Curious Carl's Corner: August 2018

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Fwd: [acb-chat] We Shall Overcome...

Monday, August 27, 2018

Here I Stand: Paul Robeson film

https://youtu.be/BUki-v-NvoE

Sunday, August 26, 2018

Re: [acb-chat] "As I see it": Edited notes of King George III

you are a riot, I mean it Carl u should do stand up comedy , think about it because you are so funny, listen I found this hole in the wall MRI center on E 77st @ 2nd AVE, it is called, Stand Up MRI, of Manhattan P,C address, 253 E 77 ST NY 10075, phone 212-772-2300. fax 212-772-2032, they run the place very well and is so very clean as well, web, http://www.standupmrilocations.com they accept straight medicare and straight Medicaid , they serve coffee, hot chocolate, and tea, and the most of all with the sit up MRI, you have no reactions after the test, I walked to my van got home and ate breakfast, please share ok thank you the very best Helen Murphy ACB member. August 26 2018 time 315 pm Sunday and OH they are opened on Sundays as well, .

Yahoo Mail Stationery

On ‎Sunday‎, ‎August‎ ‎26‎, ‎2018‎ ‎03‎:‎01‎:‎13‎ ‎PM‎ ‎EDT, Carl Jarvis via acb-chat <acb-chat@acblists.org> wrote:

What an amazing find! The following notes were found in an old trunk

filled with Jarvis memorabilia. There is no signature, but it sounds

like...well, I'll wait to hear what you think. I will pass them along

without further comment.

Carl Jarvis

****

Hmm...those pesky upstart rebels keep stealing my emails before I

write them. A Pox upon them all!

What I wished to say, while sitting on my throne this early morning,

was just what should we consider the wicked Paul Revere? Should we

label him a simple "whistle blower"? or should he be charged as a

Traitor, to be hung from the neck until dead?

And what of that surveyor George Washington and his band of hooligans?

Have they gone mad? Do they forget that this is a Land of Laws and

proper processes? We must get the word out to the Commoners. They

far outnumber the Fools among them. They will rise up and join our

Army, bringing an end to this insanity.

Hmm...and now I cannot seem to find my Royal Toilet Paper.

On 8/26/18, Carl Jarvis via acb-chat <acb-chat@acblists.org> wrote:

> _______________________________________________

> acb-chat mailing list

> acb-chat@acblists.org

> http://www.acblists.org/mailman/listinfo/acb-chat

_______________________________________________

acb-chat mailing list

acb-chat@acblists.org

http://www.acblists.org/mailman/listinfo/acb-chat

Re: [acb-chat] "As I see it": Edited notes of King George III

What an amazing find! The following notes were found in an old trunk
filled with Jarvis memorabilia. There is no signature, but it sounds
like...well, I'll wait to hear what you think. I will pass them along
without further comment.
Carl Jarvis
****

Hmm...those pesky upstart rebels keep stealing my emails before I
write them. A Pox upon them all!
What I wished to say, while sitting on my throne this early morning,
was just what should we consider the wicked Paul Revere? Should we
label him a simple "whistle blower"? or should he be charged as a
Traitor, to be hung from the neck until dead?
And what of that surveyor George Washington and his band of hooligans?
Have they gone mad? Do they forget that this is a Land of Laws and
proper processes? We must get the word out to the Commoners. They
far outnumber the Fools among them. They will rise up and join our
Army, bringing an end to this insanity.
Hmm...and now I cannot seem to find my Royal Toilet Paper.

On 8/26/18, Carl Jarvis via acb-chat <acb-chat@acblists.org> wrote:
>
> _______________________________________________
> acb-chat mailing list
> acb-chat@acblists.org
> http://www.acblists.org/mailman/listinfo/acb-chat
>

"As I see it": Edited notes of King George III

We are free...so long as we obey

If it happens to one Citizen, it can happen to me.
The following article should bring all of us to our feet, ready to
defend those citizens who are abused, and ready to take to task those
who are the abusers.
Remember way in our dim past, we said, "United we Stand, Divided, we
Fall"! The Working Class, all of us who are not in the Ruling Class,
must come together and demand our rightful place as Free Americans.

Carl Jarvis
***

The Ongoing War on the American People

"A government which will turn its tanks upon its people, for any
reason, is a government with a taste of blood and a thirst for power
and must either be
smartly rebuked, or blindly obeyed in deadly fear."—John Salter

Police in a small Georgia town
tasered a 5-foot-2, 87-year-old woman who was using a kitchen knife to
cut dandelions for use in a recipe.
Police claim they had no choice but to taser the old woman, who does
not speak English but was smiling at police to indicate she was
friendly, because
she failed to comply with orders to put down the knife.

Police in California are being sued for using
excessive force against a deaf 76-year-old woman who was allegedly jaywalking
and failed to halt when police yelled at her. According to the
lawsuit, police searched the woman and her grocery bags. She was then
slammed to the ground,
had a foot or knee placed behind her neck or back, handcuffed,
arrested and cited for jaywalking and resisting arrest.

In Alabama, police first tasered then
shot and killed an unarmed man who refused to show his driver's
license after attempting to turn in a stray dog
he'd found to the local dog shelter. The man's girlfriend and their
three children, all under the age of 10, witnessed the shooting.

In New York, Customs and Border Protection officers have come under fire for
subjecting female travelers (including minors) to random body searches
that include strip searches while menstruating, genital probing, and
forced pelvic exams, X-rays and intravenous drugs at area hospitals.

At a California gas station,
ICE agents surrounded a man who was taking his pregnant wife to the
hospital to deliver their baby,
demanding that he show identification. Having forgotten his documents
at home in the rush to get to the hospital, the husband offered to go
get them. Refusing
to allow him to do so, ICE agents handcuffed and arrested the man for
not having an ID with him, leaving his wife to find her way alone to
the hospital.
The father of five, including the newborn, has lived and worked in the
U.S. for 12 years with his wife.

These are not isolated incidents.

These cases are legion.

This is what a state of undeclared martial law looks like, when you
can be arrested, tasered, shot, brutalized and in some cases killed
merely for not
complying with a government agent's order or not complying fast enough.

This isn't just happening in crime-ridden inner cities.

It's happening all across the country.

America has been locked down.

This is what it's like to be a citizen of the American police state.

This is what it's like to be an enemy combatant in your own country.

This is what it feels like to be a conquered people.

This is what it feels like to be an occupied nation.

This is what it feels like to live in fear of armed men crashing
through your door in the middle of the night, or to be accused of
doing something you
never even knew was a crime, or to be watched all the time, your
movements tracked, your motives questioned.

This is what it feels like to have your homeland transformed into a battlefield.

Mind you, in a war zone, there are no police—only soldiers. Thus,
there is no more Posse Comitatus prohibiting the government from using
the military in
a law enforcement capacity. Not when the local police have, for all
intents and purposes, already become the military.

In a war zone, the soldiers shoot to kill, as American police have now
been trained to do. Whether the perceived "threat" is armed or unarmed
no longer
matters when police are authorized to shoot first and ask questions later.

In a war zone, even the youngest members of the community learn at an
early age to accept and fear the soldier in their midst. Thanks to
funding from the
government, more schools are hiring armed police officers—some
equipped with semi-automatic AR-15 rifles—to "secure" their campuses.

In a war zone, you have no rights. When you are staring down the end
of a police rifle, there can be no free speech. When you're being held
at bay by a
militarized, weaponized mine-resistant tank, there can be no freedom
of assembly. When you're being surveilled with thermal imaging
devices, facial recognition
software and full-body scanners and the like, there can be no privacy.
When you're charged with disorderly conduct simply for daring to
question or photograph
or document the injustices you see, with the blessing of the courts no
less, there can be no freedom to petition the government for a redress
of grievances.

