modern-schism

The Modern Schism

I am deeply perplexed. The division of people is not easy to comprehend. A deep schism has cleaved the people into two camps. I am fairly certain that both sides have good intent. Both think they are on the right track and are using true data to take sides. Still, it just doesn’t make sense.

We are all far more alike than different. The only thing that explains the schism for me is conditioning.

As I learn more about the ability that has been brought to modern times by such men as Edward Bernays, the more I see why things are the way they are.

We are living in unprecedented reality. The centuries, even millennia, of human history bear little resemblance to the reality of our times. Electronics, industry, travel, education, security, ease of survival and more are matter-of-fact, taken-for-granted things now. I think such things are wonderful and offer mankind opportunity never before available. We can move ahead into uncharted realities that seem to defy comprehension and superlatives.

Swords cut both ways. We know this. Opportunities for good can be opportunities for bad. The billions of people are being subjected to the double edged sword. Old attitudes and paradigms are being threatened by the developments of modern times.

Threats, both perceived and imagined, stimulate response. Obviously. The threatened are not limited to altruist types. Even a demon can realize a threat. There is another “thing” that can realize a threat: self-assessment.

A pharaoh in ancient Egypt believing himself a divine appointee protected himself from threats to his opinion of himself, and that is aside from his social standing. I don’t expect many to object to a claim that there are people today who share the Pharaoh type of attitude toward one’s self. Those people have perceived a real threat to their own opinion of themselves. They recognize the burgeoning, or re-birth, of “Equality.”

I think Equality constitutes a real threat to the most cherished “possession” of some very powerful people. They have all the physical things available on Earth today already, but they value their superiority above all else and they are willing to protect it. That is why the people are so divided today.

People who have possession of and/or access to the modern inventions and knowledge are able to cultivate public opinion. There can be no doubt that such cultivation is going on, but part of the cultivation is the instilling of an automatic rejection of anything that threatens the cultivated opinions. This is better understood as a form of conditioning. The scientific literature about this subject is abundant. The historically verified use of such conditioning is a widely accepted fact. The Nazis did it and the term “propaganda” was made a common term by them. It didn’t stop with their demise.

It will not stop until the people become fully aware of it and of how it is being done. That is the worst part of the problem.

We live in a world that has made “progress” totally attributable to sociological “compartmentalization.”  Organizing the people in limited spheres of work and knowledge has made it possible to achieve things unachievable by an individual. Coupled with  innovation and the increase in individual  productivity, specialization has become a widespread form of compartmentalization. It has become possible for a human to spend an entire life working on a very narrow subject and/or in a very narrow area of human endeavor.

Specialists are supported by the society. They need not protect themselves from wild animals. They don’t have to be able to plow and sow. They don’t need to know how to build shelter. They are only possible because society is structured to give them time to devote to their areas of specialization. You would not have a cellular telephone, a television, a computer, an internet, or practically everything around you without the social organization that made specialization possible. The specialists are not operating as islands.

Social organization has created the possibility of social rulers. People who receive the benefits of the specialists determine how to use what the specialists produce. When the physicists worked in their specific area of nuclear physics, few knew that they were part of a plan to produce a nuclear bomb. The discovery of the Genome was not done by people who wanted to create biological weapons. The work of the specialists is compartmentalized so absolutely they don’t even know what they are working on. The only ones who are able to make use of the efforts of the specialists are the ones at the top of the chain of compartmentalized organization.

This is an obvious observation, but it is one that begs for elucidation in this time of divided humanity. No one knows all about everything. The “highest” elite are unable to know all about everything they control for they are compartmentalized themselves. They depend on the chain of compartments even more than those operating in the compartments they control. We can understand the “chain of command” rather easily, but the chain of compartments needs understanding too.

As in the commonly repeated axiom that demonstrates how the passing of information from on person to another results in a breakdown of accuracy, the passing of information between compartments gets distorted, even lost. It can also get subverted. This is how the people working in altruistic fervor have their work used in ways they would never contribute to knowingly. Those at the top of the chain of compartments are not exempt to this. They too are working among the many chains of compartmentalized areas of human effort. There is no single person who is reliably in command or control. Even if such a person can be, it would be only a human.

People are subject to the experiences they have in life. Living affect them, us. We are all being conditioned by the very act of living. Psychology is only recently beginning to gain a reliable grasp of the ways of the human mind. Propaganda has only recently become a reliable and effective tool to use on the human mind. Living itself is no longer the only influence on the mind of man. Intentional conditioning is being used. It is being used more effectively every day. Someone is using it.  Some many are using it.

To protect their self-assessment, some are using the powers that have evolved from the long ascendancy of social development and organization to insure nothing ever causes them to doubt their superiority. To protect their social positions, their feelings of superiority must be protected. Otherwise, the people will stand next to them instead of beneath them. To put it crudely, the Kind doesn’t want to see anyone on the throne with him.

Humans are coming into new territory. What can be now could not have been before. Ahead lies what will be. We can go forward or backward, though. If we are to go forward, equality is a must. If we are to keep a stratified social standing, we cannot have equality. Herein lies the cause of the schism that we are seeing today.

Unity is probable. I say it is inevitable, but that is my opinion. You may have a different opinion. Maybe we can agree that what will be will be. We shall see. That is, if we retain the ability to see. The sight is under attack. That is my opinion, too. Is it true? If you have true sight, see. If you have true desires for the well being of others, you will desire moving forward instead of backward. We can still move into days, even centuries of blindness. We stand at the precipice of the schism that divides us. It is a wrent that has the potential for total destruction. Life is teetering on the edge. This planet is badly damaged already and the chance to fix it is rapidly fleeting. That is why I have spent this morning putting my fingers to the keys and my heart to the point.

I have been trying to compose this message for along time. It has rattled around in my mind incessantly now for decades. I can only hope I have satisfied its nagging compulsion to  express. God help us.

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