Why do people practically REFUSE to call a spade a spade?

[Bresias]

_http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Cardiologist+Turcotte+killed+children+wants+work+have+family/5657499/story.htm

_http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Disturbing+details+Turcotte+hearing/5661767/story.html

In Feb 2009, Guy Turcotte, a cardiologist in Quebec, stabbed his five year old son and three year old daughter until they were dead. He'd discovered his wife, the mother of the children was having an affair with a friend of his.

Psychiatrists who examined Turcotte pronounced him "fit" to stand trial, i.e., Turcotte was not afflicted with a mental disorder preventing him from understanding that murdering his children was "wrong". But the jury delivered a different verdict: NOT criminally responsible for the murders of his children, due to his state of mind at the time of the murders. A jury of lay-persons decided the "experts" were wrong.

I'm a newcomer to Cass and my draw here has been primarily the examination of psychopathology. I am beginning to get a grip on understanding the PONERIZED society that interferes with "justice", proper recognition, timely and appropriate judgments rendered.

What I don't understand is the 'mechanism', as it were, that influences the unwashed public Joes and Marys to render such an outrageous and obviously wrong decision -- in SPITE of psychiatric evidence.

Shades of the Caylee Anthony trial which wrapped up (and eclipsed) this trial's conclusion in July of this year.

And not just blatant interference with legal justice, but day to day, garden variety "confusion" on the part of Joe and Mary Citizen to even SEE "evil" and recognize it as such?

If the answer to my question is as simple as pointing me to some reading material, I will be as grateful as I would be to have a discussion. Thanks in advance :)

 

[Buddy]

What I don't understand is the 'mechanism', as it were, that influences the unwashed public Joes and Marys to render such an outrageous and obviously wrong decision -- in SPITE of psychiatric evidence.

Most of us are conditioned from childhood to deny what we see - to unconsciously and automatically edit our perceptions.

And not just blatant interference with legal justice, but day to day, garden variety "confusion" on the part of Joe and Mary Citizen to even SEE "evil" and recognize it as such?

See above.

Also, on a different note, for those people who can see or experience verbal, emotional or physical abuse and yet believe "love" is being expressed are just carrying their illusions into a courtroom to be manipulated by lawyers and judges toward a desired end.

Non-testimony factors also can carry weight. A bailiff makes a contemptuous noise or expression; or, a judge, surrounded by flags, official seals, a fancy desk on a raised podium, smirks or uses a "paternal" attitude to deliver his jury instructions - all this and much more is picked up by jurors and can influence the verdict. Also, an observant defendant might use those examples as grounds to charge "abuse of judicial discretion" or something similar.

For others not so blinded, they may recognize "evil" when they see it but be unable to do anything about it out of fear - in the same way all those social conformity experiments have shown.

The forum has several threads and posts on those experiments.

My 2 cents.

 

[Laura]

I've recently read two books that better spell out the ponerization process: "Character Disturbance" by George Simon and "Wetiko Virus" by Paul Levy.

Now, Levy has a problem with being way too Jungian and airy fairy in his evaluation of what a psychopath really is, but everything else in the book - how they affect others - is pretty spot on. These two, put together with "Puzzling People" by Sheridan, kind of fill in a lot of blanks and make the whole system comprehensible.

Oh, forgot to mention: you also gotta read "The Authoritarians" by Bob Altemeyer. That's another big piece of the puzzle!

 

[Buddy]

I've recently read two books that better spell out the ponerization process: "Character Disturbance" by George Simon and "Wetiko Virus" by Paul Levy.

Thanks for mentioning "Wetiko Virus". I am so feeling vindicated in my initial preference for that explanation. Yay!! :)

[If I only had a somersaulting smiley]

 

[Bresias]

What I don't understand is the 'mechanism', as it were, that influences the unwashed public Joes and Marys to render such an outrageous and obviously wrong decision -- in SPITE of psychiatric evidence.

Most of us are conditioned from childhood to deny what we see - to unconsciously and automatically edit our perceptions.

And not just blatant interference with legal justice, but day to day, garden variety "confusion" on the part of Joe and Mary Citizen to even SEE "evil" and recognize it as such?

See above.

Also, on a different note, for those people who can see or experience verbal, emotional or physical abuse and yet believe "love" is being expressed are just carrying their illusions into a courtroom to be manipulated by lawyers and judges toward a desired end.

