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Published: March 19, 2018
Tags:  Oligarchy · Psyop
The book in...
One sentence:
A blueprint to replace the image man has of himself with something more controllable and usher in a 'new age' of post industrialism.

Five sentences:
First will come a push toward an ecological ethic that we can today understand as climage change. Next, science will replace religion. Once this foundation is set, the media can begin broadcasting the new images that society will be reshaped around. Intermingled in the transformation will be new social controls (top-down or bottom-up), transhumanism, drugs, and what is called 'friendly fascism'. Eventually the goal will be to bring about something that is similar to eastern mysticism and a normalization of a (economic) caste system.

designates my notes. / designates important.

Thoughts

Originally published as a report in 1973. Later published as a book in 1982.

This is a very important book. A must read. It is on my list of ‘read to understand the modern world’ books, along with:

It lays out, in barely obfuscated terms, how society is to be transformed. It covers a lot of technical ground fleetingly, although there is a clear foundation on what modern technology can offer those who would steer our culture. The main crux of the book has to do with perception, feelings, and metaphysics.

From behaviorism to graph theory, we can see, through hindsight, how these and other techniques have shaped our modern world. When this was newly published, or in the subsequent decade when The Aquarian Conspiracy, a fluffy retelling of what is in these pages, was published, you might have been forgiven for dismissing these ideas as impossibly or at least unlikely. Today, almost fifty years, it is hard to be dismissive.

The main topic of the book is cultural change. While the techniques and arguments may differ from chapter to chapter, there are several questions that never seems to come up: Who decided culture needed changing? Why does culture need changing? If culture is to be changed, who shall guide the change?

Actually, some of these questions are ‘answered’, but to no reasonable end. For example, the economic and environmental crises are blamed; we need to change because of these failures. Nowhere is it asked, what to me seems the obvious question: why not go back to systems that worked for centuries or millennium? Another question not asked is: what, or whom, is causing these crises. You’d think there would be more ire for the banking industry, but, alas, it isn’t even mentioned. Another word you see only once in the entire book is: oligarchy.

The investigations presented in the book were launched by the Office of Education, who set 2 research centers to explore change. This book is the one compiled by the Stanford Research Center, now simply SRI.

That’s Sexist

The whole thing starts off shaky in my opinion when it laments its own title. The Changing Images of MAN. This is sexiest and, multiple times, the book is apologetic and sometimes more, sometimes less, adamant that the language must change to reflect the new values. Interesting that, if it is such a big deal, the wouldn’t simply change the name of their book. It seems to me that the whole point of this faux self-deprecating is to introduce the idea to an otherwise ignorant, on the subject of MAN (as in huMAN), masses. Why else belabor a point?

Early on it also talks about psychosexual norms, that is, of course, never actually explains. As far as I can tell, this is merely a coded term to insight sexual changes to erode the bedrock of society. See how trans-whatever and LGBT have worked to undermine the family, while outwardly presenting their crusade as one of liberation.

This ties perfectly into the feminist movement that, also in retrospect, has been disastrous to the family unit.

In retrospect, we also overlooked the enormous implications that the modern feminist movement has for a new, and hopefully less sexist image. of humankind.

All of these movements will be shown, in greater or less light, to be implementations of network (graph) theory. These techniques have been refined and honed to near perfection in the same campuses, like Stanford and MIT, over the last few decades. Don’t believe me? Consider how social networking sites and video games are built today. Both employ PhD psychologists to ensure their offerings are as addictive as possible.

Where To?

OK, so now we know (but not really) that society needs to change, because psychosexual norms and feminism. Well then, where are we headed? The move will be from perceived affluence to actual scarcity. Hmm, isn’t this the opposite of what we are sold today? The singularity salesmen, the universal basic income proponents, and the modern new-ager all tell us that we are entering a post-scarcity environment. On the other hand, the various degrees of environmentalists might talk about resource depletion and peak oil. Confused? If so, it’s working. Don’t feel bad though, peons like us exist to be manipulated by the Stanford PhD priestclass, right?

Kahn and Bruce-Briggs, in 1972, reported fifteen Multifolds Trend including developments such as:

  1. Increasing sensate (empirical, this-wordly, secular, humanistic, pragmatic, manipulative, explicitly rational, utilitarian, contractual, empicurean, hedonistic, etc.) cultures.

  2. Bourgeois, bureaucratic, and meritocratic elites.

  3. Centralization and concentration of economic and political power.

  4. Accumulation of scientific and technical knowledge.

  5. Institutionalization of technological change, especially research, development, innovation, and diffusion.

  6. Increasing military capability.

  7. Westernization, modernization, and industrialization.

  8. Increasing affluence and (recently) leisure.

  9. Population growth.

  10. Urbanization, recently suburbanization and “urban sprawl”-soon the growth of megalopolises.

  11. Decreasing importance of primary and (recently) secondary and tertiary occupations; increasing importance of tertiary and (recently) quaternary occupations.

  12. Increasing literacy and education and (recently) “knowledge industry” and increasing role of intellectuals.

  13. Innovative and manipulative social engineering-i.e. rationality increasingly applied to social, political, cultural, and economic worlds as well as to shaping and exploiting the material world-increasing problems of ritualistic, incomplete, or pseudo rationality.

  14. Increasingly universality of the multifold trend.

  15. Increasing tempo of change in all the above.

A quick look at this list, from 1972 mind you, should reveal that the authors had a pretty clear crystal ball. We can’t chalk this totally up to change. Every single one of those things is happening at varying rates right now. I particularly like the: hedonistic culture, centralization of economic power, institutionalization of technological change, and innovative and manipulative social engineering. Sounds like a bright future to me!

Jonas Salk -who’s exceedingly expensive books are something I’d love to get copies of- commented that we are transitioning from survival of the fittest to survival of the wisest.

You Need a Problem, We Got a Problem

A list of some of the major problems of our time include: inflation, unemployment, pollution, world hunger, and the threat of war. To me, inflation and unemployment are both economic subcategories. Meaning, they are symptoms of economic failure and not problems in and of themselves. Your runny nose and red eyes are not problems, your cold is. Further, inflation is controlled by not having an expanding money supply, but that is what the entire economic system is based on. The solution of not expanding the money supply, which would benefit almost everyone, isn’t something the tribe would like. I take this as more evidence that these problems are NOT meant to be solved, but to stimulate the masses, move them in a certain direction. It is nothing more than the thesis of the Hegelian Dialectic.

It also seems quite grim to lump war and unemployment together, which allows the list to span quite a gap. There is a big difference between ‘oh no I’ve lost my job and am living under a bridge’ and ‘oh no I’m being attacked and can only stay alive in a foxhole.’

Religion, particularly Orthodox Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths stand as an “obstacle to [the] emergence of new ecological understandings.” Why aren’t unorthodox religions a problem? Is Zen Buddhism or Satanism OK? I guess so. Hail the dark lord!

This also feels like a thinly veiled attempt at destroying what is/was the foundation of many a community: church. From there, the weakened families, no longer bound together, are softer targets. The fact that this anti-religious attitude is tied to “ecological understandings” is nothing more than an early attempted at climate change scare mongering. If the focus and energy once aimed at God can be redirected into the environment, it has many far-reaching effects.

First, the aforementioned community center churches are disposed of, or at least significantly weakened. Next, since the environment is tangible, it helps to cement the materialist view in the minds of its adherents. This leads to a heaven on earth mentality that, while not at all bad, is much easier to exploit. Science, the new religion, can tell you, without you having done any of the leg work, the research, yourself, what to think, how to act, etc. Soon the AI will be telling you when you’ve used ’enough’ water, electricity or has ’too much’ to eat.

This material view helps support the 17th century mechanical view of man (and the universe).

For those that are still inclined to follow a more spiritual path, don’t worry, we’ve got plans for you:

Aspects of the image of the sage and Taoistic philosophy generally could greatly contribute to an “ecological ethic;” the yogi image and philosophy of Vendanta could equally contribute to a “self-realization ethic,” as these are set forth in Chapter 5. Both would bring a welcome contrast to the exploitative tendencies of a civilization driven by the profit motive.

With what I’ve just written, this is easy to see through. Using Eastern religion to promote an “ecological ethic” is nothing more than a different view of moving the focus away from a higher power and the “self-realization ethic” is nothing more than a way to promote narcissism to help erode the community.

I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again: the long-term (or maybe medium-term, there may be something longer term I am missing) plan is the destruction of the family into atomized, easily controlled, confused, dependent individuals.

Symbols + Science = Mind Control

Because the Gnostic path was condemned as heretical, of necessity it went underground, and hence its influence on our culture is much less visible than are the effects of the orthodox views. It and views like it, however, have been kept alive by secret societies such as the Sufis, Freemasons, and Rosicrucians, whose influence on the founding of the United States is attested to by the symbolism of the Great Seal of the United States, on the back of the dollar bill.

I think that is rather telling. “Secret societies.” “Underground” influences. This coming from a book that puts forth essentially a global conspiracy to reshape how man sees himself. In The Aquarian Conspiracy this kind of thinking is front and center while simultaneously maintaining that there is no conspiracy, but it is simply a bunch a people that have the same idea. Maybe, but how did the idea get spread in the first place? The media was one of the first tools the oligarchy used to control the masses, so any message that comes across it is, by default, suspect. See: Creel, Bernays, Lippmann, ABC, CBS, NBC, the original radio networks, and their ties to the OSS

Coming back once again to the religion of science, the mechanical, Saint Newtonian view of the universe, we see that “the idea of progress become indistinguishable from the idea of science itself.”

In the applied realm, it starts, unimaginatively with B.F. Skinner’s technique of operant conditioning. This is “a systematic procedure whereby the actions of an organism are brought under control by giving it a reward if and only if it behaves in a specified manner. This technique has been successfully used-in education, psychotherapy, and in prisons to alter whole behavior patterns of individuals.” The bell in school is employed in exactly the same way as the ovals and bells Pavlov used to condition his dogs; it breaks up the day and stops children from ever getting a good grasp on any one thing before, DING, time to move to the next.

It can not be overstated that neither ethics nor metaphysics are “terms that the behavioristic scientist insists are not part of his concern.”

This lack of ethics can be starkly seen in another, more direct application of proven effective control: “the implantation of remotely activated electrodes in the brain.” This was the favorite technique of Jose Delgado, which he used to control the tiniest mice to the mightiest bull.

Operant conditioning (Skinner, 1971), electrocranial stimulation (Delgado 1969), as well as psychochemical drugs (Clark 1971) have been advocated as various means “psycho-civilization of society.”

Somehow, these techniques have been obfuscated, and even advocated, by more and more people under the banner of humanism. As with most hard to swallow pills, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. While, circa 1973, humanists had not completely coalesced, nor have they totally today, there are a number of aspects that they do tend to agree on. The following list is taken from from Klapp (1973 pp.279):

On the surface much of this seems totally antithetical to operant conditioning or electrocranial stimulation, but, if one looks closer, and with the benefit of hindsight, it can be seen as a thin veneer masking nothing less than reshaping society to a certain specification. That specification, while lauded as humanist, as the rest of the book and anyone who can see the results today can attest, is anything but humanist.

All of this fluffy language, once translated into reality, spills forth through the use of general systems theory, communication theory, and cybernetics. All of which are based on control and have exactly nothing to do with improving humanity, unless you define improving humanity the same way a farmer might define improving his stock.

This is actually a rather apt comparison. If you view the world as a globalist/elitist does, it might make perfect sense to dumb down and otherwise control the masses so that you and you clique might have an easier time harnessing the power of the masses to whatever ends you see fit.

Hess, Penfield, and Olds followed in Delgado’s footsteps, using electrodes, implanted in the brain, to map large portions of the brain’s functionality. This work has advanced the “control of psychological phenomena and stimulation of memory.”

R.J. Forbes (1968) is quoted as saying: “Technology… has become the prime source of material change and so determines the pattern of the total social fabric.”

This is eerily remnant of Cultural Patterns and Technical Change, who’s editor, Margaret Mead, we will come to later. Forbes is bluntly stating that material change leads to changing the “total social fabric.” It doesn’t get any more plainly stated than that. It should make you wonder about all the recent, rapid, material and technological changes we see around us. Most notably, in my opinion, are the Internet and the social network. These have, as Forbes is saying, quite literally changed our social fabric. Imagine, for example, someone in the 1970’s talking about all of their on line friends. It would have been outlandish. Imagine sending instant text messages and pictures from smart phones. Now imagine a world where answering machines are uncommon and phones are tied to walls. This was only a generation ago, but feels like ancient history to many.

