishment) and
Philip Zimbardo (prisoners), the Seligman/Maier experiment would not be
permitted in today’s ethical environment that establishes the conditions under
which proposed experiments are either approved or not approved.
The Seligman/Maier
investigation involved dogs, and their experiment was divided into two stages.
Without becoming too engrossed in the details, the first step produced three
kinds of dogs – (a) dogs that were put into a harness arrangement for a period
of time, and then released; (b) dogs that were put in the same sort of harness,
shocked (unlike the Milgram experiment, the shocks were real) and, then,
permitted to learn how to stop the shocks; (c) dogs that were put in a harness,
shocked, and, then not permitted to learn how to stop the shocks ... in fact, for
these dogs, there seemed to be no discernible pattern to the shocks or any way
to control them.
In the second stage of
the experiment, all three groups of dogs were run through a large box-like
structure consisting of two chambers divided by a partition that the dogs
easily could jump over. The floor of the first chamber of the box was
electrified, and the shocks delivered in that room could be escaped if the dogs
jumped over the partition to a ‘safe’ room.
Group (a) and (b) dogs
quickly learned how to escape the shocks that were delivered in the first room.
Group (c) dogs – the ones that were never permitted to learn how to control the
shocks which were delivered to them in the first stage of the experiment –
tended to lie down in a corner of the electrified room and merely whimper as the
shocks continued to be delivered. Even when group (c) dogs were dragged across
the partition and shown that they would be free from shocks in the second room,
many of the group (c) dogs would not exhibit escape behavior when placed back
in the first compartment but, instead, would, once again, lie down and whimper
while being shocked.
Seligman referred to the
behavior of the group (c) dogs as “learned helplessness.” In other words, after these dogs learned in
the first stage of the experiment that nothing they did seemed to be effective
in stopping or controlling the shocks being delivered to them, then when it
came to the second part of the experiment, those dogs tended not to take
advantage of the opportunity to escape ... either on their own, or when they
were shown how to do so by the experimenters.
The experiment had been
undertaken as part of Seligman’s study of the phenomenon of depression. He felt
that the idea of learned helplessness might apply to what had taken place in
the life of human beings who later suffered from clinical depression.
Whether, or not, learned
helplessness constitutes part of the phenomenology of depression, that concept
might apply to other facets of human existence. For example, the experience of
some individuals in the educational system seems to entail characteristics of
learned helplessness.
More specifically, those
people are put into a harness – i.e., compulsory education – and shocked in a
variety of ways (emotionally, psychologically, socially, or academically) over the
years by: Parents, other students, teachers, homework, tests, grades, and
administrators. For some of the foregoing students, nothing they do seems to
enable them to gain control over (that is, develop effective coping strategies
with respect to) the various kinds of shocks which are delivered through the
educational system ... everything appears to be so random and uncontrollable.
In effect, they seem to have
acquired or learned a form of helplessness which is debilitating. As a result,
many of them give up, lie down somewhere in a corner of their lives, and just
whimper as shocks are delivered.
I have encountered the
foregoing sorts of students in my classroom. Within the boundaries of what I
could do as an instructor, I found that almost nothing I did appeared to make
much, if any, academic difference in the lives of those kinds of individuals.
Of course, psychology is
not everyone’s cup of tea. Therefore, one has to factor in this issue to get a better
idea of which students seemed to be suffering from learned helplessness and
which students were either uninterested in, or bored by, the topic of
psychology.
However, without trying
to water-down the curriculum, I developed a technique of teaching that
permitted the bored and uninterested students to escape the shock of poor
grades ... although, sometimes, just barely. However, the students whom I
suspected were debilitated with learned helplessness would not take any of the
avenues of escape which were provided to them ... no matter how simple and accessible
those pathways might be.
These latter students
were not dumb. They were decent kids.
They didn’t act out in
class. They often came to school on a regular basis.
I did the educational
equivalent of dragging these kids across the partition that separated the room
of shocks from the room of ‘safety’ (passing grades). However, eventually,
these youngsters would merely do the human equivalent of lying down on the
floor and whimpering when, once again, they found themselves placed back in the
room of shocks with respect to tests, papers, and class participation.
One could argue that those
students do not belong in school, and there is something to be said for this
kind of a perspective. At the same time, those students have been, and are
being, marked with an indelible ink (grades), and many of the things which they
can, and can’t do, later in life will be affected by the presence of those marks.
