So do you believe in God?
As a person who discusses weird theories and psychology, I get this frequently. So I’ve decided to make a better effort to reply. To be honest, I don’t like the question because it presumes we know what those words mean. Here are some responses, touching on more or less serious aspects of the topic.
1. Which god? Do you mean Zeus, Baal, Athena, Shiva, Allah, Jehovah, or some other? If you mean one of those, then no. I am not a theist. I don’t believe in an individual being that created and now controls the world.
2. What is belief? Is it a cognitive conclusion that I have reached basic on logical consideration of evidence? That would assume I have access to all the information, and I do not. Is it an emotional feeling for something beyond myself? Well, my emotions vary, and some days are hopeful, other days are dark. Emotions are a rocky basis for “belief.” Do I make a leap of faith, not knowing anything really, but simply wanting to “believe,” and putting stock in a “scripture” to give it support? This is also difficult because knowing about the origins of “scripture,” I know the complexity; they were not simply dictated. Also, the strength of my blind faith can also vary and I’m not sure how completely I am supposed to convince myself in order to say I “believe.”
3. The concept of “God” usually meant by this question is some sort of being that exists “out there.” The god of the Bible is very separate, superior to humans, but anthropomorphic in many ways. Other gods are also considered “out there” and have controlling powers we do not have. A more New Age notion of god includes “the divine” in all of us, and still involves the notion of “spirit” infusing people. There is an assumption in most approaches to spirituality of a kind of “force,” which can be called by different names, but which is a thing in a universe of other things. As such, I do not resonate with this idea of “god” as an entity.
4. If I must use the concept at all, I would equate it with the “nature of being.” This is close to “ground of being,” a phrase coined by John Robinson many years ago in Honest to God. For me it involves a perception of existence grounded in the profound science of modern physics. Most ordinary people do not know much about this. Yet, we now know from findings in both relativity theory and quantum physics, that the universe is much more strange and incredible than we ever realized. It calls for massive humility because there are things no one understands, yet we now have good reason to question all of our basic assumptions about “reality.” The difference is bigger than finding out the world is not flat. We have evidence for questioning our ideas about matter, linear time, cause and effect, and more. String theorists agree there are eleven dimensions. Yet the general population operates all day every day assuming things that are completely out of date. The knowledge has not reached the masses. This is akin to having everyone act as if the earth is still flat. The issues are intensely profound, with implications for everything we do. The big words for me are “mystery” and “possibility.” Feelings are humility, awe, and excitement. There is no religious description of “god” that matches the grandeur of the universe as it is – elusive, ever-changing, impossibly mind-boggling. And this includes us. We are part of the fabric; there is no separation. If this is believing in god, then by all means, a hundred times YES! But I’m still not drawn to the language.
A couple of quotes that I find consistent with this:
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant’? Instead they say, ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.’ A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”`
-Carl Sagan
“I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
-Albert Einstein
5. Dispensing with the “god” word, it makes a little more sense for me to address “spirituality,” although this word has often meant a focus on other-worldly things. I prefer to describe spirituality as a way of living which is here-and-now. These are attributes rather than a definition. They involve feelings and perceptions and experiences which depend on openness. This openness can be chosen and developed. Rather than escaping into a different realm, I think of spirituality in terms of how we live our lives – the choices, the consciousness, the texture of daily life. There are several aspects of this:
Accord. This is the experience of feeling attuned with the rest of existence - a feeling of belonging on earth, being a part of the rest of nature, and in harmony with everything around. When you are in accord, you move along with the vast river of evolutionary change, feeling connected in a fundamental way with the harmony and power of the whole. You feel as though you are tapping into a rich resource that is beyond you, much larger than yourself. Your inner spring of god-within connects with the vastness of god-beyond, a "deeper power" rather than "higher power," a subterranean aquifer connecting all of life. This produces a sense of trust and safety, a knowledge that you fit, that you have a place.
Awareness. With awareness you are alive and awake, fully experiencing life. This means being totally grounded in the here and now. Your sensory experiences are vivid, and you notice what is happening when it is happening, both around and inside you. You do not reject uncomfortable experiences or deny pain; you are open and embracing of all that life has to offer. This makes it possible for you to enjoy things more intensely and to learn from difficulties. You are not trying to be on some other plane of existence, but are willing and happy to be here now, like a curious child.
Growth. Growth is a natural process. You are not static or inert; you are a changing, growing being. And your experiences can propel you to develop further. As a plant needs the attention of water and food to grow, you need to attend to your needs and consciously make opportunities to learn and change. This aspect of spirituality is active, complementing the more receptive elements of accord and awareness. As humans we are granted the exciting option of making conscious loyal commitments to move in positive directions. Learning will often occur anyway, as a neglected plant will often survive, but informed with a sense of accord and awareness, you can take action on your own spiritual behalf.
Transcendence. There are moments of awe for us in life, those times of being overwhelmed with wonder at beauty, or love, or natural power. At these moments you get clues about the immensity of the cosmos, like pinpricks in the veil around your limited consciousness. You are humbled and thrilled as you gaze at a sunset or a torrential waterfall. A moment of pure love can be ecstatic. Let your vision extend into the night sky, and you may experience a blissful dissolving of your individual ego. Not needing to understand or control, you can experience a sense of total Mystery. These moments are gifts that reflect your spiritual capacity, gifts that become more available as you open to your sense of the ultimate. This is not ultimate in the sense of above or better, but simply beyond your usual mode of consciousness. These are moments of realization knowing that the sense you have of “god” within is not only in contact with but one and the same as the transcendent “god”-beyond. You are a wave in the ocean, individual in a sense but also part of something much bigger – the immensely huge and powerful ocean of existence. You don’t understand and you don’t need to understand. All of this is multiverses away from “believing in God.”
So even though I would have to say I don’t believe in God and I am an atheist in the true definition of the word, ie, not a theist, I obviously feel compelled to question and reclaim the language being used and make this rather inadequate stab at describing my lived experience. It’s a bit defensive and that’s because the stereotype of the cold, shallow, hedonistic, selfish atheist needs to be challenged. In my opinion, it’s all about how we live, and not what we “believe.”
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
on literacy and education
this is dedicated to teachers,its time they have to change the "study for marks" mentality as i mentioned in my last posts,this mentality is degrading the quality of education and the teachers are primely responsible for it.so this one is dedicated to all you teacher(except a few one who really want students to get knowledge then marks).the basic difference between education and literacy is that moulding of character and absorbtion of knowledge happen in education while a literate person has the graduation degree only...
All learning is either by instruction or by discovery; that is, with or without the aid of teachers. The teachers who serve as instructors may be alive and in direct contact with those whom they instruct, as is always the case in classrooms or tutorials, or they may be present to the learner only in the form of books. The teacher who instructs by his writings cannot engage in discussion with those who are reading his works in order to learn; he can ask them initial questions, but he cannot ask any second questions—questions about the answers they give to his initial questions. He is, therefore, seriously limited in his performance of the art of teaching, though he may have done what he could to apply the rules of that art in his effort to communicate what he knows.
That the effort to communicate what a man knows is not, in itself, effective teaching follows from the fact that such efforts are seldom if ever successful and, at best, they succeed only in part. Successful teaching occurs only when the mind of the learner passes from a state of ignorance or error to a state of knowledge. The knowledge acquired may be either something already known by the teacher, or something about which he himself is inquiring. In either case, the transformation effected in the mind of the learner is learning by instruction only if another human being has taken certain deliberate steps to bring about that transformation. What the teacher does must be deliberately calculated to change the mind of the learner. Merely motivating someone to learn is not enough; stimulation is not teaching.
Since whatever can be learned by instruction must necessarily have been learned first by discovery, without the aid of teachers, it follows that teachers are, absolutely speaking, dispensable. Nevertheless, they are useful because most human beings need instruction to learn what they could have learned by discovering it for themselves. If we recognize, as we should, that genuine learning cannot occur without activity on the part of the learner (passive absorption or rote memorization does not deserve to be called learning), then we must also recognize that all learning is a process of discovery on the part of the learner.
This alters our understanding of the distinction between learning by discovery and learning by instruction. If the latter is not to be identified with passive absorption or rote memorization, then the distinction divides all active learning into two kinds—unaided discovery, discovery without the aid of teachers, on the one hand; and aided discovery, or discovery deliberately assisted by teachers, on the other. In both cases, the principal cause of learning is activity on the part of the learner engaged in the process of discovery; when instruction occurs, the teacher is at best only an instrumental cause operating to guide or facilitate the process of discovery on the part of the learner. To suppose that the teacher is ever more than an instrumental cause is to suppose that the activity of a teacher can by itself suffice to cause learning to occur in another person even though the latter remains entirely passive. This would view the learner as a patient being acted upon rather than as an agent whose activity is both primary and indispensable. In contrast, the instrumental activity of the teacher is always secondary and dispensable.
These basic insights are epitomized by Socrates when, in the Theaetetus, he describes his role as a teacher by analogy with the service performed by a midwife who does nothing more than assist the pregnant mother to give birth with less pain and more assurance. So, according to Socrates, the teacher assists the inquiring mind of the learner to give birth to knowledge, facilitating the process of discovery on the learner’s part. If the learner suffers birth pangs because errors block the way, then, as Socrates tells us in the Meno, the teacher may have to take strenuous measures to reduce the learner from a state of error to one of admitted ignorance (by “benumbing” the mind of the learner), so that motion toward learning can proceed unhampered by obstacles.
Before we consider how the good teacher, following the model of Socrates, cooperates with the activity of the learner, which will develop from our understanding of teaching as a cooperative art, let me call attention to two erroneous uses of the word “teach.” It is often said that “experience teaches,” but however much we may learn from experience, it teaches us nothing. Only human beings teach. We also frequently say that a man is self-taught—an autodidact— or that he has taught himself this or that. He may have learned this or that entirely by himself; all of his learning may have been unaided discovery. But to say that it occurred without the aid of teachers is not to say that he taught himself. One individual can be taught only by another.