All of this is again summed up by the portended “coming ‘spaceship earth era.” This, again, I see being promoted though a kind of predictive programming with the science fiction movies, starting particularly with Star Wars. Interestingly Lucas and Joseph Campbell, one of the contributors to this work, are not only good friends, but Lucas has said that his Star Wars series was based on Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. Suffice it to say, the Hero’s Journey, which Campbell cherry-picks from every cultures’ mythology, is used to promote change in the individual (and when enough individuals change, so to does society).

Getting back to more concrete science, we can see that the aforementioned techniques of Skinner and Delgado only scratch the surface of what is coming, or, in many cases, already here.

We have, in the late 1960’s mind you, plain talk about “The notions of genetic ’engineering,’ cloning, and the like have provided new impetus to the old visions of eugenics and the ‘improvement’ of human stock.”

Again, there is no real attempt to hide the connection to eugenics.

Science is used to support this kind of thinking:

Highly purified genetic strains of mice have been isolated and shown to have markedly different learning abilities for laboratory tasks, suggesting that at least some kinds of genetic differences can affect memory and learning.

While I suspect most people a generation or two ago would have been aghast at these ideas, today we have people openly advocating for just this. It will likely start with treating genetic diseases, for who will argue with that, but then it will move into the aesthetic realm of hair or eye color chosen for designer babies. Eventually, once the public is accustom to such genetic engineering, all kinds of other traits, who can say what the limit might be, will be manipulated. The transhumanists are anticipating just this and, the honest ones, will point out that it will be accessible first, and maybe only, to the ultra-wealthy, and would likely give rise to even less equality. Imagine, children that go to elite private schools and have personal tutors are already greatly advantaged versus a state school graduate. Now, pile on top of this the doors that open from being born into a wealthy family. Now, pile still more on top when you consider that the child of wealth has been genetically engineered to have 20% more IQ, 10% be taller than average, and more beautiful, How would anyone compete with these ‘superhumans’?

Next we see that drugs, combined with all pervasive media, are the tool of choice for controlling the masses. This should come as no surprise; men have been using drugs to subdue their opponents since time immemorial. In, at least somewhat, modern times we have the CIA running heroin from the Golden Triangle to stifle dissent in American ghettos and, going back farther, you have the British waging an Opium War on the Chinese to keep them docile and the silver flowing west.

Again no words are minced:

Many mind-altering substances have been discovered with effects ranging from hallucination to tranquillization and trance.

Tranquillization and trance, two key concepts. Keep them in mind when reading the rest of this.

Today we have countless drugs to ease your anxiety, help you sleep, or counteract you depression. These are plainly having a sedative effect on society and cut off who knows how many protests or revolutions before the thoughts, literally, even form in the mind of potential dissidents.

ADD, autism, ODD, and a hundred other ‘diagnosis’ are supplied by the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual, used by psychiatrists as an excuse to administer drugs to adults and children, of ever younger ages, at the first and slightest sign of acceptance of rapidly changing social norms. You’re a six year old boy who loves climbing trees and hates sitting still in class? You must have something wrong with your brain, because there is no way that is normal behavior, right?

The book makes no mention about things like sex change and hormonal therapy, but these are other techniques used today to allay anxieties. You don’t fit in? You don’t like your body? Well, maybe you are the ‘wrong’ sex. Here, have some drugs! Not only will this keep you busy, it pretty well guarantees you won’t be starting a family, and maybe, if the oligarchy is lucky, you’ll kill yourself. since the suicide rate is 41% higher among these, so-called, trans-people.

Kenneth Clark, as President of the American Psychological Association, suggested in 1971 that:

“We might be on the threshold of that type of scientific, biochemical intervention which could stabilize and make dominant the moral and ethical propensities of man and subordinate, if not eliminate, his negative and primitive tendencies.”

While the entire quote is rather eye-opening, let me call extra attention to: “eliminate, his negative … tendencies.” As I keep asking, who decides what a negative tendency is? The answer is obvious: the self proclaimed scientific elite.

Clark proposed the development of chemically based “psychotechnologies” (primarily to bring control over the tendencies of national leaders, in an attempt to lower the possibility of nuclear war). Delgado has urged the development of a “psycho-civilized” society such that dangerous behavior in man can be modified by electrical stimulation of the brain. Thus certain areas of modern brain research clearly raise profound moral questions which, if unresolved, might propel civilization toward Brave New World and 1984. The issue has been raised, whether the control of the brain made possible by electrical stimulation of the brain (ESB) is essentially different from placing the individual in a prison, where the prison bars, instead of being iron rods, are a complex of metal electrodes wired into a computer.

No interpretation is necessary. In their own words they talk about controlling national leaders and essentially putting man in prison of electrodes.

Finally, and making a resurgence today, is the mention of various psychedelic drugs like LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin. These and similar drugs are said to “change the quality and characteristics of normal everyday consciousness.”

As far as I am concerned, the 1960’s drug culture (and much smaller preceding beat drug culture) were nothing more than the rolling out, in a sort of open beta test, the wide-spread use of psychedelics.

Today, we see the same substances, and countless analogs thanks to people like Shulgin, being reexamined in light of medical applicability. Rick Doblin and his MAPS being a premier research institute in the field.

There is still also a thriving underground where these substances are used personally, for recreation and self-exploration. Whereas the Grateful Dead were once the main national (US) distributors for LSD, the advent of the Internet and so-called dark web sites, like the now defunct Silk Road, are allowing anyone, even in the most remote regions of the world. to quickly, easily, and cheaply, access a veritable smorgish board of drugs.

Moving back to the realm of electrical manipulation, we see that Becker, in 1963, “correlated frequency of admissions to mental hospitals with geomagnetic fluctuations.” Becker and others, like Healer, Barnothy, and Luce, followed up this work over the next decade, experimenting with how electrical fields (even those caused by weather) could influence everything from disease to pain control.

The combined body of this work suggests that (1) the electrical environment of man is just as important as the chemical, (2) inattention to this environment adversely affects a significant (though undetermined) segment of the population, who may end up being treated as “mentally ill” when the problem may be an electrically imbalanced environment.

This feels like nothing more than a, Soviet style, attempt to classify ‘unwanted behavior’ as mental illness relabeled as an electrically imbalance environment. What difference between an electrical imbalance and a chemical imbalance, a phrase thrown around judiciously today? The mechanics may be completely different, but the result are identical: an excuse to sedate the masses.

[This] research is beginning to present a view which more closely resembles that of the old astrologers, with their emphasis on the importance of the cosmic environment for human affairs, than the more conventional view wherein the immediate chemical environment of the organism is considered paramount.

While couched as negative, the comparison to astrology could easily been interpreted as a positive, a selling point, when viewed through the late 20th century new-age lens.

Not all of the techniques of ‘mind control’ are physical. Schultz and Luthe, in 1969, developed and demonstrated “autogenic training”, which uses “self-suggestion exercises for therapeutic medical treatments, e.g. relaxation, increasing blood flow to hands and feet, creating mental calmness.”

It sounds good on the surface, like most of the other propositions, but it never mentions why we aren’t mentally calm. That is, what is the underlying issue causing anxiety. If we could remove the effect, band-aids like these would not be necessary.

Clearly the cause is the social transformation; the breaking up of communities and families, the increased pace of life, and the limitless stimulation all around us, among other things. The goal, from my perspective, is not to make humanity better, ala humanism, but to introduce these anxiety causing effects, in a Hegelian dialectic, thus creating fertile grounds to deploy the various ‘mind control’ technologies proposed.

Dixon, in 1972, reexamined subliminal messaging, concluding that there are no less than “eight different aspects of perception and behavior.” I don’t think it even needs mentioning how Hollywood and television dovetail perfectly with this.

Though not exactly the same, references were made to understanding that malnutrition leads to serious underdevelopment of the brain. This is common sense, but, when viewed with the rest of these studies, it makes more sense why the western world is awash in garbage fast food; if the Stanfords and MITs of the world are trying to manipulate, control, or dull the mind, would it not stand to reason that promoting poor eating habits, and the associated developmental problems of the brain and body, would be considered low-hanging fruit towards that end?

The conclusion, since poor people often live in ‘food deserts’ and consume more of the garbage food: “the poor are doubly disadvantaged.”

My argument here is that it is actually cheaper to eat healthier. You don’t need to buy exotic fruits and vegetables, run-of-the-mill carrots, broccoli, and the like can be used, along with commonly available meats like chicken and pork, to create delicious and nutritious meals. The doubly whammy for poor people, as far as I can tell, is that they don’t know how (or want) to cook. Couple this with little to no budgeting skills, and you have a recipe for disaster. That 99c cheeseburger seems cheap compared to a 5 dollar pack of meat and vegetables, but, considering how much more you get, it is simply not the case.

The overall conclusion from this section of the book is clear. Lilly, in 1972, “hypothesized that the mind (and body) is a a human biocomputer, with programs and metaprograms which can be analyzed and altered.”

An interesting aside, John Lilly worked with dolphins. A Sega Genesis video game, Ecco the Dolphin, that features a super dolphin, used his work as a basis. Also, the film Altered States is based on his research, although it is much more fiction than science. Both of these are examples of how the media promotes such ideas, often without the viewer ever being aware.

Delgado, whos 1969 study states clearly: “autonomic and somatic functions, individual and social behavior, emotional and mental reactions may be evoked, maintained, modified or inhibited, both in animals and in man, by electrical stimulation of specific cerebral structures. Physical control of many brain functions is a demonstrated fact but the possibilities and limits of this control are still unknown,” concludes that the moral and ethical questions surrounding brain manipulation are “premature.”

“This Orwellian possibility may provide a good plot for a novel but fortunately it is beyond the theoretical and practical limits of ESB [electrical stimulation of the brain]. By means of ESB we cannot substitute one personality for another, nor can we make a behaving robot of a human being. It is true that we can influence emotional reactivity and perhaps make a patient more aggressive or amorous, but in each case the details of behavioral expression are related to an individual history which cannot be created by ESB.”

Somehow, since ESP can not completely transform personalities, it follows that a series of (unending) nudges, pushing the population imperceptibly this way or that, culminating in great changes of long time-spans, are not a problem. For such a bright guy, that is pretty fallacious. Similarly, since the technology isn’t powerful enough right now, we needn’t be concerned, even though we can already “make a patient more aggressive or amorous.” He doesn’t seem to mention that he and others like him are working, still to this day, to increase the power or effectiveness of these systems. This quote reminds me of the Wizard telling you not to look behind the curtain.

Gregory Bateson, in 1972, recognized that the “number of ideas which had developed in different places during World War II … the aggregate of these ideas [being called] cybernetics, or communication theory, or information theory, or systems theory” all worked together.

These ideas came from all over the world. “In Vienna by Bertalanffy, in Harvard by Wiener, in Princeton by von Neumann, in Bell Telephone labs by Shannon, in Cambridge by Craik, and so on. All these separate developments in different intellectual centers dealt with … the problem of what sort of a thing is an organized system … I think that cybernetics is the biggest bite out of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that mankind has taken in the last 2000 years.”

Let this sink in for a moment: “I think that cybernetics is the biggest bite out of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that mankind has taken in the last 2000 years.”

That is quite a statement. More important than sanitation, the steam engine, running water, antibiotics, electricity, or any number of truly game-changing technologies man has discovered. No, Bateson thinks cybernetics is the most important. On one hand this is hyperbole, but on the other, the degree of control offered by the understanding cybernetics provides can not be discounted. The world we see all around us today has been completely shaped with cybernetic theory. The technology is simply a means to end: control.

Laszlo, von Bertalanffy, Polanti, Weiss, and Platt, are also mentioned as having made contributions to general systems thinking with hierarchical relationships, levels of consciousness, and hierarchical restructuring. They all have the same goal in mind, controlling systems. The system, if you haven’t noticed yet, is the entire world. And that, sadly, is not hyperbole.

Koestler isn’t mentioned much, only in the bibliography I think, but his The Ghost and the Machine ‘series’ looks at hierarchical systems theory in a very approachable manner.

Toward Sciencism

It has been argued in the recent years, and I wholeheartedly agree, that science is becoming nothing more than a new-age religion. This should not discount the validity of the scientific method and the advancements thus obtained through it, but, I think it goes without saying that most people today have little to no understanding of what science has provided us with while championing it as the be-all-end-all answer to any and all problems. In the extreme, this has led to a thoroughly hostile environment for many theists.

Interestingly, this book sees this progression toward what might be called scienceism decades in advance:

For at least a century, the relationship between science and modern society in many ways has resembled that which formerly existed between religion and society.

