Warring World(s) Part 4a Introduction to "The System"

Previous Part 3 here

Part 4a Introduction to “The System”

Part 1 focused on the enemy being the psychopaths in our societies and not the people the psychopaths point us at. That these psychopaths create and market wars for their own profit and that the wars are ultimately against the rest of humanity who are largely uneducated to this ruse.

Part 2 sought to expound a little on how psychopaths think; how they are fundamentally different from the rest of us; how they have no conscience and what that means. I probably should have included in Part 2 how people generally become enamored with power and how this can lead to psychopathy. I will make amends for that now and will then look at how these psychopaths leverage their corrupt mindset into real power over our society by looking at the three main institutions or professions and the two mechanisms they use. But first, power.

We have lots of sayings in our culture that show a common knowledge of the effects of power but these are never acknowledged by those in power who, of course, are the very ones suffering from them. Some of these sayings are: “He's drunk with power”; “The power has gone to his head”; and my favourite (of Scottish heritage, I believe), “The working class can kiss my arse, I've got the foreman's job at last”! We know instinctively what they are conveying; that people exercising power over others change. Their attitudes, politics, priorities and even worldviews change and change for the worse. Arrogance goes up and compassion and common sense goes down. They become immature and insufferable yet they would have you think they are now superior. What is going on here? Where else or in whom else do we see this metamorphosis?

During my life, from early childhood onwards, I have had to deal with many alcoholics both within and without my family. Similarly, I have also had to deal with many psychopaths also both within and without my family. I am very familiar with both groups. It was a memorable day, indeed, the day I realised there was a striking similarity between the two and what that meant. And it was this; that both groups ended up with upside down priorities and engaging in behaviour that was destructive to both themselves and others and being seemingly totally oblivious to or caring about the consequences. Upon further thought, I realised that they both got to the point of their seemingly insane behaviour by the same process; incrementally, bit by little bit. At each step losing sight of where they had come from, the change that had occurred in themselves. I realised that the same delusional process was at work in both groups.

Deep sea divers can sometimes suffer from what is called “rapture of the deep” where narcosis sets in and the diver experiences this state of euphoria and thinking he is blissfully safe and in control when, in fact, he is in deep and imminent danger. This process of narcosis is the path trod by all substance abusers and addicts. I was very familiar with this phenomenon in alcoholics and now I saw that it happened with psychopaths as well. Psychopaths have the same pathology as addicts.

If you have a tendency to dismiss psychopathy because you cannot imagine people behaving like that, then just think about addicts and their behaviour. It happens.

So if psychopaths behave like addicts, what are they addicted to? The answer seems obvious, doesn't it? Power, power over other people. To quote “The Oracle” again, “What do men with power want? More Power”. Quotes such as this from the movie “The Matrix” hit you because you already know the truth of them.

I have argued previously that we are not given power over others. This is God's province and he has granted us free will so even he is not exercising power over us. “That all men are created equal” is pronounced as self evident and is accepted as such because it is (if that's not too circular). Exercising power over others finds its ultimate expression and ultimate offensiveness in torture. Torture, pared down to its essence, is an attempt on the part of the torturer to replace God in the life of the tortured with himself. I will return later to this subject of torture and talk of its ability sometimes to bring about psychopathy, particularly in children.

Exercising power over others is addictive and also narcotic i.e. it may feel good but it induces a delusion. It affects the mind's ability to accurately perceive reality and to exercise control over itself, to restrain itself. It slowly shuts down the voice of conscience. Life becomes the singular pursuit of the addictive substance, power over others, and woe betide anybody who gets between and addict and his life's desire. If pursued far enough and long enough, psychopathy is the outcome. As we are all susceptible to drug addiction, so are we also susceptible to power addiction but we restrain ourselves. We choose not to commit to this dark path. Somehow, I think that most people have an appreciation of this destructive process. Yet all of our institutions in society are structured as if this didn't happen. The hierarchy is the dominant structure used and not only does the hierarchy not encourage restraint, it rewards the opposite, dominance and exploitation. A look at these institutions and particularly the ones that are the pillars of “The System” is next. To start, I would like to briefly return to the New Testament Gospels.

