Gorging and Sacrificing

Gorging and Sacrificing
Neo-Feudalism in the U.S.


Eastern Ohio is hilly with deep hollows cutting across it in a pattern resembling a comb when viewed from the air. Most of the hollows were carved by thousands of years of run-off rain water seeking and winding its way to the Ohio River. The geological history left few areas flat enough to accommodate baseball or football fields. Consequently, basketball became the default sport of preference. One native 1950s basketball star still holds the record for most points scored by a single player in college competition: 114 points.

I had my own basketball court, as did many other youngsters in the area. Unlike football and baseball, you could spend many solitary hours “shooting baskets”. After years of shooting baskets, I suddenly realized that I knew the instant the ball left the tip of my fingers whether or not I would score.

Logically, scoring in basketball is about a one in one hundred possibility. The basket rim is parallel to the floor leaving a very narrow slit of opportunity to score. It’s like laying a target sheet flat and trying to hit the bulls-eye from straight on. Other variables include distance from the shooter to the basket. My eyes, located three inches apart, were able to triangulate the distance to the basket accurately in a split second from several yards away. Then I had to calculate the exact arc for that distance and the precise muscle propulsion on a ball of that weight for it to travel that distance over that exact arc. In addition, a player could be moving or moving and jumping when the shot is made adding variables that logically would make scoring chances about one in one thousand.

Then, while the ball was beginning its upward arc, a recalculation was done confirming or denying the accuracy of the previous inputs and their executions. After years of practice, I was scoring about 50% of the time even while shooting jump shots. Apparently I, and several other basketball players, had developed sports super calculators in our heads. Everyone, we can assume, has that super calculator potential in his or her head. It’s just a matter of harnessing and exploiting it.
In 1960, the U.S. Air Force sent me to the Far East. I arrived with a very low opinion of the humanity and intelligence of the natives. After a few weeks of interactions with them, I concluded that they were more thoughtful, considerate, humane, honest and intelligent than Americans are. In Vietnam, the U.S. military was killing Asians as if they were ants that had invaded a kitchen. My government shared my original attitude that Asians were inferior to us. No doubt that’s where I got that prejudice.
In 1970, the Ohio National Guard gunned down 13 students at Kent State University killing four. The majority of Ohio residents approved of the extra-judicial, un-Constitutional murders. Americans may trumpet their Bill of Rights and freedoms, but in the end, it’s security and order that they cherish most.

I had graduated from Kent State University a year earlier. My recollections of the anti-Vietnam War movement was a line of students and faculty standing silently shoulder to shoulder in front of the Reserve Officer Training Corps building. Many had signs castigating United States involvement in Southeast Asia. There was never any indication of violent intentions.
Deep down inside, I realized that I could have been one of the victims of the shootings. If I had needed one more year to graduate because of work to earn tuition or some other delaying event, I could have been one of the dead or mutilated. It didn’t matter that I never joined the protests. Several of the victims were walking to or from classes. After several days of agonizing over the event that I thought could never happen in the U.S., I had an epiphany. That incident made me realize that my government considers its own people to be worth no more than ants. My government and most American people value property and order above people.

Gradually, my mind went through a reconfiguration. The beast brain that thrives on suspicion and brutality no longer dominated or cut off information to the cognitive sectors of my brain. I now had an entirely new outlook on the world. Just as I had realized that I had a sports super calculator in my brain that allowed me to shoot a basketball into a small hoop with high accuracy, I discovered an ethics super calculator that enabled me to see reality and truth and suppress my self-centered animal instincts and urges. I had developed a humanity-centered nature. It seemed that just about every value and belief viewed through the ethical super calculator was the opposite of what I had been taught as a child.

The Ohio National Guard, politicians and media easily manipulated the self-centered primitive instincts of Ohioans and convinced them that unarmed students were a threat to their property, safety and order. Ohioans accepted, some even cheered, lethal action to confront or remove that imaginary threat. The entire nation was willing to commit hideous mass murders in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to remove a threat that any reasonable mind would conclude did not exist. It was ready to do the same thing to segments of its own nation if someone could convince them they were a threat.

Historian Richard Hofstadter labeled this irrational behavior “paranoid style.” In an article that appeared in the November 1964 issue of Harpers Magazine titled “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” he listed many of the bogeymen elements of society identified and vilified over the entire history of the U.S. They range from the Bavarian Illuminati, Free Masons and Jesuits of the 18th Century to the income tax, Communists and Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the 20th Century. While the conspiracies of the previous centuries were directed from foreign lands in the paranoid mind, those of the 20th Century were homegrown or included local subversive elements.

The paranoids never can defeat their imagined enemies, so they attribute greater and greater powers to them, according to Hofstadter. Soon the enemies become all-powerful, all-knowing, cunning, cruel, immoral foes. The only way to defeat them is to adopt their tactics and their internal structural methods. The Ku Klux Klan donned robes and stratified its organization to mirror the Catholic Church hierarchy, Hofstadter wrote. The John Birch Society adopted cells and front groups to confront their Communist nemesis. Spying on its own citizens is so pervasive in the U.S. today that Joseph Stalin would be green with envy. Yet the old critics of Stalin are quite comfortable with this excessive government intrusion.

It’s also necessary never to compromise with pure evil. Since the enemy is “. . .totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated,” Hofstadter noted. “This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began.”

