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What Every Jew (and Non-Jew) Should Know
A Chicago-area scholar, Christopher Jon Bjerknes, 42, thinks he
knows what plagues mankind and believes his knowledge is necessary to
stop Armageddon.
He says a heretical cult, the “Shabataian Frankists,” controls
organized Jewry, including Zionism and Freemasonry. They began as
followers of Shabatai Zvi (1626-1676) and later Jacob Frank
(1726-1791.) They believe Shabatai was the Messiah (God) and his soul
has transmigrated down to the Rothschild dynasty, who are now the “king
of the Jews.”
According to their messianic system, Redemption requires that the
Rothschilds become God, i.e. king of the world. This will see the
sacrifice of 2/3 of all Jews and the destruction and enslavement of the
rest of mankind. Bjerknes believes this demented creed actually is the
motive force behind history, including all wars, and world government.
Bjerknes (B-YERK-NES) is proud of his Norwegian Jewish heritage,
(his maternal grandfather, a famous musician, was Jewish.) He has
written two massive books – one about Albert Einstein as a plagiarist,
and another about the Shabataian inspired Armenian Genocide – that
include hundreds of pages of suppressed Jewish history. They can be
found as PDFs at his web site. http://www.jewishracism.com/
I think he exaggerates the importance of Jewish messianism but I may
be wrong. His message is compelling and consistent with the Protocols
of Zion where the author (whom I believe is Lionel Rothschild) talks
about coming into his “kingdom.”
The Shabataians believe their king is duty bound to restore the Jews
to Israel and exterminate the Gentiles. They believe the Messiah won’t
appear until the world succumbs to evil and are determined to make this
prophecy self-fulfilling. Thus evil is good. In Bjerknes’ view, this
constitutes a “Jewish war against humanity.” When Bjerknes refers to
Jewish, he means “Shabataian.”
The Shabataians are often sexual degenerates who engage in wife
swapping, orgies and incest. They often pretend to be Christians or
Moslems to worm their way into Gentile society in order to destroy it.
(“Jewish Genocide of Armenian Christians,” pp.64-65.)
Bjerknes cites Deuteronomy as an example of this Jewish supremacism:
“the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself,
above all people that are upon the face of the earth. ” (7-16) “And all
people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the
LORD; and they shall be afraid of you.” (28:10)
He points to Zachariah [13;8-9] as evidence that 2/3 of all Jews
will be slaughtered: “And it shall come to pass, that in all the land,
saith the LORD, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the
third shall be left therein.”
[9] “And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will
refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried:
they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my
people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God.” (He also cites Ezekiel
5:12-13 to this effect.)
On pp. 43-46 of “Jewish Genocide”, Bjerknes cites references from
the Talmud and the Old Testament to the extermination and enslavement
of Gentiles.
For example ,Genesis 25;23, and 27;38-41 promises the Gentiles to
the Jews as their slaves and slave soldiers, and gives an incentive to
exterminate the Gentiles simply because they dare resent their fate.
ROTHSCHILDS FOLLOW BIBLICAL BLUEPRINT
At the beginning of the 19th century the Rothschilds started
campaigning to return the Jews to Israel, purchasing land there and
scheming to breakup the Ottoman Empire. They later bought the Suez
Canal to project their power into the Middle East. Bjerknes writes:
“The ruin of the Turkish Empire and the mass murder of the
Armenian Christians were one step on the long and tumultuous Jewish
march toward the death of mankind. The ruin of the Russian empire was
another, followed by the repeated destruction of Europe, particularly
Germany in the World Wars this Jewish cult created in an attempt to
artificially fulfill Messianic prophecy and force the Jews of Europe
against their will to flee to Palestine.” (66)
According to Bjerknes, Jewish support was the only thing lacking in
the the Rothschilds’ plan to establish a world government in Jerusalem,
with them as king:
“They could bankrupt Egypt and Turkey. They could bring Russia to
ruins. They could buy Jewish ne’er-do-wells. They could even buy the
Pope but the only way to force Jews in large numbers to Palestine was
to put Hitler and Stalin in power and persecute Jews on a massive and
unprecedented scale.” (291)
CHRISTIANS ARE BEING DUPED
Bjerknes has a poignant warning to Christians:
“In the Jewish dominated media of today, we find many Jews preaching
to the public that the end times are coming and that Christians ought
to view their own destruction in a positive light as if it were the
divine fulfillment of Christian and Jewish prophecy. Many Christians
have been duped by these charlatan…the destruction of the world and
its nations is occurring as the result of the deliberate intervention
of immensely wealthy Jews and not as the result of God’s will. These
Jewish leaders view the Hebrew Bible as a plan, which they are
deliberately fulfilling…. (327)
WHERE BJERKNES AND I DIFFER
As my readers know I see the New World Order as an elite conspiracy
driven primarily by the central bankers’ need to consolidate their
monopoly on credit and power. I believe there is a strong “Jewish”
element but that they have co-opted all gentile elites using
intermarriage, Freemasonry (run by the Illuminati), and Aryanism. Look
at the Gentile membership of the Illuminati Skull and Bones for
example. Bjerknes doesn’t think the Illuminati is still in business and
downplays the Gentile role.
In an email, Bjerknes writes that intermarriage is part of the “Jewish” strategy:
“I believe that powerful Jewish interests have been deliberately
attempting to fulfill Jewish messianic prophecy for 2,500 years and
have duped many Gentiles into helping them obtain their objectives.
They have also recruited many Gentiles through intermarriage,
friendship and selfish interests, who are not dupes, but commit inhuman
acts out of greed, vanity, or for other immoral reasons. Do they
believe that what they are doing is evil? I suspect some do.
