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 dominated by the power brokers, which rule is being enforced by political, economic and social policy today in the United States?

Q: Its the first rule, of course.

P:  Then estimate from that observation, what is the level of Spiritual Consciousness of our nation,  as a national norm?   What effects of this pattern of control are already evident among our populace?

Q:  The level is obviously low, very low. You've given some examples, and you have said to follow the headlines.  There is crime, corporate and political abuses-- and the list is getting longer as I already knew before I came to you.

P: And for vast numbers of economically deprived, "benign neglect." Let me give you a clue as to why the public is so confused:  Examine this simple ledger of cost benefits of a giant corporation named Capitalism, Inc.
 

Q: Well, I don't have to be an accounting major to see that there are no costs shown.  Just the value of all the benefits.  I also think your numbers are contrived.

P: Exactly!  You are looking at a simplified display of the capitalist myth.  The numbers are made up, but I argue they are proportional in scale were the real numbers accessible.  My point is that the actual books can show the monetary material costs of doing business.  But not the emotional, social and Spiritual costs that actually affects the public.

The capitalist system today is disconnected from its social costs and other negative impact of their products and services, except as shown in the value column measured by the GNP (Gross National Product.)  But there are personal and impersonal costs that have been intentionally disconnected from their accounting.   Here is a revised form of this simple ledger:
 

Q:  Yeah!  But you said that you just made those figures up out of your head.

P: True.  But the principle and the points are valid. The reason you never see such a compilation is that the bankers and corporate power structure who controls our government would never permit any complete and objective evaluation of the downside to predatory capitalism, or the total cost benefits to American society.

Further, the true human cost cannot be quantified.  How do you assign a value to the personal hell of going through a destroyed marriage. Divorces increase when the destructive effects of chronic economic instability, unemployment, other pressures that the couple was caught up in are computed. To that we must add the permanent psychic costs of their distress to their children. Have you seen a recent report of the decline in community based "Ma & Pa" businesses over the past two decades?  If they exist, they are scrambled into other data or buried. Further, the mega-businesses that replace them (.e.g., Wall-Mart) do not bring the same benefits to the community as the local businesses they displace. [evidence] But an effort could be made to provide the public a profile of these costs.  If it were, the figure would be far more appalling than the simplistic intuitive construction of these two charts.

Q: Perhaps that could be my life's work?

P: But first things first.  We must all know, independent of the Mystical Paradigm, that our entire economic, political and legal structure is designed to support the first rule. [above]  What is the mechanism of this enforcement?  What is the link between politically impoverished polices and Spiritual impoverishment?

Apply what you have learned about the three traps of the ego mind--e.g., incipient undefined fear right out of the ego, mis-communication, disinformation, HIP incompetence, and the challenge of complexity. Sorting these out and presenting this information to the public in a credible and understandable way is the first challenge.

Q: You argue that the public must first be empowered to recognize and apply the dynamics of how they function within the three traps of mind, their agendas, communication and HIP dynamics.

P:  What do you remember about HIP (Dialogue 4)  How would you use your knowledge about HIP to overcome and reveal unrecognized abuses of power and control?

Q: How does information, social complexity and HIP competence that hides the destructive personal power networks from the public relate directly to impoverished Spiritual Consciousness as follows:

First, there is a  relationship in that the more empowered our C/consciousness, the greater our capability to penetrate the confusion of complexity, to detect its inner hidden structure, to recognize links among the involved systems, to perceive alternatives for coping with it, and to invent the options required to implement an intervention and propose other coping possibilities.
I learned that each of us is vulnerable to what you called "frozen consciousness," or being arrested at some point where we accept a particular interpretation of reality as given and fixed.  This inhibits us from accepting the possibility of more complex problem identification and resolution.  It interferes with opportunities, and keeps the victim in a spiral of defeat and neglect when such need not be so.
I learned that I should attempt to practice inventing creative alternatives, accept challenges, take risk, and above all, meditate on the best interpretation I can mentally contrive.  I must practice surrender to the Spiritual Presence within me--I carried that over from our first Dialogue. I still don't know how to do that very well right now.
I learned how oppressive force and intimidation are inspired by the worst fears of the ego, and reduce a person's capacity to develop HIP competence and expand DF. Instead, they suffer the opposite.  They collapse their options. Worse, the effect is amplified when children are abused in such a fashion.  I have already figured out that they are the most likely candidates to join extremist gangs and right wing causes. They live to reach out and hurt someone.
I learned from the studies of Adorno and Milgram you  just presented, that almost everyone is vulnerable to both the destructive elements of prejudice, and the dangerous willingness to surrender responsibility for one's decisions and actions to others (the Milgram syndrome, obedience to authority.)
Finally, I guess I should quickly take my best ideas and enter into meditation when I experience the stress of confusion.

But the pieces of the puzzle beginning with the idea of C/consciousness, then the three traps of the intellect, and now the ego's defensive need for power and control should begin to come together.   So, with respect to coping with conceptual complexity, the supporting ideas of DF, PCC and the dynamics of High versus Low HIP C/consciousness will become more clear as we now examine their appearance in the agendas of the power mongers.

Q: Whew!

P: In this section of our fifth dialogue, I want to share with you, that which is near and dear to each of us--our love affair with power and control. Where would we be without it?

Q: Well, I must admit I am interested in power and control--not the corrupt kind mind you, but enough to get by.

P: Ah, yes! How modest we all are when not faced with the broad path to opportunity and ambition. Our whole culture reeks with permission to abuse power and control and few there are who can resist it. Naturally one does not start off as Hitler, Stalin, or Saddam Hussein. One dare not propose a preconceived ruthless Machiavellian scheme. Like toddlers becoming world class athletes, we grow into it as we nurture it. We all exercise a fair amount of practice at developing this capacity, but at a healthy level.

But I cannot resist the opportunity to offer Lord Acton's often quoted dictum to the effect that "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Now its time to apply it to what is developing in our society, and recognize that we must quickly begin to cope with it.

Q: Then I will count on these insights to have a pragmatic utility.

P: The greatest single defect in our national educational priorities is our indifference to the role of abusive power in our society. There have been perverse books written to guide the reader in how to exploit and apply abusive uses of personal power [e.g., Ringer, 1975]  That negligence permits the growth of fatal national flaws that are already flourishing in every area of our capitalist society. We do not pay much attention to the dynamic relationship among C/consciousness, and actions exercising power and control in our society, nor in the Spiritually shallow ethics under which it thrives.

The Johnstown Flood, is one of the more insightful book that have been written in the mid 20th century to document the tendency of a vulnerable public to defer responsibility for their well being to a capitalist elite. [McCullough, 1965]  In this, his first book, in addition to a spectacular account of the flood itself, David McCullough documents the events that characterized the public's deference to wealthy and powerful industrialists as the foundation factor that created the disastrous Johnstown, Pennsylvania, flood of 1889. They believed that such powerful men, blessed by God with their wealth, could never do anything to permit harm to be done to the thousands of people who lived in the Conemaugh Valley downstream from the South Fork dam that burst from the neglect of this elite.  These valley dwellers were the folks whose sweat labor created the the wealth of this elite?  But for these vulnerable valley dwellers, the elite felt no concern.  Responsibility was not a part of their consciousness. [details]

What can we learn from McCullough book that can help us today?   Let me begin with this parable.

The Tree that Would be Human

[Return from Parable]

Q: So that message seems clear. So what is it on our human scale that we want, the power of the gods?

