0 comment Saturday, December 6, 2014 | admin
In a recent post, I discussed the fact that the psychological worldview, as presented by the popular culture and the old media, has become a widely accepted, very influential belief system. It's also insidious in that most people have absorbed many of the core beliefs of this worldview without even being aware of it. Anybody who watches shows like Oprah, or reads any of the best-selling 'self-help' books, or who undergoes therapy or counseling for life problems, has taken in a good deal of the beliefs of the psychological worldview. Anybody who has taken social science courses in the last several decades has also imbibed some of these beliefs.
Many of those who have unconsciously adopted these beliefs also call themselves 'Christians', and may in fact be regular worshippers at a church. The pastor at their church may also preach messages full of the humanistic ideas with which the psychological belief system is saturated. This is particularly true these days, because so many churches are caught up in this 'seeker-sensitive' movement, with its idea that people (nonbelievers, casual 'seekers', spiritual shoppers) must not be made to feel 'bad about themselves.'
Most of the mainline churches today have embraced the messages of 'diversity', egalitarianism, race-denial, and ''social justice''.
Most of these established religious groups promote open borders and one-worldism -- although most people with even a rudimentary education should be familiar with the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, and the idea that a one-world system is not in God's plan.
Those who have not even examined the facts are quick to condemn Christianity for the Babelizing of the Western world, yet how can anyone, with a straight face, presume that the church, any church, exercises that much influence over people, much less over the world's political system? No, all the commonsense evidence points to the fact that the world system is instead setting the tone, leading the way, while the churches follow along. Granted, the churches are wrong in this. They are derelict, having lost their way. They are quite literally the 'salt which has lost its savor', of which Jesus warned, worthy only to be discarded.
And if the churches are guilty of going along with the world political system, they are wrong because they are not being true to themselves, and to the message they are supposed to be preaching.
However, if the political establishment and the ovine followers who make up most of the citizenry are not being misled by the church, who is leading them towards the multicultist Babel?
I've said that most people in our society owe more to the pop psychology cult, and humanism generally, than to Christian teaching. I can just hear someone say: what does psychology have to do with politics or world affairs? It's just about people's individual lives and problems, not about politics or society. Well, think again.
Clearly, societies both help and hinder human growth. Because nourishing environments can make an important contribution to the development of healthy personalities, human needs should be given priority when fashioning social policies. This becomes increasingly critical in a rapidly changing world threatened by such dangers as nuclear war, overpopulation and the breakdown of traditional social structures.
Many humanistic psychologists stress the importance of social change, the challenge of modifying old institutions and inventing new ones able to sustain both human development and organizational efficacy. Thus the humanistic emphasis on individual freedom should be matched by a recognition of our interdependence and our responsibilities to one another, to society and culture, and to the future.''
[...]
"As the world's people demand freedom and self-determination, it is urgent that we learn how diverse communities of empowered individuals, with freedom to construct their own stories and identities, might live together in mutual peace. Perhaps it is not a vain hope that is life in such communities might lead to the advance in human consciousness beyond anything we have yet experienced."
[Emphasis mine]
Notice the emphasis on 'social change' ''modifying old institutions and inventing new ones...' -- all the leftist concerns. It could have been written by some leftist politico as well as by a social scientist. They are hand-in-glove.
In my personal experience (and yes, it's anecdotal) most leftists are immersed in psychological jargon and thinking. Very few ''progressives'' are Christians, even liberal Christians. Most, in my experience, are secular and nonbelieving, or else involved in New Age practices. That latter topic in itself is worthy of a whole post, with New Age thinking very focused on the idea of a 'one world' government and a blending of all races into some 'highly evolved' hybrid race. I say this as someone who was once very involved in this kind of thing. I know it from the inside, and I have friends who are still part of that subculture.
Marilyn Ferguson who wrote the bestselling Aquarian Conspiracy, said
There are legions of [Aquarian] conspirators. They are in corporations, universities, and hospitals, on the faculties of public schools, in factories and doctors' offices, in state and federal agencies, on city councils, and in the White House staff, in state legislatures, in volunteer organizations, in virtually all arenas of policy making in the country."
That is probably more true now than it was when she wrote it, 20-odd years ago.
What has this got to do with the psychological worldview? It intersects with the New Age philosophy. The latter is a blend of a hodgepodge of various Eastern religions (Hinduism, Taoism, ''Native American'' spirituality/shamanism, etc.) and the Western humanistic tradition of which psychology is a part.
What these systems have in common is the focus on the self, on self-actualization (whatever that means), and they both tend to promote the notion that Western morality, which emphasizes individual responsibility and a defined system of right and wrong, is ''negative'' and backward, un-evolved.
New Age beliefs (although those involved often shun that label) blend seamlessly with the beliefs promoted in psychology, particularlly 'transpersonal psychology'.
There is an emphasis on 'not judging' or not excluding anybody -- except Christians of course, because they are too 'separative' in the words of Alice Bailey, who wrote a number of New Age/occult books which are considered authoritative by many. Anything that separates, as Christianity does, is bad, according to this worldview.
Psychology as it is understood by most people has done more than any other philosophy to popularize the idea of nonjudgmentalism as the greatest virtue. The idea is that we are not to put moral judgments on people, or anything people do -- unless it can be considered racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or species-ist. Then we are free to judge and condemn at will.
Otherwise, moral relativism prevails.
The idea that it's bad to be 'negative' about anything is also a very popular idea which is attributable to psychology and the social sciences. It's also an idea that is part of New Age thinking, which emphasizes 'positive thoughts'. (This system does not account for actual evil, or consider that being negative about some things is the only appropriate response.)
These ideas have wide exposure, especially among women who watch Oprah and other such shows. I allude to Oprah often as being a promoter of this kind of thing. She is a perfect example as she claims to be a Christian, yet publicly says she believes other 'paths' and religions are equally valid and true. She also promotes many New Age authors and their books, one recent example being Eckhart Tolle, a European New Age guru who has apparently taken in some gullible Christians.
I see evidence of the influence of such ideas all around us, especially when I converse with women, or when I read popular magazines or newspapers, or watch TV. It is part of the air we breathe these days. It baffles me to think that some people believe Christianity is so influential as to take the blame (or credit) for anything in our society, good or bad. Christianity is very much marginalized these days, and the thinking I've outlined briefly here is what dominates the 'purpose-driven' churches and the 'seeker-sensitive' churches, which are everywhere.
Christians who read their Bibles know that Jesus Christ is 'the same yesterday, today, and forever.' So riddle me this: how is it that old-time Christians did not believe in open borders, miscegenation, one-world government, and 'nonjudgmentalism', while today's ''Christians'' are perfectly comfortable, in too many instances, with all of the above? Christianity has not changed; today's Christians are thoroughly confused and lost, in many cases.
The fault is not in the Bible or in Christianity. The fault is in the insidious worldview, based on humanism, based on the false notion that 'man is the measure of all things', which has captured the Church as well as the rest of our society. And the fault, insofar as it lies with Christians, is that they do not read their Bibles or develop and exercise discernment. They simply take in the world's poisons and don't even realize it.
Some are being led astray by popular authors and 'teachers' who are in turn peddling the trendy ideas of the world, not the truth. These false shepherds are to blame, but so are the gullible 'sheep' who follow them.
We can see the havoc that the influence of psychology has played in our judicial system, where every criminal is portrayed as either ''mentally ill'' or as a victim of society, or a victim of bad parenting. Everybody is a 'victim' these days, especially the worst among us. Many people have lost all concepts of evil these days; the obsession we have with trying to 'understand' and 'reach out' to everybody, even heinous criminals, is a very detrimental trend to our societal well-being.
