Slavery Incorporated: American Schools are Breeding Grounds for Compliant Citizens

By JOHN WHITEHEAD | ROTHERFORD INSTITUTE | OCTOBER 16, 2012

“[P]ublic school reform is now justified in the dehumanizing language of national security, which increasingly legitimates the transformation of schools into adjuncts of the surveillance and police state… students are increasingly subjected to disciplinary apparatuses which limit their capacity for critical thinking, mold them into consumers, test them into submission, strip them of any sense of social responsibility and convince large numbers of poor minority students that they are better off under the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system than by being valued members of the public schools.”—Professor Henry Giroux

For those hoping to better understand how and why we arrived at this dismal point in our nation’s history, where individual freedoms, privacy and human dignity have been sacrificed to the gods of security, expediency and corpocracy, look no farther than America’s public schools.

Once looked to as the starting place for imparting principles of freedom and democracy to future generations, America’s classrooms are becoming little more than breeding grounds for compliant citizens. The moment young people walk into school, they increasingly find themselves under constant surveillance: they are photographed, fingerprinted, scanned, x-rayed, sniffed and snooped on. Between metal detectors at the entrances, drug-sniffing dogs in the hallways and surveillance cameras in the classrooms and elsewhere, many of America’s schools look more like prisons than learning facilities.

Add to this the epidemic of arresting schoolchildren and treating them as if they are dangerous criminals, and you have the makings of a perfect citizenry for our emerging police state—one that can be easily cowed, controlled, and directed. Now comes the latest development in the sad deconstruction of our schools: “smart” identification cards containing Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags that allow school officials to track every step students take. So small that they are barely detectable to the human eye, RFID tags produce a radio signal by which the wearer’s precise movements can be constantly monitored.

A pilot program using these RFID cards is being deployed at two schools in San Antonio, Texas’ Northside School District. In the so-called name of school safety, some 4,200 students at Jay High School and Jones Middle School are being required to carry these “smart” ID cards embedded with an RFID tracking chip which will actively broadcast a signal at all times.  Although the schools already boast 290 surveillance cameras, the cards will make it possible for school officials to track students’ whereabouts at all times.

School officials hope to expand the program to the district’s 112 schools, with a student population of 100,000. As always, there’s a money incentive hidden within these programs, in this case, it’s increased state funding for the school system. Although implementation of the system will cost $500,000, school administrators are hoping that if the school district is able to increase attendance by tracking the students’ whereabouts, they will be rewarded with up to $1.7 million from the state government.

High school sophomore Andrea Hernandez, who is actively boycotting the RFID cards, was told that “there will be consequences for refusal to wear an ID card.” Students who refuse to take part in the ID program won’t be able to access essential services like the cafeteria and library, nor will they be able to purchase tickets to extracurricular activities. Hernandez was prevented from voting for Homecoming King and Queen after school officials refused to verify her identity using her old ID card. According to Hernandez, teachers are even requiring students to wear the IDs when they want to use the bathroom.  School officials reportedly offered to quietly remove the tracking chip from Andrea’s card if the sophomore would agree to wear the new ID, stop criticizing the program and publicly support the initiative. Hernandez refused the offer.

This is not the first time that schools have sprung RFID chips on unsuspecting students and their parents. Schools in California and Connecticut have tried similar systems, and Houston, Texas began using RFID chips to track students as early as 2004. With the RFID business booming, a variety of companies, including AIM Truancy Solutions, ID Card Group and DataCard, market and sell RFID trackers to school districts throughout the country, claiming they can increase security and attendance. For example, AIM Truancy Solutions, a Dallas-based company, claims that its tracking system boosts attendance by twelve percent.

RFID tags are not the only surveillance tools being used on America’s young people. Chronically absent middle schoolers in Anaheim, Calif., have been enrolled in a GPS tracking program. As journalist David Rosen explains:

Each school day, the delinquent students get an automated ‘wake-up’ phone call reminding them that they need to get to school on time. In addition, five times a day they are required to enter a code that tracks their locations: as they leave for school, when they arrive at school, at lunchtime, when they leave school and at 8pm. These students are also assigned an adult ‘coach’ who calls them at least three times a week to see how they are doing and help them find effective ways to make sure they get to school.

Some schools in New York, New Jersey, and Missouri are tracking obese and overweight students with wristwatches that record their heart rate, movement and sleeping habits. Schools in San Antonio have chips in their lunch food trays, which allow administrators to track the eating habits of students. Schools in Michigan’s second largest school district broadcast student activity caught by CCTV cameras on the walls of the hallways in real time to let students know they’re being watched.