I am not opposed to identifying secret societies and the ties among
the elite. I simply do not see any justification for calling them
Illuminati. As for the overall path of politics and the faces of those
who are pushing the cart toward WW III, I think I and countless others
have proven that it is a Jewish movement, and that the Illuminati were
nothing but a small part of this Jewish movement to gin up an
apocalypse, which dates back at least 2,500 years. Of course not
everything happening today has a Jewish hand steering its course. But I
do believe that powerful Jewish interests …have the ability to exert
more influence than all other groups combined, for the very reason that
they have infiltrated so many organizations, religions and governments,
and have such disproportionate influence in the media.”
CONCLUSION
I wouldn’t be presenting Bjerknes’ argument if I didn’t agree that
it is important to examine Jewish messianism. If world events indeed
are driven by the Rothschild’s megalomania propped up by Shabataian
,Old Testament and Talmudic fanaticism, I think Jews and non-Jews alike
would want to know, and take exception.
Certainly the role of Jewish Rothschild agents in advocating for the
Iraq war and an attack on Iran is consistent with the profile above.
If Bjerknes is right, “anti-Semitism” is exposed as psychological
warfare designed to disarm opposition to an insidious tyranny by
portraying it as racist. It is also used to manipulate Jews who have
been opposed to the Rothschild’s insane agenda, and victims of it.
Henry Makow Ph.D. – July 22, 2007
———————
awakenedgoyim comments:
Kemal Ataturk was a follower of Shabatai Zvi.
The French and English branches of Rothschilds have recently merged after over 100 years of seperation
————————————————————————-
Official
Culture in America:
A Natural State of Psychopathy?
Laura Knight-Jadczyk
July
30, 2003: KAH – The subject of the extremely narrow point of view
of most Americans as opposed to the majority of other peoples in the
world came up in a conversation the other day. The people having the
conversation were, as it happens, mostly American. One of them commented
that Americans had been “programmed” to their point of view
by mass media propaganda for a very long time and that it was simply
a very normal part of American life and basically, always had been.
She concluded, “Whoever denies it is either ignorant or has an
agenda.”
That
may be so. It may be true that the “pied pipers” of denial
have an agenda. But what, then, does one say or do about the ignorance
of the vast majority of Americans? Why and how is it that the trap
of Fascism is closing on them before their very eyes and no matter how
many voices – the number is increasing every day – are raised to point
out this danger, they simply do not seem to get it?
The
conversation continued with a comment from another individual suggesting
that one must take into account how effective the “official culture”
actually is in the US. It isn’t just a question of ignorance, but a
question of the long-term thoroughness of the propagandizing that began
in the early days of the last century. It was proposed that this propaganda
is so complete that not only are most people in the US ignorant of what
is taking place on the US political scene, and in the world as a direct
result of US policy, they are ignorant of the fact that they are ignorant.
They have been inculcated with the view that their view is the only
“right” one” and, consequently, they really “don’t
know any better”. In short: “What do you do if you don’t
know that you don’t know something?”
Well,
the thing is, at some point in time, no matter how thorough the programming
has been, most people will eventually end up coming across some bit
or piece of information that isn’t going to quite “jibe” with
the “official culture;” it isn’t going to “fit”
in with their view of reality, with what they have been taught, and
it is usually just a little bit uncomfortable when this happens. Or
it ought to be.
My
question is, why is complete denial, even aggressive behavior in some
instances, the reaction of some when the objective facts of reality
are pointed out to them, while there are others who react with an increased
sense of curiosity, an increased desire for additional information?
Why
do some shun knowledge and others crave it?
Why
do some resist the programming, and others welcome it?
It
is as though with some people – those who most avidly embrace the “we
are right” view – have minds that are closed from the very get-go,
and they are entirely incapable of opening them, even just a crack.
There is no curiosity in them. There are no questions in their minds.
There are no “what ifs?” or “maybes”.
It
seems to me that the propaganda of the Official Culture then, while
quite effective, may not be the sole reason why so many Americans are
apathetic when it comes to what their government is doing, both in the
US and abroad. It seems as though there may be some distinct differences
in human beings at a very basic level that needs to be considered here.
In
my opinion, (KAH), all of us who were raised in the US have been duped
via this Official Culture mind control imposed through the educational
system and the mass media. But there are some of us who seem to have
the ability to question, to wonder, to open our minds to other possibilities
– even if they seem far-fetched. And invariably, this opening of the
mind to other views has been enriching and rewarding on many levels,
not the least of which is a humanitarian view of all peoples and cultures.
Is
being able to open your mind and ask questions just a matter of “courage?”
Is a closed mind simply evidence of being a coward? Is resistance to
the “official culture” a consequence of a fundamental “rebellious
nature” and are those who “go along with the crowd” better
“team players,” even if the team is on the moral low-road?
Is
the difference one that exists between people who are willing to face
the “terror of the situation” and those who simply cannot
live in the state of tension produced by having to make moral decisions
themselves?
Or,
is there something deeper here? If so, what is it? And whatever it
is, why is it so “active” in the present day and time? What
is the “fog” that surrounds America and the minds of its people?
In
the past, I have encountered many people who I considered to be open-minded,
but ultimately discovered that
they are not so when they absolutely refuse to even admit the possibility
of what is so obvious to so many intelligent and compassionate people.
For example, the obvious psychopathy of Bush and other world leaders,
certainly reveals to us that the “terror of the situation”
is manifesting on quite a grander scale than any of us might have dreamed
possible a few years ago. There it is. Clues and signs everywhere.
