And the lack of rational nonviolent solutions that work in the long run.

“Of course the people do not want war…But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism.” German Field Marshall Hermann Goering, Nuremberg April 18 1946

This quote from Hermann Goering is very close but not quite right especially after Viet Nam. In order to be successful it will be necessary to repeat it over and over again appealing to emotion. It will also be necessary to prevent the public from being educated enough to recognize these tactics.
 
War propaganda isn’t just about the hype you do hear it is also about the solutions that are being withheld or drowned out. For thousands of years many of the most powerful governments have been controlled by people that believe that it is glorious to conquer other countries. They have used a lot of hype on their own people to convince them that it is in their best interest to fight for their leaders. A lot of this involves glorious stories about past conquests.
 
Adolph Hitler understood war propaganda better than most if not all other leaders; although one thing he seems to have overlooked is that it isn’t in the best interest of the propagandist to explain it to the public. He provided one of the most effective descriptions of war propaganda in his book Mien Kampf. This enabled him to initiate the one most unified efforts to fight a war in history. Hitler not only explained how to use propaganda so that it could be used to manipulate people but he also provided an explanation so that it can be used as a warning. If this is taught to the public in a rational manner it can help to avoid falling for the same propaganda again. In order to succeed it must done with care and the results must be open to scrutiny. If this is done then it could drastically reduce future wars or perhaps even eliminate them, assuming other contributing causes to war are also addressed.
 
War propaganda must always be addressed to the masses and it must appeal to emotion not to reason if it is going to be effective in encouraging the masses to support the war. If you’re trying to avoid war on the other hand it is necessary to appeal to reason and avoid getting to angry and allowing hatred to influence decisions. War propaganda works much better if the public is receptive to it. More educated people are much less likely to be receptive to war propaganda assuming the education process they went through allows the student to sort through the details and figure things out for him or herself. If the education process the student goes through is based more on the trust of authority and believing what your told then the student will be much more receptive to war propaganda. These circumstances would be more like indoctrination than education. If the education process is enforced by using coercion then it will be more likely to encourage the student to accept the truth as it is dictated from the teacher without actually understanding it. Under these circumstances the student will have fewer critical thinking skills and they will be less inclined to challenge authority when the authority makes a mistake. Successful war propaganda should be used in a large volume and it shouldn’t allow any dissent if possible. Successful war propaganda is not democratic it is used to accomplish the goal of the ones promoting it. The enemy should be demonized if it is going to have its greatest effect and the masses should be discouraged from looking at it from the other side. If the Masses come to the conclusion that the enemy is guilty based on their emotions it will be very hard to convince them otherwise. This is especially true if the masses are angry and paranoid.
 
The public are much more likely to be receptive to propaganda if they are raised in a certain way. This usually involves raising them in a strict disciplinarian manner. Hitler also wrote about the criteria for citizenship in his book. He recommends that people be eligible for citizenship only after they are educated in what he considers the correct manner. This involves teaching them to adopt a certain set of patriotic beliefs without question or scrutiny. Men are required to do military service and go through boot camp or military indoctrination. Only after they have proven their worth and indicated that they won’t challenge the status quo should they qualify for citizenship according to Hitler. The method history is taught is also very important. Many countries have controlled the way schools teach history by dictating facts that make their country seem much better than any other. They rarely allow much if any dissent and often demonize anyone who dares to challenge the dominant version of history.

Duh What’s the economy?
 
Is it a democratic economy to pool our resources and labors to benefit the majority in the fairest way possible?
 
Or is it a corporate economy designed to benefit the rich in the most effective way possible at the expense of the majority, unless the majority unites for a token amount of benefit which will be lost the moment they stop paying attention?
 
Have the corporations created a capitalist cult?
 
In order to have a democratic economy the public has to have an education good enough to understand what is going on and they have to have access to the information they need to make rational decisions. This means that they need to understand the basics of how the economy works. The economy is supposed to help us work together so that the quality of life can be improved in the most effective way possible. This shouldn’t mean creating just any jobs or buying and selling just anything. Jobs or trade that do little or nothing to benefit the consumer aren’t helping the majority improve their quality of life they are just enabling the corporations to profit by conducting business at the expense of the majority. For the last fifty years if not much longer the economy has been presented to the public as either a capitalist system or a communist system both of which pretended to look out for the best interest of the public neither of which actually did when they were put into practice; nor did either make much of an effort to teach the public how to understand either system in a way the public could understand it. In both cases they presented their system by using hype and propaganda and many conflicting versions of each system. A democratic economy would explain the basics of any given business to the public so that they can understand which system is most effective at accomplishing the goal of each business. In some cases a totally different system might be the most effective way to accomplish any given goal but in order to figure that out it will be necessary to sort through the details first in a way the public can understand it.
 
If any given business provides little or no benefit to the public like smoking gambling and insurance then a democratic economic system would teach the public what if any value these industries have and only the worthwhile ones would survive. This wouldn’t necessarily be because the government outlawed them but because once the public understood that something like smoking provides no benefit they would stop buying cigarettes and the tobacco industry would go out of business. In the case of tobacco it is easy to see that there is no benefit to the majority for this product, if used as directed instead of improving the quality of life for the consumer it makes it worse. This also leads to much higher health care costs. The only reason some members of the public thinks it is pleasant is because the tobacco companies have become experts at advertising and they found out how to take advantage of its addictive characteristics and hook children when they are too young to understand. Gambling isn’t much if any better for the public. It is often billed as entertainment but if you don’t enjoy losing it isn’t entertaining. Even though it is billed as entertainment most heavy gamblers don’t gamble for that reason, they gamble because they want to get rich quick. Gambling isn’t the way to do this except in a few extremely rare cases where someone wins big at the expense of many more people. If the odds weren’t fixed heavily in the favor of the controlling institutions they would go bankrupt. If the lottery advertisers were required to inform the public on a regular basis that the average consumer receives no more than about seventy-five cents on the dollar few people if any would play but instead they repeat over and over again phrases like “you can win” and play on the wishful thinking of the public. Even the few people who do win often don’t improve their quality of life for long. This is a result of what has been called “The Curse of the Lottery”. It basically means that the few people who actually do win are usually those that play on a regular basis which means they aren’t very good with their money. Just because they win this doesn’t change the fact that they aren’t good with their money and they often waste it at an amazing pace and wind up as poor as they were before sometimes even going into bankruptcy or even getting into legal trouble for related crimes often involving drugs or violence. Insurance is similar to gambling in some ways but it does serve some purpose. Insurance is supposed to provide a safety net if something bad happens but administrative costs don’t help that therefore when this is used they should be kept to a minimum. It isn’t in the best interest of the consumer to buy any more insurance than they need despite all the hype and advertising that comes from the insurance companies. This is explained more in other blog entries found in the table of contents.
 