Some school districts have even gone so far as to electronically track students without notifying their parents. In 2010, it was revealed that a Pennsylvania school district had given students laptops installed with software that allowed school administrators to track their behavior at home. This revelation led to the threat of a class-action lawsuit, which resulted in the school district settling with irate students and parents for $600,000. Similarly, in 2003, a Tennessee middle school placed cameras in the school’s locker rooms, capturing images of children changing before basketball practice. Thankfully, the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the practice in 2008, ruling that students have an expectation of privacy in locker rooms.

Clearly, there’s something more sinister afoot than merely tracking which students are using the bathroom and which are on lunch break. Concerned parent Judy Messer understands what’s at stake. “We do not want our children to be conditioned that tracking is normal or even acceptable or mandatory,” she shared.

“Conditioned” is the key word, of course. As Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham recognized in their book, Work Redesign, laboratory animals, children, and institutionalized adults “are necessarily dependent on powerful others for many of the things they most want and need, and their behavior usually can be shaped with relative ease.” Taking those ideas one step further, psychologist Bruce Levine noted, “Behaviorism and consumerism, two ideologies which achieved tremendous power in the twentieth century, are cut from the same cloth. The shopper, the student, the worker, and the voter are all seen by consumerism and behaviorism the same way: passive, conditionable objects.”

To return to what I was saying about schools being breeding grounds for compliant citizens, if Americans have come to view freedom as expedient and expendable, it is only because that’s what they’ve been taught in the schools, by government leaders and by the corporations who run the show.

More and more Americans are finding themselves institutionalized from cradle to grave, from government-run daycares and public schools to nursing homes. In between, they are fed a constant, mind-numbing diet of pablum consisting of entertainment news, mediocre leadership, and technological gadgetry, which keeps them sated and distracted and unwilling to challenge the status quo. All the while, in the name of the greater good and in exchange for the phantom promise of security, the government strips away our rights one by one—monitoring our conversations, chilling our expression, searching our bodies and our possessions, doing away with our due process rights, reversing the burden of proof and rendering us suspects in a surveillance state.

Whether or not the powers-that-be, by their actions, are consciously attempting to create a compliant citizenry, the result is the same nevertheless for young and old alike.

The Horizontal Power of the State

by Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
July 13, 2011

How many liberals, libertarians, conservatives and anarchists, to cite a few, dislike the outcomes that result from having an out of control State? It would be interesting to carry out a survey and find out exactly. However, a survey is not necessary, unless you are a statistics or a math fan, to learn that most people are dissatisfied with the current state of affairs. Proof that government involvement causes more harm than good is in every aspect of life. But it is not government or the State the party responsible for such outcomes, it is the people who support those States or governments who carry the blame.

 Although government and the power structures are seen as built in a pyramidal shape, the truth is that the government or State is built horizontally. See, government is composed by the people that give it the legal and moral support to exist, and so those very same people are responsible for whatever the State or government does or does not do. Therefore, all things that originate from the State -good or bad- are a direct result of the people supporting the system we know today as the government or the State.

 The problem is, most people do not know or understand this. People complain about the current state of affairs without realizing that they are to blame for the misery they are experiencing. Other people do recognize it, but are too hypocrite or afraid to do something about it. They do not speak against it because they fear social rejection. Those afraid should be happy to know that the problem of an abusive and out of control State or government is solved with actions, not words. Why? Because language is so fragile that it can be bent in all sorts of ways to say whatever anyone wants. It is nearly impossible to inject a dose of common sense into anyone who has been previously indoctrinated; and we all are to a certain degree. However, if one acts on something that is seen as wrong or abusive, other people will see what we mean and realize, all by themselves, that our actions make more sense than what they have thought all their lives to be true.

 Waking people up so that they act to change the current state of affairs is an impossible task if one only uses words. The reason for that is culture has rooted so deeply into their minds, that people’s reality is nothing else than what culture tells them it is. Nothing else. As it is widely clear, culture does not ‘teach’ people reality or truth, but a mixture of half-truths and plain open lies. How do you make people understand that although the Nazis directly killed 6 million jews and indirectly murdered a total of 40 million people, there is another entity that has killed almost seven times more humans than the Nazis did. It may come as a surprise to many that in modern times States or governments are responsible for the deaths of at least 262 million people. That is a fact that culture will not tell anyone.

