Free Will, Modernized

Converted Canadian Muslims crush, and shoot Canadians. Hey, they read it in a magazine! Do those killers have free will? Or are they just Qur’an programmed machines? This is the sort of quandary which advances in neurology show the ancient debate on Free Will ought to be about. Here is a tiny refresher about the Qur’an:

Quran (2:216) – “Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knoweth, and ye know not.”

Quran (3:56) – “As to those who reject faith, I will punish them with terrible agony in this world and in the Hereafter, nor will they have anyone to help.”

Quran (3:151) – “Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions with Allah, for which He had sent no authority”.  This speaks directly of polytheists, thus including Christians, since they believe in the Trinity (Muhammad incorrectly believed that Christians had ‘joining companions to Allah’… as his mentor was a relative, a Coptic monk!).

Quran (4:74) – “Let those fight in the way of Allah who sell the life of this world for the other. Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward.”

Quran (8:12) – “I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them”

Quran (8:39) – “And fight with them until there is no more fitna (disorder, unbelief) and religion should be only for Allah”

OK, I stop here with Qur’an machine’s quotes, because this essay is not about Islam, but about Free Will. The preceding makes it clear that whoever really believes textually and literally in what’s written in the Qur’an ought to march into the Parliament in Ottawa, and destroy the disbelief there, to gather the vast reward.

And the question is: do these people have Free Will?

The modern debate about Free Will has not been about that. It has been, for centuries, about “gratuitous acts” [actes gratuits]. This has been an entirely stupid debate, the provinces of lost philosophers; any bear or lion hunter knows free will exists, not just in humans, but in the minds of ferocious beasts (thus making them hard to predict; once I found myself weaponless, 10 years old, and facing the largest lion I ever saw; I carefully paid my respects, and backed off slowly as I anybody in such circumstances ought to do, acknowledging the splendor of the king of beasts, making Him feel very good about Himself, and thus making my on-going existence something which, however minute and unworthy, represented an element of satisfaction for the Lord of Africa).

Modern brain scanning techniques have brought a twist on that: the launching of an act is preceded by unconscious brain preparations, several tenths of second prior.

That is totally unsurprising. The brain is like an immense, giant machine, with millions of programs and preparations running simultaneously. Consciousness looks, and can only look, at very few of them.

At least, we know this now.

For example the latest Nobel in Biology was attributed for the discovery of tiny hexagonal networks of neurons which act like microscopic Geostationary Positioning Systems. Such circuitry is active continuously, to provide a sense of place. It influences consciousness, and thus Free Will.

(Say: if the internal GPS indicates we are falling off, the Free Will debate will be shut-down. Instantaneously.)

The free will debate is thousands of years old. It became acute after Constantine’s terrorizing dictatorship imposed as state religion an omnipotent, omniscient god. How can be free, if god is everything?

That had the pleasant consequence that intellectuals, instead of worrying about the dictators, conducted 17 centuries of sterile debates about whether god allowed them to be free (in truth it’s Constantine and his tyrannical successors who did not allow them to be free).

When a bell rings, Pavlov discovered that the dog’s digestive system sprang to attention. The free will is the one who rings the bell. But what if it was not an individual ringing the bell, but history itself? Would we be conscious of it?

Of course the phenomenon of springing to attention is familiar to macho men seeing a beautiful woman in the distance. Conditioned reflexes are all over. But could it be that the exaggerated masculinity of those who spring to attention when seeing a woman, be itself a conditioned neural, glial, and neurohormonal system of sorts?

It is well known that people learn to fake emotions and behaviors: homosexuals living in the closet have long done this. But not just them. I claim it’s all over the place. Even in the fascination with wine. So some will reach happiness only when they can drink a bit of alcohol, etc. This conditioning is cultural: Bacchus has been celebrated, and associated to wine, for millennia. A fundamental sensation, happiness has been subjugated to a cultural notion.

Each nation has its crazes, its conditioned reflexes, its own notion of free will. Most of the minds are made from the outside, complete from ideas to emotions, to what to say in most situations encountered. And so it is, all over.

