Open Thread - 08-02-24 - Your Mind is on Vacation
Is there any doubt now?
The media controls the masses, especially television. I've written many times in the past about the war on our minds. The events from the past few weeks have brought the media's techniques front and center. It's on full display.
It's amazing how Joe Biden went from the greatest president ever to persona non grata overnight and Kamala Harris went from a ditzy air head to a media darling as they hang on every word she says much like Ernest T. Bass' crush on Miss Crump, the school teacher, on The Andy Griffith Show.
The average working stiff doesn't have the time to be well informed like we political junkies. They go to work in the morning, come home in the early evening and maybe have enough time to watch the evening news before dinner. That's not to mention the subtle political and social nudging proliferated on regular television programming. Ditto that for the written media and internet as well. The Bernays of the world recognize that situation and use it to its fullest extent and it obviously works. It seems rather easy to corral a mind when it's fenced in by short spurts of a short attention span. They are easy targets.
The human mind is malleable like a clump of clay longing to be formed into a useful piece of pottery. The media is the potter's wheel and the propagandist is the potter.
Attribution: MattysFlicks at PxHere
With a possible wider war in the Mideast involving Lebanon and Iran about to break out at any moment, here's a concise animated history of the Levant.
I truly hope that the last scene doesn't come to fruition.
The timeline was taken from the comments below the YouTube video (see the Source link).
This Land is Mine3:33
- 0:18. First settlers/cavemen.
- 0:28. Canaanites.
- 0:38. Ancient Egyptians.
- 0:48. Assyrians.
- 0:55. Israelites.
- 1:07. Babylonians/Persian Empire..
- 1:10. Greeks/Macedonians (Alexander the Great).
- 1:17. Greeks/Macedonians (after Alexander the Great).
- 1:23. Ptolemaic Egypt.
- 1:26. Seleucid empire.
- 1:32. Hebrew Priest and Maccabees.
- 1:47. Romans.
- 1:56. Byzantines/Sassanids.
- 1:58. Arab Caliphs.
- 2:00. Crusaders.
- 2:04. Mamluk Egyptians/ Medieval Egypt.
- 2:07. Ottoman Turks.
- 2:09. Arabs.
- 2:12. British/Europeans.
- 2:27. Palestinians.
- 2:27. Jews/Zionists.
- 2:31. Jews vs Palestinians.
- 2:39. PLO/Hamas/Hezbollah.
- 2:45. State of Israel.
- 2:53. Guerrilla forces/Palestinians.
- 3:00. Angel of Death (Azrael).
Oh, hell yes, I've got a long list of candidates for this proposal, although the first prerequisite is to have a mind that's not on vacation.
Why high-ranking leaders should be psych testedWhy do the worst people rise to power? University College London professor Brian Klaas responds.
5:48
George Washington famously didn’t want to become the president of the United States, but he accepted the job and performed it well. That’s how people should feel about important leadership positions, according to how political scientist Brian Klaas thinks about the role of power in society.
Klaas says that power should be a burden on people because leaders have to make decisions that will ultimately have negative consequences for many people. One problem: some humans don’t care about those consequences. And, according to Klaas, our institutions don’t do a very good job of screening these people out of important leadership spots.
Klaas suggests implementing psychological screening for top jobs, asking questions to determine why someone seeks power, and identifying whether they are in it for themselves or for the greater good. These measures can help to ensure that the right people are in positions of power, whether that means leading a company, governing a nation, or handling nuclear weapons.
Is this what Elon Musk is up to? I'll bet the billionaires of the world are working hard on this project.
I mean, who doesn't want Klaus Schwab to live forever?
How ‘mind-uploading’ stands to shake the core of humanityJournalist Steven Kotler on digital immortality and the tech that could keep us “alive,” forever.
3:15
What if our minds could live after our bodies have died? What if mortality became obsolete? Steven Kotler, award-winning journalist and executive director of the Flow Research Collective, has studied these seemingly sci-fi ideas, and it turns out that they’re not so fictional, after all. In fact, mind-uploading technology is expected to be available as early as 2045.
“Digital immortality” would have its upsides; we could preserve the minds of modern geniuses and have their guidance through future conflicts. Or, alternatively, things could get dark, as we have never before interfered with such complex evolutionary processes. Kotler explains that the ability to store human personalities and consciousness on computers poses profound ethical and societal questions.
By developing and using this mind-uploading technology, we are simultaneously redefining what it means to be a human being, pushing the boundary between life, death, and whatever is in between. It seems, whether we’re ready or not, that it is going to happen soon.
