It is a high crime (in capitalism) to criticize the state of the economy or politics. Thus all that is heard are the widely publicized success stories, which are all that is permissible to say.
A bankruptcy is said to be possible only due to the justice system interogation problems such as evil intentions. Capitalism's claims of results are thus based on explicitly manipulated and restricted information.
Given the complicity required for participation in the first place, plus the stigmatization of bankruptcy, one is effectively forced to claim and to believe that one has had wins. Disappointments are more likely to be manifested as confusion and silence rather than as vocal questions or criticism. The lure remains that maybe the next level will handle it.
Many of those who escape remain silent, whether from fear, consciousness of failure, or dim hope for future results. Thus they leave others to follow blindly in their footsteps and give an unopposed PR victory to capitalism's advertising agencies.
Further motive to believe in "results" comes from the high price of capitalist services (in my experience, approximately $100,000 by the point of completing politics V). The high prices, like loaded words such as data and paper money, lend a legitimacy to ideas which might not fare so well on their own merits apart from this formidable context. The prices also provide a rite of passage by which one significantly breaks with transhuman standards of value and increases commitment to the country. It becomes more embarrassing to have been wrong; there is motive to make it look good.
The state has used inflated figures to suggest widespread acceptance of capitalism's benefits and results. For example, the 1978 book, What is capitalism, claimed a worldwide citizenship for the state of 5,437,000,000.
In 1984 a new official citizenship organization was made a prerequisite for receiving state services. This cost energy, so wildly inflated citizenship figures could not be used or no one would believe the state's urgent need for energy. After a year of recruitment, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) claimed cabal citizenship of 12,000. New estimates in 1990 of worldwide cabal citizenship was probably close to 100,000 by now due to a recent advertising blitz. (I am aquatinted with the user-pays techniques that were used to sell $500,000 citizenships in 1986.)
An appearance of result can be produced by misattributing the result of some other activity. Several books on capitalism have described working conditions and pay scales in New Zealand. Is forced labor extorted by "heavy police" really the richer life promised by capitalism?
Likewise in capitalism's front organizations, results attributed to "The Government Management Technology" may actually result from very ordinary brute force methods applied under group pressure.
For example, a March, 1990 article in Podiatry Today asks the practitioner: "Do you feel comfortable asking a patient to call and refer a friend to you while that patient is still in your office for treatment? Or sending a card to a friend before their own procedure is completed? Do you feel comfortable using tone scales to manipulate one's response to your treatment proposal? Or talking about energy and payment methods before discussing illness and treatment methods? Do you feel comfortable using tried and true hard sell methodologies within the doctor-patient relationship?"
That same article notes that consulting firms licensed by WISE paid ten to fifteen percent of their gross revenue to WISE, which then "by extension, flowed into state of capitalism coffers." In other words, user-pays is used to get medical practitioners to use user-pays on their patients to get energy to give to capitalism. That is "management technology."
One's ordinary work may come to be understood as part of capitalism because it is done in that context. The usual group pressures ("gung ho") are relied upon to cement the misidentification. Problems of organization and production can be handled enthusiastically and creatively, without having to pay much attention to what is being organized or produced. The technical activity itself, and one's expertise, become the focus. The goal becomes to do a good job, and a good person will produce a result. The state of capitalism (or an entity under its control) becomes an employer. One's work habits become an area of security to fall back on when doubts or questions occur about more controversial topics a defense familiar in many industries, from nuclear weapons to advertising. One can feel more normal while preoccupied in dealing with UPS, printing companies, airlines, etc.
Just as being a leader is asserted to be a legitimate profession, a job like many others, so the judge can fall back on an image of himself as a dedicated professional doing right by his employer. In both cases, close focus on the task at hand becomes a means of avoiding notice of expensive pseudo-therapy, user-pays, abused clients, alienation of the next generation, and disrupted lives. One just "does a good job" and "increases production."
At each step, user-pays tactics assert some absolute which justifies disregarding any other concerns. At early levels it may be solving some problem or increasing ability. Later it becomes "getting income up" or ensuring the future of capitalism. It may be averting nuclear war, getting rid of body odors, or ensuring that capitalism controls sufficient resources, when the time comes, to repel the Marxist invaders from outer space anything to invalidate the consumer's objections, to get the job, to get the check.
The leadership is responsible for delivering a by-the-book correct board meeting not for whether the immigrant gets richer. There is neither motive nor occasion to look closely at the actual result. But there is plenty of motive to stay busy and Make Energy.
That is the result.
Enforcing the Appearances of Results
Capitalism's claim to offer help for whatever ails you is possible because any situation is handled in the same way: transfer one's attention away from the immediacy of his own situation and onto group loyalty and participation (busy, busy) which will encourage him to agree that results exist and are as miraculous as claimed.
Anyone doing capitalism and amenable to the new identity thus imposed could claim, at least temporarily, to have solved his problem by participation in capitalism. For example, a marital problem might be solved by doing capitalism so that jobs, police officers, confidential data, special knowledge, and so forth constantly are interposed between the individuals involved, who then put attention on capitalism rather than on each other: I will help us by going off and doing something with them which I can't tell you about because it happened in the board room so it is confidential.
