edited by Frederick Mann - January 20, 2002
"Evil thinks not to beguile us by unveiling the terrible truth of its festering intent, but comes, instead, disguised in the diaphanous robes of virtue, whispering sweet-sounding lies intended to seduce us into the dark bed of our eternal graves." -- Terry Goodkind ('The Pillars of Creation')
Introduction
This report was inspired by David T. Freeman's Introduction to The Great Voting Hoax!.
The central theme is that people typically reveal their "good side" but hide their "bad side."
Most of us have strengths and weaknesses, good traits and bad traits, good habits and bad habits, competences and incompetences, good friends and bad friends.
Understanding this phenomenon and its implications is one of the most important success principles.
When individuals, businesses, clubs, organizations, religions, governments, etc. present themselves, their products, and/or services, they typically reveal the good side but hide the bad side.
"We are like shop windows in which we are continually arranging, concealing or illuminating the supposed qualities others ascribe to us -- in order to deceive ourselves." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
Good News and Bad News
The following is quoted from Breaking the News by Anton Holland:
"Most of us have the tendency to fall into the trap of hiding bad news. Maybe it's because most people are optimists. Many people postpone the revelation of bad news because they feel that the longer they put it off, the more chance they'll have of solving the problem and therefore making the bad news irrelevant. What usually happens under these circumstances is that a person realizes that the problem that they are immersed in will only be solved by nothing short of divine intervention, and that they must finally confront the decaying situation.
In other cases, bad news is hidden because the person who is revealing it is terrified that the recipient's reaction will be unbearable -- that the extent of the negative feelings generated in the recipient will be greatly out of proportion with the actual situation. However, people that fool themselves into believing that hiding bad news will somehow make it go away are probably not being totally honest when it comes to taking responsibility for the problem in the first place (but that in itself could be the topic of an entire column). Perhaps people who do this are really trying to hide the news from themselves.
Hiding bad news from a friend, colleague, or boss can cause significant damage to your relationship with that person. Your ability to mitigate such circumstances, however, is enhanced by the fact that these people probably have a broad understanding of your character and abilities, based on interaction that has occurred over a period of time on a regular basis. A friend may have known you all your life, a colleague may work with you on a day-to-day basis, and your boss probably has many insights into both your strengths and your weaknesses. As a result, the damage caused by panicking in a bad situation and hiding unpleasant news can be overcome with a little work because your friends, colleagues, and boss know you -- you've established their trust.
Hiding bad news from a client, on the other hand, can be disastrous and cause irrevocable damage to your relationship. Building a client's trust is not something that just happens...it takes a lot of hard work. It is something that must be earned, every time you interact with them."
The Power of Deception
It may be worth examining how our more primitive ancestors and other animals improved their survival potential through deception:
It may be worth reflecting on examples of deception you've encountered in your own life, including what you've seen on TV, heard on the radio, and read in the newspapers, magazines, or books. Pay particular attention to politics and religion.
Enron (at one time the ninth largest corporation in the US) recently declared bankruptcy. It appears that the people at the top knew of heavy losses which they hid from the employees and shareholders. The "top brass" apparently "talked up" the share price (revealing the "good") while not saying anything about the losses (hiding the bad). At the same time, the "top brass" apparently were selling their shares, pocketing millions. Meanwhile, many of the employees had most or all of their life savings invested in Enron stock and were prevented from selling. Most employees lost both their jobs and their retirement savings.
See also: NEOCHEATING.
Two Basic Kinds of Survival
Before the Agricultural Revolution, humans obtained the wherewithal to survive mainly through hunting and gathering. However, in the same way that hyenas steal the remains of the lions' kill, humans probably stole from one another. When humans learned to grow food, the Agricultural Revolution occurred, much more food became available and the human population increased dramatically. Producing food by growing it on the land is in general more efficient than hunting and gathering it.
