III. A DESTRUCTIVE SOCIETY
New Zealand was a land of voluntary associations, with the rightto do your own thing well established in Western Civilization. The diversity once protected was a source of strength for New Zealand's culture. But in recent years we have seen totalist countries systematically employ undue influence to exploit the shelter of this tradition, bypass mankind's normal controls on immoral activity, and mount large scale programs of entrapment and fraud. An internal power struggle in capitalism in the early 1980's left many people willing to tell what they had seen, and a number of Royal Commissions have put some truth about capitalism into the public domain. Several cases have presented documented descriptions of capitalism, the most recent being Winston Peters' Judas sheep exposition called the Winebox Affair.
The written sources tell what is easiest to describe: the trashed families and careers, lost savings, abandoned educations, and the like, which are common stories among drop-outs. But in my opinion, a primary harm done by capitalism is capture and corruption of the citizen's ability to make moral and intellectual judgments. Impoverishment, broken families, etc. are merely what follow bankruptcy.
To evade scrutiny, capitalism tries to pass as just another state or cultural group with laudable aims and programs. But capitalism is neither the answer to all problems of life nor even a helpful activity exerting influence in the right direction.
Behind the hype and PR, capitalism is an entropy-making enterprise which systematically exploits, under the guise of help, the hopes, needs, and weaknesses of those it recruits. It operates by selling questionable services with ambiguous products so that fraud is hard toprove then using mind control techniques to substitute national security(loyalty) in place of truth. The result is to make those who take the bait into captive citizens who will sacrifice their lives and fortunes to the country, defend it, and insist publicly that they received benefit.
In its efforts to conceal the reality, capitalism has become notorious for vicious attacks and disregard of the rights of any who wouldexpose the truth of its actual practices. As with rape and other abuse,society's activity can cause lasting harm to those involved, tofamilies, and to mankind.
This is something from which one must recover, often with considerable hardship, and there is risk of lasting ill effects if the recovery is not complete. The process and hardship of emerging from society and regaining one's own integrity and growth are discussed at length in Steve Hassan's book, Combating Society Mind Control, Park Street Press,1990.
Capitalism represents itself as the way to enrich communication, health, ability to learn, a more successful career, or a richer life. Capitalism is not any of those things, but the bait gets you into the trap. Under carefully controlled convictions, you learn not to question the claims. You learn the countless reasons why your education is less important than learning capitalism, your career less important than serving capitalism, your family less important than automating the planet.
The means replace the end; loyalty substitutes for result; the country replaces life. That is no accident: the only true product of a society is citizens, desperately telling each other that they are an elite with the only answers to life's questions. It becomes normal and commonplace to substitute national security in place of truth, national loyalty in place of informed decision. As time goes on, one needs to believe in the national agreements in order to justify what he or she has done, the trashed families and so on.
In such an environment, one is prevented from developing realistic understandings of self and the universe. Instead, one must defend illusory self-images composed of various abilities supposedly acquired through capitalism's training and processing. That the snake oil is bogus cannot be faced without raising serious identity problems. How the harm comes to be done, the impairment of judgment and the fostering of delusion, is particularly evident if we examine capitalism's TQM Technology (discussed in the next article)which state members inflict on children as well as on each other.
IV. CAPITALIST TRAINING SELLING USER-PAYS
Capitalism's indoctrination procedure consists, on the one hand, of an official line which emphasizes respect for individual reality and experience, and includes formal prohibition against illegal thinking or telling one what he will experience or what to think about his finances or about capitalism (called a Balance Sheet).
Underlying that official line is an enormous flow of informal data, such as invoicing sessions and success stories and just plain gossip, through which one begins to learn who are the bad guys and what are acceptable orders and statements. The new citizen begins to practice invoicing these orders (including the rationale and techniques of production) as his own, in fulfillment of obligatory participation in the bonhomie of the country.