 In our culture-created ‘reality’ the problem is terrorism, but instead of dealing with the root causes of terrorism, the State treats its bosses -the people- as criminals; all of them. Suddenly, everyone is guilty until proven innocent and everyone submits to this way of thinking. It is checking the inside of the shoes I am wearing what will solve the problem of terrorism, culture tells us. It is giving the State a photo of my naked body what is seen as the solution to end terrorism, the media tells us. Meanwhile, the terrorists, the real terrorists, who operate the scanners at the airports, who killed at least a million people in Iraq, who cleansed Bosnia and who are now cleansing Libya, Pakistan, Yemen and Syria use people’s complacency to continue doing all those things we dislike so much.

 People support the state and everything it does because that is how they were raised. Depending where you live, the educational system taught you anything from obeying to worshipping the State. Along with that indoctrination comes the role culture plays in people’s lives. Culture reinforces the paradigms we have all brought up with, so that everything continues business as usual. Humans were grown to accept and demand an explanation of reality that should never change, and that is that the State, any State, has our best interests in mind. That is why we must all pay taxes on our properties for the rest of our lives, even though we purchased them and paid taxes on the purchase. That is why we elect people from two majority parties and believe that the system gives us a choice. That is why we all obey the laws created by the State, although it does not obey them itself. This happens because the laws are for the slaves, not the masters. And guess what? The masters are also humans like you and me, no matter how much they like to think of themselves as superior beings.

 The problem with culture-created ‘reality’ is that because it is factually false, it needs continuous support to make it believable. It is exactly like “tell a lie a thousand times and it will become truth”. That is what culture does. People who believe in the system of paradigms imposed by the social engineers paradoxically require a constant reinforcement of what they believe is true. So, for example, people have been taught that world war I was fought for the sake of democracy, or that government came after the Great Depression to save everyone, or that world war II happened to save Capitalism, or that the central banks exist to control the horrendous forces that make the free market imperfect and dangerous. The problem with all these false realities, which to many of us are real, is that our future and the future of our sons and daughters will be shaped by the decisions made by people who believe these false truths.

 This is so because everyone thinks the State or government exists to fix everything that is wrong and therefore there is nothing to be afraid of. Right there is the origin of the Nanny State. Since individuals are not capable of managing their own lives -that is what we have been taught- there will always be a State to put the knob on the screw that got loose, an entity to give us all we need. What people do not realize, is that that same entity, if allowed, will also take away everything it handed out because of the power vested upon it. It is because the reality created and reinforced by culture revolves around collectivist views of dependency, that the State has become the inconvenience it is today. Although the evidence shows that this entity we all supposedly owe everything we have to, has destroyed everything it has touched, the level of indoctrination people are under not only does not allow them so see such destruction, but also automatically directs them to seek more reinforcement of their false reality.

 From education to economy, from foreign policy to welfare, the State has shredded everything. Intentionally, by the way. It is precisely because the evidence does outmatch culture and the false paradigm that people continuously go back for their daily, weekly and monthly dose of false ‘reality’. That is why the social engineers made sure there is a New York Times, CNN, Dancing with the Stars and American Idol; so the slaves get their blue pill whenever they need it and do not threaten to leave the human farm. The blue pill will keep them within the horizontal State they regard in their reality as a hierarchical pyramid, but that in reality is as flat as surf board. That little distinction is what separates humans from being free, truly free, and from putting an end to the out of control State.

 The key to liberating yourself from the abuses of the State resides on the ability to recognize that the State will do what you allow it to do and that it is its horizontal structure what makes it so evilly successful. In fact, the strength of the State does not come from itself, but from your relatives, neighbors, friends, co-workers, classmates and so on. In other words, the slave population to which you and I belong to. The slaves themselves support this system for a series of reasons. One, because they were taught to do that. Two, because they directly benefit from a trinket created by the State and they do not want to lose it. Three, because they do not wish that others surpass them and become more successful. Four, because the collapse of the system will mean a state of reality they cannot cope with. It is the ignorance, lack of humility and above all the indoctrination of the majority which prevents them from taking the red pill and opening their eyes to the real world. Instead, the slaves themselves guarantee the survival of the pyramidal looking State by attacking the minority who intends to warn them about the lie they live under. It is the voluntary acceptance of the false reality most people live in which allows the State to grow out of control. While most people waste time in senseless sports tribalism, racism, envy and cultural adequacy, their fellow slaves at the mid levels assure the social engineers that the State will continue to grow stronger.

 The horizontal nature of the State and they way it is used by the controllers to maintain most people blind and complacent is what explains the possibility of a few hundred people ruling over billions. It would be impossible otherwise. But it is exactly its very horizontal nature what presents people with the opportunity to break the chains from the State and to prevent it from growing larger and meaner. It is even possible, I would argue, not only to slim the State down, but also to make it work for the people, as most of us believe it should have always been. Change on this regard is not easy, however. It requires honesty from the part of those who want to ‘fix things’. If the success of the corrupt State relies upon the moral and practical support it receives from the slaves themselves, it is the withdrawal of that support what will end our slavery.

