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Power And The Rest of Us

Tue, 01/27/2015 - 07:58 — james

In the first part of this series, I wrote how it is less than useful being informed of the problems of this world if we do not understand or are not shown the causes of the problems. Being subjected to a litany of the harmful effects and not the causes is disempowering. It contributes to a condition known as “learned helplessness”.

The answers to the world's problems are predicated on knowing the causes of these problems.

The second and third parts detailed the primary cause of our troubles, psychopathy; it's nature and prevalence together with some tips on how to deal with it in your personal life. Psychopaths in religion, politics, law and business, especially banking, cause the vast bulk of humanity's problems. But, to remain in control, psychopaths need to divorce us from our power over ourselves through propaganda to control the content of what we think about and offer us the false choice of being for or against whatever the topic of the day is. They cause further conflict between us by offering power over others to further divide and thus rule us. This essay is about how they use their psychopathic culture against us to divide us so that we attack each other and disempower ourselves as a group against the psychopaths. In short, how we contribute to the problems we all suffer from.

Our present culture is psychopathic in nature because it is organised around coercion. But it wasn't always this way. This is not how we evolved through 99% of our history. Before civilisation (the last 1% of our time on earth), humans lived in tribes which were generally of a size where everyone knew everyone else. There were no hierarchies to speak of, no prisons and no taxes. We lived according to Natural Law where it was accepted that everyone was of equal value and were treated accordingly, unlike our present day situation.

But what is Natural Law? Natural Law is the law of nature; that which can be observed in operation in the world and is universal and immutable. These are the observable principles that govern and guide our world including our species. The law of gravity is one such law, for instance. It is constant and is not dependent upon someone's opinion. Quite the opposite, in fact. Anyone who advocates that there is no objective reality, that reality is a matter of personal perception, is welcome to jump off the roof of my house any time they like!

A natural law that applies to human psychology is that we have free will. We have the individual ability to choose for ourselves and the ability, therefore, to control our own individual lives. Therefore, we have been given authority over our own lives by nature, or by God, if you prefer. It also means that no one has the right to authority over another human being. The only exception to this is children. Parents assume not only authority over their children until they mature but also assume responsibility for them. The whole purpose to parenting is to facilitate the independence of the child when it matures into adulthood; to teach them to be autonomous adults and not to keep them as dependent children.

To counter this contention that no one has authority over another, a proponent of this would need to show where a natural law is in operation where one person or a class of people have authority over others; that it is universal and immutable and has proven sustainable over thousands of generations. It can't be and hasn't been done. It is a hallmark of civilisation that groups have imposed their will over others through violence and claiming that they have the right to do so. But that 'right' has never, to my knowledge, been established.

Therefore, given that God and/or Nature has given us each sovereignty, to remain in harmony with God or Nature we need to respect every person's authority over themselves. All social organisations need to be voluntary with no coercion present. To use coercion is to go against Natural Law, against our evolution or against God's plan for us.

Natural Law can be summed up in 'The Golden Rule' - “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Or, in the words of Jesus, “Love one another as you love yourself”. To state the same rule but in the negative, “Do no-one any harm”. Or, “Act with no intent to harm”. If harm is done, whether intentionally or not, then all that can be done to bring restitution should be done. In other words, we are responsible for our actions.

Now, given that we have been designed to live in co-operative voluntary social organisations that respect autonomy and insist on responsibility and have done so for 99% of our species' time on this world, we are singularly ill equipped psychologically to handle having coercive power over others as so many have in our modern hierarchical society. How often do we hear expressions like, “The power has gone to his head”: or, “He's drunk with power”; or, “He's become a petty tyrant”? (which implicitly acknowledges that ordinary, full-on tyrants are, in fact, quite mad). Nobody disputes the wisdom of Lord Acton's saying, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

Psychopaths, by and large, run this world today and when they offer people positions of power within their hierarchies, they corrupt these people to varying degrees depending on the strength of character of the individual concerned to resist power's corrupting influence. We invariably cause harm to ourselves and anyone under our control. That most people do not notice this harm in their day to day lives is because it is ubiquitous and we have not known anything different. So, we do not handle power well.