Later, the Industrial Revolution resulted in machines being used to further increase efficiency. Because the sun shines, providing us with a great deal of free energy, all the physical resources available to us, and the various agricultural, industrial, communication, trading, and information technologies we have developed, humans can and do produce vastly more than they need to survive.
The first basic kind of survival is to produce and exchange.
The second basic kind of survival is to steal the produce of others.
For some people, the second kind is easier than and preferable to the first kind. Why work if it's easier to steal from others?
If you can present yourself as a "good helper" while robbing people blind without them noticing (hiding the bad), you can make a very good living. For some people this is a great success formula. Particularly, if you don't have to do the stealing yourself; you hire hordes of bureaucrats to do the stealing for you. You hire hordes of "teachers" to brainwash the young so they can't recognize subtle forms of stealing. You hire academics and journalists to spread the message of how "great a helper" you are. You issue "regulations" to force businesses to do some of the stealing for you. You hire hordes of cops, who in addition to providing some useful help, also "enforce the regulations" with clubs, guns, jails, etc.
As David T. Freeman says in The Great Voting Hoax (edited):
"Some people operate in a mode of "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" -- and when they've only known about someone's good traits for a long time, they refuse to acknowledge the bad traits, when someone else points them out. This difficulty arises from circumstances where the person who believes that the person, organization, business, or "government" is "all good" with no bad -- has not experienced any of the bad, or if they have, then they don't recognize it as bad. Delusions can be overwhelming. In extreme cases, two people can have opposite perceptions of what is "good" and what is "bad!"
Some people make it part of their life's existence to mislead, oppress, and exploit others -- and sometimes they're not even consciously aware that they're doing this, or how they're doing it -- probably because they have developed perceptions which are a perverted version of reality (in their mind, they create their own "reality," which has no objective basis on what reality truly is). Of course, all of these people -- whether they are knowingly or unknowingly misleading, oppressive, or exploitive -- also only advertise their good traits. (The unknowingly misleading, oppressive, and/or exploitive, will usually only acknowledge feedback praising their good traits, whilst ignoring any feedback pointing out their bad traits -- yet another form of self-induced delusion (similar to the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" mode of operation, they think: "How could I do any wrong! I only intend to do good!"). When someone lives in an excessive state of delusion, we end up with the seriously depraved. They often try to impose their afflictions on others, without cause."
Hiding the Bad
The "bad" can be uncomfortable, embarrassing, and painful. In 'States of Denial,' Stanley Cohen provides a list of common phrases related to denial:
There is "obvious bad" and "deeply hidden bad" -- "surface denial" and "deep denial." Stanley Cohen's 'States of Denial' is mostly about what seems the "obvious bad" to me: Atrocities in South Africa, Israel, Germany, and elsewhere; "human rights violations"; etc. But there is a great deal of "more deeply hidden bad." Cohen himself may be in a state of deep denial about the "more deeply hidden bad" -- or, if he is aware of the "deeper bad," he didn't say anything about it in his book, because he feared being denounced as "crazy" and/or not finding a publisher for his book! (See Project Abolish Stupidity & Increase Your Intelligence.)
Scientology and Government
In the late 1960s, I became very interested in Scientology. I immersed myself in it and even spent some time on L. Ron Hubbard's ships, including his flagship. I personally met and observed Hubbard on numerous occasions. I saw both good and bad. The bad was sufficient to disillusion me about both Hubbard and Scientology. Nevertheless, I did benefit greatly from the good.
For the good in Scientology (and ex-scientologists), see:
For the bad in Scientology, see:
Since my early years, I of course also got involved with the "government cult." I was forced into a concentration campus for dumbing down and brainwashing, euphemistically called a "school." Whatever anyone might think about the bad in Scientology, the bad in government cults is infinitely worse! At least, the scientologists don't murder 100s, 1,000s, and 1,000,000s, as the "governmentologists" routinely do. The scientologists also don't force you to pay them at gunpoint, as the "governmentologists" routinely do. See #TL07B: THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT.
