Ignorance, Manipulation, and Enslavement: The New Medievalism, Collapse of Western Philosophy and Practice,  and America in Freefall

By Kenyon B. De Greene

This transdisciplinary book deals with the most critical problems now challenging our and our worlds survival: human overpopulation, vast environmental destruction, persistent ignorance in spite of purported advances in education, dominance of neoconservative thinking incommensurate with the world/s problems, increased religiosity that harks back to the Middle Ages, anti-science thinking, persistent warfare, exhausted and outmoded philosophies of people and Nature, Capitalism gone berserk, and devolution of democracy, These seemingly diverse areas arc integrated by the theory of complex systems, Avoiding Pollyannaish optimist, this hook is must reading for all people who want to make up their own minds about where we go from here.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 10, 2007
• ISBN: 9781469105680

Kenyon B. De Greene

Kenyon B. Dc Greene grew up in Hollywood, California. He attended UCLA, where he received all his degrees. His Ph.D. is in physiological psychology, an interdisciplinary field connecting biology and psychology. He studied chemistry and geology almost to the bachelor’s level. He has worked as a human factors scientist, specializing in the design of complex, computerized command-and-control systems, at System Development Corporation. Northrop Corporation, and Aerospace Corporation. He has taught at the Universities of California. Montana, and Southern California. He has authored over 100 articles and seven books, lie is intimately familiar with the real world through travels to and work in over 212 countries on all seven continents.

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Copyright © 2007 by Kenyon B. De Greene.

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Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

Ignorance

Chapter 2

Manipulation and Control

Chapter 3

Enslavement

Chapter 4

Actuality and Consequence of Western Philosophy in Terminal Illness

Chapter 5

Can We Welcome Our Future?

List of References

Appendix A

Selected Annotations of Articles in the Literature

Appendix B

Summary of the Kondratiev Cycle/Structureor Economic Long Wave

Appendix C

The Goals of Humanism-Environmentalism

Preface

SIX YEARS HAVE PASSED SINCE THE PUBLICATION OF MY book Revolution Now! The New Scientifi c Basis. Although that book received favorable comments from several prominent scholars, it did not attract much attention—or the hoped-for action—among lay readers. Revolution, Now! was based on an extensive review of the scientific, philosophical, and popular literature. The book provided fundamental advances in theory. It provided guidance as to how to build a better world and advice as to where we go from here. The present book assumes the truths in Revolution, Now! to be self-evident, and readers should refer to that book for background and corroboratory material. The main text herein should be understandable to most readers, but the material in the appendices does require chewing on some rather profound thoughts and some pretty good post-high school education , particularly in the sciences. The bibliographies and references emphasize works that substantiate and amplify my basic message. The scholarly literature, the popular media, and the books like the present one that are geared to stimulate further actions have all been researched. Authors and dates are indicated in the text where a subject is being discussed. This method conveys important information immediately as opposed to the use of footnotes or endnotes. Most of these books and articles are written in an American English that most readers—educated and not so educated—can understand and identify with.

A word should be said here about the organization of the examples in the main text and in the appendices. If you walk or drive around your community or town, you may note a number of things—poverty and homelessness, extremes of wealth, environmental degradation, threats to ecosystems and species, clutter, pollution, congestion, malfunctioning systems, and more. Most of these things that we observe in our world are interrelated, usually in complex manners. Accordingly, I have placed numerous examples in a time sequence, just as you might observe them in real life, rather than as disciplinary classifications. The book is therefore transdisciplinary. Rather than dealing with a single subject as does a chemistry text or history text, this book contains material from the many subjects that describe and study the world about us. This is the true systems approach that has pedagogic value, and your understanding of this book will be greatly enhanced if you ask yourself questions like, what do these things have in common, and what are the underlying and interrelated causes? Then try to implement this approach in your daily life.

We cannot, of course, completely divorce ourselves here from a background in scholarly research and in theory. Remember that our Founding Fathers were infl uenced by the seventeenth and eighteenth-century English and French philosophers. Likewise, philosophers from several countries anteceded the formulation of communist creed in the mid-nineteenth century. Appendices A and B provide further relevant theoretical background emphasizing today’s—and tomorrow’s—concerns. Appendix C summarizes the goals of humanism-environmentalism, the guiding philosophy of the Radical Revolutionary Movement and Party, which clearly contrasts with the tired old parties widely extant.