P: We have been given great power, but there are those among us, I call them the power mongers, who soon become obsessed with the acquisition of power and control for its own sake.  This drives them to give up their lives to obtain control over the institutional magnets of power, those entities I call power amplifiers.

Power amplifiers are the businesses and institutions that serve as extensions of the owner's capacity to wield power and influence.  Power amplifiers are used to collect power markers and other power amplifiers.  Corporations become the surrogate for advancing their control and power agendas. In our society that group is found serving in politics, as principal stockholders of major corporations and conglomerates,  and as high level corporate and agency management. Women in turn who in the past were forced to suck up to powerful men now want to control the levers of power directly, themselves.

Q: But our capitalist society thrives on competition.  It is the explanation of our success.

P: Your education is certainly showing. You see--you are correct--of course. Its just that-- in typical fashion, you own a biased view and do not see the other side, the hidden roots of our thriving materialist tree. We point with pride at its flourishing leaves. The apparent blight that seems to be appearing more and more, is dismissed as merely a temporary anomaly subject to some kind of technical adjustment. Perhaps another, more succinct parable will further establish my point.

Consider the following parable:

The Evil Puppet Master

[Return from the Parable]

Q: Are suggesting that I have been seduced by the evil puppet masters of our capitalist society.

P: Predatory capitalist society.  Now think again upon the effects of the emotionally desensitizing pseudo-experiences that celebrate mayhem and murder, but which pass for entertainment. These contrived experiences desensitize our youth to violence, preparing some of them for ultimate roles as enforcers for our puppet masters. These contrived events spew forth as entertainment television and film. Hour by hour, day by day, week by week, month by month and year by formative year of any American child, these assaults on their Spiritual Consciousness exist as relentless influences.

Q: Seem like a horror story in constant evolution.  Funny how I have not really notices what is now becoming obvious. For all our power and wealth, I am confused.  Why in the midst of such plenty are things going down the tubes?  Your theory must be very wrong.
Your point is clear. But its hard to reconcile that parable with the visible success our society has given to us.

P: Yes. Material success, of course, and on a sliding scale from those who have "everything" to those who have nothing. But not included for a growing number are personal peace and stability. This success you claim only expresses as our lush technology and vast cornucopia of material goods.  How happy were the citizens of the village, especially the children, until they finally recognized, too late, how badly they had been duped.

Q: But really, this is just a charming story, twisted to make your point.

P: But don't you see?  You don't yet gather in the whole picture. Do you know who the puppet masters are that you serve?  To whom do you pay your entrance fee?  What promises are made and expectations set up?  Who are the "good guys?" "bad guys?"  How do you know you will get your reward for the enormous investments and trust you have already given?

Q: Now I  remember from our introductory dialogue how many of my friends who pursued a high tech profession now find themselves out of work in a jobless market place, slowly becoming aware that the work they had so painfully prepared for is being down by others, overseas, off shore.

P: Has anyone mentioned the possibility of any kind of recourse if society does not deliver on its promise to you?  How badly, how many, and how often must you harm others to get the rewards you seek?  Will you be happy at last? Will you be emotionally and Spiritually fulfilled?  Is there a psychic debt you will have to pay for any material or worldly success you enjoy at the expense of others?

Have you been taught about the dynamics of the certain Karma that will call in your debt in due time, with perfect unfailing justice?  Has any of this been discussed with you during your academic progress?  I bet not.

Q: Its clear my teachers operate from a different paradigm than this MP.  But you said you will discuss this Karma thing with me, I think in our next dialogue, correct?

P: Yes, but let us continue for a while longer to revel in the glitter of the capitalist ring of power.  Your capitalist mentors are not aware of what they do.  The live in the dream time created by their world of money.  For them there is only one paradigm, the materialist one called capitalism. But, because it is not in their consciousness, they cannot ask who is sacrificed to achieve those many benefits they yearn to claim, that you and I so freely enjoy?  It is not fashionable to even speak of victims let alone express concern for them. In fact, we dismiss them as somehow having deserved their fate. We blame the victims.  [use back button to return]

Q:  Isn't that the congress that brought the government to its knees by refusing to fund its budget in their conflict with President Clinton?

P: Yes. I use this history in order to underscore the Consciousness dependent Spiritual link between symptoms and problems. This is just one example of the subtle nature of how an extreme threat can be ignored by the public until it is too late.  I cite the shutdowns of the Federal Government that occurred in November and December of 1995. Here was a gross abuse of power by an elected representative to Congress, House Speaker Newt Gingrich.  [For review of detail, , see discussion of the 1995.  1: Shutdown of the Federal Government]  2: Shutdown of the Federal Government]

Q: That was a rather gross abuse of power, I have to admit.

P: In our Dialogue we are not interested in it as a historical event, or even as a political event. I offer it as an indicator of the public's helplessness, and their inability to interpret symptoms that predict that kind of abuse of power in the vital process of governance, and in the economic system in which we are all enslaved.  It was this lack that permitted Hitler to come to power in 1933 Germany, and abolish the democratic Weimar Republic and establish himself as Chancellor. [why Hitler came to power]

Q: You say, "Enslaved?"  That's a pretty strong term.  O certainly don't feel enslaved.

P: Nevertheless accurate. How many are there who can walk away from their work no matter how oppressive it is? What happens to those who are thrown out of their work in the interest of preserving or enhancing the power of others, but through no fault or blame of their own? We dare not think of the capitalist economic model as slavery, and it need not be. But under the abusive use of today's predatory and exploitive norms of power, it is, and it becomes more so. Therefore, at some point it must and will crack. The question then is how many and how badly are those who will get hurt?  As economic abuses escalate per the  gap between the wealthy and the poor whose work empowers them widens. Remember, the consequences of their actions are not in the consciousness of the power monger exploiters.

Q: So you want to bring back Marx and Lenin? Maybe Stalin?

P: Of course not.  Remember what I said about all "isms?"   They have the same fatal flaw in the absence of leaders who are Spiritually awakened. In the absence of Spiritual Consciousness, any "ism" exists to enhance the egos of those who struggle to control and advance it.  Then the troubles proceed from that point.

Q: Not that political power appeals to me as much as economic power.  Yet I now see how they fit together like a hand and glove. I catch your point about the relationship between my unconsciousness and my potential capacity to harm others while serving myself. What your saying is that the capitalist model for all of its virtues has a fatal flaw.

P: To put it kindly.  And to paraphrase a now famous quote, "If it fits, convict."  Predatory capitalism holds a deadly flaw.  And that flaw will work its evil in the absence of Spiritual Consciousness among those controllers who are powerful--those who direct the course of the economy, and those who work the levers of government to accommodate, protect, and support predatory capitalist abuses. It is in these areas of applying the MP that we are enabled to see how the ego driven traps of mind work their destructive influences.  Now, can you demonstrate your substantial intellectual prowess by giving me a quick summary of our dialogues to this point?

Q: Awesome.  Not that I think about what you said earlier, no body but banks and corporations control the Federal Reserve. It is a government outside our elected government, and with power to affect the well being of the electorate, but without their representation. [Greider, 1987;  Wolman and Colamosca, 1997]

P: And of this they remain blissfully unconsciousness.  Now let me hear your review of what you have learned are the most important factors in the MP that can help you.

