Dredd Blog's Eleventh Anniversary

What About It?

I wanted to quote from an article from Wikipedia (some emphasis added) on this occasion, while at the same time mentioning that Dredd Blog pointed out in its first year way back in 2009 that Global Warming induced Climate Change was considered to be a national security threat by the U.S. Military (Global Climate & Homeland Insecurity). Now on to the Wikipedia article:

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"Agnotology (formerly agnatology) is the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data. In 1995 Robert N. Proctor, a Stanford University professor specializing in the history of science and technology,^[1] and linguist Iain Boal coined the neologism^[2][3][4] on the basis of the Neoclassical Greek word ἄγνωσις, agnōsis, "not knowing" (cf. Attic Greek ἄγνωτος "unknown"^[5]), and -λογία, -logia.^[6]

More generally, the term also highlights the increasingly common condition where more knowledge of a subject leaves one more uncertain than before. David Dunning of Cornell University is another academic who studies the spread of ignorance. "Dunning warns that the internet is helping propagate ignorance – it is a place where everyone has a chance to be their own expert, he says, which makes them prey for powerful interests wishing to deliberately spread ignorance".^[7]

In his 1999 book The Erotic Margin, Irvin C. Schick referred to unknowledge "to distinguish it from ignorance, and to denote socially constructed lack of knowledge, that is, a conscious absence of socially pertinent knowledge". As an example, he offered the labeling "terra incognita" in early maps, noting that "The reconstruction of parts of the globe as uncharted territory is ... the production of unknowledge, the transformation of those parts into potential objects of Western political and economic attention. It is the enabling of colonialism."^[8]

There are many causes of culturally induced ignorance. These include the influence of the media, either through neglect or as a result of deliberate misrepresentation and manipulation. Corporations and governmental agencies can contribute to the subject matter studied by agnotology through secrecy and suppression of information, document destruction, and myriad forms of inherent or avoidable culturopolitical selectivity, inattention, and forgetfulness.^[9]

Proctor cites as a prime example of the deliberate production of ignorance the tobacco industry's advertising campaign to manufacture doubt about the cancerous and other health effects of tobacco use. Under the banner of science, the industry produced research about everything except tobacco hazards to exploit public uncertainty.^[6][10]

Another example is climate denial, as illustrated in the 2012 PBS Frontline documentary Climate of Doubt, which argues that oil companies have for at least the last decade, paid teams of scientists to downplay the effects of climate change.

Tribal resistance to science that contradicts medical or dental dogma heavily biases decision making, prompting vitriolic attacks that contributes the suppression of scientific knowledge in service of protecting a sanctioned narrative. ^[11]

Agnotology also focuses on how and why diverse forms of knowledge do not "come to be", or are ignored or delayed. For example, knowledge about plate tectonics was censored and delayed for at least a decade because some evidence remained classified military information related to undersea warfare.^[6]"

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What We Don't Know ... Agnotology: The Surge, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20

Square Finger 'Splainin'

The Square-Finger Gesture

If you watch politicians and media folk use their bag of on-camera gestures, one that is quite popular now is what I call the "square-finger" gesture.

It is common to all political party members and TV channel media members.

When I first noticed the wide array of spontaneous uses, I began to count how many times a day over the past year it was used during an interviewee's response/explanation to an interviewer's question.

The square-finger gesture is used to "help explain" subject matter of many types.

It does not seem to matter which pundit, what time of day, what type of TV news or talk show, what subject matter you are viewing, or whether the square-finger gesture is used to man-splain or woman-splain what the splainer is 'splainin'.

The insurrection was this big

No, the square-finger gesture is ubiquitous and shows up spontaneously.

After going through the mini-shock of even noticing the phenomenon in the first place, then seeking to make sense of it by attempting to count how many times a day it occurs, I next tried to make more sense of the square-finger gesture by determining the context in which the square-finger gesture was used.

Not even this much ...

I haven't finished that research, but at the moment it seems to be used when the 'splainer has some degree of fear attached to the subject matter being 'splained.

and ...

That is, it is used to minimize some aspect of the subject matter at hand by indicating "this subject matter is only this big, so I am in control of it" a la "Comparing a Group-Mind Trance to a Cultural Amygdala".

I have not yet finished my research on this, so help me out on this one by informing me and fellow Dredd Blog readers if you too have noticed the square-finger gesture (and don't forget to keep sending in your annual helpful responses to "My First Science Fiction Novel").

and ...

While doing so, remember that football is played on both sides of the ball (How to control the TV with gestures).
The phenomenon has not made it to one particular online site yet:

and ...

"Gestures are a form of nonverbal communication in which visible bodily actions are used to communicate important messages, either in place of speech or together and in parallel with spoken words. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or other parts of the body. Physical non-verbal communication such as purely expressive displays, proxemics, or displays of joint

and ...

attention differ from gestures, which communicate specific messages. Gestures are culture-specific and can convey very different meanings in different social or cultural settings. Gesture is distinct from sign language. Although some gestures, such as the ubiquitous act of pointing, differ little from one place to another, most gestures do not have invariable or

and ...

universal meanings but connote specific meanings in particular cultures. A single emblematic gesture can have very different significance in different cultural contexts, ranging from complimentary to highly offensive. This list includes links to pages that discuss particular gestures, as well as short descriptions of some gestures that do not have their own page. Not

and ...

included are the specialized gestures, calls, and signals used by referees and umpires in various organized sports. Police officers also make gestures when directing traffic. Mime is an art form in which the performer utilizes gestures to convey a story.Charades is a game of gestures."