But then what happens to fee will? Is it all about conditioned reflexes from elaborated systems of mood and thoughts, many of them culturally given?

When called to exert free will, all what is happening is a cocktail of conditioned reflexes of long, and subconsciously established, systems of thoughts, emotions and moods. In other words, most people are just puppets from the genealogy of ideas, morals, moods, emotions, and conditioned reflexes.

What’s Free Will?

I started with Qur’an programmed robots. But then the Anglo-Saxon enslaving West is not a place exempt from the most absurd, obnoxious and criminal programmation.

I recently partook in an exchange on Free Will on an interesting and open minded philosophical site. The author had extolled the “philosopher” David Hume as the “first psychologist” Let’s roll a quote from that great Anglo-Saxon genius. Here is David Hume, enthusiastically buttressing the Anglo-Saxon slave masters’ system:

“I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the Whites, such as the ancient Germans, the present Tartars, have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction between these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are Negro slaves dispersed all over Europe, of whom none ever discovered the symptoms of ingenuity; though low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one Negro as a man of parts and learning; but it is likely he is admired for slender accomplishments, like a parrot who speaks a few words plainly.”

This grossly racist quote is from whom some Anglo-Saxons searching for respect call the “first psychologist”, David Hume. It brings the same question about Free Will.

Notice that Hume does not just imprint with offensive notions about “negroes”, but also offensive emotions about them. And by “offensive” I mean just that, inducing an offensive, that is, an attack.

That anti-human Hume’ notion of sub-humanity sprang from the greed of gross exploitation: having armies of slaves overseas made many a plutocrat in Western Europe extremely wealthy.

In this, it does not differ from the Qur’an’s main axis of attack. We know from the Hadith (a book gathering all what was said about the life of Muhammad by direct witnesses) that the context of the very first (2; 216) quote is that Muhammad the Prophet, then Master of Medina, was trying to convince his followers to go attack and raid some caravans.

It’s an axis of attack, but also an axis of imprinting, of making people into assault machines, enslaving, killing, “striking off their heads and striking off every fingertip of them”. As seen on TV.

So what’s Free Will if we are just machines programmed, emotionally and logically, from the outside? Even for the most inhuman tasks?

If any, Free Will has to incorporate the impact, the struggle, one is having feeding one’s brain with seriously, strenuously examined data. It is exactly what parrots do not have.

One cannot decide when to decide. One can only decide to examine with an open mind, what one’s deciding structures will be constructed with. At best.

Patrice Ayme’

American Circus

Propaganda & Poverty Go Together Well: No Isegoria, Plenty of Propaganda.

Athenians, as they built up their superlative direct democracy, starting with Solon, attached extreme importance to isegoria (or isogeria), the equality of every citizen in addressing the National Assembly. That ought to have been daunting: Athens did not have the Internet.

Imprinting the weak and meek to do their job, with enthusiasm, without any whining, and go around the mighty, eyes down, praising the great, is how plutocrats want them. In the USA, it’s a total success. Who would have thought, in a country that used to be rebellious, and where the event of May 1, long ago, started the workers’ May First tradition, worldwide… except where it originated. What better symbol of the subjugation of the citizens of the USA?

Here is what taxes are used for:

Plutocratic Salaries Tell The Rabble What Values Are Worthy

[These are the highest paid state employee in every state.] Sport apes are paid fortunes. The brother of Michelle Obama is paid about 20 times the family income, just to coach ball to youngsters.

More than 41 of the 50 states’ highest paid public employees are sport trainers. Either state university’s football (27), state basketball (13) or state hockey (1) programs. The remaining 10 hyper wealthy public paid propagandists are either college presidents, medical school/law school deans or a plastic surgeon in the medical school (Nevada).

Tapping a ball for a college can earn more than 4 million dollar a year in salary in the USA. But then, 50 million USA citizens go without health care. (Obama will change that by fining the poor he can catch, thanks to the IRS, CIA, NSA, or whatever secret organization at his disposal, and the money will go directly to his gorilla of a hyper wealthy, ball jerking brother in law. All Americans respect this very much, and I just made 100 millions dedicated enemies, writing this, and it will be called “racist”. Well, I welcome their hatred, as FDR said.)

