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  • I've entitled this "Social Pathology." I decided to use the metaphor of disease to describe

  • the current state of social affairs and the trends it foreshadows and perpetuates. I was

  • first introduced to this idea of relating social state to a cellular state by a man

  • named John McMurtry, who wrote a book called "The Cancer Stage of Capitalism." The rationale

  • is pretty simple. Just as human beings have to deal with pathogens invading and harming

  • their life system, so too does the social system we all share. Of course, these societal

  • diseases are not generated by ways of physical germs or the like. Rather, they come in the

  • form of presupposed principles of preference; cultural "memes" that transfer from one to

  • another based on values, and hence, belief systems. These "memes" or patterns of perspective

  • and behavior are what eventually result from or comprise the cultural manifestations around

  • us, such as the ideas of democracy, republicans, democrats, the american dream, etc. In chapter

  • one we will examine the symptoms, and hence diagnose the current stage of disease we are

  • in. Then in chapter two we will establish a prognosis, meaning what can we expect from

  • the future as the current pathogenic patterns continue. And finally, in chapter three, we

  • will discuss treatment for our current state of sickness, and this is where the concept,

  • of course, of a resource-based economy will be initially examined. However, as an introduction

  • to this, I am first going to describe what I call the "invisible prison". This is the

  • closed, intellectual feedback system, if you will, that consistently slows or even stops

  • new socially altering concepts from coming to fruition, stops progress. Let me explain.

  • The social order, as we know it, is created out of ideas, either directly or as a systemic

  • consequence. In other words, somebody somewhere did something which generated a group interest,

  • which then led to the implementation of a specific social component, either in a physical

  • form, philosophical form, or both. Once a given set of ideas are entrusted by a large

  • enough group of people, it becomes an institution. And once that institution is made dominant

  • in some way, while existing for a certain period of time, that institution can then

  • be considered an establishment. Institutional establishments are simply social traditions

  • given the illusion of permanence. In turn, the more established they become, the more

  • cultural influence they tend to have on us, including our values, and hence, our identities

  • and perspectives. It is not an exaggeration to say that the established institutions governing

  • a person's environment is no less than a conditioning platform to program, if you will, that person

  • with a specific set of values required to maintain the establishment. Hence, we're going

  • to call these "established value programs". I have found the analogy of computer programming

  • to be a great way to frame this point. While there is always a debate about genetics, and

  • environmental influence which, by the way, as I mentioned Roxanne Meadows will go into

  • at length, later in the program, it's very easy to understand in the context of values,

  • meaning what you think is important and not important, that information influences or

  • conditioning is coming from the world around you. Make no mistake, every intellectual concept,

  • which each one of us finds merit with, is the result of a cultural information influence,

  • one way or another. The environment is a self-perpetuating programming process, and just like designing

  • a software program for your computer, each human being is, advertently and inadvertently,

  • programmed into their world view. To continue the analogy, the human brain is a piece of

  • hardware and the environment around you constitutes the programming team, which creates the values

  • and perspective. Every word you know has been taught to you one way or another, and thus,

  • every concept and belief you have is a result of this same influence. Jacque Fresco once

  • asked me, "How much of you is you?" The answer, of course, is kind of a paradox, for either

  • nothing is me, or everything is me, when it comes to the information I understand and

  • act upon. Information is a serial process, meaning the only way that a human being can

  • come up with any idea is through taking in dependent information that allows that idea

  • to be realized. We appear to be culturally programmed from the moment we come into this

  • world to the moment we die, and I'm not going to drill in it much more than that. However,

  • consequently, the cultural attributes we maintain as important values are most often the ones

  • that are reinforced by the external culture. I'm going to say that again. The most dominant

  • cultural attributes maintained are the ones that are reinforced by your environment. If

  • you are born into a society which rewards competition over collaboration, then you most

  • likely will adopt those values in order to survive. The point is, we are essentially

  • bio-chemical machines. And while the integrity of our machine processing power and memory

  • is contingent, in part, on genetics, the source of our actions come fundamentally from the

  • ideas and experiences installed on our mental hardware by the world around us. However,

  • our biological computer, the human mind, has an evolutionarily-installed operating system,

  • if you will, with some seemingly difficult tendencies built in, which tends to limit

  • our objectivity and, hence, our rational thought process. This comes in the form of emotional

  • inclinations. You know, I'm sure many people here have heard the phrase "Be objective!"

  • No human being can be fully objective. That's one of the important things I learned, actually,

  • from Mr. Fresco. Therefore, there's a very common propensity for us humans to find something

  • that works for our needs given the social structure, and then to hold on to it for dear

  • life regardless of new conflicting information which might rationally expect a logical change

  • to occur. Change tends to be feared, for it upsets our associations. And, by the way,

  • when it comes to maintaining income in the monetary system, you see this propensity in

  • full force, which I will talk about a lot more later. Therefore, any time someone dares

  • to present an idea outside of or contrary to the establishment programming, the reaction

  • is often a condemning of the idea as blasphemy, or undermining, or a conspiracy, or simply

  • erroneous. For example, in the academic world, investigation often becomes confined to self-referring

  • circles of discourse; closed feedback loops, which assume that the foundational assumptions

  • of their schools of thought are empirical and only these experts, as defined by their

  • established credentials, are considered viable authorities, therein often dominating influence

  • over the public opinion. This is a doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis, and please excuse

  • my lack of Hungarian pronunciation, but he was a physician who lived in the mid 1800's

  • who performed childbirths. Through a series of events, he realized a pattern that there

  • was a relationship with the transfer of disease and the fact that the doctors of the times

  • never washed their hands after performing autopsies. The doctors of the time would handle

  • dead bodies in the lower elements of the hospitals and then they would go up and they would perform

  • childbirths without washing their hands. So, this doctor, realizing this pattern, he started

  • to tell his colleagues about this. He said, "Hey, you know, you should wash your hands

  • before doing this; before performing any type of surgery or childbirth, especially after

  • handling a dead body." He was laughed at. He was laughed at and ignored. He published

  • papers and they were dismissed and ridiculed. And after many years of trying this issue,

  • he was finally committed to a mental institution, where he died. It was many years after his

  • death when Louis Pasteur developed the germ theory of disease, that his observations were

  • finally understood, and people realized what a horrible mistake had been made. In the words

  • of John McMurtry, professor of philosophy in Canada, "In the last dark age, one can

  • search the inquiries of this era's preserved thinkers, from Augustine to Ockham, and fail

  • to discover a single page of criticism of the established social framework, however

  • rationally insupportable feudal bondage, absolute paternalism, divine right of kings, and the

  • rest may be. In the current final order, is it so different? Can we see in any media,

  • or even university press, a paragraph of clear unmasking of the global regime that condemns

  • a third of all children to malnutrition with more food than enough available? In such an

  • order, thought becomes indistinguishable from propaganda. Only one doctrine is speakable,

  • and a priest caste of its experts prescribe the necessities and obligations to all. Social

  • consciousness is incarcerated within the role of a kind of ceremonial logic operating entirely

  • within the received framework of an exhaustively-prescribed regulatory apparatus protecting the privileges

  • of the privileged. Methodical censorship triumphs in the guise of scholarly rigor and the only

  • room left for searching thought becomes the game of competing rationalizations." People

  • tend not to criticize the social order because they are bound within it. We are running a

  • thought program which has been installed on our mental hardware which inherently controls

  • our frame of reference. To use a different analogy, it's like they're in a game and the

  • idea of questioning the integrity of the game itself rarely occurs.

I've entitled this "Social Pathology." I decided to use the metaphor of disease to describe

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