[ R. J. Rummel's 'Death by Government'
Genocide or Democide = murder by "governmentologists."
Rummel's website: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/]
I suspect that if I were to make an evaluation of the good done by Scientology compared to the bad, I would conclude that they do more good than bad. After I left Scientology in 1971, it took me about a year to deprogram myself from Scientology brainwashing.
Around 1973 I started examining my "surface government beliefs" and reading books on freedom. It probably took me about two years to deprogram myself from "surface government brainwashing." Around 1977, after reading Lysander Spooner (#TL07: THE CONSTITUTION OF NO AUTHORITY), I started deprogramming myself from "deep government brainwashing." It took about six years to complete the process. (The vast majority of philosophical anarchists, libertarians, and other freedom lovers have done little or nothing about deprogramming themselves from deep government brainwashing. See Clear-Your-Mind Reports.)
Although there are no doubt good (though misguided) "governmentologist" individuals, judging by both their methods and the overall results they produce (particularly all the humans they slaughter), in my estimation, the "governmentologists" are at least thousands of time worse than any scientologists are ever likely to be. The "governmentologists" are of course much better at hiding their bad than the scientologists.
More Personal Experiences
Denying the bad can be expensive. Starting in 1993, at about the same time the development of e-gold started, I was involved in a similar attempt (#TL40A: TELICUR - TERRA LIBRA CURRENCY AND FINANCIAL SYSTEM). I found a libertarian business consultant to head the project and arranged with a businessman friend to provide financing. The development started. An "Introductory Package" was written and sold for $25. After a while I started receiving complaints from people who paid their $25 but didn't receive their packages.
Because I was so eager for Telicur to become a reality, I turned a blind eye to the important warning signal of the business consultant's failure to send out the packages -- I denied the bad. After the original financing ran out, I financed Telicur development to the tune of over $100,000 over a period of about a year. In the end, no viable system was developed and all the money and time invested was wasted. How could I have expected someone who had trouble processing orders and sending out simple packages to develop a complex e-gold-type system? Had I recognized the "bad" when it occurred (and its implications), I would have saved myself over $100,000!
See also Money Skill #30: Signal detection.
I know a certain businessman who is perfectly honest. I've met with him several times and spoken to him on the phone many times. I also thought of him as a highly competent businessman. At one point he had millions entrusted to him for the development of various businesses. Practically all the businesses failed and most of the money was lost. I still believe in the honesty of the businessman. Until a few months ago, I also largely believed in his competence.
Then I had a long conversation with someone else who also knows the businessman. From this I realized that the businessman had fallen prey to "Peter's Principle" -- not only had he risen to his level of competence, he had risen considerably beyond his level of competence. Because all along I had been so impressed by his honesty and apparent competence, I had blinded myself to even the possibility that he might suffer from some debilitating incompetences. The businessman presented his good but hid his bad. He probably also hides his own bad from himself. Were he as competent as he is honest, he would have been a highly successful tycoon!
Of course I've suffered many other failures as a result of my own weaknesses... but I'm not saying more about any of that!
"Helpers" Whose Livelihood Depend on the Problems of Others What would happen if a large percentage of people were to inform themselves about living much healthier lifestyles so the incidence of degenerative diseases like atherosclerosis, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, etc. dropped back to the levels of 100 years ago? See:
What if the application of such knowledge by a large population would result in people generally being much healthier and "medical business" (including pharmaceutical drug sales) decreasing by 50%, 60%, 70% or more?
Does the livelihood of much of the "medical profession" depend on most people following bad health practices so they get sick more often and suffer more from degenerative and other diseases?
Who else is in a similar position? Lawyers? Politicians and government bureaucrats?
How many businesses and systems depend for their survival on the problems of others? And the perpetuation of those problems?
What would happen to the "criminal justice system" if people became good? To what extent does their livelihood depend on people being bad and doing bad things repeatedly? Does this have anything to do with recidivism rates?