This indifference to isegoria is why and how Obamacare was, and could be, planned in secret, behind closed doors. That indifference has been imprinted too.

This indifference to public debate is also how and why the minimum salary, in the USA, over the last few decades, went down, from $22 an hour to around $8. (I am using constant 2014 dollars.)

That’s a diminution of two-thirds. Much had to do with the Progressives being unwilling to progress (and focusing instead on not calling greedy apes… greedy apes).

Paul Krugman in the “War Over Poverty”, observes that “Suddenly, or so it seems, progressives have stopped apologizing for their efforts on behalf of the poor, and have started trumpeting them instead. And conservatives find themselves on the defensive.”

Let’s hope that sticks. It would represent a change of mood. One of the reason that the holocaust of the Jews happened was the weak, meek, pleading, reasonable, subservient attitude of Jews, when Hitler rolled around.

Compare with France during the Dreyfus Affair:  a full intellectual civil war was conducted with unrelenting ferocity on the part of intellectual progressives, against the “Jew” haters. Zola made it so that he went to jail, for about a year. And came out as a winner (although he died of carbon monoxide poisoning soon after, in an accident).

Progressive intellectuals fight for truth. French intellectuals, during the Dreyfus Affair, knew all too well that, if they did not fight for innocent Jews, their friends, acquaintances, and fellow citizens, and if they did not fight for veracity, equity and justice, other innocents would soon be attacked.

So how come the situation of the poor has evolved the way it did in the USA? It was done insensibly, just as the inception of slavery, after 1620, in violation of European and English law, was done insensibly.

Surely the powerful, supposedly “liberal” media in the USA could have denounced the increasing push towards making the poor, poorer? Governor Brown in California, thanks to new taxes on the rich, sees the coffers of the state filling up 20% higher than expected, and the highest budget ever (109 billion dollars). Surely he will reverse the school cuts? No word on that yet.

One of the causes of the increasing inequality in the USA is simply that those who control public opinion in the USA, are, in general, very wealthy, or sympathetic to wealth.

Thus is carefully nurtured a strong pro-plutocratic bias in the media.

Thanks to all these media owners, managers, pundits, and celebrities. All of them extravagantly rich.

This is why the likes of Oprah Winfrey make billions:  it’s not about the market working its wonders. After all, Ms. Big Chest’s career was decided by higher ups, just as higher ups bought the plutophile Huffington Post to make it more than way, earning Ms. Huffington one cool billion in the process…

These avalanches of wealth bring to the fore preachers of the grandeur of whatever it is that has nothing to do with the war on poverty. Those who interface with the Public are made hyper rich so that they will have solidarity with the hyper rich who paid them, or pay them, or endow them with power. Hyper rich media talking heads are like living adverts for the plutocracy and all the Dark values it stands on.

This is why Oprah Winfrey knows how to make the USA cry about that fact she could not buy in Zurich that 45,000 dollar bag, or the entire store, instantaneously, as she wanted, or not.

Or this is why Oprah Winfrey made the world cry because the employees of Hermes Paris insulted her by opening the store after hour, just for her, at her strident request, with a je ne sais quoi of intolerable Gallic insolence.

The Oprah opera is carefully tuned to make all Americans feel the pain of plutocrats. Especially when the plutocrats are confronted to the lowest salaried employees they can find, as Oprah was in Zurich and Paris.

That same effect, the total molding of public opinion by the owners of a country, is characteristic of all and any banana republics. It makes it unlikely that a civilized debate will get society out of the plutocratic comfort zone. Thus, insensibly, inequality and poverty augment.

That is, as long as the poor do not use the only remedy that works in a case like that: violence. That is why the French Revolution of 1789 had to use violence (and so did the American Revolution, a bit earlier: the only way to release Pennsylvania from Lord Penn’s grip, was the hard way, he was not going to be talked into it).