Teaching, like farming and healing, is a cooperative art. Understanding this, Comenius in The Great Didactic again and again compares the cultivation of the mind with the cultivation of the field; so, too, Plato compares the teacher’s art with the physician’s.
In arts such as shoemaking and shipbuilding, painting and sculpture (arts which I call “operative” to distinguish them from the three cooperative arts), the artist is the principal cause of the product produced. Nature may supply the materials to be fashioned or transformed, and may even supply models to imitate, but without the intervention of the artist’s skill and causal efficacy, nature would not produce shoes, ships, paintings or statues.
Unlike the operative artist, who aims either at beauty or utility, the cooperative artist merely helps nature to produce results that it is able to produce by its own powers, without the assistance of the artist—without the intervention of the artist’s accessory causality. Fruits and grains grow naturally; the farmer intervenes merely to assure that these natural products grow with regularity and, perhaps, to increase their quantity. The body has the power to heal itself—to maintain health and regain health; the physician who adopts the Hippocratic conception of the healing art attempts to support and reinforce the natural processes of the body. The mind, like the body, has the power to achieve what is good for itself— knowledge and understanding. Learning would go on if there were no teachers, just as healing and growing would go on if there were no physicians and farmers.
Like the farmer and the physician, the teacher must be sensitive to the natural process that his art should help bring to its fullest fruition— the natural process of learning. It is the nature of human learning that determines the strategy and tactics of teaching. Since learning which results in expanded knowledge and improved understanding (rather than memorized facts) is essentially a process of discovery, the teacher’s art consists largely in devices whereby one individual can help another to lift himself up from a state of knowing and understanding less to knowing and understanding more. Left to his own devices, the learner would not get very far unless he asked himself questions, perceived problems to be solved, suffered puzzlement over dilemmas, put himself under the necessity of following out the implications of this hypothesis or that, made observations and weighed the evidence for alternative hypotheses, and so on. The teacher, aware of these indispensable steps in the process by which he himself has moved his own mind up the ladder of learning, devises ways to help another individual engage in a similar process; and he applies them with sensitivity to the state of that other person’s mind and with awareness of whatever special difficulties the other must overcome in order to make headway.
Discipline in the traditional liberal arts imparts the skills by which an individual becomes adept at learning. They are the arts of reading and writing, of speaking and listening, of observing, measuring and calculating—the arts of grammar, rhetoric and logic, the mathematical arts, and the arts of investigation. Without some proficiency in these arts, no one can learn very much, whether assisted or not by the use of books and the tutelage of teachers. Unless the teacher is himself a skilled learner, a master of the liberal arts which are the arts of learning, he cannot help those he attempts to teach acquire the skills of learning; nor can his superior skill in learning provide the learner with the help he needs in the process of discovery. The teacher must put himself sympathetically in the position of a learner who is less advanced than himself, less advanced both in skill and in knowledge or understanding. From that vantage point, he must somehow reenact—or stimulate—for the learner the activities he himself engaged in to achieve his present state of mind.
The Hippocratic understanding of healing as a cooperative art provides us with analogical insights into the cooperative art of teaching. Hippocrates distinguished between three forms of therapy: control of the patient’s regimen, the use of drugs or other forms of medication, and recourse to surgery when that drastic remedy cannot be avoided. He regarded the first of these as the primary technique of the physician as a cooperative artist, for, unlike medication, it introduces no foreign substances into the body and, unlike surgery, it does no violence to it. By controlling the patient’s regimen— his diet, his hours, his activities, his environment—the physician helps the body to heal itself by its natural processes.
In the sphere of teaching, the analogue of surgery is indoctrination, the result of which is rote memorization, or some passive absorption of information without any understanding of it. Indoctrination does violence to the mind, as surgery does violence to the body, the only difference being that there is never any excuse for indoctrination, while there can be justification for surgery. The restoration of health may be facilitated by surgery when that drastic remedy is needed, but knowledge and understanding can never be produced by indoctrination. Even so, Hippocrates did not regard the surgeon as a physician, though the physician may find it necessary to have recourse to his services. The physician and the surgeon are distinguished by the line that divides the cooperative from the operative artist. By the same criterion, the indoctrinator is not a teacher.
Lecturing is that form of teaching which is analogous to the use of drugs and medication in the practice of medicine. No violence may be done to the mind if the lecturer eschews any attempt at indoctrination, but the lecture, even when it is attended to with maximum effort on the part of the auditor, is something that the mind must first absorb before it can begin to digest and assimilate what is thus taken in. If passively attended to and passively absorbed by the memory, the lecture has the same effect as indoctrination, even if the lecturer scrupulously intended to avoid that result. At its best, the lecture cannot be more than an occasion for learning, a challenge to the mind of the auditor, an invitation to inquiry. The lecture, in short, is no better than the book as a teacher—an oral rather than a written communication of knowledge. Like the author, the lecturer cannot ask the second and subsequent questions, and unless these are asked, persistently and vigorously, the learner is not aided by a teacher in his own process of discovery. Unlike the indoctrinator, the lecturer may have the same aim as the teacher, but his manner of teaching is at best second-rate.
Analogous to the fully cooperative therapeutic technique of controlling the patient’s regimen is the fully cooperative pedagogical technique of engaging the learner in discussion—teaching by asking instead of teaching by telling, asking questions not merely to elicit answers for the sake of grading them (as in a quiz session, which is not teaching at all), but asking questions that challenge the answers elicited, and asking still more questions that open up new avenues of inquiry. Lectures audited and books read may provide the materials for teaching by discussion, and there may be advanced learners, highly skilled in the liberal arts, who can learn from lectures and books without the aid of teachers. But for those who need the help that good teachers can provide, listening to lectures or reading books without discussing them yields little profit to the mind. The help that the good teacher provides takes the form of conducting the needed discussion. Socrates did that without any use of books or lectures, and there may be others who have taught by asking questions without employing any “teaching materials” to ask questions about; yet for the most part even the best teachers find lectures heard and books read useful accessories to teaching by discussion.
All learning is either by instruction or by discovery; that is, with or without the aid of teachers. The teachers who serve as instructors may be alive and in direct contact with those whom they instruct, as is always the case in classrooms or tutorials, or they may be present to the learner only in the form of books. The teacher who instructs by his writings cannot engage in discussion with those who are reading his works in order to learn; he can ask them initial questions, but he cannot ask any second questions—questions about the answers they give to his initial questions. He is, therefore, seriously limited in his performance of the art of teaching, though he may have done what he could to apply the rules of that art in his effort to communicate what he knows.
That the effort to communicate what a man knows is not, in itself, effective teaching follows from the fact that such efforts are seldom if ever successful and, at best, they succeed only in part. Successful teaching occurs only when the mind of the learner passes from a state of ignorance or error to a state of knowledge. The knowledge acquired may be either something already known by the teacher, or something about which he himself is inquiring. In either case, the transformation effected in the mind of the learner is learning by instruction only if another human being has taken certain deliberate steps to bring about that transformation. What the teacher does must be deliberately calculated to change the mind of the learner. Merely motivating someone to learn is not enough; stimulation is not teaching.
Since whatever can be learned by instruction must necessarily have been learned first by discovery, without the aid of teachers, it follows that teachers are, absolutely speaking, dispensable. Nevertheless, they are useful because most human beings need instruction to learn what they could have learned by discovering it for themselves. If we recognize, as we should, that genuine learning cannot occur without activity on the part of the learner (passive absorption or rote memorization does not deserve to be called learning), then we must also recognize that all learning is a process of discovery on the part of the learner.
This alters our understanding of the distinction between learning by discovery and learning by instruction. If the latter is not to be identified with passive absorption or rote memorization, then the distinction divides all active learning into two kinds—unaided discovery, discovery without the aid of teachers, on the one hand; and aided discovery, or discovery deliberately assisted by teachers, on the other. In both cases, the principal cause of learning is activity on the part of the learner engaged in the process of discovery; when instruction occurs, the teacher is at best only an instrumental cause operating to guide or facilitate the process of discovery on the part of the learner. To suppose that the teacher is ever more than an instrumental cause is to suppose that the activity of a teacher can by itself suffice to cause learning to occur in another person even though the latter remains entirely passive. This would view the learner as a patient being acted upon rather than as an agent whose activity is both primary and indispensable. In contrast, the instrumental activity of the teacher is always secondary and dispensable.
These basic insights are epitomized by Socrates when, in the Theaetetus, he describes his role as a teacher by analogy with the service performed by a midwife who does nothing more than assist the pregnant mother to give birth with less pain and more assurance. So, according to Socrates, the teacher assists the inquiring mind of the learner to give birth to knowledge, facilitating the process of discovery on the learner’s part. If the learner suffers birth pangs because errors block the way, then, as Socrates tells us in the Meno, the teacher may have to take strenuous measures to reduce the learner from a state of error to one of admitted ignorance (by “benumbing” the mind of the learner), so that motion toward learning can proceed unhampered by obstacles.
Before we consider how the good teacher, following the model of Socrates, cooperates with the activity of the learner, which will develop from our understanding of teaching as a cooperative art, let me call attention to two erroneous uses of the word “teach.” It is often said that “experience teaches,” but however much we may learn from experience, it teaches us nothing. Only human beings teach. We also frequently say that a man is self-taught—an autodidact— or that he has taught himself this or that. He may have learned this or that entirely by himself; all of his learning may have been unaided discovery. But to say that it occurred without the aid of teachers is not to say that he taught himself. One individual can be taught only by another.
Teaching, like farming and healing, is a cooperative art. Understanding this, Comenius in The Great Didactic again and again compares the cultivation of the mind with the cultivation of the field; so, too, Plato compares the teacher’s art with the physician’s.
In arts such as shoemaking and shipbuilding, painting and sculpture (arts which I call “operative” to distinguish them from the three cooperative arts), the artist is the principal cause of the product produced. Nature may supply the materials to be fashioned or transformed, and may even supply models to imitate, but without the intervention of the artist’s skill and causal efficacy, nature would not produce shoes, ships, paintings or statues.
