The Dark Heart of Humanity

I am continually disturbed by the human world as it has evolved a kind of systematic concatenation of ever and ever more abusive and rapacious ideologies in which the Powerful can now easily and readily marshal and inject sophisticated (and not so sophisticated) strategies of persuasion into every part of our daily living: from industrial food and religious brotherhood to military invasion and Hollywood entertainments, not to mention testing in education (both for teachers and students) and mandatory payments to the industrial "wellness" industry. The list of course goes on and on.

One often balks at "conspiracy" as an idea--rationally, too many parts must coalesce to be the work of conspirators. But I've come to simply think of it as a systematic conspiracy created by very the framework of our ideas of what it means to be a human and how we come to BE and ACT within this. In short, everything seems tied together when you start thinking about changing even one way of "being" in the world.

That said, I was struck yesterday by a Rolling Stone piece about the "proposed" use of Psy-Op techniques by the military on delegations of congressional members visiting Afghanistan for "on the ground" briefings. So, basically, military generals attempting to use propaganda against our elected representatives to encourage continuing and expanding the pillaging and domination of occupied territory.

Now, it's claimed that this tactic WAS NOT deployed as those ordered to do so refused the order. This is illegal after all--but illegal never stopped anyone before! However, my "read" on this is, "of course they do these kinds of things all the time, and anyway, how would anyone know if/when psy-ops is used."

Remember when it was reported that Donald Rumsfeld would pepper all his reports to Bush with bible verses? That is psy-ops 101.

Also, you might recall that the torture regime has been aided and abetted by psychologists. Look it up yourself.

Okay, so, to the tapestry of "like" ideology.

Psy-Ops really is no different than any application of "organizational" psychology. Daily we are subjected to this kind of manipulation. It's a corporate and academic industry after all.

[You might recall that I suggested you do a little investigating the fact that there are so many Religious colleges that offer HR degrees--well, HR is of course nothing more than manipulating the "human resource" in the corporate machine.]

Now, here is little essay about Industrial and Organization Psychologists written by one of their own. Skim it, it's not worth spending too much time on. But, I would like to call your attention to the first few lines of the author's bio:

Dr. Charles Handler is the president and founder of Rocket-Hire.com. Throughout his career he has specialized in developing effective, legally defensible employee selection systems.

Comforting, yes? This is the dark heart of humanity. I hope you think long and hard about taking this route in life.

I'm tired of this. How do people justify this type of activity as it is applied to their fellow humans? But of course, what part of your life isn't infested by psy-op applications? What the hell is advertising anyway?

Well, remember an earlier post about the "organizational" strength of a certain religion?

See, this is all coming together...onward Christian soldiers marching as to war...on everyone else. But my favorite phrase is next: "with the Cross of Jesus marching on before." It's the IDEA that marches on before (the symbol of torture by the state) because Jesus, as a man and philosopher is too complicated (and well, against violent and worldly domination) to be a symbol of war.

And, finally, for this post, what do you think the "morality of greed" (not softened by the use of "profit" to replace "greed") is but a psy-op attack on your very idea of human society (your social relations). Your responsibility is now to an abstraction called MONEY, or PROSPERITY rather than your fellow beings.

All this manipulation is fostered by the distancing hand of our technologies. More machines, more tools, less human empathy, what we once might have called "fellow feeling"...it's that simple.

Please stop it.