And when you're a prisoner in your own town, unable to move freely,
kept off the streets, issued a curfew at night, there can be no
mistaking the prison
walls closing in.

This is happening and will happen anywhere and everywhere else in this
country where law enforcement officials are given carte blanche to do
what they
like, when they like, how they like, with immunity from their
superiors, the legislatures, and the courts.

You see, what Americans have failed to comprehend, living as they do
in a TV-induced, drug-like haze of fabricated realities, narcissistic
denial, and
partisan politics, is that we've not only brought the military
equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan home to be used against the
American people.

We've also brought the very spirit of the war home.

"We the people" have now come full circle, from being held captive by
the British police state to being held captive by the American police
state.

In between, we have charted a course from revolutionaries fighting for
our independence and a free people establishing a new nation to
pioneers and explorers,
braving the wilderness and expanding into new territories.

Where we went wrong, however, was in allowing ourselves to become
enthralled with and then held hostage by a military empire in bondage
to a corporate
state (the very definition of fascism).

No longer does America hold the moral high ground as a champion of
freedom and human rights. Instead, in the pursuit of profit, our
overlords have transformed
the American landscape into a battlefield, complete with military
personnel, tactics and weaponry.

To our dismay, we now find ourselves scrambling for a foothold as our
once rock-solid constitutional foundation crumbles beneath us. And no
longer can
we rely on the president, Congress, the courts, or the police to
protect us from wrongdoing.

Indeed, the president, Congress, the courts, and the police have come
to embody all that is wrong with America.

For instance, how does a man who is relatively healthy when taken into
custody by police
lapse into a coma and die while under their supervision?

What kind of twisted logic allows a police officer to
use a police car to run down an American citizen
and justifies it in the name of permissible deadly force?

And what country are we living in where the police can beat, shoot,
choke, taser and tackle American citizens, all with the protection of
the courts?

Certainly, the Constitution's safeguards against police abuse means
nothing when government agents can crash through your door, terrorize
your children,
shoot your dogs,
and jail you on any number of trumped of charges, and you have little
say in the matter. For instance, San Diego police, responding to a
domestic disturbance
call on a Sunday morning, showed up at the wrong address, only to
shoot the homeowner's 6-year-old service dog
in the head.

Rubbing salt in the wound, it's often the unlucky victim of excessive
police force who ends up being charged with wrongdoing. Although
16-year-old Thai
Gurule was charged with resisting arrest and strangling and assaulting
police officers, a circuit judge found that it was actually the three
officers who
unlawfully
stopped, tackled, punched, kneed, tasered and yanked his hair
who were at fault. Thankfully, bystander cell phone videos undermined
police accounts, which were described as "works of fiction."

Not even our children are being
spared
the blowback from a growing police presence.

As one juvenile court judge noted in testimony to Congress, although
having police on public school campuses did not make the schools any
safer, it did
result in large numbers of students being
arrested for misdemeanors
such as school fights and disorderly conduct. One 11-year-old
autistic Virginia student was charged with disorderly conduct and
felony assault after
kicking a trashcan and resisting a police officer's attempt to handcuff him.
A
14-year-old student was tasered by police,
suspended and charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and
trespassing after he failed to obey a teacher's order to be the last
student to exit
the classroom.

There is no end to the government's unmitigated gall in riding
roughshod over the rights of the citizenry, whether in matters of
excessive police powers,
militarized police, domestic training drills, SWAT team raids,
surveillance, property rights, overcriminalization, roadside strip
searches, profit-driven
fines and prison sentences, etc.

The president can now direct the military to detain, arrest and
secretly execute
American citizens. These are the powers of an imperial dictator, not
an elected official bound by the rule of law. This mantle is worn by
whomever occupies
the Oval Office now and in the future.

A representative government means nothing when the average citizen has
little to no access to their elected officials, while corporate
lobbyists enjoy
a revolving door relationship with everyone from the President on
down. Indeed, while members of Congress
hardly work for the taxpayer,
they work hard at being wooed by corporations, which
spend more to lobby our elected representatives
than we spend on their collective salaries. For that matter, getting
elected is no longer the high point it used to be. As one congressman
noted, for
many elected officials, "Congress is no longer a destination but a
journey… [to a]
more lucrative job as a K Street lobbyist
… It's become routine to see members of Congress drop their seat in
Congress like a hot rock when a particularly lush vacancy opens up."

As for the courts, they have long since ceased being courts of
justice. Instead, they have become courts of order, largely marching
in lockstep with the
government's dictates, all the while helping to increase the largesse
of government coffers. It's called for-profit justice, and it runs the
gamut of all
manner of financial incentives in which the courts become cash cows
for communities looking to make an extra buck. As journalist Chris
Albin-Lackey
details,
"They deploy a crushing array of fines, court costs, and other fees to
harvest revenues from minor offenders that these communities cannot or
do not want
to raise through taxation." In this way, says Albin-Lackey, "A
resident of Montgomery, Alabama who commits a simple noise violation
faces only a $20 fine—but
also a
whopping $257 in court costs and user fees
should they seek to have their day in court."

As for the rest—the schools, the churches, private businesses, service
providers, nonprofits and your fellow citizens—many are also marching
in lockstep
with the police state.

This is what is commonly referred to as community policing.

After all, the police can't be everywhere. So how do you police a
nation when your population outnumbers your army of soldiers? How do
you carry out surveillance
on a nation when there aren't enough cameras, let alone viewers, to
monitor every square inch of the country 24/7? How do you not only
track but analyze
the transactions, interactions and movements of every person within
the United States?

The answer is simpler than it seems: You persuade the citizenry to be
your eyes and ears.

It's a brilliant ploy, with the added bonus that while the citizenry
remains focused on and distrustful of each other, they're incapable of
focusing on
more definable threats that fall closer to home—namely, the government
and its militarized police.

In this way, we're seeing a rise in the incidence of Americans being
reported for growing vegetables in their front yard, keeping chickens
in their back
yard, letting their kids walk to the playground alone, and voicing
anti-government sentiments. For example, after Shona Banda's son
defended the use of medical marijuana during a presentation at school,
school officials alerted the police and social services, and the
11-year-old was interrogated, taken into custody by social workers,
had his home raided
by police and his mother arrested.

Now it may be that we have nothing to worry about.

Perhaps the government really does have our best interests at heart.

Perhaps
covert domestic military training drills
really are just benign exercises to make sure our military is
prepared for any contingency.

Then again, while I don't believe in worrying over nothing, it's safe
to say that the government has not exactly shown itself to be friendly
in recent
years, nor have its agents shown themselves to be cognizant of the
fact that they are civilians who answer to the citizenry, rather than
the other way
around.

As Aldous Huxley warned in Brave New World Revisited, "
Liberty cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war
footing, or even a near-war footing.
Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and
everything by the agencies of the central government."

Whether or not the government plans to impose some more overt form of
martial law in the future remains to be seen, but there can be no
denying that we're
being accustomed to life in a military state.

The malls may be open for business, the baseball stadiums may be
packed, and the news anchors may be twittering nonsense about the
latest celebrity foofa,
but those are just distractions from what is really taking place: the
transformation of America into a war zone.

As I document in my book
Battlefield America: The War on the American People,
if it looks like a battlefield (armored tanks on the streets,
militarized police in metro stations, surveillance cameras
everywhere), sounds like a battlefield
(SWAT team raids nightly, sound cannons to break up large assemblies
of citizens), and acts like a battlefield (police shooting first and
asking questions
later, intimidation tactics, and involuntary detentions), it's a battlefield.

Indeed, what happened in Ocala, Florida, is a good metaphor for what's
happening across the country: Sheriff's deputies, dressed in special
ops uniforms
and riding in an armored tank on a public road, pulled a 23-year-old
man over and issued a warning violation to him after
he gave them the finger.
The man, Lucas Jewell, defended his actions as a free speech
expression of his distaste for militarized police.