I think they didn’t need a crystal ball to see this coming. With the points already made about manipulating society, it stands to reason that the church, one of the main targets (the other being family) of this manipulation would be on the chopping block, so to speak. By promoting science as the new religion, you, de facto, weaken the old religions. Simultaneously you plow the field in the minds of the population, readying it for the forthcoming scientific manipulation masquerading as (trans) humanism.

The book then goes on to quote Ralph Metnzer when he talks of a “new philosophy” that is based on “inner experience” rather than “external observations.” That is quite literally the opposite of the scientific method. How can such opposite poles be promoted simultaneously? It is simple really, to confuse you. The sophists can argue from whatever ground suits them at the moment. When science offers supporting evidence for their preconceived notions, they use science. When science offers no support, they turn to mysticism. To borrow a line from Jan Irvine: “Mysticism is the tool of tyrants.”

Metzner goes so far as to quote the Hermetic “As above, so below,” the Vedanta’s “Thou art that,” and Jesus’ “Kingdom of Heaven is within.” Couple this with science, and one can scarcely imagine a more cherry picking basis for ‘argument.’

Following in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s footsteps, the book puts for the idea of a universal consciousness. This is the same thing as de Chardin’s Omega Point theory (and later Mckenna’s Time Wave Zero, Pinchbeck’s 2012, and still later Kurzweil’s Singularity).

The basic nature of the universe is consciousness, and the human individual can participate in this “cosmic” consciousness. This is the Ground of Being. For the human it is a “superconscious” or divine aspect of one’s being, and one’s physical nature is a manifestation of universal consciousness.

This, and the subsequent ’theories’ rehashing the same concepts, clothing them in updated garb, seem to me to be nothing more than the promotion of what is commonly called the hive-mind, a more developed version of group think. You can already see hive-minds on the Internet. Look at any social networking site or forum and you will see a general trend for all users to move towards a given set of beliefs. Dissenting opinions are censored or lambasted until the acquiesce. These are nothing more than the logical outgrowth of the modern school system, replete with the accepted behavior, uniforms, and beliefs of its cliques.

Woodruff, examining the impact of European ideas on the world concluded, in 1966, that:

No civilization prior to the European had occasion to believe in the systematic material progress of the whole human race; no civilization placed such stress upon the quantity rather than the quality of life; no civilization drove itself so relentlessly to an ever-receding goal; no civilization was so passion-charged to replace what is with what could be; no civilization had striven as the West has done to direct the world according to its will; no civilization has known so few moments of peace and tranquility. (p. 16)

The book restates this as:

the viability of a democracy depends upon the informed decision-making capacity of its citizenry, i.e. the “relative political maturity” of the people must at least maintain parity with the complexity of the issues confronting the public. If the acquisition of relevant knowledge does not proceed at about the same pace at which the decisions become complex, then relative political maturity will decline. This may have two consequences: (1) increasing reliance placed upon the “expert” to maintain order and control, with a resulting compromise of our democratic processes, or (2) reluctance to give control to the “expert” but, with an increasing inability to make informed decisions, the result is that the system may truly go “out of control.”

No matter the accuracy of the statement, we see here nothing more than a justification for an oligarchy, or similar ruling class of “experts”, to exclude the politically immature population from the decision and control aspects of society. This leads, unsurprisingly, to the same ruling class increasing complexity, and therefor dependence, as time passes.

Computers are an obvious example of this march toward complexity. While almost everyone can use a computer to some degree, those that can design and/or program computers remain a minority.

This isn’t to say everyone should be involved in every decision, as nice as that might sound, but to illustrate how a small group can dominate the direction a particular aspect of society takes. Replace computers with government or industry and you have a frightfully totalitarian future.

A final justification for control, euphemistically called guidance, is stated as: “Increasing interdependence requires that the whole system be guided.”

This leads to a sort of prescient callback seen in the dystopian utopias presented, as predictive programming in my opinion, of Huxley’s Brave New World, Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, Young’s The Rise of the Meritocracy, and Skinner’s Walden Two.

“…the vast majority of our serious visions of the future are negative visions, extensions of the most pernicious trends of the present.” (Keniston, 1965, p. 327)

“Serious visions?” More like dreams of the oligarchy. The promotion and subsequent popularity of these works –how many students are compelled to read them in high school without ever hearing the notions I am supposing right here– had a cascading effect, coloring what subsequent authors themselves were influence by and what publishers thought would be successful.

This way of seeing these books, as new-age propaganda cloaked as social criticism, is perfectly compatible with the notion of oligarchical control. The oligarchy would have the best access to publishing houses, controlling the financial success of said publishers. Similarly the oligarchy would have the means to promote particular works. Again, the cascade effect would ripple down through time, each generation being influenced by an ever deeper pile of “serious visions.”

The culmination of a century’s compounding gives rise to the modern Hollywood blockbuster. How many times have you seen New York City, or any other large city, destroyed on film? Armageddon, The Day After Tomorrow, Independence Day. The list goes on and on and on. Taking a slightly different tack you have the zombie apocalypse movie. The The Last Man on Earth has been remade more times than I can count. Sometimes the name changes, as in The Omega Man, but the story is as stale as ever. In modern times the only thing fresh is the whiz bang computer generated special effects.

All of this growth and complexity, coupled with the predictive programming and dumbing down of the masses, leads to an industrial state that “has immense drive but no direction, marvelous capacity to get there but no idea of where it is going.” I disagree with this quote. The final destination may be obscure, but the overall direction is well defined. The oligarchy are cajoling us to first build our very own prison/electronic plantation and then, one can assume, some kind of post-human artificial intelligence ridden paradise. While it might sound noble, and may people today are pinning for just this, one must remember that, with declining birthrates, defunct family and community structures, and a literally poisoned environment, a few generations down the road the population will likely be much reduced. No so much by war, famine, or plague, but by simply promoting a childless lifestyle. It can hardly be argued that we are already well on the way; between the excessively pro-homosexual propaganda and callously anti-baby propaganda, birth rates and marriages are declining. On the other hand suicide and overdose rates are skyrocketing.

History and The Future

If you want to break up a family, and later a culture, you attack the root– history. With a strong generational tie, when grandchildren are proud of what their parents and grandparents have done to advance the family, it isn’t hard to understand why the children follow in their footsteps. On one hand this has the negative aspect of: if your grandfather was a blacksmith and your father was a blacksmith, you are destine to be a blacksmith, whether you like it or not. This is how heritage is sold today: don’t be shackled to what your ancestors did, be your own person, live in the now.

On the other hand, if you have the aforementioned strong familial bonds, most, I would argue, people would want to follow in their ancestors footsteps. Not only that, but they would want to advance the family business. Maybe grandpa had a little farm, but through hard work, that his son witnessed, he grew it a little. Then when his son took over and had a son of his own, they grew the farm a little more. Within a few generations you go from a couple acres to a hundred acres. Each generation looks back at their ancestors and sees an accumulation over time. You are not forced to be a farmer, but the way you are raised makes you want to carry on the family tradition.

That said, this book clearly puts history into the negative bin:

The keynote of the American Creed would seem to be that of emancipation-not just the emancipation of a people from the bondage of tyranny and poverty, but the emancipation of humankind from the bondage of history and heredity.

“…the emancipation of humankind from the bondage of history and heredity.” It doesn’t get much clearer than that. Your history and heredity is “bondage.”

Once you’ve decoupled the current generation, and this is a generational process, it becomes easier to sell cosmopolitan lifestyles. Without anything holding you back, you can reinvent yourself every other week, depending on what fads are in and which way the wind is blowing. The shifting sands of time are embraced where once generations struggled to put down stable roots.

This headlong rush into progress is, of course, the total opposite of what the American people, generally speaking, want, or at least wanted in the 60s and 70s. I would be suspect of any similar polling today. On one hand the polls themselves could be contrived and on the other hand there has been two generations of propaganda deployed with the intent on normalizing progress.

This second point is quite slippery. If I say that I don’t trust the people to make sound decisions because they have been indoctrinated, if not outright brainwashed, how is this any different than when the technical and oligarchical classes say the same thing: the masses don’t know what is best for them so we have to make the hard decisions. For this, I have no acceptable answer beyond making knowledge of the manipulation, through the promotion of things like looking critically at this book, commonplace.

Back to the polls.

Public polls in which the principles of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights were translated into attitude questions have repeatedly drawn such responses as “too liberal,” “too much individual freedom.” Yet movements like labor unionism in the early 1900s, civil rights (for minorities) in the 1960s, and women’s liberation in the present decade typify the repeated emergence of collective attempts to make the American Creed more operational.

The examples given, labor unions and women’s liberation, are spurious at best. Labor unions, which were used as battering rams by Marxists, and women’s lib, created whole cloth by Edward Bernays, might not be the best measure of what the whole of society wants.

This gives way to the modern LGBT ‘movement’ dictating the future, whereas most people are NOT LGBT friendly– the simply fear the repercussions for speaking their minds. The media, ala Bernays and friends, simply pushes these ideas down our collective throats to reshape society. Which is exactly what this book, by its own admission, intends to do.

In a somewhat similar vein, the idea that people are basically good and have good intentions is promoted. I won’t attempt to argue that point, but what is interesting is the counter example they give:

there are some exceptions [to people being generally good] but these stem from an unfortunate situation in life; as unfortunate situations increase, it is reasonable to trust others less.

I think the whole, people are good shtick, is used as cover here to introduce the idea that you should “trust others less.” A hallmark of our modern world is that everyone is out for themselves and you shouldn’t be forthcoming with your trust. This is only natural when such value is placed on money/currency.

The portending of “unfortunate situations” increasing is simply more predictive programming to usher in terrorism, school shootings, and the like, which ultimately fertilize the seeds of mistrust and divide society even more granularly.

Economics, Consumerism, Materialism

When you put a price tag on everything, you will inevitably sap all meaning from life itself, disorienting the values that have allowed for humans to live and thrive for all of history. John Maynard Keynes, in 1930, made this prediction. Though he himself is a proponent of the oligarchy, as are most of those quoted herein, what better place to hear it than from the horse’s mouth? The problem, according to Keynes? Too much affluence.

when a society achieved a condition of relative affluence but continued to deal with it as if there were continuing scarcity.

Post scarcity economics? Sounds an awful lot like the knowledge based economy we hear about today. Yuval Noah Harari, in Homo Deus, an insider’s look at the coming changes, lays out this exact same thinking, that knowledge can somehow replace scarce resources.

It is absurd to think this. No amount of knowledge can build you a log cabin if you don’t have any logs. You can always use your know-how to build with other resources, but they, as is everything on earth, are finite. Knowledge can only increase the efficiency of resource consumption. I’ve said it many times before, everything on earth is on earth. It sounds silly, but it is saying nothing more than the earth is a (relatively) closed system.

Yuval also points out the loss of meaning to life in this, predicted, new age where robots and knowledge replace actual labor. While I don’t disagree that technology will change the labor landscape, I think humans equating meaning in life to the work they do is artificial. When we meet new people we often ask: “what do you do?” Or worse: “what ARE you?” I think this attaching meaning to work has come after the work has come to dominate our industrial lives. Work has become so central that meaning has given way to work, not the other way around.

Back to Keynes’ economics:

“The economic problem, the struggle for subsistence, always has been hitherto the primary, most pressing problem of the human race ….. Thus we have been expressly evolved by nature-with all our impulses and deepest instincts-for the purpose of solving the economic problem. If the economic problem is solved, humankind will be deprived of its traditional purpose. Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem-how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares…. There is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy.” (p. 211)

Where to being? The “struggle for subsistence?” Really? This recalls the short, brutish life. But is that actually how it was historically? Certainly some people have struggled just to eek out a living, but I suspect that for most of history humans have had plenty of free time. How else could all these elaborate rites, rituals, and religions have come about? Up until agriculture man would have lived as a hunter-gather, who are shown to work only a few hours per day. There is an old saying, attributed to the native Americans in response to the Europeans that goes something like this:

“Before the white man we’d hunt, the women would gather and tend camp. At night we’d feast and have sex until we fell asleep. Only the white man could ever think he could improve that.”

All of this “struggle for subsistence” nonsense is propaganda to make you think you have it so great working 40+ hours a week. It is the same nonsense as the old “people are living longer” bullshit. The life expectancy has barely changed once you factor in how many infants and children would die. If half the babies die at or around birth, and those that live, live until 70 or 80 (like the native American and the founding fathers of the USA), then the average gets pulled down to the 30s or 40s; nothing more than a statistical misrepresentation, also known as: a lie.

