TOWARDS A JUST SOCIETY!

JUST SUPPOSE?

2010-02-25T05:46:00.001-08:00

Just suppose you were an intellignet mammal, probablymore intelligent than a lot of human beings and you were kidnapped from your family (pod) in the Puget Sound and held hostage for upwards of thirty years in a small pool when formerly you could roam all the oceans of the world, would you be pissed off?

Should anyone be surprised and angry if you kill an individual or two, who made you dependent where you were free by being the source of your food, who gave you fish which you were so capable of catching for yourselves to do daily shows for talking, gawking animals?

The one justification I would accept for the imprisonment of Orcas, who are intelligent predators who should not be called killers because of the ingenuity that makes them efficient predators, is the threat of man's depredations and destructive tendencies succeeds in making these majestic creatures extinct another one of these viscious circles that is created by agents of coercion determined culture.

The revenge we might take against this creature is to set him free and so create a virtuous circle to replace the viscious circle that our hubris, our overweening hubris the basis of the attitude that our might gives us the right to imprison the animals who share this planet with us for our entertainment.

JUST SUPPOSE?

2010-02-25T05:46:00.000-08:00

BY KIND REQUEST

2009-12-02T06:45:00.000-08:00

Could I request that we leave Tiger Woods the hell alone.

For about a decade he has given us great entertainment with his inspiring and excelllent golf play during that period he has been scandal free and gossip free, an amazing achievement for one so rich and so popular.

Now it seems he might have hit a bump in the road, the question in my mind is not whether there is more to this incident than a car crash, it is whether the searchlight of public scrutiny will be constructive or destructive as he tries to overcome proving that he is not perfect just human?

I think this avid scrutiny can only be destructive, and for once the American public should be compassionate, tolerant and understanding instead of exhibiting once again their insatiable, voracious appetite for the prurient and scandalous and believe that he and his wife can without anyone peering over their shoulders use this incident to make their relationship stronger.

Let us believe that love can conquer all without our collective help.

A FITTING MEMORIAL!

2009-10-30T02:08:00.000-07:00

I was privileged to witness another beautiful dawn this morning over the skies of South Florida as I read "The Gathering Storm" book twelve in the "Wheel of Time" series as I come closer to the end of my personal journey of discovery, my INDEPENDENT audit of the human condition, my attempt to contribute to creating a world in which incidents of man's inhumanity to his fellow man become the exception and not the rule.

I hope that one day the approach I adopted to this transcendent enterprise of simply telling the truth and doing the right thing will be vindicated and validated, that members of my race will comprehend that this is the only approach that had any chance of producing the accurate description of the existing social reality that is the necessary prerequisite for the solution of the urgent, massive problems we face, the only way to provide the possibility of happiness for human beings.

I am constrained to reiterate that I did not decide to engage in this enterprise driven by pride or ambition but because I refused to accept that innocent children should perish to further the ambitions and lust for power of ruthless, immoral individuals.

I have dedicated my life to constructing an appropriate memorial to the two children who died in the Fire at Orange Lane and during this journey have found within a capacity for love and constructed for myself the possibility of happiness.

Woman targeted by militia

2009-06-23T19:03:00.000-07:00

Death video woman 'targeted by militia'

Amateur video apparently showing a young Iranian woman dying in Tehran after she was allegedly shot by pro-government militia on Saturday has caused outrage in Iran and abroad.

The woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, was buried on Sunday.

Her fiance, Caspian Makan, told BBC Persian TV about the circumstances of Neda's death. She was near the area, a few streets away, from where the main protests were taking place, near the Amir-Abad area. She was with her music teacher, sitting in a car and stuck in traffic.

She was feeling very tired and very hot. She got out of the car for just for a few minutes.

And that's when it all happened.

That's when she was shot dead. Eyewitnesses and video footage of the shooting clearly show that probably Basij paramilitaries in civilian clothing deliberately targeted her. Eyewitnesses said they clearly targeted her and she was shot in the chest.