Nor are we psychologically equipped to deal with any form of slavery where our self authority, our sovereignty, is taken from us to any significant degree. Many studies have shown that the less control people have over their lives the poorer is their health and the shorter are their lives. Loss of self sovereignty induces stress and stress causes the harm. In our modern hierarchical societies, we are all experiencing a loss of sovereignty and we are all suffering to varying degrees. There is an inverse relationship between authority and sovereignty.

Depression is a common symptom. Given enough severity and time, it can lead to “learned helplessness”. Institutionalisation, in other words. And, in my opinion, almost all people suffer from it to some degree. This causes us to defer to authority in a 'knee-jerk' fashion.

View on YouTube

Our psychopathic hierarchical society encourages us to become dysfunctional in one of the following two ways. Either we become addicted to power and launch off in the direction of megalomania abusing others in the process or we become disempowered and institutionalised via learned helplessness. People located in the middle rungs of an hierarchy can often exhibit both pathologies. They become subservient to those 'above' them and abusive to those 'below' them. This is best described colloquially as “kiss up, kick down”.

Mark Passio explains these two pathological responses to power in the first 30 minutes or so in this video. He explains how we become overbalanced in either our left brain (power) or right brain (helplessness). We have been divided within ourselves leaving us vulnerable either way to being controlled by those that run our society.

View on YouTube

In the early 1970's, a Stanford University team headed by Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment called The Stanford Prison Experiment to study the effects of prison life on 'prisoners' and 'jailers'. Volunteers were called for and the experiment was to last two weeks but it had to be ended after one week because of the adverse psychological effects on all the participants. The 'jailers' became tyrannical and irrational and the 'prisoners' exhibited learned helplessness. Many people treat the experiment and its findings as a curiosity and applicable only in extreme circumstances but it is representative of our whole society. It is just a matter of degree. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The corruption generally is proportional to the power. The corruption can take many forms but the forms are all dependent upon the corruption of the person's perception of reality. It is a madness.

Power is addictive. Just like any narcotic substance, it distorts one's perception of reality. It gives a feeling of well-being when, in fact, being detached from reality presents a great danger. Deep sea divers can experience something called “narcosis of the deep”. It is to do with nitrogen in the brain and induces a feeling of euphoria and the sense that all is well when the exact opposite is the case. Power induces the same perceptual distortion. Drug addicts maintain that they are in control of their lives and they know what they are doing when any observer can see the folly of that statement. Power junkies are no different. Control freaks are never satisfied with their level of control over others. They always want more thinking that this will bring happiness despite the fact that the addiction is causing the unhappiness.

Dictatorial organisations, including all governments, can only get worse over time and more insane in the process. This is the destructive addictive cycle in action.

Psychopaths have an exaggerated sense of entitlement and when normal people come under the influence of wielding power, they exhibit the same sense of entitlement. The entitlement is the perceived right to have control over another human being; the right to be God in their lives. But in controlling others, we trigger a perceptual distortion within our own mind and thus lose control of ourselves. We lose empathy for the other and therefore disconnect ourselves from our fellow human beings. This connectedness and empathy is precisely what allowed us as a species to survive many hundreds of thousands of years. Is it little wonder that today's society is facing the real possibility of extinction?

As I mentioned, we are not designed to control other people. It is not only against natural law but it will bring negative consequences in the form of physical, mental and social problems; the very problems that are the hallmark of civilisations. As the power and control becomes more ubiquitous, so do the problems.

When it comes to entitlement and playing at being God in others lives, no one can hold a candle to the Roman Catholic Pope. The Pope claims authority over all people on earth because God gave him this authority, he says. But, in the end, this is nothing more than an opinion based on selective words from a book that the Catholic Church has itself edited and contains innumerable contradictions - "Call no man father" (Matt 23:9) being just one minor but tellingly obvious one.

The same nonsense goes for kings, emperors etc. The Divine Right of Kings was endorsed by the Catholic Church in return for allegiance and tribute. These monarchies and the church with their blasphemous claims to entitlement to authority have, unsurprisingly, caused more suffering in history than anyone else (though the international bankers are fast closing in in that title!).

