TABLE 1: Elements of Dialogue 5 as Organized Below

LINKS recipe for ego's devotion to power and control summary review of factors affecting the abuse of power how all pathologies of power originate in primal fear the crucial role and functions of regulation and deregulation the seeds of the power monger, the authoritarian profile low HIP as an aggravating condition for the abuse of power Milgram's obedience to authority: role of the "little people" enforcers as critical players in fascistic governance

ethical consciousness as an estimator for the abuse of power SUMMARY REVIEW of OT/MP's context for assessing personal power how abusive use of power ultimately depends on force applications of patterns of power and control in society example of political abuse of power by right wing politicians Tracking the flow of personal power in complex systems human systems as power amplifiers and their blocking gates 10 levels of social power amplifiers, the hierarchy of controlling gates

"Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour your judgment has come..."
[Read complete awesome quote that is relevant for today:  Rev 18:10-23]  
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As we delve into the lowest pits of the human ego, I ask you to always remember that the reason we do this is solely for the purpose of understanding our enemy, an inflamed but invisible out of control ego that consumes the leadership of this nation.  We do this to motivate us, and to raise and focus our C/consciousness to understand the ego's devotion to material power, force, and control.   The most threatening danger to the ego's owner is that the owner is almost always oblivious to the presence of this fatal defect, and the ruination it can and is bringing to his//her/its life. 

A Spiritual (not Religious) awakening is the only tool that will reliably and permanently guide us how to bring the threat of an inflamed and cancerous ego under control. 

That solution is found in the Power of an awakened Spiritual Consciousness.  Beginning with you, an individual, this transformation must be caused to occur within the living systems of which you are a part, and within and among which you interact.   This must soon occur on a scale and scope that eventually involves that critical mass of humanity required for us to save ourselves. [Revisit Sub Dialogue 1:  "Cones of Consciousness" re the current vs required states of national C/consciousness essential for our survival] The MP is designed to be a common "song sheet" from which various interests can coordinate nationwide efforts at the required C/consciousness raising.

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Mystical Protagonist:  Now we focus on the pathologies of power and control as created and directed by our ego driven intellect.  Now here is a topic that is near and dear to each of us, and for some much more than others.  Some have sacrificed their eternal Soul to pursue this greatest ego illusion of all.  And from our prior dialogues, what do you now suspect that might be?

InQuiring Mind:   That has to be the ego's craving for power and control, and its obliviousness to the three traps of mind that block or distort our Spiritual Consciousness.   This block permits the ego to mindlessly control one's values and actions. I am interested to see how these three traps of mind we discussed in dialogues two through four (agendas, communication, and HIP) conspire to play this out.  You promised to discuss power and control as its own topic during this dialogue. 

I assume we are at greater risk to this evil when we are unable to recognize the dangers inherent in the ego and its vulnerability to the three traps of the mind.  I don't fully understand how the problems created by the three traps of the intellect actually combine to create what you have called the power mongers and those that support them.

P:  Yes!  In this Dialogue I shall develop the dynamics of personal power and how personal power networks are used to amplify and secure one's power base.  Always bear in mind that we will not be concerned with the reasonable need for power and control required to insure that we can survive in the competitive world that has been created for us.  We will focus on the abuse of that power and the harm created for others when that pathology is pursued.  

You will learn that money must no longer be evaluated solely as a medium of exchange, but that  money = power, and that corporations, institutions, and the institutions of government must be recognized for what they really are: as power amplifiers.  Keep these definitions in mind as we proceed.

Q: The fear is energized in the ego agendas and affects the filtering that goes in in the communication and HIP filters. [DSE described below]

P:  Correct.  This lust arises to serve an inflamed ego's need to resolve various kinds of innate fear.  This fear manifests as concerns for safety, identity, and affirmation, and for the raw satisfaction of routinely exploiting one's power for its own sake. This lust energizes one's natural fear of uncertainty, amplified by the level of perceived threat and the added fear of loss of control.  The fearful and power oriented pathological ego inspires distrust of all others who do not unconditionally and slavishly support the ego needs of a power monger. 

Q: How pervasive is this need for personal power and control, especially when it creates conflict?

"[Anything which] is a living and not a dying body... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant - not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power... 'Exploitation'... belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will to life."
Frederich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, s.259, Walter Kaufmann trans..

"My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (--its will to power:) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement ("union") with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on--"  Frederich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, s.636, Walter Kaufmann trans.. [source]

Study Point 5-2:
P:  Yes.  Now let us begin to open your C/consciousness of the dynamics of raw personal and political power.  The pathologies of personal power, and its extension through coalitions and larger human systems must be understood before they can be healed  (Review and understand the definition of "System(s)" as used in the MP.)  

A system's capacty to fulfill and protect its own agendas, and those of mutually interdependent systems, depends in part upon the the presence and viability of reasonable constraints, e.g., regulation.  Since the power mongers of corporate America (and western societes) pathologically opposes regulation of any kind at any level, they have widely succeeded in mostly suppressing it in America by means of the US Congress which corporate power owns and operates.  Please review the following allegory that demonstrates the essential need for regulation in any human system, and the costs to that system if that regulation is compromised or defeated:
...
The Man Who "Freed" His Brain
(and please include the interpretation which follows the parable)

[Return from Parable]

Q: Wow!  That guy really did a job on himself.  So what is your point?  I'm not anxious to "free my brain."

P:  True.  But remember in applying the Mystical Paradigm we always think in Holistic or systems terms.  Are you aware of what is now actually happening at the level of organizations (corporations, government) across our society? Would you allow yourself to be hired for a salary ten times your next best offer, but where you must use your skill to lobby against corporate regulation and to promote corporate deregulation?   There are thousands of lobbyists who, in their abject ignorance and naivety, have already made that Faustian choice.

The primary issue in this story pertains to the necessity of regulation to insure the health of any system and its related systems.  Within the elected government there currently exists a free for all battle, directed by the corporate power brokers, to unburden their companies from any responsibility to comply with any meaningful oversight and regulation.  They recite the clarion call, the anthem, the evil myth, that free and unregulated competition is an unconditional good.