We see this carry over to our attitudes about things like illegal immigration; the people who consider themselves 'enlightened' are oh-so-careful to try to understand and empathize with illegals, saying things like ''well, I would do the same if I were in their shoes. I don't blame them.'' The drive to 'understand' and explain away all illegal behavior, or just plain bad behavior, has no limits. We have to re-learn to judge and discern, and not simply understand and empathize and tolerate anything.
As Alexander Pope wrote in his Essay on Man:
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
If it was true in Pope's time, it is even more rife now, this 'pitying and embracing' of bad behavior. We can't be judgmental; who are we to judge? We have to understand and reach out.
If we truly care about rescuing our society, and averting its impending demise, we need to look at the real dangers which beset us and which have rendered us a weak and morally slothful people, a 'nonjudgmental' people who are scared stiff of offending anyone.
And while it's easier to zero in on easy targets, and hard to deal with an amorphous target like a hazy belief system with no visible insitutions to blame, it's also less honest.
Many of those who have unconsciously adopted these beliefs also call themselves 'Christians', and may in fact be regular worshippers at a church. The pastor at their church may also preach messages full of the humanistic ideas with which the psychological belief system is saturated. This is particularly true these days, because so many churches are caught up in this 'seeker-sensitive' movement, with its idea that people (nonbelievers, casual 'seekers', spiritual shoppers) must not be made to feel 'bad about themselves.'
Most of the mainline churches today have embraced the messages of 'diversity', egalitarianism, race-denial, and ''social justice''.
Most of these established religious groups promote open borders and one-worldism -- although most people with even a rudimentary education should be familiar with the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, and the idea that a one-world system is not in God's plan.
Those who have not even examined the facts are quick to condemn Christianity for the Babelizing of the Western world, yet how can anyone, with a straight face, presume that the church, any church, exercises that much influence over people, much less over the world's political system? No, all the commonsense evidence points to the fact that the world system is instead setting the tone, leading the way, while the churches follow along. Granted, the churches are wrong in this. They are derelict, having lost their way. They are quite literally the 'salt which has lost its savor', of which Jesus warned, worthy only to be discarded.
And if the churches are guilty of going along with the world political system, they are wrong because they are not being true to themselves, and to the message they are supposed to be preaching.
However, if the political establishment and the ovine followers who make up most of the citizenry are not being misled by the church, who is leading them towards the multicultist Babel?
I've said that most people in our society owe more to the pop psychology cult, and humanism generally, than to Christian teaching. I can just hear someone say: what does psychology have to do with politics or world affairs? It's just about people's individual lives and problems, not about politics or society. Well, think again.
Clearly, societies both help and hinder human growth. Because nourishing environments can make an important contribution to the development of healthy personalities, human needs should be given priority when fashioning social policies. This becomes increasingly critical in a rapidly changing world threatened by such dangers as nuclear war, overpopulation and the breakdown of traditional social structures.
Many humanistic psychologists stress the importance of social change, the challenge of modifying old institutions and inventing new ones able to sustain both human development and organizational efficacy. Thus the humanistic emphasis on individual freedom should be matched by a recognition of our interdependence and our responsibilities to one another, to society and culture, and to the future.''
[...]
"As the world's people demand freedom and self-determination, it is urgent that we learn how diverse communities of empowered individuals, with freedom to construct their own stories and identities, might live together in mutual peace. Perhaps it is not a vain hope that is life in such communities might lead to the advance in human consciousness beyond anything we have yet experienced."
[Emphasis mine]
Notice the emphasis on 'social change' ''modifying old institutions and inventing new ones...' -- all the leftist concerns. It could have been written by some leftist politico as well as by a social scientist. They are hand-in-glove.
In my personal experience (and yes, it's anecdotal) most leftists are immersed in psychological jargon and thinking. Very few ''progressives'' are Christians, even liberal Christians. Most, in my experience, are secular and nonbelieving, or else involved in New Age practices. That latter topic in itself is worthy of a whole post, with New Age thinking very focused on the idea of a 'one world' government and a blending of all races into some 'highly evolved' hybrid race. I say this as someone who was once very involved in this kind of thing. I know it from the inside, and I have friends who are still part of that subculture.
Marilyn Ferguson who wrote the bestselling Aquarian Conspiracy, said
There are legions of [Aquarian] conspirators. They are in corporations, universities, and hospitals, on the faculties of public schools, in factories and doctors' offices, in state and federal agencies, on city councils, and in the White House staff, in state legislatures, in volunteer organizations, in virtually all arenas of policy making in the country."
That is probably more true now than it was when she wrote it, 20-odd years ago.
What has this got to do with the psychological worldview? It intersects with the New Age philosophy. The latter is a blend of a hodgepodge of various Eastern religions (Hinduism, Taoism, ''Native American'' spirituality/shamanism, etc.) and the Western humanistic tradition of which psychology is a part.
What these systems have in common is the focus on the self, on self-actualization (whatever that means), and they both tend to promote the notion that Western morality, which emphasizes individual responsibility and a defined system of right and wrong, is ''negative'' and backward, un-evolved.
New Age beliefs (although those involved often shun that label) blend seamlessly with the beliefs promoted in psychology, particularlly 'transpersonal psychology'.
There is an emphasis on 'not judging' or not excluding anybody -- except Christians of course, because they are too 'separative' in the words of Alice Bailey, who wrote a number of New Age/occult books which are considered authoritative by many. Anything that separates, as Christianity does, is bad, according to this worldview.
Psychology as it is understood by most people has done more than any other philosophy to popularize the idea of nonjudgmentalism as the greatest virtue. The idea is that we are not to put moral judgments on people, or anything people do -- unless it can be considered racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or species-ist. Then we are free to judge and condemn at will.
Otherwise, moral relativism prevails.
The idea that it's bad to be 'negative' about anything is also a very popular idea which is attributable to psychology and the social sciences. It's also an idea that is part of New Age thinking, which emphasizes 'positive thoughts'. (This system does not account for actual evil, or consider that being negative about some things is the only appropriate response.)
These ideas have wide exposure, especially among women who watch Oprah and other such shows. I allude to Oprah often as being a promoter of this kind of thing. She is a perfect example as she claims to be a Christian, yet publicly says she believes other 'paths' and religions are equally valid and true. She also promotes many New Age authors and their books, one recent example being Eckhart Tolle, a European New Age guru who has apparently taken in some gullible Christians.
I see evidence of the influence of such ideas all around us, especially when I converse with women, or when I read popular magazines or newspapers, or watch TV. It is part of the air we breathe these days. It baffles me to think that some people believe Christianity is so influential as to take the blame (or credit) for anything in our society, good or bad. Christianity is very much marginalized these days, and the thinking I've outlined briefly here is what dominates the 'purpose-driven' churches and the 'seeker-sensitive' churches, which are everywhere.
Christians who read their Bibles know that Jesus Christ is 'the same yesterday, today, and forever.' So riddle me this: how is it that old-time Christians did not believe in open borders, miscegenation, one-world government, and 'nonjudgmentalism', while today's ''Christians'' are perfectly comfortable, in too many instances, with all of the above? Christianity has not changed; today's Christians are thoroughly confused and lost, in many cases.
The fault is not in the Bible or in Christianity. The fault is in the insidious worldview, based on humanism, based on the false notion that 'man is the measure of all things', which has captured the Church as well as the rest of our society. And the fault, insofar as it lies with Christians, is that they do not read their Bibles or develop and exercise discernment. They simply take in the world's poisons and don't even realize it.
