Power, Control, and Fear
To look at success for human beings, it follows that a review of our ancestors and what success meant for them should be included. Whether we are talking about animals, or the human animal, you have a consciousness that needs to feed, feels craving, and searches the landscape for sustenance. Through trial and error, different strategies were developed over many eons. There would have been a mixture of cooperation and conflict. From the evolutionary point of view, humans were connected to early primates. DNA analyses includes a wide variety of dates when human ancestors diverged from the other primates. Because of long time spans in the millions of years, it stands to reason that genetic mutations would have made small changes over time and human ancestors would have mated with other primates for some time before the divergence was permanent. In Genetic evidence for complex speciation of humans and chimpanzees, researchers found that “…Chromosome X [showed] an extremely young genetic divergence time, close to the genome minimum along nearly its entire length. These unexpected features would be explained if the human and chimpanzee lineages initially diverged, then later exchanged genes before separating permanently.”
Part of the divergence could be explained by developments to endlessly improve to master the environment. In the case of humans, it was always to advance technology one level further. Learning to master fire and using primitive stone tools were some of the earliest impactful developments our ancestors achieved. You can find a good example from some of the oldest archeological evidence of pre-historical ancestors that was found in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. The gorge was tested and found to be wetter and cooler than it is today. The location provides a look at the transition from bite marks to cut marks made from stone tools. The advent of stone tools, through evidence of stone cutting on animal bones, allowed for some of the earliest forms of technological power. Because evidence is still sparse on how stone tools related to human development, it is reasonable to assume that stone tools could have been made to process carcasses for meat, used as weapons, or to make other tools. There are also theories on how difficult and dangerous it would be to make these stone tools without cutting oneself and that there may have been an earlier period when appropriate shapes were sought out before being made more generally.
Because life was short during the Stone Age, with life expectancies in the 30s, it’s conceivable that there would have been fights over scarcity amongst other humans and primates, just like we see with wild animals today. Success would often be more than just finding resources but also successfully protecting oneself from violence and theft or succeeding to steal or kill without consequence. René Girard theorized about early human conflicts and how myths and religions may have came out of early forms of gaslighting to maintain power and control to support the victors in any conflict. Certainly, animals show fights over scarcity with every battle over a carcass, but the earliest evidences of human to human violence can only be found much later in Nataruk. Robin Seemangal summarized those important findings. “About 10,000 years ago in eastern Africa, a resource-rich, fertile lagoon known as Nataruk was the setting for humanity’s earliest known violent conflict which resulted in the brutal killing of over two dozen prehistoric men, women and children…’The Nataruk massacre may have resulted from an attempt to seize resources–territory, women, children, food stored in pots–whose value was similar to those of later food-producing agricultural societies, among whom violent attacks on settlements became part of life,’ said Cambridge’s Dr Marta Mirazon Lahr, who led the Nataruk study, published in the journal Nature…They concluded that the conflict that left at least 27 dead, occurred sometime between 9,500 to 10,500 years ago in the early years following the last Ice Age—known as the Holocene epoch. Sometimes referred to as the ‘Age of Man,’ this era accounts for last 11,700 years of humanity’s recorded history…Nataruk is thought to have been a habitat rich with marsh and surrounded by a forest—indicating that it was an ideal home for a large population of hunter-gatherers. The inhabitants and subsequent victims of the conflict that ensued, are thought to be members of an extended family that lived there together…”
Seven Samurai – Akira Kurosawa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V4dEWPJKNk
“Researchers have not come to a consensus on the matter of how violence became a part of human civilization but theorize that we either carried it with us from ‘deep in our evolutionary history’ or it appeared along with the construct of land settlement and ownership…Antagonistic rivalry among later hunter-gatherer groups usually resulted in violence that left the males of the opposing sides dead while females and children were often assimilated into the triumphant group. The varying remains at Nataruk indicate that this probably was not the case. It’s also important to note that certain earmarks of rivalry-driven conflict like dismemberment or trophy-taking were not found at Nataruk. 21 adults that included eight males, eight females and five unknown were found along with the remains of six children. These young victims were all under the age of six except for one whose dental analysis placed them between 12-15 years old. 12 of the skeletons were found intact and 10 of those paint a vivid picture of the massacre. The victims suffered from blunt-force trauma to the head, broken bones throughout their bodies, and fatal injuries caused by projectile weapons. One of the males had a sharpened blade fabricated with obsidian lodged in his head but not fully puncturing the bone. Another injury on the same skeleton indicates that a secondary weapon was used to crush the victim’s head and face. ‘The man appears to have been hit in the head by at least two projectiles and in the knees by a blunt instrument, falling face down into the lagoon’s shallow water,’ said Dr. Mirazon Lahr. A few of the skeletons were found face down and some in positions that illustrate bounding or imprisonment by their attackers. One of these victims was a female in the final months of pregnancy as evident by the fetal bones discovered within her abdominal cavity.”
The Earliest Evidence of Violent Human Conflict Has Been Discovered – Robin Seemangal: https://observer.com/2016/01/the-earliest-evidence-of-violent-human-conflict-has-been-discovered/
Discoveries at Nataruk: http://in-africa.org/discoveries-at-nataruk/
Male lions at top speed: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xsMUp58apXk
Nataruk: Evidence of a prehistoric massacre: https://youtu.be/05jK_-YThxY?si=NhZ3MZdgpTBfuhJt
Even with gaps in evidence, there are plenty of historical documents and anthropological studies that show curious rituals that Girard found were all the precursors to modern religions and the social response to uncontrollable violence that could at any moment erupt and destroy a civilization, and any forms of social success along with them. Girard was critical of both psychoanalysis and anthropology for either ridiculing ancestors for superstition without seeing deeper meanings in those early taboos and ancient attempts at social control. René was still thankful for the efforts of psychoanalysis and anthropology for recording case studies and allowing more avenues of interpretation. For Girard, evidence of scapegoating is all over the material, and “…for the Freudian notion of transference, inadequate as it is in some respects, should at least have alerted us that something vital is missing from the picture.” Sir James Frazer provided his own description of projection, transference, and scapegoating despite looking at it as an archaic way of thinking, which in the end a modern readership would find contemporary nonetheless.
“The notion that we can transfer our guilt and sufferings to some other being who will bear them for us is familiar to the savage mind. It arises from a very obvious confusion between the physical and the mental, between the material and the immaterial. Because it is possible to shift a load of wood, stones, or what not, from our own back to the back of another, the savage fancies that it is equally possible to shift the burden of his pains and sorrows to another, who will suffer them in his stead. Upon this idea he acts, and the result is an endless number of very unamiable devices for palming off upon some one else the trouble which a man shrinks from bearing himself. In short, the principle of vicarious suffering is commonly understood and practised by races who stand on a low level of social and intellectual culture.”
Despite the pompous superiority complex modern humans have, there’s no doubt that there is always a pecking order in any modern society and political activity belongs as much to us modern “savages.” Humans have battled with each other to include ever more people into suffrage and political franchise so policy wasn’t only left for property owning males that controlled everything, yet the modern world is still ensnared by money, power, control, and the role of ownership continues to confer political power. Modern politics is rife with criticisms of lobbyists who have outsized political influence correlating to their wealth. The franchise has less and less power as one owns less and less property. Those who have outsized power also can avoid consequences of their mistakes whereas the powerless have little to no resources to defend themselves. For example, people with less resources are not likely to be able to afford the best legal defense. The world of work and production is ideally about reciprocity, but evidence of blame shifting is quite easy to see, as well as examples of scapegoating, and double-standards. Pure accountability is an abstract ideal.
With simple implements and early attempts at farming, there already was evidence of unfairness including marauding, cannibalism, raping, and pillaging. For our ancestors, power and control started over animals and territory. Craving led our ancestors to become both greedy and envious. With each injustice, there were attempts to get a grip on understanding what had happened. Was there a God involved? Was there a Karma or spiritual punishment for what happened? Was there going to be punishment through reprisal from other villages or was it all combined with a sorcery aiming at revenge? The need for ritual to appease an angry deity required some kind of cost, but for the one who has power, and can fight back, there was no incentive or pressure that could get people to police themselves. The cost had to come from the usefulness of what was under control, including slaves, servants, and what could be sacrificed in animal husbandry. That cost is allowed for the powerful perpetrator to survive, provide atonement, and appease the aggrieved, without the accountability to fall on their shoulders alone. “The sacrificial animals were always those most prized for their usefulness: the gentlest, most innocent creatures, whose habits and instincts brought them most closely into harmony with man…From the animal realm were chosen as victims those who were, if we might use the phrase, the most human in nature…Society is seeking to deflect upon a relatively indifferent victim, a ‘sacrificeable’ victim, the violence that would otherwise be vented on its own members, the people it most desires to protect…In a general study of sacrifice there is little reason to differentiate between human and animal victims. When the principle of the substitution is physical resemblance between the vicarious victim and its prototypes, the mere fact that both victims are human beings seems to suffice. Thus, it is hardly surprising that in some societies whole categories of human beings are systematically reserved for sacrificial purposes in order to protect other categories…This dividing of sacrifice into two categories, human and animal, has itself a sacrificial character, in a strictly ritualistic sense. The division is based in effect on a value judgement: on the preconception that one category of victim—the human being—is quite unsuitable for sacrificial purposes, while another category—the animal—is eminently sacrificeable.” When animal sacrifices are not considered enough, humans will do, and it was especially the least powerfully connected humans in ancient society, and Girard included outsiders, and outliers who were given power for a time to guide the village, until a revolution was necessary to dislodge them in a crisis. “It includes prisoners of war, slaves, small children, unmarried adolescents, and the handicapped; it ranges from the very dregs of society, such as the Greek pharmakos, to the king himself.”
The Wicker Man (1973) sacrifice scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRKaAiBy-Go
The Pharmakos was a Greek form of purification for a community or a city where targets were exiled or killed when a disaster occurred, such as a famine, invasion, or plague. “In Athens, for example, a man and a woman who were considered ugly were selected as scapegoats each year. At the festival of the Thargelia in May or June, they were feasted, led round the town, beaten with green twigs, and driven out or killed with stones. The practice in Colophon, on the coast of Asia Minor (the part of modern Turkey that lies in Asia) was described by the 6th-century-BC poet Hipponax (fragments 5–11). An especially ugly man was honoured by the community with a feast of figs, barley soup, and cheese. Then he was whipped with fig branches, with care that he was hit seven times on his phallus, before being driven out of town. (Medieval sources said that the Colophonian pharmākos was burned and his ashes scattered in the sea.) The custom was meant to rid the place annually of ill luck.” Even more famous for the Greeks was Socrates who led a poor life, to the anger of his wife, and was accused of being a bad influence on the youth of Athens. His sentence was to drink hemlock, which he did to keep philosophical consistency.
Pharmakos – Encyclopedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/pharmakos
When there is blame for a poor harvest or some other incompetence, as long as people are powerful enough to retaliate, they become less of a target. Those who are not considered “essential” to the economy are prime targets, to borrow from Schindler’s List. Girard used Euripides’ Medea, as an example of social power coalescing on a scapegoat through mutual interest. The desperate need to vent speeds up the process of scapegoating because of the immediate pain and desire to feel relief as soon as possible. “‘I am sure her anger will not subside until it has found a victim. Let us pray that the victim is at least one of our enemies!’…The classic literature of China explicitly acknowledges the propitiatory function of sacrificial rites. Such practices ‘pacify the country and make the people settled…It is through the sacrifices that the unity of the people is strengthened.’ The Book of Rites affirms that sacrificial ceremonies, music, punishments, and laws have one and the same end: to unite society and establish order…The role of sacrifice is to stem this rising tide of indiscriminate substitutions and redirect violence into ‘proper’ channels’…What we are dealing with, therefore, are exterior or marginal individuals, incapable of establishing or sharing the social bonds that link the rest of the inhabitants. Their status as foreigners or enemies, their servile condition, or simply their age prevents these future victims from fully integrating themselves into the community.”