(Wikipedia, emphasis added).

And let's not forget that any form of communication can be truthful or false, but gestures are probably a situation where proving someone was not "telling" the truth would be much more difficult to prove.

... and ...

How could we tell if they were saying "taxes will only be this much" or "I was this close to winning" or "I was only going this fast officer"?

More only this much research is needed to know for sure.

Etiology of Social Dementia - 18

Once upon a civilization

I. Individual Dementia Pales In

Comparison To Group Dementia

This post declares that The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump is not as dangerous as the group dementia that produced him is.

The simple argument supporting that declaration is that he is only one person.

He is an individual who is a member of a group of about 62,984,825 people who, in varying degrees (0-100), have the same group dementia.

One thing that has happened to most civilizations is something that has been fatal to each and every one of them.

That something is the dementia that produces and ends up in 'suicide':

"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."

(A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee). There is no cure for the final symptom of that group dementia (there is only prevention by way of avoiding it altogether in the first place).

The components of that group dementia were pointed out in an encyclopedia article concerning the historian quoted above:

"In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority. Unlike Spengler in his The Decline of the West, Toynbee did not regard the death of a civilization as inevitable, for it may or may not continue to respond to successive challenges. Unlike Karl Marx, he saw history as shaped by spiritual, not economic forces" ...

(Encyclopedia Britannica, emphasis added). The show stopper (in terms of remedy, in this type of group dementia) is that it is a contagious dementia.

That form of dementia is contagious whether individual dementia is or is not contagious (see e.g. The Red Hot Debate about Transmissible Alzheimer's, Can Dementia Be Contagious?).

Group dynamics, in this context, are contagions to those who become ideological members of a demented group within a society.

Applying that to current society, we can easily recognize the rampant nationalism and militarism in our culture.

Focusing on the third factor ("tyranny of a despotic minority") tends to be much more difficult.

So here are the numbers concerning the minority we are talking about:

Clinton
65,853,516
48.18%

Trump
62,984,825
46.09%

(Federal Election Commission). A minority consisting of some 62,984,825 people voted for President Trump (but it was a smaller subgroup within that group who cast the 304 electoral votes that actually won the election for him).

II. On The Meaning of 'Despotic' and 'Minority'

The historian Toynbee (quoted in Section I above) identified the suicidal characteristics of the despotic minority group as nationalism, militarism, and tyranny (Reeling From Flynn Deal, Alex Jones Issues Civil War ‘Red Alert’—for 15th Time in Two Months).

The 62,984,825 voters are a minority, and the 65,853,516 are a majority by definition (a slim 2.09% majority).

Moving on to 'despotic,' we find that in that violent insurrection oriented group sense, it is associated with despotism:

... societies which limit respect and power to specific groups have also been called despotic.

(Wikipedia). There need not be a dictator or other autocratic individual in order to meet Toynbee's description set forth in his study, especially in the sense of the description "the tyranny of a despotic minority."

In this sense, a minority means a group composed of a population less than the majority of a society (but wielding substantial directional influence).

Note that this would not be possible in the United States if it was a democracy rather than a constitutional republic with an Electoral College that can elect presidents without a majority popular vote (as in the 2016 election of Donald Trump).

To fit into the Toynbee description, all that is needed is that the group be despotic in nature, which is to be 'authoritarian' (a synonym).

This type of authoritarian despotism requires two fundamental characteristics:

Authoritarianism is something authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders cook up between themselves. It happens when the followers submit too much to the leaders, trust them too much, and give them too much leeway to do whatever they want -- which often is something undemocratic, tyrannical and brutal. In my day, authoritarian fascist and authoritarian communist dictatorships posed the biggest threats to democracies, and eventually lost to them in wars both hot and cold. But authoritarianism itself has not disappeared, and I'm going to present the case in this book that the greatest threat to American democracy today arises from a militant authoritarianism that has become a cancer upon the nation.

(The Authoritarians, book by Bob Altemeyer, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, PDF). Put those two together (leaders and followers) in a group with despotic ideology and we have a structure matching and composing a despotic group of the type that historian Toynbee wrote about.

But, in this case the despotism is "soft despotism" to wit:

"Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people.

Soft despotism gives people the illusion that they are in control, when in fact they have very little influence over their government. Soft despotism breeds fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the general populace. Alexis de Tocqueville observed that this trend was avoided in America only by the "habits of the heart" of its 19th-century populace."

(Soft Despotism, Wikipedia). The way the despotism is maintained by a minority has been explained by "the father of spin" (The Ways of Bernays).