So, where has all this gotten us? We all think that:

“more money will bring more happiness; and, indeed, if he does get more money, and others do not (or get less), his happiness increases. But when everyone acts on this assumption and incomes generally increase, no one, on the average, feels better off. Yet each person goes on, generation after generation, unaware of the self-defeating process in which he is caught up.” (p. 10)

Thus, the purchase of happiness is an illusory phenomenon, “a distant, urgently sought, but never attained goal” (Easterlin, 1973, p. 10).

By their very own admission, “the purchase of happiness is an illusory phenomenon.”

Several premises are given to support this “illusory phenomenon” and the effects it has on society. Here again we see the deprivation of “redundant” biblical injunctions to be replaced by self expression exhibited outwardly through consumptive patterns. in short, we’ve placed such an emphasis on material wealth (or has been placed via the marketeers) that we no longer see, or use, any other mode of self expression. This, I think, rings so true in the dismissed biblical passage about gaining the world but losing your soul.

Premise Six: that individual identity and success in life are to be measured by material possessions acquired and/or occupational status achieved. The biblical injunction against this kind of thinking is to inquire what it profits a person to gain the world but to lose his soul. However, one’s soul has become redundant in a world secularized by affluence; “the most effective way to establish [identify] distinctions is through styles of consumption” (Downs, p. 64). Fortune magazine recently reported that in the consumer market of the 1970s there is “an increasing insistence by the customers on using consumption to express themselves, to help in fashioning their own identities…. For increasing numbers of Americans, the clothes they wear are not simply material objects; on the contrary, they are viewed … as the most basic expression of life style, indeed of identity itself.” (Silberman, 1971)

Margaret Mead, although defiantly not someone I would trust, makes a valid point when talking about how much a single, seemingly innocuous change in material wealth can have far reaching consequences:

Margaret Mead has pointed out that to introduce cloth garments (effectively) into a grass- or bark-clad population, one must simultaneously introduce closets, soap, sewing, and furniture. Cloth is part of a complex cultural pattern that includes storing, cleaning, mending, and protecting (Slater, 1970). Imagine, then, the cultural constraints implicit in our society which is so laden with goods and services.

If clothing can induce all the listed changes, what kind of changes might we expect introducing something as disruptive as the constant connectivity of cell phones or the daunting amount of information and entertainment afforded by the Internet? Although most people would be oblivious to such changes as were brought about by these new technologies, since they happen over a generational span, ask someone old enough to remember life before television or cell phones. These technologies, that so many of us take for granted have shaped our culture without us even noticing, often in the name of convenience.

When you try to bring this up with people, I have noticed you often get a canned, cognitive dissonant, response. ‘Without XYZ, we’d be back in the stone age.’ This does nothing but strengthen my belief that these changes are so massive that many, if not most, people literally can’t fathom a world without them.

Without getting too far off topic from the book, Ted Kaczynski made almost this exact argument in his Industrial Society and Its Future, more colloquially known as The Unibomber’s Manifesto. Though I can’t condone his tactics, he did see the divisive technology coming about a generation before it really took off. That’s right, divisive. While things like the always there cell phone and social media bill themselves as connecting people, I’d argue it does the exact opposite. They give the illusion of connectedness, sharing status updates and trite pictures does not make a relationship, and assuage our consciences as we let meaningful connections atrophy.

Taboos and Community, New Paradigms

Any society has its values and taboos. The taboos are often grounded in some pragmatic reality, though the why is often lost over time as the taboos are simply accepted unquestioningly.

One taboo of today are on UFO, unidentified flying objects “even though a significant percentage of the cases on record are acknowledged as unexplained” (Hynek, 1972). Another is the “relation between genetics and IQ (Beale, 1971) and human sexuality” (Shainess, 1973).

Those who would shape our society are hindered by taboos. This idea, of course, is turned totally on its head when the PhDs get their hands on it. By turning taboos into badges of social honor, the values the taboos used to protect are eroded and abandoned.

In the psychological realm, where issues related to images of the human being are the most explicit, taboos have included: dreams, hypnosis, death, suicide, homosexuality, parapsychology, subliminal perception, and psychedelic drugs. Only some of these areas are now beginning to emerge from the stigma of taboo (Farberow, 1963; Dixon, 1971; Kleitman and Dement, 1957; Hilgard, 1965; Noyes, 1972).

Looking at this quote we can see a number of historical taboos that are accepted, or at least tolerated, in modern society; some are quite prevalent. Suicide, which is now at epidemic levels, homosexuality, which is now not only tolerated but outright fashionable, and psychedelic drugs, which are both surging in the underground markets because of easily available analogs and slowly establishing themselves as a proper medical treatment, are among the more interesting taboos that, in the span of a single generation, have been greatly discounted.

Where taboos once explicitly stated the boundaries of social acceptability, often for good reason, like community cohesion, they are now being used for the total opposite: to drive people apart. This is, as far as I can tell, nothing but the simplest of divide and conquer tactics given a breath of new life by applying it to the predominantly psychological front.

The image we have of ourselves is constrained within those taboos we accept. By removing them, the image we have of ourselves blur and liquefy, leaving people clamoring for a new image or identity.

We have seen how the predominant image of humankind in a society is a powerful shaping force on the social environment and how the social environment, in turn, influences the society’s image.

By modifying and removing taboos you change the “predominant image of humankind in a society” and thus, harnessing the “shaping force”, can influence the social environment and, in turn, society’s image.

This changed images can be seen clearly in the rural to urban shift that has been happening for quite a long time, but has hastened in recent years as there are no longer many economic opportunities outside a city.

A sense of community has been displaced by an incomprehensible urban existence. Social pressures have created an “other-directed” mentality such that many are alienated even from themselves.

“Social pressures” seems to be nothing more than the pressures applied by the society modifying masters of the universe.

Gerald Heard once noted, “Life does not need comfort, when it can be offered meaning, nor pleasure, when it can be shown purpose.”

This is a perfect example of how these sociopaths think. Who is Gerald Heard to “offer” the masses meaning and purpose? What meaning? Who’s purpose? It is an extremely elitist attitude to think you know what is best for an entire nation, if not the world.

This is exactly how “they” think though.

Similarly, the earlier mechanistic view of cybernetics-that “the brain is merely a meat machine”-is rapidly giving way to the less restrictive notion of the computer as an extension of the human nervous system. McLuhan believes that computer systems will be used to “augment” human intellect, just as cultural forces augment the individual’s abilities (Englebart, 1973).

Replace “augment” (their quotes) with control or guide or manipulate, all more fitting, and you see a clearer picture of what is actually happening. All wrapped up in a palpably positive language, the sugar to help the medicine go down.

Further, the fact that the two competing views of the brain put forth are both so sterile, a “meat machine” versus a “computer”, is troubling in its own right. While a soul might not have any scientific basis, it at least FEELS better than either of these two deterministic models.

Oh, what’s that? You’ve got me covered on souls just the same? Great.

On of the grand daddies of all the singularity, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, said, in 1959 that “evolution is an ascent towards consciousness.” He posed his theory in theological terms, essentially equating God with consciousness. He concluded that humans were the tip of the evolutionary spear. This doesn’t feel much different than humans being at the center of God’s universe, but it does allow for all kinds of “scientific” ideas to bleed into it.

Somehow this is supposed to offer a balance of chance and determinism, “with, our speicies as one of the ‘rare spearheads … or trustees .. of advance in the cosmic process of evolution’”. This was said by none other than Aldous Huxley in 1963.

Huxley was at the center of this societal manipulation. He was in contact with many universities and professors, seems to, along with the aforementioned Gerald Heard (and a few others like Sidney Gottlieb) have been at the center of project MK Ultra, and, as he is commonly remember for, advanced many new-age and psychedelic ideas. He wrote ‘The Doors of Perception’, promoting mescaline. Several of his other works, notably ‘The Island’ heavily promote the use of drugs to sedate society. Of course one can’t leave out ‘Brave New World’, which is quite in-your-face with its friendly fascism. ‘The Island’ takes a much softer tack, without the focus on things like caste.

As a side note, the rock icon of the 1960’s, Jim Morrison, named his band, The Doors, after Huxley’s book ‘The Doors of Perception.’

This breaking down of taboos, this new paradigm we are being led to, appears to many as a “breaking down of civilization”, but Oates (1972) insists:

“What appears to be the breaking down of civilization may well be simply the breaking up of old forms by life itself (not an eruption of madness or self-destruction), a process that is entirely natural and inevitable. Perhaps we are in the tumultuous but exciting close of a centuries-old kind of consciousness-a few of us like theologians of the Medieval church encountering the unstoppable energy of the Renaissance. What we must avoid is the paranoia of history’s “true believers,” who have always misinterpreted a natural, evolutionary transformation of consciousness as being the violent conclusion of all history.”

Everything we have ever known is being overturned. Technocrats are shaping the very thoughts in our minds, through the pervasive operant conditioning of both advertising and celebrity as well as the (potential) literal manipulation via “electrocranial stimulation.” But don’t worry about it, this is “entirely natural and inevitable.” If you don’t think so, you must be a paranoid “true believer.” Another stab at religion.

After this “natural, evolutionary transformation of consciousness” we will be in a “new paradigm that will likely be inclusive rather than exclusive.” It will “make room for some sort of systematization of subjective experience.”

First of all, by definition, this shift is not natural in the strict sense of the word. There are ersatz manipulators, pulling strings, pushing buttons, promoting the nonsense and science alike that promote a particular agenda, the agenda this entire book focuses on: manipulation of man and how he sees himself so as to reshape society in “their” view.

Second of all, “inclusive rather than exclusive?” This is straight out of the modern social justice warrior play book. Radical inclusiveness. This, of course, runs completely counter to what we actually see happening. On one hand you have what amounts to a full-on invasion in places like Europe and the USA by immigrants. Because we have to be “inclusive.” On the other hand if you voice the slightest dissent, you are excluded, shouted down, by the same “liberals” proclaiming inclusion.

Third of all, what the hell is “systematization of subjective experience?” To me, it sounds like what we see today regarding gender. By all objective measures there are two sexes. Similarly there are two genders. Without splitting hairs, gender is a grammatical construct that refers to the sex of the subject. Either way, they are both objective. Now-a-days we see the subjective experience, aka: whatever I want to think or feel is as realer as real, being promoted. It doesn’t matter that you are a male or female if you subjectively feel like you aren’t. We’ve got operations and drugs to fix you right up.

This, at the core, I think, is what is meant by “systematization of subjective experience.”

While I’m thinking about it, since anyone reading this just might have been triggered, seeing me as a homophobic intolerant bigot, I’d like to point out that I am completely tolerant, if not accepting, of gay and lesbians. If someone is attracted to the same sex, so be it. Who am I to tell them what they should be attracted to? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? That is all in their head and they can believe and think whatever they want. Fine. But, when you start saying things like you are in the “wrong” body, we’ve got a problem. This moves beyond your mind, beyond your subjective perception and into the realm of objectivity. I’ll even got one step farther and say, sure if you want to manipulate your body, because evolution or God got you “wrong”, go ahead. But, stop forcing me to not only tolerate, but celebrate your “bravery.” And, finally, stop promoting this as a legitimate lifestyle choice to impressionable youths.

Rant off, back to the book.

This new paradigm will:

foster open, participative inquiry, in the sense of reducing the dichotomy between observer and observed, investigator and subject. Insofar as it deals with a “human science,” it will be based on collaborative trust and “exploring together,” rather than on the sort of manipulative deception which has characterized much experimental psychological research of the past.

Now their really having a laugh. “Collaborative trust” not “manipulative deception?” This entire book is case-study of manipulative deception. “Human science” is nothing more than a euphemism representing the technological control and manipulation of humans. Norbert Weiner, father of modern cybernetics, subtitled one of his books on the topic: “The Human Use of Human Beings.” Consider the language we use today without giving it a second thought: human resources. This is how those doing the manipulating, even if they call it “human science”, see the masses, as resources to be utilized.

Magoroh Maruyama levies some (minor) criticisms in her comments. She argues that “unity with diversity,” a common phrase used in the book, should be replaced by “symbiotization of heterogeneity.” Here I might actually agree; the latter phrase actually makes sense, different things working together. The former is almost an oxymoron. Magoroh, none the less, seems to look down on the masses, offering the observation: “Although, as you [Markley] pointed out in conversation, the term ‘unity with diversity’ is likely to be understandable to more people, it misses the point completely. This point is very important,” that betrays her agreement that the simpler phase “is likely to be undebatable to more people.” What I wonder is, if the point is to effectively communicate, why don’t these ivory tower dwellers simply use more direct language. If you accept that both of these proposed phrases may be lost on most people and you want your point to be well understood, why wouldn’t you simply say something along the lines of: everyone is different (diversity) but we can work together (unity), complementing each other with whatever each does best. Or something like that. My point is that if you want ‘most’ people to understand, don’t use uncommon language.