President Barak Obama has far more in common with them than not. Obama supports arbitrary wars of aggression as they do. He agrees with excessive power and limited liability of corporations. He routinely violates habeas corpus and the Bill of Rights. Yet, the paranoids are certain Obama is one of the enemy, the total opposite of them. The Senate majority leader stated that Republicans’ highest objective is to make Obama a one-term president. If that bankrupts the nation, they are willing to make the sacrifice. Meanwhile, no disaster justifies compromising with him.

If these paranoids rise to power, which they do from time to time, they are like a legion of Don Quixotes jousting with windmills. Their intractability and obsessions with total defeat of a non-existent foe spells certain doom for that nation. That’s where the U.S. finds itself today. Conservatives and their even more fanatic Neo-Conservative compatriots are on a suicide path under the hope that their enemies will bolt at the precipice of the cliff just as the Communists did when Don Quixote Ronald Reagan led the nuclear Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) race.

Paranoia and fear are banquets for the beast brain. The more that section of the brain is nourished, the more it thrives and deprives the logical, cognitive and moral sectors of the brain. Recent studies of brain synaptic activity indicate that the cognitive sectors are undeveloped when humans are born and remain immature until at least age 25. The Office of Population Affairs of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services reports that the prefrontal cortex where “good judgement” occurs is the last part of the brain to develop. Based on the history since World War II of continuous brutal wars including torture and indiscriminate, gratuitous killing, we can conclude that the prefrontal cortex remains undeveloped in most Americans for their entire lives. My experiences of living in foreign nations and witnessing the cruel side of my own government at home caused me to question our own values and the mind’s functions.

The Iraq Wars provide an insight into the ethical level of U.S. citizens. In both cases, over 90% of Americans supported the wars even though elementary research would have shown that both were provoked, at least in part, by the U.S. Even absent that research, going to war, especially a non-defensive war, is a subhuman reaction. One million Iraqis died as the result of the First Gulf War and 1.3 million died as the result of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The total of 2.3 million means one of every 10 Iraqis were murdered due to U.S. invasions. That literally is decimation of the Iraqi population. Americans functioning at the humanity-centered level are outraged. Needless to say, that is a tiny percentage of Americans.

The Vietnam War is a broader example. The U.S. used the most hideous weapons known to mankind against nearly defenseless men, women, children and babies. It massacred over three million Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians and mutilated millions more. It prompted Martin Luther King to observe that “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government.” Yet, most Americans continue to believe they shouldn’t be held accountable for the most evil military actions since the Second World War. Most Americans don’t know, refuse to accept or file in the denial drawer, that it was criminal. There was no contrition on the part of the government after facts proved the U.S. had acted as a cruel, murderous aggressor.
Dr. King was able to overpower his beast brain and identify the evil in his own nation’s actions when the vast majority of Americans could not. King was a humanity-centered man. Mohandas Gandhi and Nelson Mandela are two other well-known examples. All were harassed and arrested by their own governments and reviled by large segments of their own societies. Dr. King implied that most Americans are sociopathic savages. He and a handful of others were able to rise above the stampede urges of mob frenzy counseled by the beast brain and identify the Vietnam War as the atrocity it was. King was not making an original observation. Over a century earlier, Frederick Douglas, in a 4th of July speech in Rochester, New York, stated that: “. . . for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America remains without a rival.”

In spite of all of the social, political, subconscious and natural pressures to conform to the herd and tribe actions and customs, people like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Jesus and Buddha emerge. They face overwhelming scorn and abuse from their peers, but remain resolute and determined. In the end, they are proved right and the herd wrong. They tapped into the stupendous power buried deep in their brains and harnessed it just as the accomplished basketball player does.


Predispositions

Linguistics professor Noam Chomsky demonstrated that the mind of an infant and child is predisposed to absorb languages. Their minds also have a predisposition for grammar. A child first leaning a language tries to put the subject first and the predicate last as Japanese, German and Latin languages do. Learning and logic could be easier if we accommodated those predispositions as Brazilian-born educator Paulo Freire advocates.

Other predispositions exist for survival. Fear is one of the biggest. It can be used to warn us of dangers or it can be used to manipulate us to act against our best interests including criminally.

There is a moral predisposition. Clinical brain MRIs have identified increased activity in the right side of the brain when moral issues are presented. However, it seems that a minor moral position will meet the entire morality need in children and most adults. For example, the need can be met by taking an anti-choice position on abortions. That requires no sacrifice from, or cost to, the proponents of that position. Those same people are more than willing to cut off Welfare benefits to that same fetus when it becomes an infant and starve it to death.

Another predisposition is faith. Primitive man faced many threats that were unexplainable such as weather, night and day and winter-summer cycles. There’s a strong desire to explain the causes of fears in order to isolate and deal with them. People created gods as explanations for the unknown. Then all that was necessary was to please the gods associated with each mystery so they would protect people from lightening, pestilence, floods, etc.

Faith is deeply ingrained in humans as the result. The earth seemed to be dying each year as leaves fell from the trees, plants stopped growing and the days got shorter and the temperatures colder. After elaborate rituals led by priests and sacrifices by the community members, it got warmer, trees sprouted leaves again and the days got longer. Faith is the biggest obstacle to advanced political and economic systems. The beast brain is inclined to have faith in a priest, monarchy, plutocracy, aristocracy or other oppressor-oppressed Feudal system rather than in someone selected by vote. A charge against President Clinton was that he held up a finger to determine which way the popular wind was blowing and led in that direction. President Reagan, on the other hand, was decisive, they argued, and led in whatever direction he decided to take. In a democracy, the politicians lead in whatever direction the people want to go. When the leader goes in any direction he chooses, that is totalitarianism. Democracy is alien and fearful to those who admired President Reagan.