She passed away within a few minutes. People tried to take her to the nearest hospital, the Shariati hospital. But it was too late.

We worked so hard to get the authorities to release her body. She was taken to a morgue outside Tehran. The officials from the morgue asked if they could use parts of her corpse for body transplants for medical patients.

They didn't specify what exactly they intended to do. Her family agreed because they wanted to bury her as soon as possible.

We buried her in the Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery in southern Tehran. They asked us to bury her in this section where it seemed the authorities had set aside spaces for graves for those killed during the violent clashes in Tehran last week.

On Monday afternoon, we had planned to hold a memorial service at the mosque.

But the authorities there and the paramilitary group, the Basij, wouldn't allow it because they were worried it would attract unwanted attention and they didn't want anymore trouble.

The authorities are aware that everybody in Iran and throughout the whole world knows about her story. So that's why they didn't want a memorial service. They were afraid that lots people could turn up at the event.

So as things stand now, we are not allowed to hold any gatherings to remember Neda.

GIVE THE IRANIAN PEOPLE A BREAK!

2009-06-23T12:12:00.000-07:00

What some people in the USA want is to encourage the people in Iran to risk their lives to set up a democracy in that country similar to what is the experience here.

I question I want to ask is why?

The USA has been a democracy for three hundred years but what has that meant? It has meant with the most resources available to any country we are unable to educate our children, we have an economy in crisis with a gigantic national debt, we use the most drugs and have the highest rates of crime and divorce.

The city of New Orleans has not yet recovered from the hurricane that struck that city several years ago.

Why do we feel that we have the right to be promoting a way of life that has not worked for us, we are no nearer to achieving a functioning democracy that we were three hundred years ago.

What gives us the right to tell members of another sovereign nation how to solve their problems when we are completely incapable of solving our own?

It is the Dick Cheney attitude, for six years he was in power and made a complete mess of things, of everything but now he knows all the answers?

Give me a break and give the people of Iran a break and the right to work out their own destinies.

The people of America have no right to be telling anyone how to govern because the country is in a complete mess.

We should focus on fixing our own problems and when we got it right then we export it, not the other way round.

Look at the mess we made in Iraq, we can teach the world to dance to the democratic tune after we learn that secret not before.

EDUCATION FROM ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE?

2009-06-07T05:32:00.000-07:00

Jamaica Gleaner Online

School heads fail - Holness slams primary school principals for poor-quality education

Published: Sunday | June 7, 2009

Tyrone Reid, Staff Reporter

Andrew Holness, Minister of Education - File

Education Minister Andrew Holness has given several primary school principals an 'F' on their report cards for failing to ensure that top-quality education is provided to students under their care. However, this grade is being challenged by president of the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA), Doran Dixon.

The principals came in for a 'flogging' from the education minister after the country's national report on the status of its Millennium Development Goals highlighted that the quality of the education being provided at the primary level was a problem. This is despite the nation achieving universal access to education at that level.

nat'l report next month

The national report is to be presented to the United Nations Economic and Social Council's annual ministerial review in Geneva next month,

In an interview with The Sunday Gleaner, Dr Pauline Knight, director of social policy, planning and research at the Planning Institute of Jamaica, painted a disturbing picture of the problem in primary education.

She said that many children leave primary school ill-prepared for the secondary level.

"The facts are that a large percentage of children leave primary school without being able to read or write," said Knight.

She stressed that the poor-quality education being offered at the primary level has consequences that extend to the working world and the university level, where some students still have difficulties with the English language.

"And, all of this starts from the primary school, because this is where the foundation is laid. And without the proper foundation, it puts extra burden on the higher levels of the system."

buck stops with principals

Holness maintains that the buck stops with the principals. In scolding the heads of the state-operated schools, the education minister said deficient management was the main reason for the poor-quality instruction being offered to the students.

"The quality issue stems from poor leadership at the school level. That is number one," Holness told The Sunday Gleaner.

He added: "We are grappling with the issues of quality. But, when you start to talk about quality, then you have to bring in the issues of accountability."