Essential Workers – Schindler’s List: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDo6eHyeI8E
NY Gov. Cuomo: ‘You want to go to work? Go take a job as an essential worker.’ | ABC News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biorRAQJhH8
Through myth-making and gaslighting, narratives are used to placate the populace or to distract them. “Sacrificial substitution implies a degree of misunderstanding. Its vitality as an institution depends on its ability to conceal the displacement upon which the rite is based. It must never lose sight entirely, however, of the original object, or cease to be aware of the act of transference from that object to the surrogate victim; without that awareness no substitution can take place and the sacrifice loses all efficacy…The theological basis of the sacrifice has a crucial role in fostering this misunderstanding. It is the god who supposedly demands the victims; he alone, in principle, who savors the smoke from the altars and requisitions the slaughtered flesh. It is to appease his anger that the killing goes on, that the victims multiply…Godfrey Lienhardt (in Divinity and Experience) and Victor Turner (in a number of works, especially The Drums of Affliction), drawing from fieldwork, portray sacrifice as practiced among the Dinka and the Ndembu as a deliberate act of collective substitution performed at the expense of the victim and absorbing all the internal tensions, feuds, and rivalries pent up within the community…The sacrifice serves to protect the entire community from its own violence; it prompts the entire community to choose victims outside itself. The elements of dissension scattered throughout the community are drawn to the person of the sacrificial victim and eliminated, at least temporarily, by its sacrifice…This common denominator is internal violence—all the dissensions, rivalries, jealousies, and quarrels within the community that the sacrifices are designed to suppress. The purpose of the sacrifice is to restore harmony to the community, to reinforce the social fabric…But what about the king? Is he not at the very heart of the community? Undoubtedly—but it is precisely his position at the center that serves to isolate him from his fellow men, to render him casteless. He escapes from society, so to speak, via the roof, just as the pharmakos escapes through the cellar. The king has a sort of foil, however, in the person of his fool. The fool shares his master’s status as an outsider—an isolation whose literal truth is often of greater significance than the easily reversible svmbolic values often attributed to it. From every point of view the fool is eminently ‘sacrificeable,’ and the king can use him to vent his own anger. But it sometimes happens that the king himself is sacrificed…” A good example of rulers being scapegoated is the ancient Chinese Mandate of Heaven when poverty or natural disasters lead to an overthrow.
These internal struggles involve the usual blame for incompetence and powerful jockeying to exact punishment with deflected results. “When men no longer live in harmony with one another, the sun still shines and the rain falls, to be sure, but the fields are less well tended, the harvests less abundant.” We get idioms like “don’t kill the messenger” that communicate that fear of becoming a scapegoat, because “all our sacrificial victims, whether chosen from one of the human categories enumerated above or, a fortiori, from the animal realm, are invariably distinguishable from the non-sacrificeable beings by one essential characteristic: between these victims and the community a crucial social link is missing, so they can be exposed to violence without fear of reprisal. Their death does not automatically entail an act of vengeance…The desire to commit an act of violence on those near us cannot be suppressed without a conflict; we must divert that impulse, therefore, toward the sacrificial victim, the creature we can strike down without fear of reprisal, since he lacks a champion.” This sends a telepathic message to all people to seek power precisely to avoid this calamity. All these ideas of stability in modern political structures are all about evaluating if there are enough checks and balances in a society to maintain an equal application of the rule of law. Maxims like “peace through strength” also illuminate the reality that if you want peace you have to be able to defend it. By appearing strong to others, attempts at criminality tend to evaporate before they start. Weakness invites scapegoating.
With inaccurate forms of revenge, through adventurism, perpetrating, and scapegoating, it can turn into the criticism against the “eye for an eye” maxim, even though that maxim hints that truly guilty people should pay for their actions in one form or another. The problem is when justice is inaccurate. “Why does the spirit of revenge, wherever it breaks out, constitute such an intolerable menace? Perhaps because the only satisfactory revenge for spilt blood is spilling the blood of the killer; and in the blood feud there is no clear distinction between the act for which the killer is being punished and the punishment itself. Vengeance professes to be an act of reprisal, and every reprisal calls for another reprisal. The crime to which the act of vengeance addresses itself is almost never an unprecedented offense; in almost every case it has been committed in revenge for some prior crime.” As long as one side claims an entitlement for its adventurism, for example birthrights, rights conferred from God, cultural values of importance, etc., the ball gets rolling and those who are victims will make a claim based on victimhood and then a series of reprisals continue ad infinitum. A society with a weak justice system simply reverts to these messy scenarios of trials by combat, religious sacrifices, blame-shifting, and endless rounds of innocent people baring the brunt for the powerful and their scandals. “To make a victim out of the guilty party is to play vengeance’s role, to submit to the demands of violence. By killing, not the murderer himself, but someone close to him, an act of perfect reciprocity is avoided and the necessity for revenge by-passed. If the counterviolence were inflicted on the aggressor himself, it would by this very act participate in, and become indistinguishable from, the original act of violence. In short, it would become an act of pure vengeance, requiring yet another act of vengeance and transforming itself into the very thing it was designed to prevent…Only violence can put an end to violence, and that is why violence is self-propagating. Everyone wants to strike the last blow, and reprisal can thus follow reprisal without any true conclusion ever being reached.” Scapegoating provides a way to accept a cost by killing an innocent person, which is the same as the original killing of an innocent person in historical record. It also acknowledges that the true killer is still dangerous and their strength is a deterrent for accurate justice. When the violence ceases for a period of time, after an efficacious scapegoating, that peace is revered and made into myth-making as well as a posthumous appreciation for the scapegoat that provided that peace.
Topsy-Turvy – The Mikado – Timothy Spall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbE0wZaXiLI
“We owe our good fortune to one of our social institutions above all: our judicial system, which serves to deflect the menace of vengeance. The system does not suppress vengeance; rather, it effectively limits it to a single act of reprisal, enacted by a sovereign authority specializing in this particular function. The decisions of the judiciary are invariably presented as the final word on vengeance.” If you add confusion onto who is responsible, like seen in crowds and mobs, it becomes easier and easier to see how one can hide culpability in a group and deflect accurate justice, because there are no processes for investigation and discovery. “Collective responsibility never specifically excludes the true culprit, and that is precisely what is being done here. Even if this exclusion is not clearly spelled out, there is sufficient evidence for us to assume that in many instances the true culprit is systematically spared. As a cultural attitude, this certainly demands attention…There is no universal rule for quelling violence, no principle of guaranteed effectiveness. At times all the remedies, harsh as well as gentle, seem efficacious; at other times, every measure seems to heighten the fever it is striving to abate.” This strikes home the very importance of an impartial judicial system. When it is corrupted, the old system begins it’s return. There are “…those that possess a ‘central authority,’ and those that do not…This group [in authority] confronts the other group in the same way that a sovereign state confronts the outside world. There can be no true ‘administering of justice,’ no judicial system without a superior tribunal capable of arbitrating between even the most powerful groups. Only that superior tribunal can remove the possibility of blood feud or perpetual vendetta…As long as there exists no sovereign and independent body capable of taking the place of the injured party and taking upon itself the responsibility for revenge, the danger of interminable escalation remains.” This is key in that those who are in the powerless category must have access to a powerful defense to prevent rampant scapegoating.
Many examples of how scapegoating can arise are described in the law profession and law publications:
- Anonymous accusations with no ability to corroborate the claims. Eg. Anonymous media leaks. Gossip.
- Conflation of individuals who are in a group or category to predict behavior, and to also label a social movement as wholly evil based on a few bad apples.
- Accusing innocent people to avoid punishment, which is made easier if the scapegoat has been guilty of other things in the past. Eg. Attributing murders to an already convicted murderer. This can also be done in the reverse depending on the actual evidence. A murderer could take their undetected crimes and blame them on someone else.
- Using incidents that resemble a current social issue of victimhood, but when a closer look is taken, it’s found to not be the case. These incidents can be used to advance a social political agenda.
- Revenge scapegoating in response to prior scapegoating.
- Associating different lifestyles as deviant as a way to claim more resources and opportunities for oneself. Eg. The entitlement of a “pillar of the community” or political leader.
- Using dubious measures of self-sacrifice as a way to claim more resources and opportunities for oneself.
- Passing off personal expenses onto corporations, shareholders, or taxpayers.
The Temptations of Scapegoating – Daniel B. Yeager: https://www.law.georgetown.edu/american-criminal-law-review/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/2019/06/56-4-The-temptations-of-scapegoating.pdf
How these substitutions are successfully achieved are often through skilled gaslighting, as described above, and or undetected projection.
Projection
Psychological projection is a very complex topic that is often badly explained because it’s a catch-all term for many different phenomenon. If you are a successful person or are trying to rise in a social hierarchy, it’s impossible to do that without experiencing the projections of others. A lot of the common projections you find in politics today involves a normalization of corruption and moral inventories. If enough people are so corrupt, it’s easy to accuse others of what you’re guilty of, because you may be right. Some of the projection is more unconscious and has been studied in dreams in Psychoanalysis and Analytical Psychology. Marie Von Franz saw more globally that “wherever known reality stops, where we touch the unknown, there we project an archetypal image.” That image could be a good guy or bad guy. Typically, the bad guy is always the one who interferes with our goals, even if we are the criminal and the police are trying to stop us. The good guy is often an idol to be inspired by and given outsized expectations. Through moral inventories, our weaknesses, mistakes, and faults can be well known to us and become the material we use to accuse others, especially if we have a cynical worldview that assumes everyone is the same way. Carl Jung was also aware of how this could happen in therapy when the unknown for a patient has the blanks filled in by the therapist. When extended outside of therapy the example could be an “assumption that what the [onlooker] perceives or thinks is equally perceived or thought by the [recognized.]” Projection can also happen where there is a lack of understanding for real personal human struggles, through a lack of experience, and people mistakenly assume who they are judging are more unique that they actually are. The typical hypocrisy, as pointed in the Bible by Jesus, is when one is looking at a speck of dirt in another’s eye while ignoring the plank of wood in their own. When one wants to do a moral inventory against someone else, most therapists agree that it’s best to start with oneself before moving forward.
In the view of Jung’s Shadow, which is the collection of all the weak parts of our personalities, that territory is often tender when there is a humiliating comparison with people who are better than us in these exact areas. There is a threat that they can be critical of us at any moment and we may lose our status and resources. They often appear like the bad guy, trigger defenses motivated to start moral inventories, and because the accused is more skilled or intelligent, and therefore hard to understand, we make assumptions based on what we know, which is all about us and our weaknesses. There’s also a danger of annihilation because critical people who threaten resources, also threaten the well-being of the self. It’s like a psychological murder attempt. You feel unconsciously like they are trying to kill you and you unconsciously harbor feelings for their demise. This means a reformer of a system will look extreme and scary, because one doesn’t know where one will find another angle for survival. Like anyone looking for a new job, it’s a stressful process.
Dreams also can provide symbols that can be interpreted outwardly towards predictions of the future, or they can be a displacement of internal struggles that are now symbolically appearing externally. The unconscious can be confusing in this way because thoughts in a meditation, or dreams in sleep, can just appear out of a nothing and they can already be fully formed projections and unrecognized as being so. For example, a person dying of a terminal disease starts to predict the end of the world, which is really a projection of the ending of their world. Jung felt that politics was an area where projection was common. “If people observe their own unconscious tendencies in other people, this is called a ‘projection.'” Politics is full of individual ambitions tied to the ambitions of political groups and leaders. Threats of reform, revolution, and counter-revolution can easily spark a wave of projection. The confusion happens when we don’t ask the questions about our own dreams and symbols that appear in sleep or meditation. You can illuminate the situation by asking “are these symbols or ideas about the conflicts in my life? Would I feel better if others were proven guilty as I predicted? Does it feel better because those who I accuse are now seen as broken as I am?” When there is a lot of blame to go around, one way to escape the projections is to face all the problems of one’s life truthfully and go through the process of self-correction. Once the self-correction is complete, is the blame for others still there? Is there more forgiveness? In some cases, the blame is justified because the evidence is glaring, but when the evidence is not there and there’s no searching for evidence, it is likely a projection from a culture bound understanding of the world or a playing out of internal conflicts.
With projective identification, it goes even further where a person has an agenda with a narrative that will make themselves feel better and they have opportunities to brainwash a suggestible person who is open to introject, imitate, and identify with the new view. Connecting the psychology of victimhood and Girard’s scapegoating, you can see examples in children or powerless people, who need resources from the powerful and they introject blame as a way to maintain survival along with other behaviors as found in Stockholm Syndrome, where there is real guilt taken on with the identification. You may stay alive longer in a kidnapping if you help the kidnapper for a period of time, but the cost of that is when you survive, you survive with guilt because you helped them. Other examples are when people adopt a worldview that others want them to have, to serve their agendas. This can be from a personal intimate point of view in a seduction, all the way up to religious or political agendas. Everyone on Earth more or less projects some of the time because it’s tiring to do reality tests, or we are totally convinced of our point of view in one subject or another.
The need to blame to improve self-esteem is a clear demarcation between an honest prediction and an agenda. Blaming because there is an external reality and responsibility required, is less of a projection precisely because of the facts and reality involved. Also we sometimes criticize others because we are conscious of our mistakes and learned a lesson but can see that many other people are stuck where we were. Where it starts looking like an unconscious projection is when there’s a holier-than-thou attitude to feel superior to elevate self-esteem. Why was there a low self-esteem in the first place that needed such a boost? A search for content in the mind that is creating feelings of low self-esteem can be a key to a projection that was unconscious. If there’s wounding because others are superior in one arena of life or another, and if their downfall would make us feel better, it can numb the pain of having to face unpleasant facts about ourselves and the changes we need to make. Those projections also stay unconscious as long as the person avoids facing self-development. Projections can be recognized and forgotten because it’s more comfortable to avoid change.