But the implications of their strategy for our society and for insuring that our corporations serve within benign and stable international systems, are identical in principle to that which destroyed the man who freed his brain.   We are only beginning to feel the destructive impact of the current state of inadequate regulatory forces on our corporations and international conglomerates.   They already own our government and its institutions.  Because of the corporate ownership and control of the mainstream media, the public has been effectively sealed off from even the awareness of this cancer, let alone have meaningful influence and access to control it.  

Q: I recall the dynamics of the baboon society in our Agendas Dialogue. [recall allegory]  So, is it at that primal biological level where the problem begins?

P: Yes.  In the study of human behavior, the role of aggression and dominance that can be studied across different species of animal life.  This interest has created the field of sociobiology which relates aspects of this behavior in lower order creatures to human behavior. [See especially E.O. Wilson, 1975]  Male executives show many similarities to lower primate male behavior as they express their dominance in various settings under differing conditions. [evidence] This pattern is almost never visible in and of itself to the naive observer.  It masks its presence behind a facade of seductive "civilized" behaviors designed to validate one's social acceptability and status.  But with the slow but steady advance of "civilization," new definitions are being invented for what it means to be masculine.  These inventions surpasses the ancient primal roles of the primal alpha defenders and their direct and immediate use of physical aggression. [evidence]

Most notably today, western predatory capitalism mindlessly nourishes the cult of competition as an unqualified good.  This has helped to create an obsession to remove any regulation that might hold the system accountable for its actions if they adversely and unfairly affect any other system.  In militant Islam, the obsession to destroy all other cultures and non believers is given justification by select paragraphs in The Holy Qur'An.  But the real motive is FEAR.

Militant Moslems fear being overcome, or fear having their religious roots discredited, removed or replaced.  This is the common root of all religious persecution regardless of faith group.  These sectarian groups that harm others have not reached a level of Spiritual Consciousness that can validate their beliefs independent of external validating sources and conditions. Compliance is a form of validation. This is why all fundamentalists demand that their members accept their scriptures as inerrant, even though these verses of been interpreted for them by generations of human filters, scholars, preachers and teachers.  The inner Source of Spiritual Truth, the only place Truth can be found, cannot inform their impoverished intellectual consciousness.

Like the Christian clergy of the dark ages, the Islamic Imam (priest), and the fundamentalist pastor are the sole ego source that directs all actions of their faithful.  Their fear demands that this control must include and define their entire way of life.  Truly, here is one giant ego trip.  Instead of nurturing the Spiritual growth of their members, the Imam's act from an obsession to take over and control the world and use their minions to destroy any threat.  The greater their control, the more ruthless and out of control become their actions.  This same perverse dynamic is clearly visible in the tendencies of fundamentalist Christianity.

Q:  I recall that betrayal from our Introductory Dialogue.  I sense that potential in some of the fundamentalist rants I have heard.  The evidence of that dynamic is clearly evident in the extreme in the values and actions expressed by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

P: We have a lesson played out before us in the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan during the 1990s. Their secular counterpart is found in the dominance of Saddam Hussein and his family's exploitation of their absolute control over Iraq. This scale and scope of the resulting abuse has been well documented with the demise of Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay and the capture and execution of Saddam.  Now there is a fight to the death by their Suni followers with the Shia and other sects who are determined to take their place in the current power vacuum.  

American society is now caught up in this mess, thanks to the appalling ignorance and arrogance of the Bush-Cheney administration.  A civil war is the only solution accessible to the Iraqi's, and it must completely exhaust itself with or without the presence of US troops in Iraq who have been forced to accept the losing role of referee.  Only an awakened Spiritual Consciousness can hope to moderate, remove, and bring under control this ego tendency to mindlessly "stay the course" to the point, when under extreme duress, to self-immolate.

Q: Yeah, regardless of justification, the general rule of the ego which I've heard many times already is, "Do unto others before they do you!"

P: So I suggest that you begin to practice giving considerable meditative thought to your experience of the headlines and observe how the FEAR energizes this "civilized minuet" as seen in the strategies and tactics applied by the controllers of various concrete (low HIP) human systems.  The predictable re forced to resort to concrete HIP when they are unable to relate to, and thus cannot cope with their foundation problem of FEAR. [Recall the three conditions of not knowing what you don't know from Part 1 of the Introductory Dialogue.]

Q:   Will this range from the brute force actions of Spiritually empty societies and movements, to elegant deceptions and manipulation by those entities that can mask their primal agendas with some form of approved civilized veneer?

P: Yes.   In fact, that is what we have in the USA today.

P:  I am not speaking against capitalism.  I am speaking against predatory capitalism.  The dynamics of capitalism, communism, socialism, populism, and progressivism each have positive and negative characteristics.  Rise above your low HIP.  See and accept complexity for what it is.  Do not resist it. Revel in it.  You'll find it's a real trip. As has been said, "The Truth will set you free." And likewise, "The Truth" keeps you safe, healthy, wealthy, and wise!  But "The Truth" is usually buried in complexity and therefore, is deiend to the right wing low HIP concrete intellect. 

Remember to examine these conditions to detect their root in the ego's agendas, you must avoid communication traps, and apply a fully empowered abstract HIP.  Remember to look for semantic traps that are hidden in conceptual complexity.  We must cleanse the negative from any "ism" in order to remain focused on applied Spiritual Principles as we energize its positive dimensions.

By using our Spiritually grounded Mystical Paradigm, look for the positive qualities of any political or social "ism," and remove or control the negative dimensions.  You will find that the optimum "ism" for humanity is going to be a hybrid of what are now competing systems. But because of society's absent Spiritual Consciousness, this hybrid can't even be recognized, let alone developed and implemented.

Q: So I will at least stay focused on the Reality of corporate abuse that escapes into the headlines.

P: We already have at the outset of the 21st Century, major examples of profound corporate abuse.  I refer to the collapse of Enron, Inc., WorldCom, and other corporate betrayals of their workers, suppliers, and stockholders that we discusses in our introductory dialogue. [reference/review]

This is only the tip of an enormous iceberg of corporate waste, fraud, and abuse. We find presented in the news, evidence of the culpability of mostly right wing legislatures who scramble to protect their culpability by denying or obfuscating their association with the guilty such as  Enron, Worldcom (MCI), Anderson accounting, and other corporate criminals.  But some populist counter movements who are growing in public attention and interest have their own sordid truth, and they are prepared to commit political adultery in principle by placing themselves in bed with this evil. The details are sad as well as sordid.