III. The Current Soft Despotism
Is Hardening Into Tribalism

The concept of tribalism is probably easier for us to understand, because it has been engineered to fruition in our time:

"But then we don’t really have to wonder what it’s like to live in a tribal society anymore, do we? Because we already do. Over the past couple of decades in America, the enduring, complicated divides of ideology, geography, party, class, religion, and race have mutated into something deeper, simpler to map, and therefore much more ominous. I don’t just mean the rise of political polarization (although that’s how it often expresses itself), nor the rise of political violence (the domestic terrorism of the late 1960s and ’70s was far worse), nor even this country’s ancient black-white racial conflict (though its potency endures).

I mean a new and compounding combination of all these differences into two coherent tribes, eerily balanced in political power, fighting not just to advance their own side but to provoke, condemn, and defeat the other."

(America Wasn’t Built for Humans). The group psychology at work forming our minds and thoughts when tribalism prevails is enmity towards "the other."

Recent scientific papers have pointed out that our culture, and in some cases our subculture, is "remodeling" our brains all the time:

"Beyond such internal mechanisms of variation, environment-driven plasticity lends yet another layer of complexity to the brain. The brain is capable of remarkable remodeling in response to experience. Signals originating from the environment can cause both widespread and localized adaptations. At the level of individual cells, structure and function are continually changing with the environment in a dance of lifelong brain plasticity, and some experiences, such as stress or physical exercise, affect the growth, survival, and fate of newborn neurons in neurogenic regions of the brain.
...
Traditionally, cells are defined by the tissue to which they belong as well as their particular functional role or morphology. This classification represents a developmental trajectory that begins early in embryogenesis and is hardwired into each cell. But other differences among cells are more subtle. Multi-dimensional analyses of gene expression and other metrics have revealed remarkable heterogeneity among cells of the same traditional “type.” Cells exist in different degrees of maturation, activation,plasticity, and morphology. Once we begin to consider all of the subtle cell-to-cell variations, it becomes clear that the number of cell types is much greater than ever imagined. In fact, it may be more appropriate to place some cells along a continuum rather than into categories at all.
...
Brain cells in particular may be as unique as the people to which they belong. This genetic, molecular, and morphological diversity of the brain leads to functional variation that is likely necessary for the higher-order cognitive processes that are unique to humans. Such mosaicism may have a dark side, however. Although neuronal diversification is normal, it is possible that there is an optimal extent of diversity for brain function and that anything outside those bounds—too low or too high—may be pathological. For example, if neurons fail to function optimally in their particular role or environment, deficits could arise. Similarly, if neurons diversify and become too specialized to a given role, they may lose the plasticity required to change and function normally within a larger circuit. As researchers continue to probe the enormous complexity of the brain at the single-cell level, they will likely begin to uncover the answers to these questions—as well as those we haven’t even thought to ask yet."

(Hypothesis: The Cultural Amygdala - 5). We know more about some of those dynamics than those previous civilizations did, civilizations that went down by "suicide" (self-destruction).

Will that superior scientific knowledge we have be sufficient to make us aware of ways to avoid the suicidal fate that engulfed previous groups (which we call "civilizations") recorded in our written history?

IV. Conclusion

The previous post in this series is here.

Etiology of Social Dementia - 17

An etiological exercise

Over eight years ago I started this series concerning the origin of "social dementia" (Etiology of Social Dementia, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16).

By "social dementia" I mean the dynamics of cultures, civilizations, societies, and groups (not individuals).

In other words, when large numbers of people go crazy for the same reasons during the same span of time.

I have quoted A. Toynbee, who studied some 26 civilizations, then, after mulling it over, wrote: "In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown." (Etiology of Social Dementia - 13).

Concerning Toynbee's work, a premier encyclopedia has refined that statement a bit, by specifying how Toynbee indicated that the suicide or murder takes place:

"In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority. Unlike Spengler in his The Decline of the West, Toynbee did not regard the death of a civilization as inevitable, for it may or may not continue to respond to successive challenges. Unlike Karl Marx, he saw history as shaped by spiritual, not economic forces"

(Encyclopedia Britannica, emphasis added). I am reminded of: “The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization” (Ralph Waldo Emerson).

One of America's forefathers, some years prior to Toynbee, explained how the madness develops in a culture like ours:

"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied: and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.

The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both.

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

Those truths are well established."

(James Madison). The U.S. has become imperialistic, hegemonic, and addicted to the notion of war as a cure-all, rather than seeing it as a cultural dementia (Is War An Art or Is War A Disease?, 2, 3).

Some years after my initiation of this series, an interesting book came out.

Part of its title is "How Culture Shapes Madness" which is in accord with the thrust and essence of this current series and others (Hypothesis: The Cultural Amygdala, 2, 3, 4).

An interesting observation, in a review of that book, is worth contemplating:

"There is a pattern of circumstances that can make us more vulnerable to delusions and schizophrenia, the authors write. We all have a “suspicion system” that is always on the lookout for threats to us. When it is functioning properly, we are protected. When it malfunctions, we have problems, such as feeling that we are actors watched and controlled by others.
...
You may be predisposed to certain problems, they write, but it is your interaction with your culture and environment that affects whether you develop those problems, as well as how they manifest."