Translation: "We the people" are being hijacked on the highway by
government agents with little knowledge of or regard for the
Constitution, who are hyped
up on the power of their badge, outfitted for war, eager for combat,
and taking a joy ride—on taxpayer time and money—in a military tank
that has no business
being on American soil.

Rest assured, unless we slam on the brakes, this runaway tank will
soon be charting a new course through terrain that bears no
resemblance to land of our
forefathers, where freedom meant more than just the freedom to exist
and consume what the corporate powers dish out.

Rod Serling, one of my longtime heroes and the creator of The Twilight
Zone, understood all too well the danger of turning a blind eye to
evil in our midst,
the "things that scream for a response." As Serling warned, "if we
don't listen to that scream – and if we don't respond to it – we may
well wind up sitting
amidst our own rubble, looking for the truck that hit us – or the bomb
that pulverized us. Get the license number of whatever it was that
destroyed the
dream. And I think we will find that the vehicle was registered in our
own name."

If you haven't managed to read the writing on the wall yet, the war has begun.

Delivered by
The Daily Sheeple

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Re: [blind-democracy] FW: [Politics Newsletter] Sex Workers for Democratic Socialism

It's interesting to me that we single out prostitutes as being
different than all other groups comprising the "Working Class". Sex
Workers are selling their services just the same as I and my wife do.
We sell to the State of Washington our expertise as Rehabilitation
Teachers. The Prostitute, or Sex Worker sells the use of their body
and their expertise in its use. By making it a degrading activity, we
have not helped solve the needs of those who become trapped in the
Field of Sex Work, and wish to get out. We are also demeaning toward
In Home Care Providers, waitstaff, sanitation workers and most other
menial workers. Do we really think that what we do is so damned more
important than the work other perform? Is the person who runs your
bank more important than the person who picked the food you will eat
for dinner? Or the person who unplugs your clogged toilet? Or the
person who sorts your mail? Just stop one job. say that of the mail
sorter, and after a month or two, ask yourself if the Banker is really
more important.
As long as we entertain these silly notions that our work is more
important, and that makes us more important, we will continue having
strife, and we will continue being angry and spreading hatred.
Respect for one another will promote love and peace. Can we bridge
the gap and get to such a place?

Carl Jarvis

On 8/21/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
>
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> From: The Intercept Politics <newsletter@emails.theintercept.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2018 1:24 PM
> To: miriamvieni@optonline.net
> Subject: [Politics Newsletter] Sex Workers for Democratic Socialism
>
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> Politics Newsletter
> Sex Workers for Democratic Socialism
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> In a year in which one of the most overwhelmingly bipartisan pieces of
> legislation to pass through Congress was a bill that
> <https://theintercept.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=43fc0c0fce9292d8bed09ca27&id=5523cae54b&e=45228c28c4>
> cracks down on
> <https://theintercept.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=43fc0c0fce9292d8bed09ca27&id=f39afd26b9&e=45228c28c4>
> sex worker advocacy, it is rare to see a candidate openly embracing sex
> workers in her campaign. Aída Chávez reports that
> <https://theintercept.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=43fc0c0fce9292d8bed09ca27&id=5eba02021a&e=45228c28c4>
> Julia Salazar is welcoming these activists — and consulting with them about
> her policy platform — as part of the democratic socialist's run for New York
> state Senate.
>
> Also in this edition of The Intercept Politics newsletter: a billionaire
> Democrat is
> <https://theintercept.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=43fc0c0fce9292d8bed09ca27&id=613e5b87ec&e=45228c28c4>
> profiting off Puerto Rico — and he wants to be governor of Florida. And
> Shaun King looks at
> <https://theintercept.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=43fc0c0fce9292d8bed09ca27&id=a055fab2cd&e=45228c28c4>
> how the Democratic Party is completely missing in action in the criminal
> justice fight at the local level.
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> <https://theintercept.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=43fc0c0fce9292d8bed09ca27&id=c6f9e1ebbd&e=45228c28c4>
> Sex Workers Are Rallying Behind a Democratic Socialist Running for New York
> Senate
> Aída Chávez
>
> New York state Senate candidate Julia Salazar is one of the few political
> candidates to consult the sex work community and prioritize their concerns.
>
> <https://theintercept.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=43fc0c0fce9292d8bed09ca27&id=93e7eea5bd&e=45228c28c4>
> READ MORE →
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> <https://theintercept.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=43fc0c0fce9292d8bed09ca27&id=1b61115dd6&e=45228c28c4>
> A Democratic Contender for Florida Governor Appears to Own Millions in
> Puerto Rican Debt
> David Dayen
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> A financial disclosure form for Jeff Greene, a billionaire real estate
> developer, reveals that Greene may own $27 million of Puerto Rico's debt.
>
> <https://theintercept.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=43fc0c0fce9292d8bed09ca27&id=5428ad7a51&e=45228c28c4>
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> <https://theintercept.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=43fc0c0fce9292d8bed09ca27&id=3fad91db89&e=45228c28c4>
> One of the Strongest Progressives in Congress Is Facing a Primary Challenger
> Invoking Identity and Change. Will She Unseat Him?
> Lee Fang, Zaid Jilani
>
> Rep. Mike Capuano is facing a Democratic primary challenge from Boston City
> Councillor Ayanna Pressley.
>
> <https://theintercept.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=43fc0c0fce9292d8bed09ca27&id=18c61e79d6&e=45228c28c4>
> READ MORE →
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> <https://theintercept.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=43fc0c0fce9292d8bed09ca27&id=6942f3d06e&e=45228c28c4>
> Sheriff David Clarke's Deputy Goes Down in a Night of Big Wins for Wisconsin
> Progressives
> Zaid Jilani
>
> Up and down the ballot, progressives notched major wins in Wisconsin.
>
> <https://theintercept.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=43fc0c0fce9292d8bed09ca27&id=f81c03e3f3&e=45228c28c4>
> READ MORE →
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Monday, August 20, 2018

Chris Hedges on the Holocene Age.

Chris Hedges is back, just as positive as ever. Positive that is, as
positive as you can be that the Human Race is on a sinking ship of its
own making.
Carl Jarvis

Saying Goodbye to Planet Earth
Chris Hedges

Mr. Fish / Truthdig

The spectacular rise of human civilization-its agrarian societies, cities,
states, empires and industrial and technological advances ranging from
irrigation and the use of metals to nuclear fusion-took place during the
last 10,000 years, after the last ice age. Much of North America was buried,
before the ice retreated, under sheets eight times the height of the Empire
State Building. This tiny span of time on a planet that is 4.5 billion years
old is known as the Holocene Age. It now appears to be coming to an end with
the refusal of our species to significantly curb the carbon emissions and
pollutants that might cause human extinction. The human-induced change to
the ecosystem, at least for many thousands of years, will probably make the
biosphere inhospitable to most forms of life.

The planet is transitioning under our onslaught to a new era called the
Anthropocene. This era is the product of violent conquest, warfare, slavery,
genocide and the Industrial Revolution, which began about 200 years ago, and
saw humans start to burn a hundred million years of sunlight stored in the
form of coal and petroleum. The numbers of humans climbed to over 7 billion.
Air, water, ice and rock, which are interdependent, changed. Temperatures
climbed. The Anthropocene, for humans and most other species, will most
likely conclude with extinction or a massive die-off, as well as climate
conditions that will preclude most known life forms. We engineered our march
toward collective suicide although global warming was first identified in
1896 by the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius.