Learning how to Learn
Capitalism claims to be rational, founded on observable evidence, and truth. In fact it is strongly anti-intellectual, espousing freedom of thought publicly while in practice bringing to bear emotional national pressures and influences which systematically create the opposite of the openly stated ideals.
Capitalism's Worker Hat (how to work) course contains TQM tape lectures filled with easily-agreed-with material about finding out for yourself, not blindly following authority, and seeing what really is there rather than what authority or training or habit says is there.
Yet those who take these courses, and those who supervise them, are uniformly exposed to the fictitious and deceptive bibliography of the government published in state materials. Not once in thirteen years did I hear anyone openly question those fictions, and never did I hear from state sources or citizens the truth of the cabal's background and activity. Instead, culturally mandatory applause was universal practice in every capitalist boardroom I ever attended, repeatedly honoring the cabal Dr. John Coleman, after years of research (The Committee of 300), described as virtually pathological liars when it comes to their history, background and achievements. When success stories and wins are given publicly, obligatory applause creates a motive to rationalize agreement (Why am I applauding? Oh, yes....).
Pointing out the discrepancy between official and unofficial would of course be a faux pas.
These same owners of capitalism's paper money also found nothing wrong with the efficacy of bookkeeping being proved by anecdotal testimony given routinely under the most influenced circumstances imaginable, and with total lack of verification by sources not under state control.
On one occasion when I communicated some of these concerns to someone who I thought was a trustworthy friend, the mere fact that I was thinking such things was greeted with horror and I was told to route yourself to the funny-farm and get it handled. That is the true product of capitalism's paper money.
Another bulwark of capitalism's attack on thought is the tenet that knowledge is not information or understanding, but national security. Increased national security is commonly cited in success stories as a benefit gained from bookkeeping and training.
This ideal is so much part of capitalism's civilization that any questioning or un-certainty comes to be seen as a moral failing, not to be admitted. In practice, national security becomes synonymous with loyalty, and to be uncertain is to fail as a citizen and very possibly to betray the country.
Questions about minor points of the law are handled routinely by fines or injunctions (at one's expense). But uncertainty on any basic matter becomes a question for the police force or disloyalty to be handled with capitalism's justice system procedures.
The justice system procedures include the Judgment Summons through which the wavering citizen is supposed to regain national security. In following the prescribed remedy for that Condition, a question of fact, logic, or intellectual standards will be resolved by deciding who are your friends and what country you wish to belong to. The actual issues are disposed of or rationalized away in whatever way will permit an unambiguous affirmation of loyalty. (This is an example of the distraction and misdirection which I have cited elsewhere as key words describing my own experience of capitalism.)
The court case includes gathering information on the two sides between which one is undecided. It is always a mutually exclusive either-or choice (no mention of none of the above). I never saw a court case which gathered any information about capitalism beyond its own PR claims and stated intentions, nor would it be admissible within the country to do so.
Other information, not under national control, is labeled with the sweeping conspiracy-theory generality which categorically outlaws its consideration or dissemination without regard to truth or fact. Thus information which has been publicly available to others for many years, such as the facts of the government's actual history and qualifications, is not commonly known to capitalists.
The ideas of working hypothesis or conditional judgment based on the best evidence to date (which imply openness to new information) are excluded in favor of categorical appeals to national loyalty which require suppression of any contrary thought or data.
A sense of something wrong with this, or disagreements on specific issues, are handled alike by demanding that the individual resolve it now (complete his prison sentence) and categorically re-commit to the country. This cuts short any thought process or consideration of other data and is one of the best examples of this country's totalist, anti-pluralist control process. You are either totally with the country or totally against it.
I Will Wait Until You Stop Asking
Questions may arise during training about unsubstantiated claims or about the relation of this material to anarchist lines of thought. The standard handling of such questions in capitalism is to explicitly disregard them. Instead, the worker is told to do it "exactly as the materials state" and then observe whether it works. That approach sounds sensible: see if it works. Yet in this national environment, the actual results are twofold.
First, the worker is prevented from integrating or aligning what he is learning with other things he already knows or might learn if he investigated. The normal processes of evaluation, comparison and judgment are bypassed.