Non-testimony factors also can carry weight. A bailiff makes a contemptuous noise or expression; or, a judge, surrounded by flags, official seals, a fancy desk on a raised podium, smirks or uses a "paternal" attitude to deliver his jury instructions - all this and much more is picked up by jurors and can influence the verdict. Also, an observant defendant might use those examples as grounds to charge "abuse of judicial discretion" or something similar.

For others not so blinded, they may recognize "evil" when they see it but be unable to do anything about it out of fear - in the same way all those social conformity experiments have shown.

The forum has several threads and posts on those experiments.

My 2 cents.

It seems as though the average citizen is not "smart" enough to negotiate :( .

Negotiate, meaning to SUCCEED in assimilating the available information objectively. I'm not just pointing fingers at "stupid people" without pointing them at myself, I've made seriously dumb decisions, believing I was "right", and am barely peeking up and over into better way of "negotiating" reality myself. I'm trying to understand what that mechanism is, by which I/we assimilate information and come to conclusions that promote "evil" . Conclusions SO crappy that in spite of my/our "good" intentions, result in the furthering of "evil". I have willfully participated in 'furthering evil' , while wholeheartedly believing I was being "fair", or level-headedly considering my own imperfections.

I'm trying to understand the MECHANISM beneath this blindness, as you call it, Bud. Is it self-preservation of some sort? Very ill-informed self-preservation, if it is. And what "self" is being preserved, hello?

I'm wondering if it is a preservation of human laziness and selfishness. If human beings have an essential 'ponerization" unless some threshold is reached? Is this original sin? Am I losing perspective here :D LOL?

Laura: I found out today my order of "Puzzling People" by Sheridan will be delivered ahead of time, on Tuesday :) And thanks for the other book ideas. The "Wetigo Virus" book by Levy is not available on Amazon, interestingly so . . . but I'm an old fan of Jung, fwiw, and I'll check out the e-book. Thanks for your responses :)

 

[Jeremy F Kreuz]

The "Wetigo Virus" book by Levy is not available on Amazon, interestingly so . . . but I'm an old fan of Jung, fwiw, and I'll check out the e-book. Thanks for your responses

I think Laura is referring to the Article today on SOTT about the Wetiko virus: the greatest sickness known to humanity. In there is a reference to a book off Jack D Forbes: Columbus and other Cannibals. This book seems to be the orginal source for the term Wetiko and is available on Amazon. The SOTT article seems to be part of series, so in lenght it might turn out to be a book.

 

[Don Genaro]

There is a book, "Wetiko: The Greatest Epidemic Sickness Known to Humanity". I also searched on amazon but couldn't find it but you can order it from the author's site

_http://www.awakeninthedream.com/wetiko/

It's available in pdf format or as a hard copy.

 

[Laura]

It seems as though the average citizen is not "smart" enough to negotiate :( .

IQ MAY have something to do with it, but that's not always the case. Altemeyer notes that people who get converted to religion (after being brought up non-religious) are less intelligent than those individuals who are born into, and programmed by, religion, but manage to get OUT.

Negotiate, meaning to SUCCEED in assimilating the available information objectively.

In other words, does one's mental map/landscape match reality?

But there's another way to look at intelligence: is one able to extract from memory what went into memory accurately? That could be the case and what went in was lies. So, a certain kind of intelligence is involved in regurgitation of input...

The bigger question here is: if the information that is being put in via what one is told, reads, etc, can be distinguished from what one actually SEEs and experiences? (If there is a disconnect.)

"Selection and substitution" of premises is one method by which people lie to themselves all the time. This sort of thing is emotionally driven. People are programmed from childhood to think that any negative emotions are bad and reflect a "bad insides" of the person. This is further reinforced by such things as "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" and "least said, soonest mended", and "that's just gossip" or the new age version: "whatever you see in others, is in you" (which is rather Jungian, when you think about it), and "you create your own reality by what you think about" etc.

So, people will do anything to avoid having negative feelings, reactions, seeing negativity, etc. A good book that discusses this is John Schumaker's "The Corruption of Reality".

People who are trying to suppress or get rid of "bad feelings" (even things like: "that person makes me feel icky") will unconsciously eliminate data that relate to those bad feelings. They might say things to themselves like: "well, I'm being judgmental and that's bad, so I'm sure that I am wrong and this person is really a good person and I will put the most positive spin on things that I can." It's the old problem of the neurotic versus the predator. The Neurotic will always and ever blame themselves and excuse the person who is predatory, assuming that this other person is just like them inside. It's actually the most psychopathic thing that normal humans do: project their own internal landscape onto/into a predatory individual who is not feeling the least bit of guilt or shame.

