Note: This page is part of the Paradigm from California website, a collection of some fifty documents, including twenty color slides, all illuminating an understanding of human operations within the context of the four billion year old bioecosystem.
To reach the text only home page of this site, click here.
The following five short essays were posted as part of an Internet newsgroup discussion in early October, 1995, and were collected into this page on 10/18/95.
alt.history.what-if
What if Nobody Lied
soc.history.what-if
What if Atlantis didn't sink
comment on posted article
Nazi Abuse of History
alt.history.what-if
What if we all spoke the same language
alt.history.what-if
What if Galileo had not been so stubborn
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Reply to a message mentioning a story written about a drug that makes people be honest, and the possibility for a utopia that might follow . . . .
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neil@imaginenine.com:
Well, I'm not talking about a drug, or utopia. What I mean is, what if everyone was taught, from the third grade on, the specific skill of being able to figure if another person, Especially A More Powerful Person, was accurately or inaccurately reporting their own perceptions. Was taught to tell if another person was "lying about what they think" or not "lying about what they think". It's not that hard to figure out - doesn't take any psychic perceptions; just a little intelligence, knowledge, and experience. A good schoolteacher always helps. The skill could easily be taught in school, elementary school. It's a mechanical skill, like reading and writing and 'rithmetic . . .
So then, if that happened, people wouldn't lie because everyone is so casually and accurately alert to whether another person is accurately reporting their perceptions or not, so lying doesn't work, people know, from the first word out of your mouth that you're just making it up. So when someone presents a deliberately false report of their perception of the world, presents that as an accurate report of their perception of the world, they are not believed.
You don't solve the problem by making people honest, not regarding this facet of the thing, anyway. You make people honest by making people (other people) intelligent, with accurate perceptual abilities. If everyone always could accurately determine whether someone else was deliberately, falsely reporting their perceptions, then no one would bother trying to present things as true, that they understand to be untrue.
No drugs, nothin like that; just ordinary intelligence, you know, a slightly expanded school curriculum.
Now then. People would get accurate reports of what human beings perceive.
Instead of the current situation, where everyone 'believes' all these preposterous things, that no one could ever believe if they thought about it, but everyone believes everyone else thinks so, 'so it must be true' (!!!) That's the only reason why people seem so dumb; because they're using, as a basis for 'thinking', all these absurdities that everyone repeats to each other as if it's gospel, but no human being could possibly believe!!!
(About a hundred examples presented at my site, but read this first . . . )
So, in of the current situation, where everyone's lying so much (about what they think), and if you bust 'em, 'specially if they're more powerful than you, why your a goner, everyone knows that. Why, they'll call you 'angry', 'psychotic', 'uncharming', and everything else in the book, not to mention fire you, evict you, abandon you, and everything else you can think of. So you just accept the fact that everyone lies, you stay careful not to bust the more powerful, or your friends, or your lovers, or anyone else. Exhausted by the time you're fifteen, you wind up believing these preposterous things because you think other people believe them, but they don't!!! - all the lies about what people perceive - that everyone just accepts. It goes to the highest levels of science, academia, and everywhere else. It's a pretty crazy situation, as everyone knows only too well.
So, if everyone could always spot it, whenever anyone else was giving a deliberately inaccurate report of their own perception, so therefore nobody bothered lying, then we all would rapidly develop a very accurate understanding of what other people think, and since about 95% or 99% of everyone's first-hand perceptions really do conform to singular accuracy, and nobody would (or could get away with) 'BS'ing About What They Perceived, then we would finally get an Accurate, Honest exchange of views (very very very unlike the current situation), and we would all develop a highly accurate understanding of how the world works, and an accurate impression of what was going on, High And Low. Wouldn't that be nice? Yes it would. I can prove it would be nice . . . I can too . . .
Listen, the inaccurate reports of human perception that everyone's operating on the basis of right now, that insanely twisted mass of stupid pigo lies, stuff that no human being could conclude as a result of their own thinking, has convinced everyone that life, "ultimately" is a work-out-poorly-for-some/most/all proposition, you can't solve all the problems of the world, things just go, it's a dog-eat-dog-(!!!)-world, innate human-to-human hostility; preposterous stuff, all maintained only as long as the criminally insane, "lie-about-what-you-understand" system holds sway.