The beast brain also prefers that economic decisions be made by faith rather than at the polling booth. Capitalism and its gear box “the silent hand of the marketplace” fits that demand nicely. Industrialization made corporations feasible for most economic aspects of life. That was not possible in pre-industrial agrarian societies.

Just as the priests invent more fear to elevate their powers in a primitive society, creeping corporatism has spent the last one and one-half centuries consolidating its powers over the people. Corporations have exploited faith, fear and indecision to expand their control over not only the economy but politics, information, entertainment and nearly every other aspect of life that can be profitable.

While corporations have ambitious plans to control the world, they don’t let the little things slip by them. Those tips common for waiters and parking garage attendants provide profit opportunities. Originally, tips (acronym for “to insure prompt service”), were a penny dropped into a brass urn inside the restaurant entrance. That generous customer got priority seating. Then it expanded to rewards to the waiters for good service. Restaurant executives converted that into part of their employee’s pay and exploited the customers’ guild feelings to extract even higher tips. Today, tips in most restaurants have taken on a form that would delight George Orwell. For large parties, usually more than four people, there is a category on the bill for a mandatory 18% gratuity.

Corporations have become the new nobles and lords, the new oppressors as historian Richard Grossman has detailed in his book “Taking Care of Business.”

Where will corporation growth and control end? The World Trade Organization envisions transnational corporations ruling the world. Walter Wristen, former CEO of Citicorp, wrote “The Twilight of Sovereignty” describing a world ruled by corporations overruling popular wishes and needs when profits are jeopardized. In the WTO world, there is one sacred deity: the Prophet Profit. Prophet Profit’s one commandment is: “Go forth and harvest money and wealth.”

The Supreme Predisposition

A critical predisposition is a yearning for a Feudal economic and political structure. The powerful beast brain instinct was necessary for survival during all but the most recent millennia of human existence. About 30,000 years ago, humans began developing cognitive powers in their brains. The brains increased in size. However, the beast brain remained the gatekeeper for information fed into the brain. It also has the ability to produce cortisol, dopamine and other chemicals to hinder and confuse cognitive functions. The result is a brain capable of devising hideous weapons while functioning at an animal stimulus-response level.

Hermann Goering, Nazi minister of aviation under Adolph Hitler, testified after World War II that fear is the key to convincing people to behave like Nazis. Goering stated that the maximum fear could be generated by telling people they are in great danger from an external enemy and from traitors or spies in their midst. This creates a “cornered rat” paranoia. In Germany’s case, the external enemies were alleged to be Great Britain and Poland collaborating to encircle then attack Germany. Internally, Nazis blamed Communists for acts of sabotage. Most prominent was an attempt to burn down the Reichstag.

In the two decades following World War II, several psychologists conducted clinical studies to try to explain the barbaric, brutal behavior of the nations involved. Both conservatives and liberals agree with psychological studies concluding that about 70% of people are deceived easily. If deception doesn’t work, peer pressure and propaganda can bring most of the rest into line. Hermann Goering concluded his testimony declaring that what was done in Germany under the NAZIs could be done in any nation.

John Dean, with the collaboration of Barry Goldwater until his death, summarized many of these studies in a book titled: Conservatives without Conscience. Those studies were done in part to determine how so many Germans could have behaved so ruthlessly and savagely. The conclusion was that most Americans also were capable of that behavior. U.S. leaders quietly shelved the results. The Vietnam and Second Iraq wars proved Americans still are capable of hideous cruelty, barbarity and brutality.

On the left, liberals such as Judah Freed, educator, journalist and media expert, concluded that about 85% of Americans are propagandized easily. In his recent book, Global Sense, he concludes that about 15% of Americans achieve global sense, the equivalent of what this paper calls humanity-centered. The rest function at a tribal sense level that is primitive and self-centered.

On the right, NeoConservatives believe people naturally are anarchistic and ill-behaved. There is no right or wrong. They believe the average person functions at a three-year-old mental, moral and maturity level. About 10% stand out as great men, such as those imagined by Ayn Rand in her numerous books, or Masters of the Universe as some modern day business and financial millionaires like to label themselves. The great men are more talented and better able to decide what is best for society and how to manage it. University of Chicago professor Leo Strauss, the guru of NeoConservatism, saw the prototype of his great man in Western movies. He was the no nonsense marshall or sheriff wearing the white hat who, with nerves of steel, faced down and shot the black-hatted bad guy--always in a fair fight. Most of all, the great men are willing to take stern measures to insure order that benefits all members of a society. These rulers have no other moral code. In fact, they often need to be deceptive and lie to ordinary mortals. These lies are called “noble lies” because they are for the good of society as a whole.
The Goering scenario played out in the U.S. on September 11, 2001. Foreign enemies attacked the World Trade Center. A few days later internal subversives carried out anthrax attacks. Paranoia swept the nation. Most Americans reacted just as Germans did in the 1930s. Americans demanded retaliation, agreed to have their rights revoked, allowed their government to spy on them and their neighbors, submitted to executive usurpation of power and accepted violations of the International Declaration of Human Rights including torture, endless detentions, extra-judicial executions and widespread use of weapons of mass destruction.

The outrage at the loss of life on September 11, 2001 was not some heartfelt, empathetic grief for the lives of the victims. Actually only 2,006 of the victims were American citizens. The outrage was the vicarious emotional reaction to the horrible deaths of people who were so similar and geographically close to Americans. When over 7,000 U.S. soldiers died in the botched retaliations to the act, there was little grief and no outrage. Loss of life matters to the beast brain only if the beast brain can relate closely to that life.