Milli Vanilli – Blame It On the Rain: https://youtu.be/BI5IA8assfk?si=DVkSZh8UeClQcQHT
How a Botched Bank Heist Created ‘Stockholm Syndrome’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYsGbvrmr68
From the point of view of Carl Jung and Analytical Psychology, projection is an unconscious process of “…projecting our own psychology into our fellow human beings. In this way everyone creates for himself a series of more or less imaginary relationships based essentially on projection…In these imaginary relationships the other person becomes an image or a carrier of symbols.” Marie Louise Von Franz used an example of childhood play and how children playing with dolls are making associations that don’t belong to the inanimate object. This primitive layer continues on into adulthood unconsciously, but for her it’s only when projections have become problematic do we have something worth investigating. “The archaic identity of subject and object, which is the basis of the phenomenon of projection, persists subliminally, even in highly cultivated men and women. In the unconscious the inner world and the outer world are not differentiated. Only that which has become a content of consciousness is described as an inner or outer phenomenon, that is, either than an introspectively perceived condition, like a welling up of an emotion, or as an ‘outer’ event or object. Everything else, of which we are not conscious, remains, as before, an undifferentiated part of the occurrences of life.” When there is finally an investigation this is “…only when we gain enough insight to see that they are imagos of peculiarities that are part of our own makeup; otherwise we are naïvely convinced that these peculiarities belong to the object.” Because dreams and thoughts appear out of the unconscious fully formed, it’s the lack of questioning that leads to the projection being undetected. When people are walking around with their worldview, the gaps in knowledge provide an opening for the “…archaic identity of subject and object…Whenever it prevails, the unconscious is merged with the outer world.” Through awareness and meditation of mental content there can be a “…complete and final detachment…when the imago that mirrored itself in the object is restored, together with its meaning, to the subject. This restoration is achieved through conscious recognition of the projected content, that is, by acknowledging the ‘symbolic value’ of the object.” The gap in knowledge is one way to catch a projection but also when there is a distorted label applied to the world. “Exaggeration indicates, in most cases, an interpretation on the subjective level.”
Because projection is an “…involuntary process…” full of “…dreams, waking fantasies, and mythological traditions,” energy is wasted on error and judgment. “An inner mental image, the object-imago, must be recognized as an inner factor; this is the only way in which the value or the energy invested in the image can flow back to the individual, who has need of [this energy] for his development…The presence or absence of an exaggeration, however, can often be determined only through a feeling evaluation, which in dream interpretation demands a high degree of sensitivity to nuance and atmosphere. It is, moreover, important to differentiate, as Jung emphasizes, between a quality or property that is really present in the object and the value or meaning this object possesses for the dreamer, that is, for the energy invested in the assessment.” Energy of course is wasted when there is a negative criticism connected with the anger and stress. If one is interested in real success in the world, a projection-meditation can be a way to save energy for self-development. One can ask “Why was the judgment inaccurate? Does it have to do with my self-development? Are there any wishes embedded related to self-esteem and comparison? Is there an agenda I want to force on the object?” The energetic body language and countenance sets off a countertransference in the person being judged with a back and forth between two or more projecting people. This understanding can also help therapists who don’t have the routine of questioning their symbols, or they don’t have a regular therapist of their own.
Jung’s method was always about self-development and he saw how both negative and positive projections could suppress areas of the personality in most need of development. “…Everyone tends to project their less-preferred functions onto others. Unconscious dislike of a [skill] often leads to conflict with those for whom the [skill] is prominent in the personality. Negative projections are a way of denying our own deficits, and thus they keep us blind to ourselves and others, but idealizing projections may be even worse, since they externalize positive attributes, deluding us into thinking we do not have the assets that others have…Our judgments against others’ personalities suppress parts of our own minds. These ‘inner conflicts’ always erupt in disturbances of our inner peace.” Carol Shumate of Projection and Personality Development via the Eight-Function Model, concurs. “The goal of Jung’s system was to help individuals avoid becoming self-fulfilling prophecies based on their early preferences.” Another question is to look at those we idolize and see if there are any inferior feelings when we look at their abilities. We should ask if it’s really true that we can’t develop skills in the same direction. Certainly the therapeutic effect would arise if weak skills were successfully developed. The concern would evaporate as people get used to operating at a higher level.
From the psychoanalytic point of view, there’s also a question of weakened ego boundaries where children were not able to develop a sense of inside and outside, much like the above examples of conscious boundaries and unconscious boundarylessness. There’s a “…tendency to search for an outside cause rather than an internal one…” There’s a selective focus based on a worldview and then a desire for relief. Freud surmised that “whenever an internal change occurs, we can choose whether we shall attribute it to an internal or external cause. If something deters us from accepting an internal origin, we naturally seize upon an external one.” There are several theories as to why, including a desire for purity in the ideal self. If we feel that any of our own behavior tarnishes the ideal self-image, or ego-ideal, that feeling can manifest as a form of self-hatred that looks for an influence to blame, to find relief from the tension. Again, this can be accurate if you were young and copied bad behaviors from parents or culture, and now as an adult you have rejected those influences, but there can be a hunting mentality to attack societal influences, and again there can be scapegoats if the perpetrator from long ago is inaccessible. If there’s enough unconsciousness, what Freud called a pre-conscious, a person could also partially forget their past purity-tainting behavior but still make a mistake in their guess of another person, because the content was conscious enough to be a form of knowledge to draw upon, but not conscious enough to be a form of self-reflection.
It’s common for people to find internal conflicts that they struggle with and assume others are in the same situation. Many examples include anything related to identity, like sexual orientation, political affiliations, ethnic values, and internal religious conflicts. For example, a bisexual could hate their homosexual self and start attacking others for being openly homosexual. You could then apply this to struggles over deep seeded values. Another example would be a person who is now unsure of what they believe, in terms of having adopted a toxic worldview in the past, and then they could look for social influences to blame. This gets more pernicious when you look at pleasure. Many points of view, identities, and values, all contain pleasure at different levels of intensity and they can violate boundaries of others with varying levels of damage. The anger at bad influences increases as people fail to accept the the dark side of their personality. Drawbacks to pleasures don’t change the fact that one CAN get pleasure in many different ways that can hurt oneself or others. When someone realizes that their pleasure can be replaced by subjectively “better” pleasures, a therapeutic method can be to ACCEPT that one can have lower pleasures and one has simply developed into something more peaceful or longer-lasting. These identities relating to anything addictive can be a mire to be stuck in when there’s an obsession over purity.
The problem is time and identity. If you were impure in the past that means you can’t ever be pure no matter what you do. You can blame other people. You can attack yourself, but you’re still a person with potentials for being impure. This projective exaggeration is called splitting in psychoanalysis and one can do that to oneself if one can only love oneself if one is pure. To accept impurity can be moral if people are also accepting of drawbacks to desires and are moving on to better pastures. It becomes pathological if people feel they can ONLY experience pleasure in certain situations. It takes a lot of mistakes, that many don’t want to experience for practical reasons, to learn about the limits of one’s pleasure template, and unfortunately many take their childhood history and solidify it into a self-belief that prevents new healthier experiences of pleasure. Carl Jung said this about about how to deal with counter-transference when patients are judged harshly by their professionals that “if the doctor wishes to help a human being, he must be able to accept him as he is, and he can do this in reality only when he has already seen and accepted himself as he is.” The advantage of acknowledging your dark side is that what is conscious can be targeted for control. People who say they are pure may not actually know themselves that well and may act on the slightest temptation to the surprise of everyone around them including themselves. Learning for many people requires a lot of feeling and experience. Abstract knowledge may be accurate but it may also be sterile and not provide enough of a deterrence for bad behavior because of the possibility that one can get intense pleasure from something damaging. Any attempts to teach younger people may require more admission that something bad, like a drug habit, can include incredible pleasure along with the risks of wrong doses and adulterations. There needs to be an impure identity, which matches common humanity, so that exploring improved behaviors becomes possible. Rigid identities lead to hypocrisy and they can demotivate change as a way to defend the all-or-nothing identity.
Carl Jung – Ending Your Inner Civil War (read by Alan Watts): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15pjQRA80bs
90s Ravers Gurning On Ecstasy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfWBd9Eg3rI
Discotheque – U2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpvF7Qq9svk
It’s been a perennial criticism of psychoanalysis in how it is hard to test for projection, but some tests have been done on how obsessive thinking can lead to projection. Deep wounds, shameful mistakes, and past addictions can be chewed on in the mind for long periods of time, swallowed with suppression, but then regurgitated when there are reminders in the environment. In A new look at defense projection, researchers found that “people dislike certain traits and are particularly loath to believe that they themselves have such traits. It is also clear that they seek to deny some of their faults and to suppress thoughts about evidence that paints them in certain dark colors…Cognitive suppression of unwanted self-knowledge may have an unintended side effect: It may lead thoughts about the problematic personality trait to rebound and become chronically accessible…The level of discrepancy between the undesired self and one’s actual self-concept can be an important predictor of life satisfaction.”
Almost all life choices involve some compromise and when weighing choices it’s usually not so black and white. One of the modern illnesses is attributing too much to identity, but when one looks closely, identity is shifting all the time according to priority. If your priority is to send an e-mail, you’re an e-mailer right now, but as soon as the priority changes on the list you’re something else. In Identity and Identification, a case study illuminated the variety one finds and all the trial and error searches people engage in when they have to adapt to the economy and changes in the world. Identity is compartmentalized. Different lifestyles and ways of living, especially if you live in a multi-cultural society, can broaden horizons of what’s possible and allow people to experiment and change lifestyles. To the question Who Are You?, Mark Walport responded: “It depends on the circumstances. That’s what’s very interesting about identity. So, talking to you now, I’m the Director of the Wellcome Trust, but at home I’m a husband and father. On Flickr, I’m someone else, and so on. In all sorts of different circumstances, we’re slightly different people.” Then when you add age and experience, complexity accrues in the character of the person. After a lot of trial and error, certain preferences become more solid and many others may have fallen away due to obsolescence, boredom, or an acute awareness of drawbacks. Keeping a flexible attitude of learning and development weakens rigid judgments about purity of character. The safety one finds in boundaries is enjoying a life where the enjoyments already include those healthy boundaries. The need for purity can rest.
Case Studies: The ‘Wolfman’ (3/3) – Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gulsf-case-studies-the-wolfman-33-freud-and-beyond.html
Unfortunately, so many people will not read psychology with any real depth and they are going to be stuck with inflexible thoughts and they will project on the environment with an intense need to control. With projective identification people as well as the environment are manipulated to conform to the personal worldview that allows for relief. There’s a “…manipulation of the external object in order to make it comply with what the subject is attempting to externalize.” This makes the job of a therapist dealing with these ego disordered patients more difficult. Warren Brodey in, The Dynamics of Narcissism, described that selection process. “Projection is combined with the manipulation of reality selected for the purpose of verifying the projection. Reality that cannot be used to verify the projection is not perceived [because it’s about the selection]. Information known by the externalizing person but beyond the perception of the others [in the family] is not transmitted to these others except as it is useful to train or manipulate them into validating what will then become the realization of the projection…The identity that the patient sees may be unknown to the therapist (although it holds a kernel of truth, which is usually disturbing to the therapist). The therapist’s active denial of the patient’s presumption may serve as confirmation of the as-if identity, particularly because the patient, constricted to his own externalized image, does not perceive the context of the other characteristics.” Truth is used in projection, as Von Franz quoted Jung, who spoke of “a ‘hook’ in the object on which one hangs a projection as one hangs a coat on a coat hook.” Therapists are treated like a coat hanger and all the realistic details about their life can be a form of brainwashing if not careful.
Brodey then expanded on the Narcissus parable and the lack of separation between the subject and the reflection in the water due to pathological parenting, with the distorted rewards and punishments, that didn’t allow for boundaries between self and other for the child. A narcissist in therapy could easily take personal any perceived slights coming from the therapist as a form of self-injury while at the same time project one’s content into the therapist. No boundaries. “Consider again Narcissus and his reflection: the not-self that is set at a distance for relationship exists only as a relocation of a part of ‘I.’ The reflected image of Narcissus has no separate existence. It is perceived outside of the self but is continuous with the self; it owes its existence to the primary self image rather than to the transfer of energy to the perception (or misperception) of an existent other. The existent child is not libidinized. He is responded to by his mother as an as-if child—that is, responded to only when he validates his mother’s projection.” This tethering of the sense of self to authoritative people is a developmental trap that predicts a de-centering of the personality in the child preventing further independence. Brodey quoted Deutsch: “When a distanced self-reflection is [emotionally invested in] as an existent other, this is delusion.” Like a puppet the child is stuck in a limited world partially separated from reality. “The image in the pool, having no separate existence, is wholly governed by expectation and can never be spontaneous. It can give nothing…This makes the work with ego-disordered children technically more difficult. The child patterned to the mother’s expectations will not easily relate to a therapist who rejects these…The pseudo ego is that organization which validates the parental projection. It is [emotionally invested in] energy that aims to prevent abandonment and the threat of its own dissolution…The child’s reality and his mode of organizing reality are altered. An identity grows that is unsupported from within.”