Unlike the operative artist, who aims either at beauty or utility, the cooperative artist merely helps nature to produce results that it is able to produce by its own powers, without the assistance of the artist—without the intervention of the artist’s accessory causality. Fruits and grains grow naturally; the farmer intervenes merely to assure that these natural products grow with regularity and, perhaps, to increase their quantity. The body has the power to heal itself—to maintain health and regain health; the physician who adopts the Hippocratic conception of the healing art attempts to support and reinforce the natural processes of the body. The mind, like the body, has the power to achieve what is good for itself— knowledge and understanding. Learning would go on if there were no teachers, just as healing and growing would go on if there were no physicians and farmers.
Like the farmer and the physician, the teacher must be sensitive to the natural process that his art should help bring to its fullest fruition— the natural process of learning. It is the nature of human learning that determines the strategy and tactics of teaching. Since learning which results in expanded knowledge and improved understanding (rather than memorized facts) is essentially a process of discovery, the teacher’s art consists largely in devices whereby one individual can help another to lift himself up from a state of knowing and understanding less to knowing and understanding more. Left to his own devices, the learner would not get very far unless he asked himself questions, perceived problems to be solved, suffered puzzlement over dilemmas, put himself under the necessity of following out the implications of this hypothesis or that, made observations and weighed the evidence for alternative hypotheses, and so on. The teacher, aware of these indispensable steps in the process by which he himself has moved his own mind up the ladder of learning, devises ways to help another individual engage in a similar process; and he applies them with sensitivity to the state of that other person’s mind and with awareness of whatever special difficulties the other must overcome in order to make headway.
Discipline in the traditional liberal arts imparts the skills by which an individual becomes adept at learning. They are the arts of reading and writing, of speaking and listening, of observing, measuring and calculating—the arts of grammar, rhetoric and logic, the mathematical arts, and the arts of investigation. Without some proficiency in these arts, no one can learn very much, whether assisted or not by the use of books and the tutelage of teachers. Unless the teacher is himself a skilled learner, a master of the liberal arts which are the arts of learning, he cannot help those he attempts to teach acquire the skills of learning; nor can his superior skill in learning provide the learner with the help he needs in the process of discovery. The teacher must put himself sympathetically in the position of a learner who is less advanced than himself, less advanced both in skill and in knowledge or understanding. From that vantage point, he must somehow reenact—or stimulate—for the learner the activities he himself engaged in to achieve his present state of mind.
The Hippocratic understanding of healing as a cooperative art provides us with analogical insights into the cooperative art of teaching. Hippocrates distinguished between three forms of therapy: control of the patient’s regimen, the use of drugs or other forms of medication, and recourse to surgery when that drastic remedy cannot be avoided. He regarded the first of these as the primary technique of the physician as a cooperative artist, for, unlike medication, it introduces no foreign substances into the body and, unlike surgery, it does no violence to it. By controlling the patient’s regimen— his diet, his hours, his activities, his environment—the physician helps the body to heal itself by its natural processes.
In the sphere of teaching, the analogue of surgery is indoctrination, the result of which is rote memorization, or some passive absorption of information without any understanding of it. Indoctrination does violence to the mind, as surgery does violence to the body, the only difference being that there is never any excuse for indoctrination, while there can be justification for surgery. The restoration of health may be facilitated by surgery when that drastic remedy is needed, but knowledge and understanding can never be produced by indoctrination. Even so, Hippocrates did not regard the surgeon as a physician, though the physician may find it necessary to have recourse to his services. The physician and the surgeon are distinguished by the line that divides the cooperative from the operative artist. By the same criterion, the indoctrinator is not a teacher.
Lecturing is that form of teaching which is analogous to the use of drugs and medication in the practice of medicine. No violence may be done to the mind if the lecturer eschews any attempt at indoctrination, but the lecture, even when it is attended to with maximum effort on the part of the auditor, is something that the mind must first absorb before it can begin to digest and assimilate what is thus taken in. If passively attended to and passively absorbed by the memory, the lecture has the same effect as indoctrination, even if the lecturer scrupulously intended to avoid that result. At its best, the lecture cannot be more than an occasion for learning, a challenge to the mind of the auditor, an invitation to inquiry. The lecture, in short, is no better than the book as a teacher—an oral rather than a written communication of knowledge. Like the author, the lecturer cannot ask the second and subsequent questions, and unless these are asked, persistently and vigorously, the learner is not aided by a teacher in his own process of discovery. Unlike the indoctrinator, the lecturer may have the same aim as the teacher, but his manner of teaching is at best second-rate.
Analogous to the fully cooperative therapeutic technique of controlling the patient’s regimen is the fully cooperative pedagogical technique of engaging the learner in discussion—teaching by asking instead of teaching by telling, asking questions not merely to elicit answers for the sake of grading them (as in a quiz session, which is not teaching at all), but asking questions that challenge the answers elicited, and asking still more questions that open up new avenues of inquiry. Lectures audited and books read may provide the materials for teaching by discussion, and there may be advanced learners, highly skilled in the liberal arts, who can learn from lectures and books without the aid of teachers. But for those who need the help that good teachers can provide, listening to lectures or reading books without discussing them yields little profit to the mind. The help that the good teacher provides takes the form of conducting the needed discussion. Socrates did that without any use of books or lectures, and there may be others who have taught by asking questions without employing any “teaching materials” to ask questions about; yet for the most part even the best teachers find lectures heard and books read useful accessories to teaching by discussion.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
why i killed gandhi ??
i wanted to write this blog for a long time.there are many misconceptions on the times and reasons on mahatma Gandhi's death.the views of the 'killer'nathuram godse is not known and the conditions in the country during the assassination is long forgotten.this blog is a self interpretation one.i am a huge supporter of satyagraha and Gandhian ideologies but somehow i feel mahatma Gandhi tended to be a bit of a manipulative politician.the Truth always has a certain way to be brought forward,but sadly nathuram godse chose the wrong way.the killing of a person doesn't kill his ideas.nathuram godse had thoughts which were correct and could have been proved to be true.but killing Gandhi to voice the thoughts was not the correct thing to do.it portrayed that thinking to be terroristic and anti-national.but looking the ideology from a different angle,we also tend to think that maybe the man's action were wrong but his thinking was correct.
i wont say anything further.i will just let the last words of nathuram godse speak for themselves.
" Born in a devotional Brahmin family, I instinctively came to revere Hindu religion, Hindu history and Hindu culture. I had, therefore, been intensely proud of Hinduism as a whole. As I grew up I developed a tendency to free thinking unfettered by any superstitious allegiance to any isms, political or religious. That is why I worked actively for the eradication of untouchability and the caste system based on birth alone. I openly joined anti-caste movements and maintained that all Hindus were of equal status as to rights, social and religious and should be considered high or low on merit alone and not through the accident of birth in a particular caste or profession. I used publicly to take part in organized anti-caste dinners in which thousands of Hindus, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Chamars and Bhangis participated. We broke the caste rules and dined in the company of each other.
I have read the speeches and writings of Dadabhai Naoroji, Vivekanand, Gokhale, Tilak, along with the books of ancient and modern history of India and some prominent countries like England, France, America and' Russia. Moreover I studied the tenets of Socialism and Marxism. But above all I studied very closely whatever Veer Savarkar and Gandhiji had written and spoken, as to my mind these two ideologies have contributed more to the moulding of the thought and action of the Indian people during the last thirty years or so, than any other single factor has done.
All this reading and thinking led me to believe it was my first duty to serve Hindudom and Hindus both as a patriot and as a world citizen. To secure the freedom and to safeguard the just interests of some thirty crores (300 million) of Hindus would automatically constitute the freedom and the well-being of all India, one fifth of human race. This conviction led me naturally to devote myself to the Hindu Sanghtanist ideology and programme, which alone, I came to believe, could win and preserve the national independence of Hindustan, my Motherland, and enable her to
render true service to humanity as well.
Since the year 1920, that is, after the demise of Lokamanya Tilak, Gandhiji's influence in the Congress first increased and then became supreme. His activities for public awakening were phenomenal in their intensity and were reinforced by the slogan of truth and non-violence which he paraded ostentatiously before the country. No sensible or enlightened person could object to those slogans. In fact there is nothing new or original in them. They are implicit in every constitutional public movement. But it is nothing but a mere dream if you imagine that the bulk of mankind is, or can ever become, capable of scrupulous adherence to these lofty principles in its normal life from day to day. In fact, hunour, duty and love of one's own kith and kin and country might often compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force. I could never conceive that an armed resistance to an aggression is unjust. I would
consider it a religious and moral duty to resist and, if possible, to overpower such an enemy by use of force. [In the Ramayana] Rama killed Ravana in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita. [In the Mahabharata], Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and Arjuna had to fight and slay quite a number of his friends and relations including the
revered Bhishma because the latter was on the side of the aggressor. It is my firm belief that in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as guilty of violence, the Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of the springs of human action.
In more recent history, it was the heroic fight put up by Chhatrapati Shivaji that first checked and eventually destroyed the Muslim tyranny in India. It was absolutely essentially for Shivaji to overpower and kill an aggressive Afzal Khan, failing which he would have lost his own life. In condemning history's towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots, Gandhiji has merely exposed his self-conceit. He was, paradoxical as it may appear, a violent pacifist who brought untold calamities on the country in the name of truth and
non-violence, while Rana Pratap, Shivaji and the Guru will remain enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen for ever for the freedom they brought to them.
The accumulating provocation of thirty-two years, culminating in his last pro-Muslim fast, at last goaded me to the conclusion that the existence of Gandhi should be brought to an end immediately. Gandhi had done very good in South Africa to uphold the rights and well-being of the Indian community there. But when he finally returned to India he developed a subjective mentality under which he alone was to be the final judge of what was right or wrong. If the country wanted his leadership, it had to accept his infallibility; if it did not, he would stand aloof from the Congress and carry on his own way. Against such an attitude there can be no halfway house. Either Congress had to surrender its will to his and had to be content with playing second fiddle to all his eccentricity, whimsicality, metaphysics and primitive vision, or it had to carry on without him. He alone was the Judge of everyone and every thing; he was
the master brain guiding the civil disobedience movement; no other could know the technique of that movement. He alone knew when to begin and when to withdraw it. The movement might succeed or fail, it might bring untold disaster and political reverses but that could make no difference to the Mahatma's infallibility. 'A Satyagrahi can never fail'
was his formula for declaring his own infallibility and nobody except himself knew what a Satyagrahi is.