It’s as plain as the nose on your face. But most Americans would rather
cut off that nose with the result that they spite the face.
It
is terrifying enough when one realizes that the Bush Reich and other
elite groups around the globe are wreaking havoc on the planet without
regard for life in any form, apart from their own, but when we also
have to face the fact that there are so many people out there, that
– even when faced with the certain facts of this global tinder- box
– either cannot see it or WILL not see it, well, that makes this situation
just a little bit more terrifying.
Again,
we return to the problem: what is WRONG with Americans?
We
already know that the “Land of the Free” is gone, but what
about the “Home of the Brave?” It never takes courage to
support a bully – but it takes a LOT of courage to stand up against
one. Has America lost that courage that gave them the intestinal fortitude
to stand up to the most mighty military power in the world of the time
– England – to declare their independence from bullies and to stand
for what was right? What happened to “Give me liberty or give
me death?” Because surely America has chosen death in giving up
their liberty!
When
I was growing up in the West, my brothers and I were subjected to very
intense “racist attitudes” from our step-parents. We lived
in a small farming-ranching community where that sort of belief system
is generally passed on from one generation to the next and nobody ever
really questions it.
However,
at a very early age, I instinctively rebelled against this view of the
world. It seems that I had a sort of natural, intrinsic love, respect
and a fascination for other cultures and peoples. Of course, it drove
my step-parents CRAZY. There was a lot of tension between us because
of this.
My
love for and curiosity about other cultures led me to travel extensively
as I grew up. I was curious; I wanted to explore; I wanted to KNOW.
When I eventually married outside my own culture, well, I had crossed
the line and all contact with my family had to be terminated. The price
they were willing to pay for their racist beliefs was high – in my opinion
– moreso for them than for me, though certainly this rejection was painful.
My
point is, I resisted this racist program intensely. It was all around
me, in the town, the schools, the church we attended. But I wanted
no part of it. It seems that it went against my very nature. But for
others, it seemed very “natural” to “fall for” this
cultural programming – to be “comfortable” within a milieu
that excluded nearly everyone else as human beings.
Is
it just “ignorance?” Are Americans just ignorant and ignorant
of their own ignorance? Is this ignorance strictly due to “official
culture programming” – programming that seems to be designed to
encourage ignorance?
Again
it seems as though there may be two different types of people and two
different ways to deal with the question of one’s own ignorance.
Some
individuals, when faced with certain facts about their own ignorance,
deny vehemently that they ARE ignorant and resort to platitudes and
cliches even including that old saw about the difference between “book
learning” and “common sense.” Others, when confronted
with their own ignorance, immediately set about rectifying it no matter
how painful it might be.
When
I first moved abroad at the age of 21, I quickly realized that I was,
like most Americans, abysmally ignorant with regard to politics. I
discovered – to my great dismay – that in my host country, most of the
average people around me – shopkeepers, hairdressers, taxi-drivers –
knew more about what was going on in the USA and the rest of the world
than I did; a LOT more! I had no IDEA of the things that were going
on that were common knowledge to other peoples in the world. And here,
it wasn’t simply a matter of having a different opinion than others.
It was a matter of an almost complete lack of INFORMATION within the
very country that promotes democracy as the rule of an “informed
citizenry.” I realized with striking clarity exactly how ignorant
I was at that point, and I admitted it to myself. Further, I was embarrassed
for myself and other Americans who were seen (rightly so) as equally
ignorant and “in the dark” politically and culturally speaking.
BUT, due to this embarrassment and realization of the extraordinary
extent of my ignorance, I determined to do something about it.
But
there are so many Americans who – when faced with similar situations,
faced with their own ignorance – deny it aggressively. And generally,
the “last word” for them is: “Oh, he/she doesn’t know
what the hell they
are talking about! They’re ‘foreigners’.” And that’s the key:
“foreigners.”
“Foreigners”
can’t possibly know anything because they aren’t American. And Americans,
by default of having the most bombs on the planet, always “know”
what’s up. Or, at the very least, their leaders do and we just don’t
have to think about such things. That’s what we elect our leaders for,
isn’t it? So they will handle all that boring and tedious political
stuff and leave us alone to watch “Survivor” and the Super
Bowl and wash our new SUV so that the Joneses can be green with envy!
And
they leave it at that. It’s the preferred way to handle all such questions.
Forget the entire issue of an “informed citizenry” and any
possible outrage that citizens of the US are not only NOT informed,
they are being deliberately DIS-informed!
They
don’t even realize that “Survivor” is programming them to
the very attitudes that are being displayed by their leaders – normalizing
it, so to say – and at the present moment these attitude are being manifested
in their own lives in a direct and terrifying way. For many in the
US, their future is that there won’t be any more Super Bowls, and the
SUV certainly doesn’t get enough gas mileage to get them far enough
away from the terror that will confront them when they are “voted
off the island” in the global game of “Survivor.”
Why
does this condition exist? Why are so many people so susceptible to
the “official culture” and the mass media propaganda? Why
are so many people willing slaves to it? And why do some others –
once the questions have been raised – begin to seek the knowledge that
reveals the man behind the curtain?
Perhaps
it is more than simply a matter of very clever and intense programming.
Perhaps it is also a matter of the nature of a person?
LKJ:
In recent times, I have considered many ideas in an attempt to answer
this question. The members of the Quantum Future School have been engaged
in studying psychopathy and pseudo-psychopathy
for about two years now. This has certainly prepared most of us to
be able to see the man behind the curtain, or, in this case, behind
the “mask of sanity.” But it still doesn’t answer the question
as to why psychopathic behavior seems to be so widespread in the US.
(That is not to say that it doesn’t exist everywhere – that’s a given.)