Trying to determine what
happened to the foregoing students and what helped bring them to such a
condition is a complex issue. However, whatever the causes might be – and, I
suspect those causes are quite varied in some ways and quite similar in other
respects – at some point the foregoing students chose to cede their agency and
permit the system to take them in whatever direction the existential currents
were flowing, no matter what the nature of the shocks might be that were
delivered ... they permitted the system to engage them, but they stopped
engaging the system because trying to do so seemed to make no sense or did not
lead to results that, to a degree, could be controlled by the students.
Blaming those students
for their own plight is a tempting thing to do, and, undoubtedly, they did –
and do – have a role to play in why their condition is the way it is. However,
I have had over fifty years of experience in many different facets of the
educational system, and during that time, I have seen any number of: intellectually
abusive teachers, arrogant administrators, bullies – both students and school
officials -- and closed-minded ‘educators’ ... the sorts of individuals who
could make the lives of some individuals a living hell of constant shocks that
might, eventually, induce someone to lie down amidst such an onslaught and just
whimper.
The informational content
of education – about which one might have many concerns – is always filtered
through the structure of education – which entails an entirely different set of
concerns. The structural process of schooling is capable of filtering
information in a variety of ways that are both quite independent of the content
of education, as well as in ways that impact on that content.
Sometimes what is learned
from the phenomenology of schooling has much more to do with the structural
character of that process than it does with any academic content which is
channeled through that program. For instance, among other possibilities, one is
taught to become subservient to a process that is controlled by other people
for purposes that are not necessarily one’s own, and one is taught -- as The
Borg might say -- that ‘resistance is futile’ ... or largely so.
One can swim upstream
against the current. However, there is usually a considerable price to be paid
for those sorts of actions, and there is no guarantee that railing against the machine
will, eventually, lead to success.
It took me sixteen years
to get my doctorate (13 if one subtracts the three years spent obtaining a
master’s degree). My biggest sin – or, at least, one of them -- was that I was
unwilling to bow down to the alleged authority of professors concerning a
variety of issues and play the academic ‘game’ in the way they considered to be
appropriate.
They had control over my
life, and they emphasized that point in any number of ways. I met students from
other graduate departments who had encountered similar problems.
I remember seeing photocopies
of an article that had been posted on a number of bulletin boards around the
university. The article was about a former graduate student – living in
California I believe -- who was being released from prison after serving 17 years, or
so, for killing one of his professors. The number of years was circled in red,
and a note – written in red marker ink -- was added in the margin to the right
of the circled words which said, in effect: ‘Just think of it ... only 17
years.’
The posting didn’t give
me any ideas about my professors. However, the posting did allude to the
considerable amount of abuse that is taking place at all levels of the
educational process.
Sometimes, students
commit murder as a result of that abuse. Sometimes, they develop learned
helplessness in relation to that abuse.
In my own case, a way to
escape the abuse bubbled to the surface of my consciousness following a talk on
science and spirituality that I gave at a university in Ottawa, Canada. After
the talk, I met a physicist who I thought would make a great external examiner
for my dissertation, and when he agreed to take on that role, I fired everyone
on my thesis committee, cobbled together a new committee, and since my thesis
was already written (it was actually the second dissertation that I had
written, but my original thesis committee refused to read either one), I asked
for, and was granted, the right to go directly to the oral defense of my
dissertation.
The professors that I had
kicked off my thesis committee, along with a number of other professors in my
department, were all certain that I would not pass the oral exam. When I
returned to my department, and they asked me about the results of the
examination, the drop of their jaws in disbelief and consternation that
resulted from my words of success was almost worth the 17-year wait.
There was, however, a
cost. Although I eventually did find a job teaching various courses in
psychology and did this for a number of years, nonetheless, being able to have
the opportunity to gain tenure somewhere or secure a full-time job in teaching had
pretty much been taken off the table.
In many ways, the
deciding factor in the foregoing set of events – and there might be many reasons
for why that factor was present – was fairly straightforward. I was not going
to cede my moral and intellectual agency to people (professors and
administrators) who might have had the power to do what they did, but they
could not justify what they had been doing for so many years.
It was the same factor
that surfaced when I was on the bus traveling to the Charlestown Naval Base in
order to take a physical for the draft during the Vietnam War. Two or three
individuals – and although I don’t know who they were, I owe them a lot -- were
walking up and down the aisle of that bus as we were making the journey to the
military base and indicating to the 30 or 40 other individuals on the bus that
-- in effect and using my terminology -- we didn’t have to cede our moral and
intellectual authority to people who could not justify what they were doing in
Vietnam and elsewhere in the world ... and, in fact, we should not cede that
authority to those people.
Learned helplessness
involves, in part, the issue of foregoing our own sense of agency and
permitting the agency of other people to impact our lives in potentially problematic
ways. The person who is suffering from learned helplessness has been induced by
a variety of events to believe that the exercise of his or her own agency will
make no difference to the outcome of events, and, as a result, all the
information that comes to the individual from the environment is filtered
through the lenses of learned helplessness.