That is why, the minister says, he supports a system where teachers' efforts are matched to outcomes.

But this does not mean that Holness believes the proposed performance-based pay is the answer to the quality ills rocking the education sector.

According to the education minister, it would be "very difficult" to peg pay to performance in the education sector.

He was, therefore, reluctant to commit his support to the much-debated performance-based pay proposal.

caught in a difficult place

The JTA president rejected the minister's position that the principals were the primary reason for the pitiable results plaguing government-run elementary schools.

"There are clear instances where, even with the best of intentions, some principals are caught in a difficult place because they don't have the basic resources with which to work," Dixon said.

According to him, poverty is the principal problem. He argued that poverty affected children's nutrition and, by extension, their ability to attend school prepared for learning.

In addition, the JTA president argued that poverty limited the capacity of parents to provide meaningful contributions, financial and otherwise, to the school community.

"The poverty affects everything. You can't underestimate the issue of poverty; it is crucial," he said.

Dixon also argued that poor physical conditions and overcrowding of classrooms also robbed value from the quality of education being provided within the walls of primary schools.

"When you have a school where the rooms are still partitioned by chalkboard; when you have a primary class of 50 and over, it really doesn't help in the fight towards quality education," Dixon contended.

Conceded Holness: "There is still infrastructure work to be done."

not gov't inadequacies

However, Holness insisted that the ill-equipped students leaving the state-owned schools did not reflect inadequacies on the Government's side. "It is not an indictment in so far as Government's policy was to improve access," he argued.

The minister pledged that during the decade ahead, the spotlight would be turned directly on the quality of education at the primary stage.

tyrone.reid@gleanerjm.com

Students at Jessie Ripoll Primary, one of the top-performing schools in the Corporate Area. - file

Copyright Jamaica-Gleaner.com

What I find absolutely fascinating is that one of the poorest nations in the world has many of the same problems that I have observed in the richest nation in the world.

I want to make clear that in South Florida I researched and studied this issue, visited the schools and sat in on classes, examined the education bureaucracy and spoke to a wide cross section of teachers.

Can it be that the problem is simple, the primacy of culture, that human beings where ever they live on Planet Earth shared the same culture that created a ubiquitous, pervasive social system worldwide; and, what we are witnessing is that culture, "the conscious and unconscious premises for thinking and action inventing and reinventing itself to perpetuate the status quo?

I invite comments; and, if there is anyone in this group who has hands on experience with education in the USA to indicate that.

I would like to tell you that I do believe that this is the real issue with regard to long term development in the USA or Jamaica.

ISLAND HOME LOST!

2009-05-27T19:48:00.000-07:00

Earlier this evening on Facebook, I became a fan of a site with the appellation,"I love Jamaica" and was moved to think about my feelings, my exceedingly ambivalent feelings for my native land, and wrote this poem which may be the best verse I have ever written, not because it is the most imaginative or because it demonstrates the most literary merit of those I have created, but because I utilized language to communicate very accurately my true feelings, and thought I would share it with members of the Black Think Tank.

ISLAND HOME LOST

Some pain is beyond analysis or expression,
Some memories too poignant and private to share,
Some ironies are so capricious, they precipitate despair,
Such are my feelings with regards to my island in the sun.
Like a woman fantasized about, idealized and loved too much, now no longer fun,
When lost she fell below the radar of emotion, beyond nostalgia.
What remains is an empty, sterile zone of non being.
A spatial gap, an experience frozen in suspended animation, a period of personal history repressed beyond regurgitating.

ADVISE FOR DICK CHENEY

2009-05-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

For two full terms Dick Cheney served as Vice President, arguably the most influential and powerful VP ever, it may well be that he is not defending the record of President Bush but his own mistakes and inadequacies.

He had eight years to make his mark on this nation, and the results are all round us, an economy in ruins as evidenced by unprecedented increases in unemployment and housing foreclosures.

