pathocracy in school

[Guest]

I've been reading John Taylor Gatto's Underground History of American Education online. In light of the ongoing discussion and dissection of ponerology, particularly the idea of the pathocracy, Chapter 15 of Gatto's book struck a chord with me:

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/15a.htm

Choice quote from that page:

Psychopathic. An overheated word to characterize successful, pragmatic solutions to the control of institutional chaos. Isn't this process a cheap and effective way to keep student entropy in check at the cost of no more than a little grief on the part of some dumb animals? Is it really psychopathic or only strategic sophistication? My principal, let's call her Lulu to protect the guilty, once explained at a public meeting there was little she could do about the unfortunate past and present of these kids, and she acknowledged they probably didn't have bright prospects for the future - but while they were here they would know she cared about them, no one would be unduly hassled. Nobody in the audience took what she said to be insincere, nor do I think it was. She believed what she said.

Psychopathic. The word summons up flashing eyes and floating hair, men hiding gasoline bombs under their coats in crowded subway cars on the way to Merrill Lynch for revenge. But set aside any lurid pictures you may associate with the term. I'm using it as a label to describe people without consciences, nothing more. Psychopaths and sociopaths are often our charming and intelligent roommates in corporations and institutions. They mimic perfectly the necessary protective coloration of compassion and concern, they mimic human discourse. Yet underneath that surface disguise they are circuit boards of scientific rationality, pure expressions of pragmatism.

All large bureaucracies, public or private, are psychopathic to the degree they are well-managed. It's a genuine paradox, but time to face the truth of it. Corporate policies like downsizing and environmental degradation, which reduce the quality of life for enormous numbers of people, make perfectly rational sense as devices to reach profitability. Even could it be proven that the theory of homo economicus has a long-range moral component in which, as is sometimes argued in policy circles, the pain of the moment leads inevitably to a better tomorrow for those who survive - the thing would still be psychopathic. An older America would have had little hesitation labeling it as Evil. I've reached for the term psychopathic in place of Evil in deference to modern antipathies. The whole matter is in harmony with classic evolutionary theory and theological notions of limited salvation. I find that congruence interesting.

The sensationalistic charge that all large corporations, including school corporations, are psychopathic becomes less inflammatory if you admit the obvious first, that all such entities are nonhuman. Forget the human beings who populate corporate structures. Sure, some of them sabotage corporate integrity from time to time and behave like human beings, but never consistently, and never for long, for if that were the story, corporate coherence would be impossible, as it often is in Third World countries. Now at least you see where I'm coming from in categorizing the institutional corporation of school as psychopathic. Moral codes don't drive school decision-making. That means School sometimes decides to ignore your wimpy kid being beaten up for his lunch money in order to oil some greater wheels. School has no tear ducts with which to weep.

 

[atreides]

Hey

I am not sure I am completely in accord with the last paragraph.

Calling a corporation psychopathic is not helpful to understanding it, although it is a ponerogenic construct, as well as current education systems. We seem to be over analyzing the symptoms, trying to cure the symptoms, while this is somewhat helpful, corporations and schools are simply an indication of a larger more deeply seeded issue.

Schools and Corporations are things, consider them sick works of art, intergral in understanding psychopathy, but too much focus seems to be placed on these major works, and not on the beings themselves, in essence, the fact that they 'have no tear ducts with which to weep' is a forgone conclusion... just a thought.

 

[Orffyreus]

What's interesting about corporations, a further paradox, is that they are legally regarded as people, which if I recall correctly was snuck into a Supreme Court ruling shortly after the Civil War. So, they're not people, and yet they are indeed "people" in the topsy-turvy world of law and lawyers, itself most likely another ponerogenic construct.

Nested constructs.

But certainly, the psychopath, the person comes first. Corporations and systems of schooling are then both fruits of the tree *and* constructed social realities in which to promote further psychopathy and traumatize regular people.

But what is to be done (if anything) about the scenario of good people serving the psychopathic system? What do you do when good people do bad things or serve evil ends?

Perhaps Gatto is still laboring under the notion of all people being fundamentally good?

Certainly, these systems act through people and need their cooperation to continue. They do not objectively exist outside of choices and decisions made by real people throughout the day.

Can people actually wake up as individuals in enough numbers to stop these systems, or must we simply do our best to stand out of the way and wait for them to disintegrate under their own weight?

 

[ScioAgapeOmnis]

Can people actually wake up as individuals in enough numbers to stop these systems, or must we simply do our best to stand out of the way and wait for them to disintegrate under their own weight?