Thus, the Mahatma became the judge and jury in his own cause. These childish insanities and obstinacies, coupled with a most severe austerity of life, ceaseless work and lofty character made Gandhi formidable and irresistible. Many people thought that his politics were irrational but they had either to withdraw from the Congress or place their
intelligence at his feet to do with as he liked. In a position of such absolute irresponsibility Gandhi was guilty of blunder after blunder, failure after failure, disaster after disaster.
Gandhi's pro-Muslim policy is blatantly in his perverse attitude on the question of the national language of India. It is quite obvious that Hindi has the most prior claim to be accepted as the premier language. In the beginning of his career in India, Gandhi gave a great impetus to Hindi but as he found that the Muslims did not like it, he became a champion of what is called Hindustani. Everybody in India knows that there is no language called Hindustani; it has no grammar; it has no vocabulary. It is a mere dialect, it is spoken, but not written. It is a bastard tongue and cross-breed between Hindi and Urdu, and not even the Mahatma's sophistry could make it popular. But in his
desire to please the Muslims he insisted that Hindustani alone should be the national language of India. His blind followers, of course, supported him and the so-called hybrid language began to be used. The charm and purity of the Hindi language was to be prostituted to please the Muslims. All his experiments were at the expense of the Hindus.
From August 1946 onwards the private armies of the Muslim League began a massacre of the Hindus. The then Viceroy, Lord Wavell, though distressed at what was happening, would not use his powers under the Government of India Act of 1935 to prevent the rape, murder and arson. The Hindu blood began to flow from Bengal to Karachi with some retaliation by the Hindus. The Interim Government formed in September was sabotaged by its Muslim League members right from its inception, but the more they became disloyal and treasonable to the government of which they were a part, the greater was Gandhi's infatuation for them. Lord Wavell had to resign as he could not bring about a settlement and he was succeeded by Lord Mountbatten. King Log was followed by King Stork. The Congress which had boasted of its nationalism and socialism secretly accepted Pakistan literally at the point of the bayonet and
abjectly surrendered to Jinnah. India was vivisected and one-third of the Indian territory became foreign land to us from August 15, 1947. Lord Mountbatten came to be described in Congress circles as the greatest Viceroy and Governor-General this country ever had. The official date for handing over power was fixed for June 30, 1948, but
Mountbatten with his ruthless surgery gave us a gift of vivisected India ten months in advance. This is what Gandhi had achieved after thirty years of undisputed dictatorship and this is what Congress party calls 'freedom' and 'peaceful transfer of power'. The Hindu-Muslim unity bubble was finally burst and a theocratic state was established
with the consent of Nehru and his crowd and they have called 'freedom won by them with sacrifice' - whose sacrifice? When top leaders of Congress, with the consent of Gandhi, divided and tore the country - which we consider a deity of worship - my mind was filled with direful anger.
One of the conditions imposed by Gandhi for his breaking of the fast unto death related to the mosques in Delhi occupied by the Hindu refugees. But when Hindus in Pakistan were subjected to violent attacks he did not so much as utter a single word to protest and censure the Pakistan Government or the Muslims concerned. Gandhi was shrewd enough to know that while undertaking a fast unto death, had he imposed for its break some condition on the Muslims in Pakistan, there would have been found hardly any Muslims who could have shown some grief if the fast had ended in his death. It was for this reason that he purposely avoided imposing any condition on the Muslims. He was fully aware of from the experience that Jinnah was not at all perturbed or influenced by his fast and the Muslim League hardly attached any value to the inner voice of Gandhi.
Gandhi is being referred to as the Father of the Nation. But if that is so, he had failed his paternal duty inasmuch as he has acted very treacherously to the nation by his consenting to the partitioning of it. I stoutly maintain that Gandhi has failed in his duty. He has proved to be the Father of Pakistan. His inner-voice, his spiritual power and his doctrine of non-violence of which so much is made of, all crumbled before Jinnah's iron will and proved to be powerless.
Briefly speaking, I thought to myself and foresaw I shall be totally ruined, and the only thing I could expect from the people would be nothing but hatred and that I shall have lost all my honour, even more valuable than my life, if I were to kill Gandhiji. But at the same time I felt that the Indian politics in the absence of Gandhiji would surely be proved practical, able to retaliate, and would be powerful with armed forces. No doubt, my own future would be totally ruined, but the nation would be saved from the inroads of Pakistan. People may even call me and dub me as devoid of any sense or foolish, but the nation would be free to follow the course founded on the reason which I consider to be necessary for sound nation-building. After having fully considered the question, I took the final decision in the matter, but I did not speak about it to anyone whatsoever. I took courage in both my hands and I did fire the shots at Gandhiji on 30th January 1948, on the prayer-grounds of Birla House.
I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action had brought rack and ruin and destruction to millions of Hindus. There was no legal machinery by which such an offender could be brought to book and for this reason I fired those fatal shots. I bear no ill will towards anyone individually but I do say that I had no respect for the present government owing to their policy which was unfairly favourable towards the Muslims. But at the same time I could clearly see that the policy was entirely due to the presence of Gandhi. I have to say with great regret that Prime Minister Nehru quite forgets that his preachings and deeds are at times at variances with each other when he talks about India as a secular state in season and out of season, because it is significant to note that Nehru has played a
leading role in the establishment of the theocratic state of Pakistan, and his job was made easier by Gandhi's persistent policy of appeasement towards the Muslims.
I now stand before the court to accept the full share of my responsibility for what I have done and the judge would, of course, pass against me such orders of sentence as may be considered proper. But I would like to add that I do not desire any mercy to be shown to me, nor do I wish that anyone else should beg for mercy on my behalf. My confidence about the moral side of my action has not been shaken even by the criticism levelled against it on all sides. I have no doubt that honest writers of history will weigh my act and find the true value thereof some day
in future. "
i wont say anything further.i will just let the last words of nathuram godse speak for themselves.
" Born in a devotional Brahmin family, I instinctively came to revere Hindu religion, Hindu history and Hindu culture. I had, therefore, been intensely proud of Hinduism as a whole. As I grew up I developed a tendency to free thinking unfettered by any superstitious allegiance to any isms, political or religious. That is why I worked actively for the eradication of untouchability and the caste system based on birth alone. I openly joined anti-caste movements and maintained that all Hindus were of equal status as to rights, social and religious and should be considered high or low on merit alone and not through the accident of birth in a particular caste or profession. I used publicly to take part in organized anti-caste dinners in which thousands of Hindus, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Chamars and Bhangis participated. We broke the caste rules and dined in the company of each other.
I have read the speeches and writings of Dadabhai Naoroji, Vivekanand, Gokhale, Tilak, along with the books of ancient and modern history of India and some prominent countries like England, France, America and' Russia. Moreover I studied the tenets of Socialism and Marxism. But above all I studied very closely whatever Veer Savarkar and Gandhiji had written and spoken, as to my mind these two ideologies have contributed more to the moulding of the thought and action of the Indian people during the last thirty years or so, than any other single factor has done.
All this reading and thinking led me to believe it was my first duty to serve Hindudom and Hindus both as a patriot and as a world citizen. To secure the freedom and to safeguard the just interests of some thirty crores (300 million) of Hindus would automatically constitute the freedom and the well-being of all India, one fifth of human race. This conviction led me naturally to devote myself to the Hindu Sanghtanist ideology and programme, which alone, I came to believe, could win and preserve the national independence of Hindustan, my Motherland, and enable her to
render true service to humanity as well.
Since the year 1920, that is, after the demise of Lokamanya Tilak, Gandhiji's influence in the Congress first increased and then became supreme. His activities for public awakening were phenomenal in their intensity and were reinforced by the slogan of truth and non-violence which he paraded ostentatiously before the country. No sensible or enlightened person could object to those slogans. In fact there is nothing new or original in them. They are implicit in every constitutional public movement. But it is nothing but a mere dream if you imagine that the bulk of mankind is, or can ever become, capable of scrupulous adherence to these lofty principles in its normal life from day to day. In fact, hunour, duty and love of one's own kith and kin and country might often compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force. I could never conceive that an armed resistance to an aggression is unjust. I would
consider it a religious and moral duty to resist and, if possible, to overpower such an enemy by use of force. [In the Ramayana] Rama killed Ravana in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita. [In the Mahabharata], Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and Arjuna had to fight and slay quite a number of his friends and relations including the
revered Bhishma because the latter was on the side of the aggressor. It is my firm belief that in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as guilty of violence, the Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of the springs of human action.
In more recent history, it was the heroic fight put up by Chhatrapati Shivaji that first checked and eventually destroyed the Muslim tyranny in India. It was absolutely essentially for Shivaji to overpower and kill an aggressive Afzal Khan, failing which he would have lost his own life. In condemning history's towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots, Gandhiji has merely exposed his self-conceit. He was, paradoxical as it may appear, a violent pacifist who brought untold calamities on the country in the name of truth and
non-violence, while Rana Pratap, Shivaji and the Guru will remain enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen for ever for the freedom they brought to them.
The accumulating provocation of thirty-two years, culminating in his last pro-Muslim fast, at last goaded me to the conclusion that the existence of Gandhi should be brought to an end immediately. Gandhi had done very good in South Africa to uphold the rights and well-being of the Indian community there. But when he finally returned to India he developed a subjective mentality under which he alone was to be the final judge of what was right or wrong. If the country wanted his leadership, it had to accept his infallibility; if it did not, he would stand aloof from the Congress and carry on his own way. Against such an attitude there can be no halfway house. Either Congress had to surrender its will to his and had to be content with playing second fiddle to all his eccentricity, whimsicality, metaphysics and primitive vision, or it had to carry on without him. He alone was the Judge of everyone and every thing; he was
the master brain guiding the civil disobedience movement; no other could know the technique of that movement. He alone knew when to begin and when to withdraw it. The movement might succeed or fail, it might bring untold disaster and political reverses but that could make no difference to the Mahatma's infallibility. 'A Satyagrahi can never fail'
was his formula for declaring his own infallibility and nobody except himself knew what a Satyagrahi is.