Perhaps the economy was not the strong point of his administration he claims to have done better on national security, where he engaged in a naked act of aggression against the people of Iraq with contrived justifications which attack killed over a hundred thousand Iraqis, a very, very conservative estimate, made half a million Iraqis refugees, and, destroyed the infrastructure in that country while strengthening the hand of extreme Muslim Fundamentalist factions throughout the region.

Mr Cheney, you were as good at you job as Vice President as I am a great singer, I am tone deaf but love karaoke.

When you were in office you maintained a comparatively low profile, perhaps you did not want to overshadow the President, which would have been very easy considering that he was an unmitigated idiot, now you have a very high profile and I cannot for a moment imagine why you obviously have nothing to contribute or you would have made that contribution when you had the chance.

Perhaps, you have too much time on your hands and you are doing this to stave off boredom and ennui.

If that is your problem I would suggest that you go around the country and find people to shoot accidentally, and, then also find very, very stupid people who will believe your version of these accidents.

I cannot advise you to put up or shut up, because you have already put up to the degree that would make you the most unpopular VP in the history of this nation, so can I prevail upon you to SHUT UP.

OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

2009-05-14T17:53:00.000-07:00

This letter is a plea for simple justice however it will not be couched in diplomatic terminology, bromides, platitudes or flattery; nor will it mince words because I am incapable of anything but telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

First of all your reason for failing to release additional photographs depicting the atrocities committed in Abu Ghraib prison is not only reminiscent of the spin foisted on the American people by the Bush Administration, it is entirely spurious, perniciously specious and totally fallacious.

These incidents occurred in 2003:

SALON.COM

The abuses at Abu Ghraib that were photographed on Oct. 18 and 19, along with detainee testimony, show the visceral effects of the interrogation tactics once sanctioned for detainees at Guant�namo by Rumsfeld. Many of the photos depict a single detainee shackled naked to a bed with underwear on his head. A July 1, 2004, report on Abu Ghraib by the Army's CID said this man was "possibly" a detainee named H-----. Graner, however, whose camera was used to take most of these photos, told CID investigators on April 6, 2005, that these pictures showed another detainee named W-----, whom Graner called "Taxi Driver." Graner said he was ordered by a civilian interrogator working at Abu Ghraib to strip, shackle and hood the detainee as part of a sleep deprivation program.

Regardless of which detainee these pictures show, both H----- and W----- told eerily similar tales to Army investigators. "They stripped me of all my clothes, even my underwear," H----- told CID investigators on Jan. 18, 2004. "They gave me woman's underwear that was rose color with flowers in it, and they put the bag over my face. One of them whispered in my ear, 'Today I am going to fuck you,' and he said this in Arabic."

The people of Iraq who are in a position to do harm to our troops do not need photos to inflame them, they have access to the reality; if indeed children were sodomized while their mothers watched, those children and their mothers, those who have survived this act of naked aggression can provide eyewitness accounts of these atrocities; and, those who along with members of their families who entertained thoughts of revenge must have acted on these by now, or failed to act on these long since.

If the memories of these atrocities deeply embedded in the psyches of victims, that all Iraqi citizens must be aware of, have not put our troops in danger, how in the world could mere photos, pale reproductions of these horrors have this effect.

The intent of your refusal to release these photographs is political, it is driven by the fear that the conscience of Americans will be belatedly be ignited and that they will demand that justice be done.

As a human being, a member of the human species, I demand that justice be done, I demand that President George Bush be impeached, these photos document war crimes, crimes not only against members of the Iraqi population but against all humanity.

If you fail to do all in your power to ensure that justice is done, I hold you an accessory after the fact to these crimes and just another corrupt agent of the political culture that exists within the Washington Beltway - and beneath contempt.

I call upon you to act consistent with the fundamental decency Americans discerned in you that caused them to flock to your meetings and afford you an overwhelming majority in the November elections.

I say to you, whether you are aware of it or not, the road has forked for your Presidency, either you will take the high road of morality that will ensure that:

this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Or you will walk the low road of political expediency, opportunism and back door deals that holds no one responsible for their actions that will destroy beyond recapture the thus far unfulfilled hope and promise of democracy.