Some are being led astray by popular authors and 'teachers' who are in turn peddling the trendy ideas of the world, not the truth. These false shepherds are to blame, but so are the gullible 'sheep' who follow them.
We can see the havoc that the influence of psychology has played in our judicial system, where every criminal is portrayed as either ''mentally ill'' or as a victim of society, or a victim of bad parenting. Everybody is a 'victim' these days, especially the worst among us. Many people have lost all concepts of evil these days; the obsession we have with trying to 'understand' and 'reach out' to everybody, even heinous criminals, is a very detrimental trend to our societal well-being.
We see this carry over to our attitudes about things like illegal immigration; the people who consider themselves 'enlightened' are oh-so-careful to try to understand and empathize with illegals, saying things like ''well, I would do the same if I were in their shoes. I don't blame them.'' The drive to 'understand' and explain away all illegal behavior, or just plain bad behavior, has no limits. We have to re-learn to judge and discern, and not simply understand and empathize and tolerate anything.
As Alexander Pope wrote in his Essay on Man:
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
If it was true in Pope's time, it is even more rife now, this 'pitying and embracing' of bad behavior. We can't be judgmental; who are we to judge? We have to understand and reach out.
If we truly care about rescuing our society, and averting its impending demise, we need to look at the real dangers which beset us and which have rendered us a weak and morally slothful people, a 'nonjudgmental' people who are scared stiff of offending anyone.
And while it's easier to zero in on easy targets, and hard to deal with an amorphous target like a hazy belief system with no visible insitutions to blame, it's also less honest.
Labels: Christianity, Death Of The West, Globalism, Liberalism, Moral Agnosticism, Moral Relativism, One World, Politics, Pop Psychology, Societal Decay, Therapeutic Society, Transnationalism
0 comment Monday, October 13, 2014 | admin
We all know the term ''fight or flight" in its usual sense, and in the sense in which we've discussed our predicament on this blog.
But how many are familiar with the phrase ''tend and befriend"?
That's a label applied to the supposed feminine strategy for dealing with a threat.
The model, called "tend-and-befriend" by its developers, won't replace fight-or-flight. Rather, it adds another dimension to the stress-response arsenal, says University of California, Los Angeles, psychologist Shelley Taylor, PhD, who, along with five colleagues, developed the model.
In particular, they propose that females respond to stressful situations by protecting themselves and their young through nurturing behaviors--the "tend" part of the model--and forming alliances with a larger social group, particularly among women--the "befriend" part of the model.
Males, in contrast, show less of a tendency toward tending and befriending, sticking more to the fight-or-flight response, they suggest.''
Here is an interesting analysis of that idea, in light of liberal and conservative politics:
Fight, Flight...or Tend and Befriend?
'When I was a psychology professor in the 1990s, it was commonly accepted that there were two ways that people coped with fear: fight or flight. The scientific understanding at that time was that when we sense a threat, our body shoots noradrenalin in our blood stream, causing our heart to pound faster, and our muscles to fill with increased blood. This biological response readied us to sustain increased physical activity, whether to fight or run away. The fight or flight theory lent credence to the liberal's contention that the conservative response to wage war in Iran was a response to fear-- to fight.
But a more recent theory supports the conservative contention. When Shelley Taylor at UCLA looked at the research on fight or flight, she found that it was primarily based on studying men. In her studies of women, she found a very different response to fear, which she termed "tend and befriend." It also had biological underpinnings. When women sensed a threat, they emitted oxytocin, sometimes called the bonding hormone. Rather than fight or flee, they would talk, soothe, and try to connect. I saw a similar response to fear when I worked with women rape victims. Many reported that rather than fight off their assailant or try to flee, they were kind to the rapist in hopes that he would change his mind.
Both ends of the political spectrum lob accusations at their opponents for feeling fear, as if it is a shameful feeling-- the adult version of the "You're a baby" attack. But I contend that it is more admirable to feel fear than to block or minimize it.''
In this real-life example of a female victim 'befriending' her attacker and captor, it appeared that the effort was a success and the woman's 'heroism' was hailed by the liberal media. It seemed that the 'tend and befriend' strategy was the answer. But did it work ultimately?
From Wikipedia, more information on the perpetrator and his trial:
The defense called psychiatrist Mark Cunningham to the stand to testify about Nichols mental condition. Cunningham said Nichols had an emotionally distant relationship with his parents because when he was a child they worked long hours and were seldom home. His father routinely drank alcohol and also smoked marijuana which led Nichols to begin abusing the same substances as a child.
Cunningham said Nichols was sexually abused by a cousin and his older brother and that he was bullied as a child. "The stresses of his childhood is what carries forward into adulthood," Cunningham said.
He said Nichols began to show extreme beliefs in college and he presented a college essays that Nichols wrote in 1992. In them, Nichols lays out his belief that there is an organized and deliberate attempt by whites to eradicate the black race, by imprisoning black men, and keeping them from having children. One of Nichols essay read "If violence can be a righteous tool for the white man, then surely it can be used as a righteous tool for the black man. If violence can be used to murder defenseless women and children in South Africa and Vietnam, then surely it can be used to defend the human rights of dark-skinned people all over the world." Nichols wrote he believes blacks should use violence to rebel arguing that if violence is right in Vietnam and the Middle East "surely it can be used in South Central Los Angeles."
Cunningham said those beliefs "are the seeds of what later grew into a delusional disorder" as he was confined in the Fulton County jail. Nichols said the conditions paralleled slavery: labor without pay, poor sanitation, chains; and he compared his white judge, Rowland Barnes, to a slavemaster. He said Nichols eventually became so delusional he thought he was at war with the government and that he did not know right from wrong even as he pulled the trigger. Cunningham also read an excerpt from Nichols confession: "I felt as though I was a slave rebelling. I was a slave rebelling against the government of the United States. And as a soldier, I don't feel as though I committed any war crimes.... Slaves have a tendency to rebel. And as a result, I felt as though it was my right as a human being, basically, to rebel as a slave. And I felt that it was my right to declare war on the United States government."
Prosecution: Nichols will always be dangerous
...Lead prosecutor Kellie Hill said jurors only have to read Nichols� own words in letters to fellow plotters to realize that the risk of escape is real. Nichols� last known plot was at the beginning of jury selection for this trial, when paperclips fashioned as handcuff keys were found in his cell at the DeKalb County jail, where he was housed after his escape plots were uncovered at the Fulton County jail, Hill said.
Also found in the cell were sharp pieces of broken tile that could be used as a weapon, Hill said. "His plots to escape are not fantasy � he is able to manipulate people inside and outside the jail," Hill said. "He is still planning. He is still dangerous� He is someone who must be sentenced to death for the safety of our society."
Hill read from one of Nichols� letters to a Fulton County jail inmate where he talked about how he had bribed a guard and gave advice on how to overpower guards for their escape. The guard in question was later fired. "What better way to get a glimpse in to a mind of a cold-blooded killer than to look at his own words", Hill said.
[...] Nichols, 36, had been a successful, middle-class, church-going man, earning $80,000 a year as an UNIX system administrator for UPS. His life began to fall apart when Nichols impregnated another woman, causing his girlfriend of seven years to end their relationship.''
There are a number of obvious lessons in the story of Nichols. He should have been a black ''success story" of the kind that Republicans like to cite as proof of the idea that blacks just need to acculturate and follow the rules. He did not come from a poor or 'disadvantaged' background. His parents were professionals. He himself got a good education and was making a good living, as mentioned above. So what went wrong? That's a question for another blog entry.