The Pope claims to be "the Vicar of God" on earth. The word vicar derives from the word viceroy or vice regent. A viceroy has all the authority of a king but only in the absence of a king. The viceroy stands in place of the king. The Pope is claiming to stand in the place of God here on earth. That the Pope is claiming this power for himself means is his view (and of the Church's view) that God is not present here on earth.

Modern 'democratic' government's claim to have authority over their citizens because this authority has been delegated to them by the people. But people are individuals and do not have authority over anyone else and so cannot delegate that authority over others to anyone else never mind to an abstract concept such as a government.

Anyone who claims arbitrary authority over another is attempting to replace God in that persons life. The ultimate expression of this is torture. Everything else concerning control over others is on the road towards this.

It is beyond any logic that God would make us with free will, give us personal sovereignty, and then endorse a person or an organisation to take it away to rule over us. The illogic is laughable when considered on its merits. Here is Monty Python's hilarious demonstration of this lunacy which passes unnoticed every day-

View on YouTube

We simply do not need imposed authorities. Our individual free will and our inbuilt empathy for our fellow human beings allows us to self-organise in a very efficient manner. A case in point is the evacuation of Manhattan following the demolition of the three World Trade Centre buildings in 2001. This article was originally written in 2002.
http://www.sott.net/article/252259-Media-ignores-calm-amid-chaos-The-sto...

“On Sept. 11 last year, up to 1 million people were evacuated from Lower Manhattan by water "in an emergent network of private and publicly owned watercraft--a previously unplanned activity." It was an American Dunkirk, like the epic rescue of the British army at Dunkirk in 1940 by an armada of similar craft.

Yet you most likely never saw this astonishing event, reported last month by Professor Kathleen Tierney at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, on television and never read about it in the print media. It would have made for spectacular TV imagery; yet, as an example of calm and sensible and spontaneous action, it did not fit the media image of panic, an image that will doubtless be re-enacted next week.

Tierney, director of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware, argued that the reaction of people at the World Trade Center was what one might have expected from the research literature of the last 50 years on behavior in disaster situations. ''Social bonds remained intact and the sense of responsibility to others--family members, friends, fellow workers, neighbors and even total strangers remains strong. . . . People sought information from one another, made inquiries and spoke with loved ones via cell phones, engaged in collective decision-making and helped one another to safety. When the towers were evacuated, the evacuation was carried out in a calm and orderly manner.''

There is growing research literature that Tierney cites that leaves little doubt about this description. (See also Lee Clarke's article in the current issue of the new sociological journal Contexts.) Many will not believe that the scenario could possibly be true. Doesn't everyone know that there is panic in disaster situations? Don't people become frightened, selfish and flee in headlong panic?

The answer is no, they don't. The proof that this was not true on Sept. 11 is to be found in the fact that 90 percent of the people in the World Trade Center escaped--which would have been impossible had people panicked. Most people are cool under such pressure. Their old social networks do not dissolve, and new social networks emerge. The paradigm of humankind as a mob simply isn't true. We are social animals, and even when terribly frightened we remain social animals.

Note that most of the positive social behavior that saved so many lives was not organized by any formal agency, much less by any command-and-control mechanism. People saved themselves. Other people converged from all over the city to help. As Tierney says, "The response to the Sept. 11 tragedy was so effective precisely because it was not centrally directed and controlled. Instead it was flexible, adaptive and focused on handling problems as they emerged."

We function far better when we self-organise. We are not suited to hierarchical societies and do not cope well with power over others nor being subjected to power from others. Hierarchical societies are dysfunctional and create dysfunction in its members. The dysfunctions are delusion, magical thinking, violence, constant stress, depression and helplessness.

We have been raised and kept as children responding unthinkingly to authority and need to retrain ourselves to react as adults instead who accept responsibility for actions and consequences. We need to constantly ask the question, "What is the basis of your authority to direct my behaviour?"
Here is James Corbett's take on how we are trained and manipulated by those 'in authority'-

https://www.corbettreport.com/how-to-herd-your-tax-cattle-video/

We need to start the process of maturation and freedom by organising voluntary self help groups and withdrawing support from people and organisations that use any form of coercion. When you vote, you are endorsing a coercive system that takes away your freedom to varying degrees. You are agreeing to this control and the psychological effect is profound. There are better ways to use your energy and time.