When a person starts doing this from an early age, as taught by their parents and society, this subconscious substitution of premises/projection becomes habitual and automatic, thus approaching the psychopathological.

Because this process is driven by emotions, it is much faster than conscious reasoning and is probably driven by the amygdala.

Then, as Lobaczewski points out, there is the "blocking out of accurate conclusions" which occurs pretty much in the same way: that is, emotion driven. A person can have all the objective data, and ALMOST arrive at the correct conclusion, but because the conclusion is so disturbing, and they have been programmed from childhood by parents and experiences, to NOT think or say bad things about others, and that everyone is equal and basically the same inside, so the directive from the subconscious jumps in and stops the process.

I'm not just pointing fingers at "stupid people" without pointing them at myself, I've made seriously dumb decisions, believing I was "right", and am barely peeking up and over into better way of "negotiating" reality myself. I'm trying to understand what that mechanism is, by which I/we assimilate information and come to conclusions that promote "evil" . Conclusions SO crappy that in spite of my/our "good" intentions, result in the furthering of "evil". I have willfully participated in 'furthering evil' , while wholeheartedly believing I was being "fair", or level-headedly considering my own imperfections.

Join the club. This is a realization that nearly killed me. I have five kids and I was loading all that crap onto them - the persons I love most in the world. Boy, did that hurt!

I'm trying to understand the MECHANISM beneath this blindness, as you call it, Bud. Is it self-preservation of some sort? Very ill-informed self-preservation, if it is. And what "self" is being preserved, hello?

The false personality - the self-image - is being preserved. Castaneda's Don Juan calls it "the predator's mind" and Gurdjieff calls it "buffers" and "false personality". Dabrowski suggests that the person is defending themselves against personality disintegration. They fear that if everything they believe is true turns out to be false, and they have invested so much into believing stuff, that they will disappear, or die, or whatever. And, of course, when they realize that they have believed lies, facing the truth means that they have to deal with a whole bunch of "bad feelings" that they are convinced, in their core, will lead to abandonment/loss of love of the parental figures/authorities, etc. It's a primitive function of the subconscious/polyvagal system.

I'm wondering if it is a preservation of human laziness and selfishness. If human beings have an essential 'ponerization" unless some threshold is reached? Is this original sin? Am I losing perspective here :D LOL?

You just need some good scientific information.

Laura: I found out today my order of "Puzzling People" by Sheridan will be delivered ahead of time, on Tuesday :) And thanks for the other book ideas. The "Wetigo Virus" book by Levy is not available on Amazon, interestingly so . . . but I'm an old fan of Jung, fwiw, and I'll check out the e-book. Thanks for your responses :)

Wetiko. And I do mean the book, not the article. Paul Levy sent it to me with a note and I notice he has borrowed the term I coined: psychophagia.

You are right, it's not on amazon, but the book he quotes repeatedly throughout is: "Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism". I haven't read this one, but it is on order.

You might want to read these articles which cover some of my speculations on how we got from there to here:
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/217194-Witches-Comets-and-Planetary-Cataclysms

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/227222-The-Golden-Age-Psychopathy-and-the-Sixth-Extinction

 

[Guardian]

I think the vast majority of the problems we (humanity) have are caused directly by our disconnection from Nature. Nature is truth, and when we separate ourselves from Nature and try to convince ourselves that we are beings somehow set apart from all else that is.. all that is left for us is a huge web of elaborate lies? Most of these lies seem to be designed to deny who and what we really are, a tiny little part of a huge whole that is so ginormous we can't possibly grasp it's Nature/Truth while in these tiny little skin suits?

I think most people can't "Call a Spade a Spade" because if they admitted the truth about others, they'd have to admit the truth about themselves too? Excluding the small percentage of Psychopaths in our species who are totally different, the rest of us are so much alike in our basic thoughts, fears, needs and desires...it's painful.

 

[Bresias]

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/227222-The-Golden-Age-Psychopathy-and-the-Sixth-Extinction

And here we come to an interesting idea: the difficulty for both believers in purely mechanistic evolution and the creationists is that any cosmology that is sufficiently explanatory of the phenomena we observe in our universe, has deeper dynamics and implications. The evolutionists and creationists both do not seem to be capable of the truly abstract, subtle thinking required to parse these implications. It is as though both types are confined within a set of cognitive restrictions that drive their perceptions, experiences and priorities.