The issue here is the way in which the interaction between Nichols and his White female captive, his ''Angel," reflects our society's current approach to dealing with threats.
We are a feminized society, and when it comes to dealing with evil, we are losing because in liberal fashion, we try to 'block or minimize' fear, and to appease evil by 'tending and befriending', hoping that we can reform and redeem those who are out to harm us.
The White female hostage encouraged her captor, who had just been on a killing rampage, to read not the Bible, but Rick Warren's Purpose-Driven Life. If that isn't a commentary on the state of our watered-down 'Christianity' I don't know what is. And when this bit of proselytizing seemed to work, momentarily at least, this was hailed as a triumph for 'purpose-driven'-ism.
The accounts of Nichols' later comportment and behavior show that there was no 'conversion' or repentance, at least none of a lasting nature. The fact that anybody was naive enough to think that a little Oprahfied pop psychology and a dose of pop-Christianity could change this man in the twinkling of an eye should be cause for embarrassment. But it isn't, apparently.
We as a society are pursuing the same strategy with regard to all the threats which face us. We first try to 'block or minimize'' the fear we refuse to recognize, and we try to 'tend and befriend' all those who breathe out threats against us. If only we appease everybody, use all the politically correct, deferential language, and behave in a generally 'nice' fashion, we imagine we can win over our enemies, change them, save their souls, render them harmless.
The altruism about which I blogged yesterday is another manifestation of this 'tend and befriend' feminized response. And it seems that even those self-deluded liberals and leftists recognize on some level that threats do exist; everyone is not our friend. Not everyone means well. Danger is real. But the choice to block and minimize the threats and to deny the fear, and the choice to try to feed the crocodile in hopes of being eaten last, is the wrong choice. It's far better to acknowledge the reality of the threat and act accordingly so as to ensure survival.
Maybe Nichols' captive rolled the dice and won that particular time. Maybe she herself succeeded in escaping with her life. But it could well have turned out tragically for her. Appeasement of evil is always a huge gamble, and the odds are not in our favor if we rely on this tactic.
Now is not the time to 'tend and befriend'; it's been tried and found wanting. Let the more primal response serve its intended purpose.
But how many are familiar with the phrase ''tend and befriend"?
That's a label applied to the supposed feminine strategy for dealing with a threat.
The model, called "tend-and-befriend" by its developers, won't replace fight-or-flight. Rather, it adds another dimension to the stress-response arsenal, says University of California, Los Angeles, psychologist Shelley Taylor, PhD, who, along with five colleagues, developed the model.
In particular, they propose that females respond to stressful situations by protecting themselves and their young through nurturing behaviors--the "tend" part of the model--and forming alliances with a larger social group, particularly among women--the "befriend" part of the model.
Males, in contrast, show less of a tendency toward tending and befriending, sticking more to the fight-or-flight response, they suggest.''
Here is an interesting analysis of that idea, in light of liberal and conservative politics:
Fight, Flight...or Tend and Befriend?
'When I was a psychology professor in the 1990s, it was commonly accepted that there were two ways that people coped with fear: fight or flight. The scientific understanding at that time was that when we sense a threat, our body shoots noradrenalin in our blood stream, causing our heart to pound faster, and our muscles to fill with increased blood. This biological response readied us to sustain increased physical activity, whether to fight or run away. The fight or flight theory lent credence to the liberal's contention that the conservative response to wage war in Iran was a response to fear-- to fight.
But a more recent theory supports the conservative contention. When Shelley Taylor at UCLA looked at the research on fight or flight, she found that it was primarily based on studying men. In her studies of women, she found a very different response to fear, which she termed "tend and befriend." It also had biological underpinnings. When women sensed a threat, they emitted oxytocin, sometimes called the bonding hormone. Rather than fight or flee, they would talk, soothe, and try to connect. I saw a similar response to fear when I worked with women rape victims. Many reported that rather than fight off their assailant or try to flee, they were kind to the rapist in hopes that he would change his mind.
Both ends of the political spectrum lob accusations at their opponents for feeling fear, as if it is a shameful feeling-- the adult version of the "You're a baby" attack. But I contend that it is more admirable to feel fear than to block or minimize it.''
In this real-life example of a female victim 'befriending' her attacker and captor, it appeared that the effort was a success and the woman's 'heroism' was hailed by the liberal media. It seemed that the 'tend and befriend' strategy was the answer. But did it work ultimately?
From Wikipedia, more information on the perpetrator and his trial:
The defense called psychiatrist Mark Cunningham to the stand to testify about Nichols mental condition. Cunningham said Nichols had an emotionally distant relationship with his parents because when he was a child they worked long hours and were seldom home. His father routinely drank alcohol and also smoked marijuana which led Nichols to begin abusing the same substances as a child.
Cunningham said Nichols was sexually abused by a cousin and his older brother and that he was bullied as a child. "The stresses of his childhood is what carries forward into adulthood," Cunningham said.
He said Nichols began to show extreme beliefs in college and he presented a college essays that Nichols wrote in 1992. In them, Nichols lays out his belief that there is an organized and deliberate attempt by whites to eradicate the black race, by imprisoning black men, and keeping them from having children. One of Nichols essay read "If violence can be a righteous tool for the white man, then surely it can be used as a righteous tool for the black man. If violence can be used to murder defenseless women and children in South Africa and Vietnam, then surely it can be used to defend the human rights of dark-skinned people all over the world." Nichols wrote he believes blacks should use violence to rebel arguing that if violence is right in Vietnam and the Middle East "surely it can be used in South Central Los Angeles."
Cunningham said those beliefs "are the seeds of what later grew into a delusional disorder" as he was confined in the Fulton County jail. Nichols said the conditions paralleled slavery: labor without pay, poor sanitation, chains; and he compared his white judge, Rowland Barnes, to a slavemaster. He said Nichols eventually became so delusional he thought he was at war with the government and that he did not know right from wrong even as he pulled the trigger. Cunningham also read an excerpt from Nichols confession: "I felt as though I was a slave rebelling. I was a slave rebelling against the government of the United States. And as a soldier, I don't feel as though I committed any war crimes.... Slaves have a tendency to rebel. And as a result, I felt as though it was my right as a human being, basically, to rebel as a slave. And I felt that it was my right to declare war on the United States government."
Prosecution: Nichols will always be dangerous
...Lead prosecutor Kellie Hill said jurors only have to read Nichols� own words in letters to fellow plotters to realize that the risk of escape is real. Nichols� last known plot was at the beginning of jury selection for this trial, when paperclips fashioned as handcuff keys were found in his cell at the DeKalb County jail, where he was housed after his escape plots were uncovered at the Fulton County jail, Hill said.
Also found in the cell were sharp pieces of broken tile that could be used as a weapon, Hill said. "His plots to escape are not fantasy � he is able to manipulate people inside and outside the jail," Hill said. "He is still planning. He is still dangerous� He is someone who must be sentenced to death for the safety of our society."
Hill read from one of Nichols� letters to a Fulton County jail inmate where he talked about how he had bribed a guard and gave advice on how to overpower guards for their escape. The guard in question was later fired. "What better way to get a glimpse in to a mind of a cold-blooded killer than to look at his own words", Hill said.
[...] Nichols, 36, had been a successful, middle-class, church-going man, earning $80,000 a year as an UNIX system administrator for UPS. His life began to fall apart when Nichols impregnated another woman, causing his girlfriend of seven years to end their relationship.''