Study Point 5-12
Tracking thre flow of personal power in complex systrems

Now I want to focus you on a means to follow the flow of personal mpowre through complex human systems in which the individual must interact with groups and organizations within society.  I plan to focus you on how power and control become corrupted and malignant by the lust for power for its own sake.  Examine these systems diagrams which are based on Alfred Kuhn's [1974] simplification of the James Miller's model [1978]. These show how data from the material senses are filtered trhrough a person's system by the three ego overlays on Spiritual Consciousness that were the subject of our prior three dialogues:

THE DSE (DETECT-EFFECT-SELECT) PROCESS [revisit definition]:  is a potent Systems paradigm because not only can it be applied to individuals, but as Miller has shown, it also can be applied to groups of individuals acting as group. Likewise it can be applied to collections of groups acting as an organization or institution, and it can be applied at the level of a society, or to better understand the interaction of an international collection of societies.   When the lust for power and control consumes the system  at issue, the corruption of this agenda is exercised  in the 'SELECT" portion of the DSE process, and biases the decision making that controls the EFFECT processes. 

The above figure suggests how the DSE processes can be understood to be an ongoing dynamic process operating within each individual. The next step is to see the how DSE process with its internal filters of agendas (in Dialogue 2), communication (in Dialogue 3), and HIP (in Dialogue 4) may be seen to interact among systems of increasing complexity.  This is shown in the figure below. 

KNOW THAT A POWER AND CONTROL AGENDA IS BEING EXERCISED IN ALL PARTICIPATING SYSTEMS, WHETHER BENIGN OR PATHOLOGICAL.  YOU MUST DETERMINE THAT FROM THE BEHAVIOR OF THE SYSTEM. 

Once the dynamics of the DSE process within each individual is understood, attention can then be turned to the application of human systems in interaction. The above Figure illustrates that relationship. As one example, a mediator should develop the skill of being able to apply the model not only to individuals, but to all human systems of increasing complexity as appropriate to the social arena in which the conflict is expressing. Mediators in a custody scenario have a wholly different context than mediators dealing with inter or intra-national conflict scenarios.

Nevertheless, the process works exactly the same in principle regardless of the complexity of the system and can be used by an astute mediator to tease out the linkages among subsystems and adjacent systems. The skills applied through the active listening techniques which follow are used to interpret the "information significance" of the disputant's actions and statements. In using active listening, and mapping the information into the systems relationships, the mediator's capacity to interpret the inner meanings of their allegations and assertions is improved (e.g., as are those system relationships suggested in the above example.)

However, where malignant power agendas are concerned, there is no mediator to mitigate the modulation of communication and information processing away from fear directed decisions and behaviors.  The goals become progressively self serving and indifferent to the needs of the target groups to be exploited.

Q: What practical applications can I expect to learn from this dialogue?

P: You should find empowerment in at least the following areas:

Become more sensitive to your own underlying motivations that create your feelings [fear and satisfaction] about the events in your life
Interpret the news headlines and background stories from the perspective of a power paradigm
Identify hidden power and control motivations from the public actions of others, both individuals and corporations
Link the values expressed by others (in their behavior) to any disguised prejudice or bigotry toward any group or class of people
Identify the power oriented explanations of discrepancies that exist between words and behavior
Identify how power agendas are exercised by means of various power markers and power amplifiers that I will define for you
Influence political agendas to purge them of ego grounded brute power agendas so that they appeal to the healthy interests of voters
Identify the crucial role enforcers play in an autocratic governance, detect how they are emerging today, and assess our present vulnerability to that development
Identify hidden networks of power, control, and influence of which our society remains oblivious .
Recognize how communication can be designed to influence candidates and voters to remove these threats and replace them with healthy systems of politics and economics.
Recognize and accept that the major threat does not come from the power mongers themselves, but because of a deadly characteristic of human nature that allows an ordinary person to become a destructive agent of the power monger. [Discussed below as the Milgram Syndrowm.]  Then they are capable of ruthlessly advancing the agendas of the power mongers regardless of the obvious harm being done to relatives, friends, neighbors and citizens of the communities and nation of these agents.

Q: Well that last one certainly got my attention.

P: But let us begin at the beginning.  Let me scope the scale and complexity of the basic problem, the rise of the power mongers.  Now in the 21st century, the will to power has transferred from working through national governments to the cancerous rot that now consumes them in the form of raw corporate control outside the controlling power of the vote.

Q: How does that rot occur?

P: That rot lies in the nature of predatory corporations and conglomerates. Their drive for power and control begins as a survival instinct in the market place, but moves well beyond that legitimate goal to soon become an obsession for its own sake.  But until it is recognized for what it actually is, and for its implications for humanity, it cannot until it is brought under the control of a viable Spiritual Consciousness.  The implications for humanity are dire.  What do you think is the most significant underlying factor that most inspires and energizes the will to power?

Q: Greed?

P:  Actually it is fear.

Q: Fear!?

***********

As our childhood consciousness of our physical world unfolds we first seek to serve our primal needs, the basic agendas. The first and most important test is to feel sufficiently powerful and have the necessary control to exploit our known reality and meet those primal needs for security, shelter and subsistence.  During this process we are nurtured to embrace and serve our expanding ego driven worldly value systems.  The three traps of mind betray our Spiritual Truth us in the following order of influence:

First trap (Dialogue #2,) our biologically driven agendas serve our primal needs for security, subsistence and ego validation.  But they can become the need themselves.  When we serve only them, we are betraying our Spiritual promise. Fear is the primal emotion that energizes our ego activities. Then in the absence of Spiritual Consciousness the quest to serve agendas beyond meeting basic needs begins to adversely affect us. They cause us to limit our judgment and decision making priorities so as to arrest and limit our Spiritual development. When we are oblivious of this condition, we obsess at that level that best serves only our ego needs. This is greatly influenced by the quality of parental nurturing the child receives.

 Second trap (Dialogue #3) adds the effect of communication principles as they influence and direct the ego intellect. We are vulnerable to negative semantic meanings if they come to be associated with feelings around the emotions of fear and mistrust.  These "understandings" then further affect our need to serve our agendas. Words have no meanings in and of themselves, but they releases the unique meaning within the receiver of any communication.  In the reality defined for us by our senses, its meanings may or may not sufficiently match the meaning in Reality in which the receiver actually dwells, hence the "paradox of communication."

The paradox of communication states in effect that the greater the associative meanings that sender and receiver share in growing up to learn the meaning of their language, that is, learning the same words in the same emotional-social context, the easier and more accurate their language communications, but the less need there is for communication.  Conversely, the greater the discrepancy of their respective environments in which a sender and receiver learn their language, the less likely that any given word will evoke the same meaning within each, hence, the more likely their communications may fail, but the greater need there is, then, for accurate communication.

The third trap of the ego's intellect is HIP, (Dialogue #4) which is greatly determined by our parent's and peer group influences.  This is our HIP (Human Information Processing) capacity to recognize and cope with the full complexity in our Reality as it affects us.  HIP can be either enhanced, giving us abstract capability to successfully process very complex information threats and challenges. HIP becomes a destructive influence when it is nurtured to be concrete in an atmosphere of coercive fear and restricted options. Then we become limited to concrete or rule reducing, simplistic interpretations of complexity. Then we "play cards" with less than the full deck, as you put it. During the process of growth into adulthood, something has to happen with our Spiritual potential to protect and enhance our C/consciousness. This unfoldment can release us as children- becoming-adults from falling into and suffering the consequences of these HIP limiting traps.

The solution relates to developing an awakened Spiritual Consciousness that transcend the ego imposed limits in each of these three traps of the ego intellect. Otherwise, as a result, we grow to  live our lives solely to serve the needs of the body, by our consciousness as defined and limited by our ego.   We are then condemned to live under its control as ordered by its slave, the intellect.

