Witch Hunts and Other forms of Authoritarian Activities
Recently, there were some postings and replies
which revolved around Arthur Miller's play The
Crucible. The initial posting began in the
following way:
"Last night I went to the theater to see the play "The Crucible," written by Arthur Miller. It is a play inspired by the events and records of the Salem Witchcraft Crisis in Massachusetts in 1692.
At one time it was practically inconceivable to me how an entire community of people could have let these injustices occur to their friends, neighbors, and family members. What kind of mass hysteria was involved? Who could believe in spirits and witches and the devil himself walking into Salem? Worse yet, how did these belief systems help to create the atmosphere of fear which, despite the truth, caused the collapse of traditional bonds between people? The director of the play wrote: "Out of this tragedy comes a uniquely human story of individuals tested by the parameters of their morality."
Well, Satan did walk right into Salem -- just not in the form the inhabitants were on the look-out for. Iblis manifested in the form of the inquisitors and neighbors turning against neighbors."
In some present day sufi communities, with the backdrop of all the wonderful stories of mystical happenings, spiritual and worldly kashf, and the like, the atmosphere is not unlike the atmosphere in Salem in the 17th Century. If the sufi teacher is a just and decent person, no harm, foul".
But some imposters use this atmosphere to create distrust and create the same circumstances that gave rise to the Salem witch trials -- a belief in other than the truth."
Someone, while responding to the foregoing ideas, wanted to include the evolutionism/creationism controversy as a modern-day example of how hysteria and beliefs rooted in other than the truth can create similar sorts of problems as exemplified by Miller's The Crucible. My comments begin with this issue of the creationism versus evolutionism conflict, but they proceed on to a variety of other issues.
There is going to be a tendency of many who
read the following - at least, the initial portion - to go glassy-eyed when going through the material. This response - should
it occur - is, actually, part of the evidence which
I would site for how the issues of The Crucible
have relevance (or vice versa) to what I would
like to try to draw people's attention.
So, buckle up your conceptual seatbelts,
check your paradigms at the door, and
allow yourself to consider certain possibilities.
Be careful, however, for forces of hypnosis
may be in play.
First, although I agree that creationism - at least
as propounded by many people of religion - is
an abuse of scientific methodology and, in a lot of
ways, represents little more than a religious
philosphy wrapped up in a modicum of scientific
word play, nevertheless, there are some important
matters of which one should not lose sight in
the process of people getting carried away with
the point-counterpoint of the creationist and
evolutionist acrimony which has been going on
since at least the time of the John Scopes trial.
More specifically, I would make the rather
audacious claim that 99% of the people who
argue about such matters - irrespective of
which side of the ledger on which they wish to
be listed - know little, or nothing about
evolutionary theory in any essential way.
By "essential way" I am talking about such
things as prebiotic chemistry, molecular biology,
the biology of energy gradients, the complexities
of membrane functioning, cytology (or cell biology),
protein formation, DNA/RNA synthesis, and the
different theories of protocell etiology - that is, the
origins of the original cell of life which serves as the
alleged common ancestor for all cellular-based
life which supposedly ensued. One could add such
topics as meterology, hydrology, atmospheric
chemistry, and theories of planetoid formation.
For those who are interested, there are a series
of interconnected essays in the e-book, Evolution
on Trial which can be found at:
Evolution On Trial
That work explores the fundamental scientific issues -
not creationist ones - which surround origins of life
theories.
To make a long story short, there is no [as in NONE],
even remotely, tenable theory of evolution concerning
the origins of life on Earth. There is not even such a
thing as a good working theory with respect to this
topic.
If you read the aforementioned e-book, you will
be able to view the evidential and methodological
foundations underlying this claim for yourself, but, the
going is likely to be too technical for most people.
Consequently, I will just list some of the findings of
the more detailed work.
There is no tenable theory of how nucleic acids -
with or without an oxygen radical - were synthesized.
There is no tenable theory of how functional proteins
- as opposed to dysfunctional protenoids - arose
through principles of natural selection, broadly
construed. There is no tenable theory of how,
on a chace basis, lipids which were biologically
viable were formed. There is no tenable theory of how
energy gradients were established that were able to
develop triphosphates as a means of energy transfer,
or how working membranes were established - and,
please, the trilaminate organelles which form when
lipids are placed in certain kinds of liquid environments
are not working membranes. And, finally, there is no
tenable theory for either how the information of
a working protocell got converted into DNA/RNA
strands which were capable of storing such information
for posterity, or, alternatively, how a protocell
survived for the millions of years which would have
been necessary to keep genetic information intact
and capable of being passed on to daughter protocell
structures.
There are working models of population genetics -
good models .... models for which there is considerable
evidence to support them. However, population
genetics is not a viable model for explaining origins of
life issues, and, quite frankly, population genetics is not
even a good model for trying to account for how
totally new processes of cellular biology came into
being - except within the limited context of the potential
already inherent in a given gene pool of a specific
species population.