FEAR, THE IDEAL INSTRUMENT OF CONTROL

Animals returning to their lairs, dens, nests, etc., commonly are on the alert for anything that is out of place. That could be a warning that enemies were prowling the area. A broken twig, overturned stone, churned up dirt or depressed clump of grass becomes a warning sign. When everything is in place, it can feel reassured. The senses feed information to the brain where it is processed through a network of mirror synapses. The information is compared to that stored there already from past experiences. The mirror synapses rate the information positively or negatively and evaluate the proper response. Thus, when everything is in place around the nest or den, brain alarm systems can be relaxed. These material objects such as stones unturned and in place can take on a relaxing feeling and even reverence. They can become my “lucky stones” and become fetishes or even sacred. The self-centered mind can attribute lucky or spiritual qualities to these objects. A recent TV news report pointed out a difference between members of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street toward the American Flag. The Tea Party invariably exhibited reverence for the flag and handled it carefully and correctly. Flags carried by Occupy Wall Street supporters were defaced with messages and negative drawings, carried improperly or even mutilated.

Paranoia can lead to insanity. During the Cold War, the U.S. had a strategy called Mutually Assured Destruction with the appropriate acronym MAD. This Machiavellian plan threatened to incinerate and radiate every living thing on earth. The U.S. was prepared to destroy itself and everyone and everything else if anyone failed to bow to its way of life and goals. Fortunately, the main “enemy” was the Soviet Union which never put a madman like Ronald Reagan in the top leadership position. Also, atheists have more reason to cling to this life as long as possible than do religious zealots who expect to move on to a better world in the afterlife. Some religious zealots are eager to accelerate the time of that passage.

Paulo Freire’s research led him to conclude that societies break down into oppressors and oppressed. His major work Pedagogy of the Oppressed, was published in Brazilian Portugese in 1968. What amazed him was that the oppressed usually didn’t want to end oppression. Often, they hoped to become a member of the tiny oppressor class. In the meantime, the oppressed envied their oppressors and tried to imitate them. This is compatible with beast brain behaviors.

John Dean’s conclusions were similar. The psychological studies he surveyed determined that people want authoritarianism. They will be slavishly obedient to their bosses, then are equally authoritarian to those below them in their family, social or business ladder.

Beast brain people will accept the flimsiest justifications for their authoritarian belief proclivities. After the Moors were expelled from Spain in the 15th Century, returning Spanish rulers claimed there were biological differences between them and the former subjects of the Moors. Nobles had blue blood in their veins which proved the claim. Peasants’ blood was red. Blue veins were visible through the light skins of the nobility. Peasant veins were not visible through their dark mixed-Moorish skin. When they bled, it was red. The blue-blood myth endured for centuries even though many had witnessed red blood oozing from an injured noble. The belief concurred with the Feudal predisposition of the peasant, so he or she was inclined to accept it even when there was contradicting evidence. There are residues of the Medieval Feudal mentality in America today. It’s not uncommon to hear backward, poorly educated people proudly claim that they are “red-blooded Americans.”

The terms gorging and sacrificing could substitute for Freire’s oppressor and oppressed dichotomy. That would help explain some beast brain behaviors and beliefs. Gorging is a common instinct in the insect and animal worlds. The queen ant and wasp are gorged with food until they are much larger than any other member of the colony. The queen produces more pheromones which tells other colony members that she is in charge and that her food and needs must be met first. The queen then produces all the eggs for her colony.

Alpha male and female wolves eat until they are gorged. After both are stuffed, the rest of the pack squabbles over the remains. When there is insufficient food for the rest of the pack, they blame the weak and under-performers, not the gorgers, for insufficient sustenance. This insures survival of at least some of the pack when times are lean and conforms to Darwin’s primary law of nature: preservation and perpetuation of the species. In the restaurant, customers seldom blame the owner for squeezing pay out of his employees and passing on the cost to customers in the form of ever-increasing tips.

The wolf behavior can be found among beast brain people and is common in capitalist nations. The wealthy are allowed to take as much as they can get. Poor and Welfare people are demonized for jeopardizing the survival of the herd or tribe by consuming and not contributing their share.

The gorging and sacrificing instincts explain the curious behavior of lower income, asset-deprived people defending exorbitant wealth in the hands of a few other members of their community. It also explains why community members will accept the absurd argument that traveling to the other side of the world to kill people and risk death could contribute to the survival of the herd. Ultimately, a Feudal society emerges. It will have a few privileged lords and masses of vassals, a few nobles and many peasants, a few oppressors and many oppressed members, a few Plantation masters and a multitude of people in servitude. The United States is on the brink of Feudalism today. Corporations serve as the lords and nobles and are aggregating more and more power and less and less responsibility. This structure feels right to beast brains. They “feel” it isn’t right to challenge the appropriation of their rights, freedoms and property by the corporations.

PRESERVING THE BEAST BRAIN MENTALITY

The Feudal structure requires the fear instinct to nurture and preserve the beast brain. With most natural threats to lives and well-being eliminated, the fear instinct diminishes. Now it’s necessary for the oppressors to invent fears. The U.S. does that by creating an atmosphere that’s conducive to a high level of crime, drug-addled “hippies” and menacing dark-skinned people at home and ruthless dictators abroad. That’s covered with an icing of cultural tension.

Natural fear reactions generally fall into two “F” word phrases: “identification friend or foe,” and “fight or flight.” The beast brain constantly surveys its surroundings for threats. It searches microscopically and macroscopically.