P: And what is a major premise of the MP, besides the assertion that Life is RAW, Reality Always Wins?

Q:  Ah! Yes!  A key idea in the Mystical Paradigm.  What is not held in consciousness cannot be processed by one's intelligence no matter how great the intelligence. Spiritual Consciousness is the only condition that can empower and expand mental consciousness.  An illuminated Spiritual Consciousness is a precondition to promote problem identification and problem solving.

P; I conclude then from the manner in which you have prepared yourself during the prior dialogues, that the following discussion on power and force will successfully show you that:

the less Spiritually Conscious a person (or any human system) is, the more vulnerable he/she/it is to the limits of their mental consciousness, and
the more that limit makes them vulnerable to both abusing and becoming victim to abuses of both personal and institutional power.

Both the degrees of personal power we have access to, and the rules for its use are built into the natural instinctive behavior (biological consciousness) of all lower order living systems.  I have already mentioned the work of OE Wilson in sociobiology. [Wilson, 1875, 1978]  Let me now provide other resources in support of this idea, because the human world of capitalist power and control depends upon the unregulated and unchallenged reign of our animal (beast) natures.

The exercise of force in the beasts tends to be directly constrained by ecological checks and balances found in the inexorable working of THE LAW as evident in nature. But humanity has been given the option of transcend those lower limits and function at a higher level within the outworking of THE LAW, i.e., by our unique capacity to develop our Spiritual Consciousness.

We are not limited to the instinct driven and the simple fixed decision rules of the beast. We can use our free will to either optimize or corrupt our relationship to each other within THE LAW.  Without a developed Spiritual Consciousness, history clearly demonstrates that we most often use our free will to acquire and use force to dominate and exploit of others. The nature of J/justice in response to such choices will be developed in our next dialogue on Karma and Reincarnation. There is a fierce price to be paid for this abuse of free will within THE LAW.

Q:  In our prior dialogue on human agendas you told me the Allegory of the Baboons.  Tell me more about that kind of behavior and how it relates, to the human use of power and force.

P:  For example, like the baboons defending their turf, every animal, including humans, has an internal or mental construct (map) which it imposes to claim its territory (turf.) For any animal, the territory it owns exists entirely in its mind. It is defined by its mental map as projected onto that part of its reality it can perceive and which it defines as its turf. But the map is not the territory itself.

As a universal principle, the mental map is imposed on the territory and then claimed by the creature.  It is not defined by or intrinsic in the structure of the territory itself. An animal instinctively responds to intrusions of other like creatures onto its claimed turf, yet they live peacefully with other creatures that are not its natural predator, prey or competitor. For example, robins fight each other to claim their turf, but ignore other birds.  Male birds observed in defending their territory are seen to have specific boundaries which they mark as their turf.

When animal populations exceed the ability of their territory to feed them, the LAW causes them to suffer overt and serious intra-specie conflict followed by a major population crash. This crash not only reduces their numbers, but often results in genetic degradation that debilitates the ability of the species to reproduce adequately for a number of generations.  These cycles are ubiquitous in nature, and we as a species are contemptible in our refusal to see how this LAW has already begun to directly affect ourselves.

When a strange male enters a competing animal's turf, he is immediately attacked by the "owner" until one of them is driven off.  However, the further away from the center of the territory the stranger is encountered, the less passionate the owner's attack.  Because they do not have the level of consciousness required to create an ego, birds do not covet and conspire to occupy the territory of a male who occupies the adjacent turf, neither out of fear nor as a symbol that serves to indulge an ego trip.  Furthermore, the definition of a bird's turf rises to its highest concern just prior to and following the mating season when attracting a female is of paramount importance, and having sufficient supply to feed its young which will immediately follow.

Likewise, male wolves, dogs (and other animals) mark their boundaries of their turf with urine or special glandular chemicals.  They periodically make their rounds to refresh their claim, and check to see if another male may be coming to compete.  The presence of these primitive animal behaviors can be identified with its counterpart behavior in human beings.

Q: Be serious!

P: I am very serious.  Much of my development of the agendas dimension of the Mystical Paradigm is guided by these and related works.

There are numerous books by the zoologists and naturalists that develop this topic, e.g.: Lorenz, Conrad, King Solomon's Ring, (NY: New American Library, Signet Book,) 1952; ...On Aggression, (London: Methuen), 1966; and ...Behind the Mirror, (NY: Harcort Brace and Janovich, Harvest Book), 1973. See especially the sociobiologists, e.g., Morris, Desmond, The Naked Ape, (NY: Dell Publishing,) 1967; ...The Human Zoo, (NY: Dell Publishing,) 1969; Ardrey, Robert, African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man, (NY: Dell Publishing, ) 1961, ...The Territorial Imperative, (NY: Dell Publishing,) 1966; ...The Hunting Hypothesis: A Personal Conclusion Concerning the Evolutionary Nature of Man, (NY: Bantam Books,) 1976; and as I have already noted, Wilson, Edward O. Sociobiology, Abridged Edition-1980, (Cambridge, Ma, Harvard University Press, Belknap Press,) 1975; and followed by his response to his outraged critics- ...On Human Nature, (Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press,) 1978. The loudest criticism of Wilson and these authors came from psychologists who objected to zoologists and naturalists invading their intellectual turf! [additional information and ongoing work in this area]

Note there are rules for acquiring personal power, and there are cost for ignorance of these rules. These are suggested in the next parable of The Power Broker and His Victims....  Then in a subsequent parable, follow the evolutionary pattern described by the bidding at the "Power Broker and Power Monger Specialty Pawn Shop."

Then you will eventually apply these concept to the final allegory in the concluding epilogue to OT/MP, The Infernal Catechism the Secret Society of Power Brokers and Power Mongers.  Note in this final allegory, how those who are powerful, in the absence of Spiritual Consciousness, ruthlessly plot to manipulate, dominate, and deceive their victims by various expressions of threat and force.

Remember the parable "The House with Three Rooms"?  Here among the power mongers we find are the activities of first room dwellers. Their arguments originate and become strategies and tactics in the Spiritually empty second rooms of their intellect. This is an accomplishment that is possible only when both the power monger and his victim (who remains helpless to cope) are Spiritually empty.

Q: I assume that as you tell these allegories and parables related to power and control, I should again look for the interplay of all three traps of the ego mind.

P: Yes, excellent, you are catching on. The MP is a Holistic system of concepts and principles and all parts must be applied together. But I especially want you to also translate their symbolism back to the visible evidence of their presence in our society today.

The Master Power Broker and His Victims in Four Scenes

[Return from Parable]

Further Interpretation of Parable:
Q: I would like to further discuss the Summary Interpretation I just read for that story.  Certainly I detect the presence of the Maslow hierarchy here as evident in the values of the various victims. Complexity is there in that the victims only focused on and negotiated the obvious as revealed by their limiting physical senses and ego needs.  The paradox of communication is there in that none of the victims had sufficient Spiritual Consciousness to transcend semantic boundaries revealed by their limited interpretations of the evidence.  With low HIP competence they could not think in abstract (out of their experience) terms.  None of them it seems, knew how to use their gold to enhance their capacity to pursue a saving Spiritual Consciousness.

P: Your insight is correct.  The power broker first appeals to our ego for sufficient power and control solely to serve our basic physical and ego needs. But these needs bear no relationship to our intrinsic Spiritual nature.  We will give all of our material largess (gold) for life itself, but in our Spiritual unconsciousness, we give up nothing in the early stages of our Spiritual unfoldment when it involves a sacrifice of our definition of material "gold."   We are addicted to an obsession to support our ego with its lower order material needs.