[Ross Perot (Reform Party presidential candidate) is described] "...as an 'Antigovernment patriot, antiunion populist, antimanagement capitalist, loyal boss who sold out twice to GM, [and] billionaire defender of the underdog.  ' Perot’s gadfly persona worked in tandem with his populist rhetoric pitting 'the people' against the entrenched elites. He also encouraged, in a mild, often implicit, way, the early stirrings of nationalist xenophobia as an antidote to globalization by multinational corporations. Perot racked up close to 20 million votes in the three-way race where he garnered almost 19 percent of the total. But columnist Michael Kelly nailed down the troubling aspects of the candidate when he called Perot "an example of the melding of populism and the paranoid style, of legitimate critic and crackpot, of giving voice to valid grievances and hysterical fears." [Berlet & Lyons, 2000, Gilford Pub. excerpt]

As our discussion proceeds, remember that the normal desire for power and control is necessary and legitimate for each of us (and every living system) to serve basic needs.  That by itself, like money, is not evil.  It is the love of, and obsession with it that becomes evil.  Therefore, in the absence of Spiritual Consciousness one is especially vulnerable to ego errors originating from the three traps of the mind.  The athlete in this story was consumed by the needs of his ego for ascendancy and aggrandizement.  Then the legitimate quest for reasonable levels of power and control became transformed into an ego driven greed, a lust for power and control for its own sake.

Now in each of our lives, even as children, we are getting the messages that our society steadily sends us by demonstrating the values and principles of its members in behavior. We find we are making choices based on those messages, most of which is subliminal.  We make these choices either by design or by default.  In the following parable, try to remember how any of these outlaws might have influenced the values that educated you to the point where you arrived at my door?
...
The Four Outlaws

[Return from Parable]

Q: So are you setting me up to accept this romantic but silly idea, in practical terms, that love will save the world?

P: Spiritual Love is far from an idealized, "romantic" or "silly" idea.  You will discover that the Love I will speak of is not in the least romantic. At your age this may be bad news, but I trust that you will hang in there long enough to understand why in fact that is very good news for humanity.  But now let us see how, in the absence of Spiritual Love, the power mongers are created in response to the dominance of force, cunning, and greed which is manifest in the predatory capitalist population.

The seeds of the power mongers lie in nurturing the uncontrolled expression of their primal ego agendas which are further empowered by an impoverished communication capacity, and low levels of HIP competence.  The soil that nurtures these seeds in  a power monger is composed of widespread personality defects set in the context of Spiritual emptiness, social neglect, or a coercive childhood.  When these evil seeds take root, they flourish under the right conditions as prejudice and bigotry.  In mid 20th century, a scholar by the name of Adorno, with his colleagues, systematically explored the roots of human evil that led to the rise of the power mongers who initiated W.W.II. [Hitler, Tojo. Mussolini and their henchmen] These men had just delivered the holocaust to the world.

Q: I remember something about Adorno in school, something about studies of the fascistic mentality. Will this discussion empower me to understand militant Islam?

P: Yes, and  in general for any form of  militant "ism," including predatory capitalism, any movement that seeks to exploit or do violence to any other group by thoughts, words, or deeds, and regardless whether those deeds are brutal or subtle.

P: Immediately following World War II which gave us the atrocities associated with the Nazi's and their death camps, a number of scholars undertook to learn and explain more about the capacity of humanity to commit such horrors.  The now classic work of Adorno, et al and his colleagues were among the first to suggest that a certain pattern of socializing influences tended to promote prejudice with its link to fascism.   They discovered specific family and community conditions that influences a child in a way that creates an intense, fear motivated desire to control others, especially those who become identified as "out group" members.  His work is an example of the impact of minimal HIP (concrete HIP as related to Low Spiritual Consciousness.)  David Hawkins [1995] would define their fascistic C/consciousness to lie near the bottom of his consciousness energy scale (a score of less than 100.)

Adorno's evidence suggests that,
(1) where there is an impoverished Spiritual environment during the formative years of a child, and
(2) where punitive stress and rejection are consistently present among adult authority figures, there is a tendency for children to organize themselves into protective coalitions, groups, and finally, as gangs.  These collectivities tend to associate with any group dedicated to maintaining isolation from the larger punishing, threatening, and thus feared social order.  Then they intellectually attach to and identify with self serving abstract ideals that celebrate their ego grounded and bounded values (e.g., an Aryan Nation.)

Q: I recall that these atrocities were focused on what the Nazis defined as out groups that allegedly threatened their Aryian purity. For example the Jews, Poles, southern European gypsies, and some other target groups during the period leading to W.W.II.

P: Yes.  But in spite of  the sacrifices of western nations to overcome the Nazi mentality, after World War II, we see the identical neo-Nazi behavior attempting to flourish in Europe and America during the late nineties.  There were similar nationalistic excesses in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in numbers of third world African nations, e.g., Liberia, Zambia, and Somalia.  Now, Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network have reached out from the bowels of impoverished third world Islamic nations to strike America in its capitalist heart.

Adorno found that, even in western societies including the United States, the following decision making profiles are consistent with a person having an "authoritarian personality." The authoritarian personality provides the prototype of a power monger. This profile happens to be a by-product of a chronic Low HIP, punitive, and/or rejecting childhood outside the constant influence of  a Loving Spiritual Consciousness.

Q: So what defines the characteristics of a candidate to become an authoritarian personality as roots of the power monger?

P:  To begin with a reminder. please also notice that the following list illustrates a problem of inadequate Spiritual Consciousness, not one of inadequate intelligence.

This generalized authoritarian profile is defined as exhibiting most of the following eight conditions:

 1. Tendency to stereotype,
 2. Rigid adherence to middle class values and prejudice of USA in 1950, (similar to those espoused by right wing religionists and politicians today,)
 3. Regard for one's own group as morally pure compared to any defined "out group" who by definition is morally impure,
 4. Opposition to visible expressions of out-group sexuality and sensuality (a primal predictor of potency to continue the genetic line) in the out-group. This is an emergent theme today under the right wing effort to control sexual life styles, and to roll back abortion rights and other affirmative action gains of the last 20 years,
 5. Obsession for dominance and power as its own end.  This is evident in the unprincipled waffling on vote getting values solely to win national, state, and local political elections,
 6. Fear of moral contamination by the "out-groups" and their advocates and defenders,
 7. Fear of being overwhelmed and victimized, and
 8. The desire to erect protective social barriers in order to maintain the in-group in isolation so as to protect their moral "purity," and to dominate, control or eliminate all competing out-groups.