 If you pay your property taxes every year because you are afraid the State will come to raid your house and take you to jail, you are a slave of the State, and every time you pay your taxes you are a supporter of the State and as such its accomplice in all its wrongdoings. If you file your tax return and by doing so legitimize the powers of the State to tax your income, which is why you exist in the the States’ eyes, you are an accomplice of the State. If you do not like wars, but you vote for politicians who allow for the financing of invasions and killings in foreign countries, you are an accomplice of the invasions and the murder. If you do not like the corruption or inefficiency of the bureaucracy but you elect fellow slaves who will continue the back room and closed door deals, you are an accomplice of the State.

 However, the moment you become honest with yourself and gather some courage to awaken your fellow slaves, that will be the moment things will begin to change. But remember, change will not come through words or the use of language; it will come through action. If the success of the immoral State and its immoral actions is based on the support you give it, your withdrawal of that support is also what will liberate you from the chains that attach you to it. One cannot fight the dominant culture with the spoken word for the simple fact culture is made up and controls society through words. Because the controllers and their instruments of crime cannot manipulate truth, they manipulate language to cheat; and no one is better at that. They are unbeatable. That is why in order to end popular culture’s mad fake reality, individuals should use actions, not words. It is how much we act what we preach what will get us out of the giant farm we live in and in which we are milked to the last drop every day of our lives.

 Remember that the State and those who support statism approve of the use of violence against those who dare question their existence. That is, you may be arrested, imprisoned, tortured and raped if you oppose the State. So can you be a friend or acquaintance of a person who supports war, state taxation, corruption and violence against yourself? Wouldn’t you be an accomplice of his actions and therefore an accomplice of the State? I don’t know you, but I will not have anything to do with anyone who has the immoral audacity and cowardice to attack me for speaking the truth instead of opposing those who kill millions, steal our pensions, feed us toxic foods and make us sick with their pharmaceuticals.

 If a supposedly free human being cannot speak his mind and pay the price of being ostracized by his peers in exchange for real freedom, then, there is no hope from freedom. If we are afraid of being pointed at because we live by our own standards and refuse those that culture and the State impose on us, then we don’t deserve to be free.

Learned Helplessness: This is why People are so Easily Bamboozled

Along with Cognitive Dissidence, Learned Helplessness is Responsible for People’s Hopeless Behavior

By Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
May 1, 2010

People are broken people. They have been intentionally transformed into manageable human resources that consciously and learned helplessnessotherwise have stopped fighting for what is theirs; they have stopped fighting oppression and injustice. There is a system that has been established to inflict brokenness and desperation, fear if you will, which seems so paramount, that makes people lower their arms and give up. Daily, we can see clear examples of this behavior. The most recent one is the installation of body scanners in airports and courthouses around the globe under the pretext of terrorism. What is people’s answer to this invasion of privacy? Compliance. (1)

Before the scanners -which capture a digital picture of a person’s naked body- (2) we had other examples of how the system continuously corrals us and we do not seem to know what to do. For example, the financial meltdown that began several years ago turned into a bailout of powerful banking interests. (3) The same banks and same financial system that created and perpetuated the collapse, gave themselves a pat on the back and carried out the most gigantic transfer of wealth in history, leaving the ordinary citizen in shambles, jobless, in debt and homeless. (4) What was the reaction given this illegal wealth transfer? Compliance.

Previous to the financial collapse, citizens were indoctrinated into believing that humans were responsible for the warming of the planet, and that only a global carbon tax would be the solution to save ourselves from doom. (5) Fortunately, a series of leaked e-mails and documents from the University of East Anglia, revealed not only that Anthropogenic Global Warming was a hoax,(6) but that it was part of a greater plan to further consolidate power and the resources of the planet into the a few hands. Although the climate alarmists’ agenda was debunked beyond doubt, (7) there are people out there who still have not looked at the science and continue to claim that the warming is occurring and that it is due to human activity. More compliance.

Going back even further in history, we find another very clear example of how people became hopeless and easily manipulated. Common wisdom dictates that it is correct to count on synthetic pharmaceuticals in order to prevent, treat or cure disease. People could not and cannot figure out that health freedom and a healthy state of being could not be further away from such industrially manufactured products. Due to lack of information or a way to check false statements from manufacturers and doctors, the citizenry simply trusted the “experts” and their magic pills in their blind pursue of health and fall into learned helplessness.