Magoroh also criticizes the term “balance,” suggesting it should be replaced with “symbiosis.” Here, amazingly, she gives a clear example anyone would understand.

In symbiosis differences do not have to be ‘reconciled.’ You make positive use of differences. For example, plants convert carbon dioxide to oxygen, and animals convert oxygen into carbon dioxide. They do the opposite. Symbiosis makes use of this difference. The idea is completely different from ‘reconciliation.’ Also, ‘balance’ is based on the paradigm that what one gains is what someone else loses. But in symbiotic paradigm, everybody gains.

To wrap up this section on ushering in a new paradigm by transforming society, I would like to note that the very authors ‘warn’ against “overzealous attempts to proselytize on behalf of a new image of humankind for our society.” Great, you are warning against exactly what you are doing. Such hypocrisy.

This “evolutionary transformationalist response,” in my opinion, has been extremely effective. Looking around we see movements such as gay, then LGBT, and now transhumanistic ‘communities’ becoming not only accepted but gaining substantial influence over how our society is run.

I believe that this (pitiful) warning is nothing more than a cover-your-ass statement, when, in reality, the book is little more than a blueprint for a Brave New World. Transforming society is nothing more than a code word the oligarchy speaks openly to hide their intentions of weakening and destroying, first the community, next the family, and finally the individual.

Ecological Ethics

Quickly we shall look at the emergence of the green, as it is called today, agenda, ecological ethics, and how they are more tools that are used to manipulate and shape culture.

As we often hear today, the basis of this ecological ethic is fear (climate change being the modern rendition).

An ecological ethic is necessary if man is to avoid destroying the complex life-support system on which our continued existence on the planet depends. It must recognize that available resources, including space, are limited and must portray the human as an integral part of the natural world. It must reflect the “new scarcity” in an ethic of fragility, of doing more with less.

If you’re paying attention, this is the total opposite of what Keynes was saying about scarcity. His point, that we would not be able to deal with the increase in affluence, treating the future perceived scarcity as the historical actual scarcity. Here, we see the promotion of “new scarcity” and limited resources.

I can’t argue that resources are limited. That is a fact of any closed system, which earth is, or at least, if it is not strictly closed, can be considered as such given replenishment of resources would occur far beyond human-based time frames.

So, which is it? Are we moving into perceived scarcity or actual scarcity? As far as I can tell, it doesn’t much matter. The goal with both of the arguments is simply to appeal to whichever tack you might be inclined to take. Both arguments do have one thing in common: they scare you into changing how you act.

Those who follow the actual scarcity argument are lead towards the “emergence of an ’ecological ethic’ and a ‘self-realization ethic’; to coordinated “satisficing”; and to goals of ’ephemeralization’ that are consistent with limits to growth of materialism.”

Those who follow the perceived scarcity argument might be seen pursuing more economic means of change rather then ecological. Things like welfare, universal basic income, and automation, come to mind.

Both of these paths have been simultaneously traveled, their continuing effects are plain to see to this day.

In either case, the result is to focus on yourself and/or the planet, not the changing society writ large. This, as already mentioned, is a clear precursor for the green movement, but it can also be seen as a precursor for the introspective, however misguided, feelings of the modern social justice warrior or snowflake that is more concerned with their inner feelings, safe spaces, and burring society to conform to their inner experience.

This exposition and exacerbation of the power of feelings goes to the heart of the rise of the LGBT, the decline in birthrates, the increase in drug use (both as hedonistic and escapist), and all self-realization ethics so common today. In short, what we see, ironically intertwined with an ecological ethic, is a do what thou wilt, do your own thing, philosophy.

TRANSformers

Almost the rest of the book is dedicated to transforming, transitioning, reshaping, and an number of other euphemisms to the same effect. When reading the rest of this, keep in mind TRANce music, TRANShuman, and TRANSexual. These are not accidental terms.

First it is laid down as fact that “it is unreasonable to expect the rate of change in society to diminish.” There is nothing to support this other than: changes has been happening and speeding up, therefore change will continue to happen and speed up. While, looking back over the last few generations we can see that this has actually come to pass, it does not stand to reason that it will always be so. A few quiet mentions of steady-state economics are made, but generally in passing as something that need not be thought about. Either way, what we see is the promotion of change.

The image of man that we presumably all have in us is in danger of being obsoleted. This has some degree of argument behind it: man has grown up, evolved in, a world very different from the one we find ourselves in, for better or worse. To ignore this would, I believe, be folly. That said, paying attention to our self-image and being guided in such a way as to shape it are very different things.

The solution to this crisis of obsolescence:

it will be necessary to anticipate-rather than just to react to-the necessity for such paradigm changes, and continuously to seek more adequate conceptions and images.

“More adequate conceptions and images.” Again and again I ask: who determines what is adequate? This, of course, is never explicitly answered. On the other hand it is implicitly answered: the authors will decide, the oligarchy, the leaders of the technocracy.

And what have they decided is an adequate conception and image? The dilemma is not change versus no change, but revolutionary change versus incremental change. “This dilemma could be fostered by an “image of man” in transformation…”

This leads me to an understanding that, as they mentioned already, constant change is upon us. If your self-image is that of transformation, does that not lend to never ending transformation? They did not say transformation from X to Y, but merely an undefined image of transformation.

leading to thoroughgoing transformation of society only in the longer term.

Again no ends are mention. There will simply be “thoroughgoing transformation of society” in the “longer term.” The lack of defined terms is unsettling to me to say the least. What is thoroughgoing? What is longer term?

That is unimportant, at least to the authors. What is important is how to catalyze such change.

A crisis is often the catalyst for the redrawing of one’s preferred “map.”

Historically, these kinds of changes have been attached to some kind of violence. Usually some people are persuaded while others are not. The former end up imposing, with force, the change on the latter.

There is, however, a claim made in this book that change can be non-violent.

For the new image to foster a smooth transition to a benign post-industrial and eventually planetary society, it has to be absorbed into the lives of people and the institutions of society without the disruptions that accompany most revolutions. This can only happen if the new image and its implications are seen as an integration, reinterpretation or improvement of the old.

First of all, we see explicit mention of a post-industrial and planetary society. In the 60’s and 70’s, these ideas, especially a planetary society, would have been far-out. Today, in hindsight, we can see that we are well on our way to such a thing. The post-industrial society is as concerning as the planetary society and can similarly be seen in the emergence of the modern knowledge based society.

Second of all, it is important to note how this smooth transition might be realized: thought “an integration, reinterpretation or improvement of the old.” To me, this is nothing more than a fancy cover for the archaic revival, which in the 60’s and 70’s was in full swing. Consider the pioneer look of Crosby, Stills, and Nash and other musicians. Consider the stereotypical hippie and the burgeoning, then and also in the undercurrents of now, back to the land movements.

If you aren’t familiar with the concept of archaic revival, it basically boils down to: if a technologically superior group praises a technologically inferior group when they proactive their traditional living, the inferior group will continue to ’live in the past’, ignoring their inferiority, while the superior people can essentially dominate them without lifting a finger. For example, if the oligarchy praises people for their back to the land/homesteader/off-grid living, those people will never look beyond their technically inferior modes of living and thus offer no challenge to the ruling class. Hence, modernizing the old to usher in the new.

Bateson in Russia?

All that is required for this change to occur is to create the right setting:

…ways in which one or a group of individuals, with an appropriate “set and setting.” can be helped to make the type of conceptual breakthroughs…

“Set and setting,” it should be noted, are directly taken from LSD culture. The ideas were promoted by Tim Leary. Set being the mindset of the imbiber and setting being their environment. These two variables can mean the difference between a beautiful and horrific psychedelic experience and it should be assumed that they would be equally impacting outside of a psychedelic experience.

In both the cultural transformation as well as the psychedelic experience, change is almost always uncomfortable to some degree. This discomfort is analogous to stress. Before the stress occurs you are in a ’normal’ situation. Immediately after the stress you are disoriented until you internalize or adapt. Once you’ve adapted a ’new normal’ emerges.

“The structure of the revitalization process, in cases where the full course is run, consists of somewhat overlapping stages: 1. Steady State; 2. Period of Individual Stress; 3. Period of Cultural Distortion; 4. Period of Revitalization (in which occur the functions of mazeway reformulation, communication, organization, adaption, cultural transformation, and routinization); and finally 5. New Steady State.” (p. 264) - Anthony F. C. Wallace (1956)

…others in order to minimize stress. The mazeway is nature, society, culture, personality, and body image as seen by one person. . .. Changing the mazeway involves changing the total Gestalt of his image of self, society, and culture, of nature and body, and of ways of action. It may also be necessary to make changes in the “real” system in order to bring mazeway and “real” system into congruence. The effort to work a change in mazeway and “real” system together so as to permit more effective stress reduction is the effort at revitalization; and the collaboration of a number of persons in such an effort is called a revitalization movement. (pp. 266 ff) - Anthony F. C. Wallace (1956)

Here we can see, as early as 1956, a step by step understanding of how to bring about change in the individual and society. By introducing particular stresses, the individuals will be compelled to reduce these stresses in predictable ways. As these changes to reduce stress are undertaken the mazeway, or image, and the real system, the modified by stress environment, merge. Rinse and repeat and society can be transformed little by little through the injection of small amounts of stress targeting particular aspects of life.

This feels like nothing more than a refined way of speaking of a Hegelian dialectic. Instead of calling the stages thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, or even problem, reaction, solution, a new, barely intelligible language is introduced, presumably to obscure the actual intent. Still, at the core this mazeway based change does three simple things: causes a stress/crisis, injects a new image as the participants react to the stress/crisis, and finally gels on a new plateau, ready for the next round.

After mazeway reformulation come adaption, cultural transformation, and routinization

After the transformation we get the ’new normal’, something we hear about constantly today. ‘It’s just the way it is,’ people often say, not realizing that society has been led here, not by random interaction, but, as just stated, through a series of crisis designed to maneuver it into this position.

The book concludes:

Thus cultural transformation seems feasible without revolutionary disruptions, to the extent that the transformed society can meet the unique and habitual needs of diverse groups while at the same time providing a unifying framework for the entire culture. Techniques exist with which transformational discovery can be fostered;

Again, if you simply read it and look around, you can see that these transformation techniques have been applied and are not merely academic in nature. Even the language, “diverse groups” and “unique”, is apropos today.

Lastly there is a call to action.

The majority of the society do not perceive the need or have the motivation noted above. This is perhaps fortunate, for it gives time to create the needed ideas before charismatic leadership and/or simplistic attempts at reform are demanded. Although there is (among an increasing number of elites) a perceived need, motivation, some progress, and proper tools (yet small in proportion to the need), most funding understandably goes into work that fits within the present paradigms of our culture. The efficacy of transformational research and working toward more adequate paradigms has yet to be demonstrated to the mainstream institutions of society. Thus support of this kind of activity could prove to have “high leverage” in terms of building the kinds of knowledge and necessary experience that might turn cultural crisis into creative transformation.

Here we see how the “elites” perceive the masses. As unable to perceive what is happening. As being only led, by them or a charismatic leader (the basis for Donald Trump) demanding “simplistic” reform. The request for more investment from elites so as to develop the knowledge that can be “high leverage” is most concerning. “High leverage” against what? “High leverage” in being able to “turn cultural crisis into … transformation.” It is right there in black and white: the plan is to gain knowledge to transform society (into whatever these so-called elites might want to transform it into).

Two Futures: Technological Extrapolation

Two paths that might be taken into the future are covered at relatively great length. The first, in no particular order, is labeled the technological extrapolationist view.

This view has its historical basis in five subtypes: the Hobbesian Man, the Economic Man, the Freudian man, the Ethological Man, and the Behavioristic Man. I will include the complete descriptions of each because I think it is important to understand how those making the predictions and writing the programs to manipulate society classify what they see. It was developed at the Hudson Institute to explain a “multifold trend.”

(1) Hobbesian Man - Hobbes saw humankind as elaborate machines whose “vital motions” were determined by outward stimuli. One seeks the power to insure the continuation of favorable stimuli and in that egoistic concern one comes into strong conflict with other people acting in like manner. What is required to insure peace is a sovereign with absolute power over the citizenry.