Q: I'm beginning to make some connections to some of the reasons for your concern.  I have noticed that these right wing folks you describe tend not to invest in a serious intellectual defense of their views.  They are strictly tactically minded, and their goal is to hurt their opposition by any workable tactic.

P: As you may remember, I have said that, any time they can, right wing extremists always "go for the groin."

Q: Yes, the "groinicks!" [definition] I saw that tendency in the right wing attacks on Bill Clinton during his presidency. Now did to 2004 Presidential Candidate John Kerry by distorting his most honorable war record in Vietnam.  I mean the swift bot sliming of his military record.

Therefore their primitive consciousness as you call it, screens out the "hurtful" implications of their goals on others.  Interesting, because they have been hurt themselves, they gang up to inflict hurt on innocent others, even the same hurt they have most resented when applied to themselves.  And I know from the stuff I've seen on the tube that they do it in the name of some abstract justification such as patriotism, Allah, or Jesus, and some even proclaim themselves to reflect the purity of a perfect Christianity.

P: Their reality is defined by a limited number of Necker Cube dimensions in their intellectual consciousness. Notice that Adorno's scholars examined the tendency toward "ethnocentrism"  [blind devotion to one's own ethnic, national, or core group] as an indicator of authoritarianism. They also found that there was an inverse relationship between having higher intelligence and more education to having an authoritarian personality.

Q:  You means the less intelligence and education, the more likely to be authoritarian.

P: Yes. This relationship further supports my assertion that the application of one's intelligence is limited by their field of consciousness, and that the greatest danger to society is person of high intelligence but empowered by only a meager scale of Spiritual Consciousness.

Q: Then C/consciousness trumps intelligence!

Let me think.  I would assess this difference by means of a Spiritual Consciousness variable.  "Ethnocentrism" in the Mystical Paradigm is an "Ego" or self-serving perception that is projected as the extensions of one's self to the exclusion of others.  This creates the essential we-they condition that is required to begin the process of objectification and depersonalization of any out group or person.  Correct?

P: Exactly.  Their focus can be on any identity system which could be a family (clan,) group (gang,) organization, entire ethnic collection (Islam,) or as as a sub culture of nationalism as we saw in Iraq (e.g., Baathists, Sunni Muslim Kurds, the southern Shiite Arabs.) We still find Islamic ethnic elements politically competing today in Malaysia.  These low HIP ethnocentric individuals can easily define his/her simplified universe of "in" persons and "out" persons and behave appropriately toward them, and toward their coalitions and groups.

Q: Please clarify what "in" and "out" means.  Is that the same as we-they?

P: The "out" persons to any group are those persons, or definable groups of persons, who become stereotyped and labeled by their ethnicity, religious, economic, or other visible status. These "out" persons or groups are denied access to or membership in the "in" group solely for those ethnic, religious, economic or other reasons. Any usable reason will serve, valid or otherwise.  So the stereotyped out-group becomes "they" and the members of the accepted in-group become "we."

"In" is defined as those who pass whatever litmus tests the dominant group say is required.   The "out" group is then systematically depersonalized, objectified, excluded, and rejected.  After the exclusionary processes are completed, then oppression quickly follows.  After any such "objects" are defined as an out-group, then the in-group can impose any bestial atrocity with impunity upon those placed in the out group.  These are the kinds of actions that define so much of the worst of human evil.

Q: Could you offer some additional examples?

P: For example, I note that within 50 years after the holocaust of World War II, there occurred the ethnic cleansing of the Muslim population in Bosnia-Herzegovina by the Christian Serbians.  This evil was initially condoned and tolerated by not only the entire United Nations community, but by the same European community that had recently suffered the two world wars!  Scripture may claim that the sins of the parents will be visited upon the children, but it also appears true that the even the most punishing kinds of learning suffered by the parents will be lost upon the very next generation of children. This is frightening support for my claim that children mostly learn from what they are shown, not what they are told or taught. Here is the price of absent or diminished Spiritual Consciousness.

Those who denied help to the Muslim victims being persecuted by the authorities in Serbia offered only the most feeble, embarrassing, and self-serving justifications for their negligent hostility.  No Spiritually awakened person (or living system of any complexity) would be capable of tolerating such actions let alone acting as agents to perpetrate them.  The Spiritually awakened of that era are counted among those handful of persons who risked their lives to shelter members of the out-group.  We find expressed the noblest of human C/consciousness expressing in the midst of the most depraved.  Hence the indicators or measures of the capacity to do harm are predicted to be inversely related to any valid measures of Spiritual Consciousness.  Adorno and his colleagues found that:

"Ethnocentrism is based on a pervasive and rigid in group-out group distinction; it involves stereotyped imagery and hostile attitudes regarding out groups, stereotyped positive imagery and submissive attitudes regarding in groups, and a hierarchical [dominance order or pecking order] authoritarian view of group interaction in which in groups are rightly dominant, out groups subordinate." [p 150, brackets added]

P: Adorno and his colleagues also found a slight relationship between political conservatism and ethnocentrism, and political liberalism and anti ethnocentrism (p-207).  As I have already said, a pox on both their houses. Extremism is ugly (low consciousness) whether liberal or conservative.

Q: You mentioned several times that upbringing is a factor.  So how does this relate to how a child is raised?

P: Most significantly Adorno found that the prejudiced persons in their study tended to report the following family conditions:

relatively harsh and more threatening discipline,
clearly defined roles regarding dominance and submission compared to egalitarian (negotiated) practices, and
fearful subservience to parental (authoritarian) demands.