The failure to act to ameliorate global warming exposes the myth of human
progress and the illusion that we are rational creatures. We ignore the
wisdom of the past and the stark scientific facts before us. We are
entranced by electronic hallucinations and burlesque acts, including those
emanating from the centers of power, and this ensures our doom. Speak this
unpleasant truth and you are condemned by much of society. The mania for
hope and magical thinking is as seductive in the Industrial Age as it was in
pre-modern societies.

Ate and Nemesis were minor deities who were evoked in ancient Greek drama.
Those infected with hubris, the Greeks warned, lost touch with the sacred,
believed they could defy fate, or fortuna, and abandoned humility and
virtue. They thought of themselves as gods. Their hubris blinded them to
human limits and led them to carry out acts of suicidal folly, embodied in
the god Ate. This provoked the wrath of the gods. Divine retribution, in the
form of Nemesis, led to tragedy and death and then restored balance and
order, once those poisoned with hubris were eradicated. "Too late, too late
you see the path of wisdom," the Chorus in the play "Antigone" tells Creon,
ruler of Thebes, whose family has died because of his hubris.

"We're probably not the first time there's been a civilization in the
universe," Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of
Rochester and the author of "Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate
of the Earth," told me when we met in New York.

"The idea that we're destroying the planet gives us way too much credit," he
went on. "Certainly, we're pushing the earth into a new era. If we look at
the history of the biosphere, the history of life on earth, in the long run,
the earth is just going to pick that up and do what is interesting for it.
It will run new evolutionary experiments. We, on the other hand, may not be
a part of that experiment."

Civilizations probably have risen elsewhere in the universe, developed
complex societies and then died because of their own technological advances.
Every star in the night sky is believed to be circled by planets, some 10
billion trillion of which astronomers such as Frank Drake estimate are
hospitable to life.

"If you develop an industrial civilization like ours, the route is going to
be the same," Adam Frank said. "You're going to have a hard time not
triggering climate change."

Astronomers call the inevitable death of advanced civilizations across the
universe "the great filter." Robin Hanson in the essay, "The Great
Filter-Are We Almost Past It?" argues that advanced civilizations hit a wall
or a barrier that makes continued existence impossible. The more that human
societies evolve, according to Hanson, the more they become "energy
intensive" and ensure their own obliteration. This is why, many astronomers
theorize, we have not encountered other advanced civilizations in the
universe. They destroyed themselves.

"For a civilization to destroy itself through nuclear war, it has to have
certain emotional characteristics," Frank said. "You can imagine certain
civilizations saying, 'I'm not building those [nuclear weapons]. Those are
crazy.' But climate change, you can't get away from. If you build a
civilization, you're using huge amounts of energy. The energy feeds back on
the planet, and you're going to push yourself into a kind of Anthropocene.
It's probably universal."

Frank said that our inability to project ourselves into a future beyond our
own life spans makes it hard for us to grasp the reality and consequences of
severe climate change. Scenarios for dramatic climate change often center
around the year 2100, when most adults living now will be dead. Although
this projection may turn out to be overly optimistic given the accelerating
rate of climate change, it allows societies to ignore-because it is outside
the life span of most living adults-the slow-motion tsunami that is
occurring.

"We think we're not a part of the biosphere-that we're above it-that we're
special," Frank said. "We're not special."

"We're the experiment that the biosphere is running now," he said. "A
hundred million years ago, it was grassland. Grasslands were a new
evolutionary innovation. They changed the planet, changed how the planet
worked. Then the planet went on and did things with it. Industrial
civilization is the latest experiment. We will keep being a part of that
experiment or, with the way that we're pushing the biosphere, it will just
move on without us."

"We have been sending probes to every other planet in the solar system for
the last 60 years," he said. "We have rovers running around on Mars. We've
learned generically how planets work. From Venus, we've learned about the
runaway greenhouse effect. On Venus the temperature is 800 degrees. You can
melt lead [there]. Mars is a totally dry, barren world now. But it used to
have an ocean. It used to be a blue world. We have models that can predict
the climate. I can predict the weather on Mars tomorrow via these climate
models. People who think the only way we can understand climate is by
studying the earth now, that's completely untrue. These other worlds-Mars,
Venus, Titan. Titan is a moon of Saturn that has an amazingly rich
atmosphere. They all teach us how to think like a planet. They have taught
us generically how planets behave."

Frank points out that much of the configurations of the ecosystem on which
we depend have not always been part of the planet's biosphere. This includes
the Gulf Stream, which carries warm water and warm air up from Florida to
Boston and out across the Atlantic.

"Hundreds of millions of people in some of Earth's most technologically
advanced cities rely on the mild climate delivered by the Gulf Stream,"
Frank writes in "Light of the Stars." "But the Gulf Stream is nothing more
than a particular circulation pattern formed during a particular climate
state the Earth settled into after the last ice age ended. It is not a
permanent fixture of the planet."

"Everything we think about the earth just happens to be this one moment we
found it in," he told me. "We're pushing it [the planet] and we're pushing
it hard. We don't have much time to make these transitions. What people have
to understand is that climate change is our cosmic adolescence. We should
have expected this. The question is not 'did we change the climate?' It's
'of course we changed the climate. What else did you expect to have
happened?' We're like a teenager who has been given this power over
ourselves. Just like how you give a teenager the keys to the car, there's
this moment where you're like, 'Oh my God I hope you make it.' And that's
what we are."

"Climate change is not a problem we have to make go away, in a sense that
you don't make adolescence go away," Frank said. "It is a dangerous
transition that you have to navigate. . The question is are we smart enough
to deal with the effects of our own power? Climate change is not a pollution
problem. It's not like any environmental problem we've faced before. In some
sense, it's not an environmental problem but a planetary transition. We've
already pushed the earth into it. We're going to have to evolve a new way of
being a civilization, fundamentally."

"We will either evolve those group behaviors quickly or the earth will take
what we've given it, in terms of new climate states, and move on and create
new species," he said.

Frank said the mathematical models for the future of the planet have three
trajectories. One is a massive die-off of perhaps 70 percent of the human
population and then an uneasy stabilization. The second is complete collapse
and extinction. The third is a dramatic reconfiguration of human society to
protect the biosphere and make it more diverse and productive not for human
beings but for the health of the planet. This would include halting our
consumption of fossil fuels, converting to a plant-based diet and
dismantling the animal agriculture industry as well as greening deserts and
restoring rainforests.

There is, Frank warned, a tipping point when the biosphere becomes so
degraded no human activity will halt runaway climate change. He cites Venus
again.

"The water on Venus got lost slowly," he said. "The CO2 built up. There was
no way to take it out of the atmosphere. It gets hotter. The fact that it
gets hotter makes it even hotter. Which makes it even hotter. That's what
would happen in the collapse model. Planets have minds of their own. They
are super-complex systems. Once you get the ball rolling down the hill. .
This is the greatest fear. This is why we don't want to go past 2 degrees
[Celsius] of climate change. We're scared that once you get past 2 degrees,
the planet's own internal mechanisms kick in. The population comes down like
a stone. A complete collapse. You lose the civilization entirely."

Friday, August 17, 2018

Free Thought and Official Propaganda (1922)

Sometimes a peek back in history brings a ray of light to the dark
recesses of our mind, and we can feast on old thoughts that seem
fresh.

Carl Jarvis

*******

Free Thought and Official Propaganda (1922)

By Bertrand Russell

Moncure Conway, in whose honour we are assembled today, devoted his
life to two great objects: freedom of thought and freedom of the
individual. In regard
to both these objects, something has been gained since his time, but
something also has been lost. New dangers, somewhat different in form
from those of
past ages, threaten both kinds of freedom, and unless a vigorous and
vigilant public opinion can be aroused in defence of them, there will
be much less
of both a hundred years hence than there is now. My purpose in this
address is to emphasize the new dangers and to consider how they can
be met.