Mose Allison: Your Mind is on Vacation
Comments
Good morning Free Rangers...
speaking of vacation, that's what's on my mind today. We're leaving tomorrow morning for a week long visit back to my old stomping grounds, Northern Illinois. We picked this time to go to miss some of the summer heat here in Texas. The highs in Illinois are supposed to be in the mid 80s and upper 70s, so far the plan is working.
Sly and the Family Stone
I hope you guys have the very best time.
Don't worry about us. We won't throw any parties while you're gone. We'll feed the animals, water the trees and plants, wash the dirty dishes, and turn off the lights before bed.
Have fun! Bring us a present. Bye.
Populations don’t like wars. They have to be lied into it.
That means we can be “truthed” into peace. — Julian Assange
Thanks P...
we're way past over due for some R&R. I haven't seen my friends and family for over a year. There's an outstanding State Park not far from where we're staying, pictures may be forthcoming. It will be good for wifey to see something other than rows and rows of corn and beans.
Thanks for watching over things while we're gone. We're just a bit early for the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Dang it! [eyeroll here].
I'm going to hold you to the "no parties" thing.
As Thomas Jefferson said
in 1807:
I will refrain from using the apocryphal quote commonly attributed to Mark Twain, which is:
There are no records of Twain ever having said such a thing. The beautiful irony, of course, is that that misattribution is a perfect example of people reading the papers and being misinformed... Has a nice ring to it, though. Somebody Important should have said it.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
I see...
that the Twain quote misattribution was fact checked by Snopes who are master misinformationalists, so your assertion is spot on:
But I'll give them a bye on this one. They may actually be correct this time.
Thanks, my friend. Colorado must be beautiful this time of year. We're hoping to make it back up there this fall.
Colorado is
nice, at least when it isn't on fire. Unfortunately, our fire season is upon us, in spades. We've had something like 5 wildfires break out in the last week, and it'll be a few more days until any moisture shows up. There hasn't been much lightning recently to start them, so I assume that it is the standard cigarette-thrown-out-the-window thing... Or maybe the jilted-lover-burning-letters thing, like the Hayman fire (and the jilted lover was a park ranger, to boot). Probably manmade, anyway. People don't seem to realize that the state is flammable. I don't see that changing soon.
There's good info on the Twain situation from Elmira College's Center For Mark Twain Studies, which I believe far more than Snopes. They've done some decent legwork there... https://marktwainstudies.com/the-apocryphal-twain-if-you-dont-read-the-n...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Several years ago
a study (iirc by Pew) was released about how misinformed viewers and readers were by their primary information source. Fox viewers came in as the most uninformed, but the network viewers weren't too far behind them. NPR/PBS listener/viewers were the least misinformed. (perhaps I should try to find that study as I can't recall if it included newspapers and people that consume no news at all. All the changes at NPR/PBS beginning around 2005 must have increased the level the misinformed IQ of their subscribers.)
H.L. Mencken had NO idea....
.
Populations don’t like wars. They have to be lied into it.
That means we can be “truthed” into peace. — Julian Assange
Yup...
caveat emptor, buyer beware.
Well, good morning JtC, et. al. Please have yourselves a
wonderful trip to N. Illinois. Excellent,"This Land is Mine" clip. Ditto Mose Allison, one of those guys one tends to forget about.
Heh, siciopaths, and even psychopaths, tend to rise to positions of power and control, and also to desire them. This is true of shrinks too, did you not mention Bernays? To understand the mind is to gain the power to control and manipulate it, n'est ce pas?
ANd who, pray tell, made them, or declared them to be mad, or preyed upon them with assorted quackeries? Hmmmm, "I'm with you in Rockland", heh.
Yes minds on vacation can envision themselves uploaded intact and error free to a matrix of amedium to slowly, steadily go even more batshit insane than they already are, which is actually pretty bad. "Daddy, what is entropy?" Eons of continual degradation and the onset of the great boring unltra-uniform heat death. Ah yess, any day now it will be ours. Bwahahahaha.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Thanks old buddy...
back to the land of the black dirt of Illinois, as opposed to the red dirt and sand here in Southeast Texas. I can't believe anything grows here, but it does, with special preps.
The Ginsberg quote is apropos, just maybe shrinks have to have a touch of psychopathology to understand psychopaths, as you stated so eloquently:
"Mind Uploading" to what would probably be some kind of a cloud would be a hacker's dream. Imagine a hacker rewriting history in their own sense of the concept. Maybe that's what Yuval Harari meant by hacking human animals:
Heh!
