Science of the Spirit

The Psychorium: A needed new analytical tool in the study of pathocracy

The Evolved Psyche
The Circulation of Elites
Wed, 08 Dec 2021 17:44 UTC

As mentioned in an earlier post, I observed that an important scholar introducing the concept of pathocracy, and who introduced me to the importance of systemic incursion of psychopaths into politics, was Andrew Łobaczewski. In his book, Political Ponerology, on several occasions, he provided extended discussion of a phenomenon, for which he provides no precise name. Here are some of his observations.

He refers to times of extreme comfort, wherein an aversion to discomfort leads people to resist having to hear uncomfortable truths:

In such times, the capacity for logical and disciplined thought, born of necessity during difficult times, begins to fade. When communities lose the capacity for psychological reason and moral criticism, the processes of the generation of evil are intensified at every social scale, whether individual or macrosocial, until they give rise to "bad" times.

When a few generations' worth of "good-time" insouciance and increasing hysterics results in a societal deficit regarding psychological skill and moral criticism, this paves the way for pathological plotters, spellbinders, even more primitive impostors, and their organized systems of social and moral destruction to act and merge into the processes of the origination of evil. They are essential factors in its synthesis.

Comment: See also:

Political Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes

And check out SOTT radio's:

The ambiguity of the evidence - Stephen Meyer's 'The God Hypothesis'

Leonard Sax
Claremont Review of Books
Wed, 08 Dec 2021 19:50 UTC

The God Hypothesis should be considered as a possible explanation for our universe.

Friedrich Nietzsche was among the first philosophers to wrestle seriously with the implications of Charles Darwin's theories. In Daybreak (1881), Nietzsche considered the metaphysical consequences of Darwinian evolution:

Formerly one sought the feeling of the grandeur of man by pointing to his divine origin: this has now become a forbidden way, for at its portal stands the ape, together with other dreadful beasts, grinning knowingly as if to say: no further in this direction! One therefore now tries the opposite direction: the way mankind is going shall serve as proof of his grandeur and kinship with God. But this too is in vain!

Unlike modern atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, Nietzsche did not believe science could ever provide salvation or meaning. On the contrary, he prophesied in The Birth of Tragedy (1872) that scientists would eventually collide with undecidable questions, raising perplexities that the scientific method itself was unequipped to address.

Comment:

How to de-program Greta Thunberg

David Gosselin
The Canadian Patriot
Sat, 04 Dec 2021 02:57 UTC

Regardless of how many climate change doomsday stories are debunked, from showing billions of people misleading pictures of a skeletal polar bear hopelessly lurching through iceless lands to reporting about raging Californian wild fires set by radical arsonists, people have been given a story. Regardless of whether or not various natural catastrophes can actually be causally linked to CO2 levels, rather than merely correlatively linked, once we adopt a certain story as our own, the introduction of new information may or may not translate into a newly adapted story. It often doesn't. Regardless, the story we choose for ourselves serves as a map to help us navigate the world and how we choose to interpret our sense-perceptual experience.

At this point, we should state that this article is not about information, but about stories, and how we frame our stories using information. The stories we live our lives by and filter our experience through run much deeper than any amount of information. Information only sinks so deep into the mind. Stories seep into the "deep structures" of our psyche and soul. What's important here is how we use information to frame our story.

Comment: Even those who consider themselves awake and observant must constantly evaluate incoming information to discern truth or motive. Make it a way of life.

Brain surgery without a scalpel

University of Virginia
Mon, 22 Nov 2021 17:15 UTC

School of Medicine researchers have developed a noninvasive way to remove faulty brain circuits that could allow doctors to treat debilitating neurological diseases without the need for conventional brain surgery.

The UVA team, together with colleagues at Stanford University, indicate that the approach, if successfully translated to the operating room, could revolutionize the treatment of some of the most challenging and complex neurological diseases, including epilepsy, movement disorders and more. The approach uses low-intensity focused ultrasound waves combined with microbubbles to briefly penetrate the brain's natural defenses and allow the targeted delivery of a neurotoxin. This neurotoxin kills the culprit brain cells while sparing other healthy cells and preserving the surrounding brain architecture.