Turn off the teevee. The people in power need to get the rest of us to behave against our natures and inclinations. To do this a constant stream of propaganda reinforcing the idea of authority has to be disseminated otherwise, in short order, the natural self control we all have starts to reassert itself. This is the role of the media. It is only effective while you volunteer to participate. With the time saved and the programming interrupted, you are now able to gain a better knowledge of what is really happening in the world and to you personally via the internet. You can educate yourself on any subject under the sun on the Internet or at any decent library. And it's largely free!

You will need to employ discernment and critical thinking skills, though. And perhaps that is the best place to start. If you are unfamiliar with "The Trivium", you could do an Internet search for it or you could start at one of Jan Irvin's websites TriviumEducation.com

We need to be on the lookout for any issues that are promoted to divide us as a community. Religion and race are old favourites. Gender and sexual orientation are more recent innovations. Ideologies and party politics are constant companions. They are all designed to draw our attention towards our neighbours and their supposed threat to our well-being and away from the psychopaths who are controlling us all.

Divisions also create the illusion that one group is superior to the other. This introduces the psychological pathology of power mentioned before on a much wider scale. Creating divisions between nations (or within a nation) is a necessary precondition to starting a war.

Be alert to the effects of power upon you whether you find yourself in a position of power over others and/or in a position of submission to others. Be aware that if you are in a position of authority that you are also in a position of responsibility. Exercise that responsibility as Jesus entreated us by serving rather than dictating. As a supervisor or manager, ask yourself and those under your supervision, "How can I carry water for these people? How can I help them do their job better?" In other words, you grant them authority over their jobs and assist them in that. Of course, they then have responsibility for their efforts as well.

Beware, though, of people 'under' you trying to reverse the power dynamic in this case, as sometimes happens. What you are aiming for is mutual respect and acceptance of individual responsibility. Sometimes known as 'adult behaviour'! Most hierarchical structures, including our overall society, treat their members as children.

If you find yourself in a submissive situation, do what you need to do to maintain your sense of dignity. Authority prevails over you if it can convince you to give up your dignity. Abusers are always trying to take it away from you one way or another. If you have dignity, you have sovereignty and your best chance of maintaining your sanity and safety.

Do not accept situations where you do not have authority over things you are being held responsible for. It is common for those in authority to retain authority over you and your actions or circumstances but leave the responsibility for those same actions or circumstances to you. An example of this is how the US has complete authority over the Kiev Junta but you can be sure they will accelp none of the responsibility for the unfolding disaster. They are already blaming Russia and will, no doubt, blame their patsies in the Ukrainian Rada in the future.

This splitting of authority and responsibility, claiming one and rejecting the other, is a way of life for psychopaths. It is tempting to emulate them in this but problems and stress awaits those that do! Disregarding Natural Law in regard to social relationships and expecting there to be no adverse consequences is no different to defying gravity by jumping off a high building and expecting to fly. Living within the 'design rules' of this world as simply outlined by Jesus and also by the ancient Taoists or discerned through your own observations is the best way to negotiate your way through this life.

Freedom is an attitude. It is also a birth right. Our spiritual, mental and physical health as well as our physical safety (and the safety of those we may be responsible for, such as children) are all dependent upon our seeking this freedom for ourselves and upon our granting it to others.

Treat others as you would wish to be treated. "Love your neighbour as yourself". It makes for a saner world and one which just might survive.

Comments

Wed, 01/28/2015 - 15:18 — PK (not verified)

Political Ponerology.

New reader here. Not sure if this has been remarked on already - if so please ignore.
The subject of psychopaths/sociopaths has been studied by an international group of psychiatrists/psychologists in Soviet-occupied Poland. The leader and last survivor of the group produced the text "Political Ponerology" by Lobaczewski (and I just noticed it can even be downloaded as a Pdf). Takes time to read because the viewpoint is strictly medical (i.e. value-neutral) but extremely relevant to our times. Sorry if I'm repeating known info.