As the child grows older and looks to find gratification in the adult world, the desperation to find objects to be pseudo-parents and objects to challenge for domination leads to bewildered victims. Anthony Hopkins in an interview described the feeling of talking with someone who could manipulate your attention span. “I met a madman who was on the loose in London, and that’s pretty scary. I had coffee with him one day. I realized how nuts he was. He never blinked. He kept asking me questions and before you could answer he would ask me another one and another one. In the end it made you feel so that you were in a different reality.”
Anthony Hopkins Reveals Why He Didn’t Blink While Playing Hannibal | The Dick Cavett Show: https://youtu.be/rkh-bOujn40?si=D3KA9GF5fHPHVb2C
Going further than psychology patients, many psychoanalytic books talk about projection being common in the world of politics, but the reality is that so many people who use these tactics are not entirely unconscious of their effect. They find political rewards in the real world and those rewards guide them to be more strategic with their messaging. This is especially true for those who want to destabilize societies. They have a conscious agenda that is unpopular and it will only work if it is unconscious in their targets.
Accusation In A Mirror
The most relevant example of projection in politics was covered in the paper Accusation in a Mirror, by Kenneth L. Marcus, and he explained the conscious awareness of these tactics, the strategies involved, and their aims. “Accusation In A Mirror (AiM) is a rhetorical practice in which one falsely accuses one’s enemies of conducting, plotting, or desiring to commit precisely the same transgressions that one plans to commit against them…AiM has historically been an almost invariable harbinger of genocide. [It] has been commonly used in atrocities committed by Nazis, Serbs, and Hutus, among others. This is a peculiar feature, not of genocide, but of AiM since non-genocidal forms of AiM have also been ubiquitous with respect to other forms of persecution.”
For many people, they can see a projection of this enormity if they pay attention to politics and watch news stories unfold with continuity, but what about people who aren’t political junkies and are busy with their lives? Marcus described this odd strategy and how it can work with people who are unconscious of the motives. They all steer a population into a fear state where the only response is to be pre-emptive, which is ultimately an incitement for one side and a chilling effect on the targets. The goals are “…to shock, to silence, to threaten, to insulate, and, finally, to motivate or incite…[and] do unto others as they would do unto you…”
Leon Mugesera sentenced to life for ‘inciting’ genocide in Rwanda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABrVyinrD8s
The stigma surrounding Christine Anderson – True North: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ETB-y_FKds
Hillary Clinton Says Trump Poses Danger to America’s Democracy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ-N0dHJAaE
Clinton calls for ‘deprogramming’ of MAGA ‘cult members’: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DH3SgIY7S5A
Tucker Carlson – “Always trust your gut.” – https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1727090631850492257
Brace Yourself For What’s Coming in 2024 – Victor Davis Hanson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V6jH-6F6K0&t=630s
When AiM is first used the first effect that is intended is to shock. “No one tells Holocaust survivors—or a nation of Holocaust survivors and their children—that they are Nazis without expecting to shock. The same can be said of the inversive accusations leveled at Bosnians, Tutsis, and Copts.” As mentioned on prior episodes where Social Psychologist Susan Fiske was quoted, there’s an inherent trust in accusations in that people believe that they must be true, otherwise why would they lie? The target then is afraid that there will be a confirmation of guilt if there’s a strong response to the unjust accusation, meaning the strength of the response becomes a confirmation of the accusation. Silence follows because the targets are “…afraid of seeming too powerful.” The freezing of any response to the outrage is also a threat of being disciplined. “…Ascription of guilt carries with it the threat of punishment.” As the freezing continues, the outrage of the false accusation can insulate because it is treated as a legitimate accusation. Kenneth described how “holocaust inversion has been protected from normal anti-discrimination enforcement by its ability to replicate or mimic the tropes of a dissident political discourse.” AiM at this point can swirl around without too much violence until the perpetrators are able to legitimize their arguments. The difficulty is to be able to manufacture a danger to the population that Aim needs for incitement. False flags need to operate where people who are on the side of AiM dress up as the targets and they say and approve those shocking comments to bring reality to the false pretenses. “With such a tactic, propagandists can persuade listeners and ‘honest people’ that they are being attacked and are justified in taking whatever measures are necessary ‘for legitimate self-defense.'” Something that is not in the paper, but could be easily inferred is the use of mentally ill people who can be incited much easier. If they can say those shocking things with ease, and even more, if they commit an act of violence, it can catch a population unawares and goad them towards pre-emptive attacks that are worse. “AiM is motivating or inciting. That is to say, AiM not only provides a reason or justification for aggression, as other less effective forms of incitement also do; more insidiously, it also communicates to the listener that it is necessary to attack another group in order to avoid having the same fate visited upon one’s own community…Other rhetorical techniques such as demonization can make mass-murder seem acceptable, but AiM makes it appear necessary.”
Biden delivers address outside Independence Hall on ‘extremist threat to democracy’: https://www.youtube.com/live/XC-k-lhml4o?si=a96yknsZ44SGxhZF
Naomi Wolf: Joe Biden Demonized Almost Half Of The American Nation With Speech Meant For Unity: https://rumble.com/v1iklcj-naomi-wolf-joe-biden-demonized-almost-half-of-the-american-nation-with-spee.html
Laura Loomer uncovers Massive Conspiracy: Nazi Terrorists being Protected by FBI & CIA – InfoWars: https://rumble.com/v3gp88q-laura-loomer-uncovers-massive-conspiracy-nazi-terrorists-being-protected-by.html
Joe Rogan’s Opinion On Patriot Front: “You Ever Seen Anything That Looks More Like Feds?”: https://rumble.com/v188ksx-joe-rogans-opinion-on-patriot-front-you-ever-seen-anything-that-looks-more-.html
A New Development in the Gretchen Whitmer Kidnapping Trial: https://rumble.com/v3hzmfa-a-new-development-in-the-gretchen-whitmer-kidnapping-trial.html
Why politicians, the military, governments, businesses, or even gangsters want to use any of these techniques is because they all want a monopoly of one kind or another, which is their idea of success. All the manipulation and bullying that one finds in school extends into the adult world. Corrupt people are always looking for an angle, and the unaware, the distracted, or the busy, don’t know what’s happening until their dreams start to shatter. Now that we have moved from the ancient past to recent history it’s time to face modern politics of power and money to see how it can chase you down, even when you are living life inconspicuously.
Psycho-Political-Economics
“It’s Friday and I’m mad as fuck…When was America ever great? Did you all forget that underneath my President Donald Trump we were the biggest producer of crude oil in the fucking world and now we ain’t got no gas four months later are y’all serious?
Anybody else need their fucking Trump back? When was America ever great? We had gas. We had electricity. We had jobs. We had food. Now we sitting at home with no gas, some people no electricity, no jobs, waiting for a stimulus check, waiting on the goddamn extra food stamps. What’s going on?
We wasn’t going through this shit for the last four years. We were winning, winning, winning, winning and all ya’ll sitting home being quiet and shit. Now somebody say something. Tell me why the fuck you support Joe Biden. Right now! Everybody want to get rid of fucking President Trump. What’s up?
Look at this goofy ass shit. People ain’t got shit to say no more, just sitting around like sheep, goofy ass sheep. All they can do is wait. All they can do is wait. All they can do is fucking wait. The Democrats tell us that they got a Green New Deal for 2030. You ain’t got no fucking plans for everything to run off electricity in 10 years. You DO got a plan to fuck up everything within the next 10 years.
I want my goddamn Trump back…Everybody had a lot to say when Trump was in the White House. Ain’t anybody got shit to say with this fucking old ass bum in there. Fucking about fucking country fucking up the economy. These motherfuckers projected that we gonna have a million new jobs, two hundred thousand new jobs, and where the fuck are they at? Probably two hundred thousand illegal immigrants that you motherfuckers proud about the border got new jobs, but we don’t. We hurting in America!
Everybody quiet as shit! Where the fuck are the Joe Biden supporters? I can tell ya’ll why I support Trump. Tell me why ya’ll support this motherfucker? Ain’t doing shit but fucking us up everyday, fucking us up…
When was America ever great? I guarantee you motherfuckers could wish you could go back to the day that Donald Trump won. That was a good fucking day. You might was mad in your fucking mind but I bet your ass was on the way to work. I bet you was on your fucking way to work. I bet you weren’t standing at a fucking gas station looking for gas. I bet you wasn’t waiting for a fucking stimulus check. I bet you weren’t waiting for an extra $300 on your fucking food stamps. I bet you!
I’m pissed! The people walking around anybody saying shit. Everybody had a lot of fucking energy when Trump was the fucking president, a lot of fucking energy. It was never their plan for Trump to win. For four years they’ve been brainwashing ya’ll to get rid of Trump so they could do what the fuck they want to do…
We right back to where we was four years ago! What part ya’ll don’t get? You made a mistake! You made a fucking mistake! ‘Get rid of Trump,’ stop Trump for what? We right back to where we was four years ago, drawing lines in the sand, people with motherfucking Russia, bombing the fucking Middle East. All types of kids coming across our fucking borders, all this shit to we’re trying to stop.
Can’t tell me shit better for you. You can’t tell me nothing is better for you underneath your body. Not nothing is better for you. You sitting at home waiting for more fucking money on your food stamps. You had $300 worth of food stamps and now you got $800 worth of stamps that the Democrats want your ass depended upon them. I want to go the fuck to work, well I’m at work, but I want my motherfucking peoples to go to work! This is fucking stupid!”
SemoreViews “I Want My Trump Back!”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdqxwWXqRkA
In the modern world, as in the past, conflicts don’t just appear out of nowhere. They come from people pursuing their self-interests and the interests of their family and friends. For example, in the micro you might witness nepotism and cronyism in your workplace. This can expand into alliances and cultures throughout governments and businesses and then spill over internationally. Summarizing from the René Girard chapter above, if you are in a weak position where you can’t retaliate in anyway or fight back, you tend to be scapegoated and any aggression can vent itself on those individuals or groups through scapegoating. Boring contract disputes can suddenly be not so boring when the consequences are different groups turning to resentment when left behind. In economics, money is a form of power that allows one to access resources and relieve the tension of poverty for extended periods of time. If tensions cannot be released and if emotions can’t be regulated, pathological behaviors ensue. Some people commit crimes, others turn to court systems, and if there are no laws that protect individuals, then gangsterism moves into the forefront, with politics being a legalized form of gangsterism. If all those avenues fail, especially if there is a violent incitement, war typically breaks out until a negotiation for peace can be arranged.
In the 21st century, economically there is still a 20th century hangover from the period after WWII, the rise of the United States, and then trade with Asia. Throughout this thread psychologically there is always one common denominator: People don’t like being disrespected. The area that is not so common is for people to give respect to others at the same level they demand for themselves. This all relates to power and as the tables turn, the actor parts may change, but the complaints don’t and are based on the same power differentials.
These cycles have been with us since the beginning of human awareness, as can be seen in the prior chapter on human ancestry. You can either produce what you need to consume, trade what you produced with others, or steal what you don’t have through violent means. In the modern world, violence and theft has typically been denounced and trade has been considered the adult way of distributing resources. You can imagine the complexity of Freudian psychoanalysis and how everyone is trading with everyone else to satisfy libido, or cravings, which is essentially an energy exchange. Cravings always return but the ability to produce for oneself may not always be reliable, with the predictable mental health results.
As these cycles have returned again and again, along with war and strife, many theories arose on how to deal with conflicts. Almost all the theories involve some satiation that has to happen in the mind. When I’m hungry and I eat, I am satisfied for a few hours, until the hunger returns. If there’s abundance there’s a risk for addiction, and when there’s poverty there can be a scarcity mindset and an escalating hostility. This is a tenuous balance where a people in an environment without social supports will want to save a lot of money, but then in order to earn a return they need to invest it in others, incurring a risk. As economies developed into the 20th century, tax and social support structures were developed from Marxist ideas as well as other older socialist ideas. Some countries went further with more centralized systems, but the fear of corruption has always hounded any centralized power scenario. The west settled for a solution where the government and the private sector negotiated repeatedly the different areas where it appeared that one side or another was best situated. Leaders in the private sector showed a distain for anything not related to the bottom line and they liked the simplicity of paying taxes so that others could deal with the homelessness, poverty, core social programs for education and healthcare, with cultural differences in each western country.
With the industrial revolution and the abundance that was offered for those who worked hard, some countries outperformed others. Some of this had to do with borders, domestic resources, and intellectual capital. Governments learned that if they didn’t kill the goose that laid the golden egg they could get more tax revenue from less than 50% taxes rather than greater than or 100% government ownership. Humans are generally reward oriented and rationing systems tend to be jealous and miserly. In environments like the latter, motivation to work reduces, and since money is simply a medium of exchange, to decrease the limitations inherent in a barter system, less production = less wealth. This was a big problem for the Soviet Union, and as it collapsed, there were many triumphant theories on how the way of the West would influence the rest of the developing world.