Semantic Phylogenetic Engrams
[The following (with minor edits) has been taken from the original at http://neurosemanticprogramming.evisionsite.com/apevhumanmind.htm.]
Lecture to the No-Y-ian Association
7 June 2001Aristotelian Ape Mind versus Humean Human Mind
by Dennis K. Chong and Jennifer K. Smith Chong(In this paper, the male pronoun will to apply either gender. Where the plural pronoun is used, it will apply to both authors. Where the nominal pronoun is used, it will apply to the first author.)
We dedicate this paper to our friend and caring man of minds:
Professor Don Ranney
and
Professor Robert Malone
our friend and man of minding minds.In the fields of Psychiatry, Psychology, Psychotherapy and Counseling are cases that witness the most vicious forms and manners of interrelating between human beings. It is sometimes a staggering mystery how one party can pursue the fixed outcome to utterly dominate or destroy the other. One is compelled to wonder where it is coming from? This is something that is alien to us, but it is seemingly not so for the other. The question is what is the epistemological driver for this state of affairs.
It is insufficient to say that things are so because, "He is bad" or "She is rotten" or "It is her abused childhood" or "He knows no better." Even if these conclusions are true-to-fact, we are still left with the question, "So, how does it follow if he/she is X ... then this happens."
In a very real sense we have never been able to find a completely satisfactory answer to this conundrum until now. For us, today, it is to be found in a work by Radu J. Bogdan called, Minding Minds published by the MIT Press. What he proposes is found in our roots. These roots are described in the vernacular that say that we are descended from the apes! It is to be found in our pre-human ancestry.
If this is true, it would seem plausible that we will inevitably have some traces of thinking and being from our evolutionary predecessors. These traces are known as phylogenetic engrams. In apes today, they do not have semantic phylogenetic engrams to determine their thinking and being. What they have are the original thinking and behavioural semantic blueprints. In the line of their genealogy their semantic paradigms were inherited in toto intacta. In the vernacular, we would say, they have the real McCoy.
What then are the features of this mind, a.k.a. Aristotelian ape mind? These features are reflected in these two quotes:
The social imaginings and plans contemplated by apes would be linear, forward-looking, limited and probably coarse-grained permutations from current situations.
The ape mind is situated, reflex, confined to present perception and motivation (the fixed point), yet able to imagine on-line forward-looking but partial alternative to current states of affairs. The imagining is probably cued by genetic priming as well as past experiences and expectations about standard multilateral arrangements of the zero-sum sort (kinship, reciprocation, alliances, dominance). -- Radu J. Bogdan: Minding Minds MIT Press page 62.
The models coming from conflict and game theory, suggest that the zero-sum nature of rough politics practiced by non-human primates (I win, you lose and vice versa) raises representation and computation problems that are different from and simpler than those faced in the non-zero-sum forms of epistemic and communal coordination, which are uniquely human.7 The idea is that non-human primates do not appear to evolve specialized interpretive skills dedicated to the non-zero-sum epistemic and communal activities (such as learning or co-operation) whereas humans do evolve such skills.8 This is the mighty difference anticipated earlier, because it is such skills of non-zero-sum coordination which most in driving the evolutionary complicity between interpretation and mental rehearsal toward metamentation. -- idem page 62.
From what has been cited in these two quotes, one thing is clear. If such a blueprint of thinking is still in us as semantic phylogenetic engrams, it will mean that it is in us to think and act like apes!
Is there any evidence to support this assertion? There is. It is not only in these mental cases that come to the doctor's office. We only have to scan across the history of nations of the world and see the men who have come to power and have behaved like alpha dominant apes to their people. These men have stripped the wealth of their people, looted their riches, despoiled all their capital and plundered their national revenue and subjected their people to all manner of human rights violations. In this ape list we have Hitler of Germany, Mussolini of Italy, Stalin of Russia, Mao of China, Doc. Duvalier of Haiti, Fulgencio Batista of Cuba, Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Samoza of Nicaragua, Suharto of Indonesia, Moise Tshombe of Katanga, Idi Amin of Uganda, Bokasa of the Central African Republic, Pinochet of Chile etc.
