Unsolicited Testimonial
"Let me tell you something, don't ever think that I am just flattering you. I have joined in various schemes of very famous Internet gurus, but did not find a genius like you in Internet marketing. I have memberships with: Goldquest, Internation, Amway, Graham Hammer, Big Dog Secrets, Felix Ibay, TheRichJerk, etc., but you are far superior to everyone else I came across so far. Your best quality is your compassion... Your compassion towards others to become successful like you is a good virtue. Another thing is that your vision towards life is quite different... You are a visionary... I wish you all the best. Keep up this good work..."-- T.V. (12/29/05)
Stop "Dinging" Yourself!
"Thank you for your website -- #TL12A: Dinging and Dedinging -- Subtle Suppression -- Self-Sabotage! It made me believe that there is indeed a guiding force that leads you to understanding when you sincerely seek understanding. I would like to tell you of a recent experience that revealed to me the severe damaging effects of dinging in our personal lives. I was my own dinger and the result was a battle that in the past undermined my whole life.
I am extremely talented in many areas but in my own eyes it has in the past never been good enough. My energy level has usually been low. I used to feel somewhat depressed daily.
Recently my nephew and niece from Europe visited the US and I was invited to join them at the beach. One of them is 19 and I had not seen him in years. My niece is 16. I spent a great day with them. The next day, I sprang out of bed at 6am and started working with unusual energy to the music of the Beatles. At one point I was dancing in front of a mirror. I accomplished so many things that day and my life was hopeful. After reading in your website I realized what had happened to me. That day at the beach, my nephew gave me an incredible amount of attention. He wanted to know about my life and he insisted that I tell him about the screenplays I was writing. I asked him, "Are you really interested?" He said it was great and he wanted to know the end of the story. My niece gave me big smiles and she was interested in my explanation of the world through the eyes of quantum mechanics, which is my interest. All of a sudden, I found myself interesting, funny, entertaining. I felt accepted, admired and respected. No dinging whatsoever, on the contrary, only gratitude. It was as if my nephew and niece were grateful that they had un uncle like me. My sudden life explosion was directly caused by that day. I am grateful that the light led me to your website -- #TL12A: Dinging and Dedinging -- Subtle Suppression -- Self-Sabotage because I feel excited and full of hope all of a sudden. I have realized that I, myself, have been a big time dinger in the past and now I will set about the task of stopping that.
Thank you again!!!" -- J.V. (8/23/07)
How Someone with a "Core-Power Mentality" (CPM) Can Thrive
"I discovered your websites two years ago. At that point I was almost $20,000 in debt (my girlfriend was minus $50,000). I was convinced I had been effectively converted to slave status... Within two months I stopped all collection action on my girlfriend's debt. Within a year my own debt was completely eliminated and no longer did I view myself as a slave. As I approach the two-year anniversary [of my discovery of your websites], I can report that I now have $50,000 working for me, primarily offshore. My debt is zero! ...I'm not going to pretend that I owe it all to Frederick Mann or his websites, but at the same time... I can only encourage everyone to study diligently BuildFreedom, BigBooster, and their recommended readings." -- S.C. (9/28/2000)
Unfortunately, I (Frederick Mann) don't know the specifics of "S.C.'s" Core-Power Mentality. Nevertheless, we can safely assume that SC did become Someone Who Can Succeed. We can also assume with reasonable certainty that S.C. learned from his experiences and became more capable over time.
More recently, another correspondent emailed me:
"I took your advice a few years ago and signed up for YMMSS. I earned $18,000 with that program. Thanks! I also signed up with 12DailyPro and made $3,000 and signed up with 12by12Daily and made $4,000..." -- I.S. (7/31/07)
Become A 10X Performing Person!
In your head you most likely have a "program" about how fast your earnings and/or business can grow. "10% per year" is a typical "growth program." If you have such a program in your brain, it almost forces you you to think and act in ways that limit you to "10%-per-year" growth. It's a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy!
Would you like to earn ten times as much as you are now earning?
If you could become ten times as effective and efficient as you now are, would you be able to earn 10 times as much?
You most likely have a "rate-of-growth" program in your brain that limits your thinking and actions, holding you back.
In 1984, Jack Welch who was then Chairman of General Electric Corporation, was introduced to the "ten-times-growth" (10X) program. Over a period of 18 months, starting in 1985 when GE was a $30 billion company, the "10X-growth" program was introduced to thousands of GE managers. By 1988, GE had grown into a $300 billion company, and as a result GE's shareholder value had grown ten times!
If you are not yet utilizing the "ten-times-growth" (10X) program, we're happy to tell you that FREE TRAINING (via email) is available.
There's also a book you can read online on the subject: Software For Your Brain by Dr. Michael Hewitt-Gleeson.
Do you want the FREE "ten-times-growth" (10X) training?
The training consists of 35 interactive lessons. There are no fees of any kind. The success of the 10X approach is based on a few basic principles:
1. Your current results in life are a direct consequence of your general thinking skills, the way you think about yourself, what you do, and how you do it.
2. Your future results in life can be much better than they have been in the past.
3. Your current thinking skills and/or brain software can be upgraded.
4. The most powerful way to do this is through daily training.
5. You are able to find around 20 minutes a day to do this, most days.
6. Self-expression and feedback are very important aspects of learning and improvement and should not be underestimated or neglected.
More good news! FREE Sales X 10 training (called NewSell and consisting of 15 interactive lessons) is now also available.
See: BECOME A 10X PERFORMING PERSON!
However, there are potential obstacles. You may not be able to install the 10X brain software. You may be a victim of Helplessness and other Negative Override Programs that prevent you from installing the 10X brain software -- see The Helplessness Context and Core-Helplessness Mentality (CHM).
Imagine what would happen if you could combine the 10X brain software with the 8/20 Principle!
LEARN TO THINK RIGHT!
TO SUCCEED YOU HAVE TO THINK RIGHT!
For a long time I've looked for some hidden reasons why people succeed or fail. I've found the answer! ELEVEN CORE THOUGHT PATTERNS! If you don't "fix" these 11 core thought patterns, no matter what else you try to do to succeed, these 11 HIDDEN core thought patterns will sabotage your success. FIX THEM OR FAIL!!!
"Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny."
-- Frank Outlaw
"You'll learn how even radical change can be totally effortless, in the FREE Think Right Now! Accelerated Success Course!"
In 6 bite-sized email classes over 6 days, you'll learn:
...And a whole lot more!
To get your FREE course on the easiest most predictable way to make massive, radical changes in your emotions and habits, subscribe to it right now.
In less than 3 minutes your first class will be waiting for you in your in-box. 5 more will follow over the next 5 days.
Get your FREE course right now!
[defunct]
How Someone with a
"Core-Helplessness Mentality" (CHM) Can Suffer
Another correspondent, (let's call him "CHM") who had been receiving my promotional emails for about 5-6 years, sent me an email in July, 2005 (edited):
"I do get your regular messages on Internet business. Thanks for that, even if I seem to miss the good opportunities! The simple reason I joined some of your recommended programs is to make money. Yes, I have spent a fortune in MLMs and HYIPs and I have now to recover about $30,000 of losses, before I start to make a profit again!
I don't like MLMs and I see a passive program like ETX [E-TradeXchange, a program I (Frederick Mann) made a few thousand with, but which effectively became defunct as a moneymaker a month or so after it launched] as very interesting for me. Would you believe me if I told you that I don't have any extra money left after investing in HYIPs and that I am waiting for THE program that will make me recover?
I don't want to blame you that you made referral money from people like me who have put $50 or up to several thousands of dollars in a program that pretends you earn money even if you don't want or know how to recruit. That is my scenario. Every time I tried this it failed. I don't blame you I am taking the decision to get in on my own and no one but me is held responsible.
For example, some previous programs you recommended have not performed as promised, or paid nothing. I also lost a lot of money with a financial club you promoted earlier.
I am not a recruiter, but in none of the programs where you don't recruit have I seen people put in my downline?
I think there are a lot of people like me who having lost so much, but are still interested to know what new programs are launched, hoping to see an interesting and honest opportunity arise. But either have no more extra, non-living money to jump in or prefer to wait for a few months to see if it stays around paying before getting in..." -- CHM (July, 2005)
Frederick's comments: CHM claims to have suffered losses of $30,000 over a period of 5-6 years. Then he suddenly discovered that something might be wrong and he sent me an email to complain. Why didn't he send an email after a month or two and losing maybe a few hundred or a thousand? Does this point to a Core-Helplessness Mentality? Even a compulsive loser? Could this be like a heartburn victim who waits 5-6 years before he does anything about it?
If my recommendations were so bad, why didn't CHM discover that within a few months? Why didn't he find someone else who provides more profitable advice?
How come CHM "missed the good opportunities?" How come "everything he tried failed?" Some others -- like S.C. and I.S. above -- did very well following my recommendations.
The central issue revealed by CHM's email is that through his own actions he lost $30,000 -- he victimized himself to the tune of $30,000 over 5-6 years. I suspect that during this period he never asked himself, "What am I doing?" or, "How can I improve what I'm doing?"
CHM says he doesn't blame me and then he proceeds to effectively blame me for my recommendations. He also blames programs that didn't perform as promised. But CHM says nothing about learning to succeed or improving his own performance. Many of my recommendations covered this. I suspect he ignored my recommendations in this respect. His focus seems to be mostly on factors outside himself.
CHM says, "I'm not a recruiter" (the only indication of "focus on self" in his email.) Some of my advice has been on how to recruit. The "I'm not a recruiter" almost certainly points to a Core-Helplessness Mentality with Helplessness Imprints along the lines "I'm useless; nobody will ever listen to me; nobody will ever become part of my team."
When I promote a program that later proves to become a good opportunity -- enabling participants to earn $10,000 or more (what I call a "killing") -- only a very small percentage (1-2% at best), of those I promote to, end up joining. Typically, of those who join, only 1-2% tend to make a serious attempt to succeed with the program. Sometimes maybe 3-4% make a half-hearted attempt to succeed. Typically, about 95% of those who join make no attempt whatsoever to succeed with the program they joined.
I surmise that about 98% of people trying to make money online suffer from Core-Helplessness Mentality to the extent that they don't learn to make money even with the best of programs. At the time of writing his email above, CHM most likely was among the 98%.