(PsychCentral, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness, bold added). This can be expanded upon (Hypothesis: The Cultural Amygdala, 2, 3, 4).

There is ample evidence that our culture has "lost it."

For example, consider our cultural "suspicion system" and its vastness:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

(The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy, quoting the Washington Post). After trillions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars are spent because of paranoid delusions, we now fret about Russia taking over our elections (instead of fretting over our incompetence).

The demented among us are so addicted to war as "a cure," that they are now trying to destroy national systems that take care of citizens:

"The U.S. military keeps searching the horizon for a peer competitor, the challenger that must be taken seriously. Is it China? What about an oil rich and resurgent Russia?

But the threat that is most likely to hobble U.S. military capabilities is not a peer competitor, rather it is health care."

(Your Health Is Their Number 1 Enemy?!). The domestic enemies within us compose the despotic minority who Encyclopedia Britannica mentioned as the focus of Toynbee, when he studied and figured out the dementias of the previous ~26 civilizations that have committed suicide.

Suicide is a suspicious activity for civilizations to embrace and carry out (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

As I have written several times, S. Freud was ahead of the curve on this (because he saw it coming) long ago:

"If the evolution of civilization has such a far reaching similarity with the development of an individual, and if the same methods are employed in both, would not the diagnosis be justified that many systems of civilization——or epochs of it——possibly even the whole of humanity——have become neurotic under the pressure of the civilizing trends? To analytic dissection of these neuroses, therapeutic recommendations might follow which could claim a great practical interest. I would not say that such an attempt to apply psychoanalysis to civilized society would be fanciful or doomed to fruitlessness. But it behooves us to be very careful, not to forget that after all we are dealing only with analogies, and that it is dangerous, not only with men but also with concepts, to drag them out of the region where they originated and have matured. The diagnosis of collective neuroses, moreover, will be confronted by a special difficulty. In the neurosis of an individual we can use as a starting point the contrast presented to us between the patient and his environment which we assume to be normal. No such background as this would be available for any society similarly affected; it would have to be supplied in some other way. And with regard to any therapeutic application of our knowledge, what would be the use of the most acute analysis of social neuroses, since no one possesses power to compel the community to adopt the therapy? In spite of all these difficulties, we may expect that one day someone will venture upon this research into the pathology of civilized communities." [p. 39]
...
"Men have brought their powers of subduing the forces of nature
to such a pitch that by using them they could now very easily exterminate one another to the last man. They know this——hence arises a great part of their current unrest, their dejection, their mood of apprehension." [p. 40]"

(Civilization and Its Discontents, S. Freud, 1929, emphasis added). This brings up a question that is not limited to the Dredd Blog realm: Is This Country Crazy?

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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One of the authors of "Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness":

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The Shapeshifters of Bullshitistan - 2

The Banner and The Banner

I. Unreal Banners

In the first episode of The Shapeshifters of Bullshitistan I focused on two members, The Don and The ConWay.

Today, I will focus on two more members "The Banner" and "The Banner" ... see photo).

Both have "Steve" as their first names, because they know "Lucifer" has already been given to The Cruz by His Orangeness the First (On The Origin of Specious).

Steve Banner and Steve Banner both transferred in from The Inhofe's Trufiness Headquarters (Agnotology: The Surge - 16) after helping The Palin with her campaign endeavors (Book Politics Makes Strange Duplicities).

The Vainstream Media is all aflutter about who will survive to become Supreme Banner, which will be determined by the difficult-to-live-through venerable Jabber The Whut Pecking Order Reality Games (On The Origin of Assholes).

The games will be judged by the current Supreme Banner who has reigned so long that everyone forgets exactly when, in 1928, it happened (The Ways of Bernays).

The Supreme Banner

Meanwhile, several social scientists are wondering if pollution has anything to do with the struggle (The Messy Link Between Air Pollution & Alzheimer’s Disease).

Anyway, the first leg of the pecking order games is to make a declarative statement that will be praised by The Don, but soundly rejected by those outside of Bullshitistan.

The Banner and The Banner have offered entries that will make the decision for their replacement very tough on The Supreme Banner (who is not a so-called judge).

First up, The Banner:

Senior White House Policy Advisor [Steve Banner] raised plenty of eyebrows on Sunday as the perused the talk-show circuit talking about cases of voter fraud (that don’t exist) and [his opponent The Banner's] lack of involvement in drafting executive orders (which, according to most reports, is the exact opposite of the truth).

But perhaps his most alarming statement was in reference to the federal judges in Washington rejecting [The Don's] Muslim ban.

“I think that it’s been an important reminder to all Americans that we have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become in many cases a supreme branch of government,” [The Banner] told John Dickerson of CBS News, as first noted by Will Saletan of Slate. “The end result of this, though, is that our opponents, the media, and the whole world will soon see, as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of [The Don] to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.”

[The Don] was, unsurprisingly, watching his performance, and gave the 31-year-old rave reviews.