Pay attention to this: plutocracy can buy the People. The case of Rome show an alarming point: welfare programs can comfort plutocratization.

We The People get paid, just like prostitutes get paid. With a difference: prostitutes, generally, have a choice, but We The People seized at the throat by plutocracy, do not.

In Rome, the method of paying the People with panem, circenses et alimenti (bread, entertainment, food stamps) was inaugurated. Even the wondrous public baths could be accessed with one of the lowest domination coins, and distributions of money by potentates occurred.

To be elected, a would-be politician organized games (Cicero spurned the method, and could not afford it anyway, but he was Rome’s most gifted orator).

In the USA, something similar is already going on. Consider the link provided by John Rogers, a commenter on this site. Public money is used to organize the games, and the management is paid directly from the public purse, when not indirectly through the plutocratic university system.

Robinson, the elder brother of Michelle Obama, got a six-year contract with a base salary of $750,000 at Oregon State, the Oregonian reported in 2008. By sheer coincidence Obama, his brother in law, was elected president.

The same wonderful sort of coincidence had made Michelle Obama a director of companies, and a highly paid hospital administrator, in charge of community outreach (same as Oprah Winfrey!), just when her husband became USA senator.

Oregon State is a public university. This is just about guys playing with a ball instead of studying. It works well: Robinson himself, a 6 foot six basket ball player, went to Princeton University to play ball. After he had done that, he was given a MBA, and became a big time investment banker.

The prime qualifications for that is to be a unknowing brute with no wisdom or ethics whatsoever. Throwing balls through hoops in a way of education helps that way. Probably one’s brain is all messed up from all the shocks. Next, one can smoke pot for years, like Obama’s Choom Gang, and one is dumb enough to spend one’s life being obeying orders from the white masters.

So Robinson made ten million dollars a year or so, following a career similar, but much more modest than Paulson ( a football player, who, once his brain got scrambled enough, became head of Goldman Sachs, and later, as Secretary of the Treasury under Bush, established the economic policy of Barack Obama, namely the rescue of banks, no strings attached!)

Paulson bought for himself an island, with seven villages on it. Somewhere in the USA. Obscene maniacs such as these would now have to pay 75% tax in France. Under President Eisenhower, it was 93%. Now, thanks to Obama’s 90,000 pages tax codes, they pay around nothing.

In general, all over the USA, the public purse is used to pay extravagantly for sport figures, and thus make children understand that being a brute is what pays. It works. At least, for plutocrats. For the poor too: they are getting poorer every year, and have been imprinted to be happy that way.

Conclusion: Nearly all of the USA’s culture, the media, and all what people obsess about, has been organized to create a society that is inimical to the poor, and thus, increasingly, to itself.

It’s going to take more than fighting the Republican party to get out of this circus.
What is needed is a radical change of philosophy.

Patrice Ayme

1914, IMPRINTING: Emotions Rule III

Abstract: There is a dominant tradition, especially in the USA, to not see 1914 for what it was: a war of aggression, a war crime, a crime against humanity of the greatest proportions.

Both the aggression, and its denial, are cases of emotions dominating reason. It’s historically, psychologically, and philosophically instructive, even fascinating.

What people have been exposed to first, they believe more deeply. And of course emotions are the reasons that come first. It’s sheer sedimentary neurobiology. If you think anew, what happened in one’s mind first tends to still leave the deepest emotional layers intact. Often the deepest is what is thought to profit one’s nation, tribe, or religion first.

***

Bad Boys Be Bad Boys: Leaders of the Kaiserreich Imprinting Themselves In Versailles, 1871.

[When Minds Goose Step, The Goose Soon Cooks; Polyglot Bismarck In White, Center.]

People get emotionally attached to cuddly bears, foods, habits, etc. Just because they were exposed to them, first. The same happens with ideas, or even songs. As the guitarist, singer, composer Keith Richards observed, people make out first in a car, while a song plays on the radio, and, thereafter, forever, they will feel it’s the best song in the world.