How Someone with an
"Incompetent Mentality" Can Suffer
Another correspondent, (PWS) who has been receiving my promotional emails for about 5 years, sent me an email in September, 2007 (edited):
"Why should I take advice from a loser? For in my eyes, you're a loser. 35 programs I've joined under you in the last 5 years and lost money with! And when I tried to show you a winner program, you didn't even respond. Look at GPP (www.GlobalPensionPlan.net/)! They have an ingenious idea: You sign up for life insurance of Euro 200,000, set on the 67th year of age (so the health and death risk is deleted), surrender it to the program owners, so that you don't have to pay a single cent. They pay a single payment to the insurance company, raise a loan on it and from that you'll get Euro 55,000 (if you aren't yet 67 years old). I am older than that, but I've earned till now the lump sum of Euro 504,000 (that is about $685,440)!!! 'Cause they're paying for each referral Euro 2,000, and that 12 levels deep. I'm really not a good referrer, but I've built a downline of 252 members within just 5 months. Calculate, what you possibly could have earned! And than kick yourself in the... somewhere for having lost more than a million!! And I guess, that lots of your subscribers have joined GPP (but not under you). You could have gotten the referral bonuses for them. And what is the entrance fee of $40 (€30) compared to the possible gain? I don't think that they're running with our €30, 'cause they would give away a real big succes. Even for handling over the 100,000 insurance applications they would get the lump sum of €900 million (equals about $1,224,000,000!!!). And they earn lots more, for not each member can or will build a downline of 12 levels, so they are saving those €2,000 for these members. As I said, my downline has 252 members, I've gotten only 8 members in my 12th level, and even the best recruiter of my downline has reached only level 11. Calculate how much the company is saving on referral bonuses they don't have to pay. No, I'm pretty sure, this program will work.
I've done quite a lot of business with Chinese people and know their business attitude. Each and everybody of them has checked me, sometimes 3 - 4 month, before doing the first business with me. When talking with them I found out that they did know more about me, than my banks and the fiscal authorities together. They even knew my secret bank data, which not even my wife knows! In my discussions with them they told me that the worst thing for a Chinese is, to "lose his face," as they call it. In July 2006 a Chinese businessman with about 12,000 employees was interested in the program, in order to provide retirement benefits for all his employees. He checked the program and the owners for half a year and joined with all his employees at the end of January 2007!! That is another reason why I trust this program.
By the way, GPP is still accepting new members, though they've already reached their aim of 100,000 members. But the Insurance Company detected about 20,000 members who didn't provide their birth dates, or didn't give either first or last name, or are over 67 years old, and rejected these applications. But 'cause of the contract between the program owners and the Insurance Company, they have to offer 100,000! So they've reopened the program. If you're very fast, you can jump on the rolling train!" -- PWS
Frederick's comments: PWS replied to an email in which I promoted WealthTekk, with which I'd earned over $30,000 by early September, 2007, and with every penny due to me having been paid. (If you take WealthTekk's free tour and log into your account, you'll find me at or near the top of the Leaderboard.) By contrast, PWS has lost money in 35 programs over 5 years. Isn't it a sign of incompetence to call me the "loser?" What's going on in PWS's head?
Why does he insult me and then suggest that I join a program under him? More incompetence?
GPP (www.GlobalPensionPlan.net/) looks like a common form of "insurance scam." There's a program, originally called "E65," that works the same way. (I must confess that I originally promoted E65 because I'd known the webmaster for several years and thought he was trustworthy. He said he knew the principal very well and assured me that E65 wasn't a scam. Believing him reflected my own incompetence at that time. "Common reasoning" for joining such a program is that it costs "just $40 one-time"; if it works out, you get paid tens of thousands; if it doesn't pay out, you've lost an insignificant amount that won't hurt you.)
The way this common scam (a form of the more general "advance-fee scam") works is that "some clever people make an arrangement with an insurance company." For the "insurance policies" to be activated, there must be a large number of members -- like 100,000. Members pay a nominal amount of $25-$50. Somewhere down the line, the company announces that because of some pretext, more members can be accepted. Later, the company announces that they're ready to activate the "insurance policies," but all members need to send in "$50 to get debit cards" so they can receive their money. After that, there's usually a never-ending series of excuses for delays.
An important part of the scam is promising high referral bonuses -- like E65's "$1,000 per referral, 5 levels deep" and GPP's "€2,000, 12 levels deep" to attract major promoters.
The company collects several million and also builds a large "customer" base. They may create and promote other "investment programs" (usually also scams) to their "customers." In the case of E65, it was a program called ComShares that supposedly had some "expert traders" who "knew how to make money in the Asian markets."
PWS claims that he's "earned the lump sum of €504,000 (about $685,440)," but he's almost certainly been paid nothing, because payments only start after the "insurance policies" have been activated.
Psychologically, for most people, once they get involved in such a program, it becomes part of their life. It becomes very difficult to consider the possibility that it might be a scam and walk away from it -- particularly if you're hoping to receive "€504,000" and you've been imagining how your life will change once you get all that money. (E65 was launched in 1999 and is still stringing along their "customers," sending them regular "updates" with new promises and "explanations" for the never-ending delays.)
The "Chinese argument" seems just plain silly! The argument that the company "saves" by not having to pay certain referral bonuses seems misguided to me.
Here's a Review of GPP, I found in about 5 minutes!
It seems that in PWS's mind I'm a loser and he's a winner, because he lost money in 35 programs I recommended over 5 years (making me a loser!), while he's in the GPP "winner program" which is going to pay him at least €504,000. Presumably I'm also a loser because had I listened to him and promoted GPP, I would have earned a million or more!
That PWS lost money in 35 programs over 5 years and now thinks GPP is a "winner program" could make you suspect that he's been operating well below the "success threshold."
It also seems very likely that PWS overestimates his level of competence dramatically -- particularly seeing that he regards GPP as a "winner program" -- see Discover Where You Are.
Furthermore, it seems that during the past 5 years, PWS has learned little or nothing. In fact, his latest email indicates that he has been "dyslearning" and becoming less competent over time -- see "98%er Characteristics." For 5 years, it seems, he was "competent" enough to join 35 programs I recommended, but not competent enough to follow my advice on how to make money with the programs. Then, suddenly after 5 years, he falsely concluded that I was a loser and he should no longer follow my advice at all. It also seems that PWS has now falsely concluded that he's a winner because he's in the GPP "winner program" which is going to pay him at least €504,000 -- a classic example of the "Regression/Dyslearning Loop?"
Edited from an email from "R.T." to Frederick Mann":
"In all I've tried, I haven't made anything work. I'm not worth s_ _t for anything.
I cannot...
I've been searching, reading, and studying. I've seen sooooooooooo much, but I still know nothing!
I'm sad, depressed, obsessed, and fruitless...
I respectfully ask for your help. Can you help me... make more money? If you can, show me, I will do my part." -- R.T.
The following has been compiled and edited from an email exchange between Frederick Mann (F.M.) and "H.H." F.M.'s comments have been added.
H.H.: I will not give up until I secure a good living on the Internet in spite of the plethora of BS out there.
F.M.: In order to succeed you may have to become someone who can succeed. You may also have to acquire knowledge and skills that enable you to move above the "success threshold." Furthermore, you may have to remove any BS in your own head that might be lowering your level of success.
H.H.: I'm not sure what BS (specifically) you were referring to in my own head... I was a little offended by that comment.
F.M.: Getting "offended" is most likely part of the BS in your head.
H.H.: I realize that in order to succeed I have to become someone who can succeed and that requires obtaining knowledge.
F.M.: Most likely, you don't sufficiently understand what's involved in becoming someone who can succeed.
H.H.: I feel I do understand what it takes to be successful. It doesn't have anything to do with the "so-called BS" in my head. I've studied NLP [Neuro-Linguistic Programming], I participated in and facilitated positive thinking in relationship building, etc. I've read most of the material and was successful! [in the "job world"]
F.M.'s Comments: I've been communicating with H.H. for more than 7 months, basically on how to succeed at making money online. Many of his emails seemed to reflect victimization. It seems to me that, given the degree of his CHM ("Core-Helplessness Mentality"), his chances of succeeding online are small -- no matter how "determined" he might be.
The chances are overwhelming that in the area of making money online, some of the "knowledge" in H.H.'s head is BS. It's also possible that he's been "dyslearning" from some of his online experiences -- getting emotional, blaming others and factors outside himself ("the plethora of BS out there"), and making false conclusions -- adding more BS to the BS already in his head -- and becoming less competent over time. This may apply to many people who've been victimized.
As long as H.H.'s "mentality" is configured so he gets "offended" when someone suggests that he might have BS in his head, he cannot remove the BS that prevents him from learning and becoming sufficiently competent to succeed ("rising above the success threshold").
On 7/13/07, H.H. emailed me:
H.H.: I've been a strong supporter of wellness products and systems for a long time. It's a little disappointing to find out that you are promoting "THC." This is a scam of the highest proportions. This is simply another parasite preying on the sick who are full of hope. Think about it, if this guy cured someone of ALS the papers would be all over it.
F.M.: Sometimes when someone responds to something, their response is 100% about the thing they respond to and 0% about themselves. Sometimes it's the other way round: 0% about the thing they respond to and 100% about themselves. Sometimes it's somewhere in between. Unless H.H. has personally applied THC without achieving good results, or knows someone who has applied them without good results, I assume that his response about THC being a scam is a 100% response to the BS in his head and 0% about THC!
My colleague Mark Lindsay, who has applied THC more extensively than I have, says: "My opinion of "THC" is that they work phenomenally well. For me, THC has worked far better than things like Idenics and Centerpointe Holosync technology. You can also work with a coach, which adds a "laser-like focus" to the process."
1. Hold your index finger about 8-12 inches in front of your face.
2. Lift your finger about 2-3 inches.
3. What made your finger go up?
4. How did you do it?
5. What is it about you that made it possible for you to do it?
6. By lifting your finger did you create a shift in the universe?
7. If you could do that, what else can you do?
8. If you could do that, what can't you do?
9. Do your beliefs affect what you can and can't do?
10. Can you see your beliefs like you can see your finger?
11. Can you "lift" your beliefs like you can lift your finger?
12. If "yes," go ahead; if "no," what and why are your limitations?
by Frederick Mann -- 10/1/07 (under construction; first version should be completed in about 2-3 months.)
(Note on word usage: Some political words, like "government," "state," "country," "nation," "law," etc., may not represent reality very well (they are often used to mislead) -- see Political Fakery? and the "Concept Formation" and "Does the government really exist?" videos. However, it would be difficult to communicate without using such words, so I'm using "government*," "state*," "country*," "nation*" and "law*." The "*" is the equivalent of crossing my fingers, to indicate that I may be using a "fake word.")
Sponsoring Protocol: If you were directed to this page by someone other than Frederick Mann/Bigbooster, and you decide to buy any products or services, or join any moneymaking programs, please check with your sponsor before buying/joining. Where applicable, please buy/join, using your sponsor's referral/affiliate URLs.
"Our parents did the best they could knowing what they did at the time. We, as adults, must now take responsibility for our own lives and learn what "normal" is so that we can have healthier, more productive lives." -- Coping.org
Discover why to be "normal" is to be "average" is to be "programmed for mediocrity."