"Gold" symbolizes our Power, our incorruptible Spiritual promise. There is a direct relationship between expanding consciousness and our increasing willingness to invest our "Gold" in higher order intellectual and Spiritual processes, first in developing the mind, and then in developing Spiritual Consciousness itself.  This is the typical path of the Soul for most of us.

Q: You know, I could not help but see myself in that story. I have been oblivious to even the possibility of a Spiritual Consciousness transcending my sense driven mind. But what about the fourth victim?  He had every opportunity to invest his time solely in Spiritual Pursuits.  What happens to such a person?  He is like the Hollywood reprobate who "has everything."

P: ...but happiness.

Q: He reminds me of the chronic problems of so called "celebrity status" people and the miserable and destructive lives so many of them live.

P: Without a quickened Spiritual Consciousness, the fourth victim remains entrapped by his ego agendas.  His extensive largess as a gift of birth becomes the last major trap of his senses.. He was seduced by his attachment to his material wealth.  But since, as I will soon demonstrate, that money equals power, therefore, given sufficient money, there is no material want within reason that can not easily be obtained. So, rather than yield his material gratification, his gold, he ignorantly chose Spiritual death and oblivion over the transcendent life of the Spirit.  This is the choice most of humanity makes in the absence of an awakened Spiritual Consciousness. [Relevant Scripture]  Errors that cheat one's self of accessible gifts are frequently found among those who are within reach of their Spiritual potential, but who do not yet have the Spiritual empowered "eyes" to see nor "ears" to hear. Therefore they cannot muster the courage required to risk the leap.

Q: Now that I am learning this paradigm, even with little experience in using it, I seldom observe the public detecting any politician's self-serving behaviors as evident in their public proclamations, politics, or policy.  If they do notice these traps, they surely don't know what to do about them.

The public seems witless because they do not demand that either their elected officials, or someone in a high place in government question the discrepancies between rules that mostly serve the rich and powerful over and against the poor they economically exploit, ignore, or even enslave. I find that there is a constant power struggle going on among various specialists to impose power and force to obtain their desired goals.  They appear to follow the evolution of the instruments of power and control over the centuries.

P: Yes. Today, the emporiums of force compete from within their glass cased high rises and magnificent landscaped labyrinths of corporate America.  We will not find them among the struggling non-profit helpers to heal human suffering in the inner city.  For example, travel down Scully Road, Route 28, which is just east of Virginia's massive Dulles airport, near Washington, DC. Or travel down route 7 (Leesburg Highway) also in suburban Virginia, or in the Maryland suburbs adjacent to I-270 corridor leading north out of our national capitol, or in Columbia, Maryland, north-east  of the district midway to Baltimore.

Q: What will I find?

P:  You will find there, one after the other, the opulent temples of corporate ambition who are conveniently positioned to suck secular power from the seemingly bottomless cistern of political influence that both symbolize and define Washington, D.C.  Their status is paid for by you and me, by our submission to the rules that require us to submit to insurance companies, the banks, conglomerates galore, and their rules of money.

Q: Why?

P: Because of our material need to purchase their products, services and diversions.  In this we have no vote except through the now untenable myth of the marketplace.  We either afford the costs, or do without.  Who cares?  There is no advocate for the concept of "fairness for the people."  The power of money trumps the power of the people.  Capital screws the workers who create the wealth. [Wolman & Colamosca, 1987]  In the recent elections after Clinton, large numbers of the public vote for the perpetrators and protectors of this evil.

Q: I can now conclude that this is because they are oblivious to the Spiritual implications of what they do. They do not care who gets hurt by it, provided they can protect or expand their pile.

P: We find the capitalist predators lurking behind the glitter of wall street offerings. These of course are only affordable by those who are privileged to indulge themselves in playing the power games in which stock, bonds and other "paper" are simply chess pieces in the games of money and corporate power.

I find an increasingly bitter humor in the evidence that more and more commercials are offering products and services, even those of reasonable cost, to a growing segment of the public that cannot possibly afford them no matter how much they may want them.

P: Wait until we finish our dialogues before you try to decide.  But do become aware that in local communities all across middle class America, the public's personal funds are quietly being sucked up to fuel the new international engines of corporate ambition served by force.  The growing local presence of these corporate mega-monoliths (e.g., Wall-Mart) steadily sucks up the livelihoods in every vulnerable target community.  The small time family business and individual tax contributors are engulfed and consumed by these growing megaliths whose battalions of lawyers and accountants skillfully exploit the laws they have arranged to hide their power from the public they exploit.

Equally dangerous to continued social stability is not only the loss of local livelihoods and the personal power to literally survive, but also stolen is their "meaning of life," i.e., the psychic and Spiritual rewards and satisfactions derived from providing a valuable service to the community.

P:  The damage continues.  In the resulting tax drought, the first community programs to fall are those programs devoted to the higher dimensions of our C/consciousness.These include programs of culture, music, art, theater, libraries and museums.  These are quickly sacrificed by local boards and councils, even before school and community sports.

At the national level, the public languishes in stupefied silence as our cultural institutions, our national parks and monuments, and the humanity serving dimensions of our government are blatantly attacked, subverted, diluted, sold, and/or simply destroyed.  The Spiritually anestithized public cannot experience outrage when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is attacked and intimidated into accepting the embrace of a corporate megalith, e.g., Time, Inc., via their subsidiary, the National Broadcasting Company.  Please note, they now jointly broadcast both of the national Republican and Democratic conventions.

Like a chick hypnotized by a devouring snake, the public appears oblivious to this real threat to the future of unbiased and un-compromised news and analysis. Our freedom today is not being overthrown by violence, but by the progressive dilution of our rights, by the relentless erosion and abuse of laws set to preserve them, by the permissive apathy of a stupefied public.

P: This condition of national decline advances as a by-product of an impoverished national Spiritual Consciousness.  The ultimate price for this ignorance is the eventual death of our national identity as it is progressively consumed by massive, self serving,  ruthless, and Spiritually empty international corporate conglomerates.

Q:  I  trust there is additional proof of your claim.

P: The proof is there, but only for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.  As you meditate on this dialogue you will discover the hidden rules and reasoning which create and nourish a growing pattern of abusive economic and social forces.  These abuses are of course carefully managed to appear legitimate while their cancerous lesions remain hidden from the normal public awareness.

Q: I'm already catching on to why certain population elements succumb to the simple appeals of the power broker.

P: By definition, victims seldom correctly perceive why they are powerless and helpless to receiving abuses that cost their freedom. As we spoke of in Dialogue #3, regarding the toddler, the bully and the board members, each child cycles through their own experience in recreating the entire history of unfolding human consciousness.  This cycle begins with humanity's love affair with their personal ego and its attraction to power which nourishes an appeal to use force as the best and fastest means to gain their ends.

Each human being must repeat and confront that history as they evolve from infancy before they can transcend it. Their success in that transcendence depends upon the quality of Spiritual nourishment accessible to empower them.  Each human Odyssey is the same in Principle whether its the ancient version by Homer, or in its modern cloak as the Star Wars Trilogy, or my Odyssey, or in yours.

P: At the outset of human consciousness [adjacent figure,] personal power is derived solely from one's personal capacity to impose their will by means of physical force. That is, each must dominate solely by exercising one's own strength, cunning and determination. Each person confronts their version of a gate which admits or prohibits their passage to that which they believe fully resolves their needs and desires.  Each must resolve how to open the gate by themselves.  Power markers (e.g., money) are abstract keys or licenses that can open certain power gates and admit the bearer to the benefits behind the gate.