Thus, the Mahatma became the judge and jury in his own cause. These childish insanities and obstinacies, coupled with a most severe austerity of life, ceaseless work and lofty character made Gandhi formidable and irresistible. Many people thought that his politics were irrational but they had either to withdraw from the Congress or place their
intelligence at his feet to do with as he liked. In a position of such absolute irresponsibility Gandhi was guilty of blunder after blunder, failure after failure, disaster after disaster.
Gandhi's pro-Muslim policy is blatantly in his perverse attitude on the question of the national language of India. It is quite obvious that Hindi has the most prior claim to be accepted as the premier language. In the beginning of his career in India, Gandhi gave a great impetus to Hindi but as he found that the Muslims did not like it, he became a champion of what is called Hindustani. Everybody in India knows that there is no language called Hindustani; it has no grammar; it has no vocabulary. It is a mere dialect, it is spoken, but not written. It is a bastard tongue and cross-breed between Hindi and Urdu, and not even the Mahatma's sophistry could make it popular. But in his
desire to please the Muslims he insisted that Hindustani alone should be the national language of India. His blind followers, of course, supported him and the so-called hybrid language began to be used. The charm and purity of the Hindi language was to be prostituted to please the Muslims. All his experiments were at the expense of the Hindus.
From August 1946 onwards the private armies of the Muslim League began a massacre of the Hindus. The then Viceroy, Lord Wavell, though distressed at what was happening, would not use his powers under the Government of India Act of 1935 to prevent the rape, murder and arson. The Hindu blood began to flow from Bengal to Karachi with some retaliation by the Hindus. The Interim Government formed in September was sabotaged by its Muslim League members right from its inception, but the more they became disloyal and treasonable to the government of which they were a part, the greater was Gandhi's infatuation for them. Lord Wavell had to resign as he could not bring about a settlement and he was succeeded by Lord Mountbatten. King Log was followed by King Stork. The Congress which had boasted of its nationalism and socialism secretly accepted Pakistan literally at the point of the bayonet and
abjectly surrendered to Jinnah. India was vivisected and one-third of the Indian territory became foreign land to us from August 15, 1947. Lord Mountbatten came to be described in Congress circles as the greatest Viceroy and Governor-General this country ever had. The official date for handing over power was fixed for June 30, 1948, but
Mountbatten with his ruthless surgery gave us a gift of vivisected India ten months in advance. This is what Gandhi had achieved after thirty years of undisputed dictatorship and this is what Congress party calls 'freedom' and 'peaceful transfer of power'. The Hindu-Muslim unity bubble was finally burst and a theocratic state was established
with the consent of Nehru and his crowd and they have called 'freedom won by them with sacrifice' - whose sacrifice? When top leaders of Congress, with the consent of Gandhi, divided and tore the country - which we consider a deity of worship - my mind was filled with direful anger.
One of the conditions imposed by Gandhi for his breaking of the fast unto death related to the mosques in Delhi occupied by the Hindu refugees. But when Hindus in Pakistan were subjected to violent attacks he did not so much as utter a single word to protest and censure the Pakistan Government or the Muslims concerned. Gandhi was shrewd enough to know that while undertaking a fast unto death, had he imposed for its break some condition on the Muslims in Pakistan, there would have been found hardly any Muslims who could have shown some grief if the fast had ended in his death. It was for this reason that he purposely avoided imposing any condition on the Muslims. He was fully aware of from the experience that Jinnah was not at all perturbed or influenced by his fast and the Muslim League hardly attached any value to the inner voice of Gandhi.
Gandhi is being referred to as the Father of the Nation. But if that is so, he had failed his paternal duty inasmuch as he has acted very treacherously to the nation by his consenting to the partitioning of it. I stoutly maintain that Gandhi has failed in his duty. He has proved to be the Father of Pakistan. His inner-voice, his spiritual power and his doctrine of non-violence of which so much is made of, all crumbled before Jinnah's iron will and proved to be powerless.
Briefly speaking, I thought to myself and foresaw I shall be totally ruined, and the only thing I could expect from the people would be nothing but hatred and that I shall have lost all my honour, even more valuable than my life, if I were to kill Gandhiji. But at the same time I felt that the Indian politics in the absence of Gandhiji would surely be proved practical, able to retaliate, and would be powerful with armed forces. No doubt, my own future would be totally ruined, but the nation would be saved from the inroads of Pakistan. People may even call me and dub me as devoid of any sense or foolish, but the nation would be free to follow the course founded on the reason which I consider to be necessary for sound nation-building. After having fully considered the question, I took the final decision in the matter, but I did not speak about it to anyone whatsoever. I took courage in both my hands and I did fire the shots at Gandhiji on 30th January 1948, on the prayer-grounds of Birla House.
I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action had brought rack and ruin and destruction to millions of Hindus. There was no legal machinery by which such an offender could be brought to book and for this reason I fired those fatal shots. I bear no ill will towards anyone individually but I do say that I had no respect for the present government owing to their policy which was unfairly favourable towards the Muslims. But at the same time I could clearly see that the policy was entirely due to the presence of Gandhi. I have to say with great regret that Prime Minister Nehru quite forgets that his preachings and deeds are at times at variances with each other when he talks about India as a secular state in season and out of season, because it is significant to note that Nehru has played a
leading role in the establishment of the theocratic state of Pakistan, and his job was made easier by Gandhi's persistent policy of appeasement towards the Muslims.
I now stand before the court to accept the full share of my responsibility for what I have done and the judge would, of course, pass against me such orders of sentence as may be considered proper. But I would like to add that I do not desire any mercy to be shown to me, nor do I wish that anyone else should beg for mercy on my behalf. My confidence about the moral side of my action has not been shaken even by the criticism levelled against it on all sides. I have no doubt that honest writers of history will weigh my act and find the true value thereof some day
in future. "
make your own cult following...
Cults maintain their following by putting members through a cycle of ups and downs. There is a psychology behind these tactics and it is to exploit the the members and keep them dependent on the cult. This brainwashing is very effective and it is important for people to understand how it works.
From Wikipedia, “Cult roughly refers to a cohesive social group devoted to beliefs or practices that the surrounding culture considers outside the mainstream.”
Thus all religions are cults. Whether or not a particular cult is considered a religion depends on the local customs and traditions of the area.
Now onto the psychology of brainwashing.
Brainwashing or thought reform is the technique that all cults use to keep and recruit new members. The goal is to modify the attitudes, behaviors and beliefs of a recruit so that it conforms to the attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs of all of the members.
Let me be clear that this can happen in a variety of situations. It does NOT require an isolated environment, physical abuse, or require complete control of a recruit. These tactics do help to make the brainwashing more effective, however, they are not a necessity.
The important feature about brainwashing is that it is done over and over again to achieve the desired goal. When people stop thinking independently for themselves, when they stop questioning their own personal sense of right and wrong, and when they refuse to listen to information that conflicts with their own beliefs… then they have been effectively brainwashed.
Find or create vulnerable recruits
People experiencing the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, an uncomfortable or frustrating situation, etc. can be considered vulnerable (basically anything that can make you sad, anxious, or angry). Cults are especially good at finding these people. Many large cults will send out missionaries to 3rd world countries and war torn areas where many of these people exist. In more developed areas the cults will target places with lots these vulnerable people, such as college campuses and hospitals.
A cult recruiter will “reach out” to let these people know that they are “missing something.” The recruiter will claim to have the solution to this problem. Scientology uses a “personality test” to show a recruit how they can improve their personality. Recruiters for Christianity and Islam will often tell you that you are going to “hell” or will face “eternal damnation” when you die, and that you can be “saved.”The cult recruiter’s whole intent at first is to exploit the recruit’s vulnerability and to make them feel worse about their situation.(this is used over and over by naxal)
Make the Broken Down Recruit Feel Good
The recruiter will then reward the recruit with social support when he or she listens and agrees to the propaganda. Often the recruiter will offer personal assistance to get the new recruit to enter the cult’s isolated environment. This positive interaction helps to get the new recruit to a cult owned building. These isolated cult environments go by different names: church, synagogue, temple, mosque, dianetics center, jinja, mandir, kingdom hall, and shrine (to name a few). The encouragement from the recruiter makes the new recruit feel good and boosts their self esteem. This step reinforces that the cult and anything involved with the cult is good.
Use Guilt to Break the Recruit Back Down
In the isolated cult environment a member of the cult will explain to the recruit why he or she is bad/evil/impure. The things that make a person “evil” are usually normal, acceptable human behaviors and thus it is inevitable that the recruit is guilty of these “evils.” Things like sex and drug use are almost universally rejected by cults. Behavior that is actually adaptive in many situations, such as dishonesty, theft, and violence, are looked at as always bad. Therefore according to the cult it is NEVER alright to lie, cheat, steal, or maim in any situation, regardless of potential harm or personal gain. Many cults will also claim that a belief in a supernatural being/s is a requirement to be “pure.”
The recruit ends up feeling guilty about their impropriety and believes that it is his or her own fault that they were unhappy to begin with. The recruit’s self esteem will go down because of this guilt. Christianity and Judaism have the 10 commandments. Islam and Mormonism has an even longer list of commandments. Buddhism has the 5 percepts. Hinduism has the rules of karma and dharma. And every cult has its own unique set of rules.
Bring the Self Esteem of the Recruit Back Up
Now that the recruit has been broken down again by guilt, the members of the cult will go about bringing the recruit’s self esteem back up. The cult will ask the recruit to confess all of their wrongdoings to other members. When the recruit exposes their guilt to the cult, the members give the recruit praise and will declare that the recruit is on their way to being “saved.” The release of guilt makes the recruit realize that it’s not he or she that is wrong, but his or her beliefs that are wrong.