"We must overcome the notion that we must be regular. It robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre." -- Uta Hagen
This Report is an Attempt to Provide the Most Effective and Efficient Ways for People at All Levels To Elevate Themselves to Far Above "Normal" or "Average." (Who is satisfied with being "normal" or "average," anyway?)
Can You Become 10 Times as Effective and Efficient as You Are Now?
Click Here to Find Out!
Is New Brain Software Available for Me to Install to Upgrade by a Factor of 10?
According to Andre Bacard in Hunger for Power: Who Rules the World and How: "It is hard to overstate how deeply many followers conform to their leaders. The passion to obey is every bit as intense as the hunger to command. When Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin died, millions of Russians rushed into the streets and cried. Persons whose families had been sent to Siberian labor camps mourned the mass murderer who fomented their nightmares. These rank-and-file citizens deluded themselves that Stalin was innocent of all wrongdoing, that his orders were misinterpreted by zealous subordinates (like themselves)..." This phenomenon has to do with "capture-bonding," "human domestication," and "selective blindness." It has profound implications. Click Here for the Details!
This Report identifies some significant breakthroughs to enable you to become more successful. You're invited to take advantage of them, e.g., the Power Success Formula.
An important success principle is to Develop a "Core-Power Mentality" (CPM). An inspiring example of CPM can be found in the book Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise And Fall Of Jack Johnson by Geoffrey C. Ward. Jack Johnson was born in 1878 in Galveston, Texas. His parents were former slaves. Despite all the disadvantages of poverty and discrimination, Johnson became someone who succeeded bigtime as a heavyweight boxer. For several years, the top white boxers wouldn't fight Johnson because they were scared of him. Their excuse was that "they didn't fight blacks." Nevertheless, Johnson triumphed and became world champion. It's remarkable that a child of former slaves could develop a Core-Power Mentality (CPM) to the extent that Jack Johnson did. A two-part documentary on Johnson's career by filmmaker Ken Burns was aired on PBS during 2005. See Core Power: Jack Johnson, Advanced 2%er
If you've been trying for some time to make money online, and you've had little or no success, then this may be the most important Report you've ever come across! Be sure to study it carefully! It may also be worthwhile to read this Report more than once. If you come across any words you don't fully understand, be sure to use a dictionary to clarify them.
And, if you're already quite successful, you may be able to utilize some of the information on this page to become much more successful. You may also be able to benefit greatly by sending your contacts to this Report, so they can also become more successful.
Based on my online interaction with tens of thousands of people, it seems that about 1-2% of people have the ability to spontaneously become successful. They can easily read guidelines and instructions, grasp them, apply them, and achieve their desired results. "S.C." (right column) seems to be such a person. For the 1-2% it's relatively easy to Get on a Path to Success. These people seem to have a "Core-Power Mentality" CPM) -- a Champion Mentality. I call them "2%ers."
About 98-99% of people, it seems to me, are Stuck on a Path to Failure. Typically, no matter what they try, they just continue to fail. "CHM" (right column) and "PWS" (right column) seem to be such people. They can read "success books," attend "success seminars," etc., but they just continue to fail. These people seem to have a "Core-Helplessness Mentality" (CHM) -- a Victim Mentality. I call them "98%ers."
During July, 2007, I received an email which included:
"He said 99% of network marketers don't care or want to know how to either brand themselves in their business or learn the skill of lead generation and further he said they didn't have the mental capacity to do it... Reducing his subscribers to the level of mindless drones to be fed a simple job and told to do it without independent thought or innovation."
In Why do people fail? Jim Straw also alludes to 2% becoming successful and 98% remaining unsuccessful.
IMPORTANT! By referring to some people as "98%ers" and/or "Packers," I don't mean to insult, demean, degrade, put down, or dehumanize anyone. If you've been operating at a low level of success, you may be able to quickly move up to a much higher level. So "98%er" and/or "Packer" is a temporary designation. I also don't call any specific person a "98%er" or "Packer" (except for some of the anonymous examples). It's up to you to assess your current level of success, and to find the specific information in this Report that may be of greatest potential benefit to you. In any case, don't take it persoanlly -- Google "don't take it persoanlly" for articles on the topic.
The challenge addressed in this Report is to provide the means whereby at least some of the 98-99% can move forward to greater success. If this can be achieved, it may be a first in human history!
During July 2007, I identified "Helplessness" as a most important obstacle to success for some people (probably applies to most 98%ers). I came to the conclusion that there are some unsuccessful people whose route to success may be hampered or even remain blocked until they first confront, handle, and overcome their Helplessness.
Some helpless people are like a car that has lost 50% or more of its power because there's something seriously wrong with its engine, which doesn't work properly. If the engine has lost 50%+ of its power, you can drive the car on a level road or downhill, but it won't go uphill. Some helpless people typically give up when they have to "travel uphill" in order to move forward with their lives.
If you want the car with a faulty engine to run properly, you have to fix the engine to restore its power. Trying to fix anything else is unlikely to provide significant benefits. Similarly, the situation with some helpless people is that any attempts to fix anything other than their Helplessness may prove futile.
Personal power is the opposite of Helplessness. A loss of power tends to result in a degree of Helplessness -- from mild to severe. Helplessness has a "hardware component" in the form of low levels of the neurotransmitters noradrenaline and serotonin. For some people, the best place to start moving toward success is to "Upgrade their Brain Chemistry."
During September 2007, I identified what I call the "Packer Factor" as a most important component of Helplessness. The Packer Factor encompassess the damage done by "compulsory state* education" and how to recover from it. For some people this may be the best place to start.
Issues that need to be handled first, I refer to as "Make-or-Break Issues." The main ones I've identified:
Some people live their lives in such a way that they "don't have time to improve themselves" -- or so they think. If your situation is such that extra money will make it easier to spend time on self-improvement, then a good place for you start may be Overcome Money Barriers.
Another general theme of mine is that it may be useful to compare your brain to a computer. You have software (programs) in your brain. You can improve or "upgrade" your brain software. You may have noticed your PC (particularly if it uses Microsoft programs) apparently losing power over time and slowing down. Program "crashes" may also become more frequent over time. This is comparable to helplessness that gradually gets worse.
This Report can also be regarded as a "general human debug" attempt. In the same way that computer programs can have "bugs" that prevent them from working properly, humans can have "bugs in their brain software." So, as this Report grows, I attempt to identify "the most important human bugs," and provide "fixes" for them.
You may think that because you're "normal," there are no bugs in your brain. You may be smarter than all your family members, your coworkers, and everyone else you know personally, and therefore think there's no need to upgrade your brain software. I bet that if you were to ask Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter if they could benefit from further upgrading their brain software, they would both respond with an emphatic: "YES!" And I bet that if you asked them if there might still be bugs in their brains they don't know about, both would respond with an emphatic: "YES!" Really smart people never stop upgrading their brains! See Programmed for Mediocrity.
The sheer volume of possible things to do (Success Steps) included here to upgrade yourself may seem overwhelming. Fortunately, there may be some shortcuts that will work for you. First, there's the 80/20 Principle. You may find that you can take 20% of the Success Steps to achieve 80% of the potential benefits available to you. The ratio could be different: 10/90, 5/95, or even 1/99! In other words, there could be one Success Step that, if taken, will provide you with 99% of the potential benefits -- see Some Relatively Simple Solutions for Some?
According to Mike Brescia of Think Right Now! (right column), if you concentrate on doing the most important tasks related to your responsibilities and on your list of things to do (and you put off only unimportant tasks), you will be in the top half of one percent of the human population. So the challenge for you is to identify your most important tasks and do them!
Mike Brescia also says that "...[I]f you want to make any kind of significant change in your life, you must take a lot of "uncomfortable" actions that are not "normal" for you to take." So keep in mind that some of the Success Steps in this Report may seem "uncomfortable" and "not normal" to you.
Second, if Helplessness is an issue for you -- this most likely applies to you if you're a 98%er -- then the best place to start might be to "upgrade your brain chemistry."
Third, There are a number of related techniques that can be learned within minutes, called "Emotional Freedom Techniques." You may be able to use EFT to quickly and effectively handle a wide range of things in your life that bother you. You can download a free EFT Manual from the Emotional Freedom Techniques website. If you have issues you can't handle with EFT, then Idenics may be your best option.
Fourth, based on my personal experience and several reports I've received from others, Idenics stands out as a technology that can be applied to handle multiple "unwanted conditions" in people's lives in a few hours. More on this under Some Relatively Simple Solutions for Some?
Fifth, you can also use an approach based on two questions:
See MetaSuccess Principle, Quantum Leap, and Implications.
Sixth, it may be worth applying the Decide-and-Act Shortcut and Completing Cycles of Action.
Seventh, you may be able to install the 10X brain software to speed up your upgrade process by a factor of 10!
If some of your past attempts to become more successful and/or to upgrade yourself didn't work out as well as you'd hoped, then you may need to address helplessness first -- see Raise Your Mood Level, The Helplessness Context, and Core-Helplessness Mentality. (You may be like a car with a weak engine. A new paint-job may make the car look good, but won't make it run properly! If you want better results, you fix the engine!)
For people who suffer from a degree of helplessness two factors may be particularly relevant:
These two fators may make helplessness a particularly tough nut for some to crack!
I first started writing about personal power in 1984 and about helplessness in 1992. But my focus was probably about 95% on personal power and about 5% on helplessness. I think it was in 2004 that I added the following to #TL80A: Creativity Report #1:
"Helplessness is the single most important level of creation. Reason: many people are stuck at this level. It also means that they are more or less helpless to apply the formulas for the other levels. Helplessness can be a pernicious trap. If you are helpless you also tend to be helpless about your helplessness. (Interestingly, Hubbard never identified helplessness as belonging in his "conditions formulas" -- nor self-deception!) ...The book Helplessness by Martin E. P. Seligman, contains a comprehensive theory of helplessness, including cause and cure - all supported by ample experimental evidence."
It was only in July 2007 that I fully identified "helplessness" as a pivotal obstacle to success for some people, and that if they didn't confront, handle, and overcome their helplessness, much of what they might do to improve themselves would not work well. I originally read Seligman's Helplessness around 1990.
So it took me 17 years -- while I've been actively engaged in figuring out what people could do to upgrade -- before I fully realized just how important helplessness was. This is an indication of my Having been relatively blind to helplessness!
It was only after reading SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless by Steve Salerno and Primal Healing by Dr. Arthur Janov, that I fully realized that helplessness might be a "make-or-break issue" for some people.
Some 98%ers -- people who typically fail trying to make money online, or trying anything to make money in ways other than jobs where they're told what to do -- may also suffer from "deep helplessness imprints." Some were imprinted in early childhood, some during birth, and some in the womb. This phenomenon is described comprehensively by Dr. Arthur Janov in Primal Healing. Chapter 4 is titled: "The Imprint: How It Runs Our Lives."