There are a number of obvious lessons in the story of Nichols. He should have been a black ''success story" of the kind that Republicans like to cite as proof of the idea that blacks just need to acculturate and follow the rules. He did not come from a poor or 'disadvantaged' background. His parents were professionals. He himself got a good education and was making a good living, as mentioned above. So what went wrong? That's a question for another blog entry.
The issue here is the way in which the interaction between Nichols and his White female captive, his ''Angel," reflects our society's current approach to dealing with threats.
We are a feminized society, and when it comes to dealing with evil, we are losing because in liberal fashion, we try to 'block or minimize' fear, and to appease evil by 'tending and befriending', hoping that we can reform and redeem those who are out to harm us.
The White female hostage encouraged her captor, who had just been on a killing rampage, to read not the Bible, but Rick Warren's Purpose-Driven Life. If that isn't a commentary on the state of our watered-down 'Christianity' I don't know what is. And when this bit of proselytizing seemed to work, momentarily at least, this was hailed as a triumph for 'purpose-driven'-ism.
The accounts of Nichols' later comportment and behavior show that there was no 'conversion' or repentance, at least none of a lasting nature. The fact that anybody was naive enough to think that a little Oprahfied pop psychology and a dose of pop-Christianity could change this man in the twinkling of an eye should be cause for embarrassment. But it isn't, apparently.
We as a society are pursuing the same strategy with regard to all the threats which face us. We first try to 'block or minimize'' the fear we refuse to recognize, and we try to 'tend and befriend' all those who breathe out threats against us. If only we appease everybody, use all the politically correct, deferential language, and behave in a generally 'nice' fashion, we imagine we can win over our enemies, change them, save their souls, render them harmless.
The altruism about which I blogged yesterday is another manifestation of this 'tend and befriend' feminized response. And it seems that even those self-deluded liberals and leftists recognize on some level that threats do exist; everyone is not our friend. Not everyone means well. Danger is real. But the choice to block and minimize the threats and to deny the fear, and the choice to try to feed the crocodile in hopes of being eaten last, is the wrong choice. It's far better to acknowledge the reality of the threat and act accordingly so as to ensure survival.
Maybe Nichols' captive rolled the dice and won that particular time. Maybe she herself succeeded in escaping with her life. But it could well have turned out tragically for her. Appeasement of evil is always a huge gamble, and the odds are not in our favor if we rely on this tactic.
Now is not the time to 'tend and befriend'; it's been tried and found wanting. Let the more primal response serve its intended purpose.
Labels: Appeasement, Feminism, Liberalism, Political Correctness, Pop Psychology
0 comment Monday, July 7, 2014 | admin
From today's news - (please see the video at the link)
It happened may of last year, just before 11 in the morning. It was an average day on metro bus number 3684 on route 18 that all changed near the corner of 15th Avenue West and West Armor Street when a man got on the bus.
He looks like a normal guy until he paid his fare. Then, out of nowhere, he punches the victim Jeannie Square in the face.
Witness said the man shouted "The sick must die" and let punches fly at a defenseless woman.
"His initial attack was just, I mean she didn't know what hit her and she was just, she got hit pretty good." Charles Capizano was sitting in the rear of the bus. He saw what happened and wasted no time to get to the front of the bus and stop the attack.
"This guy was attacking everyone in his sight. Threatening everyone in his sight saying "The sick must die. God told me the sick must die."
Recently the video of a young man in Paris being attacked by ''youths'' on a bus was all over the blogosphere. At the time, I posted a link to the video, and the ensuing discussion centered on why the young White man seemed unwilling to defend himself, and why the bus driver seemed indifferent to his plea for help.
Well, this video was shown on Lou Dobbs earlier, where I saw it. I will let you see it for yourself; the images tell the story. The perpetrator fits the usual profile, but the victim is an older White woman -- who is obviously blind.
What is it about public transportation that seems to make attacks like this so distressingly commonplace? The skeptic might say that these things don't happen that frequently, that the media create unfounded hysteria or fear of crime. However I would say that the opposite is true; such attacks happen frequently in large urban centers, and I think anyone who lives in such areas, or ever has lived in such areas (as I have) would agree. If anything, the attacks that happen on buses, subways, etc. are probably underreported, and many of the people who habitually commute on public transportation become extremely jaded and blase about such assaults, shrugging it off as just one more minor disadvantage of urban life.
I know that the Seattle/King County area certainly has its share of such incidents, and I know that many of the people who live there are hopelessly, irredeemably liberal and passive about such things -- yet, hearteningly, a number of passengers on the bus in this video come to the aid of the blind woman who was pummeled, and they subdue the assailant. I commend them for that; it's a good sign, truly, when even Seattle people have the gumption to risk their own safety to help a rather helpless woman.
So the news is not all bad here; the glass is half-full.
However the discouraging part about all this is that most people, especially in liberal areas, are unwilling to notice some of the more salient facts -- such as who the attacker was, and to 'profile' when necessary to avoid such incidents.
And holding liberal ideas about human nature absolutely, positively disarm people psychologically, leaving them to choose a foolishly open attitude towards people who are likely to be dangerous. Moreover, once an attack is committed, the foolish liberal not only fails to learn the obvious lessons, but then proceeds to coddle and make sanctimonious excuses for the attacker. After all, he himself is just a poor victim, not responsible for his ugly actions. Check the comments on the WIVB website; some preening liberal is talking about how the attacker is obviously ''sick'' and in need of help.
In this case, pleas were probably made for the perpetrator based on his race and for his suffering the 'legacy of slavery.'
All too often, judges share these liberal attitudes, and sentence criminals who commit violence to ''treatment.''
Notice in the article that this attack happened about a year ago, though most of us probably heard nothing about it at the time; I certainly didn't.
And what has happened to this ''obviously sick man'' since the videotaped attack on the blind woman? He was sentenced for ''treatment'' at a mental hospital, not jail. I'm sorry to say that I predict that, when released, he will still be violent and dangerous, and if treated by the usual psychiatric drugs, may indeed be more dangerous and unpredictable.
How many such crimes are perpetrated by people who should be locked up indefinitely, but are instead turned loose after being pronounced 'cured' or 'unlikely to offend again' by some harebrained psychologist? How many innocent people are harmed because of these kinds of pernicious ideas, masquerading as 'compassion'? Compassion is fine but where is the compassion for the innocent people? They are forgotten by the liberal bleeding hearts.
Seattle seems to be in the news frequently these days for incidents like this, and the notoriously light sentences the perpetrators receive. Eleven years is shockingly little punishment for murder, but then the killer is a ''victim'' himself, isn't he?
In this even more egregious case, three ''youths'' are given light sentences for killing a man.
Much as I would like to echo whoever it is (is it Michael Savage?) who said 'liberalism is a mental disorder', I won't say it, because ascribing every manner of stupidity and evil to 'mental illness' is very much what liberals do. No, they don't get a pass for being ''sick''; they are either ignorant or willfully blind, or plain old malicious and destructive.
It happened may of last year, just before 11 in the morning. It was an average day on metro bus number 3684 on route 18 that all changed near the corner of 15th Avenue West and West Armor Street when a man got on the bus.
He looks like a normal guy until he paid his fare. Then, out of nowhere, he punches the victim Jeannie Square in the face.
Witness said the man shouted "The sick must die" and let punches fly at a defenseless woman.
"His initial attack was just, I mean she didn't know what hit her and she was just, she got hit pretty good." Charles Capizano was sitting in the rear of the bus. He saw what happened and wasted no time to get to the front of the bus and stop the attack.