I think the latter option is not very healthy - if we do nothing and just wait for the psychopaths and their systems to "disintegrate", we'll all disintegrate with them. Psychopaths never just admit defeat, and the more their existance is threatened, the more desperate and extreme they'll likely get to try to stay alive - which can only mean sacrificing lots and lots of people in the process as far as I understand it. But psychopaths don't usually do any killing personally, their power resides in controlling the ignorant masses who naively do their bidding for them. So if masses wake up, psychopaths, being the extreme minority, might not be able to do much damage on their way "down" - if I understand this correctly.

Conversely, if enough people don't wake up, those who are still asleep might be used as an unwitting weapon to destroy everyone else, and themselves in the process. Though I wonder what about the 3 billion Organic Portals - are they psychopaths too? Because that would mean every other person is a psychopath, and that seems like an awful lot. The C's once said that psychopaths are "failed" organic portals. Maybe that means that OP's that did not fail are not necessarily psychopaths? Not sure, just some thoughts.

 

[vinny]

Conversely, if enough people don't wake up, those who are still asleep might be used as an unwitting weapon to destroy everyone else, and themselves in the process. Though I wonder what about the 3 billion Organic Portals - are they psychopaths too? Because that would mean every other person is a psychopath, and that seems like an awful lot. The C's once said that psychopaths are "failed" organic portals. Maybe that means that OP's that did not fail are not necessarily psychopaths? Not sure, just some thoughts.

It sure is a difficult concept to consider, that such a huge proportion of people are almost 'not people' in the normally accepted sense - we fight against such a possibiliy with all our rational reasoning! I think it's important not to fall into the trap of thinking in terms of "us and them", but to consider how this could possibly be a totally natural result of nature, and progression, and of different entities and parts of existance being at different stages of their development, and that WE are all a part of that continuum too. Ark once said that in effect we are all OPs, until we learn how to act otherwise (ie. NON-mechanically). That's how I try to consider it.

The reason that psychopaths were described as 'failed' OPs in this context was that they had let their 'mask of sanity' slip, to reveal some inkling of their true character, whereas most OPs are COMPLETELY undetectable as such, and are able to fully and convincingly simulate a 'real' person. That's the theory anyway - its a difficult one to prove!

Calling a corporation psychopathic is not helpful to understanding it, although it is a ponerogenic construct, as well as current education systems. We seem to be over analyzing the symptoms, trying to cure the symptoms, while this is somewhat helpful, corporations and schools are simply an indication of a larger more deeply seeded issue.

I agree. It is useful to abserve the ponerogenic constructs, such as the education system or the corporate hierarchy, but only as an indicator of the larger scenario. You have to see the 'whole elephant' before you can decide what to do about it.

 

[Ruth]

Conversely, if enough people don't wake up, those who are still asleep might be used as an unwitting weapon to destroy everyone else, and themselves in the process.

I'm sure I'm going to mess this quote thing up, but here goes. The above is the 'way' things have been set up to work for the PTB. Those who are asleep will not only destroy others, but themselves as well.

As far as OPs go, no they are NOT psychopaths, they are a less complicated form of human life - without the higher charkras of the so-called 'souled' individuals (psychopaths are actually a 'broken' foms of this simpler form of life).

OPs can be taken advantage of by psychopaths too. How do I know? Well, because I've lived with an OP who was taken advantage of in this way. And no amount of discussion with this person will EVER mean that they understand what happened! The psychopath simply didn't 'conform' to the OPs understanding of a program. And that is simply incomprehensible to them! It also makes OPs very vulnerable to psychopaths as well. It seems to me that the psychopath always has a 'souled' individual in it's sights and my little OP friend was the 'legitimate' bird in the nest and .... then along came the cuckoo.... who simply took over.
http://www.umich.edu/~urecord/0405/Apr25_05/22.shtml

It makes me wonder if, you get an OP at an earlier enough age, can you 'develop' this person into a 'non-OP'. But then, perhaps this person wasn't an OP to start with. Not that I consider being an OP a problem. I can always think up worse problems, believe me!!

 

[ScioAgapeOmnis]

It makes me wonder if, you get an OP at an earlier enough age, can you 'develop' this person into a 'non-OP'. But then, perhaps this person wasn't an OP to start with. Not that I consider being an OP a problem. I can always think up worse problems, believe me!!