The main Communist country that avoided that fate was China. Being very close to a similar fate as the Soviets, as seen after the Tiananmen Square riots, the U.S. went in the direction of working with the government, much to the chagrin of freedom protestors in China who complained about government corruption. The students protesting the government had sympathy from leaders like Zhao Ziyang who was the most supportive of liberal reforms and a successor to Hu Yaobang who was also in favor of market reforms. Unfortunately Deng Xiaoping and other party members felt threatened by the power shift. Deng determined that “‘the entire imperialist Western world plans to make all socialist countries discard the socialist road and then bring them under the control of international monopoly capital and onto the capitalist road’; he stated further that if China did not up hold socialism then it would be turned into an appendage of the capitalist countries.” The protest crackdown led to thousands of casualties, but the total number of dead has been an ongoing controversy. In A World Transformed, Deng was explicitly admitting the desire to punish when he told the U.S. that “China will persist in punishing those instigators of the rebellion and its behind-the-scenes boss in accordance with Chinese laws. China will by no means waver in its resolution of this kind. Otherwise how can the PRC continue to exist?” The protest never got the support it needed to overthrow the Communist regime, and the rest is history.
When Globalism was born – Jack Posobiec: https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1608528342843592706
From George H.W. Bush, through Clinton and the younger Bush, China did liberalize the economy but not without protections for the political class. By the time China entered the World Trade Organization, they were given most-favored-nation status by the U.S. which allowed them to setup a mercantilist system where they were able to protect their markets while having access to western markets under a system of slave labor that tempted corporations and owners of capital to take advantage of the increased profits. The loss in jobs in the west was dubbed the China Trade Shock.
China Trade Shock: https://chinashock.info/
Since that time, many trade experts could not avoid noticing the changes, including former trade advisor to President Donald Trump, Robert Lighthizer. He grew up in an affluent manufacturing area in Ohio, but then saw the devastation since the North American Free Trade Agreement and China’s WTO inclusion. “We had lost millions of jobs and thousands of factories while wages had stagnated.” Despite the obvious destruction that was happening, there was not enough of a push to reverse what happened. “The political establishments of both the Republican and Democratic parties, under the influence of multinational corporations and importers, were unwilling or unable to recognize their mistakes. Instead, they remained convinced that rather than protect American workers and manufacturers, government policy had to put them at risk amid a quest to maximize corporate profits and economic efficiency while minimizing consumer prices.”
The difficulty of course is that cheap prices only matter when you have a good paying job. If you are displaced and have to renegotiate wages to a lower level, the result is that nothing is cheap. “While corporate profits soared for a select group of importers and retailers, many of America’s manufacturing companies were hollowed out—forced either into bankruptcy or into moving their factories abroad. And what about ordinary Americans? Though prices for some products declined, wage growth in this country has utterly stagnated since the 1980s—driven in large part by the decline of manufacturing sector employment. As a result, increasingly, working-class families must rely on two full-time incomes in lower-end service sector jobs to maintain the same quality of life one manufacturing sector income once provided. It is no exaggeration to say that American leaders traded the health of the US industrial base and the good-paying manufacturing jobs it supported for current consumption and little more.”
Lighthizer was a trade lawyer and he felt that a more nuanced view was required that looked at how skills are developed and the variety of jobs available. People have different personality types, different levels of skill and intelligence. The new model always relied on cheap products from Asia while workers without a super value-added education in the area of high tech could only try to get reeducated or work more hours in service jobs. The manufacturing gap was neglected and in many ways it still is. “When all citizens—including those without college degrees—have a chance to be productive, it’s good for the country…International trade, like all economic policy, is beneficial only if it contributes to the well-being of most of our citizens, if it makes families stronger, and if it makes our communities better…I feel strongly that the course we set for trade policy must rest on a more complete and nuanced understanding of the effects of international trade in the United States—and throughout the world—than can be captured by the question of how much we pay for televisions and toys.”
For many Gen-Xers and later generations, they found that when they left school that finding a job that matched their education was exceedingly difficult compared to what baby boomers experienced. They found little sympathy from economists and politicians of any stripe. “Advocates for free trade seemed to accept the growing distress in so many manufacturing-centered communities with the easy assurance of those whose understanding of the calamity was wholly theoretical. It was also hard to dismiss the sense that the proponents of free trade whose voices were heard the most were not trying very hard to see the reality of those costs in the context of the people and families whose lives were affected. Impersonal, inexorable market forces provided an acceptable fig leaf for the turn to globalization that was always the preferred course regardless.” Since increased profits from lower wages, and wages being the largest expense on an income statement for most companies, owners didn’t have a vested interest in changing their good fortunes. Profits are either given to owners in dividends or reinvested. “New jobs would develop in new industries that would grow. Workers would move to new locations. Government job training would fix any remaining problems. Everything will work out, they said and continue to say. By the time that it became apparent that everything was not working out and that there were devastating costs to many communities, most people in DC didn’t worry very much, because it was all happening someplace far away to people they didn’t know. Nothing useful could be done to hold back the tides of inexorable market forces. This was all aided, of course, by the fact that many in the Washington business trade associations had become far more concerned with the interests of importers than those of US manufacturers. The lobbying money was on the side of free trade.”
Even more, popular presidents like Ronald Reagan were quoted all the time and used as a baton to bash critics of free trade, but “President Reagan distinguished between free trade in theory and free trade in practice. He imposed quotas on imported steel, protected Harley-Davidson from Japanese competition, restrained imports of semiconductors and automobiles, took on the overvalued dollar, and pursued similar steps to keep American industry strong during the 1980s. Indeed, after he left office, one group of rabid libertarian free traders said that he was the most protectionist president since Herbert Hoover. I can’t hide the fact that I always took that as a compliment…The costs and benefits of trade liberalization were calibrated relative to national interests and changing political circumstances. No one would have argued for free trade and economic interdependence with the Soviet Union.”
Donald Trump Teases a President Bid During a 1988 Oprah Show | The Oprah Winfrey Show | OWN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEPs17_AkTI
In glib news reports of Chinese trade practices, many in the world ignored what was going on and focused on cheaper prices. The access to world markets for China was much larger than what China allowed on their turf for the rest of the world. “The reality is that it is a mercantilist nation that wants to impose its system on the world. It is opposed to the liberal democratic order and wants to put an end to American hegemony…The post–World War II strategy of reducing barriers to imports in return for the hope of new exports seriously went off the rails in the 1990s. The United States placed an all-or-nothing bet on free trade in the form of three consecutive deals. Since that time, we have seen the loss of millions of jobs and exploding trade deficits. The United States needs to insist on fair trade in our market and reciprocal access in foreign markets. Decades of poor trade deals have produced neither. We need a policy that assures balanced trade. We cannot afford to continue to transfer our wealth to foreign countries in return for consumer products. These are the realities…Extensive state ownership, enormous state subsidies, a closed home market, currency manipulation, rampant government-sponsored theft of intellectual property, and every other mercantilist practice. Trade deficits skyrocketed to unprecedented levels. We were allowing China, a foreign adversary, to use all forms of state-sponsored, government-organized unfair trade to run up a more than $270 billion trade surplus with us and to take US jobs in the process…The ‘China shock…was so severe that even the usual advocates for trade started to get a little nervous.”
Conservative critic of modern schooling and abstract economic theories, Charlie Kirk, had to renounce his old opinions because reality couldn’t be ignored. “If I had to indict philosophical libertarianism, of which I used to believe a lot of this stuff, because it’s young. It’s compelling. You read Ayn Rand. You read Hayek, and some of it’s interesting, and some of it I still agree with, but a lot of it is nonsense because it’s an indifference to the result.” The results of course affect the psychology of the displaced, which moves out of scope for so many globalist economists. “Between 2000 and 2016, the United States lost nearly five million manufacturing jobs. Median household income stagnated. And in the places that prosperity left behind, the fabric of society frayed. Since the mid-1990s, the United States has faced an epidemic of what the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have termed ‘deaths of despair.’ They have found that among white middle-aged adults who lack a college education—a demographic that has borne much of the brunt of offshoring—deaths from cirrhosis of the liver increased by 50 percent between 1999 and 2013, suicides increased by 78 percent, and drug and alcohol overdoses increased by 323 percent. From 2014 to 2017, the increase in deaths of despair led to the first decrease in life expectancy in the United States over a three-year period since the 1918 flu pandemic.” For those who ignored those results, often by blaming the people for being morally inferior, there were other arguments about the benefits of currying favor with enemies to change their tune, but like in situation with Deng Xiaoping, the trade negotiations changed the West much more. “One hears about the need for America to use its economic prowess to gain friends and to influence events. We need to trade more—read: import more—so that other countries will like us instead of, say, China. For others, trade is really about obtaining the cheapest products for our consumers. For these people, if the result is the loss of manufacturing and related jobs, that is a fair exchange. Cheap televisions trump American factories.” There was also an argument based on fears related to trade protectionism before the U.S. entrance into WWII. “Anything other than full-throated support for free trade was regarded as a throwback to protectionism and isolationism, as well as an invitation to trade wars.”
Charlie Kirk: The CATO Institute Deserves No Seat In The Conservative Movement: https://rumble.com/v1n00vo-charlie-kirk-the-cato-institute-deserves-no-seat-in-the-conservative-moveme.html
Adam Posen and displaced workers: https://humanevents.com/2022/10/09/posobiec-ultra-capitalist-adam-posen-admits-he-wants-your-family-to-suffer-so-elites-and-ccp-can-get-richer
Gen Z chicks are finding out that their college degrees are totally worthless – Benny Johnson: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vT6FMnIj3C4
For Lighthizer, there has to be trade negotiations that think of trade balance and mutual advantages so that there isn’t a carte blanche situation. If results on the ground show unfair trade practices, like dumping, currency manipulation, or a lack of access, there has to be a reassessment of any trade deal. “All the great economies were built behind a wall of protection and often with government money. The British industrial revolution was aided by a wall of tariffs. Likewise, the late-nineteenth-century explosion of American industry was the product of protectionism and often subsidies. Can anyone imagine the great American railroads being built without the grant of free land per mile? Similarly, the manufacturing countries of Japan, Germany, and now China all benefited during their development from tariffs, other barriers, and subsidies of one kind or another. It is important to remember that no country became great by consuming. They became great by producing…Our trade deficit grew by a factor of fourteen, while our GDP grew by a factor of four. The win-win situation promised by advocates of free trade has never materialized…It is not my position that all trade deficits are harmful. Clearly, if a country runs a deficit one year and a surplus the next, no harm is done. The surplus will offset the deficit, and all is good. Likewise, for one country to run a bilateral trade deficit with a second country and a surplus with a third is fine. They offset each other. Indeed, all three countries could benefit by increasing efficiency and maximizing the allocation of resources among them. What concerns me is running huge trade deficits with the entire world year after year for decades…The second exception to the principle that bilateral deficits don’t matter is that running up gigantic trade deficits with one’s geopolitical adversary is particularly stupid. In our case, the United States ships hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of our wealth to China every year. This helps them build up their economy, build up their military, and have leverage over the political situation in the United States. It makes them more powerful in the eyes of all world leaders. I’m not sure there’s an example in world history in which two rivals—indeed, some would say enemies—have had such a lopsided economic relationship. It is fair to say China is challenging us because we gave them the money to do it. Clearly, during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, we never transferred such money. Had we done so, we might have lost to them…Tariffs don’t necessarily prompt trade wars, and removing tariffs often does little to prevent actual war.”
There is also “…negative compounding. The people in the foreign country who buy our assets own those assets forever, with the obvious effect that they get the profit from those assets year after year. That profit compounds, and the effects of even one year’s trade deficit multiply over time as profits continue. Added to this is the fact that we have seen huge $500 billion to $1 trillion trade deficits year after year, so we have both an accumulation of trade deficits and a compounding negative multiplier on each trade deficit.” Theory then assumed that it would still balance out because “…if a country that ran large trade deficits for a few years [they] would find less demand for their currency and their currency’s value would drop. This would then make it very difficult for that country to import and easy for it to export in terms of its domestic currency. Therefore, the weak currency would help correct the trade imbalance. Indeed, we see this occurring regularly around the world.” Lighthizer then found that this didn’t work for the U.S. because of the currency’s demand in the world as a reserve currency, and the devaluation that other trade partners had done with their currencies. With a threat of a new BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) currency with developing countries dropping the dollar, there would then be a reduction of demand for the U.S. dollar, but this may be a long way off. According to Reuters “the [U.S.] dollar still dominates global trade. It is on one side of almost 90% of global forex transactions, according to Bank of International Settlements Data.” The danger would be the mounting U.S. debt because you need people to buy your debt and if there’s a sell off, there may not be enough buyers to avoid the U.S. government from having to print excess money to buy back the investments. The increased inflation would be damaging to U.S. dollar purchasing power, even if domestic manufacturing could restart from the high import cost environment.