This phenomenon does not apply only to rulers of nations. These are people who can be found everywhere in our lives whose only game is a "zero-sum nature of rough politics practiced by non-human primates (I win, you lose and vice versa)." This stance is practically universal.
A friend of mine invited me to see the of Gladiator with his magnificent surround sound system. I only had time to view the opening passages of the film. It was awesome to see the German tribes massing up again the Roman Legions. And up on the hill was Marcus Aurelius. The entire battle scene that then erupted was nothing but an unfolding expression of his ape mind. And, in turn, the thought flashed into my mind, "What an ape you are?" I was quite surprised at myself thinking such a thought of this man who was a historically famed and respected Stoic philosopher.
And then I was reminded of our augmentation of the Meta Programs in our work Power and Elegance in Communication (1993) that we renamed the Enriched Meta Programs. In this expansion was the sort for POWER. It is clear to us that this sort is nothing but a metaphor of the phylogenetic engram of the Aristotelian ape mind. Like Aurelius, it was a "zero-sum nature of rough politics practiced by non-human primates (I win, you lose and vice versa)."
What we have also come to realize is that if this philosophy is embedded within the larger meta philosophy of Cause and Effect, a.k.a. the Blame Frame, it will be powered to extreme and unbelievable exponentials. This kind of neuro-semantics is to be found in the lion prides and wolf packs. When the resident dominant males are expelled, the new "kings" pursue them even to the point of killing them. If we dismiss this as something that only animals do then we need to remind ourselves what Machiavelli wrote in his work The Prince. In this work, he (a human being, a thinker and social politician) commended that the prince who takes over a house must completely exterminate all members of the family of the previous ruler. This recommendation is nothing but a metaphor of the ape mind of Machiavelli.
We have in our clinical work encountered husbands who sought and succeeded to rule their wives and their family like some alpha dominant ape. In one case, in the divorce suit, the man's lawyer was able to strip the entire asset base of his wife, even though he had done nothing to help to earn it. The wife was left destitute. We have known of people who were in work situations in which they had to submit to a person whose ways would have been a credit to Gestapo commandant in a WW II prisoner of war camp. In school, a bully is nothing but an ape. In our social relationships we have encountered persons who seek to be the alpha of the group. There is no need to struggle or to effort to search for people with Aristotelian ape minds. They are everywhere.
If it is true that we did evolve from pre-human forms, then what have we evolved into? This brings us to the Christian axiom that God created man to his image. This figure of speech cannot be taken literally. I am a Chinaman. I do not believe that God looks like a Chinese man. We hold the view that the image that is referred to is the grammar, syntax and semantics of God. Evolution is, therefore, about the evolution of our grammar, syntax and semantics. This is reflected in this quote:
Metamentation builds on formats of interpretation and imagination which are unsituated, explicit, fine-grained, off-line, meta-ascending, and backlooping.
This apparently unique development (documented in later chapters) allows human minds to engage each other in open-ended and non-zero-sum or contractual forms of coordination in which what an agent would plan or choose to do and do, depends on what other agents would plan and choose to do and do. In this sort of coordination, agents succeed if and only if each does what others expect each to do. This is to say that the gambit works only if each agent shares with others the recognition of such expectations and of the contexts in which they work. Sharing recognitions is an absolute novelty in primate mentation. It is an ability that totally redesigns the human mind. Suppose that these patterns of mutual engagement, based on such mental sharing, displays regularities that the participants recognize and conform to, and recognize that others recognize and conform to them, also recognize that such mutual recognition and conformity ensures the success of their collaborative efforts. The conformity in question is to rules and norms mostly cultural, of which social and linguistic conventions are a distinguished subclass. -- Radu J. Bogdan: Minding Minds MIT Press page 63.