I find it interesting that when a child grows up "good" by certain standards, the parents love to take all the credit for "good upbringing". Conversely when the child is considered "bad" by certain standards, the parents blame everything else, like videogames, movies, society, etc - never themselves. But there's so much more to it than that, like natural-born psychopaths, past life issues, karma, spirit attachment, OP's, etc. In fact, as Laura pointed out in one of the recent podcasts, it's absurd just how drastically limited our "psychological analysis" (whether by a professional or not) of people's behavior really is. As a result, we mis-diagnose the reasons and causes for certain behaviors constantly, usually to the detriment of the person in question and ourselves collectively. But not to worry, it's all the rage nowadays to not even bother with trying to diagnose anymore, just prescribe some "happy pills" at the slightest hint of depression and that should solve everything. Psychology, just like philosophy, had its soul sucked out (damn psychophages) - turned into a mundane and mechanical science that does not require critical thought or creativity, just studying figures and "facts" and statistics. Now surely statistics help, and "going by the book" sometimes works, but that also eliminates the need for creative thinking, for "connecting the dots" that others have not already connected and put into book form. It's now just a "profession", just a mechanical "skill" like many other things.

I think this same sort of "I don't give a crap" (aka, psychopathic) attitude is reflected in everything our society is doing, including the "war on terrorism". People don't care who the terrorists are, why are they labeled terrorists, who may be sponsoring them, who benefits, or for any evidence. They don't care to look at new, different, or uncomfortable possibilities. No, just as long as SOMEONE is being shot and someone's house is being blown up in the name of "fighting terrorism", we're good. Imagine what would happen socially and politically if when 911 occured, no one ever found anyone to blame, and it was just left as an "unsolved mystery" with no one accused of anything? For some reason that is extremely diifficult to even imagine - the bloodlust had to be satiated. In fact, and as Laura mentioned, it's similarly to how our "courts" work - the point is not to find out the truth, it is to make a "convincing argument". So as long as the government can convince the population, the truth is neither here nor there.

Which is actually the reason for that narrowed down discussion on ATS - to arrive at a "commonly accepted conclusion" - not the truth! Again, the point is "acceptance" aka "conviction". It's about numbers of people believing something, that's it! Well it's also about looking at each piece of evidence in isolation, when the reality can only be discerned by looking at ALL evidence in context with all the other evidence together. And who's better at convincing than psychopaths using their pseudo-logic and para-moralisms? This makes me think of plausible lies and why they are so rampant and so effective. I thought about this word, "plausible", and here's what I have found.

Plausible means: "apparently reasonable and valid"
Apparently means: "from appearances alone"
Appearance means: "outward or visible aspect of a person or thing"

And I think there are 2 things that prevent us from seeing something as it is. One, how we interpret what we see, and two, what we don't see. If we cannot fix out "reality-reading instruments" and make them objective, it doesn't matter how much evidence we are presented with, there's a good chance that we won't be able to SEE what the evidence is actually telling us, what it REALLY means. I think that's ultimately the most important problem we're facing - not the lack of evidence itself, but the lack of ability in people to interpret it correctly. Obviously if interpretation wasn't an issue there would not be courts of law, since given the same evidence, everybody would always reach the same conclusion. But that is not so! This is also the part that the "judicial system" conveniently overlooks when it assumes that the jury is fully capable of objectively interpreting the evidence. Nevermind that they're only given a very limited spectrum of evidence in the first place. In other words, I think a courtroom is the perfect place to "convince", but a horrible place to "prove".

And this is what has frustrated me lately so much, because some people that I know can look at all the evidence of what happened on 911, and simply conclude that it's all meaningless, or somehow create plausible explanations for all the individual pieces of evidence to the extent that it makes it appear that the evidence actually PROVES the official 911 theory, even if it in fact contradicts it. Talk about twisting reality. Somehow they have no ability to "connect", to SEE the dynamic, to recognize who benefits, how and why, to judge probability with any degree of objectivity at all.

And this is why I refuse to label anyone as a psychopath or as an OP with any certainty, and also to label anyone as NOT a psychopath and NOT an OP with any certainty. There is always a chance that I'm not seeing something, or interpreting what I'm seeing incorrectly. Of course that chance exists with everything, so it is no excuse to be idle and wait for some absolute proof, since that does not exist and will never come and so I'd have to do nothing forever. Therefore, I think some amount of faith in myself is needed to do anything, but that faith is only enough to go from probability to action, it should never stop me from constantly re-evaluating my "conclusions" with each new piece of data or evidence. Actually conclusions is a funny word, because it's kind of wrong here, since it implies a finality, an ending, a cessation of something that is "concluded". But it's only a temporary opinion based on current data and current thought process, nothing more. I don't know if there is a word to describe that.