"This guy was attacking everyone in his sight. Threatening everyone in his sight saying "The sick must die. God told me the sick must die."
Recently the video of a young man in Paris being attacked by ''youths'' on a bus was all over the blogosphere. At the time, I posted a link to the video, and the ensuing discussion centered on why the young White man seemed unwilling to defend himself, and why the bus driver seemed indifferent to his plea for help.
Well, this video was shown on Lou Dobbs earlier, where I saw it. I will let you see it for yourself; the images tell the story. The perpetrator fits the usual profile, but the victim is an older White woman -- who is obviously blind.
What is it about public transportation that seems to make attacks like this so distressingly commonplace? The skeptic might say that these things don't happen that frequently, that the media create unfounded hysteria or fear of crime. However I would say that the opposite is true; such attacks happen frequently in large urban centers, and I think anyone who lives in such areas, or ever has lived in such areas (as I have) would agree. If anything, the attacks that happen on buses, subways, etc. are probably underreported, and many of the people who habitually commute on public transportation become extremely jaded and blase about such assaults, shrugging it off as just one more minor disadvantage of urban life.
I know that the Seattle/King County area certainly has its share of such incidents, and I know that many of the people who live there are hopelessly, irredeemably liberal and passive about such things -- yet, hearteningly, a number of passengers on the bus in this video come to the aid of the blind woman who was pummeled, and they subdue the assailant. I commend them for that; it's a good sign, truly, when even Seattle people have the gumption to risk their own safety to help a rather helpless woman.
So the news is not all bad here; the glass is half-full.
However the discouraging part about all this is that most people, especially in liberal areas, are unwilling to notice some of the more salient facts -- such as who the attacker was, and to 'profile' when necessary to avoid such incidents.
And holding liberal ideas about human nature absolutely, positively disarm people psychologically, leaving them to choose a foolishly open attitude towards people who are likely to be dangerous. Moreover, once an attack is committed, the foolish liberal not only fails to learn the obvious lessons, but then proceeds to coddle and make sanctimonious excuses for the attacker. After all, he himself is just a poor victim, not responsible for his ugly actions. Check the comments on the WIVB website; some preening liberal is talking about how the attacker is obviously ''sick'' and in need of help.
In this case, pleas were probably made for the perpetrator based on his race and for his suffering the 'legacy of slavery.'
All too often, judges share these liberal attitudes, and sentence criminals who commit violence to ''treatment.''
Notice in the article that this attack happened about a year ago, though most of us probably heard nothing about it at the time; I certainly didn't.
And what has happened to this ''obviously sick man'' since the videotaped attack on the blind woman? He was sentenced for ''treatment'' at a mental hospital, not jail. I'm sorry to say that I predict that, when released, he will still be violent and dangerous, and if treated by the usual psychiatric drugs, may indeed be more dangerous and unpredictable.
How many such crimes are perpetrated by people who should be locked up indefinitely, but are instead turned loose after being pronounced 'cured' or 'unlikely to offend again' by some harebrained psychologist? How many innocent people are harmed because of these kinds of pernicious ideas, masquerading as 'compassion'? Compassion is fine but where is the compassion for the innocent people? They are forgotten by the liberal bleeding hearts.
Seattle seems to be in the news frequently these days for incidents like this, and the notoriously light sentences the perpetrators receive. Eleven years is shockingly little punishment for murder, but then the killer is a ''victim'' himself, isn't he?
In this even more egregious case, three ''youths'' are given light sentences for killing a man.
Much as I would like to echo whoever it is (is it Michael Savage?) who said 'liberalism is a mental disorder', I won't say it, because ascribing every manner of stupidity and evil to 'mental illness' is very much what liberals do. No, they don't get a pass for being ''sick''; they are either ignorant or willfully blind, or plain old malicious and destructive.
Labels: Crime, Criminal Justice System, Liberalism, Political Correctness, Pop Psychology
0 comment Wednesday, May 21, 2014 | admin
At American Thinker, Deborah C. Tyler takes on a subject that few on the right pay attention to: the psychology belief system.
Beginning in 1950, the APA began issuing public policy statements and resolutions. Although presumably a scientific organization, the list of those proclamations reads like a libretto of politically correct shibboleths: the benefits of abortion, the need for sex education in public schools, the need for affirmative action, the evils of cultural insensitivity, the virtues of everything LGBT, the blessings of needle exchange programs for mainlining addicts, the psychological nourishment of diversity, the insensitivity of English-only initiatives, the repressiveness of white majorities -- and on and on and on and on.
Two trends can be seen in APA public positions: 1) the misuse of science, and 2) the devaluation of people who hold different moral and spiritual views -- in effect, making infidels of those who disagree. The APA's resolutions are scattered throughout its vast website, but partial lists can be found here and here.
From the first linked page of their policy manual: See their resolution on 'racism and racial discrimination':
''THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the American Psychological Association denounces racism in all its forms for its negative psychological, social, educational, and economic effects on human development throughout the life span;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that APA further the objectives of the 2001 United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance through efforts focused on elimination of all forms of racism and racial/ethnic discrimination at all levels of the science and practice of psychology in the United States;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that APA will: (1) pursue diverse racial representation at all levels of APA governance; (2) call upon all psychologists to eliminate processes and procedures that perpetuate racial injustice in research, practice, training and education; (3) call upon all psychologists to speak out against racism and take proactive steps to prevent the occurrence of intolerant or racist acts; and (4) promote psychological research on the alleviation of racial/ethnic injustice.''
I've alluded in earlier blog posts to the role played by all-pervasive belief systems like psychology and all social 'sciences', falsely so-called, in the demise of the West and the rise of anti-White policies, but I don't seem to make much headway with alerting people to just how destructive this mindset is to our people and our future.
You can find any number of ethnopatriot blogs and individuals who are busy lambasting Christianity as the fount of every woe of our people, but scarcely a word is said in criticism of psychology and its 'spiritual' branch, the loosely-termed New Age philosophy. The latter is really a hodgepodge of postmodern psychology mixed with a sort of do-it-yourself, patchwork, multicultural religion.
These belief systems are hand-in-glove with the prevailing political and cultural regime which includes what we call 'political correctness' and the 'tolerance' industry. If there is the remotest resemblance between this belief system and Christianity, or what passes as Christianity in 2010, it is not that Christianity has influenced the former; it is that the 'humanistic' belief system has crept into Christianity and captured its leaders.
If you read the list of policies and resolutions by the APA or other such secular bodies, you will see that it all dovetails with the official dogma of our governments, our media, and the educational complex in the West. This is the dominant belief system of most people in the West, not just secular people or atheists or New Agey people, but of many compromised and ignorant Christians who do not know their own faith.
This is the belief system that rules our lives, really.
It's reinforced everywhere we turn. Pick up a dead-tree newspaper and read a random selection of articles on any number of issues. You will find that the mindset of the APA and other related bodies is reflected exactly in the articles written by just about any journalist or editorial writer. It is the reigning ideology of our time.
We talk about cultural Marxism, but it began with our so-called 'social sciences', with anthropology and sociology and psychology, and cross-pollinated with political leftism to produce the many-headed hydra that dominates our thought and discourse today.