On the other hand, if everyone could always spot the difference between when a person was giving an accurate report of human perception about the world around, and an inaccurate report of human perception of the world around, then, suddenly (so to speak), an understanding that actually conformed to this bio-ecosystem would result. Namely, work-out-well-all-around, you can and are supposed to solve all the problems of the world, things can be changed by conscious decisions, it's a cooperative world (regarding human behavioral structure and biology), human-to-human hostility is a weird anomaly in human's 100,000 year history, easy to fix, and a million other things. All that, accurate to nature (at last!) would become instantly apparent.
Right now, everyone is thoroughly convinced that the world is an ugly place, and therefore you have to lie. It's like "The Emperor's New Clothes"!!!! In fact, everyone is being forced to lie on pain of abandonment, homelessness, and death, and because they are constantly being nailed into it, everyone's being forced to lie, to accept lying, to accept the entire "lie about what you understand" SYSTEM. So then, they develop a preposterous view of life, based on this gigantic, thoroughly tangled and stupid lie-web. And, coming from that thoroughly nonsensical and vicious base of "thoughts", they then "conclude" that the world's inherently an ugly place!!!!!
They (all the high level people in the world, all hundreds of millions of 'em, except me, I'm the only one of hundreds of millions of 'em that's got any clues), but they, they got it all backwards. It's not that the world is an ugly place and therefore you have to lie. It's that the social/political/social system (not life or the bioecosystem), the social/political/social system forces you to lie, and then, once you become a liar, and a believer in all those "lie about what you understand" absurdities, then you see "the real truth", (can you imagine???!!!), that life is just ugly, or something. Remember, First, you are forced to accept the "lie about what you understand" way of life. Only Then, After That, do you "learn", "the real truth"!!!!!???. Like I said, the Emperor's Got No Clothes . . . .
You don learn no "real truth", not on any level, not in any sense of the term. Nosireeee. When you come to accept that "lie about what one understands" system, you become an imbecile, and you could no longer tell what's true at all!!! I mean, once you come to accept that lie-system, you can barely tell your head from your rear end . . . Kinda obvious, no? "real truth" indeed!!!!
Instead of reaching conclusions, you "seize on things", whatever gets you some morsel of support or protection from that bigger liar!!! That's what you conclude is "true", after all, "everything's a lie", "no real truth", etc. etc. etc. And then, on that basis, you claim that you Know!!!!! Can you imagine??!!!??? I mean, please . . .
A lifetime, at whatever age, a lifetime of having a clear and accurate understanding of what people perceive, and not having a tangled web of false reporting of perception, which was presented as accurate, mixed up in it, will always show work-out-well-all-around solutions to problems, 1, 2, 3 people wide, 10, 20, 30; a hundred, a thousand, six billion, ten billion people wide.
People become liars, and come to accept a lie-SYSTEM around them, and, then, ON THAT BASIS, "conclude" that, there is no real truth, you can't Really solve, "life" "basically" is an ugly place, and all the rest of it. Imbeciles, I say. Imbeciles, and they're proud of it. Oh yeah, and they're liars too.
So, . . . . Re: . . . what if . . . nobody lied . . . ?
Utopia? I don't think so. That's out. That term means "no anxiety", a virtual impossibility within this bioecosystem and an impossibility within the human neural structure. So utopia is out, not real to this world, not real to what anyone wants (despite those infamous, preposterous claims) so forget it.
So what's the difference between risk, pain, loss, sorrow, the stupid way things are now and those same anxieties in a work-out-well-all-around situation? The difference is in whether or not the things you build actually work, actually do the thing you built them to do.
Justice. That's the difference, at least regarding one facet of things.
The way things are now, you take a risk, and then, win or lose, it's all for nothin, really, nothing you build really does anything for anyone, the risks are all fake, and stupid, you walk around feeling like nothing matters, and you live in a world with a high level background terror of rape, starvation, homicide, failure, massacre . . . you name it . . . and all for nothin' . . . that's the way things are now, under the "lie about what you understand" system . . .
But within the bio-ecosystem's, "work-out-well-all-around" structure, which is very easy to see and apply in all it's depth and consistency, in the absence of the "lie-about-perceptions" web, that is; within the bio-ecosystem's "work-out-well-all-around" structure, risk, pain, loss, sorrow, are all part of a system where the things that people build actually work, the kids that they raise are healthy, the community they live in finds actual, real, no-tricks, solutions to problems encountered, things do get solved and solved for all time, and then, later, new, higher level things come up, the losses are understood and corrected in the future.