Also, how do we know that WE are interpreting the given evidence correctly, and someone else is wrong? I mean if I think about it, I can't think of any way to argue with someone who looks at the exact same evidence and arrives at a different conclusion. Obviously something goes "wrong" somewhere between seeing the evidence, and concluding what it means. But which one of us goes "awry" at that point (or perhaps both do)? And I think that's why you cannot "debate" or "argue", why both of these activities are an utter waste of time. The only thing we can do is WORK on ourselves to try to be as objective as possible - we cannot make someone else objective, they have to do that for themselves. Arguing and debating is designed to convince, not to prove. And you cannot prove anything to anyone else, since there is no "proof", it's all a matter of either being able to SEE, or not. Convincing anyone of anything does not help anyone see the truth, bust just the opposite, osit.

Anyways, just some thoughts (not conclusions!) :D

 

[kenlee]

atreides said:

Hey

I am not sure I am completely in accord with the last paragraph.

Calling a corporation psychopathic is not helpful to understanding it, although it is a ponerogenic construct, as well as current education systems. We seem to be over analyzing the symptoms, trying to cure the symptoms, while this is somewhat helpful, corporations and schools are simply an indication of a larger more deeply seeded issue.

Schools and Corporations are things, consider them sick works of art, intergral in understanding psychopathy, but too much focus seems to be placed on these major works, and not on the beings themselves, in essence, the fact that they 'have no tear ducts with which to weep' is a forgone conclusion... just a thought.

I think you bring up an interesting point . The corporation itself is not evil, it is simply a functional entity. In fact, functionally speaking, corporations could be things of beauty. But is the underlying pathology of those who run these corperations that spreads like a pathogenic disease throughout the existing structure. Everyone gets infected.

Even if there are changes that are made within the corporate structure that appear completely inhumane and self destructive, it's never questioned. The lower management will always say that it "came from the top." End of story. The consolidation of the major corporations, banks and financial institutions, are all evidence that it is those few in power who seek complete god-like monolithic control of the many who depend on them. And all the while these primal motivations are masked in fancy ideologies. Profits for Exxon/Mobil are now the highest in history and even exceeded wall streets expectations. Then they say such "sensitive" things as "it's good for the stockholders and it's for the good of the country" and they might say that they are simply being "good businessmen."

The fact is, the real motivations of these people who run these major corporations is completely AMORAL and has no more sensitivity, compassion, or moral sense then a hungry, horny rattlesnake.

An animal has no sense of moral or immoral, it simply is what is is with no apologies. It doesnt care about right or wrong. It is simply programmed to be an animal. And so it is with the forces that drives many of these corperations. They have NO sense of morality. Just a program...with no apologies.

They hide in their pretty ideologies about how well they serve man and society (their stockholders), but their motivations are bestial and primal and their stockholders soon get infected with the same sickness as they have. Then it spreads to all sectors of society and people no longer even think about it. They just say "hey, that's just the way it is. That's reality pal"

The simple man on the street knows that something is very wrong because he can see how the society around him is being "sacked" by this inhuman greed. He can feel it but he feels powerless in the presence of the power structure that controls everything around him.

If you take away the pretty ideologies and fancy masks of these corporate behemoths then what you are left is it's real power source, that is, what's left is simply an internal wild animal drive that rapes, robs and murders without hesitation. THAT is what the average person is infected with, to a very small degree, when he goes to work each day and it's this pathology that he takes home with him to his wife, kids, mom and grandma. The little drops of pathology that the average working man takes home adds up to a sea of collective madness. The end result is a complete collective apathy to our governments murderous rampages overseas and within the United States itself.

Even movies like 'The Passion Of Christ show us what awaits us if we become "Christ-like" and object to this madness. Watch the movie (although I never saw it) and it'll
say: "Go ahead, be like Christ and this is what will happen to you"

Thanks a lot Mel

Here's an interesting link that I think expresses very well this animal 'amorality' of the psychopath.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-7-476077,00.html

I meet Dr Hare in a London hotel and find him used to such anxieties. “I know, I know,” he says. “People read this stuff and suddenly everyone around them is a psychopath. They pick up on three or four of the characteristics and say ‘yeah, he’s one’. But it’s not like that. It’s a medical syndrome. You’ve got to have the whole package.”

And when you do, what does it look like? Hare gives an example, and not just any example. He first gave it to Nicole Kidman in a private meeting requested by her to help her prepare for her memorably chilly role in Malice.