When it comes to groceries and other necessities a democratic economy would help the consumers obtain what they need in the most effective way possible for them not the most profitable way for the corporations. Corporations have been packaging things, which used to be made in the kitchen from scratch, in a way that is supposed to be easier for the consumer. In many cases this may be partially true but what has happened is that many people have forgotten that they can make many of these products cheaper and better by doing it themselves, and in a few rare cases they can even do it with less work, although it usually takes some additional time to cook from scratch but not necessarily much. If the public was more familiar with a simple cookbook they could often obtain their meals in a better quality manner and at a lower price. The only reason this isn’t happening is because of the nonstop indoctrination from the commercial media that has kept the public busy and changed their way of life without the input or understanding of the public. Corporations are constantly increasing their profits buy manipulating the way these things are packaged so that the public doesn’t realize they are getting less for their money. One of the most common ways of doing this is downsizing where they gradually make the content of packages less, then after it gets to small they introduce new bigger sizes. In other cases it is more insidious like when they gradually increase the volume of water in a battle of shampoo then eventually come up with new and improved shampoo by putting it back. In many cases the secrecy they use to hide their new inventions is actually designed to hide the way they manipulate old technology to make it seem like something new. They get away with this because the public has little or no knowledge of how business operates and the public would need to be very vigilant to keep track of the many things that have a trivial impact on their life independently but the cumulative impact is much bigger. Since the any given corporations focus a lot of attention one product they can profit by skimping a little off of millions of people.
 
Diet information is something that is rarely if ever presented in a rational manner to the public any more. It used to be that everyone understood that if you wanted to lose weight the way to do it was simple just eat less and exercise more. Implementation may have been a little more complicated but the basics never changed. That is no longer the case. If the public eats less and exercises more this does little or nothing to improve the profits for corporations in fact it will actually make it worse. If people eat less they spend less money on food and that reduces the profits for food distributors. If they exercise more without buying equipment then it may take time away from other activities that the corporations charge for one way or another. This is one example where the best interest of the consumer doesn’t help the corporations make a profit so they have created a massive advertising campaign used in many different ways to confuse the issue and convince many of the most naïve that they can eat as much as the want without gaining weight or if they want to exercise they have to buy equipment which often makes it seem easy. These methods of losing weight rarely if ever work as well as the advertisements imply which actually works to the advantage of the corporations since many consumers will just try another method that costs money and doesn’t work. One option which is never advocated by the corporate media is the possibility that people can get together at their local school and use the gym for a private exercise club. If this is coordinated with the school board people can lose weight as a community at little or no cost. They could do this when there are no other school activities scheduled and perhaps collect modest donations for the school. They shouldn’t have to pay much if anything since the school is already financed by their tax dollars, they might as well get their moneys worth. They could pick a different volunteer to head the exercise group each session some of which will work the group harder than others and they will also develop stronger community ties that aren’t under the control of the corporations. This would be frowned on by the most powerful corporations since they seem to want to use all activity to make a profit and whenever they pass up an opportunity to take a cut they consider it a loss of potential profits. Furthermore once the public does something like this for one activity they may realize they can do it for another without giving the stockholders a cut of everything.
 
Appliances are another product that is rarely produced in a way that is in the best interest of the consumer. In many cases these can be made to be much more efficient and last a much longer time but this doesn’t happen. In many cases these items are almost certainly made so that they won’t last to long in a process called planned obsolescence. If they break down after a period of time long enough that they won’t try to return it under warranty then they have to buy more. Something as simple as a coffee machine can be made to last a long time but many of the cheapest ones last no longer than a year. Slightly more expensive ones may last two or thee years but except for commercial coffee machines which aren’t marketed to the public they rarely last longer than that. They get away with this because it seems so trivial and the public doesn’t understand how they work. A democratic economic system would benefit from a consumer protection agency that benefits from the help of someone who understands any given industry.
 


Consumer safety has also taken a back seat to corporate profits in many cases in the past. The recent recall due to a sticky accelerator pedal is just one of many examples where a safety problem was ignored until there was a case so big they couldn’t ignore it and it led to many more people coming forward and saying they had the same problem. There was a similar problem with firestone tires ten years ago. This type of problem isn’t limited to the auto industry; it has been very common in the past. When the media has covered them they have often waited until it was too big to ignore then treated them as somewhat isolated incidents. They have never done a review of all the past incidents and created a complete list or even close that I know of. Some low profile consumer groups almost certainly have to the best of their ability, but they have few resources to get their message across to the public without the help of the Mass Media. Without a Media that does more than pay a token amount to the best interest of the public few problems like this can be addressed in a reasonable manner.
 
Electric utilities are also another industry where little or no effort has been made to explain the basics of how it works and how to make it the most efficient for the consumer. The free market promoters have attempted to convince the public that unregulated industry that is held accountable by competition can work just as well with utility companies as it does with goods and services. A closer look at how it works clearly indicates that this isn’t true nor can it ever be made to work. Utilities are generally broken up into two different sectors, power plants to generate electricity and a distribution infrastructure to deliver it to the public. The delivery infrastructure involves running wires all over the country. In order for two or more companies to compete at this they would each have to run their own wires to areas they cover. This would involve much more work to enable more than one company in the market and therefore it makes in impractical
and prevents competition from keeping costs down. There has been some attempt to convince the public that at least the production can be competitive but no system has been set up to enable the public to receive the information they need to make these choices and they have no way of confirming much if anything the generation companies do. They have attempted to convince the public they could choose the company that produces cleaner energy at a higher cost. In some cases this could be wind or solar for part of it. However if the corporations want to keep the supply of these down the costs will remain high even if it becomes more economical. They can use the good intentions of some consumers to justify higher costs without actually providing cleaner energy. This has made competition meaningless.
 
This also comes at a great cost to the environment which is often ignored. This isn’t just the utility industry but many other industry damage the environment without paying as they go to eliminate or repair the damage before it accumulates. In the long run the human race will not survive if the environment is destroyed and this is being done gradually by many industries of which the utility industries are the greatest. There has always been a law protecting property owners from having their property taken away from them without due process. This has rarely if ever been used to protect the poor from having the environment they depend on being taken away. For someone to interfere with industry has often been considered depriving property owners of their rights; however when they deprive others of the necessities of life the same doesn’t go especially if the victims have little or no political power or access to lawyers. In a democratic economy there
could be some attempt to respect the environment. This may not always involve never doing any damage although that would be preferable but it could involve setting up a system to repair the damage as it goes along. If it was necessary to damage the back yard of corporate board holders to accomplish their goal this would never be considered acceptable; therefore in a democratic economy it wouldn’t be acceptable to damage the environment in the neighborhoods of poor people whether it is in urban slums or rural part of the USA or countries like Nigeria, Columbia, Indonesia or many others. The assumption that US corporations should be allowed to do anything they can get away with in countries with weak enforcement is highly undemocratic. This is especially true when these corporations help keep tyrannical regimes in power.
 
 
War profiteering is a major obstacle for any form of a democratic economy. The most effective way to address this is to figure out how to minimize or eliminate war by setting up systems of government that give the public control over their own governments in any part of the world. Any efforts to accomplish this has been hampered by profiteers that benefit by selling arms to both sides of any given conflict or benefit in many other ways like mining diamonds with slave labor provided by a tyrant who maintains power by using diamond money to buy arms. The US government has often been one of the worst profiteers inciting or participating in many wars to protect the best interest of many US companies. One of the clearest instances was when the US provided arms at various times to both sides of the Iran Iraq war. This enabled both sides to maintain power and keep fighting at the expense of the public which was caught in the middle. A democratic economy would have to expose this in the most effective way possible. The majority of the public receives no benefit from this constant fighting quite the opposite. This is being used as an excuse to keep many things about security secret but over the years an enormous amount of this has already leaked out. The most effective way to reduce or eliminate this practice will involve collecting this data and organizing it in the most effective way possible, then presenting it to the public. If the public has the education and information they need they can do much more to reduce war. This can’t be left in the hands of the politicians if there is going to be a democracy.
 