Wed, 01/28/2015 - 16:38 — james

Thanks for your comment, PK

Political Ponerology has been mentioned a few times here over recent years but it is always worth bringing up again. I believe it is a great resource. I have read reviews and excerpts of the book and I actually own a copy. Alas, I have not made time to read it, though! So your mention of it is a good prompter for me smiling

Tue, 02/03/2015 - 07:20 — Penny

natural law

Hi James: I am reading through this most excellent post- and this thought came to mind wrt natural law

Your rights begin where mine end

I find that pretty straightforward-
Don't steal my stuff- I won't steal yours
Don't restrict my rights- I won't restrict yours

So where your rights begin- mine end /mine ends, yours begin
Now I must read the rest-

btw did you see in the news there has been reporting on the brain of psychopaths as different??- last week or so???

Tue, 02/03/2015 - 17:01 — james

Boundaries

Hi Pen,
Thanks for your comment. That's a great way of describing not only the nature but the boundaries of natural law. I'll be focusing more on natural law in my next instalment and I'll work your insight into it smiling

No, I didn't see the article that you mentioned. Do you have a link handy? It has been known for some years though that psychopaths' brains are wired differently. They don't respond emotionally to words or pictures of things that we ordinary people have a reaction to. This can be observed by monitoring their brains. Different areas of their brains react to ours. It is one tool that is sometimes used to diagnose psychopaths.

It seems to me that candidates for public office should be so scanned before being declared eligible. Perhaps one day!

Wed, 02/04/2015 - 18:50 — Penny

yes, I do have a link..

Hi James- yes, hang one a second
I was hoping to get to that news on the blog, but, no way
I am trying to keep on topic with the EDC series and all the other stuff and I just couldn't get to it.

tick tock tick tock-

I had saved this one

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/psychopathic-criminals-learn-differently-f...

Now researchers in London, Montreal and Bethseda, Md., have used functional MRI imaging to assess how the brains of 12 violent criminals with psychopathy, 20 violent criminals with antisocial personality disorder but not psychopathy (such as those with a history of impulsivity and risk-taking), and 18 healthy people who were not criminals responded differently to rewards and punishment.

but there was more then just that- took the time to grab you a few more interesting ones

http://www.abqjournal.com/535073/news/study-brain-of-psychopath-abnormal...

http://wccftech.com/mri-scan-shows-psychopaths-response-punishment/

They did this study on criminals, but, I believe you can extrapolate it out to the elites because they have no fear of 'punishment' or negative repercussions

"Offenders with psychopathy may only consider the possible positive consequences and fail to take account of the likely negative consequences."

This may explain how/why the psychos take charge- they really aren't concerned with the negative befalling them they don't even comprehend it! - perhaps that is why psychos gravitate/coerce/manipulate/connive their way to 'leadership' positions- because they don't care who they hurt to get there- They just don't see hurting, harming even killing people. including lots of people as a negative

"In the room with them, there's the sense that the weight of what they've done and the deleterious effect this is having on their lives doesn't really hold for them," said Dr. Nigel Blackwood of King's College London, a senior author of the paper in Wednesday's issue of Lancet Psychiatry.

It's only at the moment in the scanner when the sanction of lost points cues them to change their behaviour that the differences between violent psychopaths and those with antisocial personality disorder appear.

Thu, 02/05/2015 - 05:14 — james

Thanks Pen

Thanks for the links Pen. Interesting articles. Psychopaths are known to be reckless so the evidence that they do not consider negative consequences is to be expected, I suppose.

I agree with you about the 'elites'.

Fri, 02/06/2015 - 00:22 — Winter

good one, James

I regret to say that I have been visiting this site regularly for more than a week without realizing there was a new post up!

So I finally read it ... and I have to say: Thanks very much for putting all this together. It makes a lot of sense when you explain it this way.

I have spent a lot of time lately listening to Michael Parenti through links on this page

http://www.tucradio.org/parenti.html

and at one point he says of the power elite:

"They're standing on our shoulders, and they know if we ever did a collective shrug, they'd be off."

I couldn't help thinking about that when I read this.

Thanks again and best wishes as always
WP
(still sharp after all these years!)