The building, healing, solving that you do actually builds, heals, solves, through and through, despite, even because of the risks, pains, losses, and sorrows . . . The famous, "way it's supposed to be". Not utopia, because that explicitly means "absence of anxiety". So that's out. "Utopia" is the language of nazi-agents, setting up strawmen; forget it! . . . Justice, is perhaps a better word . . . not 'revenge', ever, of course, there is never never never never justice in revenge. Never. Justice means that the risks, the pain, the sorrow, the fear, the loss, pays, does indeed go to building, creating, healing, solving the helpful things that one was attempting to build and solve when they took the loss. That's justice, things pay off in a work out well direction, win or lose, building pays, as a matter of hard, cold reality, come what may . . . that's what justice is, and everyone knows it . . . .
Yeah you take risks, yeah, sometimes things go bad, go wrong, that happens in a work-out-well-all-around situation. But it ain't all for nothin', it goes somewhere, does what it's supposed to do . . . loss or no loss . . . that's the big difference; and the even bigger difference: Nobody lies. Or at least, lying is never mistaken for accurate reports of perception . . . Can you imagine no one ever being effectively lied to? What a world this would be, eh . . .?
In that situation, the entire "human-thwarting-human" matter is seen for what it is; nothing but the result of a ferociously tangled web of lies spun by the "lie about what you understand" system that everyone, and I do mean EVERY successful, or aspiring to be successful person, fawns over so swooningly and so desperately. Ooohhhh, what a chaaarrrming person, he/she never calls anyone on their stupid lies . . . what an obnoxious person, he/she makes you feel so exposed . . . archtype bourgeois stuff . . . The "lie-about-what-you-understand" nazification system. That's exactly what it is, quite literally. And people who actively promote "the-protection-of-lying" are militant agents of nazification, that's what I say, what I've figured out. In the full depth and breadth of the terms used. Literally.
When you put together accurate reports of human perceptions, lying-about-perception-not-withstanding, when you put together accurate reports of human perceptions, it is very obvious, to anyone, that every nerve in this bio-ecosystem, and human structure within it is geared for what is generally understood as cooperative, "anti-thwarting-of-humans" behavior. Communism. That's the way of nature, and the way of the basic structure of human behavior. And anxiety-rich communism at that! What could be more obvious. Nothing could be more obvious!
This stupid, brief, 10-thousand year little anomaly, entirely fixable, this "deliberately-claim-that-inaccurate-reports-of-perception-are-accurate-reports-of-perception" pseudo-system which everyone bows down to so humbly, is the problem, and it can be easily repaired, nation-wide, planet-wide, no-tricks, and solved for all time to come.
And, mark my words and mark them well, if that entirely doable thing were to be done, and it can be done, if that were to be done, if every person developed an automatic, accurate, and obvious understanding of when someone else was deliberately, falsely claiming to perceive something, then, after all these ten thousand years of horror, 95% of the human damage and destruction currently obtaining, would be solved, practically overnight. No Tricks. I mean that quite literally, by anyone's definition.
So, Re: . . . what if . . . nobody lied . . . ?
Like I said before, communism. No foolin' . . .
Best Wishes To All . . . .
---- neil
neil@imaginenine.com October 6, 1995 1:30 pm pdt (slightly revised and posted Oct. 10)
P.S. Hey. Guess what . . . I'm running for President [also, for U.S. Senator for California in 1998] . . . But my slogan is not 'vote for me'. No, no . . . my slogan is, check out my paradigm . . . check out the program . . . check out the plan . . .
And again, best wishes to all . . .
---- neil
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Reply to a comment specualting on what would have happened if Atlantis had not sunk . . .
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As I understand it, the Atlantis that Plato referred to was in the area that's now call Crete, circa 3000 BC and before, Minoan and pre-Minoan Crete. Massive archeological finds, discoveries, and analysis in the past century have confirmed that that civilization was an egalitarian one, where the high level holders of the social and political decision-making positions were decisively held by women, and where there was an absence of the sort of brutality, lies, and domination that we have so tragically and unnecessarily come to expect for the past several thousand years.