In pre tribal society, interpersonal encounters were rare and life was precious  The power of the individual was devoted mostly to cope with the primal wilderness. Notice the evolution of power that I will develop from that beginning. See how both the nature of the gate, and the manifest consciousness of the dwellers define the optimum means for coping with it. Notice how these characteristics change as civilization "advances."

Q: I have already seen the children I know learn to use their power and then, alas, sometimes abuse even their limited potential to use physical power, like the bully in The Playground story you related.

P: Yes.  And Spiritual Consciousness is the only means to ultimately transcend the barrier set by any gate.  This is because every "gate" exists only of "the world."  Every "gate" is a creation of the human ego.  Let me begin by defining a hierarchy of personal and social "power" and its potential abuses by means of a short parable.  I ask you to consider the nature of the "pawnshop" in this parable and observe the how its specialized trade evolves over time.

Be careful of the three traps of mind.  My challenge is not as simple as it seems.  But I trust you to grasp the conceptual point I am making from some of the character's historical names.  These are clues to understanding the parable since I know you have studied a little world history.  But I could have chosen other equally appropriate names for these characters.  Perhaps you will offer more appropriate names for these historical symbols representing the various abuses of power through applied force.

Then ask yourself, how and where you can find it operating today?  How does it appear to the senses?  Where can you find it in the social structure of any nation of interest to you?  Who is its favored customer today?  Tomorrow?  Where would you fit today, either as participant or victim?
...
The Power Broker's and Power Monger's Specialty Pawn Shop (PBPMSPS)

[Return from Parable]

P:  I this figure on the left, you will find the levels that the power brokers were oblivious to.  They were all functioning at the primal or ego needs level, until the newest arrival, Joanne Donne, appeared with her applied power of Love.  This power is the only power that operates at the transcendent level.   Which would you choose?  To be "powerful," or be "victim?"  Each of the actors in this scenario acts from a consciousness that defines "power" for them.   Each defines the nature of personal owner as some kind of controlling force managed by them and their surrogates. Where the struggle for power is at issue, the only reality accessible in their ego owned consciousness is win or lose. Each is a creature of their own culture. Each of their respective cultures have in common that it is impoverished of Spiritual Consciousness. Therefore all of them are guided by their ego intellect to become devoted to serving and conquering the material world.

Q: Better to be perpetrator than victim.

P:  Perhaps.  You shall see.  And in further reflection, I offer a quote from Leo Rosten:

"It is the weak who are cruel,
gentleness can only be expected from the strong."

Q:  Whew!  Since you asked about what should be obvious, I am wondering which to choose.

P:  My questions offers the Faustian bargain. Would you offer your Sacred Soul (your bag of Gold) in exchange for unlimited secular power and control?  Of course the obvious is to choose to be protective of one's self.  To choose to have power to apply protective forces helps to nourish that illusion. But notice the costs of that force.  Most of the clients at the pawn shop, except that last one, Joan Dunne, are known for having ruthlessly applied one kind of force or another and thereby caused some kind of damage or harm to others in the process.  Some seem innocuous, such as Marco Polo who historically is only credited with opening commerce and establishing trade routes between the Mediterranean and the far east.

Q: I can generalize that to today's predatory capitalists. They are not so innocent.

P: Neither were the traders of Marco Polo's era.  Over the intervening years after the opening of east-west trading [The Silk Road; information], many evils were unleashed that are not normally associated with mere commerce. These are forgotten--lost in modern complexity.  Such evils include the forced (slave) labor of children, the creation of sweat shops, importation of gunpowder from China, transmission of disease, rise of banditry and the other adverse effects from the intrusion of competitive commerce and its coinage.

These developments transformed simple barter based rural agrarian societies to compete in a world of abstracted power, using paper money for the first time. [brought to the west by Marco Polo in the 13th Century.]  The source of these developments are lost to modern consciousness because of the subtlety and complexity of the effects.  Furthermore, the potential for evil increases as power to apply force becomes aggregated in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals.  Try to notice how the pattern of applying force in more complex ways developed in this parable will evolve in the power monger allegory to follow in the epilogue to OT/MP.

P: Now, examine this figure. What do you see?

Q:  I notice that the pattern in the parable of the PBPMSPS is reflected in this figure [left]. There is the progression from primal tribal settings to complex high tech settings.  There is the bag of gold at the primal level that leads to the pot of gold at the top of various symbols for money, which I now understand are simply different forms of power markers.

P:  So far so good. Always remember that these symbols have power only because humanity has vested them with power.  That includes gold itself.  Continue.

Q: I can see where the abuse of power begin with the use of personal persuasion guaranteed by the potential to use force beginning with the direct laying on of hands that Rambo symbolizes. Extensions of force then follow which become his surrogate mechanisms or instruments--power markers, as you have called them. Then these aggregate as various entities or instruments for collecting power markers.

Therefore you call them power amplifiers. I notice the power monger's efforts over the centuries to promote an aggregation of power through the use of ever increasing degrees of institutional force (armies) to impose their will on others. Today, there appears to be tremendous energy around attainment of corporate and political dominance over the so called electronic information highway.  The complexity of all this hides the relationship of actual political and social power to the capacity of the power mongers to apply force, although the actual medium is unclear to me.  I confess I'm presently lost in its complexity..

P:  But now you have some initial conceptual tools, which if properly meditated on...

Q:  Suddenly it is dawning on me.  I now can actually sense the nature and scale of threat to our way of life from the corporate cancer that is growing in my United States. If I correctly interpret this parable using the Mystical Paradigm, "Rambo is the ultimate whiner.  But the truly strong, I mean those who are most powerful, are those who have transcended the need to compete using any form of material or secular force.  Am I catching on here?

P:  Your catching on, and control of information that directs the management of money in its various forms is the current power chip of preference. But the nature of this power chip as you have observed, is lost to the public by its abstract and complex nature.  The meaning behind the Biblical statement that "the first shall be last" and vice versa, applies here as well.

But these are practical concerns about the need for coping with the secular power mongers and their rapidly escalating abuses. The "winners" cannot prevail in high stakes struggles without ultimately hurting each other as well as the innocent in their competition.  Now see the roots of the dismal observations of nature being "...red in tooth and claw," [Tennyson] and the human condition being a "...war of everyone (all) against everyone (all)"  [Hobbes.] Now consider the meaning of  a related Biblical injunction, that you cannot serve both God and mammon.

"No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." ( Matt 6:24)

P: They are quite different. Manna is a metaphor for Spiritual food or nourishment.  But, "mammon," metaphysically represents the material illusions that serve the physical senses. Mammon, symbolized by the Biblical god baal, is the reality defined by the ego intellect's interpretations of data received through the physical senses.  Baal is the material seduction of the ego that compels one to enlist their energies in the quest for perfect earthly power.  This creates a win-lose requirement called a "zero-sum" game where each material winner requires a corresponding loser. But the nature and cost of these rules are invisible to the Spiritually unawakened public.  These unfortunate games require the manipulation of social forces to accumulate power.. These networks of power and influence become lost in political, social and economic complexity. [see Fillmore, 1959;  definition of baal]

In order for you to grasp the danger that resides in our confused and inflamed ego needs, we conclude this dialogue by examining the nature of the threat for humanity's survival.  You should now have sufficient grasp of the Principles of OT/MP to evaluate these conditions effectively in terms of their relevance for you and our society.