Microscopically, the beast brain feels threatened by the slightest changes from the norm. The beast brain can become obsessed with the miniscule and insignificant. If it’s at high fear levels as exists in the U.S., it’s constantly looking for outlets to relieve the fear pressure. When the Beatles came to America in the 1964 with hair down over their ears, the beast brain became alarmed. When President Kennedy didn’t wear a hat outdoors, that was seen as a challenge to social order. The beast brains were outraged at fondling incidents by President Clinton. They were certain that behavior by the top leader would rock the foundations of the nation. They didn’t object to spending $60 million of their tax dollars to impeach Clinton even though conviction and removal from office was virtually impossible. They forgive infidelity, adultery, marriage vow violations, ethics violations and deception by Newt Gingrich. Many of these microscopic minds, that reviled Clinton, are willing to put Gingrich in the highest political office in the nation.

Without the guidance of the prefrontal cortex, beast brains lack a grasp of magnitude. Jacques Rostand, a French philosopher, summarized the cognitive dissonance in typical beast brains as follows: kill a man, you’re a murderer; kill a million, you’re a conquerer; kill them all, you’re a god.

There also seems to be a big bad wolf syndrome. Beast brains can see monsters where none exist. The beast brain is eager to discover an alleged threat, such as Manuel Noriega or Saddam Hussein when logically none exist. Also, bullying will send a message to others that might consider harming the local tribe. It becomes a convenient outlet for pent-up fear and consequently, an increased eagerness to accept its existence.

When a large threat is or seems imminent, the beast brain searches for like-minded, like-attired and similar acting people to form a defensive herd. Then that herd attacks or flees depending on how the situation is assessed.
In the mid-1990s, several conservative Americans viewed the fall of the Soviet Union as an opportunity to reorder the world and establish “full-spectrum dominance.” Hitler called the idea “New world order.” The best way to do that, they claimed, was to exploit the pandemonium of a crisis or catastrophe. “A new Pearl Harbor” would be the ideal catastrophe. It would “galvanize” the American people into a frightened herd that could be stampeded in any direction, they surmised. Neo-Conservatives and their organization, Project for a New American Century, were the leading advocates of these ideas. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor under President Carter, advocated a similar strategy also wishing for a “new Pear Harbor” in his book The Grand Chessboard (1997).

Religious teachings often are contrary to those natural instincts, creating confusion in the minds of spiritual people. This adds to paranoia and cognitive dissonance or mixed signals about how to live one’s life. These people are more receptive to manipulation since they have no one certain answer to the issues and problems facing them. Sex is the easiest issue for which to set solid standards. It’s even better is one group gets to set the standards for another group such as men ordering the sex lives of women. They easily default to one answer for themselves and the opposite answer for others. To paraphrase Jesus, they can see the splinters in the eyes of others but can’t see the logs in their own eyes. In frustration, they tend to settle for a charismatic individual or class of people to tell them what to do. They become dependent on royalty or a noble class to lead them until their survival is intertwined with the survival of the royalty or nobility. The lives of the lower classes become disposable and expendable, while those of the upper class are deemed critical to survival and perpetuation of the herd or tribe.

Reconfiguring the Beast Brain

Using the second Gulf War as a recent baseline of measure, we can estimate how many American minds are dominated by their beast brains. In the lead up to the Second Gulf War, the George W. Bush Administration implied that Iraq had the ability and desire to invade the U.S. and detonate a nuclear weapon. Considering that Iraq is the size of California geographically and about two-thirds it’s size in population, any invasion of the U.S. is inconceivable to a rational mind. The Bush Administration also claimed Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) and was barbaric enough to use them. Two United Nations inspection teams on the ground in Iraq could not find any evidence of WMDs. Scott Ritter, retired Marine colonel and leader of one inspection team stated that they had looked at the receipts for weapons material supplied by other nations and accounted for all but an insignificant fraction which likely was destroyed in the First Gulf War. A person willing to think critically could figure out that the U.S. commonly uses WMDs in its numerous wars. A fear-confused mind couldn’t see the contradictions. Those minds numbered between 90 and 92% of Americans.

Without the central control provided by the mature prefrontal cortex, the mind careens along from one extreme to the other. It has no consistency. It can respond to the same stimulus one way today and the opposite way tomorrow. The modular composition of the brain allows the person to draw on the module it prefers to justify his or her position already reached by the subconscious sectors of the brain. Michael Gazzaniga demonstrated that information from one eye is split, transmitted over two nerve bundles and processed separately in the two hemispheres of the brain. Recalling the information later from both hemispheres often produces contradictory and illogical associations. Thus, the brain is fully capable of fooling itself with its visual senses and frequently does. Impartial observers label that contradiction “hypocrisy.” The hypocrite has an approval feeling from some sector of his brain and truly “feels” that his decision was right and moral. He also can criticize the same action in others and “feel” that he is right and moral.

Recent MRI tests conducted at the University College London provided tangible evidence that brains of liberals and conservatives are physically different. Liberals had a larger anterior cingulate cortex, the area of the brain heavily involved in decision-making. Conservatives had larger amygdalas, the primitive “reptilian brain stem” linked to emotion (style) and fear processing and stimulus-response reactions.

From my experience, it takes five to ten years to reconfigure a mind from self-centered to humanity-centered after age 25. One or two shocks to one’s beliefs can speed up the process. Cindy Sheehan describes her rapid rise up the learning curve and almost immediate conversion to the humanity-centered mind after her soldier son was killed in Iraq. She began to question whether or not his sacrifice was justified. She discovered the justifications for the war were fraudulent and her government had told her bald-faced lies about the need to sacrifice for the war.