In my experience, practically nobody provides the means for 98%ers to improve and become significantly more successful, because the imprints that generally render them relatively helpless in their cores are not addressed. Nor is the "biochemistry of helplessness." This applies to "success and self-imptovement books," "self-improvement seminars and workshops," "meditation, think-and-grow-rich, think-right-now, law-of-attraction, motivational-speaking, personal-coaching, permission-to-succeed, deep-breathing, sensory-deprivation, trauma-clearing, psychotherapy, and brain-entrainment practices," etc.
SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless by Steve Salerno exposes the limitations of the "self-help gurus." Salerno suggests that much of the "Self-Help and Actualization Movement" (SHAM) tends to make people worse.
Based on his later writings, I don't know that Seligman has recognized helplessness as such a "make-or-break issue." Apart from Janov, I don't know of any psychologists or psychiatrists who appreciate the extreme importance of helplessness. (Maybe people in "helping professions" benefit most by having as many helpless clients as possible!)
This suggests that many people may be relatively blind to helplessness!
Widespread blindness to helplessness may stem from our evolutionary past. Many of our ancestors were captured by rival tribes. The "captees" who submitted (more or less as helpless victims) to their captors and bonded with them, survived. It's called "capture-bonding" or the "Stockholm syndrome." Those who resisted (refusing to submit to their captors) were killed. So, capture-bonding could have become a "survival instinct."
Helplessness associated with capture-bonding would "work better" if the captees were not aware of their helplessness. If they were aware of their helplessness, they might do something about it, resist, and then get killed. In this way, blindness to helplessness may also have become a "survival instinct."
Some animals manifest a "submission instinct" (or "surrender instinct") as a survival mechanism. In animal groups with hierarchies or pecking orders, "inferior" animals have to submit (demonstrate helplessness) to "superior" animals. Typically, "inferior" animals that don't submit are attacked, forced into submission, or killed. During a fight between two animals, the weaker animal may suddenly lie down and expose its neck to the stronger animal. The stronger animal may then stop fighting as well. The weaker animal's expression of helpless submission enables it to survive. This is similar to one side surrendering during a human battle to stop further killing.
It seems likely that humans have genetically inherited a "submission instinct" from both their human and animal ancestors. From a capture-bonding perspective, you either submit helplesslessly, or you are rejected and killed!
The good news is that helplessness is associated with low levels of the neurotransmitters noradrenaline and serotonin in the brain. If you suffer from helplessness, you may be able to overcome much of it by taking supplements to raise your noradrenaline and serotonin levels -- see Raise Your Mood Level.
If you're already considerably or even highly successful at making money online, you probably realize that you're part of a small minority. You may also have built at least one downline in a moneymaking program, where most of your downline members never became as successful as you would have liked. Imagine what would happen if you could provide your downline members with the means to become much more successful. This article may just be what's needed for your contacts and associates to become much more successful.
A potential obstacle is that when you first look over this page, a "voice in your head" might say: "This is too much! I can't possibly do all this!" If you experience any such reluctance to proceed, please Click here, right now, to go to Raise Your "Quit Threshold."
If you've been less successful than you wanted to be (particularly at making money online, but it could also apply to the rest of your life), you may now be at a point where you have some important decisions to make. So let me tell you what's at stake:
If you implement the Success Steps appropriate for you on this page, the chances are very high that you will increase your level of success... at least moderately... maybe considerably... you may even achieve spectacular success!
So, your first decision may be to decide whether it's worth your time to check out this Report to get an idea of how some of the information may be of benefit to you.
Then, your second decision could be to decide whether it's worth putting in the effort required to become more successful... and, possibly, spectacularly successful.
You could also decide to try something else. If that works for you, great! -- Please let me know what you did so I can add it to this Report. If whatever else you try doesn't work, you can always come back to this Report later...
Power Success Formula (PSF): You ---> Obstacle ---> Action ---> Result
The Most Powerful Formula in the World?
If you want to produce a Result, you take the appropriate Action that produces the Result you want... and then you get the Result.
There could be an Obstacle between You and the Action that prevents you from taking the Action. There are basically three kinds of Obstacles:
If you need Knowledge, Skills, Resources, Tools, Technologies, etc., you take the appropriate Actions to acquire and/or Learn them. In some cases, you use a trial-and-error Learning process (see Progression/Learning Loop) to determine appropriate Actions and Results. See also ("Fail Fast") Take Action, Produce Results (Successes or Failures), Learn from the Results, and Apply What You Learn to Take More Effective Action.
Potentially most important Positives to Add and Negatives to Remove:
PSF is deliberately formualted so that all obstacles are treated as elements of helplessness. There's a strong reason for this. The opposite of power is powerlessness, which is helplessness. Anything that reduces your power (makes you less powerful) can be regarded as an element of helplessness. I suggest that it's very practical to think in terms of the only obstacle being helplessness. Insufficient personal power (helplessness) may prevent you from overcoming obstacles. PSF helps you to be responsible by focusing on what you can control to achieve the objectives you want. The essence is to increase your personal power to overcome obstacles. For more on, "Why Helplessness?," see Introduction.
I suspect that for many people, "I don't FEEL like doing it (now)," is one of their biggest obstacles to success. Have you ever heard anyone say, "I don't THINK like doing it (now)?" How you feel is largely determined by your brain chemistry, particularly certain neurotransmitters. Fortunately, you can Do Something about It! This may be a good place for some to start.
Timothy Leary - How to Operate Your Brain
Tom Cruise and Matt Lauer Discuss Psychiatry
Frederick Mann: In general, I think Tom Cruise hits the nail on the head about psychiatry. I share his concerns about "psychiatric drugs"; I think they should be avoided like the plague. Cruise briefly mentions vitamins. In general, I think supplements are much safer than prescription drugs. The drug companies benefit most if they can get people hooked on drugs with side effects. The typical doctor will then prescribe extra drugs for the side effects... I think Cruise is completely mistaken about "no chemical imbalances." To validate this claim, every human on earth would have to be tested for "normal chemical balances." It would take just one person with an imbalance, to refute the "no chemical imbalances" claim.
For more on psychiatry, see Psychiatric Fakery?
Considerable research indicates that low levels of the neurotransmitters noradrenaline and serotonin (a chemical imbalance) in the brain are associated with feelings of helplessness. In the "7 Keys to UltraWellness" video (below) Mark Hyman, M.D. refers to "hormonal imbalances" -- another chemical imbalance.
Drug-Free Answer to Most Health Problems
For more information, see Wealth Scan as well as Health, Life-Extension & Biological/Physical Immortality (another video by Gerard Kielty I.R.B; I.D.E.).
The 7 Keys to UltraWellness
For more information, see UltraWellness as well as Health, Life-Extension & Biological/Physical Immortality (more videos by Mark Hyman, M.D.).
Most people experience situations where their Feelings Overpower their Will and their Thoughts! Some Feelings are Much More Powerful than Thoughts and Willpower for most people. Strong Feelings Make Most People Relatively Helpless. That's why, for most people, the Key to Open the Door that Makes Upgrading Possible is Brain Chemistry! (How many people can use willpower to not eat when they FEEL hungry?)
"Your quality of life -- and your income -- depend on your mood level. Your mood level depends on your brain biochemistry. As long as you are trying to get ahead while feeling low you are beating your head against the wall. A gigantic step towards success lies in improving how you FEEL."[emphasis added] -- The authors of Food, Mood and Money
Consider the possibility that for most people the primary factor determining their level of success might be their mood level. The reality may be that if they try to do things, other than elevating their mood level, in order to become more successful -- like improving their thinking, getting motivated, getting trained, etc. -- they make little or no progress.
For many people, the first thing they need to tackle in order to become more successful may be their mood level. Your mood level may be largely a function of brain chemistry, heavily influenced by diet and exercise. So, improving your diet and exercise may be the best starting point in your quest to become more successful!
According to the authors of Food, Mood and Money:
"Success gurus claim you can become successful yourself by copying what successful people do, or by psyching yourself into a successful attitude. In the past few years these assumptions have unfortunately been proven to be false. Recent research, backed up by much data, confirms the truth you may have already suspected:
The successes of successful people are produced not from what they KNOW or what they DO but from how they FEEL inside -- their "inner weather."
When two business researchers studied two groups of salespeople, they determined that those with solid mood levels were earning five to eight times as much annually as did those who usually felt low or timid...
When Personal Selling Power magazine studied 50 Superachievers and 200 Average Achievers, they found that of the EIGHT main differences between the winners and the also-rans, only ONE was based in any way on skill or knowledge. The other SEVEN success factors were all related to mood levels...
It's true in business as in life: HOW YOU FEEL IS WHAT YOU GET.
Your quality of life -- and your income -- depend on your mood level. Your mood level depends on your brain biochemistry. As long as you are trying to get ahead while feeling low you are beating your head against the wall. A gigantic step towards success lies in improving how you FEEL. [emphasis added]
...A better way to mood elevation is taught by personal trainers and celebrity performance coaches in California, Europe and Japan, and works entirely through natural foods, non-prescription supplements, and a few simple lifestyle changes." [emphasis added]
By the way, the easiest way to get control over the quantity you eat is to Remove the FEELING of Hunger! Google: appetite suppressor. You may have to do some experimenting to discover what works best for you. (It's brain/body biochemistry!)
The Mood Cure
For some people, a good place to start their journey to success may be to complete two questionnaires:
If necessary, you may want to check out either or both of two books:
There's considerable evidence that helplessness is associated with low levels of the neurotransmitters noradrenaline and serotonin in your brain. Check out:
If you suffer from any degree of helplessness -- and I suspect this applies to practically all 98%ers -- then the above two questionnaires may have provided you with some useful clues. If relevant, you may want to Google:
You may want to read the Executive Summary -- note how it relates to Fear of Rejection -- and then order Food, Mood and Money. Following is a list of chapter titles of the 5th edition:
Mood Levels
The table below has been adapted from the original on the Food, Mood and Money pages. ("Helpless-1," "Helpless-2," and "Helpless-3" reflect increasing levels of helplessness.)