I'm about one third the way through this article, and this paragraph quoted above leaped out. What I bolded is a description of how outrageous conclusions are wrought from simple facts.

Perhaps the operant word here is "believers".

What a person already believes is unquestioned, or unconscious. It has automatic "authority", from which it can pervert conclusions via "a set of cognitive restrictions" driven by (unquestioned) perceptions, experiences and priorities.

And those "cognitive restrictions" appear to me, at my current level of understanding, to be mechanisms to preserve the "authority" already implied. Hey, I think I just described circular logic

Which begs the question . . . do people (in a collective sense) really want to KNOW anything? Or just massage what they want to believe? Which begs the next question, WHY cling to and defend belief at the expense public safety, for instance, or faith in our justice system? I wonder if the jurists who refused to acknowledge Turcotte's psychopathology IN SPITE of psychiatric "proof" (not to mention the murders themselves) were just protecting themselves . . . from . . . ?

From Laura:

The false personality - the self-image - is being preserved. Castaneda's Don Juan calls it "the predator's mind" and Gurdjieff calls it "buffers" and "false personality". Dabrowski suggests that the person is defending themselves against personality disintegration. They fear that if everything they believe is true turns out to be false, and they have invested so much into believing stuff, that they will disappear, or die, or whatever. And, of course, when they realize that they have believed lies, facing the truth means that they have to deal with a whole bunch of "bad feelings" that they are convinced, in their core, will lead to abandonment/loss of love of the parental figures/authorities, etc. It's a primitive function of the subconscious/polyvagal system.

What "false personality" is preserved by refusing to acknowledge "human evil"?

That I (the generic "I") am incapable of "evil", or insulated against it by denying that it exists?

I have long suspected we are subtly encouraged to maintain "false personality" via popular media and how information is dispensed by the "authorities". I saw how powerless I am, as an individual, and how outnumbered I am, and spent the last decade of my life keepin' it to myself and making up my own mind and filtering out the BS. I don't buy into the "authorities" any more than to acknowledge they seem to have the stage, but I don't have to watch the show.

What this awareness provides for me is something I don't understand yet, other than that I am not yanked around by the short-hairs by trends or fashionable "beliefs".

Yet just preserving my own insulation from the distortions and enabling I perceive happening all around me is not "enough". I remain on the domestic violence support boards long after my own situation has resolved, I don't feel "complete" somehow unless I stay involved in "the fight". I get feedback off and on that my contribution there is helpful. It is CERTAINLY helpful to me, and I'm not sure why.

Is it really so very awful for a person to admit, to themselves, the "truth" about themselves? And thus extend that outward, in greater circles of influence, and TRULY accomplish making this world a better, safer place? Rather than denying factual reality, taking some psychotic short-cut, like this jury seemed to do? I include the jury that acquitted Casey Anthony as well.

I've felt that as a "race", we are collectively ill in some undefined way. And I feel an "urge" to remedy that, but have no means to do so, or any real conviction that I even should. Yet the urge remains :(

 

[Laura]

What "false personality" is preserved by refusing to acknowledge "human evil"?

That I (the generic "I") am incapable of "evil", or insulated against it by denying that it exists?

People grow up believing this and that is "good" and this and that is "bad". When they learn that it is not so simple, that it doesn't always follow rules, that there is good and there is evil and there is the specific situation that determines which is which and that thinking and effort is required, they don't want to go there. I guess that, for most, it is some kind of basic laziness or entropy or gravitational thing.

So, they get an intimation that they, themselves (not to mention all the people they admired as "good") have done evil in the name of good, and they just can't go there. Cognitive dissonance.

Another good book that explains some of the cognitive science is Steven Pinker's "The Prehistory of the Mind." But he's an evolutionist trying to make a very weak case, so be aware. Nevertheless, he's pulled together some excellent science that, IMO, just validates Gurdjieff's ideas about the many "Is" that we all carry around.

I have long suspected we are subtly encouraged to maintain "false personality" via popular media and how information is dispensed by the "authorities". I saw how powerless I am, as an individual, and how outnumbered I am, and spent the last decade of my life keepin' it to myself and making up my own mind and filtering out the BS. I don't buy into the "authorities" any more than to acknowledge they seem to have the stage, but I don't have to watch the show.

Join the club!! Only I got out there and started talkin' about it in public and - horror of horrors - talked about it in spiritual terms, so that got the defamers going full blast!

What this awareness provides for me is something I don't understand yet, other than that I am not yanked around by the short-hairs by trends or fashionable "beliefs".