Let us begin by trying to be clear as to what we mean by "free
thought." This expression has two senses. In its narrower sense it
means thought which does
not accept the dogmas of traditional religion. In this sense a man is
a "free thinker" if he is not a Christian or a Mussulman or a Buddhist
or a Shintoist
or a member of any of the other bodies of men who accept some
inherited orthodoxy. In Christian countries a man is called a "free
thinker" if he does not
decidedly believe in God, though this would not suffice to make a man
a "free thinker" in a Buddhist country.

I do not wish to minimize the importance of free thought in this
sense. I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope
that every kind of
religious belief will die out. I do not believe that, on the balance,
religious belief has been a force for good. Although I am prepared to
admit that
in certain times and places it has had some good effects, I regard it
as belonging to the infancy of human reason, and to a stage of
development which
we are now outgrowing.

But there is also a wider sense of "free thought," which I regard as
of still greater importance. Indeed, the. harm done by traditional
religions seems
chiefly traceable to the fact that they have prevented free thought in
this wider sense. The wider sense is not so easy to define as the
narrower, and
it will be well to spend some little time in trying to arrive at its essence.

When we speak of anything as "free," our meaning is not definite
unless we can say what it is free from. Whatever or whoever is "free"
is not subject to
some external compulsion, and to be precise we ought to say what this
kind of compulsion is. Thus thought is "free" when it is free from
certain kinds
of outward control which are often present. Some of these kinds of
control which must be absent if thought is to be "free" are obvious,
but others are
more subtle and elusive.

To begin with the most obvious, thought is not "free" when legal
penalties are incurred by the holding or not holding of certain
opinions, or by giving
expression to one's belief or lack of belief on certain matters. Very
few countries in the world have as yet even this elementary kind of
freedom. In England,
under the Blasphemy Laws, it is illegal to express disbelief in the
Christian religion, though in practise the law is not set in motion
against the well-to-do.
It is also illegal to teach what Christ taught on the subject of
non-resistance. Therefore, whoever wishes to avoid becoming a criminal
must profess to
agree with Christ's teaching, but must avoid saying what that teaching
was. In America no one can enter the country without first solemnly
declaring that
he disbelieves in anarchism and polygamy; and, once inside, he must
also disbelieve in communism. In Japan it is illegal to express
disbelief in the divinity
of the Mikado. It will thus be seen that a voyage round the world is a
perilous adventure. A Mohammedan, a Tolstoyan, a Bolshevik, or a
Christian cannot
undertake it without at some point becoming a criminal, or holding his
tongue about what he considers important truths. This, of course,
applies only to
steerage-passengers; saloon-passengers are allowed to believe whatever
they please, provided they avoid offensive obtrusiveness.

It is clear that the most elementary condition, if thought is to be
free, is the absence of legal penalties for the expression of
opinions. No great country
has yet reached to this level, although most of them think they have.
The opinions which are still persecuted strike the majority as so
monstrous and immoral
that the general principle of toleration cannot be held to apply to
them. But this is exactly the same view as that which made possible
the tortures of
the Inquisition. There was a time when Protestantism seemed as wicked
as Bolshevism seems now. Please do not infer from this remark that I
am either a
Protestant or a Bolshevik.

Legal penalties are, however, in the modern world, the least of the
obstacles to freedom of thought. The two great obstacles are economic
penalties and
distortion of evidence. It is clear that thought is not free if the
profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.
It is clear also
that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a
controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible,
while the arguments on
the other side can only be discovered by diligent search. Both these
obstacles exist in every large country known to me, except China,
which is the last
refuge of freedom. It is these obstacles with which I shall be
concerned — their present magnitude, the likelihood of their increase,
and the possibility
of their diminution.

We may say that thought is free when it is exposed to free competition
among beliefs — i.e., when all beliefs are able to state their case,
and no legal
or pecuniary advantages or disadvantages attach to beliefs. This is an
ideal which, for various reasons, can never be fully attained. But it
is possible
to approach very much nearer to it than we do at present.

Three incidents in my own life will serve to show how, in modern
England, the scales are weighted in favour of Christianity. My reason
for mentioning them
is that many people do not at all realize the disadvantages to which
avowed agnosticism still exposes people.

The first incident belongs to a very early stage in my life. My father
was a freethinker, but died when I was only three years old. Wishing
me to be brought
up without superstition, he appointed two freethinkers as my
guardians. The courts, however, set aside his will, and had me
educated in the Christian faith.
I am afraid the result was disappointing, but that was not the fault
of the law. If he had directed that I should be educated as a
Christadelphian or a
Muggletonian or a Seventh-day Adventist, the courts would not have
dreamed of objecting. A parent has a right to ordain that any
imaginable superstition
shall be instilled into his children after his death, but has not the
right to say that they shall be kept free from superstition if
possible.

The second incident occurred in the year 1910. I had at that time a
desire to stand for Parliament as a Liberal, and the Whips recommended
me to a certain
constituency. I addressed the Liberal Association, who ex pressed
themselves favourably, and my adoption seemed certain. But, on being
questioned by a
small inner caucus, I admitted that I was an agnostic. They asked
whether the fact would come out, and I said it probably would. They
asked whether I should
be willing to go to church occasionally, and I replied that I should
not. Consequently, they selected another candidate, who was duly
elected, has been
in Parliament ever since, and is a member of the present Government.

The third incident occurred immediately afterwards. I was invited by
Trinity College, Cambridge, to become a lecturer, but not a Fellow.
The difference
is not pecuniary; it is that a Fellow has a voice in the government of
the College, and can not be dispossessed during the terms of his
Fellowship except
for grave immorality. The chief reason for not offering me a
Fellowship was that the clerical party did not wish to add to the
anti-clerical vote. The
result was that they were able to dismiss me in 1916, when they
disliked my views on the War.
1
If I had been dependent on my lectureship, I should have starved.

These three incidents illustrate different kinds of disadvantages
attaching to avowed free-thinking even in modern England. Any other
avowed freethinker
could supply similar incidents from his personal experience, often of
a far more serious character. The net result is that people who are
not well-to-do
dare not be frank about their religious beliefs.

It is not, of course, only or even chiefly in regard to religion that
there is lack of freedom. Belief in communism or free love handicaps a
man much more
than agnosticism. Not only is it a disadvantage to hold those views,
but it is very much more difficult to obtain for the arguments in
their favour. On
the other hand, in Russia the advantages and disadvantages are exactly
reversed: comfort and power are achieved by professing atheism,
communism, and free
love, and no opportunity exists for propaganda against these opinions.
The result is that in Russia one set of fanatics feels absolute
certainty about
one set of doubtful propositions, while in the rest of the world
another set of fanatics feels equal certainty about a diametrically
opposite set of equally
doubtful propositions. From such a situation war, bitterness, and
persecution inevitably result on both sides.

William James used to preach the "will-to-believe." For my part, I
should wish to preach the "will-to-doubt." None of our beliefs is
quite true; all have
at least a penumbra of vagueness and error. The methods of increasing
the degrees of truth in our beliefs are well-known; they consist in
hearing all sides,
trying to ascertain all the relevant facts, controlling our own bias
by discussion with people who have the opposite bias, and cultivating
a readiness
to discard any hypothesis which has proved inadequate. These methods
are practiced in science, and have built up the body of scientific
knowledge. Every
man of science whose outlook is truly scientific is ready to admit
that what passes for scientific knowledge at the moment is sure to
require correction
with the progress of discovery; nevertheless, it is near enough to the
truth to serve for most practical purposes, though not for all. In
science, where
alone something approximating to genuine knowledge is to be found,
men's attitude is tentative and full of doubt.