Economist Sounds Alarm on US Dollar Losing Reserve Currency Status: https://news.bitcoin.com/economist-sounds-alarm-on-us-dollar-losing-reserve-currency-status/
The Path To Hyperinflation with EJ Antoni – TFTC: https://rumble.com/v3r7vlp-456-the-path-to-hyperinflation-with-ej-antoni.html
A lot of these unfair trade practices were also ignored for fear of stoking a trade war. “Trade liberalization came to be seen not just as a tool of economic policy but also as a path to perpetual peace.” Lighthizer’s book does come after COVID19, but the origin of the pandemic has yet to be investigated with enough thoroughness to prove that it was a lab accident only. Many people still feel intuitively that the release of COVID19 was intentional and a form of escalation in response to Trump’s tariffs on China. It certainly doesn’t help that China declared a People’s War in 2019 before the pandemic. Chinese state media said that, “the Chinese side is fighting back to protect its legitimate interests. The trade war in the US is the creation of one person and one administration, but it affects that country’s entire population…In China, the entire country and all its people are being threatened. For us, this is a real ‘people’s war.'” In the Strong Country blog one poster said “[The U.S. is] sucking the blood of the Chinese…” Another comment on the site said, “Why are Chinese people bullied? Because our hearts are too soft!” This would be an argument for peace advocates in the United States to allow mercantilism to continue in China, but Lighthizer would counter that not all wars are stopped by liberal trade policies. “Economic ties between the North and the South did not prevent the Civil War…It would be hard to argue that the rise of Germany as a major exporter in the late nineteenth century helped pacify that country in the first half of the twentieth. Japan’s dependence on raw materials from the United States motivated its attack on Pearl Harbor…China’s accession to the WTO in 2001—which was supposed to make the country a model global citizen—was followed by massive investments in its military capabilities and territorial expansion in the South China Sea. And certainly the great trade between Ukraine and Russia did not stop Putin’s invasion in 2022.” Deep down, military situations are more accurately predicted based on the weakness of a target. The easier it is to attack a target, the more enticing it is to do so, like in the pattern of scapegoating described above. Attacking a strong target means that one has to assess casualties and ponder what a loss would look like to one’s own sovereignty. A deterrence. Initial attacks are usually on weak targets or on military that are unprepared for the kind of attack planned. Even further, the new slave wage system became a draw down on wages for all world markets so sooner or later the same system would knock on every door and demand entry into all countries.
Chinese state media calls for ‘people’s war’ as US trade conflict escalates: https://nypost.com/2019/05/14/chinese-state-media-calls-for-peoples-war-as-us-trade-conflict-escalates/
China declares a ‘people’s war’ after Trump’s latest tariff hikes: https://thechinaproject.com/2019/05/15/china-declares-a-peoples-war-after-trumps-latest-tariff-hikes/
Chinese scientists discover EIGHT never-before-seen viruses… and now they plan to experiment with them: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12665249/Chinas-discovered-EIGHT-never-seen-viruses-plan-experiment-them.html
REP. ROSENDALE REACTS TO REPORTS THAT WUHAN LAB SHIPPED CORONAVIRUS TO FAUCI-RUN LAB IN HAMILTON PRIOR TO PANDEMIC: https://rosendale.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=691
Increasingly, there have been complaints from populist political commentators worldwide, and a shift between the typical left and right has created strange alliances where now it has become a political a divide between oligarchs and the workers who feel exploited by them. Ex-democrats like Donald Trump, Kari Lake, and Steven Bannon are now in the Republican camp. Big business leaders and big government Marxists have now allied on the side of China and want a continuing of the current mercantilist policies. Populists compare the China One Belt One Road initiative to that of being not a partner with China but a colony with a negative trade balance to match. Part of being a colony means importing the empire politics which then influences local politicians. The original expectation after the fall of the Soviet Union was the countries like China would reform into a representative government like in the west, but in the end it went in the opposite direction.
‘Let Me Finish!’ Johnny Rotten Makes His Views on Donald Trump Heard | Good Morning Britain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1uOwz_UrQ0
China Girl – David Bowie: https://youtu.be/imSPZt77sKo?si=GqTBSUfKxb5HlCIt
When the money goes from the exporters to the importers, it takes a foreign turn. Your home is where the money is and with globalism, the borders vanish, and as reported above, national values related to constitutions, and human rights are disregarded if the mercantilist country doesn’t cherish them. It’s just about naked money and power. The O’Keefe Media Group (OMG), for example, got an inside scoop on the giant investment group BlackRock and it became clear the view that people have when they have this much concentrated power.
“All of these financial institutions, they buy politicians.”
“How do they run the world?”
“You acquire stuff. You diversify, you acquire, you keep acquiring. You spend whatever you make in acquiring more and at a certain point your risk level is super low…You own a little bit of everything and that little bit everything gives you so much money on a yearly basis, that you can take this big fuck-ton of money, and then you can start to buy people…We have a system in place. First there’s the senators. These guys are fucking cheap. You got ten grand? You can buy a senator. It doesn’t matter who wins. They’re in my pocket at this point.”
“Does everybody do that? Does BlackRock do that?”
“Everybody does that.”
OMG Blackrock exposé: https://rumble.com/v2vg7ie-blackrock.html
More exposés from Steve Bannon showed the power of lobbyists in the same vein as the HR guy above described during the recent fight for a new GOP speaker. Typically in a representative government it matters who wins and different parties provide a check and balance to each other, but if there’s an angle to win personally at the expense of a country then the balance begins to vanish. While watching politics for some time recently since the 2020 election, a certain narcissistic tactic was starting to appear again and again that I recognized by terms like “love bombing” which is a euphemism for the Trojan Horse. Like in the ancient Greek story, it’s all about using niceties to bring down the defenses of an enemy and then you attack them at a weak spot. This is used everywhere and there’s a long list in politics that never ends. In this context of corrupt politicians it works like this: The politician tells an electorate that wants reform whatever it wants to hear. Then when they are in power they look to lobbyists for directions in order to get more financial rewards. Typically, this leads to retribution at the polls when the politician is grilled on their bad voting record and primaried by another candidate from the same party. The problem is that they’ve found out how to win even when they lose. Lobbyists can provide job offers and lucrative media contracts so that if they have to leave being a politician they are forgotten about, regain their anonymity, and have increased their prospects. During the fight for a new speaker, because Kevin McCarthy didn’t achieve any objectives he agreed to after the election with Rep. Matt Gaetz and other holdouts, Bannon talked about how you “never give the apparatus a second to collect themselves, because they are going to come up and they’re going to be spreading money around and cutting deals and bring in more people to their cause. Right? That’s where the K-Street lobbyists come in…but I have spies everywhere…The lobbyists were literally walking around cutting deals with people at the tables…to vote against [Jim] Jordan.”
Jenny Beth Martin: “Honestly Steve, do you think they are worried if they lose their seat? They’re going to have a job lined up with one of those firms. They’re going to get some book deal. They’ll get a gig on CNN or MSNBC or wherever else they can go to bash all of us, so they know either way they will at least get to keep power and keep access to money and that’s what they care about.” The divide in the GOP between globalism and populism became very clear with the boos and the criticism of Rep. Matt Gaetz for taking small donations from the general public. “When it comes to how those raise money, I take no lecture on asking patriotic Americans to weigh in and contribute in this fight from those who would grovel and bend for the lobbyists and special interests who own our leadership. Oh boo all you want! Who have hollowed out this town and borrowed against the future of our future generations. I’ll be happy to fund my political operation through the work of hardworking Americans, $10 and $20 and $30 dollars at a time and you all keep showing up at the lobbyist fundraisers and see how that goes for you.”
Martin Explains The Establishment’s Radical Resolution To Install McHenry As The Speaker Permanently: https://rumble.com/v3q5f4v-martin-explains-the-establishments-radical-resolution-to-install-mchenry-as.html
Bannon: “This is the early morning hours of 2016 all over again”: https://rumble.com/v3ms086-bannon-this-is-the-early-morning-hours-of-2016-all-over-again.html
The Faux-Right Infiltrating The Republican Party, Destroying Our Nation – Jack Posobiec: https://rumble.com/v3todsd-jack-posobiec-the-faux-right-infiltrating-the-republican-party-destroying-o.html
Many of these lobbyists are all a part of the importing lobby and closely connected with China. Another exposé, this time by Tucker Carlson, unearthed a video from a Chinese economics professor that openly talks about CCP influence in the U.S., what political commentators call Elite Capture, or Pay For Play, where the strategy is to corrupt those who have power and leverage so that even if the population is aware of what’s going on, they don’t have enough power to do anything about it. The professor explained to an amused audience about how China and the U.S. were able to resolve problems quickly before Trump, it was “because we have people at the top. At the top of America’s core inner circle of power & influence.”
Tucker Carlson: Our elites’ collusion with China is real and widespread: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-elites-china-collusion-di-dongsheng
Of course lobbyists will use all kinds of arguments in their favor and the value of their businesses and what contributions they make to society but usually with important information about their personal interests left out because owners can’t really feel the same feelings that workers feel, and they are not likely to drop their contracts and fortunes if they suddenly feel a pang of shame. If ineligible organizations can make social policy without the say so of voters, then the conversion to a one-party state is complete, even if it isn’t expressed openly. This also means that the psychological impacts resulting from these policies will continue on because they can’t be addressed without upsetting the power balance. Lighthizer connected the emotional component of self-esteem, a recurring theme, that is crucial in all understanding of economics beyond abstraction. “A big part of the elites’ misunderstanding of the situation is that they have no appreciation for the social component of work. Those obsessed with efficiency tend to see employment simply as a means of allocating resources and ensuring production. In so doing, they greatly undervalue the personal dignity that individuals derive from meaningful work. Commentators from Pope Leo XIII in the nineteenth century to Arthur Brooks and Oren Cass today have written eloquently about the central role of work in a well-ordered society. Doing honest work for a decent wage instills feelings of self-worth that come from being needed and contributing to society. Stable, remunerative employment reinforces good habits and discourages bad ones. That makes human beings into better spouses, parents, neighbors, and citizens. By contrast, the loss of personal dignity that comes from the absence of stable, well-paying employment is not something that can be compensated for either by increased consumption of low-cost imported goods or by welfare checks.”
Counter arguments from the globalization side would put onus on workers to find retraining and enter more lucrative areas of the free market. “Those that claim that the benefits of interdependence or efficiency justify the costs free trade places on the American working class often argue this negative impact can be offset by retraining that helps workers move into new service sector or technology jobs. In theory, retraining may sound attractive, but this phenomenon has failed to materialize. Compared with those who lost their jobs in earlier periods of economic change, displaced workers in modern, developed economies typically have fewer and less attractive options. Historically speaking, this was not always the case. In the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century, for example, the repeal of the protectionist Corn Laws prompted agricultural workers to flee the countryside for industrializing urban areas where factory jobs were waiting. By contrast, the American factory workers who were displaced beginning in the 1990s either had nowhere to go or ended up working in low-skill, low-paying service jobs…The technology sector, for all its virtues, is not a source of high-paying jobs for working people. Over half of the United States’ roughly 250 million adults lack a college diploma. Historically, manufacturing jobs have been the best source of stable, well-paying employment for this cohort. Perhaps with massive new investments in education, former autoworkers could be taught to code. Even so, there probably wouldn’t be enough jobs to employ them all. Apple, Facebook, Google, and Netflix collectively employ just over 300,000 people—less than half the number that General Motors alone employed in the 1960s…Moreover, the service and technology jobs most accessible to working people, such as data entry and call center jobs, are themselves vulnerable to offshoring. Economists have estimated that nearly forty million service sector jobs in the United States could eventually be sent overseas. That’s more than three times the number of current manufacturing jobs in the country. People without college degrees face increasingly steep obstacles to obtaining stable, well-paying jobs. In sum, the United States has not taken adequate measures to put its own workers first…No great economy in the world has ever given up on manufacturing. To the contrary, they are all for the most part based on it. The vast majority of international trade is in manufactured goods and agriculture. The best jobs for high school graduates are in manufacturing. Most innovation in our economy is in this area. A prosperous, successful future needs a flourishing manufacturing sector…Losing manufacturing jobs, the United States also ‘broke the chain of experience that is so important in technological evolution. As happened with batteries, abandoning today’s ‘commodity’ manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow’s emerging industry.’ In every economy, a great deal of innovation comes from manufacturing, and this innovation usually takes place very close to the place of manufacturing. The engineers on the ground are the ones who incorporate much of what we call productivity gains.”