A profoundly cooperative, advanced civilization, with primarily women at the high level of it, after the model of pretty much all settled societies throughout what is now Europe prior to about five or six thousand years ago. The best books I've read detailing the science of what's been discovered on the subject are Marija Gimbutas' 'Civilization of the Goddess' and Riane Eisler's 'The Chalice and The Blade'. Gimbutas details the extremely voluminous and unmistakable scientific findings, all across the length and breadth of Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, a massive treasure, while Eisler tells the story. Quite a duo, those two. Massive amounts more has been written on the subject by many many archeologists, anthropologists, paleoanthropologists, geologists, radiocarbon-dating specialists, and so forth. Much of the dreaming that people have done about a "mythical" egalitarian, feminine, entirely advanced and cooperative 'Atlantis' turns out to be not mythical at all, but, actual history, for thousands of years, well substantiated and, best I can tell, thoroughly accepted science, well known to professionals and scholars in the field, no longer myth at all.
It always blows my mind how, in these allegedly educational institutions, they teach these preposterous myths about how things "have always been this way" (brutality, lies, and "domination"), while relegating to myth, the fact of a cooperative humanity for at least 90% of the 100,000 years of human history, including early civilization. Amazing how the lying nazi propagandists get away with ruling that roost, isn't it? And why do institutions like Ivy League Colleges, and The New York Slimes, with their crackpot, "always-been-brutality" type formulations, get to lead the way . . . something should really be done about that . . .
Well anyway . . . soc.history.what-if . . . 'Atlantis' had survived and done well, ongoing . . .
Had 'Atlantis', not the mythical one, but the real one, had it survived and done well for another couple hundred or thousand years, (instead of being destroyed by earthquakes, volcanoes, and, in a thus weakened state, invasions), they certainly wouldn't have "dominated" anybody, not in the currently understood sense of the term.
However, they might well have "cracked the case" of how it came to pass that, after 100,000 years of cooperative human history, there was suddenly (in historical terms), suddenly a shift from a brilliant state of human, feminine cooperation, to an anomalous, stupid, lying, brutal, and tortuous social structure such as we have suffered from the Greeks, the Romans, the Nazis, and all of that . . .
So I guess three questions occur to me, First, how would they have gone about cracking the case . . . Second, how would they have implemented the solution that they found . . . and third what would the world look like had they been able to pull it off . . .
So, first off . . . cracking the case in the first place . . . the first clue, of course, is words, conversation, and writing, gotta be, and the second clue is art, the physical arrangement of ideas, in shapes and forms and colors, on stone, on wood, on sand, on paper, in the air (dance), and so forth, poetry, music all that stuff . . . clue number three . . . the accumulated information of what's already known, what's already been figured out . . . the fourth . . . experience . . . ugh, brrrrrrr . . . experience . . . that's the scary part . . .
Their big problem, of course, would have been - how do you get close enough to the oncoming imbecilic butchers who were starting to destroy the world, to figure out how their mind works so as to identify and arrest the messed-up social patterns, without getting killed before you cracked the case of changing the patterns back to healthy ones . . . that would take some very sophisticated maneuvering . . . maybe, sort of, tag teams or something . . . back and forth . . . over large bodies of water . . . and over land . . . with the front line people probably getting killed, and of course, much much worse . . . they could have found a way . . . definitely . . . let's see . . .
Their problem would have been . . . when you get too close, then, in order to survive, you have to lie to the killers in order to get away again, so you can tell the tale back to the folks who are safe, behind the lines, back home, who still have enough wits and supplies and safety and presence of mind to know what to make of it and figure it out. But if the front lines people, your experiencers and reporters, if they have to lie in order to survive, then your reporters become liars and therefore killers too . . . whoops . . . that don't sound too good . . . but if they don't lie, well, killers can spot an honest person from miles away . . . and then they get really really vicious . . . and the experiencers and reporters don't live to tell the tale, and much worse . . . problems . . .
Let's see, first, the Atlantins would have had to realize that the case HAD to be cracked . . . no matter how good life was in 'Atlantis', the case of why these people to the north were starting to operate in such a psychotic manner, on such a large scale, that case had to be cracked . . . otherwise, everyone's maps of the depth of life, all the best passions and emotions, of everyone, everywhere, start to dissolve, and that's only in the short term, that's only the immediate thing . . . over time, it gets much worse, much much much worse, massacres, enslavement, gas chambers, the works . . . and, of course, it comes home, always, sooner, and later, both . . . and then it becomes too late, for some things anyway . . .