In religion and politics on the contrary, though there is as yet
nothing approaching scientific knowledge, everybody considers it de
rigueur to have a
dogmatic opinion, to be backed up by inflicting starvation, prison,
and war, and to be carefully guarded from argumentative competition
with any different
opinion. If only men could be brought into a tentatively agnostic
frame of mind about these matters, nine-tenths of the evils of the
modern world would
be cured. War would become impossible, because each side would realize
that both sides must be in the wrong. Persecution would cease.
Education would aim
at expanding the mind, not at narrowing it. Men would be chosen for
jobs on account of fitness to do the work, not because they flattered
the irrational
dogmas of those in power. Thus rational doubt alone, if it could be
generated, would suffice to introduce the millennium.

We have had in recent years a brilliant example of the scientific
temper of mind in the theory of relativity and its reception by the
world. Einstein,
a German-Swiss-Jew pacifist, was appointed to a research professorship
by the German Government in the early days of the war; his predictions
were verified
by an English expedition which observed the eclipse of 1919, very soon
after the armistice. His theory upset the whole theoretical framework
of traditional
physics; it is almost as damaging to orthodox dynamics as Darwin was
to Genesis. Yet physicists everywhere have shown complete readiness to
accept his
theory as soon as it appeared that the evidence was in its favour. But
none of them, least of all Einstein himself, would claim that he has
said the last
word. He has not built a monument of infallible dogma to stand for all
time. There are difficulties he cannot solve; his doctrines will have
to be modified
in their turn as they have modified Newton's. This critical undogmatic
receptiveness is the true attitude of science.

What would have happened if Einstein had advanced something equally
new in the sphere of religion or politics? English people would have
found elements
of Prussianism in his theory; anti-Semites would have regarded it as a
Zionist plot; nationalists in all countries would have found it
tainted with lily-livered
pacifism, and proclaimed it a mere dodge for escaping military
service. All the old-fashioned professors would have approached
Scotland Yard to get the
importation of his writings prohibited. Teachers favourable to him
would have been dismissed. He, meantime, would have captured the
Government of some
backward country, where it would have become illegal to teach anything
except his doctrine, which would have grown into a mysterious dogma
not understood
by anybody. Ultimately the truth or falsehood of his doctrine would be
decided on the battlefield, without the collection of any fresh
evidence for or
against it. This method is the logical outcome of William James's
will-to-believe. What is wanted is not the will-to-believe, but the
wish to find out,
which is its exact opposite.

If it is admitted that a condition of rational doubt would be
desirable, it becomes important to inquire how it comes about that
there is so much irrational
certainty in the world. A great deal of this is due to the inherent
irrationality and credulity of average human nature. But this seed of
intellectual
original sin is nourished and fostered by other agencies, among which
three play the chief part — namely, education, propaganda, and
economic pressure.
Let us consider these in turn.

(1) Education. Elementary education, in all advanced countries, is in
the hands of the State. Some of the things taught are known to be
false by the officials
who prescribe them, and many others are known to be false, or at any
rate very doubtful, by every unprejudiced person. Take, for example,
the teaching
of history. Each nation aims only at self-glorification in the school
text books of history. When a man writes his autobiography he is
expected to show
a certain modesty; but when a nation writes its autobiography there is
no limit to is boasting and vainglory. When I was young, schoolbooks
taught that
the French were wicked and the Germans virtuous; now they teach the
opposite. In neither case is there the slightest regard for truth.
German schoolbooks,
dealing with the battle of Waterloo, represent Wellington as all but
defeated when Blücher saved the situation; English books represent
Blücher as having
made very little difference. The writers of both the German and the
English books know that they are not telling the truth. American
schoolbooks used to
be violently anti-British; since the war they have become equally
pro-British, without aiming at truth in either case (see The Freeman,
Feb 15 1922, p.532).
Both before and since, one of the chief purposes of education in the
United States has been to turn the motley collection of immigrant
children into "good
Americans." Apparently it has not occurred to anyone that a "good
American," like a "good German" or a "good Japanese," must be, pro
tanto, a bad human
being. A "good American" is a man or woman imbued with the belief that
America is the finest country on earth, and ought always to be
enthusiastically
supported in any quarrel. It is just possible that these propositions
are true; if so, a rational man will have no quarrel with them. But if
they are true,
they ought to be taught everywhere, not only in America. It is a
suspicious circumstance that such propositions are never believed
outside the particular
country which they glorify. Meanwhile, the whole machinery of the
State, in all the different countries, is turned on to making
defenceless children believe
absurd propositions the effect of which is to make them willing to die
in defence of sinister interests under the impression that they are
fighting for
truth and right. This is only one of countless ways in which education
is designed, not to give true knowledge, but to make the people
pliable to the will
of their masters. Without an elaborate system of deceit in the
elementary schools it would be impossible to preserve the camouflage
of democracy.

Before leaving the subject of education, I will take another example
from America
2
— not because America is any worse than other countries, but because
it is the most modern, showing the dangers that are growing rather
than those that
are diminishing. In the State of New York a school cannot be
established without a license from the State, even if it is to be
supported wholly by private
funds. A recent law decrees that a license shall not be granted to any
school "where it shall appear that the instruction proposed to be
given includes
the teachings of the doctrine that organized governments shall be
overthrown by force, violence, or unlawful means." As the New Republic
points out, there
is no limitation to this or that organized government. The law
therefore would have made it illegal, during the war, to teach the
doctrine that the Kaiser's
Government should be overthrown by force; and, since then, the support
of Kolchak or Denikin against the Soviet Government would have been
illegal. Such
consequences, of course, were not intended, and result only from bad
draughtsmanship. What was intended appears from another law passed at
the same time,
applying to teachers in State schools. This law provides that
certificates permitting persons to teach in such schools shall be
issued only to those who
have "shown satisfactorily" that they are "loyal" and "obedient" to
"the Government of this State and of the United States," and shall be
refused to those
who have advocated, no matter where or when, "a form of government
other than the government of this State or of the United States." The
committee which
framed these laws, as quoted by the New Republic, laid it down that
the teacher who "does not approve of the present social system … must
surrender his
office," and that "no person who is not eager to combat the theories
of social change should be entrusted with the task of fitting the
young and old for
the responsibilities of citizenship." Thus, according to the law of
the State of New York, Christ and George Washington were too degraded
morally to be
fit for the education of the young. If Christ were to go to New York
and say, "Suffer the little children to come unto me," the President
of the New York
School Board would reply: "Sir, I see no evidence that you are eager
to combat theories of social change. Indeed, I have heard it said that
you advocate
what you call the kingdom of heaven, whereas this country, thank God,
is a Republic. It is clear that the government of your kingdom of
heaven would differ
materially from that of New York State, therefore no children will be
allowed access to you." If he failed to make this reply, he would not
be doing his
duty as a functionary entrusted with the administration of the law.

The effect of such laws is very serious. Let it be granted, for the
sake of argument, that the government and the social system in the
State of New York
are the best that have ever existed on this planet; yet even then both
would presumably be capable of improvement. Any person who admits this
obvious proposition
is by law incapable of teaching in a State school. Thus the law
decrees that the teachers shall all be either hypocrites or fools.

The growing danger exemplified by the New York law is that resulting
from the monopoly of power in the hands of a single organization,
whether the State
or a trust or federation of trusts. In the case of education, the
power is in the hands of the State, which can prevent the young from
hearing of any doctrine
which it dislikes. I believe there are still some people who think
that a democratic State is scarcely distinguishable from the people.
This, however,
is a delusion. The State is a collection of officials, different for
different purposes, drawing comfortable incomes so long as the status
quo is preserved.
The only alteration they are likely to desire in the status quo is an
increase of bureaucracy and the power of bureaucrats. It is,
therefore, natural that
they should take advantage of such opportunities as war-excitement to
acquire inquisitorial powers over their employees, involving the right
to inflict
starvation upon any subordinate who opposes them. In matters of the
mind, such as education, this state of affairs is fatal. It puts an
end to all possibility
of progress or freedom or intellectual initiative. Yet it is the
natural result of allowing the whole of elementary education to fall
under the sway of
a single organization.