And Dick Cheney shot someone in the face..
Priceless!
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
At this stage of the game...
the media could lionize Hitler, Genghis Khan, or Pol Pot and the majority of mindless voters would eat it up. That says a lot about the modern hoi polloi, no?
Heh, I could make a crude joke about Willie Brown and shots to the face, but I wont go there.
Everyone assumes she's going to be nominated.
It could happen, of course, but it's not like we can believe the Democrats when they say it's a done deed. After all, they're still pretending that Joe Biden is our President...
“One of the things I love about the American people is that we can hold many thoughts at once” - Kamala Harris
I assume you guys are driving?
.
.
Hopefully in a swift vehicle with good aircon. Hope construction isn't too severe.
That is about the same from RI to MI, usually break somewhere in Amish country PA.
Good luck!
Yep...
we're driving. Two day stops, both there and back. On the way up we'll stop for the night in Sikeston, Missouri, about a 10 hour drive, and then on to the destination, another 6 hour trip. On the way back we'll drive to Forrest City, Arkansas, about an 8 hour ride and then another 8 hour ride to get home.
There appears to be construction only in little Rock, Arkansas, but that's been going on for a long time and may never be done. We've been through it before and it isn't too bad.
A one way trip to where we're going is about 1,000 miles. I refuse to ride in the germ incubator of a plane.
Best wishes for your health and hope you get well soon.
Thanks Cap.
I had some thoughts on this
...several days ago when I saw one of the professional compliance programmers the government contracts to elicit compliant behavior from people in some kind of a psyche video. I was going to post it along with an article on the history of a "trial" that has gone on for years at GITMO and was adjourned for covid, and then resumed this year. At least one of these programmers from the old war on terror program was back to testify and he's so old now it appeared he had forgotten some of his testimony from 4 or 5 years earlier about when he threatened to slit one prisoner's throat. I'm not sure if this is what led to a recent plea bargain and Biden's promise to close GITMO.
Any way the consultant who did this video which I have lost now, mentioned the principles of eliciting compliant behavior which he said were time tested- focus, authority, tribe, and emotion. He gave one instance of its use at Abu Ghraib I think, and then just went off into a general theoretical discussion.
He made much of the electrical shocking experiment and other experiments where ordinary people were persuaded or induced without being forced in any way in an academic behavioral research situation to do things to other people they never met that were beyond the pale.
Sometimes I wonder if psyche people do more advertising and propaganda work in the US than actual counseling or clinical work. Or have advertising professionals just learned all the tricks. The intel agencies, DOD, and media seem to know all the tricks. The programming of behavior starts in infancy and continues throughout life, but sometimes it seems like people can abandon their conscience or memory in a very short time.
語必忠信 行必正直
Couldn't have said it...
better myself:
Pavlov, Milgram, and Chinese torture during the Korean War come to mind. To me, television is the prime mover of the behavioral programming, and we boomers should know since we've been exposed to it longer than any other generation. We we're the first generation to grow up watching the boobtube.
I wish you would have written that piece, I would have liked to view the video.
Thanks, as always, my friend.
Agreed, except that it seems
.
.
my memory has abandoned me, rather than vice versa.
Conscience is still in place, so that is a good thing.
Perhaps it is better to shield ones' mind from the programming.
Contrasts between the psycho and real are stark.
The Stanley Milgram experiments
and Zimbardo prison experiment demonstrated how easy it for people to become cruel. (Those experiments cannot be replicated due to the ethical standards that were later adopted.)
The Asch experiments demonstrated submission to group consensus -- even as the group was factually wrong (sort of like what exists in DC today).
Thanks Marie
For the details about the experiments and the ethical issues. I remember back in the early days of "taking the gloves off" as Cheney called it, the psychologists who participated, coached or trained US personnel involved in "enhanced interrogation" were chastised to some extent for the professional ethical breaches involved. It's not cleared to me that there was any formal sanction.
(on edit)
John Yoo was also a professional disgrace as an attorney at the time for trying to legally justify enhanced interrogation (torture).
語必忠信 行必正直
Thanks for the reminder,
but it's important to recognize the difference between investigative psychological experiments and what Jessup and Mitchell promulgated. The former experiments were done at universities in the decades after WWII. It was an effort to understand the enforcers of the Nazi and Japanese prison and concentration/death camps. How could humans become such monsters? (Setting aside the massive scale of the Nazi death camps, they weren't historically unique but in the minds of Americans at that time, they were seen as unique.) The results of their experiments are fascinating, but the stress levels imposed on the volunteer participants far exceeds the ethical standards adopted in the late 1970s/early 1980s.