Crime profiteering has often created many of the same problems as war profiteering but it receives much less attention. Any company that makes a profit from crime indirectly and benefits as long as the rate of crime remains high could be considered a crime profiteer. Brinks security could be considered one example of this. If it isn’t excessive it may not be a profiteer but if they offer solutions that only protect the public from the symptoms of crime without addressing the root causes of it they will profit from crime without actually doing anything to reduce it in the long run. This is what their home security systems do. They offer those that can afford it protection as long as they continue paying for it but do nothing to address the social causes that lead crime. The richest and most powerful people get the most effective security systems. This enables them to pursue economic policies of their choice without worrying about those that are put at a
disadvantage getting angry and striking out at them. There have been many examples, including the most recent case of Joe Stack flying a plane into a building, where some people angry about a system that appears stacked against them strike out in anger and if they can’t get to the ones responsible for their predicament or they can’t even tell who it is they may strike out any way they can. Security systems and access to politicians and media help the most powerful avoid accountability. The gun industry has also been accused of crime profiteering with some good reasons since they have fought to keep the loopholes that make it easier for criminal to get crime and when criminals get these guns and use them they often lead to scares among the public who buy more guns for protection. In "Outgunned: up against the NRA: the first complete insider account of the battle over gun control" (2003) by Peter Harry Brown and Daniel G. Abel they describe how the NRA and the gun manufacturers have manipulated the public and the government withy distorted information and by appealing to the emotions of people to make it easier for criminals to get guns and enable the gun manufacturers to profit from high crime rates. Investigating services can also be a form of crime profiteering. This is generally available only to those who can afford it so it helps keep the lower classes poor for the benefit of the rich. These investigative services can be used to investigate people whoa are mostly poor but they are much less likely to investigate the crimes of the rich. In the few exceptions it cost much more to investigate the rich. The biggest crime profiteer may be the Mass Media. They make an enormous amount of money selling advertisements to many shows that address crimes in a manner that is designed to scare the public and keep them obsessed with it without actually educating them about the most effective ways to minimize and prevent crime. They have been entrusted to provide community services when they received free access to the public airways and they attempt to convince the public that they do this but they do very little to present information from the most credible academics to prevent crime. A democratic economy would have to have a media system that helps educate the public about long term crime prevention in the most effective way possible. This would involve teaching them about the small things like child abuse and how it escalates to much more serious crime.
 
In a capitalist overdrive system like what we have wound up with it becomes clear that some people are more concerned about making money at the expense of anyone they can no matter how much damage they do to the majority. This is like the game of monopoly only they do it for real with real monopolies. In the game of monopoly the person who winds up with everything and drives everyone else into bankruptcy wins; that is essentially what the most powerful are trying to do to the majority of the word. They don’t want to totally destroy their opponents; but they do want to come close. They want to make sure that the poor have just enough to survive and stay complacent. They have done this by consolidating the biggest corporations and taking advantage of the control over the Mass Media to prevent the majority of the public from knowing what is going on with business deals to complex for them to understand. The competition that is supposed to make the capitalist system so much better than the Russian version of the communist system no longer has any way to hold the industries accountable. We are now seeing a steady decline in the quality of consumer products as well as variety. This hasn’t been accompanied by much if any effort to allow any other accountability system to take place. This enables the riches to ensure that they can obtain high profits indefinitely; however if they continue to try to increase them beyond the capacity of the economy to sustain them something has to give and this may collapse one way of another. In fact to some degree it already is. If they only provide a token amount of effort to fix it they will only set society up for another collapse a few years down the road which could be worse.

To read Supreme Court ruling see the following:

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=424&invol=1 

For the full HTML version of this blog with table of context see:

https://zakherys.tripod.com/nonviolence.htm

 
Hard as steel when I’d done wrong.
 
Is there a way to educate and discipline children without physical violence?
Does this have an impact on other issues including war and democracy?
 
The following song by Holly Dunn indicates the romanticized version of discipline and family life. In some ways there are of course good ideals here that should be encouraged but if it also romanticizes physical abuse that could escalate to greater violence it should be looked at a little closer.
 
"I remember Daddy’s hands, folded silently in prayer.
And reaching out to hold me, when I had a nightmare.
You could read quite a story, in the callouses and lines.
Years of work and worry had left their mark behind.
I remember Daddy’s hands, how they held my Mama tight,
And patted my back, for something done right.
There are things that I’ve forgotten, that I loved about the man,
But I’ll always remember the love in Daddy’s hands."
 
"Daddy's hands were soft and kind when I was cryin´.
Daddy’s hands, were hard as steel when I’d done wrong.
Daddy’s hands, weren’t always gentle
But I’ve come to understand.
There was always love in Daddy’s hands."
 
"I remember Daddy’s hands, working 'til they bled.
Sacrificed unselfishly, just to keep us all fed.
If I could do things over, I’d live my life again.
And never take for granted the love in Daddy’s hands."
 
"Daddy's hands were soft and kind when I was cryin´.
Daddy’s hands, were hard as steel when I’d done wrong.
Daddy’s hands, weren’t always gentle
But I’ve come to understand.
There was always love in Daddy’s hands."
 
Most old fashion methods of teaching and disciplining children seem to start with some form of physical abuse usually spanking. If this doesn’t work it often leads to an escalation of violence that ends when the subject submits to the will of the authority figure. This is not always the case, in some instances the physical discipline is accompanied by discussion to explain why the child needs to learn to abide by the wishes of the parent until he or she learns to make decisions on his own. There are also a growing number of people that have been arguing that there should never be an excuse to hit a child. The three most common arguments have often been divided into either advocacy of spanking and corporal punishment that escalates until the child learns, advocacy of corporal punishment only as a last resort or no spanking or any form of physical punishment to children. In the last case there would have to be an alternative in order to make it
practical. This alternative usually involves spending more time with children and find nonviolent ways of disciplining and educating children. These three general descriptions are not always agreed upon by many people though, in some cases what one person considers moderate another considers extreme.
 
Many people have argued that since children who have been disciplined properly eventually learn to obey that the discipline worked. This doesn’t always stand up to closer scrutiny though, in many cases these people only learn to respect authority as long as it is backed up by the threat of some form of punishment. In many cases when a child is punished in a harsh manner they may resent it but they may not express these feeling for fear of additional punishment. This could result in a situation where resentments come out much later if they are allowed to build up and they may not always be directed in the right direction. If punishme4nt has to be administered many times before the child learns and it e4scalates as it goes along the child may learn to respect the authority of the person who is stronger not necessarily the authority of the individual who is right which teaches the might makes right mentality. This may result in the appearance of good behavior but this may change when there is no accountability or if the child winds up in an unfamiliar situation. In many cases the child who0 is subject to harsh discipline may learn to settle conflicts with violence or they may learn to take out their anger on those with less power than them. This may initially involve bullying at school and lead to domestic violence later in life including using the same harsh discipline that they endured as a child on their own children.
 