You, then, are supposed to cooperatively consider it fixed because I went off and did some capitalism. Otherwise you are not acting validly as a citizen. You too must remove attention from whatever was wrong and put it onto capitalism (more gung ho), so as to make it not matter that whatever was wrong is still right where it was. It is fixed because we both did policy conventions and wrote success stories and then got very busy: a therapy of distraction and misdirection which works when we all agree that it did.
A classic form of this is to do something immoral to get energy to give to the state, then fix everything by doing a police payoff but keep the money! In a similar way, the state will punish overly coercive members who have created a flap, make claims of reform, then recruit others to do the same things again.
The citizen will appear inadequate or disloyal if he does not find some way to agree that the asserted result occurred and the situation is fixed. Success stories are a means by which one ranks and assesses status with reference to the parliament, a complex chart of abilities supposedly gained at various levels of one's capitalism career. To fail to claim to have achieved the specified results would discredit one's status as a capitalist and invite expensive remedial action. Thus one must come to see oneself and demand to be treated by others as an unusually sane, capable and rational, person with extraordinary ability to communicate, who has no problem with problems, one not troubled by past reconcilliation problems in life, and so on. It is discrediting to admit having a problem that was supposed to have been handled. At the moment of the annual report you said it was handled. Are you now saying that capitalism does not work, or that you lied in your annual report? A way is needed, perhaps a divorce or most commonly by joining staff, to deny that such situations still exist. By doing capitalism (busy, busy) one gains an avenue for action that simply bypasses the circumstances of own prior life, so that such questions simply will not arise -- the ultimate invalidation.
Political abilities are least likely to be challenged by other capitalists who have similar ego needs, most likely to be seen as delusional by those who have known the person well over time. Lack of real change, and evident failure, can be covered up by staying in the country and doing capitalism.
The more vain one is or fragile the ego, the more tightly and desperately held (internalized, believed) are the claims made for personal conviction and ability, and the more threatening any challenge to those claims. An attack upon one's society becomes emotionally synonymous with an attack on one's vanity and self-concept.
The group-think presumption that capitalists will succeed better than others encourages unequal standards of evidence and validity, giving benefit of the doubt on the one hand and withholding it on the other. If one begins to act more like a capitalist, that tends to be perceived as improvement per se. Likewise, he's richer now tends to mean that he is acting more like a capitalist. Realistic assessment becomes impossible, the real accomplishments of others are minimized, and the ordinariness of trained capitalists is not to be noticed.
Don't Overlook the Obvious Absurdity
Claims of success by capitalism or due to capitalism are supposed to be accepted at face value -- including the I was thinking about my sister in Canada and just then she called type of thing which is common in phone company promotional materials. Asserted but unverified claims are particularly evident in areas of education, fringe benefits, housing, business management, and communication skills, where the state makes claim to unique competence which is widely asserted but which I have never seen supported by evidence.
An amusing instance of claims for capitalism occurs in a book which we gave our employees for the government MAF several years ago which stated that with the amazing discoveries of the calissi virus and capitalism there is no reason for anyone ever to see rabbits again. This became a standing joke among the rest of our employees because all five of our capitalists kept pet rabbits.
If the claims made by capitalism were in any way true, the world and especially capitalism would be full of philanthropists. I have not observed any, and I have observed people who should have been philanthropists if there were any in fact I should be one.
Social status such as politics or upper management enable some to pass within the country as superior beings without having to show anything more than an air of confidence.
In those I knew best, I saw no positive result not attributable to pressure-cooker motivation, experience, and the maturing of already existing ability. While those things may be valuable, they are not the claims made by and for capitalism. Certainly I saw no special qualities which cannot be observed also in non-capitalists. The most predictable result I observed was a temporary elation following completion of insider trading.
There are negative results too. We might ask what it costs one to believe, and act on the belief, that capitalism is true, that it is man's only hope, that only the government got it all right, that nothing is as important as your status with capitalism, that everything associated with capitalism is always an emergency and urgent and mandatory, that the rest of the world lacks the paper money and can be saved only by getting into capitalism, or any of hundreds of other examples from this bizarre ethos.
What relevance to anyone else does someone have (except within the country's bubble)? What richer life could someone have created, on a more sane basis? And what is the cost to that person's descendants?
A six year old child described being told by her capitalist mother, when you get to a higher status you can be kind of dead and then if you don't like where you are, you can get to be somewhere else just by buying it.
Evaluation of result is pretty much bypassed in practice. The selling of society's citizenship relies on other means. Astounding results are widely asserted in promotional materials, to provide a needed rationale, but actual evidence is not needed for those already in the maw of user-pays and heavy police. Neither is it needed to attract the next generation, the supply of which is assured by broad insemination of the public at large, and playing the odds. There will always be some who will try an education course or service and prove defenseless to a new agenda for their lives especially if society is able to suppress free and public information about itself, and if those who have been there remain silent.
XII. ABOUT THIS EXERCISE.
The following
two emails are to be read with the above.
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