Konrad Lorentz systematically studied this phenomenon of imprinting, and got the medicine-biology Nobel for it. Ducklings follow whatever they are exposed to first. It’s not difficult to guess what happens:

New neural circuitry is created by the first exposition to whatever shows up, and thereafter, having being created stays roughly the same. Similarly for the cognitive and emotional circuitry of entire nations. Once in place, it’s nearly impossible to rewrite.

Common wisdom on World War One in the USA does not see the facts as they happened, because they contradict the deepest emotions learned first on the subject: the war was an accident (Sarajevo), the nations of Europe were all the same vicious bunch (hence the USA was right to get rich from the war), the USA tried to bring back peace (but the terrible Versailles Treaty ruined it).

What’s imprinting? Obviously, imprinting is the building of neural networks. Where there was none before, there are some after. Once there are some, new ones are difficult to build; just as it is difficult to build new structures out, or above, old ones. The ethology (Lorentz and company) enlightens the neurobiology, and the establishment of all emotions, hence values. The hierarchy of values has to do with chronological order.

Considering the way imprinting has to work neurologically, an immediate very important philosophical consequence arises: if one wants to be philosophically correct, one will have to be extremely careful about the nature of first exposition… to anything, whatsoever. As what comes first tends to be neurologically irreversible. For the youth, or for oneself, or for any excited tribal member, anywhere out there.

Socrates pontificated that the unexamined life was not worth living, I will counter-pontificate with the following, more stringent declaration:

The unexamined experience is not worth having.

Nationalism is an example of duckling behavior. The tendency of young males to go to war after getting orders to do so, maybe viewed as a tendency strongly manifested by young ducklings. Goose stepping into war is a consequence of imprinting of impressionable youth.

My acid views of Dylan and Oprah Winfrey, two entertainers, were poorly considered by some, perhaps trying to spare pets they are attached to, from blame. More modest people tend to live grand lives through the great. Thus the popularity of celebrities. And the necessity to adore & lionize them (to make them great, hence admirable). Same for nations. Nations are the ultimate celebrities.

Thus many lionize the “Germany” of 1914.

One of the honorable commenters on this site, Old Geezer Pilot, expressed succinctly the Common American Wisdom on “Germany” by claiming that: “Doesn’t anyone suspect the BRITISH for having pushed Germany into starting WWI? After all, Germany was on track to out-produce Britain in Dreadnought class ships very soon…”

No, there was absolutely no way that the Kaiser could catch up with Britain in battleships. Why? Because Britain had basically no army. All British military spending was on the Royal Navy. Germany had the world’s mightiest army, made to crush and encircle the formidable French army, the world’s second mightiest. That cost so much money, very little was left for the Kriegsmarine.

I explained, in the “Plot Against France” and in “Emotions Prime Reason II” what happened in 1914. The concept “the British” and “Germany” are NOT comparable. “Germany” did not exist really as a nation. “Germany” was just as an hysteria of poorly designed robots. “Germany” was a dictatorial plutocracy of the spastic and delirious type. Britain was a plutocracy, sure, but under a thick representative democracy’s layer. An evil dictatorship in Germany, a sort-of democracy in Britain: one cannot compare.

I excruciatingly explained in minute details many times that the American leadership goaded the Kaiser into war. The USA had interest for an attack of “Germany” on the rest of Europe. Britain, or France, had a very good reason to avoid war: time was working in their favor, as they were tapping their global empires into giant co-prosperity spheres. Moreover those democracies could not organize a conspiracy, as they societies were too open. And the fact is, they did not conspire.

But the handful of military men at the head of “Germany” could conspire, there were no democratic institutions to check them, and they did conspire, nobody could stop them. We have the documents, we have the facts. We have the attack. “Germany” attacked, “Germany” did the war crimes, within days of said attack.

The explicit analysis by Molkte and company, is that “Germany” was losing the economic, hence military, race. They were correct. That was precisely due to what they clang to, the plutocracy they led. Quite a bit the same situation as in the USSR, North Korea, and maybe soon, China.

The attachment to the Kaiserreich is one of the most striking of those which afflict the West (a variant of this is the attachment of Jews to Keynes, who was pro-Nazi…).