I propose the present book as a further no-nonsense counter to the forces and institutions that are degrading our world and threatening our future. I write without Panglossian optimism, and this may disturb the falsely optimistic. Remember this definition—a pessimist is an informed optimist! Except for our masters—the politically, economically, and militarily dominant elite that rules almost all countries and the world as a whole—things have deteriorated essentially exponentially for almost all the rest of us in the mere six years since my warning in Revolution, Now! Human society, like all systems, evolves into states of aged decrepitude and obsolescence, and the corridors of power are trod by entrenched cabals that lack the ability and will to make the drastic changes that are mandatory if the society and nature on which we depend are not only to survive but are to be rejuvenated. I place major emphasis on the decrepitude of our aging society and its constituent institutions and modes of thought. I further emphasize that humanity is not a learning system—there is plenty of evidence showing our inability to learn from history and our myriad past mistakes. The lessons of the rise and fall of previous world empires were lost on successor empires. Most pertinent to the present, the United States sinks deeper into the quagmire of Iraq as if Vietnam had never happened. And other contemporaneous events are likewise factored into broader historical trends and into a theoretical matrix.

The parts of the world, however, do not show the same degree of senility. Western Europe, for example, appears to have learned from the folly of its innumerable wars, and Western Europe seems to understand somewhat the necessity of protecting the natural environment and the social support and betterment of its citizens. It is the United States of America that is leading a regression toward deliberate barbarism and ignorance, that is, toward a new medievalism.

Because the United States is the most powerful—and most dangerous!—nation in history; and because the United States maintains that it has pioneered such laudable states of being as freedom, democracy, and peace; and because the United States has a special responsibility and should know better than to behave as it does, I, as a loyal, patriotic, and worried American, pay special attention to the debility of my own country.

Kenyon Brenton De Greene, Ph.D.

Woodland Hills, California

November 2006

Chapter 1

Ignorance

A Crisis in Ignorance

LET US START THIS CHAPTER WITH APPREHENSION— the structural underpinning of modern science and politics, the Enlightenment, may have entered a zone of twilight. For the past 250 years, skepticism, asking questions, and seeking evidence through objective observation and experimentation have led to (enlightened) conclusions based on thinking that is as rational as human limitations permit. The European Enlightenment had several sources, prominent among which was the work of Scottish philosopher David Hume. An outcome of the Scottish Enlightenment was the cessation of the execution of religious heretics. See Kennedy (2005). In the following pages, we shall present what we consider to be overwhelming evidence for the degeneration and destruction of Enlightenment thinking, for increased religiosity and intolerance, and even for the return of medieval practices like torture , the current version of executing Scottish heretics.

Because science is a powerful, often-decisive element in the armamentarium of protagonists, its manipulation and control are imperative. Science and its acceptable findings assume the shape demanded by political power. Kennedy (2006a) discusses the situation at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In the case of NASA, a scientist pointed out that 2005 was the warmest year in a century, and that the evidence for climate change is now so strong that the voluntary measures proposed by the administration of President George W. Bush are likely to be inadequate. The scientist was warned of dire consequences if he continued to make such statements. Interestingly, one of the bureaucrats who admonished the scientist had to be fired because he had falsified his résumé! In the case at NOAA, empirical studies show that hurricane intensity has increased in the past thirty years along with increases in ocean surface temperatures. The agency denied this relationship, however, and ordered its scientists not to present papers at meetings or speak to the press without prior departmental review and approval.

Unfortunately, scientists and other scholars, especially senior people, attempt to bully others. I had such an experience with a manuscript (De Greene 1993) submitted to a publisher. Reviewers urged the copy editing of my introductory chapter if publication were to be approved. Nor have I been alone. Kennedy (2006b) describes attempts by senior faculty at Oregon State University to suppress the publication by Science of the study by Donato et al. discussed in Appendix A. This research illustrated the deleterious impacts of so-called salvage logging . The study led to a decision by the Bureau of Land Management, fortunately short lived, to withdraw funding for the research. And Science did not yield to this uncalled-for pressure.