Linda
Mealey of the Department of Psychology at the College of St. Benedict
in St. Joseph, Minnesota, has recently proposed certain ideas in her
paper: The Sociobiology of Sociopathy: An Integrated Evolutionary
Model. These ideas address the increase in psychopathy in American
culture by suggesting that in a competitive society – capitalism, for
example – psychopathy is adaptive and likely to increase. She writes:
I have
thus far argued that some individuals seem to have a genotype that
disposes them to [psychopathy].
[Psychopathy
describes] frequency-dependent, genetically based, individual differences
in employment of life strategies. [Psychopaths]
always appear in every culture, no matter what the socio-cultural
conditions. […]
Competition
increases the use of antisocial and Machiavellian strategies and can
counteract pro-social behavior…
Some
cultures encourage competitiveness more than others and these differences
in social values vary both temporally and cross-culturally. […]
Across both dimensions, high levels of competitiveness are associated
with high crime rates and Machiavellianism.
High
populaton density, an indirect form of competition, is also associated
with reduced pro-social behavior and increased anti-social behavior.
[…]
[Mealey, op. cit.]
The
conclusion is that the American way of life has optimized the survival
of psychopaths with the consequence that it is an adaptive “life
strategy” that is extremely successful in American society, and
thus has increased in the population in strictly genetic terms. What
is more, as a consequence of a society that is adaptive for psychopathy,
many individuals who are NOT genetic psychopaths have similarly adapted,
becoming “effective” psychopaths, or “secondary sociopaths.”
(Many
experts differentiate between primary and secondary sociopaths. The
first is a sociopath because they have the “genes” and the
second is more or less “created” by their environment of victimization.
Other experts refer to these two categories as “psychopaths”
for the genetic variety and “sociopaths” for the reactive
variety. We prefer this latter distinction.)
Of course,
because they are not intellectually handicapped, these individuals
[psychopaths] will progress normally in terms of cognitive development
and will acquire a theory of mind. Their theories, however, will
be formulated purely in instrumental terms [what can claiming this
or that GET for me?], without access to the empathic understanding
that most of us rely on so much of the time.
They
may become excellent predictors of others’ behavior, unhandicapped
by the “intrusiveness” of emotion, acting, as do professional
gamblers, solely on nomothetic laws and actuarial data rather than
on hunches and feelings.
In determining
how to “play” in the social encounters of everyday life,
they will use a pure cost-benefit approach based on immediate
personal outcomes, with no “accounting” for the emotional
reactions of the others with whom they are dealing.
Without
any real love to “commit” them to cooperation, without any
anxiety to prevent fear of “defection,” without guilt to
inspire repentance, they are free to continually play for the short-term
benefit.
At the
same time, because changes in gene frequencies in the population would
not be able to keep pace with the fast-changing parameters of social
interactions, an additional fluctuating proportion of sociopathy should
result because, in a society of [psychopathy], the environmental circumstances
make an antisocial strategy of life more profitable than a pro-social
one. [Mealey]
In
other words, in a world of psychopaths, those who are not genetic psychopaths,
are induced to behave like psychopaths simply to survive. When the
rules are set up to make a society “adaptive” to psychopathy,
it makes psychopaths of everyone.
Now,
do not be fooled by the word “psychopath.” Many individuals
equate this term with mass murderers or “foaming at the mouth”
madmen. By any name, this dangerous personality disorder presents three
unsettling realities: Its prevalence seems to be increasing, it is far
more common than previously thought, and there is no cure.
What
makes the psychopath so frightening and dangerous is that he or she
wears a completely convincing “Mask of Sanity”. This may at first make
such a person utterly persuasive and compellingly healthy, according
to psychiatrist Harvey Cleckley. Dr. Cleckey was first to describe the
key symptoms of the disorder.
Psychopaths
can be very sociable, even though they are antisocial behind their “mask”
in the sense that their “emotions” are completely fake. They
are masters at manipulating others for their personal gain. Their charm,
in fact, is legendary. “As a therapist, you run across this all of the
time, where a man is mysteriously controlled by a sociopath,” explains
psychologist Melvin Sinder, co-author of Smart Men Bad Choices.
Psychopaths
are experts at using people. They can ask anything of anyone without
embarassment and because of their outgoing seducing friendliness, their
use of “poor innocent me! I am such a GOOD person and I have been treated
so BADLY!” the victim invariably gets sucked into giving the psychopath
what they ask for – no matter how outrageous.
Psychopaths
are masters at faking emotions in order to manipulate others. One psychologist
reported that if you actually catch them in the act of committing a
crime, or telling a lie, “they will immediately justify their actions
by self pity and blaming another, by creating a heart-rending scene
of faked emotional feelings.” These fake emotions are only for effect,
as the careful observer will note. The Psychopath considers getting
their way or getting out of trouble using faked emotions as a victory
over another person.
Psychopaths
are incapable of feeling concern or remorse for the consequences
of their actions. They can calmly rationalize their insensitive and
bizarre behavior all the while attributing malice to everyone but themselves.
When caught in a lie, they will manipulate others or stories to their
own advantage without any fear of being found out – even if it is obvious
to everyone around them that they WILL be found out.
Psychopaths
cannot feel fear for themselves, much less empathy for others. Most
normal people, when they are about to do something dangerous, illegal,
or immoral, feel a rush of worry, nervousness, or fear. Guilt may overwhelm
them and prevent them from even committing the deed.
The
psychopath feels little or nothing.