Well, it's already something to not be yanked around, yes???

Yet just preserving my own insulation from the distortions and enabling I perceive happening all around me is not "enough". I remain on the domestic violence support boards long after my own situation has resolved, I don't feel "complete" somehow unless I stay involved in "the fight". I get feedback off and on that my contribution there is helpful. It is CERTAINLY helpful to me, and I'm not sure why.

Same reason I write, run this forum, try to help others wake up and connect with others who are waking up... sorta like trying to find "our own kind" - people who want to, and can, wake up. I don't know what is in my make-up other than some sort of overwhelming urge to nurture (I did have five children) so that's what I put it down to usually.

Is it really so very awful for a person to admit, to themselves, the "truth" about themselves? And thus extend that outward, in greater circles of influence, and TRULY accomplish making this world a better, safer place? Rather than denying factual reality, taking some psychotic short-cut, like this jury seemed to do? I include the jury that acquitted Casey Anthony as well.

Seems to be so. Some people welcome what Dabrowski calls "positive disintegration" and change, others are so terrified of it that they fight it to the death or go mad when it happens. I think there are some genetic things going on in the different types. And it is also possible that the ones that really cannot go there in any way, shape, form or fashion, simply do not have individuated souls as we think of them. That is what Gurdjieff suggests, and the Cs have said as much. But then, there are the ones that certainly DO have souls who can't go there either. It is an interesting puzzle.

I've felt that as a "race", we are collectively ill in some undefined way. And I feel an "urge" to remedy that, but have no means to do so, or any real conviction that I even should. Yet the urge remains :(

Yeah. My solution has simply been to put up a lighthouse, keep it going, and work with/help those that really ask. A lot of people SEEM to ask, but really aren't asking... they are manipulating. So even figuring that out can be problematic.

And definitely, if you wake up and try to wake up others, you will be slammed by a whole slew of crazies.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

Is it really so very awful for a person to admit, to themselves, the "truth" about themselves? And thus extend that outward, in greater circles of influence, and TRULY accomplish making this world a better, safer place? Rather than denying factual reality, taking some psychotic short-cut, like this jury seemed to do? I include the jury that acquitted Casey Anthony as well.

Seems to be so. Some people welcome what Dabrowski calls "positive disintegration" and change, others are so terrified of it that they fight it to the death or go mad when it happens. I think there are some genetic things going on in the different types. And it is also possible that the ones that really cannot go there in any way, shape, form or fashion, simply do not have individuated souls as we think of them. That is what Gurdjieff suggests, and the Cs have said as much. But then, there are the ones that certainly DO have souls who can't go there either. It is an interesting puzzle.

That's pretty much what Dabrowski, thought too. It's not so much that people are terrified of it (but I'm sure there are cases of that), more that they don't have the 'hardware' to either disintegrate in the first place (negative/primitive integration), or to successfully come through on the other side unscathed (negative/unilevel disintegration). It's like the extra 'energy' fries their system, because they don't have the right 'upgrade' with which to install the new 'program'. Or they just run with Windows98 their whole lives.

 

[Laura]

That's pretty much what Dabrowski, thought too. It's not so much that people are terrified of it (but I'm sure there are cases of that), more that they don't have the 'hardware' to either disintegrate in the first place (negative/primitive integration), or to successfully come through on the other side unscathed (negative/unilevel disintegration). It's like the extra 'energy' fries their system, because they don't have the right 'upgrade' with which to install the new 'program'. Or they just run with Windows98 their whole lives.

Good way to describe it.

But let's not be denigrating Windows 98... I was using it myself up until just 4 or 5 years ago!

 

[Approaching Infinity]

That's pretty much what Dabrowski, thought too. It's not so much that people are terrified of it (but I'm sure there are cases of that), more that they don't have the 'hardware' to either disintegrate in the first place (negative/primitive integration), or to successfully come through on the other side unscathed (negative/unilevel disintegration). It's like the extra 'energy' fries their system, because they don't have the right 'upgrade' with which to install the new 'program'. Or they just run with Windows98 their whole lives.

Good way to describe it.

But let's not be denigrating Windows 98... I was using it myself up until just 4 or 5 years ago!

Maybe a Commodore 64 would've been a better analogy. But you DID upgrade, didn't you? ;D

 

[Guardian]

Good way to describe it.

But let's not be denigrating Windows 98... I was using it myself up until just 4 or 5 years ago!

Yup, then eventually we get to XP, and it feels like we're making progress....then something like Vista comes along. ;D