Science itself is, of course, undergoing profound scrutiny by concerned scientists. All individuals, all groups, and all organizations exist within larger contexts. Although there are many reasons for us to worry, the effects of global capitalism should probably cause us to lose the most sleep. Essentially, just about everything is for sale. Contrary to the admonitions of our founders that we should value thrift most highly, our economy would collapse in the absence of continued heavy consumption. Hypocrisy dominates. The prestigious scientific honorary Sigma Xi (Margulis 2006) expresses these concerns. Large amounts of taxpayer money went into the production of audiovisual teaching materials, but these were on the wrong side of the cultural divide and were never implemented. Our masters insisted that our children and we remain appropriately ignorant. Publishers driven by the bottom line of large sales and profits and the avoidance of sales taxes dominate science for schools. Scientists and teachers are bribed to approve content dictated by our masters. Teaching materials are designed to be obsolete within the academic year.

There are many other serious dimensions of societal decay. Klein (2005) maintains that the United States has covertly used torture for decades, but now openly admits the practice. Describing the various kinds of torture applied, she documents her belief with reference to the notorious School of the Americas that the United States operated from 1946 to 1984 in Panama and at Fort Benning, Georgia. She also references the Phoenix program operated during the Vietnam War, in which more than twenty thousand suspects were allegedly killed and thousands more tortured. In these programs and in more recent ones in Iraq , Afghanistan , and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, U.S. personnel directly applied torture; but perhaps just as iniquitous, they trained thousands of local goons in Latin America, the Near and Middle East, and at other locations.

Perhaps a tongue-in-cheek allusion is appropriate here. Turn your mind back a million or 1.5 million years ago to our Homo erectus ancestors in Africa or Asia. These ancestors lived in a valley. In an adjacent valley lived another

H. erectus tribe, but they were evil and inferior. They were too short (or too tall), too dark skinned (or too light skinned), too hairy (or had not enough hair), and had faces that were too broad (or too narrow). Their very existence threatened us; they were terrorists! Because of the physical and moral stigmata of this other tribe—their utter wrongness—we had to torture them, behead them, and eat them. Our core values required we do so.

In the United States , and elsewhere, policymakers and decisionmakers (herein, our masters) tout the value of education and of the schools, colleges, and universities that purportedly advance that education. But education and educational institutions must support a dominant sociopolitical paradigm. They must reinforce a status quo. In psychological terms, convergent thinking or coming up with the correct answer is encouraged, while divergent thinking or seeing alternative answers is discouraged and even severely punished. Our masters have always gone to great efforts to discourage alternate ways of thinking, and keeping our minds properly channeled has been abetted by salutes to leaders and to flags, by parades, and by reminders of the deeds of past heroes who sacrificed all for our way of life.

History shows that new ideas, philosophies, and paradigms are almost always initially rejected—often violently—until enough evidence has mounted to push the system past some critical threshold . Even in science , initial rejection was the fate of the Copernican theory, the theory of relativity, quantum theory, the theory of evolution , the theory of plate tectonics, the theory of climatic cycles (Milankovitch theory), and the theory of economic long waves (Kondratiev cycle theory). To prepare ourselves for a radical and revolutionary restructuring in our thinking, how might we begin? Consider the following:

Almost all systems are no go. Almost all systems in the United States and in many other places today—for example, health, education , criminal justice, transportation, energy, political structure and behavior, and the military—are broken. In addition, the natural environment is in serious decline. Clearly, world society as a whole is insane—yes, that’s right, psychotic in the full sense of detachment from reality, delusions, hallucinations, and intellectual deterioration.

Changing times mean changing ways. Societal and environmental decay cannot be rectified through more of the same old ideas and actions. The news and communications media , in the United States especially—the once-revered adversarial fourth estate—are controlled by large corporations. We are fed superficial feel-good stuff to keep us properly opiated and unquestioning. Democracy has been eroded. Indeed, terms like democracy, free, freedom, and elections have become so adulterated as to assume the opposite of their original meanings. The western democracies are essentially one-party states. Typically, one of the two (or more) defi ned parties remains in power for decades. Further, in the United States , for example, there is little difference between the main bodies of the Democratic and Republican parties . Perhaps even more sinister, even though the main parties may attest to certain philosophical differences, the behavior of the incumbents, as the system ages, becomes increasingly uniform. These people, many of whom are millionaires, and hold sinecures for years, even for life, are not going to rock the boat for the benefit of the little person, the environment, or integrity itself. Consider the immoral and illegal war against Iraq initiated and perpetrated by the Republican administration of President George W. Bush has received almost universal support among Democratic congresspeople.

It is well to remember the admonition of Huey the Kingfi sh Long, governor of Louisiana and U. S. senator in the period 1928-1935. Of course, we will have Fascism in America, but we will call it Democracy.