Religious toleration, to a certain extent, has been won because people
have ceased to consider religion as important as it was once thought
to be. But
in politics and economics, which have taken the place formerly
occupied by religion, there is a growing tendency to persecution,
which is not by any means
confined to one party. The persecution of opinion in Russia is more
severe than in any capitalist country. I met in Petrograd an eminent
Russian poet,
Alexander Blok, who has since died as the result of privations. The
Bolsheviks allowed him to teach aesthetics, but he complained that
they insisted on
his teaching the subject "from a Marxian point of view." He had been
at a loss to discover how the theory of rhythmics was connected with
Marxism, although,
to avoid starvation, he had done his best to find out. Of course, it
has been impossible in Russia ever since the Bolsheviki came into
power to print anything
critical of the dogmas upon which their regime is founded.

The examples of America and Russia illustrate the conclusion to which
we seem to be driven — namely, that so long as men continue to have
the present fanatical
belief in the importance of politics, free thought on political
matters will be impossible, and there is only too much danger that the
lack of freedom
will spread to all other matters, as it has done in Russia. Only some
degree of political scepticism can save us from this misfortune.

It must not be supposed that the officials in charge of education
desire the young to become educated. On the contrary, their problem is
to impart information
without imparting intelligence. Education should have two objects:
first, to give definite knowledge — reading and writing, language and
mathematics, and
so on; secondly, to create those mental habits which will enable
people to acquire knowledge and form sound judgments for themselves.
The first of these
we may call information, the second intelligence. The utility of
information is admitted practically as well as theoretically; without
a literate population
a modern State is impossible. But the utility of intelligence is
admitted only theoretically, not practically; it is not desired that
ordinary people should
think for themselves, because it is felt that people who think for
themselves are awkward to manage and cause administrative
difficulties. Only the guardians,
in Plato's language, are to think; the rest are to obey, or to follow
leaders like a herd of sheep. This doctrine, often unconsciously, has
survived the
introduction of political democracy, and has radically vitiated all
national systems of education.

The country which has succeeded best in giving information without
intelligence is the latest addition to modern civilization, Japan.
Elementary education
in Japan is said to be admirable from the point of view of
instruction. But, in addition to instruction, it has another purpose,
which is to teach worship
of the Mikado — a far stronger creed now than before Japan became modernized.
3
Thus the schools have been used simultaneously to confer knowledge
and to promote superstition. Since we are not tempted to
Mikado-worship, we see clearly
what is absurd in Japanese teaching. Our own national superstitions
strike us as natural and sensible, so that we do not take such a true
view of them
as we do of the superstitions of Nippon. But if a travelled Japanese
were to maintain the thesis that our schools teach superstitions just
as inimical
to intelligence as belief in the divinity of the Mikado, I suspect
that he would be able to make out a good case.

For the present I am not in search of remedies, but am only concerned
with diagnosis. We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education
has become
one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
This is due primarily to the fact that the State claims a monopoly;
but that is by no
means the sole cause.

(2) Propaganda. Our system of education turns young people out of the
schools able to read, but for the most part unable to weigh evidence
or to form an
independent opinion. They are then assailed, throughout the rest of
their lives, by statements designed to make them believe all sorts of
absurd propositions,
such as that Blank's pills cure all ills, that Spitzbergen is warm and
fertile, and that Germans eat corpses. The art of propaganda, as
practised by modern
politicians and Governments, is derived from the art of advertisement.
The science of psychology owes a great deal to advertisers. In former
days most
psychologists would probably have thought that a man could not
convince many people of the excellence of his own wares by merely
stating emphatically that
they were excellent. Experience shows, however, that they were
mistaken in this. If I were to stand up once in a public place and
state that I am the most
modest man alive, I should be laughed at; but if I could raise enough
money to make the same statement on all the busses and on hoardings
along all the
principal rail way lines, people would presently become convinced that
I had an abnormal shrinking from publicity. If I were to go to a small
shopkeeper
and say: "Look at your competitor over the way, he is getting your
business; don't you think it would be a good plan to leave your
business and stand up
in the middle of the road and try to shoot him before he shoots you?"
— if I were to say this, any small shopkeeper would think me mad. But
when the Government
says it with emphasis and a brass band, the small shopkeepers become
enthusiastic, and are quite surprised when they find afterwards that
business has
suffered. Propaganda, conducted by the means which advertisers have
found successful, is now one of the recognized methods of government
in all advanced
countries, and is especially the method by which democratic opinion is created.

There are two quite different evils about propaganda as now practised.
On the one hand, its appeal is generally to irrational causes of
belief rather than
to serious argument; on the other hand, it gives an unfair advantage
to those who can obtain most publicity, whether through wealth or
through power. For
my part, I am inclined to think that too much fuss is sometimes made
about the fact that propaganda appeals to emotion rather than reason.
The line between
emotion and reason is not so sharp as some people think. Moreover, a
clever man could frame a sufficiently rational argument in favour of
any position
which has any chance of being adopted. There are always good arguments
on both sides of any real issue. Definite misstatements of fact can be
legitimately
objected to but they are by no means necessary. The mere words "Pear's
Soap," which affirm nothing, cause people to buy that article. If,
wherever these
words appear, they were replaced by the words "The Labour Party,"
millions of people would be led to vote for the Labour party, although
the advertisements
had claimed no merit for it whatever. But if both sides in a
controversy were confined by law to statements which a committee of
eminent logicians considered
relevant and valid, the main evil of propaganda, as at present
conducted, would remain. Suppose, under such a law, two parties with
an equally good case,
one of whom had a million pounds to spend on propaganda, while the
other had only a hundred thousand. It is obvious that the arguments in
favour of the
richer party would become more widely known than those in favour of
the poorer party, and therefore the richer party would win. This
situation is, of course,
intensified when one party is the Government. In Russia the Government
has an almost complete monopoly of propaganda, but that is not
necessary. The advantages
which it possesses over its opponents will generally be sufficient to
give it the victory, unless it has an exceptionally bad case.

The objection to propaganda is not only its appeal to unreason, but
still more the unfair advantage which it gives to the rich and
powerful. Equality of
opportunity among opinions is essential if there is to be real freedom
of thought; and equality of opportunity among opinions can only be
secured by elaborate
laws directed to that end, which there is no reason to expect to see
enacted. The cure is not to be sought primarily in such laws, but in
better education
and a more sceptical public opinion. For the moment, however, I am not
concerned to discuss cures.

(3) Economic Pressure. I have already dealt with some aspects of this
obstacle to freedom of thought, but I wish now to deal with it on more
general lines,
as a danger which is bound to increase unless very definite steps are
taken to counteract it. The supreme example of economic pressure
applied against
freedom of thought is Soviet Russia, where, until, the
trade-agreement, the Government could and did inflict starvation upon
people whose opinions it disliked
— for example, Kropotkin. But in this respect Russia is only somewhat
ahead of other countries. In France, during the Dreyfus affair, any
teacher would
have lost his position if he had been in favour of Dreyfus at the
start or against him at the end. In America, at the present day, I
doubt if a university
professor, however eminent, could get employment if he were to
criticize the Standard Oil Company, because all college presidents
have received or hope
to receive benefactions from Mr. Rockefeller. Throughout America
Socialists are marked men, and find it extremely difficult to obtain
work unless they
have great gifts. The tendency, which exists wherever industrialism is
well developed, for trusts and monopolies to control all industry,
leads to a diminution
of the number of possible employers, so that it becomes easier and
easier to keep secret black books by means of which anyone not
subservient to the great
corporations can be starved. The growth of monopolies is introducing
in America many of the evils associated with state socialism as it has
existed in
Russia. From the standpoint of liberty, it makes no difference to a
man whether his only possible employer is the State or a trust.

