In honor of Passover starting this evening, with Tuesday being the first full day, I thought I’d go in a slightly different direction. A completely non religious discussion inspired by a religious event or celebration. Passover, for my non-Jewish friends is at its core, a celebration of freedom. More specifically, it means to those of us who are Jewish, our deliverance from bondage, (enslavement,) by God, and as a consequence of that deliverance, the agreement that we would live our lives according to the laws of the Torah, (the first Five Books of Moses found in the Old Testament of the Bible.) So, for this week, my topics will be a celebration of that spirit of freedom, what it means, how do we achieve it, keep it, and prevent the usurpers of such from gaining a foothold on ideology within our societal thought.
There are two conditions required in order for an entire population to be subjugated. One of those conditions is that there must be a group of elites or a ruling class that wishes to do the subjugating. The second condition that needs met is that the population in question must, for the entire duration of that subjugation, be incapable of doing anything about it. Those doing the subjugating will always live in constant fear of losing their upper hand. For them, Life itself will always be a paradox. Having a population that is totally and forever subordinated, and at the same time, constantly a threat if awakened to the possibility of revolt.
That is why slavers will institute certain precautions among their chattel. Education will be disallowed, most specifically, Slaves will not be allowed to learn the art of reading and writing. Disarmament is a must, as in complete gun control. Fear must be instilled, but a deeper and more subtle fear than what you might believe. Yes, making chattel fearful of immediate reprisal for breaking the rules is a necessary tool, but it is not the complete picture. Even more useful is making the subordinate population fearful for their very existence, thus convincing them to become complicit in their own bondage. Even more insidious, convincing the enslaved that they are not a permanent servant class, and controlling their behavior through mass manipulation techniques taught in every Group Dynamics Class on college campuses across our Fruited Plains.
Let’s explore those last two items in a more focused context. How do potential overlords achieve these ends? How do you convince an entire segment of the human population that without your protection from some perceived boogeyman or collection of unseen dangers, they would perish? How do you get them to be afraid of those boogeymen in the first place, meaning initiate the perception necessary to establish the ruse?
Fear, contrary to what you may believe is not a human failing. It is an evolutionary defense mechanism, which in the past helped us, as a species, to survive. When I managed Woolworth Stores in some of America’s crappiest neighborhoods, I happened upon an alcoholic named Norm. One day Norm came up to me and said, “you should try being an alcoholic John, it gets rid of your inhibitions.” I told Norm that I liked my inhibitions just fine, and that inhibited behavior was in fact what kept mankind alive for from his first appearance on Planet Earth. When you think to yourself, “should I play in traffic, in front of that oncoming tractor trailer?,” it is your inhibitions that say, “probably not a good idea.” It is the fear of falling from great heights that convinces your natural curiosity to not test the laws of physics by throwing yourself off of tall buildings to determine if you might indeed be able to fly. Fear and inhibitions were those very things that made early man not pull the tails of lions, poke bear while sleeping, or tug on Superman’s cape. What makes us different as species, is our ability to temporarily control those hardwired pieces of our natural design. The entire point I’m trying to make here is that those pimping fear in order to control everyone have a distinct advantage to begin with, and that advantage is that we are, all of us, genetically predisposed to be fearful pretty much most of the time.
Being a follower, is also hardwired into most of us. I know that this one hurts to read, and more specifically, most people actually see themselves as leaders. The truth is however, that this is not so. From the beginning of our first steps upright as people, when Simian Chromosomes 2 and 13 fused, forming our Human Chromosome number 2, with its two centromeres and three telomeres, our survival has been enhanced by living in collective groups, rather than individually. For any such social structure, leaders and followers are always established, with genetics playing a particular role in determining alphas and betas, (leaders and followers.) After the Nuremberg Trials, in which the world at large refused to accept officially any defense in which the betas of Germany professed that they were merely followers, a pretty smart guy named Stanley Milgram decided to test if it were possible after all that people in general would really be willing to simply follow a maniacal leader to commit genocide. What he found was to say the least, chilling.
Of Milgram’s original 40 test subjects, 4 were removed from the study due to a breakdown of the control conditions, (the actors involved failed to convince the test subjects of the ruse,) 35 deliberately killed off their victims, and 1 person refused. The single failure by the way was a Catholic Priest, scoring one for those of you with faith. Our humanity really is connected to our faith in a higher power. Also of note, Milgram eventually lost his job at Yale due to the fall out from this experiment, as many of those tested over the course of this study needed psychological counseling due to their realization that they were indeed willing to commit murder simply because a person in authority ordered them to do so. If WWII proved one thing, it is that human beings are predisposed to be followers, and that we are capable of being manipulated in mass, even if that manipulation leads us to do terrible things. For those of you who say it could never happen again, I would simply point to Josef Stalin’s mass murder in the Soviet Union, and Pol Pot’s mass murder in Cambodia, both of which happened after WWII. Both were instances of subordinates being ordered to exterminate millions of people based on ideological or racial grounds, and following those orders without question or failure.
I’m sure that many who read this will be those precious few alphas who are leaders and not followers, but the vast majority will be followers who view themselves as leaders. In Milgram’s experiment, each of the subjects was interviewed prior to the testing, and each one of them professed their belief that they were strong enough to stand out from the crowd and were essentially non-conformist in nature. My personal belief is that the first step in controlling these parts of our nature, genetically coded into us through millennia of natural selection, is recognition of the existence of this truth. Only by recognizing that we are being led against our will, or fearful for possibly irrational reasons, can we overcome the effects of those realities.
Always question the premise for which information is presented to you. Don’t allow for others to frame the debates of the day, dictating terms upon which decisions are made. We, as people with inalienable rights granted by our creator have a say so in matters pertaining to our existence as well, meaning, self determination. As a small lad who was a member of BBYO, (for you Christians out there, think church youth group,) I participated in a leadership weekend. There was some hippie present who taught us a class in Group Dynamics, doubtless based on his work at some leftist corner of what ever institution of higher learning was providing him protection from the consequences of living in the real world. We glossed over the basics of recognizing that when collected together as a group, people will begin to act in concert in certain respects, without recognizing the phenomenon. This behavior will begin to take on a life of its own, and will do so in every instance of any group’s formation. Even today, and in the most unlikeliest of places, I can see evidence of this in motion. Not only can this group behavior be noticed, but it can be manipulated, and most of the members of the group will follow suit. There probably will be a few dissident influences, but there is a methodology of dealing with those as well. The means of dealing with those dissident influences is easier for leaders who are organized, and looking out for them specifically. The success of the dissidents, similarly depends upon the ability to organize, but that success can be accomplished. For what makes groups easy to manipulate, is also the thing that the manipulators fear the most, and that is the recognition of the manipulation. People are generally not pleased to learn that they’ve been conned. They’re downright mad beyond belief if they feel that they’ve been led to a bad end.
Milgram’s test subjects did not just go away after his experiments were done. They contacted the University in New Haven, Connecticut demanding his head upon the realization that he had played with their emotions, consciousness, and pointed out how easily they could be led into tossing aside their humanity. The people of Germany held war crimes trials for decades after the original Nuremberg Trials had ceased, hunting people for prosecution deemed to low on the totem pole to be considered war criminals by the International Court. Truth and knowledge are the tools which will make combating the weapons of the left possible.
Cross Posted from Musings of a Mad Conservative.
Tags: Freedom, Group Dynamics Class, Passover, Totalitarianism