(2) Economic Man - Is rationalistic (able to calculate what will maximize one’s utility), self-centered (acquisitiveness constrained only by the self-seeking of others), mechanistic (a factor in the production process), individualistic (responsible for taking care of one’s self), and materialistic (with an overriding concern for one’s own material welfare).

(3) Freudian Man - Freud saw people as being driven by the dual instinctual forces of eros (the sex drive) and thanatos (the will to destruction of self or, when turned outward, the will to aggression). Civilization suppresses these potentially destructive instincts and in doing so it increases the individual’s internal tensions. Therefore, civilization is bought at the price of an increase in personal frustration.

(4) Ethological Man - An aggressive animal with a veneer of civilization holding this aggression back. Man is instinctually programmed from his hunter origins toward war, destruction, and territoriality, and this cannot be unlearned or outgrown but can only be sublimated, redirected, or repressed. This any civilized society must do.

(5) Behavioristic Man - One’s actions are completely determined by hereditary and environmental factors. A recent emphasis is upon behavior modification through a stimulus-reinforcement-response process. Freedom and dignity are thought to be the illusory constructs of an individual who views himself as having autonomy. The survival of a culture is likely dependent on the systematic “shaping” of human behavior.

This view, which I think has been the path followed, leads to:

(1) Increasingly empirical, secular, pragmatic, manipulative, explicitly rational, utilitarian.

(2) Centralization and concentration of economic and political power.

(3) Continued rapid accumulation of scientific and technical knowledge.

(4) Increasing reliance upon specialists and “knowledge elites” despite anti-intellectual trends.

(5) Increasing affluence and the institutionalization of leisure.

(6) Increasing use of social, economic, political, and behavioral engineering.

(7) Increasing urban concentration and the emergence of megapolitan/regional urban areas.

I think this well describes our current world.

An image of humankind that is supportive of this future would likely have the following characteristics:

(1) The individual by nature is aggressive and competitive, largely determined in his behavior by hereditary and environmental forces.

(2) The group is emphasized, to the relative detriment of individualism.

(3) Sexuality, territoriality, materialism, rationalism, and secularism are emphasized.

(4) There is an increased demand for and implied reliance upon technological solutions to our societal problems, and upon centralized regulation of technology application to provide needed controls.

Again, I think this describes the world we live in today with a few exceptions, that might not actually be exceptions but less realized developments.

For example, while competition, sexuality, materialism, in technological dependence are clear to see, it might be argued that the west is still focused on the individual instead of the group, as this predicts. I simply see this development as less advanced but, none-the-less, underway. The youth of today are being indoctrinated with ideas like “free” health care and education, universal basic income, and similar communistic ideas. While these might not be as mainstream as the material and technical aspects of society, they are slowly worming their way in through generational adoption. Imagine, in 20 or 40 years, most of the population will have at least been exposed to things like universal basic income. It will be sold, of course, as a way to keep the economy humming. It will sound great, especially to those left behind by the rising technological tide.

The point I am trying to make here is that these changes don’t occur all at once nor do they occur overnight. It took 50 years from the time of this book’s publication to get to where we are today; it isn’t outlandish to think the transformative processes laid out herein are still underway. As Rome wasn’t built in a day, so to the West wasn’t transformed in a day.

Two Futures: Evolutionary Transformation

The other path, which was generally not followed, is labeled the evolutionary transformationalist view. It has its roots in essentially the opposite forces behind the technological extrapolationist view. Its focus on the more humane, cooperative side of the coin. Metaphysics, consciousness, and the ecological ethic are included in this view.

(1) Lockean Man - For Locke, the pre-social condition of the human being was not mutual hostility but mutual tolerance. Nor was man’s social contract a surrender pact drawn up between the people and the sovereign; it was a limited agreement among the people to allow regulation of some natural rights so as to gain protection for the remaining ones. Innate ideas or instincts were not the source of knowledge and character, but rather experience and awareness.

(2) Emergent “Humanistic Capitalism” - Would replace the economic growth ethic with self-realization and ecological ethics, and holds that the appropriate function of social institutions is to create environments conducive to that human-growth process which would ultimately transcend a materialistic orientation.

(3) Perennial Philosophy - " … the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds" (Huxley, 1945). The individual can, under certain conditions, attain to a higher awareness, a “cosmic consciousness,” in which state he has immediate knowledge of a reality underlying the phenomenal world. “Rudiments of the Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditional lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in everyone of the higher religions.” It is then, the highest common denominator among the religions and thereby has tremendous integrative potential while recognizing the diversity of peoples.

(4) The “Other” Ethology - From this perspective, aggression is not inherent in human nature. The environment more than instincts is the source of aggression. To the extent that aggression, territoriality, etc., are learned rather than innate attributes, then they can be unlearned.

(5) Systems Theory - The person is an interdependent part of the progressive differentiation and higher-order reintegration of bio-social systems; the next phase in this evolutionary process is for the person to become conscious of his own evolution and to make the process purposeful so that there can be reconciliation of subsystems into large systems without loss of uniqueness. The underlying goal is the enhancement of individual fulfillment through the actualization of the best potentials there are within the person.

This view leads to, as would be expected, the opposite results of the technological extrapolationsist view. This, for the most part, is not the world we live in today, though it is still presented as a kind of utopian view to strive for.

(1) Increasingly balanced between dimensions such as empirical/intuitive, manipulative/pan-determined, rational/intuitive, utilitarian/aesthetic.

(2) Stabilizing population; decentralization of urban areas so that population is distributed with greater balance; a greater diversity of living environments to express a larger range of life-style alternatives.

(3) Increasing affluence for a time but then tending toward a steady-state society without substantial income/wealth differentials; a “do more with less” technology; more creative/participative leisure activities.

(4) A decrease in the use of social, economic, political, and behavior engineering except where this was chosen by a group as the preferable mode of organizing and directing life-activities within their societal subsystem.

(5) Increasing reliance upon specialized and general (holistic) skills of “knowledge elites” with greater legitimization and use of diver- gent thinking; also greater participation in the planning processes.

(6) Continued accumulation of scientific and technical knowledge but of a sort which fits within the framework of a new “moral” paradigm.

(7) Decentralization and deconcentration of economic and political power to allow “full valued participation” of people in their political and productive processes.

Some of these predictions are almost laughable. Steady-state society? Decrease in social, economic, political, and behavioral engineering? Generalization of skills? Decentralization of economic and political power?

On the other hand, some are not so far fetched or at least sold as such. The accumulation of scientific and technical knowledge in a “moral” paradigm is vague enough to be meaningless. I think it implies a “better” morality, but it could easily be interpreted however you might want to interpret “better.” Eugenics, for example, could easily be perceived as a good idea, even if we don’t see it that way today. Transhumanism seems to be nothing more than repackaged eugenics and is lapped up quite readily today.

Either way, this is generally the tack that has not been taken, but instead has been used as more a kind of carrot to keep the optimistic among the population hopeful in spite of the lockstep march down the technological extrapolationist path.

An idealized end to this path would lead to more individualistic behavior. This behavior would be determined by both biological and social influences, “which can be either good or ill.” The conclusion is that the individual will be mostly free from “deterministic influences.” This seems to run counter to the book’s own argument, that environmental/social forces can be manipulated to steer individuals, and therefor groups, in predictable fashions. To me, this feels like nothing less than double-talk; saying one thing that sounds nice, but has essentially no connection to reality.

Problems

Both of these paths would, of course, have their strengths and weaknesses, but, given hindsight, we can see what actual problems have developed despite whatever the actual or stated intentions might have been. Some of the problems foreseen include:

(1) Continued acceleration of industrial development through massive transnational corporations which, because they transcend national boundaries, will be difficult or impossible to regulate adequately.

(2) Intensification of ecological problems, and of marathon competition to exploit vanishing resources.

(3) Increasing discrepancies in the distribution of affluence;

(4) Intensification of “revolutions of rising expectations” and of strife among interest groups.

(5) Increasing danger of sabotage, and increasing concern for personal and institutional security; development of new “security technologies.”

(6) A shift from basic research to applied research and development.

(7) Increasingly unwieldy urban agglomerations whose political, financial, and total-systemic stability becomes uncertain.

(8) Increasing dominance of institutional needs over human needs.

(9) Increasingly questioned legitimacy of the entire socioeconomic system.

Here again we can see uncanny predictions; massive transnational corporations, increasing wealth disparity, “security technologies”, and institutions outranking individuals.

These problems are almost exactly what we do face today, some 50 years after publication. One should ask, were the authors able to predict this future or were they able to engineer it?

Of interest is number 5, increasing danger of sabotage and “security technologies”. This seem to me to be one of the hardest to predict. Even if you take number 9 for granted, that people will be disillusioned, that does not immediately lead to sabotage; equally reasonable would be to predict protest and/or political upheaval. In fact, both of these seem the more reasonable, if not conservative, prediction. Only after the peaceful means of change are exhausted would, it seems, more radical means be employed.

I think this is interesting to note because of the rise of the so-called terrorist and lone-wolf of recent years. Again, looking at this from the 1960’s and 1970’s perspective, this seems like a far-fetched prediction, yet it has essentially come to pass.

There is a small amount of push-back presented, although this feels more like controlled opposition to me. By presenting the alternative view, which is given much less space, the authors can claim an unbiased presentation. This controlled opposition would also appease those who might be most critical, instilling in them the feeling that they needn’t protest since there is at least some counterpoints present.

A “warning” is issued that feels more like a prediction the more I read these kind of oligarchical blueprints for a future:

We could quickly or, more likely, gradually emerge into the kind of society that Bertram Gross (1970) has termed “friendly fascism.” This is a fascism that “will come under the slogans of democracy and 100 percent Americanism … in the form of an advanced technological society, supported by its techniques-a techno-urban fascism, American style” (p. 44). Gross describes it as:

The warning continues:

… a new form of garrison state, or totalitarianism, built by older elites to resolve the growing conflicts of post-industrialism. More specifically: a managed society [which] rules by a faceless and widely dispersed complex of warfare-welfare-industrial- communications-police bureaucracies caught up in developing a new-style empire based on a technocratic ideology, a culture of alienation, multiple scapegoats, and competing control networks …. Pluralistic in nature, techno-urban fascism would need no charismatic dictator, no one-party rule, no mass fascist party, no glorification of the state, no dissolution of legislatures, no discontinuation of elections, no distrust of reason … this style of management and planning would not be limited to the economy; it would deal with the political, social, cultural, and technological aspects of society as well …. The key theme, therefore, would not be the managed economy, but rather, the managed society.· (pp. 46)

If it works (it does), use it

There is constant reference to tools and understanding that can be used to shape society that are explicitly understood to work:

Although one may fault the metaphysical implications of behavior modification, one cannot deny that it works.

There is no hiding what these tools will be used for: control.

Today we are seeing the rapid emergence of “psycho-technologies” which could efficiently shape and modify patterns of behavior as well as motivational and emotional states. This could take the form of directed emotional conditioning in childhood; objectively constructed reinforcement patterns in adult life; the use of a wide variety of drugs; electrical brain implants; the modification of genetic makeup to activate different human potentials; the use of sophisticated electronic surveillance mechanisms to detect “aberrant” behavior patterns.

As of 1973 some of these technologies were already being employed. I would argue that the precursors to these tools have been used for decades at least and depending on how you might define them possibly centruies (I am thinking specifically of Dionysian rituals with wine and psychedelic mushrooms).

Many psycho-technologies are already in limited use in our society and they would appear to be quite palatable to the general public if they were assimilated gradually while being couched in the appropriate language; e.g. rather than discuss the control of emotional and motivational states, we can talk of insuring peace and harmony by modifying the behavior of those “irrational” persons who threaten the stability and security of our society.

In 1967 Quarton mused on controlling the public through drugs. We can obviously see this in modern times.

If these protective and avoidance patterns are greatly extended in the future, one can imagine a society that allows widespread use of drugs to prevent pain and anxiety, brain surgery to prevent both suffering and any aggressive actions by individuals, and extensive use of monitoring equipment to restrict individual behavior with a destructive potential." (p. 850)

There are many other explicit examples presented making a case for the emergence of Gross’s friendly facism.

Consequences

There are many consequences to using these manipulative tactics on a society.

One is that the economy, the oligarchical economy, would subsume social relations.

Instead of the economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system …. For once the economic system is organized in separate institutions, based on specific motives and conferring a special status, society must be shaped in such a manner as to allow that system to function according to its own laws." (Polanyi, 1944, p. 57)

Further, the family would tend to be atomized. Again we see this today when children our pushed out of the home and into college. I am not claiming college is bad per se (though I do think it generally is), but the conditioning exists to get the children away from their parents. Often to the other side of the country where they will be exposed to the indoctrination of the mostly progressive education system. I also think we are starting to see a shift away from this that is being economically driven. That is to say, people are staying and moving back home effectively against their will because economic conditions are deteriorating.