Americans have been subjected to a century of the world’s most sophisticated propaganda. In 1913, after a decade of government litigation by two Republican presidents against predatory, corrupt corporations and robber barons, the business community was determined that it never again would be held accountable for its crimes. Corporations poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the coffers of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable, American Advertising Council, over 200 think tanks and numerous public relations firms. In turn, they set out to saturate Americans with the message that private enterprise represents everything good and noble about America, and trade unions and governments are threats to American prosperity, values, traditions and freedoms. NAM had incorporated Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis revelations into its “public relations” ambitions. It felt confident it could dupe most Americans into believing that laisser faire (unregulated) capitalism is the best economic system possible. The same propaganda methods were applied to the effort to convince Americans to enter the insane First World War that was devastating Europe. Although there was a strong aversion to foreign entanglements, the new propaganda expertly implemented by the Committee on Pubic Information proved to be highly effective.

NAM and friends achieved similar success. Their propaganda formula became the model for the world. It impressed numerous world leaders and a young Corporal in the German Army named Adolph Hitler. The Australian sociologist and psychologist Alex Carey, considered the world’s leading expert on propaganda, concluded from his exhaustive studies that Americans are the most brain-washed people in the industrialized world.

By the 1970s, corporations were spending a billion dollars per year on propaganda and brain-washing Americans. They decided they had perfected techniques for manipulating the masses. They could move on to less costly, more pervasive, approaches. They parted with the grass roots manipulation tactics and aimed at “tree tops” targets, according to Carey. They began to concentrate on influencing the academic, bureaucratic and media elites. NAM moved its headquarters from New York to Washington D.C. Nearly 200 CEOs of the largest corporations in America formed the Business Roundtable and began collaborating rather than competing. They wanted to remake Washington D. C. into their own image. In 1980, they got their fondest wish. Ronald Reagan was elected president, and they had their man in the White House.

To change America from the world’s greatest purveyor of violence and land of revolting barbarity and shameless violence will be a major undertaking. To change Americans from the most brainwashed inhabitants of the industrialized world to enlightened citizens of planet earth who are immune to manipulation can’t be accomplished over night, or, possibly, at all. Not only are there millions of years of insect instincts and animal natures to surmount, but the world’s most well-funded, sophisticated propaganda system must be confronted, exposed and extinguished.

The brain constantly “rewires” and reconfigures itself. Some reconfigurations are a natural process of maturing. During infancy, there is a surge of brain neuron growth and increase in gray matter. Another surge occurs just before puberty. After puberty and up to the mid-twenties, extraordinary brain changes (brain plasticity) occur and massive rewiring channeled to accommodate the survival needs and the tasks the person undertakes. It’s like the brain’s college years. Society’s failure to take advantage of these years of massive potential is to the detriment of that society. The neuron synapses that are unused or rarely used are pruned. The neural connections of the most used neurons are coated with Myelin making them more resilient, efficient and faster conductors of information. It’s at this point that the prefrontal cortex finally matures and has the potential to coordinate all modules of the brain like a well-connected interstate highway system.

The prefrontal cortex is the brain of the brain. It is in a position to direct multi-tasking, conduct cognitive analysis, organize abstract thought, plan strategies and moderate moral and social behavior.

In most Americans, the potential of the prefrontal cortex is short circuited by the powerful stimulus-response instincts freeing up the beast brain, the limbic system, to run amok. Emotions such as fear, anger and “fight of flight” rule. The beast brain feels an irresistible urge to return a comfortable Feudal political and social structure or its U.S. incarnation the Plantation. Uncivilized behaviors like unjustified wars, high crime, exploitation, racism, abuse and social stratification become the accepted norm.

While reconfiguration of the brain takes place at a crawl after age 25, it is possible to do as Cindy Sheehan proved. However, that is even more difficult in a nation with a long history of racism, cruelty and exploitation at home and abroad. If one-third of Americans were functioning at the humanity-centered level, that should be enough power to drag the United States kicking and screaming into civilization and suppress its European mean genes and violent urges to conquer and kill. That core could expose and dismantle the sophisticated propaganda system.

Sixty-five to 70% occurs again and again as the number of people incapable of consistent, altruistic, logical behavior. Social psychologist Stanley Milgram’s research revealed that the conscience is a self-regulating inhibitor (Dean p. 43). Sixty-five percent of people will follow orders to harm someone else even when he or she believes it is wrong (Dean p. 40).
An Army Master Sergeant confided to me that troops in Iraq were told they were there to do a job. Slaughtering people and destroying their property and livelihoods was to be reduced in their minds to a routine occupation. They were not to deliberate on the morality of their hideous, criminal acts. The military knows that the mind is able to subordinate the individual conscience to the group conscience and higher authority.

The conscience is the weakest of those forces bombarding the brain with behavior suggestions and advice. If the Amygdala is the fast-track to body responses, reflexes and reactions, the conscience is the deliberative, reasoning slow-track.

The brain has incredible potential. However, it can be steered off the road and over the cliff by numerous vestigial and primitive behaviors. Insect instincts, animal natures, reptilian reflexes, parental pressures, herd behaviors, community counsels and, finally, the conscience bombard the brain with conflicting suggestions. Many of those originated from fear, dysfunctional or authoritarian sources usually with their own selfish interests at the core.