A state of learned helplessness is a psychological condition in which people have learned to believe they are helpless in a particular situation. They believe they have no control over their situation and that whatever they do is futile. As a result, they will stay passive in the face of an unpleasant, harmful or damaging situation, even when they actually do have the power to change their circumstances.”For example, in politics, when there is a two party dictatorship in a country and people can only vote for one or the other -a false sense of choice- and things do not change or continue to get worse because the same corporate interests continue to maintain control. The automatic psychological response is a sense of hopelessness. Another valid example is when a person is in a relationship where he or she is physically, mentally or sexually abused. The victim knows the truth, but is unable to liberate himself or herself due to fear, guilt or any other feeling of despair. The same happens in a society, where the citizen is no longer called a citizen or a human being, but a consumer or a human resource. In a society filled with broken people, the truth no longer sets them free. Different from say, colonial times, when most members of a society still adopted the fighting spirit, today most citizens are conformists, laid-back or apathetic.(8)

What all these people who have learned to be helpless have in common is that pain, in any shape or form, simply makes them weaker, more prone to abuse, and more easily swindled. This takes us to another form of learned helplessness. When people feel depressed, lonely and mentally drained the immediate answer by common wisdom is to look for a psychiatrist or a psychologist to deal with their problems. “What they do not know,” says Dr. Bruce E. Levine, “is that most of the psychologist and psychiatrists out there are only looking to make money out of helpless people.” They are also instruments of the plan the establishment has to maintain control of society.

In today’s society there are three main pillars that support the learned helplessness and cognitive dissidence filled environment: School, Television and the Mental Health Profession. According to doctor Levine, television makes people more passive and docile due to the effect it has in brain waves. It is one of the most effective tools for pacifying the population,” he adds. (9) “Schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant for the important enterprises of the planet,” says professor John Taylor Gatto, author of books such as the Underground History of American Education and Weapons of Mass Instruction. Professor Gatto was named New York’s teacher of the year. “School is not the place where most people get any kind of education. In fact it is a place used to subdue the population, ” agrees Levine. (10) Are scientists trained in science classes, or politicians trained in politics classes? The only thing schools are good for is to teach people to obey orders. This is a conclusion that people who have any critical thinking skills learn very easily and very fast. Of course, school has also been used to completely eliminate critical thinking and creativity in the population. (11) From very young we are taught to worship and depend on the government for every single aspect of our lives. A clear example of this is the fact that a majority of the most relevant citizens in any country were and are people who did not attend school. They can even become presidents! A couple of things people who attend the traditional educational system have in common are that they end jobless in many cases and with a pile of outstanding debt. The traditional educational system has turned into a tool for the creation of an assured state of servitude.

Mental health professionals and psychologists are along with teachers, two of the most compliant groups in society. Health professionals are also one of the groups with the highest suicidal rates. (12) What happens when psychiatrists find resistance to compliance? They become anxious and tend to pathologize. So, almost every person who disagrees with the establishment or with authority is automatically diagnosed as mentally ill. Ernest Hemingway was himself a victim of this system. He was drugged and punished with electric shocks after being diagnosed as mentally imbalanced because he thought he was being followed and watched. It later turned out he was indeed being harassed by intelligence agencies. So, does it make sense to obtain advice from professionals who cannot even control their own personalities? Can we trust people who are indoctrinated to maintain the status quo?

Imagine society as a victim of kidnapping who then suffers from Stockholm Syndrome during and after a kidnapping. The incapacity to react to a kidnapping is such that they begin to make excuses as to why it was normal not to run away when given the opportunity or the chance. Society as a whole, just as kidnapping victims do, even get to a point where they defend their kidnappers. Most people shield themselves from reality by being apathetic, or ignoring what is staring at them as a mechanism of defense against their impossibility to react to such reality due to a feeling of fear and helplessness. In other cases, people choose to spend their lives worrying about football games, reality shows, fashion, gossip and so on.

Another very common problem in today’s society is cognitive dissidence. This happens when people are incapable of being in a state of tension, so they choose to make up a series of excuses in order to escape such situations. The most common reaction is to tell themselves they are not in such tense situation, which serves them to ignore the humiliating state of affairs they are in. So, even though society seems to be turning into an abusive place, where all of our rights are disrespected or taken away, citizens still conform by saying things like “it is not good, but we still live in the best country in the world”. This kind of statements reflect people’s lack of power to face the truth that they live in a repressive tyrannical city or country.