In America, which is the most advanced country industrially, and to a
lesser extent in other countries which are approximating to the
American condition,
it is necessary for the average citizen, if he wishes to make a
living, to avoid incurring the hostility of certain big men. And these
big men have an
outlook — religious, moral, and political — with which they expect
their employees to agree, at least outwardly. A man who openly
dissents from Christianity,
or believes in a relaxation of the marriage laws, or objects to the
power of the great corporations, finds America a very uncomfortable
country, unless
he happens to be an eminent writer. Exactly the same kind of
restraints upon freedom of thought are bound to occur in every country
where economic organization
has been carried to the point of practical monopoly. Therefore the
safe guarding of liberty in the world which is growing up is far more
difficult than
it was in the nineteenth century, when free competition was still a
reality. Whoever cares about the freedom of the mind must face this
situation fully
and frankly, realizing the inapplicability of methods which answered
well enough while industrialism was in its infancy.

There are two simple principles which, if they were adopted, would
solve almost all social problems. The first is that education should
have for one of
its aims to teach people only to believe propositions when there is
some reason to think, that they are true. The second is that jobs
should be given solely
for fitness to do the work.

To take the second point first. The habit of considering a man's
religious, moral, and political opinions before appointing him to a
post or giving him
a job is the modern form of persecution, and it is likely to become
quite as efficient as the Inquisition ever was. The old liberties can
be legally retained
without being of the slightest use. If, in practice, certain opinions
lead a man to starve, it is poor comfort to him to know that his
opinions are not
punishable by law. There is a certain public feeling against starving
men for not belonging to the Church of England, or for holding
slightly unorthodox
opinions in politics. But there is hardly any feeling against the
rejection of atheists or Mormons, extreme communists, or men who
advocate free love.
Such men are thought to be wicked, and it is considered only natural
to refuse to employ them. People have hardly yet waked up to the fact
that this refusal,
in a highly industrial State, amounts to a very rigorous form of persecution.

If this danger were adequately realized, it would be possible to rouse
public opinion, and to secure that a man's beliefs should not be
considered in appointing
him to a post. The protection of minorities is vitally important; and
even the most orthodox of us may find himself in a minority some day,
so that we
all have an interest in restraining the tyranny of majorities. Nothing
except public opinion can solve this problem. Socialism would make it
somewhat more
acute, since it would eliminate the opportunities that now arise
through exceptional employers. Every increase in the size of
industrial undertakings makes
it worse, since it diminishes the number of independent employers. The
battle must be fought exactly as the battle of religious toleration
was fought.
And as in that case, so in this, a decay in the intensity of belief is
likely to prove the decisive factor. While men were convinced of the
absolute truth
of Catholicism or Protestantism, as the case might be, they were
willing to persecute on account of them. While men are quite certain
of their modern creeds,
they will persecute on their behalf. Some element of doubt is
essential to the practice, though not to the theory, of toleration.
And this brings me to
my other point, which concerns the aims of education.

If there is to be toleration in the world, one of the things taught in
schools must be the habit of weighing evidence, and the practice of
not giving full
assent to propositions which there is no reason to believe true. For
example, the art of reading the newspapers should be taught. The
schoolmaster should
select some incident which happened a good many years ago, and roused
political passions in its day. He should then read to the
school-children what was
said by the newspapers on one side, what was said by those on the
other, and some impartial account of what really happened. He should
show how, from the
biased account of either side, a practised reader could infer what
really happened, and he should make them understand that everything in
newspapers is
more or less untrue. The cynical scepticism which would result from
this teaching would make the children in later life immune from those
appeals to idealism
by which decent people are induced to further the scheme of scoundrels.

History should be taught in the same way. Napoleon's campaigns of 1813
and 1814, for instance, might be studied in the Moniteur, leading up
to the surprise
which Parisians felt when they saw the Allies arriving under the walls
of Paris after they had (according to the official bulletins) been
beaten by Napoleon
in every battle. In the more advanced classes, students should be
encouraged to count the number of times that Lenin has been
assassinated by Trotsky,
in order to learn contempt for death. Finally, they should be given a
school-history approved by the Government, and asked to infer what a
French school
history would say about our wars with France. All this would be a far
better training in citizenship than the trite moral maxims by which
some people believe
that civic duty can be inculcated.

It must, I think, be admitted that the evils of the world are due to
moral defects quite as much as to lack of intelligence. But the human
race has not
hitherto discovered any method of eradicating moral defects; preaching
and exhortation only add hypocrisy to the previous list of vices.
Intelligence,
on the contrary, is easily improved by methods known to every
competent educator. Therefore, until some method of teaching virtue
has been discovered,
progress will have to be sought by improvement of intelligence rather
than of morals. One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is
credulity, and credulity
could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent
forms of mendacity. Credulity is a greater evil in the present day
than it ever was
before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier
than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy,
the spread of
misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders
of power. Hence the increase in the circulation of newspapers.

If I am asked how the world is to be induced to adopt these two maxims
— namely: (1) that jobs should be given to people on account of their
fitness to
perform them; (2) that one aim of education should be to cure people
of the habit of believing propositions for which there is no evidence
— I can only
say that it must be done by generating an enlightened public opinion.
And an enlightened public opinion can only be generated by the efforts
of those who
desire that it should exist. I do not believe that the economic
changes advocated by Socialists will, of themselves, do anything
towards curing the evils
we have been considering. I think that, whatever happens in politics,
the trend of economic development will make the preservation of mental
freedom increasingly
difficult, unless public opinion insists that the employer shall
control nothing in the life of the employee except his work. Freedom
in education could
easily be secured, if it were desired, by limiting the function of the
State to inspection and payment, and confining inspection rigidly to
the definite
instruction. But that, as things stand, would leave education in the
hands of the churches, because, unfortunately, they are more anxious
to teach their
beliefs than freethinkers are to teach their doubts. It would,
however, give a free field, and would make it possible for a liberal
education to be given
if it were really desired. More than that ought not to be asked of the law.

My plea throughout this address has been for the spread of the
scientific temper, which is an altogether different thing from the
knowledge of scientific
results. The scientific temper is capable of regenerating mankind and
providing an issue for all our troubles. The results of science, in
the form of mechanism,
poison gas, and the yellow press, bid fair to lead to the total
downfall of our civilization. It is a curious antithesis, which a
Martian might contemplate
with amused detachment. But for us it is a matter of life and death.
Upon its issue depends the question whether our grandchildren are to
live in a happier
world, or are to exterminate each other by scientific methods, leaving
perhaps to negroes and Papuans the future destines of mankind.
*
Bertrand Russell, Free Thought and Official Propaganda (New York: B.
W. Huebsch, Inc., 1922)

1
I should add that they re-appointed me later, when war-passions had
begun to cool

2
See The New Republic, February 1, 1922, p. 259 ff.

3
See "The Invention of a New Religion," Professor Chamberlain, of
Tokyo Published by the Rationalist Press Association (Now out of
print)

Curious Carl's Corner

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Fwd: [acb-chat] We Shall Overcome...

Monday, August 27, 2018

Sunday, August 26, 2018

Re: [acb-chat] "As I see it": Edited notes of King George III

Re: [acb-chat] "As I see it": Edited notes of King George III

"As I see it": Edited notes of King George III

We are free...so long as we obey

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Re: [blind-democracy] FW: [Politics Newsletter] Sex Workers for Democratic Socialism

Monday, August 20, 2018

Chris Hedges on the Holocene Age.

Friday, August 17, 2018

Free Thought and Official Propaganda (1922)

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