The classroom, however,
is not the only place where the phenomenon of learned helplessness occurs. That
phenomenon also shows up in social, economic and political spheres as
well.
For example, many people
have dropped out of the political process because that form of activity has
taught them that, for the most part, no matter what they do, the nature of the
political process will not change because it is completely entangled in: Vested
interests, struggles for power, corruption, disinformation, corporate money,
manipulation, dirty tricks, hypocrisy, misinformation, greed, ambition,
lobbyists, and dishonesty. As a result, people retire to their corner of the
room of political shocks, lie down, and whimper about the ways in which that
process brings pain into their lives.
I don’t disagree with those
people. Or, at least, I agree with their belief that the political process in
America is not salvageable under the current set of arrangements, and that no
matter what one does under those conditions, the individuals who are in power
are unlikely to give up their control of a system that serves their purposes,
and, therefore, it is in their interests to keep the political process in its
current dysfunctional condition which renders it vulnerable to all manner of
political, economic, financial, legal, and media forms of undue influence.
There is a very real
sense in which democracy has become something of a cult in America. For
example, like cults, so-called political leaders – some of them quite
charismatic – often try to induce people to cede their moral, intellectual, and
financial agency to one, or another, cause or ideology.
Like cults, the political
parties often troll the waters of the disaffected and seek those who are going
through various kinds of transitions in their lives – e.g., unemployment, loss
of one’s home, divorce, rising costs, and education. These kinds of individuals
are particularly vulnerable to becoming highly suggestible with respect to the
‘solutions’ that are being offered by this or that party or political
organization.
Like cults, political
parties often attempt to leverage and manipulate the fears, anxieties,
uncertainties, and confusion of people. Like cults, the purpose of that
leveraging and manipulation often is not to solve problems but to acquire
power.
Like cults, political
parties often seek to foster a sense of ‘us’ versus ‘them.’ Like cults,
political organizations often attempt to forge a sense of ‘family-like’
community through which the individual develops some form of loyalty or
obligation to the ‘leaders’ in exchange for having a sense of ‘belonging’ to
something bigger than themselves.
Like cults, political
leaders often seek to control the channel-ways of information flow and use this
control to keep their followers in the dark about any number of issues.
Moreover, like cults, when embarrassing ‘facts’ come to light, those ‘facts’
are re-framed and given another interpretation that is more favorable to the
political leaders.
Like cults, political
leaders often use a form of ‘love bombing.’ In politics this form of love bombing
is known as ‘patriotism’.
Endorphins flow as a
result of the ‘power’ and ‘glory’ that are associated with the manner in which
a given cause, party, or organization gives expression to the superficial
trappings of patriotism. As a result, leaders manipulate that endorphin flow (the
same sort of high one gets when one’s team wins the Super Bowl or the world
series or the Stanley Cup) through their speeches and writings by pressing all
the right buttons through the use of words such as: ‘freedom,’ ‘rights,’
‘democracy,’ ‘honor,’ ‘duty,’ ‘justice,’ and so on ... words which are
ill-defined and mean many things to many people but, nonetheless -- due to
years of classical and operant conditioning by politicians, the educational
system, and the media -- stir the heart and soul whenever they are mentioned.
Like cults, political
leaders and parties often play on people’s sense of guilt concerning the
foregoing issues, and, then, use that guilt to fuel commitment to the cause or
ideology that allegedly will assuage or redeem that guilt through
accomplishment and victory. Like cults, political leaders and political
organizations often create ‘true believers’ who will stick with the party no
matter what nonsense the leader or organization utter and irrespective of whatever
form of betrayal might be committed.
Like cults, political leaders,
organizations, and parties often use disinformation, misinformation, propaganda
and outright lies to shape the understanding of their followers. Like cults,
political leaders, organizations, and parties often seek to induce their
followers to filter information concerning national or world events through the
ideological lenses that are provided to those followers.
Like cults, political
leaders, organizations, and parties often denigrate anyone who does not agree
with them. They tend to use techniques which are intended to attack the
integrity, credibility, and sense of identity of their opponents ... and, frequently,
this is done quite apart from whether, or not, those attacks are empirically
justified.
Like cults, the followers
of a given political ideology are often very resistant to any data which
suggests that the cause to which those individuals are committed might be other
that what they have been led to believe by their leaders. Like cults, the
followers of those political ideologies all too readily become abusive toward
anyone who is perceived to be a threat to their sense of ideologically-induced
identity.