“I gave her a scene,” he says. “You’re walking down the street and there’s been an accident. A child has been hit by a car and is lying on the ground. There’s a crowd around him. The mother’s kneeling down there crying and emoting. You’re curious but not appalled. You look at the child momentarily and then you look at the mother. You walk towards her, step in some blood and then study the mother’s facial expressions for a minute or two. Then you walk back to your apartment or hotel room, walk into the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror practising those expressions. I said, ‘If you did that, people would see that you don’t understand emotion, you have no idea at all, you’re a colour-blind person trying to explain colour’. They didn’t use the scene, but they could have.”

In the workplace such a person might resemble “Dave”, a real individual studied by Babiak who cut a swath of disruption through a highly profitable American electronics company in the mid-1990s. Dave was good-looking, wellspoken and impressive in the interview that led to his recruitment. He was also a skilled and shameless liar, rude to subordinates, scheming towards his boss and quickly friendly with the firm’s top management. Already on his third marriage by his mid-thirties, he was shorttempered, happy to ignore assignments that he felt were beneath him, and quick to change the subject if challenged on a lie or asked to produce some real evidence of work.

When his boss summoned the courage and evidence to make a complaint to the company president, he found that Dave had got there first and secured for himself the status of “high-potential employee”.

The boss ended up sidelined. Dave ended up promoted, swaggering and “in love with himself”. He scored 19 on the PCL-R, lower than you would expect for a psychopathic murderer but much higher than your average working non-psychopath. He or she would score a 5 at most.

People such as Dave can be spotted early. Babiak recommends checking CVs exhaustively and auditing expenses — psychopaths like to indulge. It all seems obvious, but for the past 10 or 12 years, for most of corporate America, it hasn’t been. These have been tumultuous years in the world of business, with dot-coms booming and collapsing, older firms merging or shrinking to catch up, and hierarchies everywhere flattening faster than the boss can say: “Hey, c’mon in, my door is always open.” In short, it has been a high old time for psychopaths.

“When you see what has happened with Enron and WorldCom and all these other big corporations, and you ask how the hell could this guy get in that position, well, there are answers,” Hare says. “When the structure’s not there, when charisma is extremely important and style wins over substance, and one person ends up with three or four hundred million pounds in an offshore bank account, I start to get suspicious. And when the whole thing breaks and people are losing their pensions and livelihoods, these people give nothing back.

“Many of the high-level executives now being charged knew exactly what they were doing. They had no concern for anybody else, and you have to say they aren’t warm, loving guys.”

Likewise in politics. “Think what happened in the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia. The old rules went by the board. Structure vanished and all the ethnic tension that had been held in check by central government began to emerge. It was the perfect set-up for an opportunist, a thug or a psychopath to enter and take over.”

That takeover usually has three stages. First, the psychopath identifies those who can help him and cultivates them with all his considerable charm. Then he pinpoints those who can harm him and outflanks them or stabs them in the back. Finally he makes a sycophantic but ultimately devastating beeline towards the source of power (one thinks of Hitler and Hindenburg, but also of the irrepressible Eve Harrington in All About Eve).

Psychopaths necessarily have victims, and Hare’s drive to expose the “subcriminal” ones in our midst is at least partly personal. He speaks of an old college friend, now gravely ill, who lost $500,000 in a mortgage scam to a white-collar crook who got off with a $100,000 fine and a six-month trading ban. Society still labels such people rogues at worst. Hare calls them natural- born predators.

There is a difficulty approaching all this from outside academe: it can seem as if the experts are using jargon to force a thousand shades of grey — for there are surely at least that many degrees of psychopathy — into convenient boxes for personnel managers, employment tribunals and courts.

Babiak certainly counsels caution. Being psychopathic is not a sin, let alone a ground on its own for dismissal. But underpinning the PCL-R is hard science, hard to ignore. Before he published it, Hare performed two now-famous studies which suggest that psychopaths really are different from the rest of us. In the first, subjects were told to watch a timer counting down to zero, at which point they felt a harmless but painful electric shock. Non-psychopaths showed mounting anxiety and fear. Psychopaths didn’t even sweat.

In the second, the two groups had their brain activity and response time measured when asked to react to groups of letters, some forming words, some not. Words such as “rape” and “cancer” triggered mental jolts in nonpsychopaths. In psychopaths they triggered precisely nothing.

That research is decades old now. The man behind it, instead of retiring, tours the world helping to nail the psychopaths among us and trying to make sure that his instruments are not misused. Part of his mission is to stay serious. He won’t appear on Oprah, and he won’t name names. Instead, when he sees someone in the news he thinks might be a psychopath, he says: “I’d sure as hell like to study this guy.”

“Have you heard of Jeffrey Archer?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Is he a psychopath?”

“No comment. But it would be interesting to take a closer look.”