This is our Sacred Mission to preserve democracy for with all its manifest inadequacies and inconsistencies it represents the key to freedom, it is time for you to move beyond rhetoric and campaigning, beyond high flown high sounding concepts to action consistent with American values, it is time for you to take a stand for simple justice.

Support the Moats Family

2009-03-31T05:13:00.000-07:00

It is my view that the Police Officer who pointed a gun at members of the Moats Family should be fired out of hand.

Taking thirteen minutes to write a ticket is one thing and stopping those individuals from being with a dying relative by some stretch of the imagination could be considered bad judgment, drawing and pointing a gun at citizens for running a stop sign is something else.

This Police Officer needs to be terminated and never be again be put in a position of being authorized to carry a firearm and point it at anyone.

I PERSEVERE

2009-03-20T06:07:00.000-07:00

I PERSEVERE

Fur Elise, a composition for piano,is and always will be to me,

A piece of transcendent, incalculable, inestimable beauty.

Yet it was composed by someone losing his hearing,

Who, as a consequence, was never permitted to fully appreciate

The artistic immensity, ethereal majesty and awesome symmetry

He had brought into being.

So I dare not flinch from grappling with

The ultimate paradox and consummate irony of human existence,

I must from somewhere garner the will and spiritual resiliency

To persevere.

WILLIAM E. VIRTUE

Copyright Retained, All Rights Reserved

TOWARDS A JUST SOCIETY!

2008-05-28T22:18:00.000-07:00

The slogan “Change we can believe in” has become a prominent and inescapable component of every television appearance of Senator Barack Obama, but what is the change that would really make a difference; what is the change that would create a just society; that would allow human beings to complete the journey from subject to citizen; that would create functioning democracies, true governments of the people, by the people, for the people; what is the change that would ignite and release the mental acuity that remains an unrealized potential of the human species and allow us to solve traditional, chronic problems like poverty, crime and drug abuse; and, confront and overcome more recent contretemps like global warming?

The change that would precipitate this miraculous transformation in our circumstances would be if we ceased to rely on coercion as the means used to motivate the other, as we have done from the beginning of the human story; and, adopt and embrace positive reinforcements as the stimulus utilized and emphasized to motivate the other to act.

As the following passage from an introductory text in the discipline of Sociology indicates and documents, the fundamental choice that confronts the humanity species is between relying on the carrot or the stick, between relying on coercion or positive reinforcements:

Reward and punishment play a part in all learning, but one rather than the other may be stressed. Repressive socialization emphasizes punishing wrong behavior, participatory socialization rewards and thus reinforces good behavior. In toilet training, for example, parents may be on the lookout for mishaps to admonish; or they may ignore mishaps and concentrate on praising instances of self-control and compliance.

If the modes of socialization are compared with laboratory conditioning of animals, repressive socialization is similar to administering an electric shock to an experimental rat when he takes a wrong turn in a maze. Participatory socialization is like giving the rat a pellet of food when he selects the right path. Both forms of conditioning extinguish “wrong” behavior, one by the negative act of punishment, the other by the positive act of reward. (Broom 100)

For the past three decades I have been attempting, without success, to galvanize humanity to examine the consequences and implications of using one or the other of these types of motivation.

I have suggested that coercion has been the means relied on from the beginning of the human story to motivate the other to act; that this has created a culture whose ethos is competition, one in which might is right, that is unashamedly elitist, that generates as a consequence high levels of conflict; and, is the root cause of the chronic, apparently immutable, problems of poverty and crime.

This world view is diametrically opposed to the civilized values of simple justice and equity and only is sustained because the application of coercion based culture lames the higher mental processes of human beings so that they cannot objectively and intelligently process information with regards to which type of motivation is the basis for their social interaction.

Time is running out for the human species because we have developed weapons of mass destruction, and, these will destroy the civilizations we have so arduously and painstakingly built - unless the decisions to use, or, not to use these weapons are limited and informed by the dictates of conscience and intelligence.