As
a result, the threat of punishment, even painful punishment is a laughing
matter for the psychopath. They can repeat the same destructive acts
without skipping a heartbeat, as well as seek thrills and dangers without
regard for possible risks. This is called “hypoarousal.” That
is, very little – if anything – really arouses them; they are more machine-like
than human-like.
The
psychopath seems to be full of something akin to deep greed. They manifest
this inner state in many ways. One of the most common ways is to steal
something of value to their victim (valuables), or to hurt/slander the
victim or something or someone the victim loves. In the psychopath’s
mind, this is justified because the victim crossed him, did not give
him what he wanted, or rejected him (or her).
Psychopaths
lie for the sake of lying. They can convey the deepest hear- felt message
without meaning a word of it. They can also tell the most outrageous
stories simply in order to be at the center of attention and to get
what they want.
An
example is told by a researcher in psychopathy: Melissa was a girl that
was very attractive and very outgoing. She met with an attorney regarding
getting a divorce from her husband and convinced the attorney that her
husband was ruining her life.
The
attorney felt sorry for her as she carried on about the abuse she had
suffered. She was so convincing, that the attorney wanted to help her
personally. With her seductive charisma, he became hopelessly infatuated
and began to date Melissa. At a certain point, the attorney refused
to take illegal and immoral actions against her estranged husband that
Melissa requested.
At
this point, she filed sexual harassment charges against the attorney
to try to force him to do what she wanted. She didn’t realize that,
by doing this, she had exposed herself for what she was and there was
no possibility that the attorney was going to bow to her blackmail pressures.
After much pain and heart break all around, Melissa dropped the law
suit and moved to another state. The attorney commented that he had
never been so emotionally overwhelmed in his entire life.
Indeed,
using their “emotional performances,” these individuals can
be truly overwhelming. Their charisma can be so inspiring – their emotion
so deep and sincere-seeming – that people just want to be around them,
want to help them, want to give all and support such a noble, suffering
being. What is generally not seen by the victim is that they are feeding
an endless internal hunger for control, excitement and ego-recognition.
The
psychopath is obsessed with control even if they give the impression
of being helpless. Their pretense to emotional sensitivity is really
part of their control function: The higher the level of belief in the
psychopath that can be induced in their victim through their dramas,
the more “control” the psychopath believes they have. And
in fact, this is true. They DO have control when others believe their
lies. Sadly, the degree of belief, the degree of “submission”
to this control via false representation, generally produces so much
pain when the truth is glimpsed that the victim would prefer to continue
in the lie than face the fact that they have been duped. The psychopath
counts on this. It is part of their “actuarial calculations.”
It gives them a feeling of power.
It
is all too easy to fall under the spell of the charismatic psychopath.
There are many who do the psychopath’s bidding without realizing that
they have been subtly and cleverly controlled. They can even be manipulated
to perform criminal acts, or acts of sabotage against another – innocent
– person on behalf of the psychopath. Very often, when this is realized
by the victim, that they have caused suffering in innocent people at
the behest of a liar, again they prefer to deny this than to face up
to the truth of their own perfidy and gullibility.
Psychopathic
behavior seems to be on the rise because of the very nature of American
capitalistic society. The great hustlers, charmers, and self-promoters
in the sales fields are perfect examples of where the psychopath can
thrive. The entertainment industry, the sports industry, the corporate
world in a Capitalistic system, are all areas where psychopaths naturally
rise to the top. Some observers believe that there is a psychological
continuum between psychopaths (who tend to be professionally unsuccessful)
and narcissistic entrepreneurs (who are successful), because these two
groups share the highly developed skill of manipulating others for their
own gain. It is now being thought that they are actually the “same”
but that the “unsuccessful” psychopath is merely flawed in
their calculating abilities. They are unable to recalculate based on
new actuarial data. Successful Narcissists might seem to be perfectly
able to add to their actuarial database and “recalculate” and shift
course and develop new subroutines based on ongoing input.
In
general, the successful psychopath “computes” how much they
can get away with in a cost-benefit ratio of the alternatives. Among
the factors that they consider as most important are money, power, and
gratification of negative desires. They are not motivated by such social
reinforcment as praise or future benefits. Studies have been done that
show locking up a psychopath has absolutely no effect on them in terms
of modifying their life strategies. In fact, in is shown to make them
worse. Effectively, when locked up, psychopaths just simply learn how
to be better psychopaths.
Since
the psychopath bases their activities designed to get what they want
on their particular “theory of mind,” it is instructive to
have a look at this issue. Having a “theory of mind” allows
an individual to impute mental states (thoughts, perceptions, and feelings)
not only to oneself, but also to other individuals. It is, in effect,
a tool that helps us predict the behavior of others. The most successful
individuals are those who most accurately predict what another person
will do given a certain set of circumstances. In the present day, we
have Game Theory which is being used to model many social problems including
psychopathy.
When
two individuals interact with each other, each must decide what to do
without knowledge of what the other is doing. Imagine that the two
players are the government and the public. In the following model,
each of the players faces only a binary choice: to behave ethically
either in making laws or in obeying them.
The
assumption is that both players are informed about everything except
the level of ethical behavior of the other. They know what it means
to act ethically, and they know the consequences of being exposed as
unethical.
There
are three elements to the game. 1) The players, 2) the strategies available
to either of them, and 3) the payoff each player receives for each possible
combination of strategies.
In
a legal regime, one party is obliged to compensate the other for damages
under certain conditions but not under others. We are going to imagine
a regime wherein the government is never liable for losses suffered
by the public because of its unethical behavior – instead, the public
has to pay for the damages inflicted by the government due to unethical
behavior.
The
way the payoffs are represented is generally in terms of money. That
is, how much investment does each player have to make in ethical behavior
and how much payoff does each player receive for his investment.