The cult will tell the recruit to follow these rules and return on a regular basis to the “holy” place. This means returning to the isolated cult environment at least every week if not more often. The new recruit then leaves feeling happy and relieved.
Continue the Cycle of Breaking Down and Building Up Cult Members
Within the week the cult member will probably commit one of the “sins” and feel guilty. They will attribute any sadness, anxiousness, or anger to their flawed beliefs. They will return to the cult environment at a low. At the weekly meeting the cult will use the social influence of a large group of people to now induce guilt and break down members further. The confession of wrongdoings and the “goodness” of the cult will once again be used to build up everyone’s self esteem.
This cycle is repeated week after week.
The Loss of Self and Exploitation
Eventually the cult member’s self worth becomes dependent on the cult. The cult’s self worth replaces any independent self worth. The cult member feels that any and all happiness is because of the cult, and the “sins” of the real world are the cause of their unhappiness.
Once the individual has reached this point they will have also lost most of their independent thought. The cult then exploits the member for their time and resources. Donations of money are mandatory in all cults. Cult members will claim that donation is not mandatory, however failing to donate or taking money from the cult is a major “sin.” Tithes, voluntary contributions, sacrificial giving, voluntary stewardship, tzedakah, alms, and zakat are some names for these mandatory donations. In all cults donating money is considered “sacred” and met with praise (how odd that even the supernatural obey the almighty $$).
Like businesses the intent of the cult is not really to help members, but to make money from them. Unlike businesses, though, cults do not pay taxes. This distinction is a result of politicians and other government officials being members of cults themselves. The influence of cults is widespread in all countries of the world. Hopefully information like this will help people realize these mind control techniques and manipulation.
“1) Find lonely, desperate people
2) Break them down: Make them feel much worse about themselves
3) Build them back up: make them feel good about themselves again
4) Repeat 2-3 until their sense of self-worth is completely dependent on you
5) Reveal the “true” beliefs of the cult and take all their money
Et Voila. Combine those with other brainwashing techniques and you have yourself a nice little cult.
So it is not so much “what do these people get out of the cult?”, as it is “what does the cult take from them?”. They take your independent sense of self-worth and turn it into a cult-dependent sense of self-worth.
edit: the strange part is, a lot of other organizations use the same tactics but nobody tends to notice them. The army, marine corps, navy, sports teams, pimps ;), etc.. all use the same break em down, build em back up tactic, which is brainwashing 101.”
From Wikipedia, “Cult roughly refers to a cohesive social group devoted to beliefs or practices that the surrounding culture considers outside the mainstream.”
Thus all religions are cults. Whether or not a particular cult is considered a religion depends on the local customs and traditions of the area.
Now onto the psychology of brainwashing.
Brainwashing or thought reform is the technique that all cults use to keep and recruit new members. The goal is to modify the attitudes, behaviors and beliefs of a recruit so that it conforms to the attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs of all of the members.
Let me be clear that this can happen in a variety of situations. It does NOT require an isolated environment, physical abuse, or require complete control of a recruit. These tactics do help to make the brainwashing more effective, however, they are not a necessity.
The important feature about brainwashing is that it is done over and over again to achieve the desired goal. When people stop thinking independently for themselves, when they stop questioning their own personal sense of right and wrong, and when they refuse to listen to information that conflicts with their own beliefs… then they have been effectively brainwashed.
Find or create vulnerable recruits
People experiencing the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, an uncomfortable or frustrating situation, etc. can be considered vulnerable (basically anything that can make you sad, anxious, or angry). Cults are especially good at finding these people. Many large cults will send out missionaries to 3rd world countries and war torn areas where many of these people exist. In more developed areas the cults will target places with lots these vulnerable people, such as college campuses and hospitals.
A cult recruiter will “reach out” to let these people know that they are “missing something.” The recruiter will claim to have the solution to this problem. Scientology uses a “personality test” to show a recruit how they can improve their personality. Recruiters for Christianity and Islam will often tell you that you are going to “hell” or will face “eternal damnation” when you die, and that you can be “saved.”The cult recruiter’s whole intent at first is to exploit the recruit’s vulnerability and to make them feel worse about their situation.(this is used over and over by naxal)
Make the Broken Down Recruit Feel Good
The recruiter will then reward the recruit with social support when he or she listens and agrees to the propaganda. Often the recruiter will offer personal assistance to get the new recruit to enter the cult’s isolated environment. This positive interaction helps to get the new recruit to a cult owned building. These isolated cult environments go by different names: church, synagogue, temple, mosque, dianetics center, jinja, mandir, kingdom hall, and shrine (to name a few). The encouragement from the recruiter makes the new recruit feel good and boosts their self esteem. This step reinforces that the cult and anything involved with the cult is good.
Use Guilt to Break the Recruit Back Down
In the isolated cult environment a member of the cult will explain to the recruit why he or she is bad/evil/impure. The things that make a person “evil” are usually normal, acceptable human behaviors and thus it is inevitable that the recruit is guilty of these “evils.” Things like sex and drug use are almost universally rejected by cults. Behavior that is actually adaptive in many situations, such as dishonesty, theft, and violence, are looked at as always bad. Therefore according to the cult it is NEVER alright to lie, cheat, steal, or maim in any situation, regardless of potential harm or personal gain. Many cults will also claim that a belief in a supernatural being/s is a requirement to be “pure.”
The recruit ends up feeling guilty about their impropriety and believes that it is his or her own fault that they were unhappy to begin with. The recruit’s self esteem will go down because of this guilt. Christianity and Judaism have the 10 commandments. Islam and Mormonism has an even longer list of commandments. Buddhism has the 5 percepts. Hinduism has the rules of karma and dharma. And every cult has its own unique set of rules.
Bring the Self Esteem of the Recruit Back Up
Now that the recruit has been broken down again by guilt, the members of the cult will go about bringing the recruit’s self esteem back up. The cult will ask the recruit to confess all of their wrongdoings to other members. When the recruit exposes their guilt to the cult, the members give the recruit praise and will declare that the recruit is on their way to being “saved.” The release of guilt makes the recruit realize that it’s not he or she that is wrong, but his or her beliefs that are wrong.
The cult will tell the recruit to follow these rules and return on a regular basis to the “holy” place. This means returning to the isolated cult environment at least every week if not more often. The new recruit then leaves feeling happy and relieved.
Continue the Cycle of Breaking Down and Building Up Cult Members
Within the week the cult member will probably commit one of the “sins” and feel guilty. They will attribute any sadness, anxiousness, or anger to their flawed beliefs. They will return to the cult environment at a low. At the weekly meeting the cult will use the social influence of a large group of people to now induce guilt and break down members further. The confession of wrongdoings and the “goodness” of the cult will once again be used to build up everyone’s self esteem.
This cycle is repeated week after week.
The Loss of Self and Exploitation
Eventually the cult member’s self worth becomes dependent on the cult. The cult’s self worth replaces any independent self worth. The cult member feels that any and all happiness is because of the cult, and the “sins” of the real world are the cause of their unhappiness.
Once the individual has reached this point they will have also lost most of their independent thought. The cult then exploits the member for their time and resources. Donations of money are mandatory in all cults. Cult members will claim that donation is not mandatory, however failing to donate or taking money from the cult is a major “sin.” Tithes, voluntary contributions, sacrificial giving, voluntary stewardship, tzedakah, alms, and zakat are some names for these mandatory donations. In all cults donating money is considered “sacred” and met with praise (how odd that even the supernatural obey the almighty $$).
Like businesses the intent of the cult is not really to help members, but to make money from them. Unlike businesses, though, cults do not pay taxes. This distinction is a result of politicians and other government officials being members of cults themselves. The influence of cults is widespread in all countries of the world. Hopefully information like this will help people realize these mind control techniques and manipulation.
“1) Find lonely, desperate people
2) Break them down: Make them feel much worse about themselves
3) Build them back up: make them feel good about themselves again
4) Repeat 2-3 until their sense of self-worth is completely dependent on you
5) Reveal the “true” beliefs of the cult and take all their money
Et Voila. Combine those with other brainwashing techniques and you have yourself a nice little cult.
So it is not so much “what do these people get out of the cult?”, as it is “what does the cult take from them?”. They take your independent sense of self-worth and turn it into a cult-dependent sense of self-worth.
edit: the strange part is, a lot of other organizations use the same tactics but nobody tends to notice them. The army, marine corps, navy, sports teams, pimps ;), etc.. all use the same break em down, build em back up tactic, which is brainwashing 101.”
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
anecdotes and scrap
many email and orkut posts make rounds saying "forward this to seven people or u will be doomed "and such similar things.and the best part is the so-called computer literate and educated people actually believe in such stuff.i actually wonder is our government has taken notice of this.just imagine what would their email be like
dear user,
i am dianna(this is for the foolish orkut users,grow up),speaking from the government of maharastra.as you know the government has a large deficit to fill which is about 27000 crores.in view of this we have make a tie up with gmail,msn,rediff and other important email providers that for every forward you send they will give us 0.123 rs(exclusive of VAT).we are of great need of money as the chief minister's nephew's third cousins wedding is happening and so all our funds are being utilised in that procedure.
also"jai bhumbhum bhole".if you send it to 689.32(taxes included)people within 34 min,your will receive blessings from the pundit presiding in the wedding.if you don't forward and delete this message,you are doomed for the rest of your life.
special attention:
1.sc,st,o.b.c,have special concessions.they will get 5 more blessings and their forwards will be accepted separately without vat.
2.all those belonging to vt,nt etc. will have the concession of not being doomed for the rest of the life.
3.person doing the most forwards will get the ice cream served in the wedding(tutti fruity or malai pista).
4.all forwards are a property of the goverment and all disputes regarding it will be done in the jurisdiction of maharastra state.