An example of a society where all hope and reason has been lost is the United States. In 2000, one president was elected but the losing candidate was who took power. Short of the circus created by the main stream media, no one else manifested the slightest interest in resolving the election through democratic means. In a clear example of how weak democracies, or pseudo-democracies work, the Supreme Court of the country was the one that decided who would govern the nation. In other countries often called Banana Republics, such as Iran or Mexico, the decision reached by the Court would have resulted in numerous manifestations on the streets and perhaps a real recount of the votes or a second round. How is it that 50 or 60 million people simply let their votes be stolen away without any interest to make it count? In Iran, 3 million people would have turned to the streets to protest a few tens of thousands would have certainly manifested in Mexico. (13)

Madison avenue found out a long time ago that it was possible to make people feel inadequate, that it was possible to tell people what kind of person they should be and that everything that was not so would be socially unacceptable. (14) With that it also realized that it would be easier for the industry to commercialize its crap among insecure people. That is how most women use Botox or surgery to manipulated their bodies in order to look like the model from the magazine cover. That is why men inject themselves with human growth hormone in order to look as strong as the baseball player who also takes drugs to improve his performance. This insecurity spurred the sale of make up and slave-made goods such as sports shoes, apparel and handbags. So the image makers tell the people that not fitting a specific pattern or mold will render them worthless; and people believe it. This of course makes people who are financially incapable of providing themselves with Madison Avenue products victims of their own ignorance, and those who can afford it become petty victims of their power trips. People were taught to hate their humanity and that of others.

Equally insidious is the abuse perpetrated by “professionals” who mostly take advantage of weak-minded people. “There is a lot of money to make out in my profession,” says Dr. Levine. The amount of money people spend in pharmaceuticals and visits to their psychologist or psychiatrist -that in turn supports the very same system that benefits from people’s weakness- is uncountable. “Is it not easier to control a population whose self-esteem is low or non existent? It is in the total interest of the corporate authoritarian society we live in,” adds Levine. That is why it is common to hear professional psychiatric associations call for the identification of new mental disorders. The recognition of such disorders will not only ensure that more people can be subjected to their management model, but also that society will continue to operate business as usual. Recently, the American Psychiatric Association revised its “bible” with the purpose of creating and including new mental diseases. (15)

The “bible” now contains things like “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” (ODD), which includes anyone who disagrees with authority. People who are antisocial are suddenly considered as victims of “Antisocial Personality Disorder” and require pharmacological treatment. Children are no longer unhappy or throwing a temper tantrum, they are suffering from “Temper Dysregulation Disorder with Dysphoria.” The so called “bible” even adopts other made-up disorders such as Repetitive Dysmorphic Nose Picking Disorder With Itching (RDNPDWI), Oppositional Disorganized Speaking Disorder With Indigestion (ODSDWI) and so on. (16)

Is there a solution for Learned Hopelessness and Cognitive Dissidence? Sure. Does it work for everyone? Unfortunately not. So many people are so deep into depression or a state of helplessness that it may be impossible to let them out. The level of indoctrination is such, that losing their homes, families, jobs, liberties and self-respect may not be enough to wake them up. For the lucky ones, it seems that the start of a solution is called Individual Self-respect and/or Collective Self-confidence. In other words, what can I do on a daily basis to restore confidence, faith and respect in myself and people around me? All democratic movements or nations had these two ingredients. What can I do to help myself and others? People who follow these paths are those who identify what is bothering them, but instead of handing those issues to the government -which in turn will make them captives- they give themselves the opportunity to use their problems and solutions to connect with other people. They themselves form their own support groups where everyone shares their solutions to their own problems and those of others. It is what not too long ago used to be called communities.

Another way to pick oneself up is to take on intelligent safe risks. There are projects or goals that everyone has which would exponentially raise his or her confidence and self-esteem. It is precisely pursuing those goals and projects -especially those that include a certain degree of healthy risk- and conquering them, what exalts people out of their sorry empty lives. This risk-taking sometimes includes a decision to get away from people who always drag you down or who simply do not help. A decision needs to be made as to whether this person needs to be left behind in order to achieve that which will help you become what you want. So, the advice is to let the backbiters and backstabbers behind and get on with your life by surrounding yourself with those who support you and wish you well.