In
this model, behaving ethically, according to standards of social values
that are considered the “norm,” costs each player $10.00.
When law detrimental to the public is passed, it costs the public $100.00.
We take it as a given that such laws will be passed unless both players
behave ethically.
Next,
we assume that the likelihood of a detrimental law being passed in the
event that both the public and the government are behaving ethically
is a one-in-ten chance.
In
a legal regime in which the government is never held responsible
for its unethical behavior, and if neither the government nor the public
behave ethically, the government enjoys a payoff of $0. and the public
is out $100 when a law detrimental to the public is passed.
If
both “invest” in ethical behavior, the government has a payoff
of minus $10. (the cost of behaving ethically) and the public is out
minus $20. which is the $10. invested in being ethical PLUS the $10.
of the one-in-ten chance of a $100. loss incurred if a detrimental law
is passed.
If
the government behaves ethically and the public does not, resulting
in the passing of a law detrimental to the populace, the government
is out the $10. invested in being ethical and the public is out $100.
If
the government does not behave ethically, and the public does, the government
has a payoff of $0. and the public is out $110 which is the “cost
of being ethical” added to the losses suffered when the government
passes detrimental laws. Modeled in a Game Theory Bi-matrix, it looks
like this, with the two numbers representing the “payoff”
to the people – the left number in each pair – and government – the
right number in each pair.
Government No Ethics Ethical No Ethics -100, 0 -100, -10 Society/People Ethical -110, 0 -20, -10
In short,
in this game, the government always does better by not being ethical
and we can predict the government’s choice of strategy because there
is a single strategy – no ethics – that is better for the government
no matter what choice the public makes. This is a “strictly
dominant strategy,” or a strategy that is the best choice for
the player no matter what choices are made by the other player.
What
is even worse is the fact that the public is PENALIZED for behaving
ethically. Since we know that the government, in the above regime,
will never behave ethically because it is the dominant strategy, we
find that ethical behavior on the part of the public actually costs
MORE than unethical behavior.
In
short, psychopathic behavior is actually a POSITIVE ADAPTATION in such
a regime.
The
public, as you see, cannot even minimize their losses by behaving ethically.
It costs them $110. to be ethical, and only $100. to not be ethical.
Now,
just substitute “psychopath” in the place of the government
and non-psychopath in the place of the public, and you begin to understand
why the psychopath will always be a psychopath. If the “payoff”
is emotional pain of being hurt, or shame for being exposed, in the
world of the psychopath, that consequence simply does not exist just
as in the legal regime created above, the government is never responsible
for unethical behavior. The psychopath lives in a world in which it
is like a government that is never held responsible for behavior that
is detrimental to others. It’s that simple. And the form game above
will tell you why psychopaths in the population, as well as in government,
are able to induce the public to accept laws that are detrimental.
It simply isn’t worth it to be ethical. If you go along with the psychopath,
you lose. If you resist the psychopath, you lose even more.
The
[psychopath] is unfamiliar with the primary facts or data of what might
be called personal values and is altogether incapable of understanding
such matters. It is impossible for him to take even a slight interest
in the tragedy or joy or the striving of humanity as presented in serious
literature or art. He is also indifferent to all these matters in life
itself. Beauty and ugliness, except in a very superficial sense, goodness,
evil, love, horror, and humour have no actual meaning, no power to move
him. He is, furthermore, lacking in the ability to see that others are
moved. It is as though he were colour-blind, despite his sharp intelligence,
to this aspect of human existence. It cannot be explained to him because
there is nothing in his orbit of awareness that can bridge the gap with
comparison. He can repeat the words and say glibly that he understands,
and there is no way for him to realize that he does not understand.
[ Cleckley, H.M. (1941). The mask of sanity: An attempt to reinterpret
the so-called psychopathic personality. St. Louis: The C. V. Mosby Company]
It
also means that such a person is free to choose to do things that are
potentially self-destructive without giving a single indication to another
“player” that his or her choice is based entirely on a delusion.
Very often, they “win” because of the sheer boldness of their
actions which is unrestricted by conscience which is a construct of
emotions.
It’s
like a poker player who has absolutely nothing in his hand, but because
he is so intent on winning, and is so unmoved by the possibility of
losing because lying produces absolutely no internal, emotional reaction
of fear of being discovered or the potential shame or disaster inherent
in such an event, is able to bluff so convincingly that the other players
– any of whom might have a winning hand, fold and walk away because
they are convinced by the psychopath’s confidence that he must have
the winning hand of all time.
Only
he doesn’t.
And
this means that the psychopath’s strength is also his Achilles heel.
Once he has been spotted, identified, understood, he no longer has the
power to bluff. Once knowledge enters the game, the psychopath is exposed,
and has no more ability to “con” the other players. The sad
part is: he also has no ability to learn from this experience anything
other than how to make his bluff better and more convincing next time.
The psychopath never gets mad because he is caught in a lie; he is only
concerned with “damage control” in terms of his ability to
continue to con others.
Societies
can be considered as “players” in the psychopath’s game model.
The
past behavior of a society will be used by the psychopath to predict
the future behavior of that society. Like an individual player, a society
will have a certain probability of detecting deception and a more or
less accurate memory of who has cheated on them in the past, as well
as a developed or not developed proclivity to retaliate against a liar
and cheater. Since the psychopath is using an actuarial approach to
assess the costs and benefits of different behaviors (just how much
can he get away with), it is the actual past behavior of the society
which will go into his calculations rather than any risk assessments
based on any “fears or anxieties” of being caught and punished
that empathic people would feel in anticipation of doing something illegal.