Experiments with a variety of family structures would be a legitimate endeavor in a society that encourages individual and interpersonal exploration of human-growth processes.

These societal experiments will likely lead to anxiety and self-destructive behavior. Civil unrest and violence are expected. These things are framed as irrational, but if we are honest with ourselves someone lashing out at the appropriate targets (the ones doing the manipulation) seems like a perfectly rational response. (See: Unibomber’s manifesto)

These thoughts are crystallized in what they call “garrison-state” dynamics:

I think this sums up my take quite well:

“I wish I could see this whole thing more positively and creatively, but so far I can’t, and your discussion just seems to reinforce my pessimism, though I’m certain the opposite is your intent!” -David Cahoon

Strategies

Strategies to bring about the “desired transformation”:

The manipulative strategy works by “overtly or covertly reducing individual freedoms.” Some of these tactics could be direct (as with a new law) while others might be indirect (as with self censorship based on social pressure exerted likely via media).

The persuasive strategy is nothing more than propaganda. It simply tries to persuade others of the value of its idea. This can be seen clearly with education and media. Modern social media seems to be acting like a self reinforcing feedback loop with the echo chambers it creates.

These ideas are as old as civilization, but we can see how refined the understanding of these large scale manipulation programs were by even the mid 1960s.

Adolph Lowe’s observation (1965) that the state of an economic system depends upon behaviors, which in turn depend upon motivations, which depend upon images, beliefs, and values-and thus interventions for change could be contemplated at any of these levels. Behavior patterns can be altered by authoritarian controls, motivations can be affected by psychological conditioning, and beliefs and values are modified by education.

Interestingly the report claims that institutional changes are lagging behind cultural changes, but here I would push back. The institutions (obviously not all of them) are responsible for “programming” the youth that steer the culture. Further, one could argue that the CIA (and similar) is the institution that is manipulating other institutions into manipulating the public. Again showing that the cultural changes lags the institutional change.

There are six rules laid out to bring about cultural change. These 4 I find most telling:

Finally, in the appendix (E) it talks about a ‘call to action’ for the oligarchy to:

Promote experiments with steady-state economics, new forms of “general-benefit” corporations, new life styles, etc.

When I hear steady-state economics today, I think of “stable” coins, bitcoin, and CBDC.

Further it calls to:

Explore uses of mass media to alert populations to the social macro-problem and to behaviors essential to its ultimate resolution.

Which I read as: terrorize the masses with end-of-the-world scenario movies, news about ‘climate change’, war, etc.

The book ends with an observation on conspiracies:

The “conspiracy” trap catches many particularly in discussions of the oil crisis. As Goodwin points out, there is no need for conspiracy. It is only necessary that managers, corporate or governmental, understand and follow the “rules of behavior dictated by the structure that binds them” and the “set of stable assumptions,” often unspoken, that inform decision- making. Decisions made by people who share assumptions, even though there has been no discussion between them, will produce actions so similar that there appears to be collusion even though the actors themselves feel they occupy conflicting positions.

Books

Exceptional Excepts

It was undertaken for a specific purpose: to chart, insofar as possible, what changes in the conceptual premises underlying Western society would lead to a desirable future.

In 1968 the U.S. Office of Education launched two research centers in an ambitious undertaking to “investigate alternative future possibilities for the society and their implications for educational policy."

Orthodox Jewish, Christian, Islamic faiths = Stands in its present form as an obstacle to emergence of new ecological understandings.

Human as “mechanism”-to be understood in ways found successful by nineteenth-century physics = Promoted as providing the most appropriate basis for man’s next era, perhaps now itself needing to be incorporated into larger synthesis

Because the Gnostic path was condemned as heretical, of necessity it went underground, and hence its influence on our culture is much less visible than are the effects of the orthodox views. It and views like it, however, have been kept alive by secret societies such as the Sufis, Freemasons, and Rosicrucians, whose influence on the founding of the United States is attested to by the symbolism of the Great Seal of the United States, on the back of the dollar bill.

the idea of progress become indistinguishable from the idea of science itself.

Darwin comes upon the principle of natural selection and the struggle for survival, not so much from his meticulous observations and collections as from reading Malthus’ Essay on Population, and from living amidst a society in which laissez-faire economics and the ethics of rugged individualism were being championed. (It is noteworthy that Darwin’s competitor, Alfred Wallace, working independently, also happened upon the insight of natural selection-through-struggle through reading Malthus; and that the very phrase “survival of the fittest,” which first appeared in the second edition of Origin of Species, was contributed by Herbert Spencer, the philosopher of social evolution via laissez-faire economic capitalism and rugged individualism.)

the technique of operant conditioning, a term originated by B. F. Skinner to denote a systematic procedure whereby the actions of an organism are brought under control by giving it a reward if and only if it behaves in a specified manner. This technique has been successfully used-in education, psychotherapy, and in prisons to alter whole behavior patterns of individuals.

A rather different approach to understanding (and controlling) behavior, also of proven effectiveness, is through the implementation of remotely activated electrodes in the brain.

The “psycho-civilization of society” has been advocated by means of various techniques of behavior modification such as operant conditioning (Skinner, 1971), electrocranial stimulation (Delgado, 1969), and psychochemical drugs (Clark, 1971).

The keynote of the American Creed would seem to be that of emancipation-not just the emancipation of a people from the bondage of tyranny and poverty, but the emancipation of humankind from the bondage of history and heredity.

“The economic problem, the struggle for subsistence, always has been hitherto the primary, most pressing problem of the human race ….. Thus we have been expressly evolved by nature-with all our impulses and deepest instincts-for the purpose of solving the economic problem. If the economic problem is solved, humankind will be deprived of its traditional purpose. Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem-how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares…. There is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy.” (p. 211)

“Each person acts on the assumption that more money will bring more happiness; and, indeed, if he does get more money, and others do not (or get less), his happiness increases. But when everyone acts on this assumption and incomes generally increase, no one, on the average, feels better off. Yet each person goes on, generation after generation, unaware of the self-defeating process in which he is caught up.” (p. 10)

Premise One: that progress is synonymous with growth of GNP and that growth is inherently good. It is now well accepted that gross measures of growth such as GNP do not tell us a great deal about our society’s welfare. For example, the level of pollution is correlated with the level of GNP: the question arises, what is growing-pollution or social well-being? Given the destructive as well as benevolent potential of our powerful economy, we can no longer afford blindly to accept the premise that “bigger is better” and “growth is good.” The momentum of such an ideology may be suicidal.

Premise Six: that individual identity and success in life are to be measured by material possessions acquired and/or occupational status achieved. The biblical injunction against this kind of thinking is to inquire what it profits a person to gain the world but to lose his soul. However, one’s soul has become redundant in a world secularized by affluence; “the most effective way to establish [identify] distinctions is through styles of consumption” (Downs, p. 64). Fortune magazine recently reported that in the consumer market of the 1970s there is

“an increasing insistence by the customers on using consumption to express themselves, to help in fashioning their own identities…. For increasing numbers of Americans, the clothes they wear are not simply material objects; on the contrary, they are viewed … as the most basic expression of life style, indeed of identity itself.” (Silberman, 1971)

Premise Seven: that there is freedom in affluence. We have traditionally assumed that if people can simultaneously earn “enough” money and be given “freedom” of choice, they can take care of themselves. The fallacy of this view lies in believing there is no conflict between earning the money and the freedom of choice that is then available. The very act of earning “enough” money constrains the number of social, psychological, political, and physical choices that one can make. Margaret Mead has pointed out that to introduce cloth garments (effectively) into a grass- or bark-clad population, one must simul- taneously introduce closets, soap, sewing, and furniture. Cloth is part of a complex cultural pattern that includes storing, cleaning, mending, and protecting (Slater, 1970). Imagine, then, the cultural constraints implicit in our society which is so laden with goods and services. Thus, the real philosophy underlying “freedom in affluence” is that once you have enough money to be free from want, then all further income gives you the freedom to want-as long as you want only more material goods and services. This premise runs afoul if wants arise that cannot be largely satisfied by material means.

This schematic suggests that as a society becomes increasingly developed, a logical consequence is for the system to become increasingly complex and interdependent.

Another way of stating this is that the viability of a democracy depends upon the informed decision-making capacity of its citizenry, i.e. the “relative political maturity” of the people must at least maintain parity with the complexity of the issues confronting the public. If the acquisition of relevant knowledge does not proceed at about the same pace at which the decisions become complex, then relative political maturity will decline. This may have two con- sequences: (1) increasing reliance placed upon the “expert” to maintain order and control, with a resulting compromise of our democratic processes, or (2) reluctance to give control to the “expert” but, with an increasing inability to make informed decisions, the result is that the system may truly go “out of control."

Similarly, the earlier mechanistic view of cybernetics-that “the brain is merely a meat machine”-is rapidly giving way to the less restrictive notion of the computer as an extension of the human nervous system. McLuhan believes that computer systems will be used to “augment” human intellect, just as cultural forces augment the individual’s abilities (Englebart, 1973).

The notions of genetic “engineering,” cloning, and the like have provided new impetus to the old visions of eugenics and the “improvement” of human stock.

The work of Hess, Penfield, and Olds involving the implantation of electrodes to create signals internally has allowed the mapping of large portions of the brain. Control of psychological phenomena and stimulation of memory have resulted from this work.

As Delgado (1969) describes it: “Autonomic and somatic functions, individual and social behavior, emotional and mental reactions may be evoked, maintained, modified or inhibited, both in animals and in man, by electrical stimulation of specific cerebral structures. Physical control of many brain functions is a demonstrated fact but the possibilities and limits of this control are still unknown."

Many mind-altering substances have been discovered with effects ranging from hallucination to tranquillization and trance.

Such developments led Kenneth Clark, as President of the American Psychological Association, to suggest in 1971: “We might be on the threshold of that type of scientific, biochemical intervention which could stabilize and make dominant the moral and ethical propensities of man and subordinate, if not eliminate, his negative and primitive tendencies."

Clark proposed the development of chemically based “psychotechnologies” (primarily to bring control over the tendencies of national leaders, in an attempt to lower the possibility of nuclear war). Delgado has urged the development of a “psycho-civilized” society such that dangerous behavior in man can be modified by electrical stimulation of the brain. Thus certain areas of modern brain research clearly raise profound moral questions which, if unresolved, might propel civilization toward Brave New World and 1984. The issue has been raised, whether the control of the brain made possible by electrical stimulation of the brain (ESB) is essentially different from placing the individual in a prison, where the prison bars, instead of being iron rods, are a complex of metal electrodes wired into a computer.

Psychedelic Drugs. In the last 15 years there has been increased interest in chemical substances that change the quality and characteristics of normal everyday consciousness, particularly through such drugs as lysergic acid, mescaline, psilocybin, and others.

“Psychoactive substances have many potential uses-and misuses. (See Wayne O. Evans and Nathan S. Kline, Psychotropic Drugs in the Year 2000. Charles C. Thomas, 1971.) It is irresponsible to wax enthusiastic about the potential of drugs without also cautioning about the many problems that they are causing." -Michael Marien.

Lilly (1972) hypothesizes that the mind (and body) is a human biocomputer, with programs and metaprograms which can be analyzed and altered.

We may let Gregory Bateson introduce a final research area to be mentioned here: “the growing together of a number of ideas which had developed in different places during World War II … the aggregate of these ideas [being called] cybernetics, or communication theory, or information theory, or systems theory. The ideas were generated in many places: in Vienna by Bertalanffy, in Harvard by Wiener, in Princeton by von Neumann, in Bell Telephone labs by Shannon, in Cambridge by Craik, and so on. All these separate developments in different intellectual centers dealt with … the problem of what sort of a thing is an organized system … I think that cybernetics is the biggest bite out of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that mankind has taken in the last 2000 years." (1972, pp. 482-484)

For at least a century, the relationship between science and modern society in many ways has resembled that which formerly existed between religion and society.

We have seen how the predominant image of humankind in a society is a powerful shaping force on the social environment and how the social environment, in turn, influences the society’s image.

…leading to thorough going transformation of society only in the longer term.