(Apologies to Think Progress, emphasis added). The lackeys of The Banner were all aglow, thinking that there was no way for his opponent, The Banner, to overcome such an Alt Facts presentation.

Little did they know, however, that next up in the initial submission phase was The Banner with the ability to tell whoppers of the silver-tongued-devil degree (just like The ConWay):

[The Banner], who’s now ensconced in the West Wing as [The Don's] closest adviser, has been portrayed as [The Don's] main ideas guy. But in interviews, speeches and writing — and especially in his embrace of Strauss and Howe — he has made clear that he is, first and foremost, an apocalypticist.

In [The Banner's] view, we are in the midst of an existential war, and everything is a part of that conflict. Treaties must be torn up, enemies named, culture changed. Global conflagration, should it occur, would only prove the theory correct. For [The Banner], the Fourth Turning has arrived. The Grey Champion, a messianic strongman figure, may have already emerged. The apocalypse is now.

“What we are witnessing,” [The Banner] told The Washington Post last month, “is the birth of a new political order.” [pronounced political odor]

(The Apocalypse Is Coming And War Is Inevitable, emphasis added). The Banner even dyed his hair grey in order to emphasize his channeling of The Grey Champion (rumors are that he counseled The Don not to dye his hair grey).

II. The Banner Trance

These kinds of trances bring on dark ages, because they become self-fulfilling prophecies.

For example, civilization's addiction to oil is the result of that same Apocalypse trance:

"From the moment he arrived at the Admiralty, a young man of destiny, Churchill started to prepare the fleet for the Battle of Armageddon he believed was inevitable.
...
Then, in 1911, the German Kaiser provoked the Agadir crisis ... Churchill went to the Admiralty and his outlook transformed. He was immediately confronted with the decisive question: to convert the navy from coal to oil ... the "fateful plunge" was made ... in April 1912 ... five oil-burning battleships were approved.
...
Britain was well supplied with coal [but not oil]. It was the Royal Navy which was the impetus for the development of the oil industry in Britain. The problem was supply and the security of that supply. Initially, the British government purchased shares in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, subsequently, British Petroleum [BP].
...
Then, to prevent further disruptions, Britain enmeshed itself ever more deeply in the Middle East, working to install new shahs in Iran and carve Iraq out of the collapsing Ottoman Empire.

Churchill fired the starting gun, but all of the Western powers joined the race to control Middle Eastern oil."

(The Universal Smedley - 2). The only advice I can offer in these situations is quite limited.

III. Conclusion

That advice is (Choose Your Trances Carefully, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Yep. Desolation Row ...

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That is Not My Daddy - 2

Vladimir Putin, President of Russia

The HUAC virus has escaped from the dusty minds of those who have been ravaged by its toxoplasma gondii type of symptoms again (The Germ Theory of Government, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

Hail! the House Un-American Activities Committee ghosts of yore, pass the lard, and praise the ammunition!

In the first post of this series I pointed out a hypothesis about a dynamic which I called "the cultural amygdala", then considered the physical amygdala, and also asked readers about their reactions:

Does fear bubble up inside of you, emanating from your subconscious

The Book

amygdala, to automate a reaction when you see photo of the President of Russia?

Or does it prevent you from reading an op-ed in the New York Times which he penned?

If so, that is your cultural amygdala, an extension of your physical amydala which develops as your "birth amygdala" before it has been "customized" by your society, the culture around you (The Cultural Amygdala).

(That is Not My Daddy). The subject matter I am focusing on today is the way we make decisions, other than relying on faith/trust to replace our own cognition or the lack thereof (The Pillars of Knowledge: Faith and Trust?).

We are studied all the time so those who govern us can get their way:

If you have a patient in a doctor's office who's just been told they have terminal cancer but there's this operation they could perform right now that might save their lives. ... They have a 90 percent chance of surviving the operation — if you tell them that, they respond one way. If you tell them ... that they have a 10 percent chance of being killed by the operation, they are about three times less likely to have the operation.

If you frame something as a loss — 10 percent chance of dying — as opposed to as a gain — 90 percent chance of living — people respond entirely differently. They make a different decision.

(Are You Of Two Minds?). The studies go deeper, and sometimes have a commercial purpose:

A group of US marketing researchers claim that brand owners can make their customers believe they had a better experience of a product or service than they really did by bombarding them with positive messages after the event. Advocates of the technique, known as "memory morphing", claim it can be used to improve customers' perceptions of products and encourage them to repeat their purchases and recommend brands to friends.

"When asked, many consumers insist that they rely primarily on their own first-hand experience with products – not advertising – in making purchasing decisions. Yet, clearly, advertising can strongly alter what consumers remember about their past, and thus influence their behaviours," he writes in his book, How Customers Think. He says that memories are malleable, changing every time they come to mind, and that brands can use this to their advantage. "What consumers recall about prior product or shopping experiences will differ from their actual experiences if marketers refer to those past experiences in positive ways," he continues.

(A Structure RE: Corruption of Memes - 3; "Memory Morphing in Advertising"). After that quote, I would be remiss if I did not mention the father of advertising, a.k.a. the father of spin (The Ways of Bernays).