Thus those bigoted and prejudiced low consciousness types tend to develop an extrinsic orientation, i.e., being obsessively reactive to external conditions believed to affect them.  Research on human Spirituality has demonstrated that persons holding an intrinsic orientation to religious values tends to be more Spiritual, and physically and emotionally healthier and better adjusted in coping with the world. [evidence] Thus an intrinsic orientation empowers a person to act from internal criteria that transcends the need to be reactive to the effects of external conditions or forces.  OT/MP asserts that an intrinsic orientation toward empowerment is always more conducive to the emergence of Spiritual Consciousness.  Adorno, et al states an observation describing the effect of extrinsic orientation to emphasize the obligation of duty, not love:

"Faithful execution of prescribed roles and exchange of duties and obligations is, in the family of the prejudiced, often given preference over the exchange of free flowing affection." (P- 386)

P: Yes. Adorno's group found that persons raised with prejudice, and with incipient resentment and hostility toward their own parents (whom children cannot normally overpower) created in them the need to generalize and project their suppressed anger onto all external authority. Thus there is a tendency for such person to become members of gangs, revolutionary movements, and destructive action groups with right wing (fascistic) leanings, or those organized to deliberately frustrate the laws of the dominant in-group or government authorities (as is the case with the current "survivalist" (militia) movements.)

Study Point 5-5:
Q: So what is the recipe for raising a reasoning and rational kind of person?

P: Persons with lower tendencies toward prejudice and authoritarianism tended to be raised in families were obedience for its own sake was de-emphasized. There was less concern about social status, less willingness to accept socially unacceptable behavior, but to respond with guidance and support rather than condemnation and punishment. When persons are raised in the loveless homes that produce authoritarian children, investigators find that those children conduct an unsuccessful life long search for the love they never found within their parents.

Q: So the message here is to raise kids with love.  Sounds like a cliché to me.

P:  Nevertheless, in the context of the Principles of OT/MP, the Adorno findings suggest that it is not surprising to find that children raised with nurturing love and acceptance tended to be:

less prejudiced,
less ethnocentric,
more open to influence from outside information,
more stable, and
more accepting and loving in their relationships with others.

Q: I clearly recall the disastrous effects of PTSD that creates low HIP in seriously abused children that you introduced in our HIP dialogue. [revisit]  So I guess that now this is where I get the message that religion can be an answer to these problems of authoritarian children.

P:  No!  Religion can create its own abuse, and regardless of faith group, as its history clearly documents.  Religious influences can be either a blessing or a curse.  Many children raised in families with authoritarian religious practices, and without love, are as likely to become far more dangerous to society than a child raised outside of any religious influences. It is not the religion but the influence and modeling of a vibrant Spiritual Consciousness that raises loving and compassionate children. These practices create the children who are likely to become effective in life and to use their lives to serve others in meaningful ways.

Q: So there are plenty of examples of both kinds to find today.

P: The problem is, it takes only a few of these problem types to endanger our entire society. We can understand this from the disastrous results of a handful of Spiritually impoverished terrorists within our boarders.  One can come to understand, and see in the world today, how the pernicious effects of low levels of HIP (low consciousness potential) are combined with primal dominance agendas.  These inflame a narcissistic ego's orientation to the world through the medium of language, e.g., use of simplistic epithets, "buzz" words, and irrational and indefensible stereotyping and generalizations.

Low HIP communication statements are frequently heard in right wing extremist exposition,  Words and phrases such as: "absolutely" the best (or  worst,) "without a doubt" (statement of abstract facts,)  "Clearly," "self evident," "You may be absolutely certain that..."  "best," "worst," "uncompromising." "totally" true (or false.) and so on.

Q: You mean that anybody who uses these words is a right wing extremist?

P:  Not just using them, but that they habitually use these words and phrases.  Everybody sometimes uses these word and phrases appropriately.  But extremists use these words and phrases repeatedly,, almost as a mantra.  Observe them among the right wing pundits you will find on the TV news analysis interviews. As you listen you come to undersigned there is no middle ground, no wiggle room, not possibility that they might err, no place for compromise.

Q: Now I understand.  These folks are limited to work within a short stack of conceptual necker cubes that they furiously work to assuage their fear, find safety in converts, and to confound the out-group members.  They are oblivious to the possible existence of that large stack of necker cubes.  Its not in their consciousness.  Their intellect, no matter how great, cannot grasp it.  Consistency of their claims with any reference to an absolute Truth is not relevant.

Study Point 5-6:

P: Then you begin to understand that, for such an in-group, these kinds of opposing positions are not just different, but are not connected to any common conceptual frame of reference an out-group may perceive.  Worse, they are more likely to be defective, debased, and intolerable.   Hence what is lost to reason is made up for by political passion and emotional fervor.

You come to understand that in the mind of the extremist, the owners of opposing positions are not just of a different mind, but they are defective, defined as out-persons, non-persons, out-group members, are disallowed in the world, and are only worthy of contempt. In the extreme, out-groups are worthy of being done away with.  Similar patterns, varying in scale of intensity, can be found in various contemporary settings: e.g., in:

family conflict,
conflict over children during custody disputes
extremist politics and debating religious issues,
the Arab-Israeli and other international and intra-national conflict over national turf,
academic debates over ponderous but insignificant issues of relevance to academic credibility,
employee vs management conflict, and indeed,
ecological and almost any other area of human conflict.

Q: So if I serve on a city council, and half the council are members of the American Foreign Legion, and if a stranger comes in as a consultant to present some position on a conflicted issue, and if he notes up front that he is a member of the American Legion in another state, he will have instant unconditional credibility with his counterparts sitting on the council.

P: Most likely.

Q: Now I understand how playing the game with half a deck, as you said, can be costly to the innocent as well as the afflicted.  Right?

P: Right.  Now let me tell you this brief allegorical story. It demonstrates the ultimate fate of a human system when the unchained greed of a subsystem is permitted to afflict the larger system because there is insufficient regulatory power to oppose it.

The Entrepreneurial Liver

[Return from Parable]

Q:  You showed me a different version of the same principle that insured the doom of The Man who Freed his Brain.  But I gather you suggest that just as the body is a system of interdependent parts or subsystems, then the cancer that consumed the liver and thus killed the body is related to counterpart predatory systems in the "body" of our society.

P: Correct, especially those unregulated corporate entities that attach themselves to the political processes of a nation. The ultimate fate of those who win the game of unchained power and control is their own death.