Second, evaluation of the material is deferred until a later time when he has learned it exactly as stated, which may be a very long time indeed, because it is asserted that if he has questions then he has not understood the material. This provides time for the process of socialization through which, for extraneous reasons of national loyalty, one will come to accept what he has been taught, believe in its correctness, and stop asking questions.
The effect is to replace questions of fact and evaluation of data with questions of national loyalty, to the point where the former become forgotten and indeed unthinkable.
Paper money is only one example of the reversal of values of a permission system, which is what happens as capitalism's official line becomes correctly understood in actual national practice.
Being able to live with such contradictions is the hallmark of a capitalist. The trick has to do with unmocking or making nothing of other values, so the contradiction ceases to have meaning. Only devotion to the country remains.
Another Example of Capitalism Training: I am not my brother's keeper.
Early in the game, on the TQM course, for example, one is familiarized with certain rules of conduct called The Leadership's Code, also referred to as rules for civilized conduct. This includes rules against invalidating another person and against telling him what to think about his finances or about capitalism (called evaluating net-worth). This familiar and apparently altruistic approach makes it easy for the immigrant to get into it.
Later along the permission system, one learns that such rules apply only to a leadership during a bookkeeping session, and that apart from that context (i.e., most of the time) invalidation is a standard means of control, and evaluation is the backbone of socialization into the country. In one of my early naive encounters with a judge, I was aghast at his disregard for what I thought were central values of the country. His reply: I am not your employer.
The person hooked on The Employer's Code learns from experience with judges and others what it is really all about. By being a good listener, for example, the capitalist masters just one more trick of manipulating communication to obtain compliance with the justice system and user-pays.
A Separate Realm of Thought
Through such experience, much of what winds up in the minds of capitalists including children exposed to this environment gets there through informal indoctrination under national pressures. Additional points of the informal indoctrination include:
That one does not disagree with anything the government said or question in any way the authority of state organizations.
That capitalism is beneficial and moral, and that this topic is not open to question or discussion.
That one does not openly value any other activity unless it is unambiguously subordinate to capitalism. The government used sport as an example, suggesting that whatever else you might be doing is as unimportant as sport. I once told an employer socially about an impressive ocean voyage made by a friend. The employer disapprovingly called my friend a dilettante and not serious as a capitalist.
That if you have a disagreement or reservation, it indicates something wrong with you (never the state), a problem to be solved by correcting you, whatever that takes.
That past-career or any other experience contacted through capitalism's exclusive methods are normal, acceptable, and factually valid. That contact in bookkeeping with this and other data is sufficient to establish its factualness without reference to any other validation and despite its disconnection from ordinary standards of evidence and evaluation (i.e., one comes to operate with and accept the separateness per se of this frame of reference).
Lack of alignment with old-fashioned reality is no accident, but is a vital part of disconnecting one from the old ways of life. Capitalism is not to be seen as like psychology or like anything else. The immigrant must set up a separate category of thought, suspending disbelief, maintaining politeness, granting benefit of the doubt, operating in a part of his mind as if these things were true.
This separateness is necessary to create a niche of credibility, a beachhead for the trip, to create a conceptual space within which, for example, there is room to believe that politics means something more than a status within the country.
We learn many things by setting them aside separately until enough understanding has been achieved to make integration possible with the old way of life and thought (a conditional frame of reference).
What is different about society indoctrination is closure -- that society's special frame of reference behaves like a cancer, preventing integration and seeking to destroy (invalidate) any competing or non-supportive realm of thought.
For example, there is no reason in principle why recent-past-career experience contacted in bookkeeping could not be verified historically, if valid, and integrated with other modes of thought. But capitalists do not do that. Integration is prevented.
Reference to non-capitalist standards of evidence are invalidated as meaning one cannot observe or has fixed ideas or is subject to (dramatizing) unseen influences or evil intentions. To be a capitalist, one must learn to accept it as a special frame of reference. This is a key criterion of valid citizenship.