Well, still and all . . . there's was a way . . . they coulda cracked the case . . . back then . . . all those thousands of years ago . . . they didn't . . . or at least if they did, the lying killers, in their desperation to "prove" there could be no solution, in their desperation to "prove" that murder was correct (sort of like modern day 'social professionals' and New York Slimes groupies), deranged morons that they were (are), specifically searched and destroyed whatever solution might have been found, in those days, destroyed it with the blade, as Eisler might say - or maybe that solution was found by the 'Atlantins', and is still there, buried somewhere, for some archeologist or linguist to find . . . well, maybe and maybe not, I can't tell . . . anyway, even if they did manage to find some solution or some part of the solution, one way or another they didn't manage to pull it off all the way. . . their solution, even if they did find it, didn't get implemented, or implemented enough . . . and we've had to put up with all these brutal imbeciles for a couple of thousand years since, as a result . . . a really bad continuation . . . so far . . .
but they might have cracked it, they just didn't . . . but nothing is inevitable, not then, not now, not ever . . . in this bioecosystem, only the past is written in stone, the future is never already written, on this planet, the future is always subject to human decisions, one way or the other . . . it's a different kind of thing from the past, entirely different, in that one particular way - in that one particular way, the past and the future are hardly even related . . . and for sure, definitely, we certainly can get it, we can crack the damn case, implement it, and all the rest, even now . . . maybe even by using some of what they figured out . . .
So let's say they did crack the case, all those years and millennia ago . . . figured out the mechanism, internal, conversational, or whatever, which was keeping the murdering marauders operating in such a suicidal, stupid, and lying manner, thoroughly out of touch with any part of human history, completely derailed from the basic human structure . . . entirely anomalies to any bioecosystemic pattern . . . let's say they cracked it . . . all those thousands of years ago . . .
Now, implementation . . . then, after that, what's the world gonna look like, what woulda happened if, instead of the Greeks and Romans massacring by the millions all the hundreds of little, millennia-long communities of the Mediterranean area, instead of that, an intelligent, cooperative, feminine, continuation had prevailed . . .
Let's say that, instead of 99% of the thousands-years-old Mediterranean communities being raped to death, and the last 1% being collected in Athens and called 'Greek', instead of that, what if there had been a cooperative development, all across that area, over the next couple thousand years . . . lots of places left alone, all the combinations of societies with the cores left to keep developing intact and the parts that did combine, well, the best things preserved and everything taken into account . . . what would this world have developed into . . .
. . . welp . . . always too late for some things . . . not too late for others . . .
I guess that's as far as I can think at this particular moment . . . but there is plenty more to be figured obviously . . . implementation for openers . . .
hey, check out:
http:/imaginenine.com
I figured I'd stop by this newsgroup, look around, find some subject here, say a few words, then invite you to stop by my site . . . there's a great bibliography for openers, and lots more . . .
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Hi -
Just read your interesting article at Brian's web-site. (Click here for a reprint.) I certainly agree with the thrust of it, but there are some decisive details that I could take issue with.
For instance you say "any position can be "substantiated" by selective quotes from history, just as you can justify anything . . ." Well, you do use quotes around the word substantiated, so actually, therefore, I don't disagree with that, but in the next phrase, "justify anything" the quotes are missing. It may seem like a small point, but it's not. It's the same error that the news magazine "Extra!" and everyone else seems to make, and it's major. Well, in my opinion, of course.
The problem is that the whole matter of the accuracy/inaccuracy framework of thinking, and the makes-sense/doesn't-make-sense framework of thinking is the central issue in all that you discuss in the article, but I daresay, it is one that no one seems prepared to approach. But it is the central issue in everything of political and social relevance in the current age. The fact is, people claim to be "justifying" things with these preposterous "single hits", but they don't "justify" them. More important, they themselves do not believe that they are making the case that they claim to believe themselves to be making.
I have an abrasive expression for such operations - I call it "lying about what they understand". That is the way they see it, although progressive persons seem intent on putting it all in the frame of "well, the statement seems to 'make sense' to them". It Does NOT Make Sense To Them. If anyone believed that Herr Gobles (or however you spell it) or any of these nazis believe themselves to be making sense in what they are saying, they are mistaken, tragically and crucially mistaken. They do not believe that they are accurate or are making sense. They operate on the idea that you win, by making the suckers believe that you are sincere and smart. They don't think "accuracy"; they think "win". Period.