For Lighthizer, the response to mercantilist policies is to use tariff leverage to open up markets. “…We should just go to the countries keeping our competitive products out and demand more access. This was our approach in the Trump administration. Countries with enormous trade surpluses with the United States have a lot more to lose from our taking concessions away. We have leverage and should use it…We [also] need to create value to buy things from importers. Of course, some services are exportable, such as banking or professional services, but most are not (think food services or health care).”
The consequences of leaving those without advanced degrees behind is one of an inability to make ends meet, save money, and enter the ownership economy, which allows for more independent political views. If wages are made to be as low as possible then those workers will be unable to invest and the profits earned from lowering wages will just coalesce with a smaller group of owners. Victor Davis Hanson reminds the reader that “we need [the Middle Class] to be present, because without this present, you do not have these independent voices…Unfortunately in our generation it’s eroding and we can see it erode in a variety of contexts. The first is, for ten years average wages of the middle class did not rise. Fifty-percent of the country dies with less than $10,000 in aggregate wealth. Over half of Americans die with credit card debt. Their buying options are limited and their choices on how they live are limited. Their chances of home ownership decline simply because they owe a lot of debt. Nowhere is this more dramatic than in student loans. When the student graduates, the average loan is somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000. We have an entire generation of students that are graduating, often with therapeutic degrees and are not able to find jobs that would allow them to pay off this enormous debt. If we came from Mars and looked at the situation, we would just simply say ‘you have tens of thousands of serfs or indentured servants. If they are not beholden to their credit card, they are beholden to the federal government and the universities.”
The Middle Class and Why Its Disappearing | Victor Davis Hanson: https://youtu.be/r8GeHGQK6fU?si=63QxelPH_gp0yfTt
The sensitive topic of illegal immigration also factors in big when it comes to whether people have a chance to enter the middle class. Labor, like anything in the market, falls under the forces of supply and demand. Wages are dear when employers have to compete for skilled labor that is scarce. Now that the U.S. southern border since 2021 has been opened to millions of illegal immigrants in the United States the pressure is always to renegotiate wages down, including those illegal immigrants who ironically have to compete with each other in the same bottleneck, keeping all of them out of a savings and ownership economy. The divide between the America First and George W. Bush influenced GOP became clear. Since retiring, Bush Jr. has been painting, including portraits of immigrants, and he provided his critique. “It’s a beautiful country we have and yet it’s not beautiful when we condemn and call people names and scare people about immigration. It’s an easy issue to frighten some of the electorate, and I’m trying to have a different kind of voice. I would describe [the current Republican party] as isolationist, protectionist, and to a certain extent nativist.” Nativist being a euphemism for racist. One can infer that there’s a self-hatred going along with this line of reasoning, but it also ignores the parallel development in psychology to counter co-dependency, where it’s common to hear healthcare workers admonished to take care of themselves better, say no, and have boundaries because you can’t help others if you can’t help yourself. One wonders when politicians around the world will catch on. Bush’s view on immigration isn’t a completely open border but it should be “pro-enforcement with a compassionate touch.” He hinted a bit that he may also be out of touch in the Today interview when he conceded that “[the current Republican view] is not exactly my vision, but I’m just an old guy they put out to pasture, just a simple painter.”
George W. Bush: Immigration System ‘Needs To Be Reformed’ | TODAY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqJDPSPUZ44
Former President George W. Bush releases new book about America’s immigrants: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y1L-ZGDTuk
The quiet comfortable interview unfortunately blurred details and was also dated since the new administration has allowed unprecedented numbers of illegal immigrants undocumented into the country, including in the years up to now. Bush’s idea of having more courts and a new vetting system is just another thing that is imaginary but not actually a reality, like his ownership society, which ended up being a debtor society. Lower wages means slave wages, but all politicians would raise their hand if asked if they were against slavery. The topic of having people of different ethnic backgrounds working for cheap is hardly an image to advertise for immigrants who also want to be in the middle class. Bush’s view goes back to the old story that certain jobs won’t be filled because the wages are too low. “We need to change the work visas. There’s a lot of jobs that are empty, and there’s a lot of jobs that need to be filled, and there are people willing to work hard to do so.” The plight of the middle class is ignored. Biden whispering “pay them more” is not going to magically raise the wages, especially when he opened the border wide open. The negative trade balance was also ignored in this interview. Illegal voting with easy-t0-get driver’s licenses was not broached, including changes done in 2019 before the 2020 election. Illegal immigration, especially in the U.S. led to an increase in drug and human trafficking. There are also worries now after the war for Israel has begun that there maybe terrorists that have crossed the open border, which evaporated the entire purpose of Bush’s Homeland Security initiatives. The Biden Administration even went further with a trial balloon to just merge the former NAFTA countries into an E.U. style regional government showing how settled their globalist view is.
Biden on Work Shortages, Tells Employers to Pay Workers More: https://youtu.be/h9wANPpPL98?si=5AvnKKKdCWzjRBf9
Governor Josh Shapiro announces switch to Automatic Voter Registration: https://twitter.com/GovernorShapiro/status/1704095982193877181
Lara Logan claims migrants are part of a globalist plot for a unified North American government: https://www.mediamatters.org/one-america-news-network/oan-lara-logan-claims-migrants-are-part-globalist-plan-unified-government
Trial Balloon Merger With Canada Mexico and the U.S – Tucker Carlson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jy1pIrWP44
Donald Trump upset this current establishment which responded with their fear of what reform meant for them and projected it onto the population, except for the fact the establishment didn’t have, and still doesn’t have, anything the general public would find exciting from them. Who wants debt slavery? Who wants stagflation? Who wants endless wars? In an emotional false-start resignation letter, General Milley made an assumption that Trump was “ruining the international order…” which he misinterpreted as being connected to the Greatest Generation in WWII, which I think would have a bone to pick with this current international order. I’m sure some did support the U.N., the Marshall Plan, etc., but I’m sure that many, if not most, were fighting for their country, and their children, not some nebulous and shifting international order with faceless bureaucrats that resist reforms. Regardless of political labels, this craven behavior should now be expected in any situation where there is a power differential and there’s a threat of reform, meaning that people will lose their money and position with said reforms. Each side that reforms another side has a hatred of the people who are gumming up the works and wants them gone. Those who are to be fired feel castrated and mortified. The success or failure of any reform will have to rest with how many people it frees up and helps to thrive while at the same time removes obvious corruption, which always requires vigilance because for many people, corruption is a way of life and it seems unconscionable that enough money can be made with goods and services alone.
‘Your husband is the worst president. You owe us gas money’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQv5cMSFkdE
Dick Cheney calls Trump a coward “He Lost. He Knows It”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Nq9SpGzic
😂 Posobiec: I present to you, my dramatic reading of the General Milley resignation letter: https://rumble.com/v1fmezx–posobiec-i-present-to-you-my-dramatic-reading-of-the-general-milley-resign.html
Gen Mark Milley: I Had My Resignation Letter Ready for Trump: https://rumble.com/v3ih4ck-gen-mark-milley-i-had-my-resignation-letter-ready-for-trump.html
When you have a weak population that is like a colony, under taxation without representation, what would it look like? We already covered what it looks like now, which is very compromised, but what would it look like if all dissident reformers are put in jail? The world got a taste of that when the former President of the PRC Hu Jintao was escorted out in a way that looked disconcerting and humiliating to western audiences. Chinese media stated that “When [Hu] was not feeling well during the session, his staff, for his health, accompanied him to a room next to the meeting venue for a rest. Now, he is much better.” Some commentators joked that his aids told him “death is a serious condition if you’re not careful.” Other commentators felt it was more of a middle ground. “What we just saw was the making of an All Xi’s Men team, the breaking of decade-long rules, and the birth of an unlimited supreme leader…He is now a truly modern emperor.” Hu Jintao did make another appearance later at Jiang Zemin’s funeral with Xi Jinping in Dec 2022 showing that at least he wasn’t dead. I talked to one Chinese woman who immigrated to Canada about it and she said “we [were] not allowed to talk about that.” She found it surprising in Canada when looking at Twitter and all the aggressive back and forth between debaters of different political stripes and how it was possible to criticize top leaders with unlimited sarcasm and derision. This would be a hint that complete freedom of speech would have to end in order to consolidate power to one political aim. Dissent would have to be hidden and kept in closed door meetings and each prospective leader would have to be subservient and then make power grabs at all the right times before ascending to leadership, usually when the prior dictator has gotten too old. Any missteps could lead to expulsion, house arrest or execution.
For example, Zhao Ziyang, the leader who was more favorable to the students at the Tiananmen, lived under house arrest and was allowed some freedoms while being watched intently. His views on Communism grew more towards freedom as time passed. “We needed to establish multiple channels for dialogue—with various social factions, forces, and interests. Decisions on major issues should be made with ongoing consultation and dialogue with various social groups, not just within the Communist Party, and not only after merely consulting once with key figures of other political parties…We had to permit social groups to exist; otherwise, how could dialogue be conducted? Most important, we needed to change the situation in which all social groups—including workers’ unions, youth organizations, women’s organizations, chambers of commerce, and others—were all in monotonous unity with the Communist Party. They should not be treated like the Party’s royal instruments. They have to be able to truly represent the people they are meant to represent. Only dialogue conducted with groups of this kind would carry any real meaning. In other words, their function as intermediate organizations should be fully developed. The Communist Party should not take control of everything or interfere so much in their affairs, and should give them room for independent activities…We must establish laws that guarantee the protection of specific aspects, for example, freedom of association, assembly, demonstrations, petitions, and strikes. All these should be protected by specific laws.” Of course these reforms never came to pass. His son Zhao Wujun said that “Zhao lived to see the consequences of rapid, unfettered economic growth in the absence of checks on government powers–rampant corruption, crony capitalism, one of the widest wealth gaps in the world and widespread social discontent…The things he wanted to do were abandoned…more than a decade of his sweat and blood was ruined in an instant…We have missed a huge historical opportunity to transform society. I don’t know if history will give us another chance.”
Hu Jintao’s Removal – CCP 20th National Congress: https://archive.ph/20221022153634/https://twitter.com/XHNews/status/1583829797297598465
Xi Jinping and Hu Jintao were on hand to bid farewell to Jiang Zemin: https://www.zaobao.com.sg/realtime/china/story20221205-1340592
Son of purged reformer Zhao Ziyang tells of China’s ‘shame’, 25 years after Tiananmen: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/05/son-purged-zhao-ziyang-tells-chinas-shame/
AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY – Official Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MYFOzP6Xns
Getting centralized control to give up power is one of the most difficult knots to untie for any reformers in any country, and this was not lost on presidential candidate Javier Milei who described leftist politics in his country as being seduced by Antonio Gramsci. Tucker in a couple of episodes also interviewed an Argentine economist and a business owner about what the economy is like in Argentina, before getting Javier’s take on the situation. “We are 47 million people, out of which 11 million people have what you call a job. Slightly under 3.5 million people work for government, and 7 million people work in the private sector. So 10 to 11 million people out of 47, 25% of the people, [if you take out government workers], 1/7th of the population will have a private job…7 million people are working to support the other 40 million people. 60% of the children are poor…In Argentina the incentives now are so perversely inverted that many people decide that it’s not worth working. They can make more money sitting home idle.” To a restaurant owner this was due to high taxes and expensive union dues. The psychological impact of this kind of system was described by Javier like the typical Cycle of Abuse and The Battered Wife, where “politicians are kind of sociopaths. They want to believe that we are mentally disabled, disabled in every way, because we cannot live without them. In fact, they are the ones who cannot live without us.” One of the ideas he warned Tucker about was “the idea that where there is a need there is a right. It’s a problem because there can be infinite needs but someone always has to pay for those rights, and the resources for that are finite. That sparks a conflict between infinite needs and finite resources…Under my administration…they should have no reason to complain. There won’t be any layoffs in the first round of reforms, and when the second round of reforms takes place, they will be able to leave behind their public sector jobs, because they will have an incentive to do so, and they will be paid better.” Considering that Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the U.S. are currently under lawfare by their opponents, I think Javier will have to put on his seatbelt if he thinks the opposition will make it easy for him to just walk in and make changes.
Argentina’s economy – Tucker Carlson: https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1702079713622299100
Javier Milei. Who is he? – Tucker Carlson: https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1702442099814342725
Bolsonaro Again Ruled Ineligible to Hold Public Office by Brazil Electoral Court: https://news.yahoo.com/bolsonaro-again-ruled-ineligible-hold-232806102.html
Trump’s presidential ballot eligibility on trial in Colorado and Minnesota: https://www.axios.com/2023/10/31/trump-14th-amendment-trials-colorado-minnesota
Prosecutor files case against Argentina’s frontrunner Javier Milei days before presidential election: https://apnews.com/article/milei-picardi-peso-fernandez-argentina-02db52be25b493ca0f1d10fec9d6f017
It’s best not to forget that when you trade with people, or if you are involved with people in friendships or intimate relationships, you are receiving strong signals from people who need repeated confirmations that they are respected. Many others need confirmations that they are special and superior. China expert Jack Posobiec worked in China and remembered how focused the Chinese were in wanting to turn the tables on the U.S. “I’ll never forget this one. These are people I worked with by the way, and they weren’t saying this in a hateful way or an angry way. They were just saying it matter of fact. They said ‘we want to see a world where Chinese parents are one day adopting American babies.'” It’s safe to assume that when you deal with people there are always hidden concerns in the background about power, self-esteem, envy, jealousy, and resentment.