There is an enormous amount of evidence that children who suffer from child abuse which often starts as corporal punishment and either escalates to more severe physical or mental abuse are more likely to become violent later in life. This should indicate that at least trying to minimize if not eliminate physical punishment works better if there is a more effective alternative. This could involve spending more time with children from an early age, some of which could be spent explaining why misbehaving is wrong and listening to why the child may disagree and addressing these concerns. This may involve using other forms of nonviolent discipline like taking a break or repairing damage that was done for example, cleaning up his own mess. The problem with spending with more time with children under the current circumstances is that some cultures have so many things that are considered more important often involving work. This indicates that in order to address improved child care it may be necessary to take a look at how effective the economy is at accomplishing its job. The economy is supposed to be an institution that improves the quality of life for the people by allowing the public to work together provide necessities in a more efficient manner but it has often turned into something that is more concerned about creating jobs and trade even when these activities don’t actually serve a good purpose. For example a job to create a product that doesn’t benefit the consumer isn’t improving the quality of life for the public. This only serves to benefit the businessman that profits from it. This may not seem like it has an impact on child care but if it is done on a large scale it deprives the parents of the time they need to spend with their children and leads to neglect.
 
One of the biggest obstacles to reducing corporal punishment has been religious beliefs in some cases from fringe cults that impose strict discipline starting before the child even learns how to talk. This isn’t limited to fringe cults there are also many more mainstream religions that advocate strict punishment and some more moderate religions that use this only as a last resort. In his book “Spare the Child” (1990) Philip Greven PhD. had reviewed many of the methods used to discipline children over the centuries including some that have come from many child rearing books written by religious leaders and in some cases psychologists. He has found that many of them rely solely on punishment and intimidation tactics that do little to educate the child but only teach them to obey out of fear of the authority figure. In some cases when children were disciplined with violence by their own caretakers they have learned to associate violence with love or they have developed paranoid attitudes. The most extreme of these religions focus on breaking the will of the child from birth and teaching them to obey the orders of the authority figure in some cases even when the authority figure is wrong. In one instance Greven cites Larry Christenson who says “The bible… does not say ‘children obey your parents when they are right’ it says ‘obey your parents in the lord, for this is right’- even when they are wrong! (see Ephesians 6;1) the child who obeys a ‘wrong’ command will still bask in the light of Gods approval.” He also cites Roy Lessin who says “A parent’s directive does not have to be reasonable to be obeyed.” Another quote from Sarah Edwards says “that until a child will obey his parents, he can never be brought to obey God.” These methods are all more concerned with teaching blind obedience than teaching morality. This sense of morality is based on accepting what you’re told by an authority figure whether it is right or wrong. This blind respect for authority is often transferred to other authority figures; which in the worst cases could lead to blindly following a leader like Adolf Hitler. Most religious leaders don’t make statements that are quite so clear and in many cases they will almost certainly deny that teaching children to obey even when the parent is wrong is the right way to go but they rarely if ever come up with an alternative and they often demonstrate with their actions that they do the same thing.

Phillip Greven also review the upbringing of many of the most famous televangelists including Billy Graham, Orel Roberts, Tammy Baker and Tim LaHaye and has found that they have learned these disciplinary methods from their parents and used them raising their own children as well. He has found that they usually marry people that are raised in similar manners and few if any of them have taken much effort to find an alternative. He cites one incident from oral Roberts autobiography when Oral and his brother were on a pallet listening to their father preach when another child pulled on the pallet and his brother Vaden responded by telling him that if he did it again he would cut his ear off. The other child said he didn’t have the nerve. Oral wound up holding the boy while Vaden began to cut off the boy’s ear. Their father intervened when he heard the boy scream and told them he would see to them later which meant they would be taught a lesson by beating them with a razor strap until there were stripes on their rears. Oral later learned to teach his children the same way. He didn’t seem to consider the possibility that the reason the attempted to cut the boys ear off in the first place may have been because they were imitating similar methods to discipline the other child. This wouldn’t have been the first beating they received from their father and it is probable that they learned that when they have a problem with others the way to deal with it is to “discipline them” in a manner similar to what their father did. Cutting off a child’s ear would of course not be considered an appropriate way to do this but they were children at the time and they may have used the most effective method they knew how to based on their resources and education at that time.

These methods of dictating the truth without question can also lead to blind belief in many myths and prejudices as well. In many cases cultural differences are often dictated by the leaders of each side of a potential conflict and they often both learn the same methods to settle conflicts which may involve breaking the will of their opponents or disciplining them the same way they discipline their own children. In many cases they are much more sever with their enemies since they are often demonized and anger and blame is often redirected to their enemies whether it is right or wrong. If the leaders of any one group dictates beliefs to their children about an opposing group then it justifies fighting wars against them and bringing them into submission often as inferiors who can never earn the same rights; however if the situation is reversed they feel that they should always fight to overthrow their tyrants. This leads to a situation where there is
constant conflict unless one side can eliminate the other or break their will and force them to submit to the leadership of the other. Neither of these options work in the long run. In order to successfully eliminate the opposition it often requires one side to use ruthless tactics which they come to be accustomed to then when they win they generally find another enemy to turn those tactics against. If they break the will of the opposition they have to maintain this with constant discipline which often goes too far and leads to another rebellion.

A study done by Stanley Milgram in the sixties indicates how extreme blind obedience to authority can be. He conducted an experiment where participants were told they were supposed to help “teach” a subject by administering electric shock to them when they got the answers to a question wrong. These shocks were escalated until they got the answers right even to the point of causing great pain in the subject. The subject wasn’t actually shocked but he acted as if he was and teacher was unaware. In most of these experiments the teachers were willing to obey the authority figure and administer the maximum 450 voltage even though the subject was often screaming or begging for the experiment to stop. No research was done at the time to indicate for certain whether the ones that did administer the full voltage were raised with strictly disciplinarian methods but enough research done since then has been done to indicate that there is a strong possibility that were.

The combination of teaching children to blindly obey their leaders and the paranoia that increases with strict discipline has a major effect on the current situation with the war on terror. In its most extreme escalating violence could lead to major wars like this one where neither side respects the rights of the other. Many members of the public are more paranoid and they are acting on their emotions. Their leaders are offering them a solution which involves constant fighting and more espionage. In the rush to come to a conclusion on how to deal with the situation many people are accepting this without question. There is little effort from most of these people to find out what the true cause of these efforts to terrorize the USA and even less if it partially implicates those they view as their saviors. The terror of the opposition is used as an excuse to escalate violent tactics from our own side despite the fact that a closer look will almost certainly indicate that is what got us into this situation in the first place.  