Jesus paid out big time on three groups, the priests, the scribes (lawyers) and the moneychangers. These three groups conspired together in Judean society to exploit most of the people. Nothing has changed! These three groups down through the ages have manufactured misery and fear when none was necessary so as to gain privilege and power over others for themselves. They did it by working on peoples' minds. This is a crucial point because in it lies the key to our liberation from these same groups who are still doing it to this day.

First, the priests. Our dominant Christian culture was fostered first by the Catholic Church and it still remains a powerful force in our society. Various reformations caused rival denominations to be established and these denominations seem to be forever splitting. Each time saying the “old” denomination was wrong. No argument there from me! But, unfortunately, the new group always takes the really bad part with them; the desire to dominate and the structure to do it with.

Though Christianity was persecuted by the Jews and the Romans, it flourished for three hundred years. Christianity took the form of many small regional churches. They co-operated with each other but were autonomous. Then the Emperor Constantine came along. He had two problems. The first one was that he didn't have enough troops to maintain the level of control he wanted over his empire (and, anyway, to do so would have bankrupted his treasury). Constantine set about resolving this problem by instituting his own church, or religion to be more accurate. He reasoned that it was more effective to control people psychologically through religion than physically through the use of soldiers.

He started out by putting all church leaders on the state payroll making them psychologically and financially dependent on the State and thus separating them (in their own minds) from their flocks. Next he announced the Council of Nicea whereby all church leaders were required to attend. Money buys compliance. Constantine promptly locked them all up and said they weren't getting out till they had formed themselves into a monolithic church and agreed on a common set of beliefs (this became known as the Nicene Creed). This resulting church would be given the authority of the State, be financed by the State and take its direction from the Emperor. Again, money buys compliance. For more information on this, I suggest you read Malachi Martin's, "The Fall and Decline of the Roman Church".

According to the Gospels, Jesus was given a similar offer by Satan when he was tempted in the desert, "All this", he said, indicating “The World”, "I will give to you if you but bow down and worship me". But Jesus rejected the offer. However, the church elders when faced with the same offer rather unwisely did not. That wasn't the end of it, either. There were many other religions in the empire which couldn't be left to themselves as this would frustrate Constantine's plan for a “Universal” religion, a one stop God-shop for the whole empire. Constantine was into centralisation. The largest one of these other religions was Mithraism. Mithraism worshiped the sun god Mithra. So, in fact, Constantine formed a new religion out of these two. For sure, Christianity was dominant but it took on a new character, one of dominance and power. The Mithraism was included through adoption of their winter solstice festival (birth of the new sun in the heavens and the birth of Mithra which was witnessed by shepherds and Magi bearing gifts!). This became Christmas (birth of God's Son on Earth and the Christmas story) and the spring fertility celebration (bunny rabbits laying eggs!) worshiping Astare (there are various spellings) which became known as Easter. The head would be known thereafter as “Pope” presumably after “Pater Patratus” the title of the head of Mithraism (both titles mean “father”). The title "Pontiff" belonged to the Emperor but was later appropriated by the RCC. The day of worship became Sunday in deference to the Mithraists. Churches (the buildings, that is) were thereafter oriented East-West to face the dawn sun and the whole occult fascination with magical thinking, magical rituals and playing dress-ups came along for the ride. Mithraism was a warlike religion and this spirit seems to have carried over into the new offspring, the RCC. And we now had a priest class which didn't exist previously (King James version of the Bible with its insertion of words such as “bishop” and “deacon” notwithstanding).

Christianity was back to the good-old bad-old days of the Pharisees complete with their violent, genocidal and exclusivist Old Testament. The New Testament was assembled using the four main Gospels and the writings of Paul, largely. Paul, being a Jewish scribe (lawyer), was very familiar with the Books that would later form the Old Testament and was fond of quoting them, thus, tying the two books together. The focus shifted subtly but significantly to include the earthly authority both of government (the Emperor) and the priest class. Books or scriptures that didn't accord with that were left out and were, indeed, rounded up and burnt. Knowing this, it is quite easy to see how Christianity has the dominating and often warlike spirit it has today which is quite at odds with the spirit of Jesus evident in the Gospels. It is also quite easy to see why psychopaths would be attracted to this new religion now; this Roman (Empire) Catholic (Universal) Church.

Just to rub salt into the wound, the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) was structured using the hierarchical model of the Roman army and Roman bureaucracies. So the RCC has brought down to us through the so called Dark and Middle Ages, not only the spirit of the Roman Empire with its obsession with centralism and power (empire) but also the mechanism to manifest it, the hierarchy. All breakaway denominations have taken with them this same attitude and structure.