The very dynamics of our organizations guarantee decay. Bureaucracies will not accept information that challenges the usual ways of doing business (Eden 2004). Organizations try to solve known problems, while ignoring problems that are not understood. Now we must think and act within an entirely new paradigm—a radical and revolutionary paradigm—not the science, a sort of rigid finality, which vested interests claim justifi es their programs. So, be careful what you accept as science. Our masters can control the membership of research organizations, replacing critics with persons who are more compatible. This then leads to policymakers’s at best ignoring findings that are unfavorable to their agendas and at worst suppressing and distorting data. The Union of Concerned Scientists and twenty Nobel laureates have criticized the George W. Bush White House for such tactics (Malakoff 2004). Another tactic is to accept certain fi ndings but to offer interpretations that are counter to those of legitimate scientists. For example, our masters may admit that the climate is warming but explain this away as a recovery from the Little Ice Age that lasted from about 1300 to about 1900. Scientific research, however, has shown that although the winters were colder during this period, the summers were not. Indeed, the climate of the past several years is hotter than any time during the past fi ve hundred years (Luterbacher et al. 2004). The evidence for anthropogenic or humanity-induced climatic warming (the greenhouse effect) continues to mount, as does our masters’ determination to protect their clients whose energy-use practices, industrial design, deforestation, and so on contribute markedly to global warming .

What the latest science tells us. Just as the science of Isaac Newton and others led to formulating the ideas that underlay our political revolution, independence, and Constitution, so does the latest science drive us toward revolution now. The latest science, the science of complex systems, is concerned with uncertainties, probabilities, nonlinearities, nonequilibrium , fl uctuations, feedback loops, irreversibility, and critical thresholds. It is not the science, a sort of rigid formality that vested interests plug into some situation, then claim the results justify their programs. For a good summary of the knowns and unknowns of contemporary science, see the 1 July 2005 issue of Science magazine (The Editors 2005). Note, however, that organized science is not without its blemishes. Like all people, scientists can be dishonorable; like all institutions, those of science can become corrupted.

Failure to understand systems complexity has led to a resurgence of fundamentalism and extremism among followers of the world’s leading theistic and secular religions . Ethnic hatred and warfare and impediment to scientific study and education and impediment to necessary social change have resulted. The inevitable crises have allowed the forces of reaction, always latent or lurking just below the surface, to assume dominance in most areas worldwide.

Although, as we shall see, humanity expresses its ignorance individually and collectively in myriad ways; some forms of ignorance are more dangerous to our future integrity and survival than are others. Consider, for example, the two main alternative ways to explain the origin and nature of humanity: evolution and creationism . Archconservative religionists, who have acquired increasing power in these dour days, maintain that evolution is only a theory. These persons have no knowledge of scientific methods and the details of the sciences contributing to the theory of evolution . Note that the theory of evolution is in good company, in companionship with the theory of relativity, atomic theory, number theory, the theory of differential equations, quantum theory, chaos theory, and so forth. All these theories have received major substantiation. Note also that the second law of thermodynamics, one of the most basic in science , is based on probabilities. Evidence for evolution is vast and comes from (1) cosmology (the origin of stars and galaxies, the expanding universe, etc.); (2) geology (sequences of sedimentary rocks, radioactive isotope dating of rocks, etc); (3) paleontology (a fossil record moving from simpler to more complex species, etc.); (4) comparative anatomy (clear resemblances and gradations among species, etc.); (5) genetics (increasingly shared DNA among closely related species, etc); and (6) observation of evolution in progress (adaptations of closely related species like the finches in the Galapagos Islands to specialized environments, and adaptive resistance by microbes, insects, and rodents to our attempts to poison them).

Creationism, on the other hand, cannot be substantiated. Different authors wrote the books of the Bible at different places over a period of hundreds of years. These authors, like you and me, were smart and dull witted, honest and charlatans, faithful reporters of events and fabricators, independent and beholden, sane and psychotic, sometimes under the influence of drugs, and so on. The Bible is a morass of oxymorons and contradictions. You can justify almost any kind of behavior from passages in the Bible. Most egregious, however, is the religious extemists’s claim that God created the earth, mankind, and all the other inhabitants about 4,500 years ago, and that God placed all other living creatures and all Earth’s resources under human suzerainty.

In a meaningful, civilized twenty-first-century society, people should be tolerated to have their own beliefs. Many people suffer attacks of anxiety in the absence of certainty about things. Others are mentally lazy and