A Growing number of academics including sociologist Murray Straus, psychologists Alice Miller and Benjamin Spock and many other more recent psychologists have recommended against much if any physical punishment for children. Murray Straus has reviewed over eighty studies on viole4nce that look into many different aspects of violence and has found that one after another they indicate that violence begets violence. This includes a higher amount of school violence and murder in states that allow corporal punishment in schools as well as a higher rate if violent behavior of adults that were abused as children and a higher chance that these adults will also abuse their children. None of these studies are perfect but the cumulative results of all these studies plus the fact that the conclusions are also supported by different types of research by other academics including Dan Kindlon, James Garbarino and Ellen deLara and many others indicates that abuse of any type including corporal punishment should be minimized if not eliminated. Dr. Spock has always recommending avoiding corporal punishment when ever possible but in 1988 he went one step further and said spanking should never be used at all. He said “The best test of a punishment is whether it accomplishes what you are after, without having other serious effects. If it makes a child furious, defiant, and worse behaved than before, then it certainly is missing fire. If it seems to breaks a child’s heart then it’s probably too strong for him. Every child reacts somewhat differently.” Keep in mind in many cases it may seem to work for a while since in the immediate aftermath the child may be more concerned with receiving more punishment and may suppress his anger. This could mean that although his behavior may improve for a while if his anger builds up it may get worse later and then an even greater degree of violence may be necessary since he may become accustomed to it. Dr. Spock went on to say “There are several reasons to try to avoid corporal punishment, I feel. It teaches children that the larger, stronger person has the power to get his way, whether or not he is in the right, and they may resent this in a parent- for life. Some spanked children feel quite justified in beating up smaller ones. The American tradition of spanking may be one cause4 of the fact that there is much more violence in our country than in any other comparable nation-murder, armed robbery, wife abuse, child abuse.” Part of the reason children learn to suppress their anger is that in addition to punishing children physically many parents learn to punish them even more if they cry or complain about their punishments. Some of the same leaders who recommend punishment for disobedience also recommend additional punishment if children don’t submit to punishment without complaints or crying.

Teaching children to accept what they’re told without question can be a serious threat to democracy. If there are a large number of people who believe what their told from their leaders they may vote accordingly instead of sorting through the issues and figuring out what is in the best interest of themselves as well as the rest of society. In order for a democracy to be successful the public has to have the access to the education and information they need to make rational decisions. If they are taught to accept certain false facts without question from their leaders they won’t be able to vote in a rational manner and it won’t be a true democracy.

Secular ideas about discipline often have their routes in tradition or religion even though many of the people that adopt them may not realize it. When enacting laws about child abuse many politicians are more concerned with the beliefs of the majority and perhaps the beliefs of the religious le4aders as well as legal precedents influenced by religious leaders in the past than they are about the research done by academics that have learned much more about the subject. Respecting the beliefs of the majority is reasonable but if there is a problem with those beliefs it is important to explore them and rectify them especially when the consequences are as severe as child abuse. Many people still don’t know how much damage child abuse and corporal punishment can lead to. There needs to be a much bigger education effort where the public is encouraged to listen to what the majority of the academic community has to say. One example where the law doesn’t seem to recognize the importance of this issue is Ingraham v. Wright where a school in Florida was implicated in severe use of corporal punishment against the students who had no right to trial. This resulted in severe damage to many children simply for not leaving the audience fast enough when told to. The Supreme Court ruled that the children had no right to a trial nor was the protection against cruel and unusual punishment applied to students. This was true despite the fact that this case was extreme. Hardened criminals have more rights than children according to this ruling. More details are available about this in the link below.

http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/ 

For information about Ingraham v. Wright see:

http://www.nospank.net/flygare2.htm
 
For the full HTML version of this blog with table of context see:

https://zakherys.tripod.com/nonviolence.htm
 

“The Cult of Intelligence” has become a common way of referring to the CIA due in part to Victor Marchetti and his book by the same name. The phrase has also been used by William Colby (former director of the CIA) indicating it may have become popular long before Marchetti write his book. In many ways they are close to the truth but the use of the words cult or intelligence may not be quite right although it is close. First of all as I have indicated before espionage isn’t intelligent. No matter how often you repeat the phrase it won’t change the fact that keeping the most important information many people, including the public and the leaders, need to make rational decisions about the most important subjects secret isn’t an intelligent way to advance democracy or the quality of life for many if any people. The very concept of espionage involves manipulating people and depriving many people including the public of the information they need to make rational decisions which contrary to the claim some make does not protect democracy but is one of the greatest threats to it.
 
The use of the term cult usually refers to religious cults who control the thought process of the followers although it could refer to secular cults too in my opinion. If the CIA doesn’t quite fit the definition of a cult it is because they don’t have total control and the followers know it is largely based on deception; however it does have many of the same characteristics of a cult and they take advantage of several other ideologies and religions that attempt to dictate the truth to the public without fully explaining them so that the public truly understands them. Instead many members of the public adopt certain beliefs because it is what they are told to believe and it is repeated over and over again without much if any rational scrutiny.  Two of the most common secular ideologies these espionage agencies have used include Capitalism and Communism. These ideologies have been drilled into the minds of many members of the public without explaining them in a rational way and they have been used to justify the clod war. Instead of fighting against totalitarianism the USA fought against Communism which they equated with totalitarianism. Part of the reason for this may be because Communism is supposed to stand up for the rights of the workers and fighting against that wouldn’t sound like a good cause. This doesn’t mean the USSR or China actually stood up for the rights of workers but they claimed to and it served the best interest of the Capitalist to let this go unchallenged since it would help them equate Communism with totalitarianism. Information about these two ideologies isn’t kept completely secret from the public. Those that take the time to learn about them can sort through the details of both beliefs and try to find the best aspects of each but unfortunately the majority of the public doesn’t do this. Instead most people rely on what they are told by their leaders. The information that has been drilled into the heads of many people through the Mass Media for the last sixty years at least has been extremely biased peaking with McCarthyism.
 
The very excuse that the CIA has used for most of their activities is flawed which indicates that a large segment of the public has stood up for the cold war based more on indoctrination rather than education. This first began long before the cold war. The roots of this indoctrination go back hundreds if not thousands of years. Since the United States was formed the capitalist belief system was created largely by the most powerful people that controlled the press and the corporations. This created a ideology that was accepted by a large number of people without fully understanding it. It was often backed up by charismatic speakers who advocated for it like the individual who repeated the “Acres of Diamonds” sermon in the nineteenth century and at the Height of the cold war Joe McCarthy. According to William Colby the CIA was moderate and reasonable compared to McCarthy but that doesn’t mean they attempted to educate the public about communism or capitalism by sorting through the details and figuring out what the best aspects of each belief system was. Instead two ideologies were presented to the public one was hyped in a positive way the other was demonized. Then when the CIA was established after WWII it was created by a combination of former OSS members and lawyers. These people primarily came from the upper classes which were the few who benefited from the narrow perception of capitalism.  
 