MOOD LEVELS | EMOTIONAL STATES | TYPICAL THOUGHTS | REWARDS AND PAYOFFS |
MANIA | Overoptimistic, fanatic, overconfident, euphoric, grandiose, unrealistic high expectations, overly egotistical, extremely arrogant, excessive certainty, excessive pride, reckless, pompous, bombastic, disrespectful to the point of obnoxiousness. Hyper-energetic. | "I'll save the world from... (whatever)!" or "I can jump out the window and fly like Superman!" or "In next to no time I'll become wealthier than Bill Gates!" or "I can get away with anything!" or "I can fool all the people all the time!" or "Nothing can stop me now!" | Rare spectacular success possible, however, disastrous failures more likely in the long run. Some political, religious, and business leaders "elevate" themselves to this level and become dangerous to themselves and others. Adolph Hitler, Jim Jones, and David Koresh come to mind. ("Low-mood-level" victims sometimes idolize maniacal leaders and follow them into war, destruction, death, business disasters, etc.) |
BOLDNESS, OPTIMISM & ENTHUSIASM | Self-confident, high self-esteem, courageous, curious, responsible, rational, persistent, strong leadership qualities, determination, initiative, independence and/or self-dependence, self-reliance, strong sense of humor. This optimal state of brain biochemistry is probably experienced naturally and automatically by maybe around 2% to 5% of people -- ("the fortunate few!") The rest of us might occasionally get to this state by accident for short periods. Then we might perform some amazingly astute actions that produce great results -- and exclaim afterwards: "I don't know what came over me!" High positive energy. | "I'm the master of my fate and the captain of my destiny!" or "What's the most important thing for me to do today?" or "What's the "weakest link" in my life or business -- the single thing I can improve to produce the biggest increase in the rewards for my family, friends, associates, business, clients, etc?" or "How can I test, measure, and evaluate my actions so as to make them most effective, efficient, and productive?" or "What knowledge, skills, and methods do I need to acquire in order to become more successful?" or "What resources are available to me to make my life healthier, happier, and more successful?" | Consistent high rewards. Sometimes, spectacular sustainable rewards. The authors of Food, Mood and Money claim that the evidence that individuals at this mood level enjoy "far higher incomes (average 5 to 8 times higher than timid individuals) is statistically documented in impeccable research reports." Individuals at this mood level enjoy higher levels of success in all or most areas of life -- health, fitness, longevity, family, relationships, businesses, careers, projects, satisfaction, happiness, etc. With Internet money-making programs, they typically build downlines of hundreds or even thousands -- and earn a great deal of money. They may be dedicated to life-long learning and improvement, which are likely to bring them huge rewards in the long run. Ideally, they use their Power of Choice to maximize the rewards for themselves, their associates, and the world in general. |
MILD & BRITTLE OPTIMISM | Mild enthusiasm, feelings of mild uncertainty, lack of confidence, disappointment, slight inferiority, etc. People at this level typically give up easily and don't follow through. They suffer from a lack of determination and persistence. They often make half-hearted attempts to succeed. When things go wrong, they tend to blame others and/or factors outside themselves -- lack of responsibility. Low energy. | "It's not my fault!" or "This is too difficult or complicated for me!" or "With so may crooks in the world, you just can't win!" or "I'll just stick with my (boring dead-end) job because I know I'll get paid!" or "I'm cleverer, smarter, and better educated than my family, friends, co-workers, etc. -- so why should I make a special effort to become more knowledgeable, competent, and skilled?" | Moderate rewards. Individuals at this mood level may do comparatively well in mundane, routine jobs. They may even enjoy moderately high salaries. However, at some point in their lives they may ask themselves: "What am I living for?" or "What makes my life worthwhile?" -- and not be able to provide any satisfactory answers. They may feel that they're wasting their lives. With Internet money-making programs, they typically sponsor 0-5 people... then they give up and move on to the next program... where they repeat the same inferior behavior patterns. |
NEUTRAL MOOD - APATHY, LETHARGY - Helpless-1 |
Boredom, inertia, futility. Typically, people at this mood level are like a baseball player who steps up to the plate, but when the pitcher pitches the ball, they just watch it go by, without attempting to swing the bat and hit the ball -- then they wonder: "How come the ball didn't go into the stands for a home run?" Little or no energy. | "I'll probably never amount to very much!" or "If I watch TV and/or drink a beer, I'll feel better!" or "There's nothing I can do to improve myself!" or "I was made to be this way, meant to be this way, and I'm going to stay this way!" or "I just don't have the time to do what's necessary to succeed!" or "Anyway, I don't care!" | Few rewards. In a low-level job you earn just enough to get by. With money-making programs, you typically do nothing and sponsor 0 people. Vicarious rewards. You identify with and idolize a sports team, a leader, or a movement with a "great cause." A form of escapism. Can also be fanatic -- sports fan(atic)! Can provide the rewards of camaraderie and a feeling of belonging. |
TIMIDITY, NEGATIVITY & MILD DEPRESSION - Helpless-2 |
"Turned off," pessimistic, shy, brooding, gloomy, sad, self-denigrating, procrastination, self-sabotage. If you have trouble with promoting yourself, selling, cold-calling, presenting, and generally moving your agenda forward, this may be the mood level that's holding you back. Your general emotional state may be your big handicap. Your ability to distinguish between actions likely to produce money (and other rewards) and futile, time-wasting, or negative actions may be limited. Negative energy. | "Life is a drag!" or "I woke up with the blahs -- I feel so bad!" or "There's no point in asking; I know I'll be rejected!" or "Nothing I've tried in the past has worked, so why should I continue trying?" or "All my friends agree with me that it's impossible to sponsor enough people to make money!" or "I've failed so many times that I now feel completely discouraged!" or "I didn't succeed because...(list of excuses)." or "I don't feel like doing it now!" or "I don't feel like continuing with this!" | Minimal or negative rewards. Relatively low income. Small and/or dilapidated accommodation (maybe in a poor neighborhood). Older or no car. Few or low-level friends and contacts. Stuck in unrewarding ruts. Persists with losing propositions. Rarely undertakes new activities, projects, or endeavors. Rarely or never operates at full steam. Rarely or never enjoys the feeling of being fully alive. Individuals at this mood level typically sabotage their own success with money-making programs by not taking (or mishandling) the actions necessary for success, and by sending dumb, time-wasting, and/or insulting emails to Program Admins and posting negative messages to forums and discussion boards. |
DEEP DEPRESSION - Helpless-3 |
Serious emotional state with some or all of the following: extreme negativity and pessimism, fatigued, indecisive, hopeless, helpless, low or lost sex drive, non-specific (vague) anxiety and guilt, feeling useless and/or worthless, withdrawal. Extreme negative energy. | "I don't feel like getting out of bed!" or "I might as well kill myself!" or "I wish I had never been born!" or "The world is probably better off without me!" or "I'll show them; I'll kill myself!" or "Everybody hates me!" or "I'm just a worthless piece of shit!" | Extreme negative rewards. Why do some people use their minds, bodies, and energy to hinder and harm, rather than help, themselves and their fellows? To what extent is it a matter of choice? What are the payoffs for negative and destructive behaviors? What kind of "inversion" might be at work here? What are the differences and similarities between Depression and Mania? |
If your mood is consistently "BOLDNESS, OPTIMISM & ENTHUSIASM," then the chances are very good that you're a 2%er enjoying a high level of success. If your mood is consistently below this level, or frequently drops to a lower level, then you may need to take urgent action to "Upgrade Your Mood Level!"
Emotional Control
See #TL12: How to Achieve Emotional Control.
"I'm reading a quote you have by Edward Roth, in his book written in 1906 called Social Control, where he says, "Plans are on the way to replace community, family, and church with propaganda, education, and mass media. People are only little plastic lumps of human dough." Now you quote that I suppose because for you it encapsulates the underlying spirit of education in America?" -- Jerry Brown
"Geddard of Princeton, the head of the psychology department, who said that standardized testing would function as a dunce cap, making people aware of their inferiority, making them reluctant to compete and even, even reproduce themselves!" -- John Taylor Gatto
" [T]he accumulation of great wealth requires the ability to command labor. You cannot labor if its independent and critical, therefore you need a schooling system much in the way that obedience school provides for dogs -- they have to be taught not to pee in the house, or heel at their master's beck and call. And in effect, the entire school enterprise, and there are obvious examples, is a huge obedience school run on the kennel model." -- Jerry Brown
Jerry Brown: Welcome to another edition of We The People. This hour we're going to talk some more about learning, education, and schooling in its many variations. To help us reflect more deeply on this question, we have on a line from New York John Taylor Gatto. He was named the New York Teacher of the Year in 1991. He was also named New York City Teacher of the Year in 1989, 1990, as well as 1991. He resigned from teaching during his state titled year, and he's put out an op-ed piece in the Wall St. Journal, and four months later he was honored by his former students in a program at Carnegie Hall called "An Evening With John Taylor Gatto -- the Exhausted School." He's written the book "Dumbing Down: the Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schools."
So, what should I call you, not professor of course, just John! John, welcome to the show. Call me Jerry.
John Taylor Gatto: Okay, Governor, I'll call you Jerry.
Jerry Brown: Ok. It's a real pleasure, I've been reading some of your material, and it certainly harkens back to a couple of major influences on my teaching, or rather my school ideas, one Ivan Illich and the other Paul Goodman. I guess I got off the trail there in 1991 and 1992; I read the book Compulsory Mis-education, and I've never quite been able to get the hang of school issues since.
John Taylor Gatto: I know both of those writers, and they've had a big influence on me as well.
JB: Well tell me John, you've been in the school business thirty odd years teaching in the public schools of New York, so can you state here in the beginning what the problem is here with here. People are just wringing their hands, and it doesn't seem like anything is going to get better with the path that we're on.
JTG: Well, there's a lot of problems Jerry. But I think they boil down to a quick slug of we don't teach the way children learn and because the business has become really a central part of the American economy, you're really not allowed to teach the way children learn although any individual component in this system would admit privately that they wish they'd allow you to do that. You have the perfect example of that out your way: an elderly Peruvian immigrant, in a school near Los Angeles, inside of four years, had the best scores on the Advanced Placement Calculus Test. I'm sure he was an excellent teacher, but that's really beside the point. He was working with a group of kids with no mathematical tradition, and very little literary tradition, and inside of a short time, Garfield High was the third ranking school in the US on the AP calculus. Mr. Escalante's fate is just fascinating -- he was harassed and hounded out of the school. They made it intolerable for him to stay!
In Chicago, there's a black lady named Marva Collins, working with black ghetto kids, many of them with no intact families. She found out what I found later on, which was that these children have no resistance to very high level work and ideation. In a quick take, if you set the idiom aside, they're producing work of a caliber that we associate with adults. I know this must sound fantastic to your listeners, but the truth is you and I could spend hours and not come to the end of people who've accidentally stumbled on the great dirty secret of American schooling: it just doesn't teach the way children learn, nor can it be allowed to, or maybe that's just momentum and not design. We're dealing with a 6,700 billion dollar a year industry -- it's the gatekeeper to all of the rest of the jobs. We couldn't turn out an excess of competent people without really doing damage to this economy. If this sounds like I'm playing a conspiratorial string on my violin, hardly, the president of Columbia's teacher's college, Dean Russell, in 1908, in the keynote speech to the NEA, said that there was a tremendous danger that too many leaders would be produced, and it would cause a collapse in the system.