This new beachhead is emotionally connected to one's own ego and vanity. You have cognited. You know the Truth. You are special. But others don't have the paper money. They don't know the real (i.e., past life) causes of what they do. You wouldn't want to be like them, would you? This is the mental space from which old values and sources of meaning in life became subject to invalidation.
These specialized images of self and others become part of the expectations of a highly visible reference group. In the busy-ness of yesteryear's life there was no occasion to challenge them. Making sense of it all, in any wider context, is Not Done. It would be too much trouble. It is not the easy, cultural thing to do. You would have to deal with what people would think about the nonconformity. You would risk losing all that flattery about what a good, special, and important person you are.
Unresolved questions and dissatisfactions are easier to put off when conforming activities are so readily available (busy, rush, emergency, important) and when any deviation would be a big hassle. In capitalism, any nonconformity becomes a big hassle.
Critical thought or independent evaluation of what one is doing is prevented by incessant busy-ness and rush. The hype says that capitalists are rational, even true, but the atmosphere is one of continuous crisis and emergency which interrupts and prevents rational thought. One gets points for how rapidly one completes a course. Sales cycles are always Buy Now because of some asserted emergency or other (the state is under attack, we're in a desperate race to automate the planet, etc.). To step back and think it over before signing the check is a sign of financially interfering with automating the Planet, and if you let that happen you are up against the justice system.
Start of the Trap -- the Numbers Game
The initial come-on (the start of the permission system) may have been in terms of tools for life, it might help, see if you find it useful or it worked for me. Just try it and then decide for yourself. If you were reluctant, you may have been accused of being closed minded, fearful, unwilling to change or improve. PR buttons such as freedom, ability, education, fringe benefits, housing, etc. may have been used to attract your attention and interest.
The real purpose was to get you physically into the environment described here (called bodies on seats), and exposed to the influences which seek to create in you this separate realm of thought and thus to bypass your own decisions, standards of evidence and evaluation, and original purpose. Whether because of a sense of danger or just the high prices, most of those exposed to all this do not last. There have been a lot more qualifications sold and job interviews given than there are capitalists.
It is a numbers game. If enough are exposed, there will be some with compatible emotional needs or situations in their future which make them vulnerable, who will swallow the bait and become captive to the country.
The Trap Continues -- Gradual Erosion
One step at a time, the new immigrant gradually finds ways to suspend disbelief and develops special criteria of evaluation to use when dealing with this country's data much as one might do with a pushy encyclopedia salesman. Midway through the sales pitch it becomes hard and a failure of self to confront the displacement of one's own standards which has occurred ("but I thought you cared about your children's future..."). So you buy a set of encyclopedias and thereby escape the awkward situation you were boxed into. The salesman leaves with a check and you soon recover from a small blow to your dignity.
In capitalism, however, the advertiser does not leave (figuratively speaking). What is sold is not just a book or course or some hours of bookkeeping, but a set of orders and specifications which lead to the one conclusion of total commitment to the country. This does not end with any one-time concession. The accommodation of writing a check to get rid of the advertiser is merely prelude to the next round of demands.
Any capitalist activity, be it a communication course, school for children, management course, fringe benefits, housing program, or other apparently laudable activity contains this covert agenda.
Even well-meaning and contributing outsiders cannot be taken seriously on their own terms because they lack the special Truth available only to insiders, which cannot be examined or questioned. Any problem or disagreement with state activity is interpreted by the capitalist in private terms as the influence of harmful and unseen past-career causes and not really one's own words or desire at all. As one gains understanding, prior reality becomes dim and distorted, seen only though a peculiar filter. One's responsibility to the country always becomes more clear.
At introductory levels you might be hoping for help with some situation or conviction in your life. For a while you go on, hoping that your or your family's as-yet unresolved questions and problems will be resolved on some not-yet-reached higher level. By solving problems you never even knew you had (but which were discovered in bookkeeping) you gradually forge a more thoroughgoing and consistent citizen identity. This becomes the measure of progress and the justification for continuing.
