A timely topic that covers an issue that every dissident also needs to personally consider: taking the step from dissident thinking to disruptive actions.
Why are Most People Cowards? | Obedience and the Rise of Authoritarianism
I remain puzzled why I have never seen the Academy of Ideas quote from Political Ponerology by Andrew Lobaczewski. I have not watched all their videos, so if I have missed it, I'd appreciate a link from an observant viewer.
Lobaczewski was a Polish psychiatrist and his book goes one step deeper into the problem of tyranny. Talking in terms of morals, of society, of governments are all compound-structures that still require the atomic properties of the individual.
Why are most people such cowards? Why do only a few people recoil from being commanded? This is not about the physical act of compliance or obedience, which could be expedient, but the emotional reaction to a situation.
This leads me back to something that I feel is becoming a strong hypothesis: most minds default to the path of least resistance. Most brains are trying to minimise the energy usage and hence will instruct the conscious will to take the path of least resistance: copy whatever everybody else is doing.
This may be energetically efficient at every step - until the final step of extinction. It is the survival of the stuffed men, until the world goes out with a whimper.
A mind trapped within its own efficiency-algorithm requires some extraordinary event to supply the needed extra energy to climb out of such a well of conformity. Such external inputs appear necessary, as otherwise the internal energy required to do such a daring deed would already have existed, and hence the hole would not have felt like a home.
Thus, mental courage to think the unthinkable is a necessary condition to give energy to one's actions, without falling into the other trap of displays of aggressive yet futile disobedience. The fallen hero may serve as a romantic device, but the avoidance of such doom requires both power and clarity.
So, my researches take me down a path that could be called that of the enlightened dissident; as freedom now seems to be a crime, it is fitting that a freedom-fighter be recast as a dissident to the prevailing tyranny.
Looking at the energy-efficiency-neural-algorithm, what would make its opposite equally successful. We must assume that critical thinking and love of freedom are not totally dead, else I would be writing for ghosts. The mere emotional charge needed to say "No!" must come from somewhere. Neurons only fire once they have reached some threshold potential, some level of excitation. But we must also assume humans largely share a common biology - what would make one human a potentially obedient automaton, while another is a free spirit?
I think it has to do with how sensitive one's nervous system is. The word "sensitive" can be misunderstood; I mean here the way some instruments are more sensitive than others. The ability to pick up weak signals that others may miss; the ability to process such signals faster than the average dolt. The ability to imagine the impossible - and then the energy to realise it. That kind of sensitivity, which can manifest across different human spheres, from intellectual to emotional to physical to spiritual to... the limits of human capabilities.
Surely, the most cowardly of all acts is the denial of one's own humanity.
Please vote for my witness account @busbecq.
Can be done directly here.
A witness is more than a machine - and so are you.
Thanks!
When I joined Steemit before 2 years, I didn't have a idea about what the witnesses are. I thought It just a system that don't work a lot. With the time, I understood witness isn't just a machine. But After I set up My witness node in blurt, I understood not only witness is not just a machine but also a valuable life making toward the success of the platform. Just voted for your witness.
One of the things I have quietly sensed since my teenage years, and particularly since the "Reagan Era" is that the world started to implement increasingly draconian... "penalties" for not comforming. Not so much in terms of obidience, but in terms of a certain kind of "social excommunication" for not belonging to clearly defined groups and schools of thought.
I cannot help but think that we can lay some of the culpability at the feet of Television... there's a polarity presented that you are either in support of or not in support of. Nuance gradually fades away. We end up with just the extremes, with the middle removed.
Subsequently, social media has fed a certain "dopamine addiction" that comes with the process of "collecting friends." I know people who are virtually traumatized if someone unfriends them on Facebook... so all the frameworks for "compliance" are put in place in a social sense; no actual law is needed, people are voluntarily choosing their compliance for fear of losing their "dopamine nuggets."
Of course, that's just part of the picture.