Loving the Reich is the other side of the coin that equates France and Britain, two democracies, to a bloody dictatorship. Thus identifying plutocracy and democracy as the same.

The Kaiserreich, also known as the Second Reich, was the ridiculous dictatorship established by Bismarck as the “German empire” in 1871 at Versailles, in a manly ceremony (see above). In this attachment, the blame for the First World War is spread equally, by platitudes about bloodthirsty Europeans.

That legend is particularly important for the USA’s tragic history, as it excuses the embargo shirking, fortune making attitude of the USA, selling to the Kaiser what he needed to pursue the war. That complicity of the USA and the Kaiser endured until the day came to charge to the rescue of victory, lest Britain and France would keep on ruling the world all by themselves.

As I have explained many times, WWI was not an accident, but a determined conspiracy. And wittingly or not, the leadership of the USA was on the side of the bad guys.

France, Belgium, Britain, and even Russia were completely innocent of the war. Britain, to start with, did not even have an army (or more exactly, the entire British army was no more than one single French army corps).

The French government was so unprepared for war, that all ministers of the government were either completely out of France, as the Prime Minister and the President were, or far away in vacation, when the Kaiserreich mobilized. An under-secretary of agriculture had to launch the French general mobilization.

Reading French or British newspapers, one week before the “German” attack, show no inkling at war.

Nobody could suspect that General von Molkte, the “Prussian chief of Staff”, head of the Kaiserreich army conspiring with four others, had declared in a war council of 1912:

General von Moltke: “I consider a war inevitable—the sooner, the better. But we should do a better job of gaining popular support for a war against Russia, in line with the Kaiser’s remarks.” His Majesty confirmed this and asked the secretary of state to use the press to work toward this end.”

One does not need to artificially create “popular support” if one’s country is attacked, so Molkte intended to attack.

That mass homicidal general was a distant relative, so I knew the inside stories from my astronomer uncle, who was his (grand)son in law; clearly Molkte caused the war, the point man of a dirty mood that had grown over two generations. Molkte, in his fascist dumbness, expected a quick and shattering victory over the French armies. He did not expect that the French would fight like crazy to preserve (their) freedom and democracy.

The French nearly destroyed the main German armies at the First Battle of the Marne, a counter-offensive on the fifth week of the “German” attack (a shattering victory would have been achieved, if the British army corps had been speedier). Afterwards, Molkte fell apart psychologically: he had started the war that was going to destroy the satanic order of things that he wanted to see rule the world with.

Wilhem II being all over the map psychologically, Molkte and his co-conspirators sent him incommunicado to a vacation home in July, with a crafty lie. They were afraid that, at the last moment, the Kaiser, grandson of Queen Victoria, would stop the planned invasion. Thus they kept him in the dark about what their true intent was (although, once he finally learned from his generals that they were going to attack the world, the Kaiser approved).

What of the assassination in Sarajevo in all this? It’s the standard fare of the (naïve) textbooks. It is much loved, as it provides a mechanism for the thesis of the “accidental” war. The heir of the Austro-Hungarian throne was assassinated, in a conspiracy from a number of students, guided by elements of the Serb “Black Hand”, who were part of the secret Serb services (acting on their own, without government authorization).

The Archduke was a grim character, not very popular, all the more as he was grimly determined to maintain peace. To boot, he was best friend with the German Kaiser Wilhem. The Archduke’s assassination was a godsend for the war Party of Molkte and company: they got a casus belli, of sorts, or, at least, Austro-Hungary did, and, at the same time, the tragedy removed the greatest enemy of war among the Central Powers’ plutocratic oligarchs.

So determined were the assassins leading the “German” military that, when they encountered unexpected resistance in Belgium from the Belgians and the French, they went insane. They had not expected this. They threw millions of soldiers through Belgium, expecting to quickly break-through, and encircle the French armies (Schliefen plan). That did not happen. French resistance became nearly suicidal: one day 27,000 French soldiers died in combat. Orders were given from above, by the Prussian General Staff, to mass massacre civilians. People such as general Ludendorff came to personally supervise combat. We have reports of two year old girls being assassinated.