Now to the point, the nitty gritty of today's post:

We are besieged, readers. As the archives of this magazine make perfectly plain, the spasm of Russophobia now threatening to overcome us is but a variant of the anti-Soviet paranoia that defined the 1950s and early 1960s. “We’re in the most dangerous confrontation with Russia since the Cuban missile crisis,” Stephen Cohen, the noted Russianist (and Nation contributor), said on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! earlier this month. This is just the point—the reality we must now consider with utmost seriousness.
...
The corporate press, from the government-supervised New York Times on over, now hastens to obscure the same shameful collaboration with power that it displayed in the Cold War’s depths. On a shocking website called PropOrNot.com, Salem witch-hunters who refuse to identify themselves list hundreds of media that they assert are manipulated by the Kremlin.

Read these, too, as danger signs. Anyone too young to remember the House Un-American Activities Committee and Red Channels and all the destruction they wrought ought to study up: We are a few short steps away from both. Russia is not destroying (what remains of) American democracy. “Patriotic Americans” are.

It is essential, as I suggest, to understand our moment in historical context. Then each of us must decide, just as those called before the HUAC had to: Do I acquiesce or participate in this freakish exercise in crowd control and fear-mongering, or do I repudiate a propaganda campaign as irrational and morally wrong as any concocted during the McCarthy years? At last the question confronts us, and it is especially acute this time for those self-described as progressives: Is one a descendant of that muddled, gutless lot known as Cold War liberals, or does one insist on clear sight and principle even in the face of the ideological blasts our corporate media deliver daily?

Think it through: This is the imperative of our moment—a significant moment, because the American propaganda machine is now unusually challenged. Its efficacy is no longer the certainty it was during the Cold War decades. My own view, to be clear straightaway, is without ambivalence. It is our minds that are the objects of this onslaught: They are finally what is at issue. Surrender yours to this most flagrant case of scapegoating—hatred and anxiety conjured from thin air—and your place in the history books will be with the ghosts of all the shrill Cold Warriors and cowering chumps of decades past.

(The Perils of Russophobia, emphasis added). Free thinkers of every nation on Earth unite, because in that context there is nothing better than knowing the natural history of government:

“Experience has shown that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” – Thomas Jefferson

The previous post in this series is here.

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When You Are Governed By Psychopaths - 6

Fig. 1 Hey! PEOTUS, remember You Are Here

On the popular front inhabited by the masses, whether or not a slice of science is interpreted as an 'exaggeration' or even an 'underestimate' to us, turns out to be, for the most part anyway, an emotional, subconscious feeling masking itself as intellect.

That feeling, to be sure, is produced with the ingredients of various segments of information, however, when that information happens to invade our 'comfort zone', i.e. a number of feelings in a subconscious inner-group of feelings, produced by our 'world view,' we are prone to consider that disturbing information to be an 'exaggeration' or something similar to that.

A word for those who engender the feeling we call 'exaggeration' is the word 'alarmist'.

Those descriptive words vary from place to place, and from person to person, but the deep down-under-the-hood reality is that we are substantially composed of fear circuitry that has a profound influence on what we call consciousness:

A recent paper by the biologist Janis L Dickinson, published in the journal Ecology and Society, proposes that constant news and discussion about

Fig. 2 "Let's spray chemicals in the clouds to stop global warming"

global warming makes it difficult for people to repress thoughts of death, and that they might respond to the terrifying prospect of climate breakdown in ways that strengthen their character armour but diminish our chances of survival. There is already experimental evidence suggesting that some people respond to reminders of death by increasing consumption. Dickinson proposes that growing evidence of climate change might boost this tendency, as well as raising antagonism towards scientists and environmentalists. Our message, after all, presents a lethal threat to the central immortality project of Western society: perpetual economic growth, supported by an ideology of entitlement and exceptionalism.

(The Technological Stairway To Heaven?). This portion of reality is exacerbated by another portion of reality: some 98% of our cognition is subconscious (The Toxic Bridge To Everywhere).

We see this reality coming to life now in the minds of the president elect and his followers, because of their denialist world views (Hey! PEOTUS, Fig. 1, Fig. 2).

Another world view in play in Port Authorities, cities, counties, and other segments of everyday-reality officialdom, is pragmatism:

"A growing number of public and private entities, including port authorities, are evaluating potential impacts from climate change and are developing procedures to incorporate the financial and other risks into their investment decision making processes.
...
Based on the Port’s location, operational activity, and on planning work conducted to date, SLR is the primary climate change impact which will affect the Port."

(Sea Level Rise Impacts At Ports). Yes, there are many responsible people in the U.S. who govern more responsibly than denialists can (Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 44).

The gist of it is that when fear-based denial renders us unable to analyze a threat with the full power of intellect and knowledge, all we have remaining is emotional "thinking" which we use to run from the problem.