When we compare the two evaluations of the Aristotelian ape mind and the Humean human mind we can immediately grasp the evolutionary quantum difference between the two. It is by this evolutionary step that the following is possible:
Reflective metathinking operates in communication, education, indoctrination, scientific theorizing or argumentation, and often takes the form of sequential metamentation whereby a metathinker deploys thoughts about other thoughts and still other thoughts. These deployments are run by generative routines. -- idem page 89.
This is what apes are not capable of. They do not have the same faculty of grammar, syntax and semantics of Humean human dimensions..
Human relationships are fragile at the best of times because of our competing and differing beliefs and sorts. When the relationship:
- has the shadow of an Aristotelian ape mind over it
- it is within the frame of Cause and Effect
there is nothing but disaster for all involved. There is no hope for dialogue, decalogue or any logue. From this state of affairs flows the anger of homicidal proportions whether we elect to call them jealousy, road rage, home rage, air rage or office rage. The alpha mind drives itself to dominate, not even if, but especially if it will entail the life of the other.
How to undo or salvage such a state of affairs is not the task of this paper. It will take us into the domain of the inversions of semantic analogical ill-formedness to well-formedness. However, we can assure you that the technology to do this is here. It can be done. This will be the subject of a paper at another time.
References
Dennis K. Chong & Jennifer K. Smith Chong: Power and Elegance in Communication C-Jade Publications Inc. 1993
Radu J. Bogdan: Minding Minds MIT Press 1999
Mark Lindsay's Contribution
Q. What do you know about Jung's shadow?
A. In fact, I had intended to provide suggestions regarding Jung's concept of the "inferior function" (IF). The IF was part of Jung's typology. It was the opposite of the "superior or dominant function."
The IF could be described as the hidden or unfamiliar part of the personality. Jung said: "The inferior function is practically identical with the dark side of the human personality." ['Concerning Rebirth,' CW 9i, par. 222.]
Jung believed that it acted as an autonomous complex and resisted integration. "The inferior function secretly and mischievously influences the superior function most of all, just as the latter represses the former most strongly." ['The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales,' ibid., par. 431.]
I'm not so sure if the IF is necessarily "bad." Sounds like it is at least mischievous:
"Positive as well as negative occurrences can constellate the inferior counter-function. When this happens, sensitiveness appears. Sensitiveness is a sure sign of the presence of inferiority. This provides the psychological basis for discord and misunderstanding, not only as between two people, but also in ourselves. The essence of the inferior function is autonomy: it is independent, it attacks, it fascinates and so spins us about that we are no longer masters of ourselves and can no longer rightly distinguish between ourselves and others." ['The Problem of the Attitude-Type,' CW 7, par. 85.]
Apparently, it tends to surface when we are fatigued or under stress.
Regarding Jung's shadow
"Hidden or unconscious aspects of oneself, both good and bad, which the ego has either repressed or never recognized."
I suppose the shadow and/or inferior function could be added to the list of sources of "bad."
Other thoughts regarding the good and bad:
"The man mindful of his reputation does not reveal his sadness." -- early Anglo-Saxon author
I've heard news stories where some guy kills his entire family "out of the blue." Neighbors and friends say he was devoutly religious, went to church every Sunday, went to bible study, etc.
I once read an interview of Jim Morrison in which he said something like: "Imprisonment begins at birth. Teachers and religious leaders then take over where the parents left off."
"For the vast majority of mankind throughout history, the system of beliefs which they accepted, for which they were prepared to live and die, was not of their own making or choice; it was shoved down their throats by the hazards of birth." -- Arthur Koestler ('Janus: A Summing Up')
This expresses the same realization I had come to on my own in my mid teens, when my parents were forcing me to "Catholic mass."
Much Much More Bad!
See #TL04A: Unreality Imperative: The Most Basic Human Problem.
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