Sources:

(1) New scanners break child porn laws

(2) Exposed: Naked Body Scanner Images Of Film Star Printed, Circulated By Airport Staff

(3) Central Banks were complicit in Robbing the Middle Class

(4) 2009 US Economy: The largest transfer of wealth in history

(5) The Carbon Tax Deception

(6) The E-mails from the East Anglia University

(7) The Great Global Warming Swindle

(8) Learned Helplessness

(9) The Awful Truth about Television

(10) The New Dumbness

(11) How School Kills Creativity

(12) Professionals with the highest rate of suicide

(13) Iran Election Protests

(14) Madison Avenue and your Brain

(15) Revision of ADM could introduce new mental disorders

(16) New Psychiatric disorders flag normal human behavior as diseases

Collectivism: The Doctrine of the Rulers

By Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
April 18, 2010

Individualism as the concept that defines the rights of the individual as the most important instead of those of the masses is not the Collectivismissue of this writing. Collectivism as the idea that the common good is more important than that of a single individual is not the matter of this essay either. The issue of concern is how Collectivism is used to manipulate individuals and masses in order to achieve the nefarious goal of control.

Collectivism is the underline ideology that is common to the many past and modern totalitarian systems of government. Communism, Fascism and Nazism have a series of common features that are the ones to be looked at as supposed to the labels used to mask those features; namely Communism, Fascism and Nazism, to cite a few. These names simply add another layer of fog to what lies beneath them, and that is Collectivism.

In general terms, Collectivism is known as the concept that states the group is more important than the individual and that any particular individual may be ‘sacrificed’ for the greater good of the greater number. This idea is embedded in the educational systems which then feed the minds of those who walk across it for a good third of their lives. We live in Democracies -we are told- and as such, it is completely normal that 51% of the total governs over the rest. The idea of a majority rule, although seemingly normal, was not in the plans of many who came before us. A Democracy as a form of government was in fact rejected by those who founded most of what is today the free western world.

Collectivism was and is used by demagogues and corporations that support them to take advantage of societal mob-like behaviour and way of thinking, in order to pursue and achieve very specific goals. That is why a document called The Constitution was written in most countries around the world. The Constitutions and all the rights and duties they entail, were created to limit abuses the founders of the free world correctly envisioned as probable to occur in a society like the one we live in today.

One of the most famous talking points demagogues use to manipulate the masses is: “We are doing this for the greater good”. What is more amazing than this sentence, is to hear people using it, when describing or justifying collectivist actions -many times without even knowing what it means. This mass brainwashing is part of the manipulated collectivist view; to make people think the way the demagogues want without them even knowing it. Another popular dictate is: “We do what is in the best interest of the so and so people.” Every time the demagogue uses phrases like this one, people cannot help it but to nod their heads in acceptance.

The irony of this way of thinking is that the demagogue, the leader or the head of the Democracy is the one who in the end gets to decide what is done. For example, it is decided that there will be no medical care to people who are 70 or older because it is for the greater good. The leader or demagogue allied with his fervent followers promotes the idea and sells it to the masses, who rapidly accept it as obvious. They of course forget that there will come a time when they themselves will be 70 years of age.

But if a group is composed of individuals, where did the word group and collective good idea come from? Where does the word Forest come from? Can the group exist without individuals? Can the forest exist without trees? The word group, is an imaginary one, just as forest is. I cannot see the forest but I can see the trees. Can anyone see the group? The abstraction of a group is what Collectivism as an ideology takes advantage of to sacrifice the most important unit of that supposed group, the Individual. In the end, however, the abstract group itself is also sacrificed. The difference is that this process of sacrifice is done one individual at the time, instead of a one time mass sacrifice to the whole group.

Although both collectivists and individualists seek to get the best for themselves and the rest -good health, peace, security, justice- they differ in the way all those goals are achieved. The collectivist says ‘we use force if necessary’ -not always physical force- but coercion, for example. Their thought is almost always: ‘We are smart. Those dumb people out there are not; and for their own well-being, we are obligated to rule over them.’ This is what the Neocons think like: ‘Democracy has served us well, therefore we must spread it around the world at all cost’. Then a law is passed, a presidential decree is signed and all of a sudden people wake up naked not knowing why.

Take for example the payments to a social security system. In many countries people are obligated to contribute to a social security fund in order to finance a program that allegedly provides financing to bring health care to those who do not have the means to pay for it. Needless to say what happens next, when it is clear that today social security systems are completely bankrupt and unable to provide the necessary care people so urgently need, not even when they are well funded. What is promoted and provided is sick care, based on the idea that synthetic pharmaceuticals are the means to treat and cure disease. But if one asks people on the street about it, most of them would agree that it is a great idea to obligate the public to give a portion of their income to finance social security, health care, pension funds, and so on.