And, I suggest, there is a viable alternative to reliance on coercion to motivate the other.
We must become adept at utilizing positive reinforcements in our relations with other human beings; a development that would produce a diametrically opposed outcome to the human story.

If we can find the moral courage to effect this fundamental change in our attitudes we could create a culture whose ethos is cooperation; one in which right is might; a social system that is a functioning, not pretend, democracy; a matrix in which human beings overcome the neurosis and ambivalence that lames their intellects; and, which would create the possibility of happiness for ever increasing numbers of human beings.

I suggest that one reason for my failure to ignite this very necessary and urgently required debate on the relative consequences, implications and worth of these two types of motivation; is the fact that I too, am an agent of coercion based culture.

I too am a victim of this neurosis that lames my intellect; I too am subject to the dichotomies and ambivalence that is the most obvious and remarkable feature of human existence; and, during these past thirty years as I have tried unsuccessfully to ignite this debate that would precipitate the redemption and salvation of my species, I have been stripping from my consciousness, layer by agonizing layer, the attitudes and patterns of behavior to which I have been socialized while growing up in a small, minor outpost of Western civilization.

The first premise and fallacy, that buttresses and perpetuates coercion based culture, that I shall attempt to debunk and discredit; is the notion that the world of men and women can be divided into good and bad individuals; the evidence strongly indicates that every single human being plays the role of territorial predator or prey in every social interaction; that some human beings appear to be ‘good’ only because they are better at pretending and dissimulating; and, thus are able to better conceal that they are in fact agents of coercion based culture.

This was aptly and comprehensively exposed in the life and times of Frank Serpico, the New York policeman who was shot in the face for trying to expose the graft and corruption in that metropolitan’s police force; his story makes clear that from time immemorial good guys come last.

This has been my experience in nearly every workplace in which I have been employed, beginning with my first real job as a refinery technician in the Esso Kingston Refinery.

Every employee, regardless of rank, who worked on shift, regularly pilfered gasoline; yet no one was punished for so doing during the more than a decade that I was able to observe that practice.

I stopped stealing gasoline when I witnessed a Laboratory Technician, on his way to his honeymoon in Negril with his new wife in the car; engaging in this illegal enterprise; and, concluded that this had become such an established practice that we were too complacent, and, that someone was bound to be caught sooner or later, and, since I could not bear the shame of that being me; that I would no longer participate in this pattern of behavior.

Thus, I became an oddity and absurdity for this naïve perception; socially, a square peg in a round hole; because no one, has ever had to bear the consequences of being caught, just as no New York policeman is ever publicly castigated or successfully prosecuted for taking graft.
But it is another glaring inadequacy that has been for most of my life, my Achilles heel, that I shall confess and lay bare to demonstrate the seemingly immutable, ubiquitous and monolithic nature of coercion based culture.

I remember, with a clarity little diminished or lamed by the effects of repression, occasions on which my former wife employed a new domestic servant who ignited my lust, while we resided in my native land; on the first occasion that household drudge and myself were alone in the domicile together, going to her, taking her hand and leading her to a location where we would not easily be observed; and, having my way with her, without conversation, foreplay or even a vestige of anything that could be described as a courtship ritual.

It was years later, when I read the following passage from “The Sociology of Slavery” by Orlando Patterson, that I began to appreciate and be aware of the moral implications and unrelieved depravity inherent in a pattern of behavior in which I had so casually, thoughtlessly and mindlessly engaged:

The sexual exploitation of female slaves by white men was the most disgraceful and iniquitous aspect of Jamaican slave society. Rape and seduction of infant slaves; the ravishing of the common law wives of the male slaves under threat of punishment, and outright sadism often involving the most heinous forms of sexual torture were the order of the day. It was common practice for a white man visiting a plantation to be offered a slave girl for the night. Moreton tells us that many of the white employees on the estate had a rotation system whereby
they seduced every desirable female on the plantation over and over again. He also informs us of the practice of many of the attorneys who made a grand annual tour of the estates under their supervision with a large retinue of friends remaining at each estate for a number of days during which there were indescribable scenes of debauchery, the female slaves being primed in advance of their coming. (Patterson 42)

I feel constrained to interject that I have not copulated with any female since 23rd April, 1993, a discipline that comprehensively demonstrates the degree and extent to which I repudiate, reject and renounce coercion based culture; even as it exemplifies the tragic fact that good guys come last because no human being can satisfy any innate or socially learned drive - unless he, or she, is willing to play the roles of territorial predator or prey.