Q: And I now understand that such a message is not in their consciousness.  Unfortunately, they bring down the entire suprasystem with themselves.  So the unregulated growth of the liver kills the body, and the unregulated growth of corporations or conglomerates kill the society.

P: Yes, or more likely a coalition of corporations or conglomerates as may be embodied in a surrogate political party or movement.  I just don't mean independent growth, but the kind of growth that takes over the functional capacities of adjacent systems, whether they compete or not. Alas, the actual working out of the death of a society is far more subtle, complex, extended, and beyond the consciousness of most of our leaders to even detect it, let alone understand it.

Like prior to the immanent collapse of a bridge or other structure, its defects are invisible to most observers until the collapse begins.  Then it is too late. They only experience the symptomatic effects of the rot, and then they strike out in futility at the visible symptoms, and they begin to look for scapegoats.  In this search they of course exclude themselves.  They are not capable of the insight revealed by Pogo, the early 20th century cartoon character, who observed, "We have met the enemy, and they is us."

Q:  How does that cancerous dynamic work in more complex human systems than the body?

P: In subtle ways.  In that context, I now want to share with you an awesome dynamic that represents one of the greatest threats to our society and to humanity.  That is:

Q: Really?  Is that kind of person sometimes referred to as a "dupe?"

P: Yes, and a significant majority of Americans are vulnerable to be enlisted as members of that class.

Q: Come on!  You mean to tell me that a majority of Americans could become collaborators and dupes for the likes of the Nazis or Stalinist type communists?

P: Yes, and worse.  In May of 2004, a great furor arose over the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. People everywhere asked in dismay, "How could Americans do such a thing?"  The short answer is that we can and we do, and will will.  Further there is growing evidence of right wing orchestrated murders of liberal politicians and advocates when they have a chance to derail right wings causes and elections. [Evidence]   So now hear me out.

"Obedience to Authority" [Milgram, 1974 ] How low consciousness creates the capacity for "normal" people to commit  even the severest cruelties upon each other

P: Now there are extensive scientifically derived findings that support the claims I am about to make, and they will amaze any who are unaware of them. The concept of low or inadequate consciousness can explain many factors that limit our capacity to support or protect human harmony.  A positive correlation can be further affirmed by reference to an amazing and disturbing series of studies conducted at Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut) by Professor Stanley Milgram during the 1970s.  He called the phenomenon "Obedience to Authority."  His investigation built upon Adorno's studies to systematically inquire into a phenomenon sometimes referred to as "concentration camp psychology." [source]

It addresses the questions,
"Why do concentration camp inmates sometimes take on the characteristics of their oppressors and do harm their own group of inmates? And,
Is a normal group or population of non incarcerated people also subject to that defect, and if so, under what conditions?

Q: I think I remember hearing something about these studies in school.  Is this the experiments where subjects were severely shocked for the purpose of achieving some kind of valid goal or something?  I heard about that somewhere.

Are you really going to try to convince me that even my friends and relatives are likely to assist some autocrat to come to power and commit atrocities to repress and control the public? And are you also telling me that they will even act as his agents to continue to advance his cause by harming innocent persons, even acquaintances and friends?  Come on!  For real?

P: Yes. Even possibly you.  Bear with me, because you and the public are likely to find the following assertions to be outrageous.  But what is truly outrageous are that the facts and principles revealed by this set of experiments are painfully true.  An elaborate set of experiments were designed by Milgram and his colleagues as follows:

The experiment required a fake adult victim (actually a collaborator of the investigator,) who was represented to the real subject as the "subject," or as I will call him a pseudo-subject. This pseudo subject appeared to be hooked up to electrodes, and was supposed to get shocked when he misspelled test words as part of an alleged  learning experiment. But the real subjects of this experiment were the "trainers." They were average people from the greater New Haven, Connecticut area. They were paid up-front and asked simply to participate as a "trainer," no strings attached.  Having been paid, they understood that they were free to leave without prejudice any time after the experiment had begun.

The protocol required the real subjects of the experiment to believe they were serving as the trainer.  A kindly appearing, grandfatherly gentlemen (the pseudo subject and the apparent victim of what would soon appear to be torture,) was introduced to the "trainers" as the study's subject.  The trainers (actual real subjects) were then told that this "student" was attempting to learn to spell nonsense words.  If a mistake was made by this pseudo subject, the trainer was simply to apply a shock from an electronic device whose electrodes appeared to be attached to the elderly "student" (but in fact were not.)

In the first trials the "student" victim and the trainer were out of sight of each other in different rooms, but the "student" victim could be heard through a speaker. There were 30 steps on an increasing scale of shock severity from 15 volts to 450 volts, increasing by 15 volt increments.  The trainer (real subject) was required to first experience a sample shock at are relatively low (75 volt) level, a level which most trainers agreed was already painful.

The experiment was concluded when either the trainer refused to continue shocking the "student" after hearing the elderly person's cries of pain and pleading, or after the entire set of 30 levels of shock were completed. The trainer learned during the briefing that the "student" had suffered a prior mild heart attack, but that his physician had approved his participation the study.   I also note that when the most severe shock level was reached, the shock had to then be applied three times in succession before a formal halt to that experimental run was called by the investigator.

The research question? How far would the trainer (real subject) go in administering obviously painful shocks to the "student" under these experimental conditions? The investigators were also wanting to know how many trainers would continue to impersonally torture the helpless, but protesting student, solely in the interest of serving the white coated Yale University laboratory investigator who appeared to be directing this "training" experiment.

After the mid range of shocks had been passed, the complaints and cries of the "student" (pseudo subject) were halted by design.  No further sound was heard from the room until the experiment was concluded by what ever resolution, either the established end, or by the the insistent refusal of the "trainer" to give any further shocks at what ever point he/she stopped.

P: In fact, the opposite is true.  The results were quite disturbing in revealing the capacity of apparently normal America citizens of average consciousness, from all walks of life and various education levels, to willingly persist in harming this kindly appearing vulnerable person, provided they were officially absolved of responsibility by a duly constituted authority.

In this extensive series of studies more than 75% of average American citizens were willing to submit torturous shock to the "student," a harmless and gentle elderly man with an alleged heart condition, simply because they were under the authority of, and in the presence of a Yale University Ph.D., an experimental investigator wearing a white lab coat.