I mentioned before that Constantine had two problems. The second one was that he had a lot of Christian soldiers in the ranks who were there for economic reasons and who weren't too keen on killing. He would soon be also facing a significant battle against his rival, Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge just outside Rome and would be outnumbered. Fortunately, Constantine saw a sign in the sky. It was a cross and he heard Jesus say to him, “With this sign, go forth and conquer”. Lucky for Constantine, Jesus, upon re-entering heaven from earth had apparently done a 180 degree rethink on his policy of non-violence and decided war and killing were good things (provided you are a Christian, presumably). Also fortunately, the priests were on board now and could endorse this new policy and they had authority because being priests, they could talk with God; an ability the punters in the pews had suddenly lost. The short of it all was that we now had the phenomenon (indeed, the oxymoron) of the Christian Soldier gleefully killing for Jesus.

They won, by the way, which proved that Constantine was a godly man and saw and heard correctly. Either that or that he was one cunning SOB. History tends to the latter interpretation. Little wonder, then, that the Pope had his own army in later years and waged his own wars. Little wonder also that Popes and other churches' leaders have not stopped wars by simply reminding their adherents that they are not supposed to go and kill people and instead, you know, love your enemies. The RCC cannot come out in opposition to wars because they fear being seen as partisan politically. The only way not to be seen as such and to still oppose wars would be to do so in principle. But it cannot do that because fighting wars for God is part of its foundation myth. Other churches cannot do so either because they borrow the RCC history to trace themselves back to Christ. Which is ironic because the RCC cannot trace itself back to Christ in the way it claims, anyway. It claims that Peter was the first Bishop of Rome and therefore the first Pope. He was neither. This is a matter of historical record. He wasn't a bishop anywhere, not even in Jerusalem. After Christ's death, James, his brother, became the head of the Christians in Jerusalem.

The Christian faith was co-opted by Constantine and turned into an instrument of power and dominance and given the tools (hierarchy and State authority) to use and abuse. So what's not for a psychopath to love about religion?

Next, the Lawyers. The situation is particularly bad in Common Law countries. Down through the centuries the Law has been shaped by the lawyers. They run it and they run it for their own benefit. If you have enough money, they will get you acquitted. It's that simple. Eighty percent of defendants in serious criminal trials go free in Australia and yet innocent people are found guilty and jailed. The figures vary but estimates of between five and ten percent have been made. It is similar in England and the US, I believe. With privatised prisons, the situation has become a real nightmare. (see here) – over incarceration is inevitable.

Though there is a judge presiding, he doesn't run the case. The lawyers do. The judge is reduced to an umpire. Two lawyers battle it out in front of the jury and the best legal team wins. It has become a sporting contest whereby the best team wins and justice loses. A whole legal hurdy-gurdy has grown up around admissibility of evidence. It gets truly bizarre and is the main reason criminals with deep pockets go free. Truth and Justice are not the issues. Money and style are. And don't forget the judge is a trained lawyer. Judges (lawyers) make case law. Lawyers are over represented in any government and they legislate laws. The lawyers in government are deferred to by non-lawyer politicians, especially in this area. These lawyer/politicians make ambiguous laws and full of loopholes requiring judicial adjudications and lots of appeals. It's good for business. The lawyers control everything from the training institutions in universities to the making of the laws through government and from the Bench, to pimping for the crooks and fleecing you and me. They stifle any reform be it of their own profession or reform in government. It is their very own Sacred (Cash) Cow. They mystify the whole process and create the helplessness which then creates the demand. Too easy!

The Law Profession is at the heart of institutionalised corruption in our society. The legal fraternity will actively discourage a member from following their conscience and insist they follow the letter of the law as written (and interpreted for them) no matter how bizarre the result. By doing so, they institutionalise corruption and advance its cause. Because almost all of the profession is driven by money and the highest bidder, be it in court or in government, this exaggerates class privilege and all the corruption and abuse that goes along with that. It owes no allegiance to truth. It is a cancer.

Police corruption is exacerbated by the lawyers. Because they make it so hard for police to get a conviction, the police are encouraged to fabricate evidence and frame suspects. Pretty soon this becomes routine and necessary for promotion and next comes framing completely innocent victims. Hence the high wrongful incarceration rate.