I am suggesting that at the beginning of the human story, as homo sapiens evolved in the ‘state of nature’ created by the cooling and contracting of the planet before it attained a state of relative equilibrium; the human mind developed a learned adaptation to these very extreme and life threatening circumstances; it divided into two compartments, the conscious and the subconscious.

This development, this involuntary development, was crucial to the very survival of the species; because it allowed human beings to demonstrate a powerful duality - to simultaneously be intelligent; and, harness and utilize fire; and, act with the unrelieved barbarity and savagery that not only allowed them to survive by becoming an efficient and deadly predator; but, facilitated, in the long term, their becoming the dominant species on Planet Earth.

This development also unleashed the ultimate paradox and consummate irony of human existence for it produced in human beings, the almost unlimited capacity for self delusion.
I am constrained to interject at this point, evidence, contemporary evidence that supports this remarkable, incredible and iconoclastic hypothesis.

It is clear that children who suffer at an early age extreme degrees of physical or sexual abuse, or, live in conditions so sere and severe that they approximate the circumstances and conditions that existed in the ‘state of nature;’ these hapless, pitiful individuals develop, involuntarily develop, multiple personalities to allow them to survive these harsh, pitiless environments.

Consider also, the fact that currently human beings who experience the intense mental anguish and traumas occasioned by life threatening incidents, are insulated from the unbearable burden of constantly reliving these moments; by consigning the final moments before the car crashed, or, the memory of witnessing an horrendous act of violence; by consigning these memories to their subconscious where they exist to be retrieved when the individual has regained the capacity to confront them; or, where they are buried forever.

We might also examine the fact that most children are taught to be diplomatic, to not literally describe the inadequacies of other human beings; to not state that the new neighbor is disgustingly fat or ugly; and, consider if this training in diplomacy does not soon extend to the individual and cause them not to think about or accurately describe their own inadequacies or moral failings.

For most of human history to reveal or confess the inadequacies of another human being, or yourself, was to put your life or the life of another in serious jeopardy; to survive human beings had to be socialized not to ‘snitch’ on themselves or anyone else; they learned to consign experiences to their subconscious where they were buried forever.

The extremely sere and extreme conditions combined with the circumstance that human beings had a subconscious compartment to which experiences could be consigned to provide a near unlimited capacity for self delusion; which in turn combined with the socialization that was required for functioning in coercion based culture to create the means for human beings to consign experiences at will to the subconscious compartments of their minds.

There are human beings who have the means to beat a lie detector test, individuals who can bury memories so deeply that they cannot be detected because they do not affect their involuntary responses.

I am suggesting that human culture was determined in the extreme conditions of the ‘state of nature;’ that humanity came habituated to a certain set of ‘conscious and unconscious premises for thinking and action’ in the state of nature and that these have not undergone any significant change since.

Having said this, I am not unmindful of the fact that there have existed down the long march of human history pockets of civility, what I saying is that these were never widespread, dominant or enduring; that these pockets were erased or absorbed without trace by the prevailing, ubiquitous coercion based culture:

Many of us feel that to allow a child to decide for himself and to act according to his own wish, that is, to be permissive, is to show respect for the unique being of the child. Yet for many of the societies we know, it would be presumptuous for any person to “allow” another to take what is essentially his prerogative - the right to decide for himself. These people do not “permit” others. When the children of the Wintu Indians ask “Can I” they are asking for information the rules of the structure; for instance, they may be seeking clarification about a religious taboo or social custom. They are asking in effect, “Is it permissible for me to . . .? And not, “Do you allow me to . . .? These people do not “give” freedom to their children, because it is not theirs to give. If they do not impose an external time schedule on their infants, but feed them when they are hungry, and put them to bed when they are “sleepy,” they are not being “permissive;” they are showing their deep-seated respect for individual worth and their awareness of the unique tempo of the individual. (Broom 73)

It might be appropriate at this point to examine what happens when force is used to motivate action, how dependent personalities are created.