"This novel surgical strategy has the potential to supplant existing neurosurgical procedures used for the treatment of neurological disorders that don't respond to medication," said researcher Kevin S. Lee, PhD, of UVA's Departments of Neuroscience and Neurosurgery and the Center for Brain Immunology and Glia (BIG). "This unique approach eliminates the diseased brain cells, spares adjacent healthy cells and achieves these outcomes without even having to cut into the scalp."

Panpsychism is starting to push out naturalism as a scientific world view

Denyse O'Leary
Mind Matters
Mon, 29 Nov 2021 20:48 UTC

A key goal of naturalism/materialism has been to explain human consciousness away as "nothing but a pack of neurons." That can't work

Naturalism, often called "materialism," posits that nature is all there is. Panpsychism doesn't dispute that. But the panpsychist also thinks that consciousness is real — present in all nature (or all living nature) but especially developed in humans. Last Monday, writing about a classical atheist naturalist who was attacking panpsychism, I reflected on the difficulties the trend to panpsychism presents him.

The naturalist is hostile to the panpsychist because he assumes that human consciousness will, in due course, be explained away. It is either an illusion, or an aid to survival that evolved among early humans. Or perhaps it is a spandrel (in evolution theory, a useless accompaniment of useful traits).

In short, what we thought was our means of understanding the world is just another part of that world. It's not a place we can stand that gives us some insight.

Comment: Human beings have always instinctively understood the pervasive nature of consciousness in the world. From the attributions of qualities to a particular mountain or lake, to warriors naming their weapons, to the names given to ships or personal vehicles. The acknowledgment of that consciousness can be seen in the 'whisperers' of animal species, or even mechanics who 'have 'the knack' for machinery, which of course are a product of consciousness. The naturalists would have us live in a dreary world indeed.

Majority of adults in US believe in afterlife, Republicans much more than Democrats, poll shows

Sputnik
Tue, 23 Nov 2021 23:53 UTC

A majority of adults in the United States believe in some form of an afterlife, but Republicans believe in it with a greater frequency than their Democratic counterparts, a Pew Research Centre report said on Tuesday.

"A majority of Americans believe in both heaven and hell, including 74% of Republicans and 50% of Democrats. But about a third (35%) of Democrats say that they do not believe in either heaven or hell, compared with just 14% of Republicans who say this. In fact, when given the option to express belief in some sort of afterlife aside from either heaven or hell, a quarter of all Democrats say that they do not believe in any afterlife at all, which is much higher than the share of Republicans who express the same view (9%)," Pew Research Assistant Justin Nortey said in the report.

Five reasons why Dostoevsky is SO great

Valeria Paikova
Russia Beyond
Wed, 24 Mar 2021 00:01 UTC

A great thinker. A true believer. An intrepid explorer of the darkest corners of the human mind. The man who conceived the world's most famous literary equation - Crime and Punishment. One hundred and forty years after his death, Fyodor Dostoevsky is still a source of great national pride in Russia and a magnet for bibliophiles across the world.

Vasily Rozanov, one of the most influential Russian philosophers of the 20th century wrote in 1912:

"Dostoevsky is a horseman in the desert with a quiver of arrows. Blood drips where his arrow hits. Dostoevsky lives in us. His music will never die."

Here are the top five traits of Fyodor Dostoevsky's personality which made him so great.

Psychopaths and the managerial class: How homology in modus operandi risks pathocratic capture

The Circulation of Elites
Fri, 19 Nov 2021 10:16 UTC

Homology refers to a correspondence between two entities that share a common structure. What I'm arguing for here is a homology between the modus operandi of the current ruling managerial class and the manipulative, verbally fluent psychopath, which leaves the former - particularly the surplus elites of the ruling class - constantly vulnerable to pathocratic capture.1

The concept of pathocracy has been elaborated in an earlier post - those unfamiliar with that concept are suggested to learn about it, here. Additionally, no effort is made here to defend or support my claims about the ruling, managerial class. That has been done at length in my book, The Managerial Class on Trial. Those interested in evidence and elaboration of the claims made in this post should look there.