Less important is the fact that the content of what they are saying is inaccurate. Vastly more important, I'll repeat that, Vastly More Important, is the fact that they do not believe their own statements to be accurate. This last is the life and death part. The great tragedy of the progressive, anti-nazi community is that, while arguing about facts, they seem so desperately intent on protecting the entire "deliberately-misrepresenting-what-you-believe" nazification SYSTEM, whether it emanates from the New York Times, from Harvard University, or from the militias. These guys don't "miss things", they don't "overlook", no no no, no more than Hitler or Manson or Bailey missed the truth, or overlooked the truth. They "Lie About What They Understand". Consciously And Deliberately. That's the key, controlling point.
The reason why this is the central problem is fairly simple. The low level perceptions of humans about life are accurate, to about a 95% degree anyway, or a 99% degree, or something like that. And life is a work-out-well-all-around system. Thus, if people were thinking in terms of accurate human perception, the entire one-against-the-other right wing would disappear overnight, and the cooperative/left-wing/work-out-well-all-around side of things would prevail. I can prove that very easily. But humans were designed, through evolution, to get so much of their information from others. So what you wind up understanding, at the high level, is a combination of your own low-level accurate perception, plus the major combinations of views of others to make up your high level understandings.
So much of what people CLAIM to believe, no human being could possibly believe, but you think that they do believe what they're saying. So you take their claims as reflective of human perception, which it is not. So your high level "understandings" are a combination of your own accurate perceptions and other people's lies about what they believe, the whole package together being a pack of very stupid, vicious lies - one-against-the-other-is-the-nature-of-life, no-real-truth, etc. etc. And as is well known, this ridiculous system goes to the highest levels of academia, the media, of course the corporations (first and foremost) and everywhere else.
But the left, seems so intent on protecting the "lie-About-What-One-Understands" SYSTEM, while merely arguing on content, that the right becomes increasingly convinced that you're supposed to just say things that 'seem' 'convincing', and whoever can project their 'things' strongest wins. In other words, since the left does not approach the high-level issue of accuracy/inaccuracy, but simply accedes to the "whoever speaks more forcefully" "game", the right becomes increasingly convinced that they are operating in the same framework as the left (no-real-truth, just whoever appears 'stronger') and the right-wing gets increasingly confirmed both from their own ranks and from their opposition that they are handling things correctly, just say whatever might make you look good in the moment.
So why don't the progressives, the anti-nazis approach the issue of accuracy/inaccuracy vs. no-real-truth? How come they argue so much at the low level of content (which is an excellent thing to do, but by itself not good enough) but never approach the decisive high level framework of the discussion?
Several reasons. First of all, Cointelpro, through funding schemes in the women's movement in the late 60's, injected the very deadly toxin of "absolute-truth-is-facist-masculine-chauvinist-intolerence". "Why, if you want to be kind, you have to see every point of view as equal, truthwise, and just fight for your side". Very very crazy, suicidal, obviously, but that's the position that the bad guys managed to obtain, first in the women's movement and then throughout the entire left, and of course, in a fight where there is no truth, all you're left with is brute force, and in that case, the most brutal, deceptive, and vicious always win; that is the way it is. There can be no exceptions.
[[[Obviously, I shouldn't pick out the women's movement in that way, it's been going on for a long long time . . . I loved the Wobblies, but reading of that dynamic among them, not from big Bill but from others, broke my heart, as it did in the Chinese revolution and the US peace movement and everywhere else . . . I guess I mention the women's movement in particular because that's been particularly crushing for me personally, and millions of others, guys and gals strewn all over the place, these past thirty years . . . shoulda been the central movement . . . should still be in my opinion . . . 'cept for this "no-real-truth" horror . . . ]]]
Second, oppositionists to reactionary systems have generally been kept in a desperate and insecure position - it's sort of an axiom, the great majority who are exploited are going to be fighting the few exploiters. But being in a desperate situation means that you have to "cut corners", not only financially, but also socially and politically just to survive. I'm using the term "cut corners", to mean, well, to be blunt, dishonest. It's sort of another well known and widely discussed way that the reactionaries work: they force dishonesty on their opposition, on pain of failure, abandonment, torture, and death, and then they claim that everyone is dishonest, like them. Sort of like packing all the Jews into a starving ghetto, and then claiming that they're all diseased. First you create the dishonesty or disease, then you claim that they were like that all along. In the current case, the reactionaries need desperately to "show" that everyone is dishonest, like themselves, so the subtle (but obvious to careful observers) economic and prestige awards and rewards come down primarily to those who accept the "high-level" dishonesty system, who are then allowed to argue their low level points, with the unspoken but powerful given that "everyone's a liar" "so the strongest liar should win". I mean, I shouldn't have to point to the current famous court case in LA; that's everyday stuff. The jurors just did what everyone (almost) does - "no-real-truth", just "my-side-your-side", and "may the strongest win" . . . Not a rule of evolution, no way, nor a rule of the human structure . . . just some twisted, insane, temporary anomaly . . . entirely repairable . . . and the sooner the better . . .