Currently, children are required to perform certain tasks; they are required to get good grades, to help with the household chores, and, accept schedules that limit play and socializing with their peers.

A child who is forced to clean their room and give up more enjoyable activities, resists this imposition; and, is likely to form habits of cleanliness, but will only clean their rooms when pressed by the parent.

A child who is driven to do homework develops the same attitude, and, will likely never learn to love knowledge for its own sake.

I remember a girl who lived on my street when I was growing up, whose existence was not much different from life in a monastery; until she went to college she had never kissed a boy, had any sexual experiences with the other sex, or, had a date.

Perhaps as a result of this lifestyle, she achieved very good grades and got a scholarship to go to college; where she became so promiscuous she garnered the reputation of being so easy that if she refused any proposition it simply needed to be repeated more loudly, because the only way she would fail to cooperate and participate is if she had not heard the first salacious invitation.

For coercion to work it requires that the arbiter of behavior be present, it does not cause the child to internalize values; it creates dependent personalities.

It worked - in communities composed of extended families where most of individuals lived within a fifty mile radius for all of their lives.

In modern social systems composed of nuclear families or single parent households, children must be taught to internalize values, something that cannot be taught by repressive socialization; and, which is an unusual feature in dependent personalities.

Which brings us to the other very powerful tendency that has emerged from the application and practice of coercion based culture:

In the last days of slavery even the Creole slaves, who had never known what it was to be free, began to organize revolts against their masters, and the last and most damaging of all the rebellions remains a living memory of their struggle for something they had never experienced but for which they felt a need sufficiently strong for which to die. (Patterson 282)

Human beings want to decide for themselves what they should do, where they should live, whom they should love etc. and, even if they have never experienced the freedom to make these choices they will put their lives on the line to attain this inalienable right.

This the source of the intense social conflict that currently rages on Planet Earth, of the conflict between individuals, between employers and employees, between husbands and wives, between parents and children, between governments and citizens, and, most lamentably and destructively, between nation and nation.

The notion that there should be governments of the people, by the people, for the people has not ameliorated this conflict but intensified it.

For years I have been futilely and very unsuccessfully trying to communicate that the net effect of spread of democracy, and, the increased popularity, acceptance and strengthening of democratic ideals, values and institutions has resulted in limitations being placed on the degree and extent to which coercion in any form, overt or covert, can be applied to any citizen; which has had the impact of creating low levels of motivation to galvanize human beings to the patterns of behavior that are absolutely essential for societal functioning and social order.

And, there is no going back to the good old days of Absolutism, of feudal societies, of serfs and slaves, in which rulers had the power of life and death over their subjects; because the balance of power has changed irrevocably and beyond recapture.

The good old days of assegai pitted against the Royal Enfield rifle, of bows and arrows pitted against Winchester rifles, of cannons reducing mud fortifications; those good old days when entire populations could be exterminated without outcry or consequence; when millions of human beings could be kidnapped from their native lands and transported to another continent to provide labor are gone forever, never to return.

It is time for a change, it is time for the human race to embrace a future that permit’s the possibility of happiness; a future in which human beings rely on positive reinforcements to motivate the other; a future in which the ethos of every society is cooperation.

Bibliography

Sociology, A Text with Adapted Readings by Leonard Broom & Philip Selznick,
Harper International Edition Copyright 1955 published Harper & Row New York N.Y.

The Sociology of Slavery by Orlando Patterson 1967. First American Edition published 1969 by Associated University Presses, Inc Cranbury New Jersey

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William E. Virtue
Pembroke Pines, Florida
Ph: (954)850-1498
E mail: vox_pacis@hotmail.com