Briefly, over the last century and a half, Marx's bourgeois ruling class has been displace in the West by a new, managerial ruling class. The latter remain very much a class in Marx's sense, having a distinct relation to the mode of production. Like any other ruling class, they perpetuate an ideological superstructure that sustains their hegemony. What is unique about this managerial class, though, is that - being composed of symbol manipulators - they are uniquely verbally fluent and capable of psychological manipulation.

Comment: See also:

And check out SOTT radio's:

The brain uses bodily signals to regulate fear

Max Planck Society
Medical Xpress
Thu, 18 Nov 2021 00:00 UTC

© MPI of Neurobiology / Kuhl
The insular cortex in the brain processes information about the heart rate to keep fear in balance.

Fear is essential for survival, but must be well regulated to avoid harmful behaviors such as panic attacks or exaggerated risk taking. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology have now demonstrated in mice that the brain relies on the body's feedback to regulate fear. The brain's insular cortex strongly reacts to stimuli signaling danger. However, when the body freezes in response to fear, the heartbeat slows down, leading to attenuated insular cortex activity. Processing these opposing signals helps the insular cortex to keep fear in balance. The body's reactions are thus actively used to regulate emotions and are much more than passive emotional responses.

We usually experience fear as extremely unpleasant. Nevertheless, this emotion has a crucial function: It prevents us from engaging in overly risky behaviors. However, this only works if fear is kept within a healthy range. Excessively intense fear can severely impair our daily lives, as in the case of anxiety disorders or panic attacks. So how can fear be kept in balance? It seems obvious that bodily signals may play a crucial role, as fear causes noticeable changes in our bodies: The heart beats faster or breathing becomes shallower. However, how exactly the brain processes this information to ultimately regulate emotions like fear is still largely unknown.

Pre-emptive compliance versus "It will only happen when it has happened"

Bruce Charlton
charltonteaching.blogspot.com
Mon, 08 Nov 2021 00:00 UTC

In my time working in the UK universities and National Health Service - these functions were brought under managerial control, and integrated into The System which (since early 2020) is now global.

The almost complete surrender of power by academics and doctors happened almost entirely without coercion. Why?

Essentially, deeply, due to the lack of motivation and courage from living as godless-expedient hedonists (i.e. regarding mortal life as wholly about 'utility'), on the basic of incoherent (increasingly inverted) Leftist values.

Lacking any positive transcendent values (truth, beauty, virtue, coherence...); modern people, especially Westerners, are easier to control than any group I have heard of throughout history.

But how did this control operate proximately? The answer could be termed pre-emptive compliance.

The management (whether national or local) would announce what was going to happen - some new scheme to strip autonomy from academics and subordinate teaching, research, scholarship under administrative control; or some new, extra, unpaid and harmful bureaucratic tasks...

The authors of this piece of crap "language guide" are in fact masochists who unconsciously call for someone to come and punch them in the face...

dom38

Blinken Delays US Response to Russia [Link] #astrology

Javed

I have here a sketch I drew from life of one of my beloved kitties. I like to believe it's better than this one: [Link] I dated a girl who won the...

Rowan Cocoan

There is a 1953 French film/drama on this very subject. Certainly worth watching, I think. This link is the best I can do at short notice, sorry....

Colinb

WAKE UP! You're Literally Under A Spell | Max Igan [Link]

Dragnarr77

Science of the Spirit

The Psychorium: A needed new analytical tool in the study of pathocracy

The ambiguity of the evidence - Stephen Meyer's 'The God Hypothesis'

How to de-program Greta Thunberg

Brain surgery without a scalpel

Panpsychism is starting to push out naturalism as a scientific world view

Majority of adults in US believe in afterlife, Republicans much more than Democrats, poll shows

Five reasons why Dostoevsky is SO great

Psychopaths and the managerial class: How homology in modus operandi risks pathocratic capture

The brain uses bodily signals to regulate fear

Pre-emptive compliance versus "It will only happen when it has happened"

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