There are other major reasons too why the left, tragically, accepts this preposterous "no-real-truth/my-side-your-side" system. I wrote a couple of books (unpublished) about it. But, I'll just leave it at that for the moment.
Your article discusses the low level accuracy stuff, which, of course, is extremely important, but not the high level "lie-about-what-one-understands" SYSTEM, which is the life and death, make or break, across the board nazification system. Quite literally, nazification. That's the core of it, in the Germany of the thirties, here, again, literally. So that's the issue I take with your article.
For progressives, an exposure of the "lie-about-what-you-understand" system, feels like a personal threat of personal exposure, and personal exposure means failure, and everything is so tenderhooks anyway, financially, personally, professionally, across the board. So they - EXTRA, the old Lies of the Times, and all the rest, wind up defending as a personal matter, the very core of the system that's killing them and killing us all, the "lie-about-what-you-understand" system. That's what's happening, that's why I'm a pariah, that's what's gotta be approached. I mean, GOTTA BE . . . .
And thank you very much for your article . . .
Sincerely,
----- neil
neil@imaginenine.com (Neil Miller) http://imaginenine.com
San Francisco October 9, 1995
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Reply to a speculation regarding what would have happened if we all spoke the same language . . .
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Well, I don't think all speaking the same language would work out at all, sounds like a bad idea to me . . . One of the characteristics of this bioecosystem is that things grow, they don't just stay stable - it's millions of years in evolutionary time and decades in human times. More in the same area means survival problems, so organisms (in evolutionary terms) and ideas (in human terms) have to develop to higher and higher levels of organization, to solve the more more situation. Things advance to a higher and higher level of organization to meet the problems of growth in the same space. I think that's a "law" of evolution, built into the system.
A brand, new, higher level of organization, requires, in order to be found, previously unavailable things, the sort of things that can only be found through a combination of the apparently unreconcilable. Combination of differences is required for anything new, workable, at a higher level of organization to be found. And they must be profound differences.
Best I can tell, that's why there are different languages and cultures in the first place. No access to other cultures, over centuries and millenia, and the people of any culture will die out. Important high level differnces, in this bioecosystem anyway (I can't tell about another planet), but here, major differences are required as part of the life and death higher level advancement process.
That goes for millions of years in evolution and decades and centuries for humans.
One of the deadliest things going on on this planet right now is all this mass-media, mono-culture stuff, planet wide. It's not just that the media-mono-culture is so corrupt, that's pretty deadly in itself, but even worse, is that the high level cultural differences are being destroyed - that's deadlier still. It's a mess.
Survival in the long term requires higher and higher level advancement, and one of the necessary ingredients in that is combining high level differences.
Ideally, cultures should be isolated and almost sealed at the core to retain their distinctness, and should combine at the edges, but only at the edges, for that life-saving advancement. People who react against intermarrige may have a point - if they are NOT exploitive or condecending, that is of course. (Actually, most people who are against intermarrige are racist as hell, so THEY don't have a point. But there is a point to it . . .) Sure, there has to be intermarrige, that's life and death important, but at the edges only, not at the core; cultural "purity" at the core, that's what I say . . . Way too much "multi-cultural" stuff around if you ask me. (Then again, I choose to live in San Francisco, a harbor town . . . probably too little elsewhere . . .)
Frankly, I don't think one language, or even a universal, common "second language" for everyone would be a good idea at all. I'm so facinated by anything strange and exotic, and I think I need that for my intelligence, among other things. Language is such a big deal . . . World-wide homogenious stuff in that department, I think, would be a disaster. To much "blending" already as it is as best as I can tell . . . way way too much . . .
Re: What if Galileo had not been so stubborn . . .
Forgive me for generalizing the question, and also, I don't know that much about Galileo specifically. But I do know something about the matter of coming up with a new framework of understanding altogether, and why, sometimes, persons who do that are insistent that the WHOLE thing be understood, that it be seen for what it is, that is, as a new Framework of thinking, or framework of understanding altogether, rather than people just seeing it as an 'interesting' idea within the current framework of thinking.