In this context of a prestigious Yale University laboratory, when the genuinely distraught or anxious "trainer" (actual subject) repeatedly asked, then pleaded, and then even demanded to stop the experiment, the research official did not argue or threaten, but simply and calmly told the anguished trainer, "The experiment must go on."  Having already been unconditionally paid and able to leave at any time, there was no kind of direct or indirect pressure or intimidation in the experiment for the trainer to continue.  This process has outcomes similar to police or military combat indoctrination.  If an authority defines an obviously harmful action against a target person or group as "acceptable," or "essential," then moral resistance to participation is weakened and eventually eliminated.

Q: This sounds like the "Nuremberg Syndrome" after W.W.II where those ordinary bureaucrats who carried out the Nazi atrocities argued they were only doing what they were told.  I guess where interest began in in what you noted was "Concentration Camp Psychology."

Study Point 5-8:
P:  Indeed. Consistent with the earlier findings of Adorno, Milgram explained his obedience to authority syndrome by suggesting that the manner of being raised in an autocratic and controlling environment, even where there is affection and no overt abuse,  established antecedent conditions in which the subject had been conditioned to submit to constraint and control by authorities.  He concluded that "binding factors" in the social order cause this conditioning to be integrated as a way of life.

When adverse consequences are deliberately placed on innocent victims by agents who follow the orders of duly constituted authority, the resulting stress on the agent is resolved by transferring responsibility to that authority.

This is a demonstration of absent Spiritual Consciousness.  As explained in the MP, given absent Spiritual Consciousness the ego self is absolved of any intrinsic moral constraints. This is why right wing extremism always emerges under conditions of fear and social distress, and why it is so dangerous and must be halted as soon as its presence is found.  The urgency is amplified when this pathology is found at any level of governance.

Q: Wow!  Now I kind of shrink back when I consider how naive I have been in evaluating the criteria for the present list of candidates for high political office.

P: In this impoverished consciousness of the typical agent of authority, ego stress is resolved simply by rejecting any responsibility for one's own thoughts, for one's own decisions, and the consequences of such decisions that lead to the resulting actions. One is absolved of responsibility for such actions simply by surrendering to the will of the established authority. Now this is important.

They appear to be literally not conscious of the alternative of resistance.  In reference to his own model, Milgram states as follows:

"Specifically the person entering an authoritarian system no longer views himself as acting out his own purposes but rather comes to see himself as an agent for executing the wishes of another person.  Once an individual conceives his actions in this light, profound alterations occur in his behavior and his internal functioning.  These are so pronounced that one may say that this altered attitude places the individual in a different state from the one he was in prior to integration into the hierarchy.  I shall term this the agentic state, by which I mean the condition a person is in when he sees himself as an agent for carrying out another person's wishes.  This term will be used in opposition to that of autonomy--that is, when a person sees himself acting on his own."  [p-133]

P: They are, and the omen is very bad unless we begin to understand the difference between Spiritual Consciousness, and mental consciousness, as these affect the limits of our intellects.  Milgram discusses the dynamics by which some persons did resolve their stress by disobedience.  But Milgram contemplates the extent and significance of the compliance he found to be clearly a social norm among average work-a-day Americans.  Here is the really scary part. He states:

"And what is it we have seen?  Not aggression, for there is no anger, vindictiveness or hatred in those who shocked the victim.  Men do become angry; they do act hatefully and explode in rage against others.  But not here.  Something far more dangerous is revealed: the capacity for man to abandon his humanity, indeed, the inevitability that he does so, as he merges his unique personality into larger institutional structures." [p-188]

Q: I can't help think about the law and order mentality that seems to be taking over our politics. What terrible implications for abuses by out-of-control enforcers, and the legions of "good" American's who will be willing to help them.

P: We already have that today.  Recent high school graduates, allegedly nurses, with sweet little high school voices, impersonally deny elders health care and long term insurance over the phone. The do this without remorse when the applicant doesn't fit a demanding telephone underwriting protocol ordered by the Insurance Company.  These innocent lackeys know nothing about the person or family whose lives they will likely destroy by enforcing their corporate role.

The see nothing wrong in what they do.  Confront them and hear them respond: "I'm only doing what I have been asked to do. Its my job." They have made themselves lackeys to corporations who have arranged, with government collaboration, to set criteria so selective and abusive that not only are they guaranteed to make a profit on those they insure, but they will make a huge profit, a profit that is collected essentially without any important risk.

In other areas related to health care, if you cannot afford to pay more than $3,500 each month for full term nursing care, then the greed mongers in the elder care industry will happily bankrupt you, your children, and/or your loved ones to get their due.  Simple hearing aides can cost from $3,000 to $6,000, even when a patient is over 90 years old and approaching the end of their life.   Those who collect these fees have no moral problem in forcing such a hearing challenged person to choose between bankrupting themselves or going without hearing.  And when the health care industry has murdered you, then the guilt masters of the funeral industry await in the wings to clean out any remaining fiscal residue from your estate and bereaved survivors.

Q:  That's a pretty extreme allegation, cruelly outrageous if true.  But I think you're being excessive.  I do sense its pretty ugly out there. It's clear I have not been aware of these details.  I sense your barely scratching the surface.

P: And these abuses are rapidly getting worse.  Meanwhile, for our political "leaders," its business as usual. Appeals from the democratic party for donations go out to the public, and there is not one single word, not one iota of acknowledgment that out-of-control corporations are the root cause of many of the evils coming doing on American society.

Q: Why not, given the powerful case you made for that claim in part 3 of our Introductory Dialogue?  [review dialogue]

P: Politically unchallenged corporations have created circumstances where tragedy and pathos can embrace comedy, e.g., like the matriarch, Lyubov Ranevskaya, and her shallow family in Anton Chekhov's great play, The Cherry Orchard (grand and beloved symbol of the landowning class's centuries old tradition of power and control.) They refuse to accept the sweeping economic changes in Russia that ultimately cost them their fortune, and force them to sell their estate to a local bourgeois merchant just prior to the first Russian revolution (1905.) After all of the family has departed, a forgotten servant sips tea in the now foreclosed and abandoned house, oblivious to the distant sound of the new owner's axes already chopping down the beloved cherry orchard, symbol of prior glories.