What Jessup and Mitchell, both psychologists, were involved in was torture. Here's a good report on the consequences for them: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/17/544183178/psychologis... In summary. there were no consequences other than reputation among civilian psychologists. The American Psychological Assocation. much to the dismay of members, soft peddled the issue. The American Psychiatric Assocation took a strong stand against torture and "enhanced interrogations." Why the difference? Psychiatrists are first physicians/MD and subject to medical ethics.
Operational, practical considerations are that universities crank out far more psychologists than psychiatrists, and a major funding source for psych uni experimental and application contracts and employment of psychologists is the US military. CIA, DIA, and Department of veterans affairs. Can't trample on those relationships.
Prosecutions were limited to the military shlubs at Abu Ghraib. Unfair, but their crimes were captured in photos/videos and their punishments weren't that severe. The more important consideration in not pursuing prosecutions were the large number of government personnel and high ranking government and military officials involved in these war crimes. This did rise to the office of the POTUS. The summary Wikipedia entry on "enhanced interrogation" is well done and reasonably complete: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_interrogation_techniques
International travel for Cheney, Yoo, Jessup, and Mitchell should probably be avoided -- don't know that Cheney has traveled outside the US -- because warrants for their arrest under international criminal activities may exist in any number of countries. (GW Bush is probably safe because he travels with a large SS detail.)
The ghost of George Washington shed a tear over this violation of US traditions and laws. But no reason to think that this practice has ended; likely outsource to the private sector and cooperating foreign governments.
Thanks for elaborating and the links
I knew something about the SERE program.
This sentence below in the wikipedia entry is misleading and fails to distinguish training and real world programs correctly -
Maybe it's just an editing error. But who knows? I really don't quite understand how these wikipedia entries are composed. I had read quite about this subject matter at the time when it became an issue and followed it.
語必忠信 行必正直
Seen on the net
.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
Nine inch...
stilettos should help.
Shh, don't tell Biden
.
.
He may grow into his new role as VP?
Democracy the American way!
As an added bonus.
If TPTB get their way Kamala will be elected and the leading candidate to be her VP is Josh Shapiro.
After she laughs way out of office and is impeached we will have the first Jewish President.
The Zionists and AIPAC will sit back with Cheshire Cat smiles.
She may need...
a really good secret service detail, or paid personal security.
Friday!
Hi all, Hey JtC,
Hope it's all good all over out there! Edit to add: Great Mose Allison !!!
I like the clay analogy. I was taught one... our minds are like rubber bands, and once stretched by a new idea, they do not return to their exact original shape.
This is why the yearn to learn is so important. Keep stretching it.
I would also say, the person that wants the job the worst, is usually the worst person for the job. It is more often a trait of psycho/sociopath, than it is pure of intent. See politicians.
As some very cool dudes sung, "Free your mind and your ass will follow."
Re: travel... The place I missed and would like to go between E.TX and N. IL is the Ozarks. Some altitude, great birding and butterflying I hear, beautiful.
Can't wait to see pics! Y'all have a great trip!
That Edison Co. CIA State Dept. cutout is behind this Venezuela election coup BS. Same people behind the Bolivia, Georgia, Ukraine, and other election coups the U.S. planned and plotted. Yep, we are the baddies, again, as usual and always. What is only having one party that has real primaries???????
happy trails all!
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
Hey dysto...
I love Mose, his Mose Allison Sings album is a classic. He's written a lot of songs that were big hits by bands from the 60s, 70s.
Heh, I like your rubber band analogy, I stretched mine greatly back in the 60s, I'm sure you know what I mean.
I've been to the Ozarks, it is beautiful. But time constraints wont allow it this time, so we basically go up the Mississippi River route. In between Sikeston and St Louis there's some nice sandstone formations we have to drive through, but it's mostly rolling hills on that route.
I just reminded otc to pack her good camera, a cell phone wont cut it. This year the US Postal Service issued a block of 12 stamps featuring famous waterfalls in the US. The state park (Starved Rock) we'll be visiting has a waterfall that is included in that block. I ran out and got one when they were issued, I used to party and swim at that falls. Back when John Hartford was still alive he was a crew member and pilot on a steamboat, the Julia Belle Swain, that made cruise trips from Peoria, Il. to Starved Rock on the Illinois River and then he and other musicians would play at the historic lodge, that was always a great time.
Yeah, there seems to be an epidemic of questionable elections worldwide.
Thanks for stopping in and happy trails backatcha.