JB: I'm reading a quote you have by Edward Roth, in his book written in 1906 called Social Control, where he says, "Plans are on the way to replace community, family, and church with propaganda, education, and mass media. People are only little plastic lumps of human dough." Now you quote that I suppose because for you it encapsulates the underlying spirit of education in America?
JTG: Yeah, I actually used that in a book that's coming out in the summer called The Empty Child by Simon and Schuster. Since they wouldn't give me the million words I needed, I needed to find the most trenchant reflection of this attitude towards children that they're little plastic lumps of dough. Roth of course is not just a professor of sociology he was one of the two or three people who created the American discipline of sociology. And you also have a few years later Geddard of Princeton, the head of the psychology department, who said that standardized testing would function as a dunce cap, making people aware of their inferiority, making them reluctant to compete and even, even reproduce themselves! There's a current to this, not a strain but a powerful central current right before the first world war, reaching a tremendous visible crescendo sometime right after the second world war, after which it disintegrated itself, rather than provoking controversy, as a duty thing and not talk about it.
I stumbled upon all of this while I was trying to figure out why on earth so many people appeared to have a vested interest in trying to stop me from doing what they knew worked in a school setting. But I talked to each one of them individually, they'd admit that that "its stupid, but I have to do it because" -- and then they'd refer to the next highest person on the administrative ladder. Eventually when we got the state education dept. and I was able to talk to the people there. They began referring to politicians, not all politicians, but certain politicians. And when I spoke to some of their administrative assistants, a few were honest enough to refer me to corps, great foundations, think tanks which were running this particular politician, although this was hardly said, but I heard that. What we have done then is to displace authority over the lives of children into so many different hands, many of those quite invisible, that to approach this with a problem-solving set of mind is really to frustrate yourself to death. We're dealing with a system that's working exactly the way it's supposed to work. There are ways around that -- you can sabotage it like I did for many years, and that works sometimes locally, or parochially, until you're caught. You can sidestep it by sending your kids to some private schools, but most private schools function the same way, except that they're more cosmetic. You can homeschool your children, I mean there are a variety of ways around it, but they're not all tackling the problem.
[Note: Gatto's hint about "foundations running politicians" and some of what Alex Jones and Norman Dodd say may be "paranoid conspiracy theory" and off the mark.]
JB: I want to ask you, you said that anytime you do something that is right, you get blocked. Could you give me one example of what you did that was right, and was blocked?
JTG: Oh sure! I'll give you the actual example that triggered my resignation and the op ed editorial in the Wall Street Journal. My school system, that I continued to succeed in, in the sense that my kids were succeeding, including the kids that weren't supposed to succeed, continued to move me into worse and worse school settings. Until finally I ended up at the school that produced 7 of the 9 "Central Park jogger" rapists, including a number of other distinctions. And here, using the essentially the same methods, but it took a lot longer and I was an older man, but using essentially the same methods, the kids began to lose their "kid" quality and began to become people and have a vested interest in developing their minds and spirits and characters as far as they could. When I saw this heartening response, my method is then to offer more and more challenges, and at some point a challenge to a kid is navigating in the adult world of reality that they see around them dimly.
I had arranged with the president of, I'll call it "Bell Telephone," in New York, to have my kids taken through to visit a telephone station, in keeping with things that I had been doing for 15-20 years. At the moment that some executive was dispatched to pick up the kids at the school and take them to the station, our principal raced to the door that very moment, confronted me, and said "these kids can't go out, they haven't filed the proper papers." I said, "sure I did Jules, I dropped those in your box 48 hours ago." He said, "the policies have changed, it has to be done two weeks in advance, sent to the district, and approved." And I said, "Ok Jules, the next time," and he said, "No!" -- In front of the vice president of the phone company, with the kids all assembled together. At that point I realized that what happened was not an independent decision by the principal, but rather a frantic attempt by the school district, which happens to be on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. In fact, they were disturbed by the continued success of children who happened to be under my direction. The truth is they could have been under anyone's direction, who had followed the same sort of system dirt farmers would have followed 150 years ago.
JB: Now what did you do for the kids, with the kids, that triggered this kind of retaliatory response?
JTG: Essentially I operated on a couple of really simple assumptions. That this bizarre and disturbing behavior that kids, not only poor kids, but really prosperous kids in New York were producing, was a direct result of their lives being stripped of significant experiences, confined in these abstract cells for all of their natural youth, and set a diet of low-level abstractions. Not even the challenging debate material or text that you would have find in a fourth or fifth grade in the middle of the 19th century. I mean, that stuff that is reserved for the "gifted" or "talented" kids. The ones in high school are doing sixth or seventh grade work by a century ago's standards.
JB: If I can read between the lines, you deviated from the standard curriculum that the administration wanted?
JTG: I put together what I call a "guerrilla" curriculum Jerry, and that was composed of stuffing them with primary experiences, as much as I could, from an ad-hoc basis, when I would read the paper in the morning or the night before. Any kind of news going on, I would have advance permission and the kids would be dispatched to investigate. One part of this was I brought a kind of seminar standard to the classroom. We didn't have to understand -- I'll use Aristotle as an example -- we didn't have to understand everything Aristotle was driving at to be absolutely certain that a lively discussion shows that much of what he was driving at were current topics in kids' minds. Once they got over the barrier of the language gap, which is extremely easy to do, just like teaching reading is extremely easy to do, California's example to the world notwithstanding.
JB: OK. So you got them into more challenging material in a way which would change based on day to day events in the environment. The way the administration saw it, this was not in the structure that the curriculum was designed, but you get that this was the way to give reality and aliveness to the learning experience.
JTG: You're quite right, but I think that the dynamic at work is worth exploring because its not as simple as the administration opposing it. What's happening is that each subordinate level that has to give permission is on thin ice. So that the ball is passed, and when the ball leaves the local precincts, it's really passed between foundation project officers, certain university staff, policy people in Washington, so that in fact the ball never returns to your court, or when it does, its invariably ringed around with so many restrictions by other people who are making a living. I'm not alleging that its conscious, but it happens. To the point that you don't want to do it anymore.
JB: I want you to comment on the curve, marking on the curve in standardized testing as a way to imbed the growing inequality in our society. Would you comment on the idea that grading on the curve, which I presume most schools do, is a way to put in a type of bell curve social stratification that is increasingly being replicated in almost every part of America.
JTG: The idea very, very early on, came out of Prussian Germany. In a series of debates in the 19th century, that essentially said a mathematical, or mathematized predictable world is the best out of all possible things to hope for. The big people to read -- if you've read Hegel himself -- I think you'd know all you'd need to know. In order to control everybody, certain strategic courses were undertaken in forced schooling. There had never been, prior to Prussia in the early 19th century, been successful forced schooling in the history of the planet. And suddenly Prussia, in 1819, drew in all of the children, put them in a 2-stage system. The first stage was to trivialize the greatest learning time by filling it -- I realize that this is going to get the backs up of some of your listeners -- with balloons, songs, and funny games. But to keep the intellectual/moral part under the control of the teacher. Somewhere in the age of 12, the idea was to set everyone suddenly in competition with each other, and produce visible marks of rank for everyone, so that no matter how secure you were in your understanding of something, there would always be people you could see who had been visibly recognized as your masters. And according to Hegel and a number of other thinkers, this constant "alienation"- that was the world they used which was translated directly to American schools -- this alimentation would lead to the kind of society which could be placed under the direction of certified experts that the state, and the corporate world, found safe and productive! The net result of this, Jerry, was that Prussia, a dirt poor country, in 30 or 40 years, was one of the world leaders. The Prussian King decided the Canadian/American border, because he was the most prestigious monarch on earth! Hartsman, and every other founder of American schooling before we had compulsory schooling, went to Prussia and came back with glowing reports of what the Prussians had produced, that is to say a predictable society that could be run by the best minds.
What you see on a normal bell curve, probably at a moment when assessment is the wrong thing to do, its inappropriate, people learn on private learning curves. We know the point in which we cross the barrier and understand something. Some people learn instantly certain things, and others learn six years later. I will tell you this -- a kid who learns to read at five, and a kid who learns to read at 9, will be indistinguishable to each other at the age of fourteen, assuming they both like what they're doing. On the other hand, we can say its too inconvenient, or too expensive, to allow that and impose a learning curve in first grade that produces this wonderful bell, we can then assign the people on the fringes of the bell to special ed and the people in the middle of the bells -- the walls of the curve -- to the dull classes and so on. And we will create a class system by simply doing that. Inside of a year or two, the kids will impose that kind of class system on themselves! It's a phenomenally intricate, but rather easy to unravel puzzle there - reading is pathetically easy to teach, you assume that once you assemble 30 people in a room, and do it in the same routines, that you'll fail to teach it to some of them, that this bell will appear, and the atmosphere in the classroom is that the humiliation of being a dull reader or bad reader will never wear off. You can predict the rise of a giant remediation industry.
On the other hand, I want your to compare it to 1812 or 1815 when the founder of the DuPont fortune wrote to investors in France and said there's a miracle going on in this country, because everyone here can read and debate like a lawyer! "There's nobody who can't read and they're facile with numbers." Or you can look at De Tocqueville's famous 1835 analysis, when he said that the classical Greeks are children compared to these dirt farmer's kids! Look at the best-sellers of that day! The Last of the Mohicans [by James Fennimore Cooper] -- I would urge your readers to get an uncut version of Last of the Mohicans, especially if they have one or two college degrees, and see what an impossible book it is to read. And yet, it sold the equivalent of 10 million copies!
JB: I notice that you're also saying that judging from the Army Intelligence Test that you have 17% of the whites who can't read and 44% of the African Americans who can't read.
JTG: Its just amazing because just in 1941, these figures were just 4% for the white group and 20% for the African American group.
JB: Do you believe, John, do you believe those numbers, because they're very shockingÖ
JTG: I believe those numbers from my own experience! When you try to reconstruct the intellect of a 13 tear old kid, which is essentially what my classroom was about, you're dealing with social resistance which is quite unbelievable, yet I just got a call today from a kid who had 16 criminal charges against him at 13, and furthermore he was filed as a functional illiterate by the school. He's working on his second college degree and trying to decide among 3-4 offers which would make him leave academia. This is a boy that wanted to have a gun at 13, he's only about 23 now. So what miracle happened? Well the miracle that happened was that he was given himself back -- and it didn't take a N.Y. teacher of the year to do that. I'm not claiming any particular insight, other than what was common knowledge a century ago. This country was unique in world history, because it took ordinary people, people who were considered trash in Europe, and made them independent hard working self-respecting people. To deny what is unique about American history is just nuts, because in there we have the skeleton key to unlock the problem of our schools!