Please review the following hierarchy of controlling power gates that have expressed across the history of western society, particularly American society.

P:  The following discussion will present various kinds of "power markers." In the games of life, we strive to accumulate these power markers.   They are indicative of our capacity to exercise earthly power and control.  Consequently, they act to define for us our ego status.  Then we sometimes act to neutralize, limit, remove, or acquire for ourselves the power markers of others.  Using whatever means are accessible, we act to advance our ability to acquire and use power.

Herein is found the dynamics of human conflict, a constant struggle for power using various social manifestations of force [defined] to obtain power and control over other human systems.  Given their use of force in their material world, there are a variety of intellectual solutions related to alternative dispute resolution techniques t hat can be employed to deal with this.

However, none of these are equal to the power of Spiritual Consciousness as a foundation factor that is essential to promote the healing and prevention of conflict.

Q: So what then, is the relationship between power markers, power amplifiers, and the problems you presented in your introductory dialogue?

P: A power marker is that symbol of dominance and control that has evolved from primitive forms, through various levels of complexity and kinds of instruments. But all provide the means to acquire and exercise power and control over the bio-social ecology. The figure below is intended to provide a means to illustrate this social evolution of the nature of personal power and its extension through some kind of force.

A series of figures will follow in which the following elements will help clarify the nature of a person's maximum power potential.  As the complexity of the social ecology increases, the nature pot these markers change.  A power broker's biases will change to favor that marker or amplifier that maximizes his power and control in the social and cultural ecology in which he/she exists.  The power become oriented toward those markers from which they perceive their needs can best be reliably met. The descriptive elements you will find in these figures are:

Dwellers (you and I): these represent the characters in the PBPMSPS (pawn shop) and their peers.  It defines the status of target individuals and human systems (such as disputants in conflict, or competitors in business) as determined by the nature of their consciousness in their bio-social ecology.
Symbolic gate to be unlocked: the symbol of the key (i.e., a power marker) or the releasing mechanism for overcoming the gate or opposing the withholding condition or force. That gate separates individuals from easy or direct access to the fulfillment of their needs.  The gate must be overcome to gain access to the "Pie" that represents the fulfillment of one's needs within the Maslow hierarchy.
Symbol of principal opposing force or condition: these are the hostile conditions in the bio-social ecology that construct the "key", that social environment that creates the opposing forces and pressures that lock the gate, i.e., that deny, compromise or limit the easy fulfillment of a "dweller's" needs,
The "pie" is the symbol for that condition which fulfills a person's (system's) material needs: these are the conditions, benefits and empowering entities that define for each person (dweller) how their basic needs can be met. Values are defined as those systematic and persistent behaviors that have been learned from experience as being effective in serving the person's needs. We value those activities or achievements that are reliable and effective in the fulfillment of our needs.  [review comparison among, needs, wants, and values]
Pyramid (hierarchy) of needs: this triangle symbolizes the hierarchy of importance for the bio-social resources described by the Maslow hierarchy, which fulfillment potential becomes defined by the resources and conditions in the bio-social ecology, but inhibited by the nature of the intervening gate.
Label for the gatekeeper (key--power marker or amplifier) at a given level of ecological and social complexity: At the primal beginnings of human consciousness, humanity evolved through successive levels of social complexity. In the beginning, personal power was derived solely by ones hands-on use of force. One applied this force as limited by one's personal prowess, mental cunning, and ruthless will to dominate the biological wilderness to obtain basic security, food and shelter.  Then the nature of the gatekeeper changes as human civilization evolves through increasing levels of complexity.  The pie evolves from the lower levels of the Maslow hierarchy, to higher levels that include various expressions of ego satisfaction.

In primal humanity's initial unfoldment of consciousness, the first "Gate" requires individual initiative and applied force to overcome other individuals and the primal wilderness. The individual must both accommodate to and then dominate that part of the wilderness upon which literal survival is dependent. That is, one applies one's keys to the gate, a power marker which at this level is one's own strength, cunning, and ruthless determination.

Each person must confront their version of a gate which admits, compromises, or prohibits their passage to those resources which fully resolve their needs and wants. Conflict scenarios erupt when individuals confront each other's competing interests which are blocked or limited so that a win-lose situation is created. For example, there may be numbers of powerful and cunning hunters in a given area, but because of drought, there is insufficient game to adequately serve all who enter.  Then they must first weed each other out to claim sufficient game and survive.

Each of the actors in the following scenarios of increasing social complexity are condemned to act from within the limits of their ego intellect, their material consciousness.  That constraint defines the nature of "power" for them as they overcome the inhibiting "gate" with their power marker keys to get their pieces of the needs fulfilling "pie."

NOTE: in the following hierarchy of 10 levels of social power, be aware that there are no hard boundaries of time and conditions that separates the advance of these levels.  Rather there is a shading of emphasis as the dominant factors change from level to level.  At any given level, aspects of the other levels will be present, especially the adjacent levels.  One of the requirements for a human system to survive this change at any level, especially where time lines are short and change is rapid, is the capacity to detect the nature of the change, and prepare one's self and ones power amplifiers to meet it.

Success at this level involves the will, strength and cunning to directly (hands-on) dominate both the wilderness elements and to impose control over other all competing human beings. This priority must be served before one can serve one's own material agendas (ego needs.)

The warrior chief became the custodian of the primal forces of personal prowess, courage, and will.  The Witch Doctor evolved to become the custodian of the innate Spiritual forces of the primal wilderness that he/she could muster to destroy the warrior. Thus each primal custodian of power (material and Spiritual) held each other at bay, and they dwelt in eternal suspicion and distrust of each other.  Each was afraid to overstep their respective authority to exploit their unique strength and be destroyed by the other.

Dwellers:
        Organization of aboriginal peoples who formed into groups, becoming nomadic tribes and clans
Nature of the Gate:
        Physical dominance over themselves through personal discipline in coping with the demands of the wilderness; the blessings of gods and spirits for guidance in overcoming the primal wilderness, and  to inspire their personal will, courage, strength, and cunning
Principal Opposing Force:
        The will of the gods and the nature of the primal elements
Pie--the Appearance of Needs Met:
        Security and subsistence needs met as food, clothing, shelter and safety, interpreted as evidence of the blessings of their gods; plus the reliability of their chiefs and Witch Doctors
Gatekeeper or Power Marker as Key to the Pie:
        Warrior chiefs and Witch Doctor classes to whom the member individuals of the tribes and clans became progressively dependent and subservient
Dominant Nature of Conflict:
        Added elements of interpersonal competition for the approbation of, or status to be recognized as the alpha (chief) and/or to demonstrate the beneficent and protective influence of the Witch Doctor influences.
.
Success at this level involves applying threat, force, or demonstration of personal power to intimidate, coerce or manipulate the members of one's tribe or clan, and to intimidate any adjacent tribes and clans.  [see Biblical example]

Success at this level involves successful organization of one's own tribe, or coalition of tribes, to conquer and subjugate competing tribes and clans to one's own dominance and control.

Dwellers:
        Populace of small towns affording the specialization of its members into crafts and trades
Nature of the Gate:
        Position of influence over essential craft and commercial resources held and controlled by others
Principal Opposing Force:
       Village alphas and opinion leaders; competing providers of products and services;  control of the essential raw material resources
Pie--the Appearance of Needs Met:
        Emergence of individual recognition, status and influence as a factor contributing to the individual needs and the viability of the village or town, plus meeting of the basic needs and essentials
Gatekeeper or Power Marker Key to the Pie:
        (Commercial class) The development of primitive "power amplifiers" (businesses) designed to attract the flow of power markers;
        Individuals who controlled or had access to the most essential or desirable locations, goods and services
Dominant Nature of Conflict:
    Turf struggles over control of land, crafts, and other production of goods and services;
    Expansionist actions against  competing villages and city-states.