According to Marchtti and many others the CIA justified their activities including torture by claiming the other side did it first and in order to be effective they had to use the same method. William Colby denies that the CIA ever used torture due to the fact that it is ineffective but he still uses the same excuse to justify the use of newspaper reporters and businessmen as agents. There have been several reports that the CIA has done extensive business with many corporations; one of the most notorious cases is the incident with ITT. This was uncovered during the Watergate era. ITT offered a million dollars to help overthrow Allende. This was clearly an example where a corporation was trying to overthrow a partially democratic government for financial reasons and the USA with the CIA was available to help. Allende may not have been perfect but he was almost certainly better than both the corporations that opposed him and Pinochet who eventually replaced him. This isn’t the only case where corporations had some influence on the CIA, The reinstallment of the Shah in Iran and many other political relationships in the middle east and other oil producing companies are almost certainly at least partially influenced by the oil companies and diamond and coltan companies have almost certainly influenced policies in Africa.

The Watergate incident itself was done by former members of the CIA and according to Colby the CIA had no say in it; however it is common practice for the CIA to arrange for its operatives to act on their own when they are abroad and maintain plausible deniability. At the least the CIA trained these people and helped them develop the connections that enabled them to be in a position to help Nixon’s reelection campaign. This could be and almost certainly is a common occurrence. The CIA trains people and puts them in contact with other organizations including corporations, political parties, criminal organizations, other countries etc. the result is that powerful organizations have the opportunity to learn about espionage and manipulation techniques and the only people left in the dark are the majority of the public. This creates a situation where the rich can spy on the poor but the poor can’t find out what the rich is doing unless another powerful institution leaks it and then it isn’t presented in an organized way for the poor so they can’t take advantage of it the same way as the rich.

Peter W. Singer has reported in “Corporate Warriors” that many corporations are now using private military firms including some that specialize in espionage. This creates a situation where some of the biggest multi-national corporations are more powerful than many third world countries and they often have private armies to defend themselves and even take over governments if needed although they would almost certainly not do this in an open and honest manner. 

Many of the activities that the CIA has conducted in the past would never have happened if they were held up to scrutiny from the beginning. There are numerous incidents where the CIA has actually suppressed the popular governments supported by the people and some cases where this has backfired when the moderates were kept out of power but the extremists wound up taking over anyway. Two of the biggest examples of this were Cuba and Iran. In both cases the USA and American corporations supported a tyrant, the Shah and Batista, and moderate democratic forces were kept out of power so the people turned to the extremists who helped overturn one tyrant and replace him with another. Other cases like Chile and Nicaragua were examples where the government the USA suppressed or at least tried to suppress was much more democratic than the one they supported. In many cases it may not be easy to tell which government was more democratic because there is so much disinformation and propaganda being put out by the most powerful institutions that it is difficult to know what is going on which is the inevitable result of excessive espionage.
 

William Colby has argued that the worst atrocities done by the CIA were done in the past before the Watergate era. He claims that this led to reforms some of which he oversaw while he was director of the CIA. He believed (in 1978 when he wrote “Honorable Men: My life at the CIA”) that after the reforms that the CIA was much more credible and there was a vital need for the CIA. Many other authors and former CIA members have disagreed since then. Colby has acknowledged the fact that many people within the Ford administration weren’t to happy that he revealed so much to the congress but he believed that it was his constitutional duty to do so and implement reforms. Others have claimed that when George H.W. Bush took over in early 1976 the openness of the CIA was shut down. This claim seems to be at least partially justified by the behavior of both Bush and Reagan during the Iran Contra hearings when they both claimed to be out of the loop. Even if they both were out of the loop then that would indicate at best negligence to keeping track of their own people. There have also been many more claims of wrong doing buy the CIA that includes fraud, money laundering and at best complicity to drug smuggling at worst active smuggling of drugs. The most credible claims of drug complicity may come from Alfred McCoy author of “The politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade”. He argues that the CIA was complicit with drug dealing, by dealing with drug dealers and looking the other way, but not actually involved. I suspect that if many of the activities that he attributes to the CIA were attributed to another nongovernmental organization they would be prosecuted for drug smuggling not just complicity. There are many other former CIA operatives or alleged CIA operatives who have come forward to make more severe claims, in most cases doubts have been raised about their credibility as well as the credibility of the people raising the doubts, which creates a he said she said situation where little is certain without confirmation. The volume of these claims and some of the confirmation seems to indicate that at least some of it is true but it is hard to sort out fact from fiction with so many contradictory stories. The strongest circumstantial evidence that the CIA may be raising money either by complicity to drug dealing or some other means is their high costs. According to Robert Baer it may cost about a quarter of a million dollars just to put a covert agent into place in a foreign country before he can begin to establish connections to gather covert information about foreign governments. From there the cost go up especially when it comes to some of the most important information they need to gather. This is especially tough when dealing with unfamiliar cultures. Espionage is extremely inefficient and expensive.

  
For the most part the mainstream media is paying little or no attention to this subject. The quality of the investigation of the CIA seems to have deteriorated at about the same time that the consolidation of the media was taking place. It is hard to tell whether or not this is true but there are claims that the CIA is influencing the Mass Media and at times the heads of the CIA and other operatives have admitted to a small amount of cooperation with the media. Although there is little or no solid evidence that the mainstream media has been corrupted by the CIA there is a lot of conclusive evidence that the mainstream media is not doing as good job and there is circumstantial evidence indicating the possibility that they are cooperating with other institutions including the CIA, various political parties and many corporations which openly buy air time in a large volume. The strongest circumstantial evidence isn’t secret at all it is the way the Mass Media is presenting the war on terror. Anyone who understands manipulation tactics and indoctrination tactics should know there is something wrong with the way the Mass media is behaving. They are repeating a lot of information to hype the war on terror over and over again but when it comes to legitimate complaints from third world countries they present them on much rarer occasions and these are often followed up by emotional rebuttals. This is a very effective way to appeal to a large percentage of the American public which is predisposed to make decisions on emotional grounds. If the Mass Media was doing a good job they would spend much more time looking at the long term causes of the war on terror and what the long term solutions could be. This would involve acknowledging the many conflicts that the USA instigated in opposition to the people of third world countries and the support by multi-national corporations of many tyrants as well as the massive damage done by child abuse globally which creates an enormous supply of angry adults.

In order to put an end to various cults of espionage it will be necessary to educate the public better about many subjects including manipulation tactics and it will be necessary to make the information they need to make decisions available to them. This could be helped by a truth commission which would expose the activities that have been kept secret in the past. This would have to be organized with the help of the people and the criteria for this truth commission should be approved by the majority of the public. Ideally this would be accompanied by an education program that allowed the points of view from many people and it would help to present a lot of information that has already been exposed to the public in the most organized way possible. By looking at this information it could help to decide what the conditions of any truth commissions should be.

Cultural relativity has also had a major influence on the evolution of tyranny. Contrary to what some people have been led to believe cultural relativity isn’t an excuse for bad behavior but an explanation for it. Or at least this is the way many anthropologists look at it, those that believe in their own culture often think it is an excuse because it is the way they were taught to think.. Basically what this means is that people are taught from birth to go along with the beliefs of any given culture and to accept them as the right way to live often without question. In most cultures they developed a way of life that works for them and enables them to survive. If they didn’t they would go extinct in line with the concept of the survival of the fittest. More often than not efforts to change were few and far between. Changes were often born pout of necessity. If they ran into a problem where their way of life wasn’t working as well as they would like to believe some people would question certain flaws and they would try to change them. More often than not they would be met with resistance from conservative members of their community. These people would usually win unless the flaws were so serious that they would bring a great cost to society and the case could be made to the majority in a rational and simple way they could understand. In many cases even this didn’t work and the problems might not be fixed until a disaster forced the public to deal with the consequences. Examples of this include the collapse of the Roman Empire and various revolutions and civil wars. If decisions are made based on false beliefs there will be consequences eventually and if those consequences are serious enough they can lead to the collapse of a civilization. Improved education and willingness to look at things from other points of view may help avoid this and may also enable culture to develop much bigger improvements in the quality of civilization for everyone.