JB: My own grandmother I think went to school until the 6th grade, she was quite a reader well into her 90's, very well read. Now we have a world in which this president is saying that we have to create a situation that everyone can have at least two years of college, in the same way that I suppose that the 6th grade was assumed to be necessary at the beginning of the century.
JTG: I hope that he's just a dupe, Jerry, I really hope so. The way that the game works is that we say that the reason this problem exists is that A. we don't have enough money and B. we don't have enough of the kids lives to work on them. So we've watched schooling go from an average 12-14 weeks and produce a totally literate nation --
JB: 12-14 weeks or 12-14 years??
JTG: 12-14 weeks! The truth is that nowhere in the US as late as 1876, nowhere did more than 49% of the people go to school.
JB: And when they went to school, you're saying that they only went for 12-14 weeks? That's only a couple of months!
JTG: And kids who went for longer than that didn't go every day, or even every week! So they came and went. And furthermore, they were under the control of one woman who had 6-7-8 ages and class sizes of 60-80, that's an impossible situation according to the way we do business today. And yet, as soon as you change the teacher-student ratio from the teacher being 90% of the solution and the student 10, to the reverse of that, the student 90% of the solution the teacher 10, then you can see how very large classes, or mixed classes, can work, because the kids are responsible teaching each other.
JB: What I'm hearing here, one of the key building blocks, more important than TV, in the development of a society of dependent, obedient, sheep-like herdlike uncritical people is that the school is the mechanism of schooling, enshrined as a secular religion. So if the goal is independent thinking, self reliance, critical thinking, all the good stuff that Abe Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin held up as such important values, then somehow this whole schooling mechanism needs to be smashed! And I want to get that very clear, because there is a childlike devotion to the school system that reminds me of the "Devotion of the Blessed Mother" at St. Brendan's grammar school 50 years ago!
JTG: It was sold that way, all of this, the various media sold it this way. I'm not saying that there was a cabal, but simply that it was the way it was presented to them. Flattering luncheons where the decision has been made to take that wonderful woman who had run without an administration those one-room schools which had done so well, and put her under the direction of an apparatus of men, not just a single layer, but infinite layers which are still being spun out.
JB: It almost sounds like the apparatchiks in the late stage Soviet Union!
JTG: That's an excellent kernel! The question is whether this grows naturally as a result of certain economic decision. MIT makes mandatory I believe a book called Autonomous Technology by Langdon Winter written about 30 years ago, in which Winter says once you start with certain premises, it is inevitable that the system will eventually control all the personnel, the apparent leaders will remain only as long as they serve the system's purposes. If they don't, they are marginalized and gotten rid of, and someone else is put in.
A lot of them thought that the family was the barrier to a "sane" future. They may not have liked each other, but they all agreed that you had to get children away from the family. School was the mechanism to utopianize. I think both things are at work here -- ideologues who communicate this idea and are able to perpetuate themselves from generation to generation. They control hiring at universities and foundations and so on, and look for people like themselves.
JB: Today we get a report of Al Shanker's funeral, a memorial, Al Shanker being the head of the United Federation of Teachers of America, probably the most powerful educator of this country. And you have Senator Kennedy, representing the Left wing of the remnant Democratic Party, and you have [former New York City mayor Ed] Koch, once a Democrat, but now a populist-corporatist-conservative former New York mayor. So you have a pretty wide spectrum, at least on the left-right spectrum, giving real encomiums of adulation to the creative work of Shanker, which as far as I know, without speaking ill of the deceased, Shanker was a pillar of this entire apparatus which you have been criticizing for the last 40 minutes!
JTG: He was. Let me say, not in Shanker's defense, but an explanation of how Shanker managed to draw support from all portions of the political spectrum: Shanker was, to his credit, very outspoken of the division that he represented. Shanker is as close to being a classical old-line socialist -- nor did he make any bones about that. Shanker is on record a number of times saying that schools are not about the best destiny for the children, schools are not about making Johnny's family stronger, or bringing his parents in on the governance or deliberations. I had dinner twice with Shanker, I was at this small table with him, and I must say, that compared to everyone else at the table, probably me included, that Shanker absolutely said what was on his mind [laughs]. Not that I agreed with him!
JB: But that's the real issue: what is on his mind and what's on America's mind is that the problem of America is that there is not enough education, there's not enough getting to these poor people who are causing all of the crime, or there's not enough in the middle to compete with the Japanese, or the Chinese, or all of those smart people. And the answer is, whether it's the market-based people who have their strategy, or the liberals who have theirs, one way or another its to get these little kids more programs for the competitive world and not for the kind of disruptive, individual critical thinking which I believe you're suggesting and that I certainly very much recommend.
[break]
JB: John, I'm going to read you something that you've said, and I'm going to ask you how to attain what you're suggesting. I quote, "We have to radically decentralize government corporate schooling, return the power of designing and assessing programs to the local level, and ensure that every form of training for the young aims at producing independent, self-reliant minds, good characters, and individuals who get fighting mad when called a "human resource" and told their main function is to be part of the work force. Ok, great, I accept that -- so how do we get there? Who do we attack and what do we build?
JTG: The schema, first, has to be seen clearly: as long as the economy is built up of very large corporations, very large institutions, and very large government agencies, by necessity all the training that is approved leads towards some position on the pecking order of these giant employment pyramids. I'd like to jump from that to two groups who have never participated in that, and who've had a sort of blemished record of success. I'd like to do this, to allow your listeners to independently verify that its possible.
Look at Johns Hopkins University, not one of my favorite universities, but they've been tracking the Amish for a long time. They've published several I think mind blowing books about what has happened in Amish America. In this century, at the beginning of the century, there were 5000 of these people, now there are 150,000. So the group itself has retained its integrity and grown 30 times. Second, 100% of the Amish, or as close to that as humanly possible, has independent livelihoods, and its divided 50% in small entrepreneurial businesses and 50% in small farms. Now consider the drawbacks these people labor under - the government of Pennsylvania has been their sworn enemy through the century. And, they don't use telephones, they don't use computers, they don't use cars, and they go to the 8th grade only because the Supreme Court cut a deal with them in the 1976. So with all these drawbacks you have a community that with all intents and purposes has no crime at all, that takes care of old and young because it mixes both of those groups together in the life of the community, is amazingly successful, amazingly wealthy, and amazingly unschooled! Now, many of your listeners, or my friends who would no doubt say that it's that religious glue, that pious glue, that gives them the advantage. So I'd like to jump to the group that's resolutely, militantly free-thought, probably as any that's ever existed.
And that's in the Basque country in Spain, the north-west of Spain, and its, forgive my accent, the Mondragon Cooperative. There's about the same number of these people as there are Amish, and they aim for exactly the same grown-up solution that everyone will have an independent livelihood, or they'll be a part of a small group that makes its living proving to other people that it's valuable. So their schooling is resolutely directed toward developing the kind of independent, self-reliant, tough minded characteristics that, oddly enough, Amish education also stresses.
So here we have bracketed now, two groups that are small but not that small, who manage to keep what Lincoln's idea for America was! Independent livelihood was where it was at! You know, back in the 1840's - 1850's it was impossible to assemble an American work force over 40, because people would only work for you long enough to get a little stake, and then cut off and go off on their own. When we look at the history of New England factories, that they're going to concerts, and dances and libraries for the young girls who worked there for just a couple of years until they could bring a little stake to their marriage. That was the American dream, that you could write the script to your own life! And very , very gradually, that dream was converted, and this is quite easy to track, not by evil people, but by people who understood that wealth depends on your ability to command labor. And unless you can assemble large groups of labor, you were never going to be wealthy as the Europeans reckoned wealth, or the English reckoned wealth.
JB: Ok John, since we have a few callers on the line, I'd like to encapsulate what you're saying: that the accumulation of great wealth requires the ability to command labor. You cannot labor if its independent and critical, therefore you need a schooling system much in the way that obedience school provides for dogs -- they have to be taught not to pee in the house, or heel at their master's beck and call. And in effect, the entire school enterprise, and there are obvious examples, is a huge obedience school run on the kennel model. And the two examples you've given me -- Amish, which is based on a character, traditional, very family based with a very god-centered decentralized form, and the other one which you refer to as secular, is the worker-owned cooperatives in the Basque land in Spain. Two poles which are totally at variance with the consumer mass-obedience operation which is cheerleaded from Jesse Jackson on the Left, or [Nation of Islam leader Louis] Farrakhan even more to the Left, to, you know, the Right Wing folks, the Moral Majority and the chamber of commerce!
So if I hear you right, what we really have to face up to is the absolute need for a critical distancing from this whole status quo which seeps into our deepest aims.
JTG: Absolutely, that's a perfect abstract. Notice that we can eliminate Marxist ideas that evil or venal people are doing this. What is happened is that the people who are doing this have convinced themselves "scientifically" that this is the only that it can be. This is what [sociologist Thomas] Malthus, [biologist Charles] Darwin, or [chemist John] Dalton all said. This is what the book the Bell Curve a couple of years ago said. This is the way wishes it to be, it can't be any other way. So they have to overlook Jaime Escalante in California, or Marva Collins in Chicago, or even John Taylor Gatto in New York! They have to overlook the Basques, they have to overlook the Amish, because they don't fit that theory!
JB: So John, then, I take it you have no objection to vouchers?
JTG: Its not that I have no objection to vouchers -- there's a real danger built into vouchers, and that is the same sort of surveillance over your kids lives will follow the voucher. What we have to do, and we're going to do it whether its allowed or now, we have to begin to break the fealty to these enormous organizations, whether they're government, or corporate, or institutions!
JB: Ok, let's take a few calls now. Craig has been waiting; go ahead Craig!
Craig: Thank you for your recent programs with Susannah Shepherd and Grace Malone. We are a home schooling family for many years, and I guess in a sense I'd like to explain why it is we home school. I'd like to start by recommending a book, Teaching as a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner. And I'd would say that anyone who has an interest in this subject, if you have not read that book, consider yourself uneducated! That book was written in 1956, didn't deal with home schooling, but it does explains the need to raise children who do not just accept the unexamined assumptions of our society. That impulse is out there across the country, but its really at war against what seems to be a stronger approach to suppress that kind of approach. I know there are exceptions -- there are good teachers who really want to educate kids in the truest sense of the term, but they're fighting the system. What I really want to say here is that the school system at its heart, even though yes its there to, in some sense, to educate the children, but at its heart its really there to break their spirits. That is what I think all the time. We've had some experience with our own children for short periods of time at our local schools, and its only confirmed and reinforced what we already thought we knew.
JB: Thank you Craig, very eloquent. John?