From Bernard Chazelle at A Tiny Revolution-
In 1998, Judge Keller rejected the request for a new trial for a mentally retarded man convicted of rape and murder, even though DNA tests after his trial showed that it was not his semen in the victim.

“We can’t give new trials to everyone who establishes, after conviction, that they might be innocent,” she later told the television news program “Frontline.” “We would have no finality in the criminal justice system, and finality is important.”

The people in this article from the New York Times have so much wrong with them, I really wouldn't know where to start. But suffice it to say that all the characters had significantly more power than the hapless inmate who lost his life because none of them, despite the excuses and apologetics, in the end cared enough. Power anaesthetises you to others' pain. This situation does not perturb the ultimate controllers in our society (subject of the next institution) because it adds to the pervasive atmosphere of helplessness and arbitrariness which, as we've seen, contributes to triggering obedient behaviour.
At present, the Common Law system rewards people without conscience. It is tailor made for psychopaths.

I have talked about two of the three institutions, religion and law, and one of the mechanisms, the hierarchy. This essay is getting long, so I'll continue with the third institution that has grown up around the “Moneylenders” and the second of the mechanisms, compound interest, in a further installment.

Next installment - Part 4b

Comments

newjesustimes's picture

great writing james

I'm already looking forward to your next one, and finding out what you suggest we might do about all these psychopaths running things...?

Upcoming parts

Thanks NJT. And thanks for setting up this blog. It's a great resource.
Yes, I would like to go straight to the solutions, myself, if only to avoid writing about some shitty stuff. But without the knowledge of what and who we are up against and how they operate and co-operate, I think the actions I propose will not make as much sense as they would otherwise. The changes I propose aren't new. I'll just be presenting them in a different light (hopefully!) or in a different combination, much like what I've written so far, I think. Part of what I've tried to do so far is to show whom NOT to turn to for help. It wastes precious time and digs us in deeper. Like campaigning and voting for the Democratic Party, for instance!
So, I'll finish this part by looking at the banks and their system. Then the next part will look at control systems such as state security agencies, torture and television and then, finally(!), the plan of action. Sorry about the suspense but I find it quite slow going writing about this stuff on power and control. You may have discerned I have a personal investment, so to speak, in all this.

Very helpful and informative

Very helpful and informative essays.

Feedback

Thanks, Robert. Without feedback it feels like you are just blowing into the wind. Much appreciated.

"Psychopath" is still too

"Psychopath" is still too muddy and flexible term to be useful. Some might even say it is scapegoating. Or intellectually lazy. Can't figure out what drives a person? He's a psychopath!

I think you can do better, james.

Terminology

“I think you can do better, james.”

Thanks for your faith in me, Anon, and I agree with you, yes, I can do better .... and will. But, no, I couldn't have done better so far because of time constraints and because of the sheer size of this whole subject. There is lots to introduce, describe, explain and corelate. It's all dynamic, too, not linear. Consequently, I am trying to deal with it in a circular or spiral fashion. Which means I will return to subjects and deal with them more in depth each time. For instance, I was going to return to psychopathy and the centrality of torture next but have decided to address remedial action first as I haven't dealt with it at all yet. Then we'll probably go round again going deeper until either I or the readers have had enough! I also don't have the advantage of having an already published body of writing as, say, Arthur Silber has that I can cut and paste and/or link to. Not that I would compare myself to Arthur.

I have, though, been conscious that my use of the term “psychopath” is sounding increasingly jingoistic and I'm sure that is what you are responding to, and quite rightly. Giving something a name does not give you understanding which is what you are saying, I think. But I and the reader need time to get beyond this necessarily surface, but useful, level of understanding. I will talk more about it but from an experiential and practical viewpoint. I am not going to get into defining what I call psychopathy but I did, and will further, describe it. A clinical or academic approach is neither necessary nor helpful in the end, I believe. We need working answers.