5.forward kar varna thok dalunga.
in America,almost 40 percent of the students suffer from dyslexia ,according to recent reports.i fail to get the logic_40%??are you serious?are the dyslexia genes punjabi that they have the desire of going to america as soon as they are formed.i think there if i child doesnt perform well in studies he is suffering from dyslexia.its a cool word you see.we in india call the child is dumb or stupid or dunce.in america they say the child has dyslexia.if a child is weak in studies...u know what he suffers from dyslexia.its so popular that after some years ,there will be a new diesease."news flash-new survey says about 10 % of our population have the fast learning diesease"people who learn fast will undergo psycological treatment to 'slow' themselves down.you cant say anything after all its america,anything can happen.
dear user,
i am dianna(this is for the foolish orkut users,grow up),speaking from the government of maharastra.as you know the government has a large deficit to fill which is about 27000 crores.in view of this we have make a tie up with gmail,msn,rediff and other important email providers that for every forward you send they will give us 0.123 rs(exclusive of VAT).we are of great need of money as the chief minister's nephew's third cousins wedding is happening and so all our funds are being utilised in that procedure.
also"jai bhumbhum bhole".if you send it to 689.32(taxes included)people within 34 min,your will receive blessings from the pundit presiding in the wedding.if you don't forward and delete this message,you are doomed for the rest of your life.
special attention:
1.sc,st,o.b.c,have special concessions.they will get 5 more blessings and their forwards will be accepted separately without vat.
2.all those belonging to vt,nt etc. will have the concession of not being doomed for the rest of the life.
3.person doing the most forwards will get the ice cream served in the wedding(tutti fruity or malai pista).
4.all forwards are a property of the goverment and all disputes regarding it will be done in the jurisdiction of maharastra state.
5.forward kar varna thok dalunga.
in America,almost 40 percent of the students suffer from dyslexia ,according to recent reports.i fail to get the logic_40%??are you serious?are the dyslexia genes punjabi that they have the desire of going to america as soon as they are formed.i think there if i child doesnt perform well in studies he is suffering from dyslexia.its a cool word you see.we in india call the child is dumb or stupid or dunce.in america they say the child has dyslexia.if a child is weak in studies...u know what he suffers from dyslexia.its so popular that after some years ,there will be a new diesease."news flash-new survey says about 10 % of our population have the fast learning diesease"people who learn fast will undergo psycological treatment to 'slow' themselves down.you cant say anything after all its america,anything can happen.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
a dream
someone told me that i should write more peoms because someone thinks i write pretty ok.so i decided to experiment a bit to try writing another one and lets see how it turns out......
DREAM ON.........................
Where the mountains touch the sky
Where poets dream, where eagles fly
A secret place above the crowds
Just beneath marshmallow clouds
Lift your eyes to a snowy peak
And see the soon- to- be we seek
Whisper dreams and let them rise
To the mountains old and wise
Climbers climb, it's time to try
Where the mountains touch the sky
Take me there. Oh take me now
Someway, Someday, Somewhere, Somehow
Where the ocean meets the sky
Where mermaid dance and seagulls fly
A place in dreams I know so well
The sea inside a single shell
Far across the living sea
A pale blue possibility
Beyond the castles made of sand
Tomorrow in a small child's hand
Only dreamers need apply
Where the ocean meets the sky
Take me there. Oh take me now
Someway, Someday, Somewhere, Somehow
Where the forests reach the sky
Men are equal and doves still fly
No thorns of war, a perfect rose
This is where the green grass grows
Out beyond the crystal stream
Like Dr. King I have a dream
Imagine such a goal in sight
For red and yellow, black and white
Whisper now, let the dream begin
It's time to trust the truth within
This is where we seek and find
A gift in being colorblind
Dream on Dreamers, hopes are high
Where the forests reach the sky
Take me there. Oh take me now
Someway, Someday, Somewhere, Somehow
Now, listen close, the future calls
"Build your bridges and tear down walls! "
For time has taught and so it seems
Realities are born of dreams
*********************************NEONSTEIN***************************************
DREAM ON.........................
Where the mountains touch the sky
Where poets dream, where eagles fly
A secret place above the crowds
Just beneath marshmallow clouds
Lift your eyes to a snowy peak
And see the soon- to- be we seek
Whisper dreams and let them rise
To the mountains old and wise
Climbers climb, it's time to try
Where the mountains touch the sky
Take me there. Oh take me now
Someway, Someday, Somewhere, Somehow
Where the ocean meets the sky
Where mermaid dance and seagulls fly
A place in dreams I know so well
The sea inside a single shell
Far across the living sea
A pale blue possibility
Beyond the castles made of sand
Tomorrow in a small child's hand
Only dreamers need apply
Where the ocean meets the sky
Take me there. Oh take me now
Someway, Someday, Somewhere, Somehow
Where the forests reach the sky
Men are equal and doves still fly
No thorns of war, a perfect rose
This is where the green grass grows
Out beyond the crystal stream
Like Dr. King I have a dream
Imagine such a goal in sight
For red and yellow, black and white
Whisper now, let the dream begin
It's time to trust the truth within
This is where we seek and find
A gift in being colorblind
Dream on Dreamers, hopes are high
Where the forests reach the sky
Take me there. Oh take me now
Someway, Someday, Somewhere, Somehow
Now, listen close, the future calls
"Build your bridges and tear down walls! "
For time has taught and so it seems
Realities are born of dreams
*********************************NEONSTEIN***************************************
OF IRAQ WAR AND PHILOSOPHIES
I have noticed something in the year or so I have been doing this.this post is long due i know but my restricted intelligence takes a long time to analyse things out.
What I have noticed is that certain types of Iraqi aims and ambitions and values are consistently hooted down by the American media-and-policy people as nothing more than rationalizations for power-grabs on the part of the people expressing them, or else are completely ignored. And yet certain other types of ideology or organized sets of values--namely religion and race-- are puffed up by the American media-and-policy people as the major motivating factors in Iraq and in fact as the standing in the way of implementing the benevolent and wise policies that the Americans had been proposing.
The first group includes Iraqi nationalism, Sadrist social-group loyalties or any other expression of social solidarity, along with regional loyalties of many types. These expressions of nationalist and other values are either completely ignored, or else debunked as mere "instruments" in a power struggle, not actual bona fide expressions of meaning.These types of aims and ambitions and values (including such things as national, regional and group loyalties) are regularly either debunked in this "instrumentalizing" way, or else completely ignored.
And by contrast other expressions of values and loyalty and so on are not debunked, but on the contrary they are elevated to the status of the major motivating factors in the whole country, in fact in the whole region. These are sect (Sunni versus Shia) and to some extent race (Kurd and Persian versus Arab). What is the difference between these two classes of values, that causes them to be treated by the Americans so differently?
The first idea that suggests itself is that Sunni/Shia is the Americans' instrument in a power struggle, and in order to be used as an instrument, the Sunni/Shia theme has to be built up and armed, so to speak, not only with real arms, but also with ideological importance. Hence in the aftermath of the invasion the use of Chalabi and the others to harass Sunnis, and more recently we have the arming of Sunnis to provide "military balance" against the Shiites. This kind of policy wouldn't be even explainable if it were not that "Sunni" and "Shia" are touted as almost military or at least militant and powerful enemies of one another. For which of course there was no real pre-existing evidence at all, and for which the evidence has to be provided by this American media build-up of these. This is so not only in the media sense, but really in terms of arming the two sides respectively.
In other words, the American strategy has been to aggressively sideline anything having to do with nationalism, or social solidarity, or regional loyalty, or any of the other civic virtues that would be so highly praised and prized in any other situation, debunking all of this in Iraq as mere fancy words dressing up the respective groups' roles in a brutal value-free struggle for power. While at the same time the American strategy has been to elevate Sunni-versus-Shia and to a lesser extent racial loyalties to a level of supposedly decisive importance. (If you say this is only a reflection of what happened, you are begging the question. What happened was that the Americans invaded, and they invaded, if not with a particular strategy in mind, at least there was a strategy that was quickly developed).
And the American people have bought into this. People have been expected to believe, and have believed, that nationalism, social solidarity, regional loyalties, and so on, are, in the Iraqi case, essentially nothing but covers for respective roles in a brutal struggle for power. And people have been expected to believe, and have believed, that the struggle in question is "really" religious, that this religion (or these religions) are not a mere cover for anything, but are the real thing, the real motivating forces. (Now you will say that people are gullible and succumbed to the media bombardment, but again I would like to take a step back and see if that isn't another case of begging the question: Why were people ready to believe that?)
Here's a proposed explanation for that part of it: People feel, as part of their overall moral upbringing, an obligation to be universally benevolent and good to one another, and in the Iraqi case the only way to justify the brutality of the invasion and the occupation was to buy the idea of "promoting democracy". Democracy is a "secular" value, an expression of universal equality not dependent on religion or any other factor except for the people themselves. This idea of a pure and religion-free value, and more particularly the idea of "promoting" it in a far-away country like Iraq, carried with it from the beginning a heavy burden of hypocrisy. And when it went wrong, who to blame? Here's where the proposed explanation gets a little "philosophical". Who you blame is you blame those factors that historically had to be overcome in creating an ideology of democracy: primarily religion. You blame, primarily, "Sunnis" and "Shiites" as natural enemies of democracy (as was specifically done in the aftermath of the 2005 and 2006 elections). Never mind that "Sunnis" included nationalists and a variety of other more particular loyalties; or that "Shiites" included a variety of different social loyalties and affiliations. It was all, supposedly, the fault of the Sunni-Shia difference in religion. Certainly the media megaphone was responsible for a lot of the touting of this, but the point I am making is that perhaps there was a preexisting disposition in Westerners to go for this "blame it on religion" approach, as a reflection of the historical archaeology of their whole moral world.
(Charles Taylor talks about "benevolence on demand" as part of the moral world we have inherited ultimately from religion, often bearing with it a latent sense of hypocrisy, and he warns: "The threatened sense of unworthiness can also lead to the projection of evil outward. The bad, the failure is now identified with some other people or group. My conscience is clear because I oppose them, but what can I do? They stand in the way of universal beneficence; they must be liquidated." Pretty clear-sighted, I would say).