JTG: I'd like to comment on what Craig said on breaking the spirit. The most influential US commissioner of education that ever existed was William Torre Harris, and in a book he wrote, back in 1906, The Philosophy of Education, he said that the purpose of schooling was to alienate children from their families, their churches, their neighborhoods, and themselves! I mean, it wasn't a secret, its just that people who walk their dogs, or look at the sun come up in the morning, they don't have time to read books called "The Philosophy of Education!" [laughs] Of course that's what it's about!
JB: Amazing!
JTG: He was the only prominent school man who, and I believe that's still true, who was a house guest to the Rockefellers, the Carnegies. Harris brought German schooling to the US and made sure that it stuck.
JB: All right, let's take a call from Angel in New Jersey!
Angel: Hi, thank you both. My question concerns what I seem to see as an apparent contradiction between the acknowledged purpose of the school systems as they now stand and the stated belief that they can in fact be altered without actually altering the primary purposes of society. In other words, with corporations wanting a docile work force, with a government needing a military going overseas and to engage in practices that many would consider are against the very interests of the very people who are being asked to fight in that military, why would you believe that under the current system that people who are in control of the schools, ultimately the politicians, would in fact want to change the system so that it would in fact produce critical thinkers?
JB: Ok angel, you've just asked the $64,000 question! I think you're hitting it right on the head here -- you're going to need to change a lot more than just the schoolhouse!
JTG: Angel, let me speak to that. One of the great ways that people are held in place by their own fear. Because these enormous employment pyramids control the flow of money and even the flow of information around the whole country, you might assume that nothing can be done about them. The truth is, they have almost no internal cohesion at all -- they hate each other! Look how fast the soviet union came apart -- I would like to just tell you, very quickly here, that I sat with Jeane Kirkpatrick about two weeks before the first signs of the crack took place. There were a few other people in the room, and she said in that cold steely flinty voice of hers, "let me tell you that it won't be for a hundred years that you see a crack in the soviet union, because they have a personal dossier of every citizen, and they have mathematical ways of telling where the fault lines will appear." And two weeks later, of course, it was dying, and a short time after that, it was dead.
JB: Ok John, John, we've got to break in. One hour has gone by! We'll do it again, we'll do it again, but we are out of time. We'll come back to this topic again; there's a lot more to dig in, and there's a lot of people who want to talk about the public schools. This is Jerry Brown for We the People, thanks for listening!
Make-or-Break Issues
Issues that need to be handled first, I refer to as "Make-or-Break Issues." In the Introduction I explain why there may be some issues that need to be handled first, before you can become significantly more successful. The main ones I've identified:
It's up to you to find the best place to start. Some Relatively Simple Solutions for Some? may help you identify your best starting point.
Some people live their lives in such a way that they "don't have time to improve themselves" -- or so they think. If your situation is such that extra money will make it easier to spend time on self-improvement, then a good place for you start may be Overcome Money Barriers.
Packers
Don't take the "Packer" word personally -- see IMPORTANT!
For many people, what I call the "Packer Factor" may be a make-or-break issue they need to handle in order to become significantly more successful. "Packer" is a term coined by Alan Carter and Colston Sanger in their book The Programmer's Stone. By "Packer Factor" I refer to children's skills of perception and thinking being damaged by "compulsory miseducation in schools," as well as by other forms of "Human Domestication." The Packer Factor can be regarded as part of what I call the "Second Big Inversion." Under the Packer Factor I also include the challenge of developing the means to enable Packers to overcome any damage that may have been done to their skills of perception and thinking.
John Taylor Gatto (article on the left) provides some background information on how and why schools are used to produce Packers. Schools are "successful" most of the time at producing Packers, but fortunately not always.
Honest Valedictorian's Speech
- Mayfair High School 2007
In The Programmer's Stone, Carter and Sanger also write about "Mappers" -- people with better skills of perception and thinking than Packers. The skills of Mappers may have been damaged less by schooling (and other forms of "Human Domestication"), compared to Packers. It's also possible that Mappers were severely damaged by schooling, but found a way to recover. The young woman in the video (above), demonstrates some Mapper characteristics with the following:
Fortunately, her schools failed to turn this young woman into a Packer! You may not have been so fortunate. Nevertheless, if you're a Packer, there's still hope!
Gatto's Independent Study
You may also want to watch Gatto's "Classrooms of the Heart" and "State-Controlled Consciousness." Gatto says, "Human genius is as common as the air we breathe!" There could be a latent genius within you, eager to emerge!
Packers and Mappers
Carter and Sanger, in The Programmer's Stone (TPS), describe a Packer as a "conventional thinker." In general, typical Packers have been conditioned to work for other people, to follow orders, and to not think critically. Packers tend to conform to society.
Mappers tend to be strategic and critical thinkers. Most if not all of them have also undergone the "Second Big Inversion," but generally their thinking skills have not been damaged to the same degree as those of Packers. The Programmer's Stone (TPS ) gives as the epitome of Packing: Frederic Taylor, the father of scientific management, who played a major role in developing mass production before the time of industrial robots, by getting people to do robot jobs. His slogan was, "Leave your brain outside and bring your body indoors." So Packers typically work better with their bodies than with their brains.
There are many more Packers than Mappers. It's quite possible that 98%ers are typically Packers and 2%ers are typically Mappers. According to TPS (The Programmer's Stone), "Mappers experience learning as an internal process in response to external and self-generated stimuli. Packers experience learning as another task to be performed, usually in a classroom, using appropriate equipment. Particularly in the early years, efficient Mapper learning requires internal techniques for exploring conceptual relationships and recognising truths, while efficient Packer learning focuses on memorization skills. ...Packers often seem to neither seek out the flaws in their own logic, nor even hear them when they utter them. Worse, when flaws are pointed out to them, they are likely to react by justifying following logic that they cheerfully admit is flawed, on grounds of administrative convenience. The evidence of their own senses is not as important as behavior learned through repetition..."
Dayna Martin: What is Unschooling?
Some key points adapted from TPS:
Dayna Martin: Common Unschooling
Questions Answered
Concentration Campuses for Mind Destruction
If you're a Packer, and you're interested in recovering from the damage done to your skills of perception and thinking, then a good place to start may be to become more aware of what was done to you, who did it, why did they do it, what have been the consequences, and which specific consequences have effected you. See "Are Our Schools Concentration Campuses for Mind Destruction?"
It may be important to realize that forcing innocent, helpless children into schools can be a form of "Capture-Bonding." You may have bonded with your school "captors" to a greater or lesser extent -- you were essentially a helpless and vulnerable "captee." Your school was most likely part of a larger system called "government*." Your captors most likely did not tell you that "Free education for all children in public schools" is one of the 10 planks of the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels (first published in 1848) -- one of the 10 steps necessary for a communist takeover -- see "AMERICA - CAPITALIST OR COMMUNIST?"
IMPORTANT NOTICE: A system can be seen as "evil" if it produces bad results. That does not necessarily mean that any people in the system are "bad" or "evil." It's possible for all the people in an "evil" system to be "good" people. The reason for this is that "good" people may suffer from "Selective Blindness" that effectively blinds them to the "evils" of their system.
Some people see more than other people see. Generally, Mappers see more than Packers. Some Mappers see more than other Mappers. John Gatto sees much more than the vast majority of teachers. This has to do with "Selective Blindness." In some systems, people who "see too much" must be driven out -- like Gatto (a Mapper who sees much more than most other Mappers) was effectively driven out of the school system. You may not yet see certain things revealed in this Report. They are available for you to see... as soon as you are ready!
The Production of Ignorance and Stupidity
According to L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology (for references, Google: "hubbard control lie"): "THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL PEOPLE IS TO LIE TO THEM.) [emphasis added] You can write that down in your book in great big letters. The only way you can control anybody is to lie to them. ...He's got to tell you lies in order to continue control, because the second you start telling anybody close to the truth, you start releasing him and he gets tougher and tougher to control. So, you can't control somebody without telling them a bunch of lies." -- L. Ron Hubbard, ("Technique 88: On Control and Lying")
Just imagine American politicians, education officials, school principals, and teachers telling people: "We've got to have compulsory state* education. Even though Marx and Engels said so in the Communist Manifesto in 1884, it's actually a good idea!" Or telling people: "We've got to design the education system so young Americans can become as ignorant and stupid as we can make them, so they'll be easy to control!"
20/20 Stupid in America
It may be important to understand as much as you can about the phenomenon of "Capture-Bonding." It may be a most important part of the Packer Factor. Equally important may be "Human Domestication." If you're a Packer, the better you understand Capture-Bonding and Human Domestication, the easier it may become to recover from the damage done to your skills of perception and thinking.
Do a Google video search for "Stupid Americans" -- you may find quite a few pages of results!
Your captors may have brainwashed you into believing that they are "special and superior people" with "magical powers" to do things "ordinary people" can't do. For example, "Only the government* can build and run schools"; "If the government* didn't provide education, then everyone would remain ignorant"; etc. They didn't tell you that government* consists of people, and that these people can only do what people can do. You may have gotten brainwashed into believing, "Only the government* can do...X (whatever)"; "If the government* didn't do...X (whatever), there would be chaos"; etc. Understanding that government* consists of people -- generally ordinary people -- who can only do what people can do, may help you recover from some of the brainwashing.
Man, Family and State
More on Mappers and Packers
Mappers tend to create mental structures ("maps in their heads") to help them understand the relationship between things and ideas. Mappers constantly attempt to expand and improve their maps. Packers simply collect information. Packers have been socially conditioned to suppress their natural faculty for building mental models through reflection and daydreaming. Mappers tend to learn much faster than Packers. Mappers tend to be better problem solvers than Packers.
When mappers talk to each other, they try to examine each other.s maps. If they discover that their correspond, they are able to communicate large amounts of information rapidly. Mappers are more likely to be leaders than Packers. Some Packers prefer repetitive work and may become addicted to it.
Packers tend to be rule-driven. They learn the rules for something, then follow the rules (with little or no reflection). Packers typically learn how to use a computer through rote memorization of basic tasks, not through an actual understanding of the processes involved. Typically Packers become lost when they don't have a "script" for the current situation.
Mappers tend to integrate a wide range of information into coherent maps. Packers tend to collect more or less isolated pockets of disparate information. Mappers tend to be more flexible than Packers. Packers are more predictable than Mappers. Mappers are more likely to question things than Packers.
Freedomain Radio 427:
Fearing Our Parents
Gatto on Victims of Schooling
This section is based on notes I took while listening to some of Gatto's videos on how the minds of victims of schooling have been damaged:
Timothy Leary: How to
Operate Your Brain
How to Recover from Schooling and Upgrade Your Brain
Here are some steps you could take:
The Money Solution
Disclaimer - Copyright - Contact
Online: buildfreedom.org - terrorcrat.com - mind-trek.com