Thus,
in order to reduce psychopathic behavior in society and in government,
a society MUST establish and enforce a reputation for high rates of
detection of deception and identification of liars, and a willingness
to retaliate. In other words, it must establish a successful strategy
of deterrence.
Since
the psychopath is particularly unable to make decisions based on future
consequences, and is able only to focus attention on immediate gratification
– short term goals – it is possible that such individuals can be dealt
with by establishing a history of dealing out swift social retaliation.
That is, identifying and punishing liars and cheaters must be both immediate
and predictable that it will be immediate.
And
here we come to the issue: concerning the real-world, human social interactions
on a large scale, reducing psychopathy in our leaders depends upon expanding
society’s collective memory of individual players’ past behavior.
Any
reasonable scan of the news will reveal that lies and cheating are not
“covered up” as thoroughly as American apologists would like
to think.
Even
the less well-informed Americans have some idea that there was certainly
something fishy about the investigation into the assassination of JFK.
In recent years, the man in charge of the Warren Commission, Gerald
Ford, also a former president, admitted to “cheating” on the
report.
Then,
there was Watergate followed by the Iran-Contra affair, not to mention
“Monica-gate.” And here we are just hitting some highlights
familiar to all Americans.
What
consequences did the cheaters of society suffer?
None
to speak of. In fact, in nearly every case, they were rewarded handsomely
with those things of value to the psychopath: money and material goods.
If anyone thinks they were shamed by public exposure, think again!
But
what is of CRUCIAL interest here is the fact that the American people
have simply NOT responded to the revelations of lies in government with
any outrage that could be considered more than token. At the present
time, there isn’t even “token outrage.”
Don’t
you find that odd?
But
we have already noted the reason: the American way of life has optimized
the survival of psychopathy and in a world of psychopaths, those who
are not genetic psychopaths, are induced to behave like psychopaths
simply to survive. When the rules are set up to make a society “adaptive”
to psychopathy, it makes psychopaths of everyone. As a consequence,
a very large number of Americans are effective sociopaths. (Here we
use “sociopath” as a designation of those individuals who
are not genetic psychopaths.)
And
so, we have George Bush and the Third Reich calculating how much they
can get away with by looking at the history of the reactions of the
American People to cheating.
There
aren’t any because the system is adaptive to psychopathy. In other
words, Americans support Bush and his agenda because most of them are
LIKE him.
But
that is not because they are ALL born that way. It is because psychopathy
is almost required to survive in Competitive, Capitalistic America.
As
a society gets larger and more competitive, individuals become more
anonymous and more Machiavellian. Social stratification and segregation
leads to feelings of inferiority, pessimism and depression among the
have-nots, and this promotes the use of “cheating strategies”
in life which then makes the environment more adaptive for psychopathy
in general.
Psychopathic
behavior among non-genetic psychopaths could be viewed as a functional
method of obtaining desirable resources, increasing an individual’s
status in a local group, and even a means of providing stimulation that
socially and financially successful people find in acceptable physical
and intellectual challenges. In other words, the psychopath is a bored
and frustrated sensation-seeker who “does not have the intellectual
capacitiy to amuse and occupy himself” internally. Such individuals
may begin their lives in the lower socio-economic levels, but they often
rise to the top.
In
America, a great many households are affected by the fact that work,
divorce, or both, have removed one or both parents from interaction
with their children for much of the day. This is a consequence of
Capitalistic economics.
When
the parents are absent, or even when one is present but not in possession
of sufficient knowledge or information, children are left to the mercies
of their peers, a culture shaped by the media. Armed with joysticks
and TV remotes, children are guided from South Park and
Jerry Springer to Mortal Kombat on Nintendo.
Normal kids become desensitized to violence. More-susceptible kids
– children with a genetic inheritance of psychopathy – are pushed toward
a dangerous mental precipice. Meanwhile, the government is regularly
passing laws, on the demand of parents and the psychological community,
designed to avoid imposing consequences on junior’s violent behavior.
As
for media violence, few researchers continue to try to dispute that
bloodshed on TV and in the movies has an effect on the kids who witness
it. Added to the mix now are video games structured around models of
hunting and killing. Engaged by graphics, children learn to associate
spurts of “blood” with the primal gratification of scoring
a “win.”
Again,
economics controls the reality.
While
everyone will readily admit that there is probably too much violence
on television and that the ads are probably pure balderdash, very few
people have a real conception of the precise nature and extent of the
hypnotic influence of the media. Still fewer have any idea of the purposes
behind this inducement. Wallace and Wallechinsky write in The
People’s Almanac:
“After
World War II, television flourished… Psychologists and sociologists
were brought in to study human nature in relation to selling; in other
words, to figure out how to manipulate people without their feeling
manipulated. Dr. Ernest Dichter, President of the Institute for Motivational
Research made a statement in 1941… ‘the successful ad agency manipulates
human motivations and desires and develops a need for goods with which
the public has at one time been unfamiliar — perhaps even undesirous
of purchasing.
“Discussing
the influence of television, Daniel Boorstin wrote:
‘Here
at last is a supermarket of surrogate experience. Successful programming
offers entertainment — under the guise of instruction; instruction
— under the guise of entertainment; political persuasion — with
the appeal of advertising; and advertising — with the appeal of drama.’
“Programed
television serves not only to spread acquiescence and conformity,
but it represents a deliberate industry approach.” [quoted by Wallace,
Wallechinsky]
Aside from the fact that television has been conjectured to be extremely
detrimental to children and that it is now thought that most of the
deteriorating aspects of society can be attributed to the decaying values
portrayed on television, there is a deeper and more insidious effect
upon the human psyche. As quoted, it is a planned and deliberate manipulation
to spread acquiescence and conformity and to hypnotize the masses to
submit to the authority of the masters of economics through their false
prophet, the television.