Cultural relativity may explain how each member of a certain class is taught to accept their role in society. This includes the leaders, from birth they are often taught it is their god given right to rule over the masses. The reason they believe they should be put above reproach is because that is what they were taught from birth. This is what enables many people to act with self-righteous indignation when the authority of the leaders is challenged. For example during the slave years in the early nineteenth century the people of the south would be shocked and angry when abolitionists challenged the morality of keeping slaves. Keeping slaves is what they were taught from birth and they never knew any other way to live so to them this was the only way to live and to challenge it was sacrilege. This doesn’t mean it was rational, it wasn’t. Many members of the south had to do as much if not more work to maintain the institution of slavery than they might have had to do if they did the labor themselves and shared the benefits equally. This institution of slavery also underwent some social evolution. When they first started doing it in the 1600’s they used white indentured servants in addition to the black slaves. They treated them equally and there was little bigotry between the servants and the blacks. This enabled them to work together at times to rebel against their masters. After their masters put down a few of these small rebellions they decided to give whites better treatment and encourage some descent between the blacks and poor whites. This is a classic case of divide and rule. They learned that in order to maintain the institution of slavery they had to prevent the slaves from uniting. They also learned they had to prevent them from being educated more than necessary to perform the chores given to them by their masters.

The blacks that were separated from their tribes lost the benefit of the tribal leadership and education. When they came to America they no longer knew how to rule themselves. They were separated from the tribal institutions they understood and they were at the mercy of a new control structure they never learned to understand. Even if they escaped they had no way of surviving on their own. It wasn’t until they had access to education that they learned how to stand up for their rights. There were a few blacks that were either lucky or very bright and determined in the beginning like Frederick Douglas who managed to educate themselves but the majority of their true freedom didn’t come until the civil rights movement when they improved their access to educational systems at least for some blacks who formed the new black middle class. The civil war didn’t free the blacks as many people were led to believe. The control over major institutions was handed back to the whites and a state of virtual slavery was established that enabled the whites to hold the high ground as long as people didn’t look to close. The new black middle class served as another buffer between the rich and the poor. This enabled some people to claim that blacks had equal opportunities but a close look indicates this isn’t true. Those who could adapt made it into the new black middle class but those that couldn’t may have wound up in black slums where a cycle of violence prevented improved education. Many of these blacks were raised in violent households where they often took out their anger on each other since they couldn’t take their anger out on the white community. These people are undergoing a more sophisticated form of suppression which many of them perceive as tyranny. Part of the problem is that they have been denied opportunities to educate themselves and get jobs but another part of the problem is that they have become dysfunctional communities that can’t pull themselves out of poverty because they have so many problems with gangs and drugs. The maintenance if this underclass has enabled many people to put all the blame on the blacks. While it is true that part of the responsibility must fall on the black it is also true that the interference from the whites in power is largely responsible for creating this situation in the first place. Those in power deprived them of the educational and employment opportunities that led to this situation. Those in power set up the system that governs the most powerful institutions but they also have the best ability to use the Mass Media to divert the blame. The whites disrupted the old tribal governments and there was never any other system that worked well to replace it. In order to fix this instead of demonizing the poor their need to be a much better education system set up in the long run. Unfortunately this will take time and some of these people are still very angry and out of control. If these people are allowed to run loose they may disrupt efforts to reform the system. Jails should still be a last resort and if they are necessary they should include sincere rehabilitation efforts that hopefully would enable these people to become functional members of society. In many cases some of these people became even more violent when they went to jail in the past since it is a violent environment which only makes people even more violent. In order to fix this problem there needs to be moiré control over the environment in jail. Jails shouldn’t be used primarily to punish but to prevent further violence. Any discipline should be nonviolent if possible since violence only begets more violence.
 
Similar problems happened in African countries where the Europeans invaded and set up colonial governments. This led to the destruction of old tribal governments and the blacks were no longer educated in a manner to govern themselves. When the Europeans left the blacks that were left behind had no governmental institutions and people that knew how to run them. They wound up being taken over by violent tyrants who had little or no respect for the rights of the people. These tyrants wound up dealing with many multi-national corporations. These corporations provided the tyrants with the funds and the weapons they needed to stay in power and maintained plausible deniability for the atrocities committed since they didn’t do it themselves and they claimed they were obeying the local laws. This enabled the multi-national corporations to maintain power without actually claiming to control these countries. Their denial of responsibility becomes weak once you understand that without the cooperation of the corporations these tyrants wouldn’t be able to maintain power and make laws that justify their atrocities. This effectively sets up a complex system where people participating in these corporations can acknowledge only the aspects they want to. People that would never torture little children buy products and trade them enabling those who do torture children to continue to do so and profit from it. This is similar to many other multi-national corporations that use child labor around the world and even use these children to fight their wars. This enables many people to claim they are being part of the solution even when they support a system that is creating virtual slavery for a large segment of the global population. The multi-national corporations do a very effective job diverting the attention of the majority of the public in the western world enabling them to maintain this corrupt system in the developing world. This results in system where, as Peter W. Singer often describes, “we have peace in the west war for the reset”.
 
Woman didn’t begin to receive their rights either until they became better educated and learned how to stand up for their rights. In fact for the most part no one did. This is party of a pattern of behavior that repeats it self from one group of people to another. There is a lot of talk about what is fair and justice but without institutions run by sincere people to preserve the rights of any group of people they are usually not protected if more powerful people have an incentive to infringe on them. In the past people have been much more passionate about standing up for their own rights than they have ever been about standing up for the rights of others, especially if they haven’t had contact with these others. This has led to an enormous amount of conflict which has caused an enormous amount of damage to society as a whole. If the public can be better educated about this and they set up institutions that look for injustices before they escalate too much bigger problems this can be minimized.

The way the Native Americans were treated is an example of how passive or less developed communities can be suppressed and even driven to extinction if they come into contact with a more advanced and violent society. When the Europeans first came to America the Native Americans welcomed them and for a long time they trusted them when they made treaties with them. They eventually learned that these treaties were only good if it was in the best interest of the Europeans or if the Native Americans had enough power to enforce them. The Europeans often described the Natives as savages mainly because they had different cultures. One of the biggest reasons they were described as savages is because they didn’t wear clothes. The invaders were considered more civilized because they did wear clothes despite the fact that they were much more violent. This is an ironic situation where the people who were more violent were considered more civilized because they could wipe out the opposition and then control the way history was recorded. By this definition whoever controls the propaganda is more civilized and moral regardless of their behavior.