Success at this level involves involves being in a position to prohibit and dilute competition, and to arrange to monopolize selected products and services that can be traded.
..

Dwellers:
        Villages, towns and cities with well defined social groups keyed to function as gatherers and managers of power markers
Nature of the Gate:
        Power markers (money, bonds, gold, silver, etc) replacements for direct barter of good and services
Principal Opposing Force:
        Conditions affecting the accessibility and control over power markers and their link to material resources
Pie--the Appearance of Needs Met:
        Evidence of money or other status indicators and influence bought by money,
        plus access to all basic and ego related essentials
Gatekeeper or Power Marker Key to the Pie:
        (Banking class) Money lenders and controllers of goods and services that are managed by money
Dominant Nature of Conflict:
        Ability to control the accessibility and flow of power markers through ones own "power amplifier"

Success at this level involves defining the types and value of various forms of power markers, arranging to own and process power markers, and to control the rudimentary business entities (power amplifiers) of others that manage, regulate, and direct the flow of power markers.

Dwellers:
        Functional groups of power amplifiers of increasing size, complexity, and abstraction
Nature of the Gate:
        Knowing the data (information) factors affecting the ebb and flow of power markers [review definitions] and the tracking of the power amplifiers of others
Principal Opposing Force:
        Competing controllers of information related to the acquisition and management of power amplifiers and power markers and their
        allocation as these become attached to factors that support basic and ego level needs
Pie--the Appearance of Needs Met:
        Status defined by dominant control of information and access to the ownership of power markers;  to compete more  effectively among other power amplifiers
Gatekeeper or Power Marker Key to the Pie:
        Administrators, and classes of analysts, commercial stock brokers, money managers and marketing specialists
        Market and political factors affecting the flow of power markers
Dominant Nature of Conflict:
        Competition for access to control of information resources;
        empowerment for control over the manipulation of power markers and the power amplifiers of others;
        potential dominance and overwhelming by interventions of competitors within or among city-states.

Success at this level involves controlling all information resources, including those that gather and process data and transform it into information; dominance is achieved by those positioned to interpret, package, and and disseminate the information; and those who choose what forums and what kinds of information will be displayed; and have a capacity to choose what media for providing information to selected client audiences.
.

Dwellers:
        Individuals and their collection into complex marketing and manufacturing organizations and institutions
Nature of the Gate:
        The Rule Making process that determines the laws and regulations by which power markers, individuals, groups, and organizations (power amplifiers) interact to affect the flow of power markers (money,) goods and services.
Principal Opposing Force:
        Coalitions of political forces fueled by power markers who compete to acquire for themselves direct access or influence over rule making that affects the behavior of power markers, commercial and other markets, and  power amplifiers
Pie--the appearance of Needs Met:
        Access to the means of control or influence over the rules affecting the behavior of power amplifiers;
        Control over the rules that affect the management of power markers owned by competing entities
Gatekeeper or Power Marker Key to the Pie:
        Dominant political controllers
        Political positions that create access to influence or control the owners of  power amplifiers by manipulating the rule makers;
        Capacity to dominate the rule making process and determine the final results
Dominant Nature of Conflict:
        Struggle to obtain, dominate, control and influence "the law,"  rule making, and the capacity to bias the process toward self interest
.
Success at this level involves control over the legislatures by lobbying, and by staffing the legislative support bodies with one's own accountants and lawyers who operate solely in the interest of the power monger who owns them;  and direct control over the policy makers themselves, those who can be bought and are therefore owned by and under the control of one's self or institutional (power amplifier) extension.
.

Success at this level involves total control over the power broker/mongers and the politicians they own who have arranged to "own" the government, i.e., the best government that money can buy.

Dwellers:
            Citizen participants in cities, organizations, institutions, societies and Nations
Nature of the Gate:
            As distress increases in obtaining fair access to and control over the governmental processes, since the actual machinations of operations with the rules and laws of commerce, banking and society are lost in complexity to the individual citizen, the "reality" that affects the capacity to protect and enforce the rule making process will be determined by the perceptions of citizen members. Thus continued control of the laws and regulations, and the nature of the flow of power markers, and the performance of power amplifiers depends upon the absolute need to control the beliefs of the voters as long as they still have some capacity to control the decision making values at the various levels of government
Principal Opposing Force:
            Controllers of hostile power amplifiers controlling the image making and influence power amplifiers; both competing interests vested in their own dominance and control of the myth machinery, and public service interests with a vested interest in the truth when the truth is contrary to the agendas of the dominant myth makers.
Pie--the appearance of Needs Met:
            Ego satisfaction derived from ability to create, destroy and manipulate myths;
            The capacity to establish of favorable controlling political coalitions;
            The pacification of the populace; and the
            Shutting down the capacity of competing power amplifiers to influence the government and oppose your control of it.
Gatekeeper or Power Marker Key to the Pie:
            Media, Information Management entities, media and information oriented power amplifiers
            Press, television, Internet (World Wide Web), strategists, and purveyors of processed information
Dominant Nature of Conflict:
        Ability to provide or withhold and manipulate emotional public interest content;
        Unopposed design and implementation of biased information as part of any tactical or strategic objective;
        Control over information resources, channels of information flow, communication technology,
        Control of the government entities and the rules by which it is implemented, monitored and paid for.

Success at this level requires that the power brokers and power mongers disguise their ultimate objectives, the fact and nature of their existing control; and the owners of power amplifiers and political and government entities that are in league with them and who act as their surrogates. By means of creating, disseminating and perpetuating the myths that validate the status quo in the mind of the majority of citizens, they insure that the electorate is pacified, divided and impotent to make any serious inroad into the scale and cope of their control of the society.

Success at this level requires that the power broker/mongers establish sufficient ruthless control of sufficient numbers of ignorant sympathizers, and obtain absolute control over the enforcers themselves, who in accordance with the "Obedience to Authority Syndrome" are willing and able to harm or kill any an all opposition as defined by the power mongers, including those citizens who are otherwise emotionally close to them.

Q:  Wow!  Given this array of the evolution of the power monger, the headlines related to the politics of today are truly ominous.  My work is cut out for me to begin to examine these headlines and assess what is really motivating the actors who create this politics involved.   It appears that I could use this information to be very effective in competing with the power brokers.  Maybe I could even become a power monger and beat those leaders at their own game.

P: Before you seriously consider such a use of the MP, you might first review the topic of our next dialogue in detail.

Q: You mean the so called perfect Justice you call Karma and Reincarnation?

P: Yes.  We will take up that topic as our next dialogue.  And then you might want to apply that topic as well as this topic on power to the review I will provide you in the form of the "Infernal Catechism of the Secret Society of Power Brokers and Power Mongers."

Q: Yes, that will be shared during our concluding dialogue.  Well, I will be all ears.

P: Good!  And perhaps by then you will have ears that hear and eyes that see.

TABLE 4: 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 depends upon 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

NEXT:  Dialogue 6, Karma and Reincarnation.

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Master Page of OT/MP

Master Site Map

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Current update on October 11, 2007
[currently under revision]
Original page first published to WWW on September 5, 1996.