A very small percentage of humans can score points in basketball with high accuracy thanks to extraordinary tasking development in the brain and a sophisticated functioning of the prefrontal cortex. A small percentage of humans surmount their animal natures and compartmentalized brains and create a well-functioning, balanced, smooth-flowing neuron network and become wise and morally righteous. That is done with years of practice guiding the brain away from impulsive reactions and fear of the unknown. Vigorous questioning and rigorous research of every major change and common practice is critical to awakening the humanity-centered part of the mind and becoming altruistic, empathetic, humane and righteous. All normal people have the potential to reach this state. An average of five experience and training years are needed to reach the righteous human being level. Children raised by beast brain people face a greater, usually impossible, challenge. The primitive limbic sectors of their brains are nurtured and reinforced by the parents while the prefrontal lobe is ignored and avoided and left to atrophy. That means they reach adulthood already confused, corrupted, disoriented and inhumane.

The adverse effects on children of conservative mothers actually begins during gestation. A mother’s fear reactions from imagined “cornered rat” threats is passed on to the fetus. The mother produces an excessive amount of cortisol that is transferred to the fetus stimulating its brain limbic sectors and speeding up their development. The cognitive prefrontal cortex is malnourished and subjected to retarded development. Ironically, the threat to normal fetal development is greater in those conservative mothers who claim to care so much about fetuses.

THE MEDIA

The media are corporations. Usually they are owned by bigger, predatory corporations. The media are not the watchdog “fourth estate” idealized by British conservative political philosopher Edmund Burke. The media are the traitorous “fifth column” as described by journalist and commentator Bill Moyers.


THE HUMANITY-CENTERED FUTURE IS POSSIBLE

In 1992, Francis Fukuyama, a political science and economy professor published a book titled: The End of History and the Last Man. As the chronicler for Neoconservatism, he argued that the world had reached “the end of history.” “There is no alternative” (TINA), he argued. Nations such as the United States and United Kingdom had reached the optimum balance among all the social, political and economic needs of their people. That included the trappings of democracy even though a small corporatocracy actually runs the nation, just as the Communist Party Politburo was the real power in the Soviet Union. The people naturally are not capable of wise political or economic decisions, so the pretense of democracy gives them a feeling of power even though it doesn’t exist. The free market economic system is sacrosanct and not to be challenged. Corporate executives and wealthy investors make all of the significant decisions. When everything is privatized, including water, and possibly air, life will be as good as it possible.

Neoconservatives were certain people of other nations gladly would accept this model if it were offered to or imposed on them. After all, all of them are envious of the United States Neoconservatives believed.

In 2006, Francis Fukuyama wrote a book titled: American at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy. In it, he argued that The End of History was not the end of history after all. Nations such as Afghanistan and Iraq did not fully appreciate all the benefits of a U.S. or British style economic and political system and violently rejected any effort to have one imposed on them.

In 2000, the Neoconservatives grabbed control of the United States with the help of a Supreme Court led coup. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were the Neoconservatives’ front men. They planned to gain control of the world using U.S. military and political might. They used terms such as “full spectrum dominance” and “U.S. hegemony” rather than “new world order” as Adolph Hitler labeled his similar plans. The intellectually dense duo led a team of sociopathic megalomaniacs including luminaries such as Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle bringing the benefit of their superior intellects to the American people. When the U.S. was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001 by Saudis on planes flown by pilots trained in the U.S., they retaliated against Afghanistan and Iraq. Dick Cheney said the Iraq war would be a cakewalk that would last six days, six weeks, certainly no more than six months. Now, six years plus three later, the U.S. still has not completed its costly cakewalk. The Neocons inherited an economy with $100 billion per year surpluses and quickly turned it into $500 billion per year deficits. As Fukuyama ponders the Neoconservative legacy, his former confederates wonder the world having left swaths of destruction and devastation in their wake.

No Neoconservative is humanity-centered. They are the monster brains of the beast brain segment of society. They believe it’s a concept that is not part of human nature. Their minds can’t grasp the idea. Fukuyama might be undergoing a reconfiguration, but he is not there yet.

Neoconservatism and its neo-liberal economic theories still dominate and damage the U.S. economy. Canadian journalist Naomi Klein wrote a book The Shock Doctrine tracing the consequences of neo-liberal economics in several nations where it was tried. In all those nations, it ended in disaster. It ended in disaster in the U.S also, but U.S. leaders managed to keep a lid on it so far.

The nobility values members of the underclasses the same way a dairy farmer values his milk cows. As long as the cow is producing enough milk to be profitable for the farmer, he will provide it with basic food and shelter. When the cow no longer produces enough to be profitable, the farmer and his family will consume it for dinner or sell it to others to use for food, leather, etc.

When a factory worker becomes too old or disabled to perform at a peak level under pure capitalism, the factory owner jettisons him or her into the streets and the stockholders cheer believing those lost wages will become their dividends.

The more remote rulers are from those affected by their decisions and the more they can convince themselves that they are inherently different from them, the more they are able to dehumanize them. The more invisible customers and subjects are, the easier it is to rob and abuse them. Jane Goodall, the British anthropologist who spent decades in Tanzania studying chimpanzees, discovered that Chimps sometimes participated in premeditated murder of other chimps. Originally anthropologists believed only humans were capable of deliberate murder of their own species. She named this unnatural behavior pseudo-speciation. Humans can convince themselves that they are entirely different from other human beings and justify murdering them or doing unspeakable things to them. Large corporations and remote centralized governments find it easy to behave like the dairy farmer and the chimps of Tanzania. Those institutions must be diminished and disempowered if people are to become humanity-centered.

As mentioned above, most Americans were outraged by the 2,000+ American deaths on 9/11/2001. They are not outraged at the 7,000 American deaths in the badly botched retaliation. The deaths of nearly one thousand times that many Afghanis and Iraqis as the consequence of the retaliation also does not bother the vast majority of them. The fact that no Afghani or Iraqi was among the 19 perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks prompts no regrets.