The difference then between the collectivist and the individualist approaches is that individualists use other methods to bring people on board when trying to achieve a goal. Instead of coercion, persuasion is used. The first sign of a collectivist mind, or one that was brought into collectivism, is the thought that there has to be a law for everything. There has to be a law for those dumb people who do not wear seat belts, there has to be a law for those who smoke in their cars, there has to be a law for those who criticize the government, and so on. The individualist instead, believes in freedom of choice. Is it wrong to smoke? Who am I to decide for others? I, of course, am free to have my opinion and to express it, but an individualist does not thrive on forcing people to do what he thinks is better.

Now, what happens when there are no limits to this world view where ‘I know best’, and therefore we do what I want for the greater good? Let us think about other examples. Who could be against preserving the forests -group of trees-, keeping lakes and rivers clean from pollutants, preserving all forms of life, maintaining a sane economic and financial system? No one, right? Let’s say theoretically we pass a law that says land cannot be used for agriculture or growing livestock because it is in the best interest of the greater mass to conserve the land and the trees? It is for the greater good, is it not? Well, what does it do to keep a group of trees up if there is a lack of food to feed the masses we are supposed to be saving? How about theoretically we pass a law that bans CO2 because it is a pollutant, even though we are all made of Carbon and plants and trees -including those we use to feed ourselves- need CO2 to live? It is reasonable, is it not? Let us say that as a way to keep a healthy economic and financial systems we write a presidential decree that allows the government to tax the people in order to finance its never ending policy of spending. In the process we allow a private entity to create money out of thin air and charge the people 30% interest on the loan of the currency?

Someone has to pay for the roads and parks and security, right? However, we see a rapidly degrading infrastructure, governments on the edge of the precipice due to their outstanding debt and the fastest wave of criminality and impunity in government and on the street. But it is OK, because it is for the greater good, right? Let us simple be taxed to death. Is it not in the best interest of all to charge a tax in order to fund public schools? Of course, most people immediately say, not knowing that their very own children are being indoctrinated through this public school system. And if someone does not want to ‘educate’ their children in the collectivist public system, there are laws created to punish parents who decided it is better for their children to be home schooled. There are laws to be enforced and as a consequence monies to be collected. There is very little to no room in today’s form of government for voluntary compliance, as every law and rule is enforced with legalized violence by the government. What could it be more violent than to snatch someone’s children because of the ‘revolutionary’ idea of educating them at home? Surely schools know them better than the parents and therefore it is necessary to send them there!

Collectivism used by demagogues and corporations to support the falsehood that government; especially big government is the solution to all problems, that it is so constructive and the thing we look at for guidance and salvation, is the smoke screen, the bait people bite as dumb fish and which eventually makes us perish through our own mouths. The collectivist way of thinking is what allowed Socialist, Communist and Fascist governments to appear and prosper, and in the process people’s rights and humanity are stolen.

The ideology of Collectivism finds thrives on creating reasons for its existence and what it does. That is where Social Engineering comes along to model the very existence of every human being to become dependent. Along with it, comes the engineering of public opinion, which is the method used to justify the actions of the collectivists; and there is when we hear, ‘this is for the greater good’ or ‘it is in the best interests of the people’. Although sometimes is thought that a country with no thinking individuals is a fertile ground for Collectivism and collectivists, the truth is a scenario with no thinking men and women is a direct consequence of Collectivism, and not a previous state of affairs. The origin of Collectivism lies way back, when people simply stop caring start focusing on ‘the greater picture’ and forget that such an abstract concept could not exist if it was not for them as individuals. It gets to a point when people effectively think they are indeed dispensable and that their sacrifice will help the greater mass.

Collectivism works today on the premise that there is a guy up there who is in charge of all -a president or prime minister- and therefore everything is all right. It also works so smoothly, because people are used to having others make decisions for them. In fact, many people would not be able to survive if it depended on themselves to make their own decisions on matters like health, economics, politics and others. This dependency was created by the collectivist minds that guide the system through the different stages of life. So the problem does not necessarily lies on the man up there -we all know he is a puppet- but on the individual consciousness. It is not a matter of a good and a bad man, but of a system that must set limitations to those who try to become rulers and not servants.

As stated before, people are indoctrinated from a very young age to welcome and accept Collectivism, and with it big government. In turn, a government that creates and maintains control through the educational system assures itself of a continuous acceptance of the ideology through several generations. It takes a lot of critical thinking, reading and study of history -real history- to break loose from the idea we are embedded with from the moment we are born. Waking up to this reality, but not waking others up
-allowing collectivists to maintain control- is an example of how one becomes accomplice of the system. If on the other hand we spread the knowledge of this reality, and help family and friends see through the smoke screen -Democracy, Socialism, Communism, Fascism- there will come a time when collectivists will be so out in the open, and so many people will have taken possession of their own lives, that the system itself will collapse.

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