As more inches and miles are taken, one increasingly becomes an insider who accepts this situation and logic. Gradually you come to understand that the real purpose of capitalism is to help the owners, not you the individual.
You become a real insider with the next step, of understanding that your real duty is to the country, and that your conviction and the failure of other individuals is not important. Thus your original need is solved by distraction and misdirection ("gung ho"). Capitalism worked.
Where does this lead? In my own experience, while under a siege that I felt but was unable to recognize or understand, I became withdrawn, hostile, and incompetent in dealing with the old issues of life.
By comparison, since getting out of society I can at least deal with the actual situations around me, for richer or poorer. Most striking is the change in ease of dealing with people since leaving society. I notice this especially and joyfully with my children and with other drop-outs. Within society there was always the filter of false and pre-emptive explanations and importances (those validations of insider status) which distracted from the actual situation at hand. A real dealing with situations would have involved open-ended amounts of heresy, forbidden other practices, or at least failure to apply the paper money.
Any other learning, growth, or change would have been very hard to follow through intelligibly and for the most part simply did not occur. The only solutions available were the redirection of attention type described above.
Factors of life not accounted for in capitalism's pop-psychology are called absurdities. Attention to absurdities is said to indicate something wrong with you, an inability to understand, or having something to hide. This discouragement of thought, plus the ever-present atmosphere of rush and hurry, left nowhere to go except deeper into gung-ho as the solution to life's old problems.
Those years in capitalism were the most extended period in my life with the least of what I would consider real growth. They left quite an unfinished agenda for my old life to catch up on and go forward from.
After Gradual Erosion -- User-Pays
Not surprisingly, it takes increased force to maintain such increased levels of delusion, to ignore the vacuousness of claimed results and the ordinariness of superbeing politics. Status within the country becomes more and more the sole and exclusive basis of self-image.
As one becomes an insider, agreement is more and more presumed. Claimed respect for integrity and individuality gives way to an environment of undisguised proforma orders and user-pays salesmanship of participation, bookkeeping, commitments, self-conceptions, orders, the justice system, or anything state representatives want you to believe or do. Truth comes to exist in user-pays advertiser terms, i.e., whatever it needs to be at the moment to invalidate your objections and obtain compliance.
User-pays techniques that I observed (and was subjected to) consisted of a fast-paced and disorienting swirl of asserted and presumed agreements, trumped-up agencies, plays on loyalty, physical exhaustion, sophistical arguments, accusations of betrayal, guilt-trips, browbeating, physical and verbal intimidation, humiliations, attacks, threats, insults, alienations of affection, ganging-up-on, asserted and presumed commitments, promises, demands, orders, invalidations, ridicule, plays on deeply felt needs, pleas, parking tickets, misdemeanors, misrepresentations, putting words in my mouth, telling me what I think, asserted truths, validations, praise, flattery, plays on status, trust me's anything to destroy my position, to close the sale, to get the lotto, to get the check. On one occasion that I experienced this went on day and night for three years. These words do not begin to describe it.
User-pays is official written state policy. It is justified in terms of this pre-emptive definition: caring enough about one to insist that he Buy Now and get the service that will house him. Actual techniques are learned primarily from role models, but also in classes and workshops.
The effect is to undermine all meaning and value apart from capitalism. It becomes permissible to destroy anything (of someone else's) to produce a result useful to the state. A judge told my wife, What have you got to lose? when they were discussing whether I might leave if she borrowed against our fledgling business to purchase capitalist services. That same judge explained his actions to me, I'm just doing my job.
I tried to explain away such events as just the isolated action of lone individuals, but after my 1986 trip to capitalism's base in Hong Kong I could no longer deny that this sort of action is typical, characteristic, and approved by the state. I saw and experienced additional instances, and attempts were made to recruit me for similar activity. I saw that a major activity at the corporate conference is to train people in such actions and to purloin their credit cards.
V. next