Right, I've seen users traumatised by those zero-value downvotes on steem/hive.
The psych effect is far greater than the financial.
In such cases, I think the psyop is to get people to leave so that the reward pool trough is "shared" by just the elite pigs ;-)
If I was to describe the really big picture, it is that human qualities have been weaponised by a small group of malevolents in such a way as to weaken and destroy each other.
What I find depressing and pathetic - as a species - is how most can't see it. That's not a species with clarity of perceptions nor the will to power.
I already voted for you as a witness , isnt it great to be loved and followed 😉
Rycharde the Great ❤️🔥
lol. I think I'm with (Life of ) Brian on the follower thang!
;-)
I had this conversation with my sister recently. Whenever I complain, she says "You could just get the vaccine." To which I respond "It's easier to go along than it is to fight."
Yes, I also feel that a kettled path of least resistance is an observable hypothesis. They also play to the structure of our tribal heritage - where to be ostracised from the group could have been akin to a death sentence.
The Tavistock method also plays to the weaponisation of peer pressure - a method used to great effect within our current situation.
Hard to think of anything left that hasn't been weaponised - and by stealth (well done, psychos!) as most weren't looking. The whole history of science is like that, when one looks at it through that lens - yes, discoveries have been made, but the resulting tech has always been for the elite.
TV, wonderful, everyone could go to the theatre - also a powerful organ of propaganda and perception moulding.
Even Galileo wrote on ballistics for the military.
But I digress.
If someone attacks you with a sword, do you go for a shield or a gun?
Great comment!
If you look at the vast majority of scientific disciplines, they are formatively funded by the same entities - individuals that are verifiably working towards a long term agenda. Thus, it would seem reasonable to suggest that for all our triumphs and breakthroughs - the intent was that science was always intended to be shepherded towards a premeditated conclusion. Now that they're at the cusp of achieving their objectives, the obstacle of the scientific method is being quietly usurped in favour of the cult of communitarian scientism. A religion that forbids the questioning of the science - especially if you're a reputable scientist outside the consensus narrative.
We have our choices along the way - but ultimately the majority appear to opt for comfort, pleasure and greed - all of which (there is that word again lol) been weaponised to ensure our complicity with our own enslavement. A few years back the majority of the crypto community were wanting to build something outside of the system - now they cheer when JP Morgan, and Rothschild's Grayscale buy bitcoin, why? Because it pumps their bags and fuels their dreams of buying Lambos.
For me, a key problem is that we have been mentored into a reactive mindset - thus in the context of our current predicament - I'd opt for strategy - strategic thinking.
I think that is the main reason why most people fall victim of lack of mental courage.
Until that incentive is being corrected, many will still remain a coward. :-(
Interesting topic !
But is it an "incentive"? Seems to be hard-wired into most brains - hence, both hard to remove and seemingly hard to be even self-aware of it.
I think this is a garbage piece of algorithm that appears to both promote survival of the species... and its extinction. We laugh at the meme of lemmings, but what's humanity's excuse for doing the same?
I was only speaking based on my sentiments :-)
I rigidly concur with your comments,
And I think you should also draft section B of this topic. I really want to learn more on obedience & authoritarianism in relation to humans.
Thank you.
Witnwss vote done. I really didn't know about witness and what is need of witness node months ago. @lmost three months ago, a member of serey have informed me about witness and clarifier it. Then I opened a witness node there. Now I realize how important the witnesses are on blockchain. Best wishes for you and blurt.
Congratulations, your post has been curated by @r2cornell-curate. Also, find us on Discord
Felicitaciones, su publication ha sido votado por @r2cornell-curate. También, encuéntranos en Discord
Just like today, the government requires its people to undergo Covid-19 vaccination and is regulated in various regulations and policies. Like it or not, people are forced to accept it. In fact, the community has the right to choose the type of health service.
"community" is a construct - it does not bleed but it can kill.
"It" has no rights to anybody!
I think you will like this one