Fri, 02/06/2015 - 05:57 — james

Thanks WP. Michael Parenti

Thanks WP. Michael Parenti is

Thanks WP. Michael Parenti is such a good speaker. He is remarkable for his age. He is in his eighties now. Still sharp, as you say!

I read his "Assassination of Julius Caesar" with great interest. The parallels he draws between the oligarchy of those Roman times and its equivalent today is eye-opening. Nothing changes. Psychopathy and its greed are constant if nothing else.

Thanks for the link to his talks. I'll give them a listen smiling

Sun, 02/22/2015 - 17:17 — PK (not verified)

Psychopathy

In today's zerohedge I was very surprised to find an article that very clearly equated the Rothschilds with psychopathy: no more pussyfooting around !!! http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-20/rothschild-vs-rothschild

Btw another article also inches closer to describing true motivations:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-20/911-us-has-been-involved-more-5...

If I had to guess at the reason for this new directness I would name 2 factors:
1. The feeling that war is approaching and that time is running short
2. The new US initiatives to combat "domestic terrorism" which will most likely make such articles illegal in the near future.
- DHS's first statements: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-20/war-terror-turns-inward-%E2%80%...
- DHS's statements that some malls in the US, Canada and the UK (!) are now facing local terrorist attacks.
Clearly a Charlie-Hebdo type of event would do wonders for the motivation of the mass mind. And in these statements the internet is now explicitly named.

Sun, 02/22/2015 - 23:37 — james

Thanks for your comments and

Thanks for your comments and links, PK. They are interesting articles. I agree with the first one regarding Rothschilds, their psychopathy and their plundering of the economies worldwide. They are just common thieves but on a grand scale. They do act compulsively in the sense that there are a lot of alternative behaviours that are not open to them as psychopaths. The fable of the Scorpion and the Frog comes to mind. Their natures are parasitical and destructive and they have to remain true to their nature.
The author of the article did not back up many of his assertions, though, and left himself open to the usual lot of apologists.

It is interesting, as you say, that psychopathy is being talked about more openly in politics and commerce. My guess is that the knowledge of psychopathy is spreading and it makes much more sense to people and suddenly the world is becoming more understandable.

The psychopaths rely on violence and fear to maintain their grip on peoples minds but, as they are becoming more desperate to retain power, they are exposing themselves and their methods more and more to more and more people. It is becoming too blatant for many people to ignore.

The financial crisis of 2008 was, in my opinion, meant to usher in the new One World Currency (see more here). The derivative bubble had to be set up years in advance and then had its own timetable. Unfortunately for the bankers, when the time came they were not ready for it. They had not gained control of the major oil fields of Russia, Iran, (Libya at that time), Venezuela. The OWC could only be imposed on nations if they had to use it to buy oil with. So it was a big fizzer and its not getting any better for the bankers. Meanwhile they will keep doing what they know; producing violence wherever and whenever they can.

Fri, 03/20/2015 - 19:44 — PK (not verified)

A good illustration of psychopathy

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-20/us-begs-russia-remain-%E2%80%98...
This article again clearly shows the psychopathic elements and the deficiencies (inability to understand "normal" consequences) of the current system. The notion of psychopathy (and of its limitations) seems to become more widely known :Cool

Fri, 03/20/2015 - 21:59 — james

Beautiful!

That is indeed a great article at Zero Hedge by Jeff Nielson. I commend it to other readers and thanks for posting the link, PK. And I agree, it is very good illustration of the psychopaths inability to predict consequences and also their inability to accept reality.

In my view, their 'Achilles Heel' comes from their inability to accept that they make mistakes (it's always someone else's fault) so they can never learn from them. The other thing is that they truly believe they can shape reality to their own fantasies of power; evidence, Karl Rove's oft quoted remark, "We're an empire now and we create out own reality".

The article also shows how the psychopaths' 'power' falls apart when others call them on their threats. Which in reality amount to an intestinal worm threatening to leave if the host doesn't eat more. Leave, ffs!

Like all parasites, they think they are not only necessary but crucial to the functioning of the host body. They get away with this bullshit only for as long as their victims believe this lie and comply with their threats.

As you say, it is very interesting the Zero Hedge keeps publishing articles that illuminate psychopathy. Psychopaths hate exposure and ridicule. The tide is turning!

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