Does anybody remember the days when Scientologists used to have people leafleting out in the streets, trying to reel in new 'customers'? Their sales pitch used to start with the question, ''would you like to take a free personality test?" And just about everybody, at least every young (under 30) individual would eagerly agree. We have been shaped into being a narcissistic, individualistic people, who are fascinated with ourselves, I mean, with our selves. Ridiculous belief systems proliferate by appealing to our obsession with ourselves, our minds and personalities. Pop(ular) psychology is popular because it appeals to this lowest common denominator: the desire to navel-gaze and admire ourselves in mirrors and ponder how very unique we are.
Samuel N. Behrman said
"A quite wonderful discovery -- psychoanalysis. Makes quite simple people feel they're complex."
Christianity, by contrast, tells us we are all sinners in need of a redeemer. That, naturally, rubs the post-modern individual the wrong way. He'd rather be told how scintillating and fascinating he and his creative mind are. He'd rather be told that 'the proper study of mankind is man', and specifically, self.
Psychology may tell us that we are all potentially 'mentally ill' but the social sciences hold out the possibility of human perfectibility because our 'ills' (which are often just bad habits or bad character) are curable by what? In the olden days, years of expensive therapy, many hours on an analyst's couch, or now, lots of medications and 'positive self-talk' and 'boosting self-esteem' and reading the right guru's books.
Look how popular Oprah and Dr. Phil and Deepak Chopra and Dr. Oz are by peddling various forms of this self-religion, posing as 'science.'
Naturally, we have freedom of religion in this country, so people are quite welcome to believe in Xenu and the Galactic Confederacy, or nothing at all if they so choose. But this reigning belief system, despite its preaching 'non-judgmentalism' is not the least bit tolerant of Other Gods, as witness the policy statements by the APA and its pronouncements of anathema on 'racists, homophobes, and xenophobes.'
It's this belief system that saturates our society, and it goes unchallenged because it is part of the air we breathe, and because it wears the benign mask of 'science' and assumes a mantle of infallibility. Everybody, just about, believes in it to some extent, because we absorb it by osmosis. It's on every TV talk show or 'women's' programming in particular. Women are big proselytizers for the psychology cult's tenets, whether they realize it or not. Women are very fond of the touchy-feely-emotional trappings of this belief system. It is a very feminine mindset and cult.
For whatever reason, I've had a longstanding suspicion of the psychology cult, even to the extent of avoiding any psychology classes in college, which made me quite the oddity. One counselor looked at me as though she thought I was a primitive because I said I had chosen to take no psychology classes, though I took other science courses toward my degree. It was clear that saying I avoided psych classes was tantamount, in her eyes, to saying I could not read and write. Everybody took Psych classes in college; everyone, though they were not required for all majors. But everybody loved to analyze themselves.
Here's the crux of the problem I have with psychology. Does not science in general demand some kind of objective perspective, an ability to look at something from outside, in a dispassionate way? We can't do that with ourselves. Our efforts to understand the human mind, especially our own minds, are flawed because the human mind can't objectively understand itself or be honest about itself, much less measure and quantify itself.
As a much greater source says of the human heart, ''who can know it?''
The belief system that we call the psychological science is one which contradicts in the most basic ways the beliefs and attitudes of our forebears. It destroys the very idea of right and wrong, good and evil, making everything relative and subjective. It contradicts the belief that we are responsible human beings, who make choices, and who must be held accountable for our actions. It diminishes our freedom in that it tends to cause us to see ourselves and others as helpless pawns, products of circumstance or neurochemicals or anything but free choice. Homosexuals are born with a genetic predisposition, say the seers of psychology. People are criminals because of circumstances like poverty, or 'racism.'
Nobody can be held accountable except, of course, for people who are heretics when it comes to the established belief system, namely those labeled as 'racists, xenophobes, homophobes, misogynists', and other holdouts such as Christians who believe in the faith of their fathers.
Psychology, like political correctness, is so dominant in our ways of thinking that most of us would not dream of contradicting it in any way.
Behrman's quote about psychoanalysis making simple people seem complex is reflective of the tendency of the psychological dogma to make everything seem complex; things are never what they seem. Contra Ockham's Razor, the most convoluted explanation is the best one for anything, it seems. And this mindset has made people lose moral clarity, to see everything as relative, as a complicated grey area, where there are just 'differing narratives', not truth or falsehood.
Rather than increasing man's wisdom about himself or others or the problems of life in general, it has made everybody lukewarm or noncommital about many things which should be clear-cut.
In response, many people just shut down, and distract themselves with the trivial things, entertainment, sports, shopping, anything but actual thought and discussion.
Hence, here we are fiddling while Rome burns around us. Others, while able to see that our situation is dire, cast about to find someone to blame, and they fix the blame on the older generations (Why didn't they stop this long ago?) or a political party -- and with many people, it's Christianity alone which is blamed for the delusion which our people suffer from.
Let's face it: how many real Christians are out there? How many people take their Christianity seriously and live their lives according to its precepts? Few, sad to say. And Christianity, contrary to what the theocracy-phobics say, exerts pitifully little infliuence on our secular liberal government or on our popular culture, which is decidedly carnal and materialistic.
But the ruling ideology of our day is firmly rooted in this reigning philosophy which combines psychology with its false 'science' of the human mind and the syncretistic, multicultural, all-tolerant 'spirituality' peddled by Oprah, Eckhart Tolle, and other celebrities who wield a great deal of influence over women and the young.
Most of the women and young people I know imbibe these things from the popular culture. Everybody talks in pop-psych jargon and psychobabble, about empowerment and self-esteem and 'sharing'. If you watched that video of Lorena Bobbitt that I linked to, you saw her tell the interviewer that she now has good self-esteem and is now helping other women not to be 'victims' -- this, from the ultimate castrating female.
She is just one individual example, an indicator of what happens when our high priests are Abraham Maslow and Oprah Winfrey and Carl Rogers.
And it's easy to see how such a deluded people, following such authorities, might passively acquiesce to displacement, dispossession, and worse.
Beginning in 1950, the APA began issuing public policy statements and resolutions. Although presumably a scientific organization, the list of those proclamations reads like a libretto of politically correct shibboleths: the benefits of abortion, the need for sex education in public schools, the need for affirmative action, the evils of cultural insensitivity, the virtues of everything LGBT, the blessings of needle exchange programs for mainlining addicts, the psychological nourishment of diversity, the insensitivity of English-only initiatives, the repressiveness of white majorities -- and on and on and on and on.
Two trends can be seen in APA public positions: 1) the misuse of science, and 2) the devaluation of people who hold different moral and spiritual views -- in effect, making infidels of those who disagree. The APA's resolutions are scattered throughout its vast website, but partial lists can be found here and here.
From the first linked page of their policy manual: See their resolution on 'racism and racial discrimination':
''THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the American Psychological Association denounces racism in all its forms for its negative psychological, social, educational, and economic effects on human development throughout the life span;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that APA further the objectives of the 2001 United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance through efforts focused on elimination of all forms of racism and racial/ethnic discrimination at all levels of the science and practice of psychology in the United States;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that APA will: (1) pursue diverse racial representation at all levels of APA governance; (2) call upon all psychologists to eliminate processes and procedures that perpetuate racial injustice in research, practice, training and education; (3) call upon all psychologists to speak out against racism and take proactive steps to prevent the occurrence of intolerant or racist acts; and (4) promote psychological research on the alleviation of racial/ethnic injustice.''
I've alluded in earlier blog posts to the role played by all-pervasive belief systems like psychology and all social 'sciences', falsely so-called, in the demise of the West and the rise of anti-White policies, but I don't seem to make much headway with alerting people to just how destructive this mindset is to our people and our future.