The way parents teach their children has always had a major impact on the social evolution and on the ability of the children to resist tyranny. In most cases the parents teach their children the same way they were taught as a child. This creates a system of tradition that is difficult to change. Many of the most successful tyrants recognized this and pressured the parents to teach their children in a certain way that doesn’t challenge the authority of the tyrants. This has often been done with the help of the clergy. Parents were often taught to dictate the truth to their children and to use intimidation tactics and corporal punishment to enforce the appropriate beliefs. This leads the child to believe what they are told from their leaders without question. This isn’t rational education but indoctrination. In order to put an end to tyranny indoctrination has to be replaced by education. This will be a slow process where people take the time to sort through the details and figure out what is true before choosing their beliefs.

In the twentieth century the control over the people has been done largely with the help of espionage organizations like the KGB and the CIA. They have used the control over information to manipulate the public and they have created a situation where the way to gain the most power is to have access to the most accurate information while the rest of the world is deprived of this information. This creates what some people have called a “cult of intelligence” where people trust secrecy more than they trust openness and honesty. The problem with this is that the vast majority of the public doesn’t have the information they need to make rational decisions and this leads to an enormous amount of incompetence. Withholding this information from the public creates a situation where an enormous amount of wars and other conflicts occur because no one knows who is responsible for anything. This attitude escalated during the cold war where the USA was fighting communism. They won this war when the USSR collapsed but not necessarily for the reasons the public has been led to believe. The USSR may have collapsed more due to their own incompetence that because of what the CIA or the USA did. They may have put so much effort into controlling the people that they weren’t able to support the economy and the people didn’t have the education they needed to function properly.
 
The very premise of this conflict was flawed. It was a conflict between the champion of two ideologies that claimed to stand up for the rights of the public but neither one of them actually backed it up by providing the best education they could. Both side supported their cause with an enormous amount of propaganda to selectively highlight certain facts, true or not, to justify their beliefs. In the USSR there was a lot of propaganda to glorify their leaders especially Stalin and convince the public that letting the government control all industry was in the best interest of the public. In the USA the propaganda indicated that unregulated capitalism was much more efficient and that if the corporations were allowed to control all industry they could compete to provide the best deal for the public but the corporations often used tactics that eliminated competition and created monopolies or near monopolies where only a small number of companies controlled
any one industry. Communism was demonized because of the way the USSR and China implemented it. Just because these two didn’t implement it in an honest manner doesn’t mean there aren’t some good aspects about the communist ideology but there are also some bad aspects about both the communist and the capitalist ideology and the best thing to do is to sort through them both, figure out what the best aspects of each are and look for additional good ideas and form a new better ideology. This one should be one that educates everyone that is capable of learning in the most effective way possible. Unfortunately the USA equated communism with totalitarianism instead. Communism was supposed to stand up for workers rights yet this was equated with tyranny. In many cases there were popular revolutions around the world that were supported by the people at least partially. These revolutions stood up against the corporations that were infringing on the rights of the public and in some cases attempted to nationalize these corporations so that there could be asset of checks and balances. Some of these efforts attempted to offer reasonable compensation to the corporations and others didn’t but in most cases there was partial justification for the nationalization. This was criticized in the USA because they were taking away the private property of the corporations many of which were based in the USA. They didn’t do much if anything to acknowledge the fact that these corporations were infringing on the rights of the public. In many cases including Iran, Nicaragua, Chile, Viet Nam and others the CIA conducted covert activities to overthrow the popular governments supported by the people and installed puppet regimes. In the case of Iran and Cuba this led to another revolution that overthrew these governments and put in another that was much more hostile to the USA. These actions were supposedly done to protect democracy. The most effective way to protect democracy is to educate the public not to overthrow popular governments.
 
The current war on terror and the damage being done to the environment could lead to a possible collapse. Due to the fact that the majority of the public is being fed an enormous amount of propaganda they don’t have the information they need to make rational decisions nor does it seem do a lot of the people leading many of the most powerful institutions. Many of the same problems that led to collapse of past civilizations are escalating at a rapid pace. The divide and rule tactics that are being used to maintain the current power structure is the same thing that could be its downfall. Internal conflict and war has been the most common cause of the collapse of civilizations in the past and if it continues to go unchecked. In order to prevent this in the most effective way possible the public needs to be educated in the most effective way possible and the people who make the most important decisions need to have access to the education and information they need to make rational decisions. It might be possible to provide improved education only to the ones who are making the most important decisions and prevent the collapse of society but this won’t create a sincere democracy. This would lead to a republic where many of the upper classes continue to receive benefits at the expense of the lower classes. This would be a risky way to do it since if they obtain education on their own the conflicts that they tried to avoid could come back again. On the other hand if there was a better effort to set up a fair system then the lack of destruction caused by unnecessary conflict could lead to better standards of living for everyone. For example during the labor conflicts of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the corporations spent an enormous amount of money for security and to transport low paid labor rather than give raises to the labor that they already had. They also lost a lot of money on the work that wasn’t being done during work stoppages. Imagine what would have happened if the saved the money on security and gave part of it to the workers. Then the worker could have gotten their raise and the business could have gone on without interruption. The waste would have been drastically reduced but the people in power seemed to be more concerned with having as much power as possible.

At times in addition to using propaganda in other countries both the CIA and the FBI (when Hoover was still in power) often used propaganda to manipulate the public and influence the US elections. Like the earlier labor conflicts this was almost always in favor of the status quo that protected the best interest of the corporations first and the public second if at all. In the seventies some of this was exposed in a conclusive manner when certain revelations were made including the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. Since then there have been many other accusations some of which may not seem as credible but the strongest evidence might be the fact that the government and the corporations aren’t addressing the most important subjects starting with an accurate description of the basics. This may also be supported by the fact that the Mass Media has been consolidated and is mainly controlled by only five corporations that have enough media power to create an almost unchallenged indoctrination machine.
 
This hypothesis skips over an enormous amount of history and leaves a lot of details out but they are available in the history books if you look in the right place but unfortunately many of those were controlled by the people in power. One of the most notable exceptions is “The Peoples History of the United States” by Howard Zinn. Other books like this could and probably have been written about many other times and places where historians made a better effort to look through the various records and sort out what was distorted for the benefit of those in power at any time. In order to develop an accurate idea of the way civilization evolved it will be necessary to recheck the records to sort out biases if this hasn’t already been done. This has often been criticized as rewriting history with some justification. If hi9story was written right in the first place it shouldn’t be rewritten but if it was based on a lot of propaganda then perhaps rewriting history is what we need if it is done very carefully.

One way or another we have wound up with a complex system that provides benefits for some people in some parts of the world at the expense of others and since the system is so complex most of these people maintain plausible deniability about the damage it does simply by not looking to closely at the system.
 
There are also at least a couple unexplained facts about the social evolution of civilization and tyranny. One of them is how many early societies developed the ability to build monuments like the pyramids, Angkor temple and many other ancient wonders. Experiments to replicate these wonders have come up short. When it comes to moving the ancient megaliths they haven’t even been close. Another unexplained mystery has received much less attention. With all the education the leaders of our country have received including education about political manipulation why are they blundering so bad and so often?