In the U.S.eh? our divided government mirrors the subconscious struggle, within us all, between fear and awareness of reality.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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A panel with various social backgrounds discusses the denial issue:

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Choose Your Trances Carefully - 7

"Trump will help us stop Bad Barbara"

I. A Peek At Trances

This series has bolstered the subcultural notion that there is no reason to think that officialdom can avoid its ingrained systemic trances (Choose Your Trances Carefully, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

These trances even form the basic cultural cognition playing out before our eyes in the climate of media misinformation storms:

"While America and the world have been making strides to deal with climate change, so far the efforts are halting and pitifully inadequate.

Most people instinctively resist conclusions like this. It sounds extreme, which is generally an indicator of wrongness. But sometimes extreme problems require extreme solutions. A failure to appreciate the radical implications of climate change is a political error of the first order."

(The Week, emphasis added). Those seeking to be elected do pretzel positions trying to avoid the more serious predicaments facing those they claim to want to make "secure" (The Elections of Pontius Pilots, 2, 3, 4, 5).

II. Peak Trances Don't Prevent Reality

Yet, the bleep goes on in the mindless trances of Bullshitistan (Media Was Right to Ignore Climate Change in Debates).

Meanwhile, more and more subsystems within the Global Climate System show signs of further degradation:

"When the vortex weakens, a growing number of climate scientists argue, the cold Arctic air migrates to lower latitudes, as happened in early 2014 and 2015. The sudden and somewhat prolonged burst of cold broke pipes and water mains and more than doubled energy bills in places like New York and New England as it wreaked havoc across a wide swath of the country.

The movement of the vortex has come as the Arctic steadily loses sea ice, a process that some scientists are worried could accelerate in the future as the Earth continues to warm at record levels."

(Scientific American). I have written about this vortex upon occasion for a couple of years now (The Damaged Global Climate System, On The Origin of Tornadoes - 6).

Not only is the ocean taking fatal hits, the atmosphere is being choked to death with new methods of madness:

"A weird phenomenon is happening high above the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas that could prove to be an atmospheric nightmare. Pollutants that gather from India and China in the lowlands around the mountains can be boosted as high as 18 kilometers, reaching the stratosphere—the atmospheric layer directly above the troposphere that contains most of Earth’s ozone. That is far higher than aerosols from vehicles, power plants and fires usually reach. Once aerosols are that high they can spread globally, destroy the ozone layer that protects us from ultraviolet radiation and exacerbate global warming, researchers warn.

Until a few years ago “we thought human activities had little impact on the stratosphere,” says Jean-Paul Vernier, a remote-sensing expert at the NASA Langley Research Center. Scientists had previously thought only volcanoes could eject aerosols—tiny particles or droplets—to such heights. And most models looking at future climate change scenarios did not account for aerosols in the stratosphere. Special tests reported in September confirm the aerosols continue to collect over India, and the work reveals fresh insights into their composition."

(Strange Pumping Effect above Asia Threatens the Ozone Layer, emphasis added). Oh, that would be the "worse than previously thought" trance.

III. The Senate Committee on Several Trances

Senator Inhofe will have some more snowballs to prophesy with this winter (Inhofe, Beavis, & Butthead Need Waders, Inhofe's One Man Troofiness Crusade).

But more and more people are noticing that his denial has no impact on reality (The Donald University vs. The Lord GOP University).

IV. Conclusion

Only very strange politicians make a career out of ignorantly seeking policies that bring catastrophe upon innocent people of the world (Agnotology: The Surge, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post of this series is here.

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"Don't stop thinking about tomorrow ..."

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Etiology of Social Dementia - 15

"There must be some way out of here"
(All Along The Watchtower)

I. Background

This series has taken a look at the various and sundry dementias that historically infect then destroy civilizations.

Our civilization has not officially implemented ways to deal with group dementia, leaving the yeomen’s work on dementia to its manifestation in individuals; so, to the extent that there are similarities between dementia in an individual and dementia in a group, nation, society, or civilization, that has also been addressed in this series from time to time (Etiology of Social Dementia, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13).

In today's post I want to address the habitat of dementia within "groups, parties, nations ... epochs" and civilizations, a la Nietzsche (“Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” – Friedrich Nietzsche).

II. What Is Habitat?

In both British English and American English there can be several meanings given to a word.

Seemingly innocuous, at times this innate doublespeak can render discourse anywhere from problematic to catastrophic (Good Nomenclature: A Matter of Life and Death).

So, I often make an attempt to isolate a particular word's meaning to a particular context.

That is probably especially needed in the context of a discussion about "the habitat of dementia."

Seeing as how 'dementia' has been defined in this series, let's define "habitat."

I want to use the word 'habitat' with an expansive meaning, so let's start with:

"A habitat is made up of physical factors such as soil, moisture, range of temperature, and availability of light as well as biotic factors such as the availability of food ..."

(Wikipedia). The "physical factors" (dirt, water, temperature, light) in this sense are "abiotic", and they are in contrast to the "biotic" factors:

A fair definition of Biology is:

... the science of life or living matter in all its forms and phenomena, especially with reference to origin, growth, reproduction, structure, and behavior.

(Dictionary, emphasis added). A fair definition of Abiology, then, ought to be:

... the science of non-life or non-living matter in all its forms and phenomena, especially with reference to origin, growth, reproduction, structure, and behavior.