“Three interpretations must be mentioned here: hierarchical, atomistic, and network. In the first school of thought, represented by Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Polanyi and Weiss, these dimensions are conceptualized as levels in a hierarchy. The second school of thought, having its origin in the Nominalists of the Medieval Age and translated into the ideology of democracy in England and in the U.S.A., sees the whole as nothing but a statistical sum of its parts. The third school of thought, developed particularly since the advent of cybernetics in 1940s, sees the whole as characterized by the pattern of network formed between individual elements. In some cases such a network may be pre-designed according to a centralized plan. But in many cases the network will form as a result of interaction between the elements without anybody planning ahead. Ecological inter- actions are an example of the latter. The evolutionary process is another example. The result is different from a mere statistical sum of the parts. Nor is it something planned by a central authority. This type of system is characterized by the pattern of interaction activated by its component elements.” -Magoroh Maruyama

emergence of an “ecological ethic” and a “self-realization ethic”; to coordinated “satisficing”; and to goals of “ephemeralization” that are consistent with limits to growth of materialism.

A crisis is often the catalyst for the redrawing of one’s preferred “map."

“The structure of the revitalization process, in cases where the full course is run, consists of somewhat overlapping stages: 1. Steady State; 2. Period of Individual Stress; 3. Period of Cultural Distortion; 4. Period of Revitalization (in which occur the functions of mazeway reformulation, communication, organization, adaption, cultural transformation, and routinization); and finally 5. New Steady State." (p. 264) - Anthony F. C. Wallace (1956)

Cause crisis, inject new image, reshape society.

Scientific revolutions are often difficult to accept for established scientists. Like Plank said, it isn’t about the old scientists accepting the new ways, but instead the old scientists die off and the new generation embraces the new paradigm. Similar is the adoption of cultural revolution.

If the future is portrayed in primarily dystopian terms, a dystopian image of humankind will prevail in the collective unconscious of the culture. But as Margaret Mead has noted (1957):

Image manipulation is practiced in our society, but it has not yet reached the proportions that were practiced in Germany before World War II.

Virtually every institutionalized aspect of our society, but especially the image-creating media (whose revenues, hence editorial policy, currently derive primarily from advertising), indirectly support the cur- rent industrial paradigm. The physical aspects of our culture (urban- centered factories, freeways, automobiles, etc.) all reinforce it by shaping our perceptions, incentives, and habits.

The majority of the society do not perceive the need or have the motivation noted above. This is perhaps fortunate, for it gives time to create the needed ideas before charismatic leadership and/or simplistic attempts at reform are demanded. Although there is (among an increasing number of elites) a perceived need, motivation, some progress, and proper tools (yet small in proportion to the need), most funding understandably goes into work that fits within the present paradigms of our culture. The efficacy of transformational research and working toward more adequate paradigms has yet to be demonstrated to the mainstream institutions of society. Thus class=“important”>support of this kind of activity could prove to have “high leverage” in terms of building the kinds of knowledge and necessary experience that might turn cultural crisis into creative transformation.

Gerald Heard once noted, “Life does not need comfort, when it can be offered meaning, nor pleasure, when it can be shown purpose."

Increasing danger of sabotage, and increasing concern for personal and institutional security; development of new “security technologies."

We could quickly or, more likely, gradually emerge into the kind of society that Bertram Gross (1970) has termed “friendly fascism.” This is a fascism that “will come under the slogans of democracy and 100 percent Americanism … in the form of an advanced technological society, supported by its techniques-a techno-urban fascism, American style” (p. 44). Gross describes it as:

”… a new form of garrison state, or totalitarianism, built by older elites to resolve the growing conflicts of post-industrialism. More specifically: a managed society [which] rules by a faceless and widely dispersed complex of warfare-welfare-industrial- communications-police bureaucracies caught up in developing a new-style empire based on a technocratic ideology, a culture of alienation, multiple scapegoats, and competing control networks …. Pluralistic in nature, techno-urban fascism would need no charismatic dictator, no one-party rule, no mass fascist party, no glorification of the state, no dissolution of legislatures, no discontinuation of elections, no distrust of reason … this style of management and planning would not be limited to the economy; it would deal with the political, social, cultural, and technological aspects of society as well …. The key theme, therefore, would not be the managed economy, but rather, the managed society.· (pp. 46)

Although one may fault the metaphysical implications of behavior modification, one cannot deny that it works. Today we are seeing the rapid emergence of “psycho-technologies” which could efficiently shape and modify patterns of behavior as well as motivational and emotional states. This could take the form of directed emotional conditioning in childhood; objectively constructed reinforcement patterns in adult life; the use of a wide variety of drugs; electrical brain implants; the modification of genetic makeup to activate different human potentials; the use of sophisticated electronic surveillance mechanisms to detect “aberrant” behavior patterns.

Many psycho-technologies are already in limited use in our society and they would appear to be quite palatable to the general public if they were assimilated gradually while being couched in the appropriate language; e.g. rather than discuss the control of emotional and motivational states, we can talk of insuring peace and harmony by modifying the behavior of those “irrational” persons who threaten the stability and security of our society.

Quarton (1967) examined the plausibility of widespread use of such processes and concluded: “If these protective and avoidance patterns are greatly extended in the future, one can imagine a society that allows widespread use of drugs to prevent pain and anxiety, brain surgery to prevent both suffering and any aggressive actions by individuals, and extensive use of monitoring equipment to restrict individual behavior with a destructive potential.” (p. 850)

Utilization of behavior-changing drugs and operant conditioning in schools.

The inability to sustain stable subsystems (let alone the macro-system) suggests that a strong thrust toward decentralization would be a plausible concomitant to the trans- formationalist image of humankind.

The greatest hazard in such a transition is that the anxiety level can raise to where the society responds with irrational and self-destructive behavior.

“Given my own pre-paranoid selective-perception ‘set’, the most convincing discussion of all is the drift into the Gross ‘friendly fascism’! It is comforting to hear you affirm that this is ‘an extreme outcome from the technological extrapolationist image and trend’, and ‘unintended to most people’ but it seems to me we are well into it! The very crisis nature of our future seems to me to most likely increase the garrison-state dynamic:

a manipulative strategy attempts to accomplish a similar result through overtly or covertly reducing individual freedoms. Some manipulative tactics may be direct (as with the passage of a law); others may be more indirect (as with class=“important”>editorial policies in the media, or “confrontation politics” in the counter-culture).

Adolph Lowe’s observation (1965) that the state of an economic system depends upon behaviors, which in turn depend upon motivations, which depend upon images, beliefs, and values-and thus interventions for change could be contemplated at any of these levels. Behavior patterns can be altered by authoritarian controls, motivations can be affected by psychological conditioning, and beliefs and values are modified by education.

institutional changes may already be lagging behind basic changes in the culturally dominant images, and actions taken to further hasten emergence of the new image could be socially disruptive. (Something like this seems to have taken place during the psychedelic period when Timothy Leary’s advice to the young to “tune in, turn on, and drop out” added its bit to the disorder of the times.)

the appropriate question may be not so much how to bring about a transformation (even if one is quite convinced the situation is exigent), but rather how to facilitate a non-catastrophic transition when the dynamics for transformation are already there.

(1) Promote awareness of the unavoidability of the transformation

There must be a new economics, if not steadystate in a strict sense, at least compatible with the constraints of the “new scarcity.”

(3) Foster a period of experimentation and tolerance for diverse alternatives, both in life styles and in social institutions.

In public education, for instance, it is equally important that new experimental curricula be tried and that the traditional subjects be available for those who resist moving precipitously into the new.

(4) Encourage a politics of righteousness, and a heightened sense of public responsibilities in the private sector.

(6) Accept the necessity of social controls for the transition period while safeguarding against longer-term losses of freedom.

Explore uses of mass media to alert populations to the social macro-problem and to behaviors essential to its ultimate resolution.

G. William Dumhoff has documented the role of social clubs in cementing personal ties and creating ideological consensus among corporate executives, financial leaders, high level government officials, and members of powerful families under such irreverent titles as “How the Fat Cats Keep in Touch.” The powerful meet not only in exclusive playgrounds among the California redwoods, but in policy-making groups like the Business Council, the Council of Foreign Relations, the Committee for Economic Development which supply personnel for a wide range of special commissions and important government appointments.

Table of Contents

· Introduction

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· 01: Images of Man in a Changing Society

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1. Increasing sensate (empirical, this-wordly, secular, humanistic, pragmatic,
manipulative, explicitly rational, utilitarian, contractual, empicurean,
hedonistic, etc.) cultures.

2. Bourgeois, bureaucratic, and meritocratic elites.

3. Centralization and concentration of economic and political power.

4. Accumulation of scientific and technical knowledge.

5. Institutionalization of technological change, especially research,
development, innovation, and diffusion.

6. Increasing military capability.

7. Westernization, modernization, and industrialization.

8. Increasing affluence and (recently) leisure.

9. Population growth.

10. Urbanization, recently suburbanization and "urban sprawl"-soon the growth
of megalopolises.

11. Decreasing importance of primary and (recently) secondary and tertiary
occupations; increasing importance of tertiary and (recently) quaternary
occupations.

12. Increasing literacy and education and (recently) "knowledge industry" and
increasing role of intellectuals.

13. Innovative and manipulative social engineering-i.e. rationality
increasingly applied to social, political, cultural, and economic worlds as
well as to shaping and exploiting the material world-increasing problems of
ritualistic, incomplete, or pseudo rationality.

14. Increasingly universality of the multifold trend.

15. Increasing tempo of change in all the above.

(Kahn and Bruce-Briggs, 1972)
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· 02: Some Formative Images of Man-in-the-Universe

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• Man is one species; races and other biological subdivisions are relatively
unimportant.

• If progress exists, it is to be measured by improvement in the life of all
mankind.

• Killing one another for national or ideological reasons is not justified.

• A world order representing all mankind should be created as soon as possible.

• Certain weapons and technologies should be prohibited if for no other reason
than because they threaten the future of man on this earth.

• Every culture and style of life that does not destroy human rights should be
preserved.

• Customs, taboos, beliefs, and institutions which cramp the development of
human potential should be reformed or abandoned.

• Social systems which restrict free activity of writers, artists, thinkers,
and scientists are suspect.

• The standards which govern man should come from man himself and be cut to his
measure.

• Concern for the well-being of man in this world should not be obscured by
concern for the next.

• Much work is dehumanizing and should be changed to make it more satisfactory
to the worker even at some loss of "efficiency" or profit.

• Many modern cities are unfit for human habitation.

• Many of the activities of the "counter-culture" today are an important part
of experimentation to find a better life style for man.
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· 03: Economic Man: Servant to Industrial Metaphors

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· 04: Influence of Science on the “Image of Man”

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  1. and human sexuality (Shainess, 1973).
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· 05: Characteristics of an Adequate Image of Humankind

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· 06: The Feasibility of an Integrative, Evolutionary Image of Man

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_ The Gradient in the Human Biocomputer. The real power and flexibility of the modern computer is found not in its hardware, but in its software-the gradient series of ever more general symbolic programs that make it feasible to use the computer for vastly different functions. The basic functioning of a computer requires one instruction for each operation that is carried out, and while programming at this machine- language level is in principle very flexible, it requires too much time to prepare special purpose programs for different applications. Rather, it has been found useful to create a hierarchical series of macroprogramming languages, where a single instruction at one level generates a score or more detailed instructions at a more basic level. The utility of the computer metaphor of human functioning is illustrated in Table 6 (a). At the lower (machine language) end of the human biocomputer are such processes as genetic inheritance; instinctual, endocrine, and autonomic processes; semantic and cultural determinism-all of which we have some degree of subconscious awareness of; and as the experience of yoga, hypnosis, and biofeedback training suggests, all of which we can to some extent reprogram. At a higher level, that of normal waking awareness, the executive function of the human biocomputer manifests awareness of the self (cogito, ergo sum); and as part of that self-awareness, believes that it is constantly capable of choice and of reprogramming itself, i.e. that it has freedom.

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  1. Period of Revitalization (in which occur the functions of mazeway reformulation, communication, organization, adaption, cultural transformation, and routinization); and finally 5. New Steady State." (p. 264) - Anthony F. C. Wallace (1956)

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· 07: Societal Choices and Consequences of Changing Images

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· 08: Guidelines and Strategies for Transformation

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· References

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· Appendix A: An Alternative View of History, The Spiritual Dimension of the Human Person, and a Third Alternative Image of Humanness

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· Appendix B: Information Systems and Social Ethics

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· Appendix C: A View of Modified Reductionism

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· Appendix D: Scientific Images of Man and the Man in the Street

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· Appendix E: Some Projects Suited to Government or Foundation Support

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· Appendix F: The Basic Paradigm of a Future Socio-cultural System

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