Allen Funt, host of a popular show, Candid Camera, was
once asked what was the most disturbing thing he had learned about people
in his years of dealing with them through the media. His response was
chilling in its ramifications:
“The
worst thing, and I see it over and over, is how easily people can
be led by any kind of authority figure, or even the most minimal kinds
of authority. A well dressed man walks up the down escalator and most
people will turn around and try desperately to go up also… We put
up a sign on the road, ‘Delaware Closed Today’. Motorists didn’t even
question it. Instead they asked: ‘Is Jersey open?'” [quoted by
Wallace, Wallechinsky]
A picture is forming of a deliberately contrived society of televised
conformity, literate and creative inadequacy, and social unrest and
decadence. It is apparent that the media is in charge of propagating
these conditions, and the media is controlled by what?
Capitalistic,
competitive Economics.
It would seem that the motivation masters would, in the interests of
their industrial clients, plan programming to bring about beneficial
societal conditions – which they could, in fact, do. It is apparent
that the final authority on televised programming is in the hands of
the advertisers, backed by the industries whose products are being sold.
With all the psychological input to which they have access, it would
seem that they utilize programming to correct societal conditions which
cost them money. Over 25 billion dollars a year is spent to teach workers
to read and write, after graduating from the combined effects of a public
school system and the television. It is accepted that the burgeoning
crime rate, which also costs these industrial giants vast sums of money,
is mostly attributable to the frustrations and dissatisfactions engendered
by the false view of reality presented over the television.
Why
don’t they use their financial resources to back the motivation masters
to figure out how to present programming which could effect positive
changes?
Can
it be that the conditions of society, including the programed response
to “minimal signs of authority” are planned? Would anyone care to suggest
that the figures and studies relating to the detrimental influence of
programming is not available to them and that they don’t realize that
it is costing them money? If that is the case, then they are too stupid
to be arbiters of our values and we should disregard them entirely in
any event. If it is not the case, then we must assume that there
is an object to this manipulation.
There is much evidence to support the idea that this purpose, or the
object of this manipulation, is to create psychological and social disunity
– social psychopathy – sufficient to permit the instituting of a totalitarian
government at the behest of the people. It is further theorized that
the “wealthy elite” seek to control the entire world from behind the
scenes and it is to this end that they mastermind and fund the various
actions which appear to the masses as political and international “accidents”.
FDR.
said:
“Nothing
in politics ever happens by accident; if it happens, you can bet it
was planned!”
And
he was in a position to know.
There
is much evidence to support the notion that wars are fomented and fought
to redistribute these balances of financial power behind the scenes
and that, though our fathers, brother, grandfathers, uncles, cousins
and sons die in these actions, they are merely games of “International
Relations” played by those whose money and position give them absolute
power to shape our reality to some nefarious end.
The psychic stresses of our world are right in the home. There they
can easily act on any kid who believes that “the world has wronged
me” – a sentiment spoken from the reality of existence – a reality
created by economic pressures instituted via Game Theory.
Is
there a solution?
The
obvious solution would be a world in which, at the very least, the psychopath
– in government or in society – would be forced to be responsible for
unethical behavior. But game-theory modeling demonstrates that selfishness
is always the most profitable strategy possible for replicating units.
Could
it ever be an evolutionarily stable strategy for people to be innately
unselfish?
On
the whole, a capacity to cheat, to compete and to lie has proven to
be a stupendously successful adaptation. Thus the idea that selection
pressure could ever cause saintliness to spread in a society looks implausible
in practice. It doesn’t seem feasible to outcompete genes which promote
competitiveness. “Nice guys” get eaten or outbred. Happy
people who are unaware get eaten or outbred. Happiness and niceness
today is vanishingly rare, and the misery and suffering of those who
are able to truly feel, who are empathic toward other human beings,
who have a conscience, is all too common. And the psychopathic manipulations
are designed to make psychopaths of us all.
Nevertheless,
a predisposition to, conscience, ethics, can prevail if and when
it is also able to implement the deepest level of altruism: making
the object of its empathy the higher ideal of enhancing free will in
the abstract sense, for the sake of others, including our descendants.
In
short, our “self-interest” ought to be vested in collectively
ensuring that all others are happy and well-disposed too; and in
ensuring that children we bring into the world have the option of being
constitutionally happy and benevolent toward one another.
This
means that if psychopathy threatens the well-being of the group future,
then it can be only be dealt with by refusing to allow the self to be
dominated by it on an individual, personal basis. Preserving free will
for the self in the practical sense, ultimately preserves free will
for others. Protection of our own rights AS the rights of others,
underwrites the free will position and potential for happiness of all.
If mutant psychopaths pose a potential danger then true empathy, true
ethics, true conscience, dictates using prophylactic therapy against
psychopaths.
And
so it is that identifying the psychopath, ceasing our interaction with
them, cutting them off from our society, making ourselves unavailable
to them as “food” or objects to be conned and used, is the
single most effective strategy that we can play.
It
seems certain from the evidence that a positive transformation of human
nature isn’t going to come about through a great spiritual awakening,
socio-economic reforms, or a spontaneous desire among the peoples of
the world to be nice to each other. But it’s quite possible that, in
the long run, the psychopathic program of suffering will lose out because
misery is not a stable strategy. In a state of increasing misery, victims
will seek to escape it; and this seeking will ultimately lead them to
inquire into the true state of their misery, and that may lead to a
society of intelligent people who will have the collective capacity
to do so.