You can find any number of ethnopatriot blogs and individuals who are busy lambasting Christianity as the fount of every woe of our people, but scarcely a word is said in criticism of psychology and its 'spiritual' branch, the loosely-termed New Age philosophy. The latter is really a hodgepodge of postmodern psychology mixed with a sort of do-it-yourself, patchwork, multicultural religion.
These belief systems are hand-in-glove with the prevailing political and cultural regime which includes what we call 'political correctness' and the 'tolerance' industry. If there is the remotest resemblance between this belief system and Christianity, or what passes as Christianity in 2010, it is not that Christianity has influenced the former; it is that the 'humanistic' belief system has crept into Christianity and captured its leaders.
If you read the list of policies and resolutions by the APA or other such secular bodies, you will see that it all dovetails with the official dogma of our governments, our media, and the educational complex in the West. This is the dominant belief system of most people in the West, not just secular people or atheists or New Agey people, but of many compromised and ignorant Christians who do not know their own faith.
This is the belief system that rules our lives, really.
It's reinforced everywhere we turn. Pick up a dead-tree newspaper and read a random selection of articles on any number of issues. You will find that the mindset of the APA and other related bodies is reflected exactly in the articles written by just about any journalist or editorial writer. It is the reigning ideology of our time.
We talk about cultural Marxism, but it began with our so-called 'social sciences', with anthropology and sociology and psychology, and cross-pollinated with political leftism to produce the many-headed hydra that dominates our thought and discourse today.
Does anybody remember the days when Scientologists used to have people leafleting out in the streets, trying to reel in new 'customers'? Their sales pitch used to start with the question, ''would you like to take a free personality test?" And just about everybody, at least every young (under 30) individual would eagerly agree. We have been shaped into being a narcissistic, individualistic people, who are fascinated with ourselves, I mean, with our selves. Ridiculous belief systems proliferate by appealing to our obsession with ourselves, our minds and personalities. Pop(ular) psychology is popular because it appeals to this lowest common denominator: the desire to navel-gaze and admire ourselves in mirrors and ponder how very unique we are.
Samuel N. Behrman said
"A quite wonderful discovery -- psychoanalysis. Makes quite simple people feel they're complex."
Christianity, by contrast, tells us we are all sinners in need of a redeemer. That, naturally, rubs the post-modern individual the wrong way. He'd rather be told how scintillating and fascinating he and his creative mind are. He'd rather be told that 'the proper study of mankind is man', and specifically, self.
Psychology may tell us that we are all potentially 'mentally ill' but the social sciences hold out the possibility of human perfectibility because our 'ills' (which are often just bad habits or bad character) are curable by what? In the olden days, years of expensive therapy, many hours on an analyst's couch, or now, lots of medications and 'positive self-talk' and 'boosting self-esteem' and reading the right guru's books.
Look how popular Oprah and Dr. Phil and Deepak Chopra and Dr. Oz are by peddling various forms of this self-religion, posing as 'science.'
Naturally, we have freedom of religion in this country, so people are quite welcome to believe in Xenu and the Galactic Confederacy, or nothing at all if they so choose. But this reigning belief system, despite its preaching 'non-judgmentalism' is not the least bit tolerant of Other Gods, as witness the policy statements by the APA and its pronouncements of anathema on 'racists, homophobes, and xenophobes.'
It's this belief system that saturates our society, and it goes unchallenged because it is part of the air we breathe, and because it wears the benign mask of 'science' and assumes a mantle of infallibility. Everybody, just about, believes in it to some extent, because we absorb it by osmosis. It's on every TV talk show or 'women's' programming in particular. Women are big proselytizers for the psychology cult's tenets, whether they realize it or not. Women are very fond of the touchy-feely-emotional trappings of this belief system. It is a very feminine mindset and cult.
For whatever reason, I've had a longstanding suspicion of the psychology cult, even to the extent of avoiding any psychology classes in college, which made me quite the oddity. One counselor looked at me as though she thought I was a primitive because I said I had chosen to take no psychology classes, though I took other science courses toward my degree. It was clear that saying I avoided psych classes was tantamount, in her eyes, to saying I could not read and write. Everybody took Psych classes in college; everyone, though they were not required for all majors. But everybody loved to analyze themselves.
Here's the crux of the problem I have with psychology. Does not science in general demand some kind of objective perspective, an ability to look at something from outside, in a dispassionate way? We can't do that with ourselves. Our efforts to understand the human mind, especially our own minds, are flawed because the human mind can't objectively understand itself or be honest about itself, much less measure and quantify itself.
As a much greater source says of the human heart, ''who can know it?''
The belief system that we call the psychological science is one which contradicts in the most basic ways the beliefs and attitudes of our forebears. It destroys the very idea of right and wrong, good and evil, making everything relative and subjective. It contradicts the belief that we are responsible human beings, who make choices, and who must be held accountable for our actions. It diminishes our freedom in that it tends to cause us to see ourselves and others as helpless pawns, products of circumstance or neurochemicals or anything but free choice. Homosexuals are born with a genetic predisposition, say the seers of psychology. People are criminals because of circumstances like poverty, or 'racism.'
Nobody can be held accountable except, of course, for people who are heretics when it comes to the established belief system, namely those labeled as 'racists, xenophobes, homophobes, misogynists', and other holdouts such as Christians who believe in the faith of their fathers.
Psychology, like political correctness, is so dominant in our ways of thinking that most of us would not dream of contradicting it in any way.
Behrman's quote about psychoanalysis making simple people seem complex is reflective of the tendency of the psychological dogma to make everything seem complex; things are never what they seem. Contra Ockham's Razor, the most convoluted explanation is the best one for anything, it seems. And this mindset has made people lose moral clarity, to see everything as relative, as a complicated grey area, where there are just 'differing narratives', not truth or falsehood.
Rather than increasing man's wisdom about himself or others or the problems of life in general, it has made everybody lukewarm or noncommital about many things which should be clear-cut.
In response, many people just shut down, and distract themselves with the trivial things, entertainment, sports, shopping, anything but actual thought and discussion.
Hence, here we are fiddling while Rome burns around us. Others, while able to see that our situation is dire, cast about to find someone to blame, and they fix the blame on the older generations (Why didn't they stop this long ago?) or a political party -- and with many people, it's Christianity alone which is blamed for the delusion which our people suffer from.
Let's face it: how many real Christians are out there? How many people take their Christianity seriously and live their lives according to its precepts? Few, sad to say. And Christianity, contrary to what the theocracy-phobics say, exerts pitifully little infliuence on our secular liberal government or on our popular culture, which is decidedly carnal and materialistic.
But the ruling ideology of our day is firmly rooted in this reigning philosophy which combines psychology with its false 'science' of the human mind and the syncretistic, multicultural, all-tolerant 'spirituality' peddled by Oprah, Eckhart Tolle, and other celebrities who wield a great deal of influence over women and the young.
Most of the women and young people I know imbibe these things from the popular culture. Everybody talks in pop-psych jargon and psychobabble, about empowerment and self-esteem and 'sharing'. If you watched that video of Lorena Bobbitt that I linked to, you saw her tell the interviewer that she now has good self-esteem and is now helping other women not to be 'victims' -- this, from the ultimate castrating female.
She is just one individual example, an indicator of what happens when our high priests are Abraham Maslow and Oprah Winfrey and Carl Rogers.
And it's easy to see how such a deluded people, following such authorities, might passively acquiesce to displacement, dispossession, and worse.
Labels: American Decline, Cultural Marxism, Multiculturalism, Pop Psychology, Psychiatry