First of all, usually when a person comes up with something that is accurate, and useful, and relevant, and big, in that case a decisive part of what drives them, endocrinically, neurologically and everything else, is the drive, which is present in all humans, to solve problems of damage to people. The term "evil genius" is a contradiction in terms, but I'll leave that explanation alone for the moment.
Secondly, when the powers of society are corrupt, they are most secure when people generally think that the common framework of understanding is "just the way things are"; there is no other framework of understanding to be had. In contemporary America, that translates to an acceptance of "no real truth", "eternal human-to-human hostility", "power corrupts", "nothing lasts forever" and lots of other statements (see http://imaginenine.com the "elements" charts, or the tables), statements which are obviously prepostrous, to anyone who thinks carefully about them, especially in the light of an alternative accurate framework, but which, in the absense of that, everyone seems to think is "just the way things are in life". And then everyone stakes their life on those absurdities, and reacts sharply should anyone dare expose them as UNnecessarily corrupt, dishonest, etc. etc. by illuminating an accurate, consistent, alternative, non-corrupt framework.
I wish I could give similar examples from Galelio's time, but I can't . . . I suspect, however, that much of the same was operative then . . . (I do give some examples from Copernicus's situation, at http://imaginenine.com/ page two of the summary . . . but I'll leave that for now . . .)
So, when the powerful people in a society are corrupt, they need for everyone to continue to think that the current (inaccurate) understandings about life are "just the way things are". Exposing that that's not the case, means exposing the people who are powerful in a corrupt world, exposing them as not knowing what they are (and have always been) talking about, and exposing their corruptions as transparent, and unnecessary.
So. When a paradimisist comes up with, illuminates, a whole new framework of understanding, be it Mendel, Lavoisier, Darwin, Einstein, Copernicus, Galelio, or any of the thousands that you never hear about because they died on the rack, at the stake, from starvation, in the gas chambers, or elsewhere . . . the first thing the powers that be do when they get wind of a new paradigm, when those powers-that-be are corrupt that is, is check to see if this new paradigm will expose the overall understanding that life altogether "just is" the way things are currently organized, will check to see if that will be exposed as false to the population at large.
I think very few people realize how much overall social power is derived from the general poplulation concluding that the high level people "must" know what they're talking about, must be correct about life overall. When the people who are successful in the current framework are exposed as persons who do not have a clue as to what life's all about, they are no longer respected, obeyed, taken seriously. This is very very freightening for corrupt powerful people, and they tend to react with all kind of horrible retribution against those that might threaten their position in that way.
So, why would a guy like Galelio be so stubborn? Why would a paradimisist insist that their entire new understanding be understood, instead of each little idea within it being seen as just an "interesting" idea in the old framework? Why not just let the little parts of it "bleed out" giving time for the corrupt rulers to "adjust", and even be strengthened? Why be so stubborn? Especially if it'll just get you starved, or burned at the stake, or some such . . .
Well, and this goes for the archtype case, in science there are lots of sleezos who came up with big things (Freud for example), but in the archtype case, the fact is that the "drive" that led the paradimisist to come up with the new paradigm in the first place, was the drive, again, present in all humans, the drive to solve problems of damage to humans and to the bioecosystem. That drive being overtly and powerfully present is an endocrinogical/neurological requirement for coming up with a new paradigm in the first place.
If your whole drive eminated from a desire to solve problems of damage in the first place, you can imagine it would be difficult to bear to see your solutions going to reinforce the very damage that you were trying to solve! So paradigmists tend to be "stubborn", so that their solutions do what they were supposed to do . . . make things better, not make things worse. In order for that to happen, the whole understanding has to come out, rather than little pieces in dribbles, which tends to reinforce the problems and the damage.
So what would have happened if Galelio was not so stubborn? My answer is that if he had not been that "stubborn" he would not have been the sort of person who would have come up with his discoveries in the first place.
Well, all that is not nearly as clear or comprehensive, or even as to the point as I would like
it to be, but, best I can tell, it is entirely accurate . . . I have much better, cleaner, clearer
explanations for such dynamics at my site - http://imaginenine.com
Just thought I'd speak to something I saw here, off the cuff so to speak . . .
best wishes
---- neil
neil@slip.net http://imaginenine.com
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this page ©Neil Robert Miller, October 15, 1995
e-mail neil@imaginenine.com
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