(see e.g. abiological). One problem or question that biologists struggle with is the art of defining life (Erwin Schrodinger, PDF), but, to be sure that arises most often inside the twilight-zone between the abiotic and the biotic realms.

(Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 27). For those who would take umbrage at this Dredd Blog explanation, relax, there are other sources for your reading comfort:

Habitats consist of both the biotic and abiotic factors found in the environment. Biotic factors are living things, while abiotic factors are nonliving things.

(What Is Habitat? - Definition & Explanation, emphasis added). If you want an utterly long look into the abiotic habitat that existed billions of years before the additional carbon based, organic, biotic habitat evolved, check out (On the Origin of the Genes of Viruses, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13) and (The Uncertain Gene, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).

III. What Is Civilization?

Let's begin to answer the question with a look at some specialized literature:

"The meaning of the term civilization has changed several times during its history, and even today it is used in several ways.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries CE, it was widely believed among European scholars that all human communities were involved in a process of straightforward progression by which the conditions of a society were gradually improving. As part of these changes, it was believed, societies experienced different stages: savagery, barbarism and, finally, civilization."

[Establishment social science was of that mindset too: "Lastly, I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilisation than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risks nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago, of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races [Chuck was a tad-bit racist eh?] will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world." - Charles Darwin (1881); cf. "Even what were once considered elite scientific journals have turned out to have been utter long-winded bullshit (The Eugenics Review Vols. 1 to 60; 1909 to 1968)" -Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 28]

"Civilization, in this context, was understood as the last stop in the long journey of human society. The different stages of this social evolution were equated to specific human communities: Palaeolithic and Mesolithic hunter-gatherer communities were considered part of the savagery stage, Neolithic and Bronze Age farmers as part of the barbarism stage, and finally Bronze Age urban communities (particularly those in the Near East) were considered an early phase of the civilized world. Today, this approach is no longer valid since it is linked to an attitude of cultural superiority, by which human communities which are not yet "civilized" are seen as somehow inferior.

In everyday conversation, there is a tendency to use the word "civilization" to refer to a type of society that displays a set of moral values, such as respect for human rights or a compassionate attitude for the sick and the elderly. This can be problematic, since moral values are inevitably one-sided and ethnocentric. A behaviour considered "civilized" by a particular culture may be judged senseless or even seen with horror by another culture. History records an abundant number of examples of this issue. A famous one is reported by Herodotus, who describes the conflicting funerary practices of a group of Greeks, who cremated their dead, and the Indians known as the Kallatiai, who ate their dead:

During his reign, Darius summoned the Hellenes at his court and asked them how much money they would accept for eating the bodies of their dead fathers. They answered that they would not do that for any amount of money. Later Darius summoned some Indians called Kallatiai, who do eat their parents. [...], he [Darius] asked the Indians how much money they would accept to burn the bodies of their dead fathers. They responded with an outcry, ordering him to shut his mouth lest he offended the gods. Well, then, that is how people think, and so it seems to me that Pindar was right when he said in his poetry that custom is king of all (Herodotus 3.38.3-4)."

(Ancient History Encyclopedia, emphasis added). I think that many of these cultural dynamics of "civilized behavior" are actually cultural trances induced in many cases by the cultural amygdala (Hypothesis: The Cultural Amygdala, Choose Your Trances Carefully).

In another sense of history, civilization is merely a group entity which comes to an end by suicide or murder, but much more frequently by the former (A Study of History, Toynbee).

In another sense we could call it "the largest form of a human group."

IV. The Habitat of Cultural Dementia Within Civilization

The early stages of social dementia resemble being lost in, of all places, space.

In other words, not knowing where we are - lost - even though we have been schooled and given a "YAH" map (You Are Here).

We hear of individuals walking around lost, but that is actually the legacy of civilizations that have come and gone too.

In the current presidential elections in various countries, right wing extremism is challenging the status quo.

In the U.S. version, one candidate does not know were we are in terms of believing that the environment, the habitat writ large, can't be harmed.

The other is like the current president, who talks like a showman but acts like the worst of the worst, killing entire nations for their oil as those who went before did (The Fleets & Terrorism Follow The Oil - 6).

The social dementia lurks behind the billboard of lies, hides in the media generated reality, incessantly covered by the cocoon of propaganda (The Deceit Business, The Authoritarianism of Climate Change).

Cultural dementia hides within the institutions of civilization, within the literature, within the educational system, within the government, within the military, and especially within the corporate media.

The study of that dynamic, that generating of ignorance, is being done within the (most likely) soon-to-be-doomed discipline of Agnotology (Agnotology: The Surge, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17).

These ignorance generators within society produce what the institutions perpetuate in an epigenetic dynamism we vaguely see and describe as "the status quo."

It plays out in a more and more obvious, more and more exposed, and more and more degenerate stupor (Comparing a Group-Mind Trance to a Cultural Amygdala).

Economically, it plays out as an economy morphing into a plutonomy within a wartocracy, i.e. neo-feudalism (American Feudalism, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).

V. Conclusion

It won't get far having failed The Test (The Tenets of Ecocosmology).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Black guitars matter.

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