And if moral history can help explain the puffing-up of the Sunni-Shia theme as the scapegoat in the story, what about the other side of this? What explains the ease with which people have fallen for the idea that expressions of the other sets of Iraqi values including nationalism and regionalism and so on, have been nothing but instruments and weapons in a power struggle, as opposed to bona fide expressions of values? As I read some of the would-be debunking that has gone on over the last year or so, I get the feeling the debunkers think of this as something like hard-headed realism battling against the naivete of listening to hollow expressions of emotion-laden tradition and the like. In fact I myself have been the target of this "don't listen to their words, look at the killing they are all doing" type of objection whenever I have tried to propound what it was the nationalists, for example, were saying. These expressions of value are merely "rationalizations", and should be debunked, so the argument went, because all these types of "rationalizations", whether emotional or calculating, need to be debunked in principle. All that matters, and all that underlies those types of discourse, is the drive for power or a share in power, and deploying the tools and weapons for that, including these verbal weapons. (Of course those making the claim think they are exempt from that: What they say is a genuine and sincere expression of values, but what everyone else says is a rationalization or an emotional sideshow of some kind).
And here's the philosophical part: This debunking attitude is a distant but living remnant of the Enlightenment idea of the power of (what Taylor called) "disengaged reason" to beat back all the superstitions of religion and tradition and the rest of the bad old medieval world. This "disengaged reason" has had a long and complicated history, but certainly it lives on in various forms, and one of them is this idea of our ability to debunk expressions of mere tradition, authority, prejudice, and so on. But here, in this case, in the Iraq-war context, this debunking "reason" is turned against bona fide expressions of value, merely because these people are thought of as the enemy. It is another example of a living part of our moral history gone bad.
This is all very sketchy. But suppose the above discussion is basically right. Suppose both of these mass-mediated phenomena--the (knee-jerk) condemnation of Sunni/Shia as the obstacle to Iraqi democracy; and the (knee-jerk) debunking of what would otherwise be considered valuable civic virtues--suppose both of them reflect living parts of our cultural heritage, that have gone bad or more likely been manipulable and manipulated to help support the vicious demolition of a great nation and maybe a whole region. What would that mean?
I don't know, but for me what it suggests is that for America to have abandoned the study of its own moral and philosophical history--and the liberal arts in general--is possibly having effects that are far more destructive than some mere "loss of depth and richness in our lives".
And if you don't find the above general line of argument convincing, then how do you propose to explain the fact that Americans are at one and the same time against this war and occupation, and powerless to mobilize to stop it? Isn't it plausible to think that in some way or another (even if not in the ways I suggested here) the moral power that one assumes would be fired up in a case like this has been hijacked or disabled in some way? Is this not worth thinking about?
What I have noticed is that certain types of Iraqi aims and ambitions and values are consistently hooted down by the American media-and-policy people as nothing more than rationalizations for power-grabs on the part of the people expressing them, or else are completely ignored. And yet certain other types of ideology or organized sets of values--namely religion and race-- are puffed up by the American media-and-policy people as the major motivating factors in Iraq and in fact as the standing in the way of implementing the benevolent and wise policies that the Americans had been proposing.
The first group includes Iraqi nationalism, Sadrist social-group loyalties or any other expression of social solidarity, along with regional loyalties of many types. These expressions of nationalist and other values are either completely ignored, or else debunked as mere "instruments" in a power struggle, not actual bona fide expressions of meaning.These types of aims and ambitions and values (including such things as national, regional and group loyalties) are regularly either debunked in this "instrumentalizing" way, or else completely ignored.
And by contrast other expressions of values and loyalty and so on are not debunked, but on the contrary they are elevated to the status of the major motivating factors in the whole country, in fact in the whole region. These are sect (Sunni versus Shia) and to some extent race (Kurd and Persian versus Arab). What is the difference between these two classes of values, that causes them to be treated by the Americans so differently?
The first idea that suggests itself is that Sunni/Shia is the Americans' instrument in a power struggle, and in order to be used as an instrument, the Sunni/Shia theme has to be built up and armed, so to speak, not only with real arms, but also with ideological importance. Hence in the aftermath of the invasion the use of Chalabi and the others to harass Sunnis, and more recently we have the arming of Sunnis to provide "military balance" against the Shiites. This kind of policy wouldn't be even explainable if it were not that "Sunni" and "Shia" are touted as almost military or at least militant and powerful enemies of one another. For which of course there was no real pre-existing evidence at all, and for which the evidence has to be provided by this American media build-up of these. This is so not only in the media sense, but really in terms of arming the two sides respectively.
In other words, the American strategy has been to aggressively sideline anything having to do with nationalism, or social solidarity, or regional loyalty, or any of the other civic virtues that would be so highly praised and prized in any other situation, debunking all of this in Iraq as mere fancy words dressing up the respective groups' roles in a brutal value-free struggle for power. While at the same time the American strategy has been to elevate Sunni-versus-Shia and to a lesser extent racial loyalties to a level of supposedly decisive importance. (If you say this is only a reflection of what happened, you are begging the question. What happened was that the Americans invaded, and they invaded, if not with a particular strategy in mind, at least there was a strategy that was quickly developed).
And the American people have bought into this. People have been expected to believe, and have believed, that nationalism, social solidarity, regional loyalties, and so on, are, in the Iraqi case, essentially nothing but covers for respective roles in a brutal struggle for power. And people have been expected to believe, and have believed, that the struggle in question is "really" religious, that this religion (or these religions) are not a mere cover for anything, but are the real thing, the real motivating forces. (Now you will say that people are gullible and succumbed to the media bombardment, but again I would like to take a step back and see if that isn't another case of begging the question: Why were people ready to believe that?)
Here's a proposed explanation for that part of it: People feel, as part of their overall moral upbringing, an obligation to be universally benevolent and good to one another, and in the Iraqi case the only way to justify the brutality of the invasion and the occupation was to buy the idea of "promoting democracy". Democracy is a "secular" value, an expression of universal equality not dependent on religion or any other factor except for the people themselves. This idea of a pure and religion-free value, and more particularly the idea of "promoting" it in a far-away country like Iraq, carried with it from the beginning a heavy burden of hypocrisy. And when it went wrong, who to blame? Here's where the proposed explanation gets a little "philosophical". Who you blame is you blame those factors that historically had to be overcome in creating an ideology of democracy: primarily religion. You blame, primarily, "Sunnis" and "Shiites" as natural enemies of democracy (as was specifically done in the aftermath of the 2005 and 2006 elections). Never mind that "Sunnis" included nationalists and a variety of other more particular loyalties; or that "Shiites" included a variety of different social loyalties and affiliations. It was all, supposedly, the fault of the Sunni-Shia difference in religion. Certainly the media megaphone was responsible for a lot of the touting of this, but the point I am making is that perhaps there was a preexisting disposition in Westerners to go for this "blame it on religion" approach, as a reflection of the historical archaeology of their whole moral world.
(Charles Taylor talks about "benevolence on demand" as part of the moral world we have inherited ultimately from religion, often bearing with it a latent sense of hypocrisy, and he warns: "The threatened sense of unworthiness can also lead to the projection of evil outward. The bad, the failure is now identified with some other people or group. My conscience is clear because I oppose them, but what can I do? They stand in the way of universal beneficence; they must be liquidated." Pretty clear-sighted, I would say).
And if moral history can help explain the puffing-up of the Sunni-Shia theme as the scapegoat in the story, what about the other side of this? What explains the ease with which people have fallen for the idea that expressions of the other sets of Iraqi values including nationalism and regionalism and so on, have been nothing but instruments and weapons in a power struggle, as opposed to bona fide expressions of values? As I read some of the would-be debunking that has gone on over the last year or so, I get the feeling the debunkers think of this as something like hard-headed realism battling against the naivete of listening to hollow expressions of emotion-laden tradition and the like. In fact I myself have been the target of this "don't listen to their words, look at the killing they are all doing" type of objection whenever I have tried to propound what it was the nationalists, for example, were saying. These expressions of value are merely "rationalizations", and should be debunked, so the argument went, because all these types of "rationalizations", whether emotional or calculating, need to be debunked in principle. All that matters, and all that underlies those types of discourse, is the drive for power or a share in power, and deploying the tools and weapons for that, including these verbal weapons. (Of course those making the claim think they are exempt from that: What they say is a genuine and sincere expression of values, but what everyone else says is a rationalization or an emotional sideshow of some kind).
And here's the philosophical part: This debunking attitude is a distant but living remnant of the Enlightenment idea of the power of (what Taylor called) "disengaged reason" to beat back all the superstitions of religion and tradition and the rest of the bad old medieval world. This "disengaged reason" has had a long and complicated history, but certainly it lives on in various forms, and one of them is this idea of our ability to debunk expressions of mere tradition, authority, prejudice, and so on. But here, in this case, in the Iraq-war context, this debunking "reason" is turned against bona fide expressions of value, merely because these people are thought of as the enemy. It is another example of a living part of our moral history gone bad.
This is all very sketchy. But suppose the above discussion is basically right. Suppose both of these mass-mediated phenomena--the (knee-jerk) condemnation of Sunni/Shia as the obstacle to Iraqi democracy; and the (knee-jerk) debunking of what would otherwise be considered valuable civic virtues--suppose both of them reflect living parts of our cultural heritage, that have gone bad or more likely been manipulable and manipulated to help support the vicious demolition of a great nation and maybe a whole region. What would that mean?
I don't know, but for me what it suggests is that for America to have abandoned the study of its own moral and philosophical history--and the liberal arts in general--is possibly having effects that are far more destructive than some mere "loss of depth and richness in our lives".
And if you don't find the above general line of argument convincing, then how do you propose to explain the fact that Americans are at one and the same time against this war and occupation, and powerless to mobilize to stop it? Isn't it plausible to think that in some way or another (even if not in the ways I suggested here) the moral power that one assumes would be fired up in a case like this has been hijacked or disabled in some way? Is this not worth thinking about?
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