Another form of Hofstadter’s paranoid style can be called “screech words.” When a mother warns an infant “don’t touch that,” or “stay away from that” in a lower, menacing voice or high bone-chilling shriek, the infant usually reverses course and remembers to avoid that item or refrain from that activity in the future. These warnings are screech words. The infant learns to avoid harm without experiencing the harm. It’s common among birds to screech warnings when a cat is prowling or raptor bird is hovering near their nesting and feeding areas.

Color words are examples of screech words that most people don’t realize are having a fear effect on them. “Red menace,” “browning of America,” “yellow peril” and “red scare” are a few of the color slogans used to rally the rabble against their own species. For instance, “Red menace” was used to portray Native Americans as a lethal threat. The subconscious mind viewed Native Americans as an evil threat even though white European invaders were slaughtering them by the millions and stealing their lands.

There are screech phrases as well. A recent example is “weapons of mass destruction” that was repeated ad infinitum in the lead up to the second Gulf War. A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that also kills non-combatants indiscriminately. Saddam Hussein had them, according to our government and media, and was barbaric enough to use them. WMDs include cluster bombs, land and harbor mines, lethal or harmful gases, depleted uranium, etc., all of which the U.S. possesses and uses in large quantities. All of those were used by the U.S. in the its invasion of Iraq. So, where is the outrage? This shows once again that the beast brain is incapable of outrage, remorse or shame in wars of aggression.

In the paranoid style, screech words and phrases can become unscreeched. In the 19th century when capitalism was completely unregulated, the markets crashed every 15 years on average. The crashes were called panics or recessions. To make the economic collapse of the 1930s sound less severe, depression was substituted for panic and recession. Now economic panic or recession have milder connotations.

The phrase “fifth column” struck fear in anyone who heard it during the Second World War through the McCarthy era Red Scare. Today, no one under 50 years of age is the least bit disturbed when hearing the phrase. Fifth column originated during the Spanish Revolution of the 1930s. Spanish General Francisco Franco led a revolt against the Spanish Republic which was one of the most democratic governments in Europe. Aided by Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and the U.S., Franco set out to bring Fascism to Spain. He had defeated most of the opposition in the countryside. Only Madrid remained in the hands of the Republic. Franco divided his army into four columns which marched toward Madrid from four different directions. Franco had many sympathizers inside Madrid who sabotaged the Republic at every opportunity. These saboteurs became know as Franco’s “fifth column.”

The 9/11 events were played and replayed on television thousands of times. Viewers saw the buildings slowly dissolve into powder and collapse, people fleeing in terror from the monstrous clouds of dust and bodies of people trapped in the burning buildings plummet to the ground preferring an instant death to a slow death by fire. Repetition burned the images into the minds of Americans accompanied by menacing narrations from politicians and media. The date itself, 911, is a national alarm number or screech word. The coincidence raises a huge leap of imagination. The screech words release cortisol which puts the fear networks on alert or high alarm. Sometimes it is so subtle the conscience mind isn’t aware of an emotional change taking place.

On the other hand, soldiers killed in battle were reduced to bland, formless, colorless numbers. The Bush Administration forbid the media to take pictures or videotape the returning, flag-draped coffins of sacrificed soldiers. People were content not to be reminded of the human costs of the war. The horrible, senseless deaths of thousands of American soldiers was devoid of paranoid style. Thus, it was of little concern to the general public.

A similar problem arises when governments and corporations are remote from the people they are supposed to serve. They stop seeing individuals and start seeing an amorphous mass. The mass wants cheaper prices, lower taxes and more goods and services. It becomes more and more annoying, challenging the privilege, greed and gluttony of the nobility with whom politicians rub shoulders all too frequently and picture in their minds as sentient beings.

The current transnational and interstate corporations and big governments are too remote, unfeeling and lacking in altruism and empathy to work for the common good. Corporations have become dominators, not servants, of the people. They have an insatiable craving for power. It will end only when they have all of it and rule the world, or when the people they exploit and dominate eliminate them. The corporation-centered environment fueled by greed and gluttony corrupts everyone it touches retarding any chance of civilized development and humane advancement.

Big governments have demonstrated no immunity to corruption. Governments on international, federal and state levels must be limited to those large, temporary projects that can not be done at the local level as they did originally. The first corporations got state charters to perform a particular project such as building a bridge. The charter gave them limited liability from law suits. When the project was done, the corporate charter was dissolved.

The remote exploiters in corporations and government need to be more inconspicuous as they get bigger, more powerful and destructive. Finally, they will create that critical mass reaction described by Historian Margaret Meade: “A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Their final demolition will be self-destruction.

Business ownership by remote, uncaring, greedy, gluttonous stockholders, must be replaced by local stakeholders. The top priority of stakeholders is the preservation of the community. Stakeholders are employees primarily then community citizens, businesses and other institutions that have a link to the community.

Recent extraordinary advances in technology, energy, food production and information access make a complete reconfiguration of society possible and desirable. True democracy is possible for the first time in U.S. history. A 24-hour workweek for 40 hours living wage pay is possible and will provide full employment. People could work a shorter time to provide for all of their food, clothing, shelter, education, healthcare and entertainment needs and have time left over to pursue their dreams or train for a new career. Citizens would have time to become more involved politically and more active in their communities. An example of an excellent alternative that incorporates the latest technological and scientific advances and merges them with a real democratic political system is a concept called the Plebian Village.

-END-