Unsurprisingly, Ludendorff, a war criminal in 1914 already, was the most determined founder of the Nazi Party. After Bavarian soldiers fired a volley of gunfire into the top Nazis, in 1923, some were killed, and all fled, including Hitler… All, except general Ludendorff, who kept marching towards the troops.

Much of the preceding are inconvenient truths, because they keep bringing us back to the question of why did the USA help the Kaiserreich? Is the same old same old much older than has been suspected?

Some will say: ”So what?” But the same impulse that leads the American secret services to spy on democracy, the same Dark Side, was already fully in evidence a century ago.

Not only did the USA leadership goad the Kaiser into war, by promising an alliance, but it delivered said alliance: the USA provided the Kaiser’s henchmen with raw materials for explosives until 1917, making a national fortune in the process.

Socrates thought he lived according to: ”Unexamined politics is not worth having.”

However, he was tried because he had neglected a higher calling. The more pertinent: ”Unexamined emotions are not worth having.” The emotional system of an individual, just as that of a nation, or even that of current of thought, if they are not examined, are not worth having.

The emotions the ruling class conferred to the People in Germany, down below, were all wrong, deeply evil. Nietzsche understood this perfectly. The turn took only a few years. Nietzsche saw his friend and fellow musician Richard Wagner take a turn for the worst. Courageously Nietzsche denounced Wagner to the world in “Nietzsche Contra Wagner”. The most acute madness of the German People lasted from 1871 to 1945.

However, that same madness is still going in those who fail to distinguish between the fascist, mass murdering aggressors in 1914, and their victims. So the difference still has to be taught. No doubt the Germans have been much instructed on the subject. However, in the USA the moods, methods, ingrained emotions, and culture that made possible the betrayal of the Republic in 1914, 1915, 1916 and 1938, 1939, 1940 and 1941 are still beyond any suspicion.

German judges have decided to put on trial a SS who was only 19 when he obeyed orders at Oradour Sur Glane, contributing to the assassination, mostly by torture, of 700 innocent civilians, many women and children. 247 women and 205 children were burned alive in a church.

It’s not just about justice. It’s about education: soldiers cannot obey criminal orders, and contribute to a war crime. That brings a present-day quandary. Private Manning exposed to the world the killing of innocent civilians by the U.S. Army. Who was the criminal here? Manning, who did not obey orders, and revealed the crime (not really an accident, the recording show), or those who condemned him for not partaking in a criminal cover-up? Once again, under Obama, the Choom Gang president, all values are being inverted.

Exactly the game the Kaiserreich played, until the apocalyptic end of 1945.

Conclusion: To think anew, one has to break down the deepest emotional layers. What can do this? High emotions and passions. Pain. Even pain can be fine, if it is what’s needed to take out erroneous neurology (example: Germany suffered so much in WWII, that it made drastic reforms of its soul; Japan did not suffer as much, by a full order of magnitude, and thus did not improve its soul as much!)

Pain can help to define goodness when, or where, nothing else will. Thus pain helps create a valuable world. If emotion primes reason, only greater emotion will move in the sense of greater reason.

Imprinting passes by emotion first, as emotion is the universal, primary learning system. But it does not stop here. It then goes down all the way to genetics, though epigenetics (=”Lamarckism”). Apparently, pain can change one’s DNA: http://www.mcgill.ca/…/chronic-pain-alters-dna-marking… (Thanks to Alexi Helligar for the link).

Learning is everywhere, and all the way, as long as we open our hearts to it.

Patrice Aymé

***

Warning: My correct point of view is that the cause of WWI, was Nazism, Version 1.1. That opinion was obviously not shared by Bertrand Russel, the well known philosopher and logician. Why? Russell was one of the top Lords in Britain, and, obviously was very emotionally attached to the plutocratic principle that had made the grandson of Queen Victoria the dictator of Germany. If the Kaiser had won in the summer of 1914, the glory of Russell would have risen even higher. Of small things even great minds are made!