If you want to follow the academic angle, I encourage you to do so. If your local library has “DSM 4”, you will find it interesting, I'm sure. This is the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 4th Ed.” put out by the American Psychiatric Association. Of particular interest to you will be the so called Personality Disorders.
Other less academic but thoroughly useful books I can recommend are Martha Stout's “The Sociopath Next Door” and “The No Asshole Rule” by Robert L Sutton. If you read Martha Stout you will also see that I am talking about certain types of sociopaths and not all of them.

not necessarily jingoistic,

not necessarily jingoistic, james. but you seem to have understood my comment. you write well and you seem to have an analytic mind, I follow your thinking very well. it's just that when I read the tag "psychopath" in your analysis, it reminds me of the bigots I know who blame America's problems on "immigrants." I don't think sociopath or psychopath are definite enough terms to help us get to the root of what's going on. said differently, it seems that one avenue of response to the problems you discuss is to trace the problems to the appropriate psychopaths. and then what? kill them? imprison them?

Erich Fromm and Alice Miller dealt in more depth with this notion that you seem to reference with "psychopath" and I don't think either stopped at the simple labelling of misanthropic people. it seems almost like a taxonomic exercise, rather than an analysis of problems and solutions, when you resort to blaming "psychopaths."

for example, Miller would suggest "psychopathy" is attributable to abuse as children, and Fromm would suggest that the behavior of "psychopaths" in power is just opportunism, which exists in all humans, and Fromm would say that the response is for people to wake up and take responsibility for the authority they have, but yield to the governmental authorities.

that's what I'm talking about.

I'm enjoying these essays though, and I thank you for writing and posting them.

"Miller would suggest

"Miller would suggest "psychopathy" is attributable to abuse as children, and Fromm would suggest that the behavior of "psychopaths" in power is just opportunism, which exists in all humans, and Fromm would say that the response is for people to wake up and take responsibility for the authority they have, but yield to the governmental authorities."

I'm not sure that yielding to governmental authority is in sync with taking responsibility for (or from) your own authority. But that aside, I think both Miller and Fromm are right because I think they are talking about two different groups which I talk about very briefly in my next essay (I want to and will talk more on it later). I hesitate to say more on Fromm's position as it is twenty or more years since I read anything of his. I will re-read his "Escape From Freedom" which I remember making a very large impression on me at the time I read it. Fortunately, my local library has a copy because, unfortunately, my ex-wife, a clinical psychologist, decided she needed my copy of it more than I did. I think she showed rare wisdom!

Thanks for mentioning Fromm, as you have before, and thanks for your encouragement.

maybe the comma caused a

maybe the comma caused a poor communication there.

I mean that people have responsibilities -- for themselves, for their own acts which affect others. I mean that people abdicate from those responsibilities, and yield the responsibilities to the "authorities," mainly because doing that is easier than taking on the burden of the responsibilities and conducting one's self according to the responsibilities.

most in America today are busy playing a partisan game. from the perspective of those who are more likely to be here than at some braindead Rush Limbaugh fan-site, I see it this way. they spend energies finding scapegoats in the "conservative" or "republican" mindset, which is a way to make themselves feel good, fulfilled, or "correct" for supporting Democrats who aren't doing anything differently than the GOP. the idea is that they can give their own responsibilities to the noble Democrats, who supposedly will discharge their duties in a responsible way.

people who cling to a partisan perspective are abdicating responsibility. they use partisanship to avoid real analysis. I'm not accusing anyone here of doing that. that's not my point. my point is that abdication of responsibilities can arise even when a person's heart is in the right place. I might agree with a Dem-partisan on issues of importance and on what humanity needs re those issues. Where I'll disagree is the idea that merely supporting the right Democrat (or independent like Ron Paul for example) is all one has to do.

as long as people think they discharge their responsibilities as a member of a complex human society by simply being on the "right team," we will have massive inequities IMO.

the "right team" hasn't ever appeared in my experience. what I have seen is a whole lot of "right teams" taking their voters for granted, and continuing to chase corporate goals -- soft fascism, basically.

In the story, "The Grand

In the story, "The Grand Inquisitor" from "The Brothers Karamozov", Christ Returns to the world at the height of the Inquisition.
After bringing a dead child back to life, he is seized by the authorities and imprisoned.
The Grand Inquisitor admits to knowing that Jesus is truly returned, however, so far as the church is concerned, it is too late. The people have surrendered freedom and genuine spirituality for the security offered by the state and the church. A loaf of bread means more to a hungry man than the promise of eternal glory.
This arrangement has brought a certain stability to human affairs, as few are able to percieve that life is more than food, sex, and pain.

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
By submitting this form, you accept the Mollom privacy policy.