Q: You suggest that the hordes from our nation's "first room" in you allegory of The House of Three Rooms [revisit] are gathering. And based upon what I am learning, there is no use to complain to the government, because our elected representatives are actually arranging these conveniences for those predatory corporations.   I understand that such abuse is already widespread in a variety of applications.

P: People need to fear this development enough that they are willing to take the risk and act to remove it.   But now they lack the Spiritual Consciousness to even detect these developments.  When they at last suspect, they typically do nothing except perhaps to complain. They do nothing even when their actions could make a difference in ways that are themselves harmless.

Q: But don't people have at least a grudging respect for law enforcement, the police?  We don't like traffic tickets, but we know they are the thin line of protection against rampaging crime.

P: Control over cadres of enforcers capable of being ruthless is an essential ingredient for power mongers  to achieve. This control empowers them to cope with the public's inevitable unrest that can breed insurrection as conditions reach a certain point of social deterioration.  The instinctive urge of the dominant party to control and protect its own interests is paramount and central. The less C/consciousness, the greater the potential for brutal excesses. The following statements by Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials after W.W.II is testimony to this point:

"Goering gave his account of the Nazi rise to power.  He told the court, "Once we came to power, we were determined to hold on to it under all circumstances."  Goering was unrepentant.  He evaded no questions; offered no apologies.  He testified that the concentration camps were necessary to preserve order: "It was a question of removing danger."   The leadership principle, which concentrated all power in the Fuhrer [Hitler,] was "the same principle on which the Catholic church and the government of the USSR are both based."  Commenting on Goering's performance in the witness box, Janet Flanner of the New Yorker described Goering as "a brain without a conscience."  [Doug Linder, 2000, source]

P: Nothing dissuaded most of them, not even telling the trainers about the student's (victim's) heart trouble, not the victim's pathetic pleading to be let free, not even his screams of pain, and not the suspicious silence from the experimental room during the last third of the shocks.  Nothing effectively dissuaded the majority of average person participants from continuing, even though they were randomly accepted from off the streets of a typical American college town.  The data shows that psychological distancing created the greatest potential for abuse.  The more removed from the victim the trainers were, the greater their compliance all the way to the official end of the experimental run.  Even a "Touch-Proximity" condition for some experimental treatments, in which the subject had to literally place the arm of the victim on the electrodes, still produced 25% compliance with the experimenter.  Milgram concludes:

"The results, as seen and felt in the laboratory, are to this author disturbing.  They raise the possibility that human nature, or-more specifically--the kind of character produced in American democratic society, cannot be counted on to insulate its citizens from brutality and inhumane treatment at the direction of malevolent authority. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority." [P-189, emphasis added]
...

Spirituality and a Higher Ethical Consciousness

Q: So now I could read that and substitute "Spiritual Consciousness" in place of his use of the word "conscience" What does this say for the hope for that severely enforced rules for moral and ethical behavior will have the necessary clout?

P: The reliable presence of ethical behavior depends entirely on a Consciousness nourished by the person's (or system's) Spirituality.  Without that we will eventually have a storm trooper society.  They only thing we will all share in common as average Americans is fear.  An Ethics defined by Spiritual Consciousness as a national norm is the equivalent in the social body of the immune system is in the biological body.

Q: Are their other studies that relate that idea of ethics to the work of Milgram?

P: Research has been done elsewhere (Harvard) by Lawrence Kohlberg [1976] who developed his now well known ethical hierarchy. Subjects who tended to object and break off early in the Milgram experiments were found to have advanced to a higher point of development of Ethics based on an evolved (Spiritual) C/consciousness. [resource] This finding is in accordance with the expectations and predictions of the Mystical Paradigm. Other hierarchies of C/consciousness and ethics can be found illustrated in Ken Wilber's book, The Atmen Project,  [1980]  [other resources] [complimentary investigations] [pioneers in humanistic psychology and moral development]  They all share in common a pattern of unfolding C/consciousness, however described.

The theory being presented by the MP is that the quality, scope, and scale of mental and Spiritual Consciousness will be determined by the nature of the a child's shaping forces during its formative years. When love, trust, peacefulness and compassion are the major characteristics of the nurturing context of childhood learning, the resulting adults tend to advance to an expanded Spiritual Consciousness. [Revisit the section in Dialogue 3, Communication as the 2nd trap of Spiritual Consciousness, to be reminded of the powerful role of metaphor in determining the nature of Spiritual and Ethical Consciousness because these are the only inoculation against the pressure to become and agent in serving the autocratic abuse of innocents.]
.

Application of rules for use of power and control in Society:
P: You asked me to set before you a challenge for you to devote the rest of your life to.  There is a lot more about the problems of complexity for you to consider than can surface in our brief Dialogues. In addition to the socialization of human behavior, there is a certain causal interaction between human economic freedoms and constraints.  These interact with the social stresses generated in family and community that produce either trust enhancing compassionate discipline, Love, and healing, or the opposite--alienation, brutalizing punishment, and manipulative control though threat and intimidation.
...
Let me pose another challenge which is implicit in these Dialogues.  Which of the following political rules would you teach society to live by if you could?

1. Rules intended to preserve and advance the unchallangable control of power brokers (banker, stock broker, lawyer, corporate CEO or board member) even at clear cost to the quality of your life, your family's life,  and also the basic livelihoods of large numbers of middle and lower economic classes?

2. Rules that would remove or regulate the economic controls used by power brokers so as to compel them as their first priority, to preserve and enhance the basic livelihoods, health and education of their employees, customers, and clients, and to promote opportunities for fair income for fair work for all economic classes as the a foundation requirement for doing business as an organization.  That they meet these requirements must become the first condition for receipt of and continuance of any license to compete for commercial advantage in the marketplace?

P: But now I ask, why are the second set of rules almost entirely ignored by those responsible for social policy, by those who design education curricula, and especially by those who proclaim themselves to be the real leaders of tomorrow--folks such as you wanted to become?

The only alternative to the first rule we are mockingly told is, "Godless Communism," the vaguely threatening Socialism, or some other unacceptable "ism."  We have also heard the phrase, spoken affirmatively in some quarters that, "Greed is good!"  Simply ask yourself on the evidence, even that which is filtered though a media and press already dominat