Like cults, political
leaders and parties often like to create a condition of emotional and/or
financial dependence in their followers with respect to the leader or party. This
sort of dependency is used to forge feelings of duty, loyalty, and moral
obligation in the followers.
Like cults, political
leaders and parties often urge their followers to become willing to sacrifice
their lives, resources, time, and families for the sake of the leader or party.
Like cults, political leaders and parties encourage their followers to be
willing to go to war to preserve the sanctity of their cause.
There are a variety of
terms that might be used to describe the techniques which frequently are
employed by cults and political leaders/parties. Some of the terms which allude
to those techniques are: bounded choice, thought-reform, indoctrination,
propaganda, undue influence, menticide, and information disease.
Irrespective of what word
one uses to refer to those techniques, they all have a common purpose ...
although the underling methods which are used to implement those techniques might
differ considerably from case to case. That purpose is: To induce people to
cede their moral and intellectual authority to a given individual, party,
organization, or form of governance.
So-called
representational democracy is nothing more, or less, than getting the
electorate – or an appropriate percentage thereof – to cede the agency of the various
members of that electorate to a given candidate. The problem with this is that
very rarely, if ever, do those candidates represent the people who vote for
them ... especially, when the aims and goals of that set of voters is diverse,
if not contradictory, in nature.
No form of
representational government is capable of representing the soul of another
human being. Nevertheless, the idea of representational government is often
predicated on such a myth, and, as a result, when a given representative fails
to represent someone, people feel betrayed, and, as a result, become cynical
toward, or disgruntled with, the process -- and the foregoing situation will
invariably occur since such a representative will necessarily filter
information through the lenses of his or her understanding of things and not,
necessarily, through the understandings of her or his constituents.
The foregoing problem
might, or might not be, an indication of personal failing on the part of any
given representative. However, the foregoing issue definitely indicates that
there is a structural flaw at the heart of the process of representational
democracy.
In her book, Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight
Against their Hidden Menace, Margaret Singer, now deceased, attempts to put
forth an argument which purportedly shows how the Marine Corps differs from
cults ... and she did this because when she gave talks on the subject of cults,
she repeatedly ran into questions and comments concerning the cult-like
character of the Marine Corps. Her perspective on the issue indicates that she
might not have understood as much about the nature of cults as some people
supposed was the case.
The following comments
should be prefaced by several observations. First, wanting to defend America
against armed invasion is a noble calling. Secondly, I am willing to grant that
many, if not most, individuals who join the Marines do so out of honorable
intentions. Thirdly, I believe that most individuals who want to become Marines
believe they are serving the interests of: justice, liberty, democracy, and
human rights. Fourthly, it takes courage to be willing to put one’s life and
body on the line for one’s country and one’s fellow Marines.
Notwithstanding the
foregoing considerations, none of those observations precludes the possibility
that the Marine Corp itself might be a cult. Many, if not, most of the people
who join, say, spiritual or religious cults do so with noble and honorable
intentions, and they believe they are serving the interests of truth, goodness,
wisdom, and justice.
Moreover, many cult
members are quite prepared to sacrifice themselves, their possessions, their
money, their time, and their talents on the line for the sake of what they
consider to be the truth. Marines are not the only individuals who have a
willingness to sacrifice their personal interests for the sake of others.
The very first reason
which Singer gives as to why the Marine Corps is not like a cult is because
supposedly, unlike cults, Marines understand the nature of the organization
they are joining, and, as a result, there are no secret aspects of that
organization and Marines know what to expect. The fact of the matter is – and
in another posting I referred to the perspective of Smedley Butler, a two-time medal of
honor winner, in this regard – war is a racket, and, consequently, Marines do
not necessarily know whose interests they are serving, and when they do have
such an understanding, they often also tend to have some appreciation that those
interests are not necessarily synonymous with justice, freedom, or democracy
... that war is a dirty, messy business in which the first casualty tends to be
the truth.
Marines are trained to
obey orders. Those orders are shaped by presidents, politicians, and military
authorities who do not necessarily feel obligated to share their purposes and
ideas with “grunts.”
Marines are trained to
trust their superiors just as cult members are trained to do so. Marines are
trained to follow orders without question, just as cult members are.
As is true in many cults,
there are all kinds of secrets in the military. Secret operations, classified
materials, information that is on a ‘need to know’ basis, and so on, are all part
of military life – both within and outside of the Marine Corps.
Marines can be trained in
the art and technology of killing. However, until a person has actually taken
the life of another person, then contrary to what Singer claims, that
individual cannot possibly know what to expect with respect to how one will
emotionally and psychologically respond to that sort of an event, or what
ramifications that kind of act will have on the rest of an individual’s life.