China is going to eat our lunch – Jack Posobiec: https://rumble.com/v2r7ocg-jack-posobiec-chinas-going-to-eat-our-lunch..html
Even if reforms seem clear that there should be more work and production, with a reducing of some government spending, along with a reduction of interest rates, and how that will resurrect an economy, some of these economic principles are going to be challenged by the incoming developments of Artificial Intelligence (A.I). If the technology develops as quickly as developers contend it will, you’ll have a situation of overproduction when the newly unemployed can’t buy any products produced by the A.I. that replaced them. If there’s a minimum income introduced, and if taxes are implemented to replace all the wages lost, what will life be like? Will a universal basic income allow the same human freedoms as before? What would psychology look like if one just pursued hobbies and didn’t have to go to work? Would the lack of power when there are no wages or labor to negotiate with lead to another form of slavery?
Artificial Intelligence
As jarring as the quickly expanding abilities of artificial intelligence (A.I.) are, one consistent thread is how economics and economic theory has changed along with technology. Libertarianism for example was very thoughtful for a time when machines failed to take over in the Jetsons cartoon style as predicted in the 1950s, but now with more advanced A.I. to be released in 2024, technology is moving faster than ethical human thought can get a grip on. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, as well as many other speakers, talked to the U.S. Congress about the 2024 ChatGPT and provided mixed testimony full of unknowns, but also lots of positive predictions. “There will be a significant impact on jobs, what that impact looks like is very difficult to predict…I believe that there will be far greater jobs on the other side of this and the jobs of today will get better.” The new 2024 A.I. is “good at doing tasks, not jobs, and so I see already people using GPT 4 to do their job much more efficiently, by helping them with tasks. GPT 4 will, I think, entirely automate away some jobs, and it will create new ones we believe will be much better…There will be an impact on jobs. We try to be very clear about that and I think it will require partnership between industry and government, but mostly action by government to figure out how we want to mitigate that but I’m very optimistic about how great the jobs of the future will be.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn-W41hC764
AI eliminated nearly 4,000 jobs in May, report says – CBS: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ai-job-losses-artificial-intelligence-challenger-report/
AI anxiety as computers get super smart – RTL: https://today.rtl.lu/news/world/a/2132837.html
One of the ways that will trigger needs for government intervention is how the distribution of wealth changes with each job displacement. In an article on RTL, it was ironic that “computer coders and writers [critiqued] AI creators for ‘training’ software on their work, enabling it to replicate their styles or skills without permission or compensation.” When A.I. replaces a wage completely, or even partially, a lot of that labor cost is now rewarding computer engineers and suppliers of the materials for the computers, robots, and A.I. software PLUS the ownership. Each displacement requires a new inventory on what transferrable skills are still relevant for that candidate. As stated in the U.S. congress, there are already plans for retraining services, which will also require a lot of resources. Without a tax to transfer the profit of that labor to a human being who lost their job, it can’t be ignored that consumers today need to be producers in order earn currency to access consumption. What is also often not talked about is the complexity of these new jobs. I remember talking to a Japanese A.I. expert about this and he was generally irritated with my line of questioning. “I think people will have to move to more complex jobs…Let’s change the subject.” I later was in a restaurant and bumped into the Alberta provincial New Democratic Party, which is the name for the main socialist party in Canada. The leader was there head-bobbing and chin-wagging with party members and supporters. I took the advantage to talk to some of them and found an economics expert in the bunch. He said for some reason “I am biased,” which ultimately everyone is, but he showed that because we are a conservative province the NDP has been steadily moving to the right and has already replaced the Liberal party to appear as the moderate choice on the left side of the political spectrum. This is so much so that they could get former conservatives to vote for them. I asked him if manufacturing jobs could return. He responded that “we are not setup well for that…We can instead develop higher technological value-added jobs.” Continuing with the prior thread, his solution still leaves out the high school diploma worker, part-time artist, and hobbyists. Also falling through the cracks would be people who have chosen the wrong field for their personality type and are struggling to make a career change. Where many researchers and economists feel those types of individuals will end up is on a Universal Basic Income.
Already people are getting nostalgic for the times before the pandemic and after the roll out of technocratic control during COVID lockdowns. That nostalgia is key into understanding human emotion. The problem with social engineers in bureaucratic and corporate environments is that they are essentially unelected. When they foist new technology onto the population, governments are always scrambling to understand the consequences. The consequences usually have to happen first so that the complaints can help to create a regulatory response, much like a beta software. This is assuming that there is enough freedom of association and a galvanized population to bring about changes to government policy. The worry is always about people lacking power, being helpless, dehumanized, while working longer hours in low paying jobs alongside a lack of insurance from the government. Joe Allen from Dark Aeon, worries that the Golden rule “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” will devolve and “worldly powers will do to us what they would never have done to them.” If people are gradually sent to a Universal Basic Income their leverage in the workforce will disappear and worldly powers will now have control over the resources for their survival. People cannot go on strike if they have no job. Then if you compound the desire that oligarchs have to use Climate Change as a tool to ration resources, meaning REWARDS, a very constrained two-tier system will clarify things where those leaders will predictably have enormous freedom to do what they want, to reward themselves, while they at the same time repress everyone else with a false sense of morality. I already argued this when the pandemic was starting in the episode on Narcissistic Supply and how one can be addicted to a downward comparison with others and despite what many leaders say, in practice they are not interested in the equality of outcomes. This can be seen with pop stars who live a high lifestyle while supporting rationing systems for their audience. It can be seen with climate activists using fossil fuels on tap while shaming everyone else. The ultimate conclusion of a system like this is to emulate the Chinese 15-minute city where a person is supposed to live within a 15 min walking distance and not go beyond it. If this is implemented in a harsh way it would mean living in a technological version of the parochial medieval town.
Narcissistic Supply – Freud and Beyond – WNAAD: https://rumble.com/v1gveop-narcissistic-supply-freud-and-beyond-wnaad.html
Life Circle Construction in China under the Idea of Collaborative Governance: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/geogrevjapanb/90/1/90_900103/_article
Klaus Schwab: Whoever Masters AI Will Rule the World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvkRj80H96s
Massive Protest in Oxford Against 15-Minute Cities – Rebel News UK: https://rumble.com/v2a6oy4-massive-protest-in-oxford-against-15-minute-cities.html
MEP Christine Anderson Issues Wake-Up Call: “You Cannot Comply Your Way Out of a Tyranny”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93qGEqJnBwo
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi pointed out the dangers for psychic entropy, when there is too much regulatory control, and this is what would happen on a mass scale if you have a class of dependent people with no leverage in society. For those unaware of this blog, because it’s the most common topic, Flow is the ability to gain pleasure by exercising your sense of self on the environment to master a skill, some form of leisure, or endeavor. “In a research on the effects of ‘flow deprivation’ we have asked subjects to go through their normal daily routines, but to stop doing anything that was not necessary, any act or thought that was done for its own sake. After only 48h of this regime subjects reported severe changes in their psychic functioning. They felt more impatient, irritable, careless, depressed…Performance on creativity tests dropped significantly. [A common] reason for the ill effects of deprivation by the subjects was ‘the act of stopping myself from doing what I wanted to do.’ Apparently the experimental interference with the freedom of attention may have been one of the causes for the near-pathological disruption of behavior and experience.”
If there’s an area that requires massive improvement it would have to be in the area of socialism, because that has been the catch-all solution in politics for so long. That problem is that any kind of dependencies can be exploited or over-regulated. This new socialism would have to be super-decentralized so that corruption would be close to impossible. Since that doesn’t exist yet, there’s a lot of work for the left to do. Good examples were provided by the apostate of the U.S. left, Naomi Wolf, who was shunned after criticizing the COVID19 vaccine rollout and mandates. In an interview with Peter McIlvenna of Hearts of Oak, she recounted her experience of Britain and Europe and some of the dangers of dependency she found there. “…People get so many benefits from the state, in Europe and in Britain, and that’s messaged AS benefits and it’s very tempting. I have this free this and free that, and I love it and I used to be thoroughly on board with free healthcare and free universities and everything, why not? The dark side is the discourse of individualism, and individual rights becomes very theoretical. Once they give you all these good things, then when they say ‘but you can’t drive your car from here to here,’ it’s very hard to realize that that was a poisoned gift.” Naomi’s struggle is similar to Zhao Ziyang’s, as described above, on how to balance human freedoms with leverage, power and responsibility. You can almost imagine some mediation system that is bogged down in committees, or a punishment system that punishes for every small infraction. The reality is that what most western countries have, is already much better than ill-thought-out abstract theories coming from the powerful today. Peter: “It is subtle. [15 minute cities are] for our good, for our health, for our convenience. Convenience comes up often…Often you can point out these issues, ’15 minute cities, being local is good.’ No it’s about restriction or controlling you. Despite what’s happened in the last 3 years, they cannot see past the government propaganda.” Naomi: “[15 minute cities] may seem ‘convenient’ or ‘green’ but it’s really going to enslave you and your children forever.”
Hearts of Oak – Naomi Wolf – Facing the Beast: Courage, Faith and Resistance in a New Dark Age: https://rumble.com/v3tbcwj-hearts-of-oak-naomi-wolf-facing-the-beast-courage-faith-and-resistance-in-a.html
Star Trek TNG — Crime and Punishment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7XqGiwfUyI
A vast area of study like A.I. can be confusing and distracting, but the nostalgia that people have for the past often has to do with the freedom they had to pursue their interests, especially those pristine experiences where there was a lack of conflict with others. It can be a way to cut through the noise and complexity. Certainly the past shouldn’t be treated like a golden age, but it will if attention spans get ever more controlled and rewards are progressively removed. A peaceful exertion of creativity on the environment without endless coercion has to be the litmus test. If A.I. is to truly succeed people will have to feel less fear, and enjoy more peace. There must be as much freedom of choice as in the past, if not more, and very importantly, there must be access to REWARDS. People don’t just want to exist. They want to thrive.
Ikigai: https://rumble.com/v1gvo41-ikigai.html
Object Relations: Fear Of Success Pt. 2: https://rumble.com/v1gvuql-object-relations-fear-of-success-pt.-2.html
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Violence and the Sacred by René Girard: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780801822186/
Evolution of the Human Diet: The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable by Peter S. Ungar: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780195183474/
General History of Africa – Vol. 1 by Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Unesco Staff, Mokhtar: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780520039124/
Projection and Personality Development via the Eight-function Model by Carol Shumate: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780367341381/
Transference And Projection by Jan Grant, Jim Crawley: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780335203147/
Projection and re-collection in Jungian psychology by Marie Louise von Franz: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780875484174/
Newman, Leonard & Duff, Kimberly & Baumeister, Roy. (1997). A new look at defensive projection: Thought suppression, accessibility, and biased person perception. Journal of personality and social psychology. 72. 980-1001.
Identity and Identification by Ken Arnold, James Peto, Mick Gordon, Chris Wilkinson, Hugh Aldersey-Williams, The Wellcome Trust: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781906155865/
Brodey WM. On the dynamics of narcissism. I. Externalization and early ego development. Psychoanal Study Child. 1965;20:165-93.
Marcus, Kenneth L., Accusation in a Mirror (2012). Loyola University Chicago Law Journal, Vol. 43, No. 2, pp. 357 – 393, 2012
Atrocity Speech Law by Gregory S. Gordon, Benjamin Ferencz: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780190612689/
A World Transformed by George Bush, Brent Scowcroft: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780679752592/
No Trade Is Free – Robert Lighthizer: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780063282131/
The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited by Louisa Lim: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780199347704/
Prisoner of the State – Zhao Ziyang: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781439149393/
Dark Aeon : Transhumanism and the War Against Humanity by Joe Allen: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781648210105/
HOU Lulu, LIU Yungang, Life Circle Construction in China under the Idea of Collaborative Governance: A Comparative Study of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, Geographical review of Japan series B, 2017, Volume 90, Issue 1, Pages 2-16
Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/
Fear of Success Pt. 1: https://psychreviews.org/fear-of-success/
Fear of Success Pt. 2: https://psychreviews.org/object-relations-fear-of-success-pt-2/
Fear of Success Pt. 3: https://psychreviews.org/object-relations-fear-of-success-pt-3/
Fear of Success Pt. 4: https://psychreviews.org/object-relations-fear-of-success-pt-4/
Fear of Success Pt. 5: https://psychreviews.org/object-relations-fear-of-success-pt-5/
Fear of Success Pt. 6: https://psychreviews.org/object-relations-fear-of-success-pt-6/