Moreover, the fact that
Marines kill people is not necessarily a strong selling point with respect to
the task of differentiating the Marine Corps from cults. After all, many cults
– but not all – seek to use non-violent means to achieve their objectives.
According to Margaret
Singer, another difference between the Marine Corps and cults is that physical
fitness is encouraged for members of the USMC, but this is not the case with
respect to cults. While it might be the case that some cults eschew physical
activity, many cults actively engage their members in physical activity as both
a way of breaking down their resistance in order to render those individuals
more vulnerable to cult indoctrination, as well as to suppress the inclination of
individuals to engage in critical reflection (i.e., they are too tired to
think).
In addition, Singer
claims that one of the differences between the Marine Corps and cults is that
the USMC values rational behavior and independent thinking. Up to a point, she
is probably right, but cults also encourage members to use their rational
capacities for independent thinking as long as that activity serves the
interests of the cult.
Beyond a certain point,
however, that sort of rational, critical, independent thinking is not
encouraged in either the Marine Corps or cults. For instance, killing people
and destroying the infrastructure of a country might be very rational things to
do within the context of a military operation, but that sort of an operation
might not be very rational when it comes to finding the best way of solving the
underlying problem in a non-violent fashion, and any Marine who insisted on the
peaceful solution to all conflicts would not necessarily be considered either
rational or an asset to the USMC, any more than a cult member who always
advocated pursuing solutions that were antithetical to the cult’s raison d’état
would be considered ‘rational’ and exhibiting good, independent thinking.
Singer believes that
another difference between the Marine Corps and cults is that the USMC is not
above the law of the land, whereas cults consider themselves to be above that
law. This is a very sweeping statement, both with respect to the Marine Corps,
as well as in relation to cults.
Many cults don’t
necessarily consider themselves above the law, but, they do want to have equal
protection under the law and sometimes feel that they are not always afforded
equal treatment. Furthermore, there is the problem of determining whose
interpretation of the law will be applied in any given instance and whether, or
not, that kind of an interpretation is actually capable of being justified.
On the other hand, SOFA –
Status of Forces Agreements – are often forced on countries and contain
conditions that prevent American military personal – including Marines -- from
being held accountable under the laws of the country in which they are
stationed. Apparently, Americans believe they have the right to dictate to the
rest of the world about what constitutes moral and immoral behavior or what
does, and does not, constitute crimes for which one should be held accountable
by people who are impartial in their judgments ... which is not what military
legal proceedings necessarily involve.
Margaret Singer indicates
that another difference between cults and the Marine Corps is that members of the
USMC cannot be used in medical and psychological experiments without their
informed consent. However, military personnel – including Marines -- have been
repeatedly been put in harm’s way with respect to all manner of radiological
(e.g., depleted uranium), chemical (e.g., Agent Orange), and biological (e.g.,
forced inoculations of unproven biological agents during several Gulf wars)
experiments without their informed consent.
Moreover, with the
exception of, perhaps, Jonestown, I am not aware of too many cults who have
subjected their members to medical and psychological experiments without their
informed consent ... unless, of course, one wishes to count meditation and
chanting as instances of psychological experimentation – which raises a variety
of interesting questions but does not necessarily meet the abusive standard
which government officials set in the Tuskegee syphilis experiment when
unsuspecting Black men went untreated for the disease, or the LSD experiments
that the CIA performed on unsuspecting Canadians and graduate students in the United States.
Singer also believes that
an important difference between the Marine Corps and cults is that, unlike
cults, the USMC encourages its members to read, gain knowledge, take courses, or
actively engage the sort of information that is available through Stars and
Stripes or Armed Services Radio. However, once a Marine has gone through boot
camp, everything that is read, heard, or learned is very likely engaged through
the filters of the perspective of the USMC, and if it isn’t, then, for one
reason or another, the USMC and such an individual are likely to part company
in the not too distant future.
None of the foregoing
considerations is intended either to denigrate Marines or serve as a form of
advocacy for this or that cult. Nevertheless, I believe the foregoing
comparisons indicate that there might be a lot more similarities between cults
and the USMC than Singer was willing to acknowledge.
The term “deprogramming”
is sometimes used to refer to the attempt of one, or more persons, to induce an
individual who is part of a cult to begin to become aware of the techniques of
undue influence that are being used, and have been used, by the cult to:
recruit an individual, initiate that person into the cult, and, then, maintain such
an individual within the sphere of influence of that cult. In fact, one could
describe this posting, along with many others I have written on this blog, to be exercises in ‘deprogramming’ with respect to all
those individuals who are entangled – willingly or otherwise -- in the cult
which democracy has, to a great extent, become.