99% of the people who talk about evolution are not
conversant with any of the foregoing issues. Yet,
pronouncements are made about whether evolution
did, or did not, take place.
There is nothing necessarily inconsistent with the idea
of God working through evolutionary processes if
that is the way things were done. As Creator, God
gets to do things whatever way Divininty pleases.
But, part of the evolutionary model is that there was
no intelligent purpose or design underlying the
origins of life. Everything which took place occurred
through chance phenomena working in conjuction
with the shaping potential of natural selection - but,
as Einstein said in an entirely different context (that
is, the argument which he had with many of the
architects of quantum theory): " God does not play
dice."
A few years ago, when I finished researching and
writing Evolution on Trial I contacted quite
a large number of people who had web sites dealing
with various aspects of evolutionism and creationism,
and I sought to engage them in discussion. Among
other things, I gave them a free copy of the
above mentioned work, and I sought there
critical comments concerning the issues being
raised within the e-book.
I approached people on both sides of the issue -
that is, those who were committed to imposing
creationism on others, together with those who
were committed to imposing evolutionism on
others. I got back very, very few responses to my
invitation - none of which gave any indication
of having read any of the material.
Like the Church fathers who would not even look
through the telescope of Galileo because they
had no wish to compromise good theology with
unsettling facts, neither the proponents of
evolution, nor the advocates of creationism
wished to look into the conceptual telescope
to which I was inviting them. Like some people
in some governments I know, they seemed to feel
that blind, steadfast commitment to their idea of
things was more important than trolling for
the truth.
I also remember a number of years ago when
I was participating as a member of a committee
which had been formed by the Ontario provincial
government to look into matters of textbook bias
concerning, among other issues, Islams and Muslims.
One of the people on the committee was a professor
of anthroplogy at a local university.
I can still remember the look of utter contempt and
incredulity on his face when he discovered that I
was not a fellow believer in evolutionary theory as
a tenable explanation for the origins of life. The
professor may have known a great deal about
anthropology, but he knew next to nothing about
the actual issues at the heart of scientific arguments
concerning origins of life, and, yet, he couldn't
fathom how someone could be a graduate of
Harvard University and the University of Toronto
and still hold to such antediluvian ideas.
It is not just in 17th century Salem, or in countless
other localties in medieval Europe, where people's minds,
hearts, and souls are bedazzled by belief systems
which rendered them, in many ways, defenseless against
the techniques of undue influence, mind-control, and
other dissociative states. There is susceptibility to these
forces going on today - the case of evolution, outlined
above, is a case in point.
The vast majority of people accept or reject evolutionary
theory not because of any basic understanding of the
evidential, methodological, and hermeneutical principles
involved in such issues, but because they have been
induced to accept a belief system under threat of being
considered different, or uncivilized, or unscientific, or
unspiritual, or rebellious, or a trouble-maker, or an
activist, or uneducated.
Consider, for a moment, the perception experiment
of Solomon Asch done back in 1955. Although subjects,
when alone, were able to identify which line was the same
as three other sample lines 99% of the time, nonetheless,
when these same subjects were required to make similar
kinds of identifications when answering after confederates
(that is, people who were in the know about, and playing a
role for, the experiment) who clearly mis-identified the
two lines which were the same, more than 33% of the
subjects went along with an answer which was clearly
incorrect, and which they knew to be incorrect when
questioned later.
If one can get this kind of compliance with something as
seemingly 'objective' as matching which line is the
same as three other lines, then, what happens when one
gets into murky, ambiguous areas such as: philosophy,
politics, spirituality, and emotionally charged relationship?
Moreover, one can add to the Asch experiment, Leon Festinger's study When Prophecy Fails, or Stanley Milgram's study in obedience, or Philip Zimbardo's prisoner study at Stanford, or Jane Elliot's 'Blue-eyed and Brown-eyed
experiment in prejudice with her 3rd graders,
or any of Robert Cialdini's work in the ways in which
six principles of influence can be used to alter the beliefs,
attitudes, perceptions, and behavior's of people without
the latter understanding anything of how they are being
manipulated to move in certain emotional, conceptual,
and behavioral directions.
Rudyard Kipling once said that the most powerful drug
known to man is language. Many people have been
induced into states of belief through the skillful use
of language which persists quite independently of
evidence, reason, and critical judgment - the theory of
evolution being one such instance, and there are,
unfortunately, so many other instances which could
be cited which have been bequeathed to us through
what is sometimes referred to as 'education' but
which is, more often than not, the induction of
beliefs states - many which will become quite
resistant to change - that give expression to many
of the same characteristics as are in evidence with
a post-hypnotic suggestion.
I am currently reading a book by Stephen Heller,
who passed away a few years ago, who is considered
one of the foremost proponents of an Ericksonian-like
mode of hypnotic induction technique. The book has
a lot of very useful information.
There is one quote which he borrows from Bandler and
Grinder - namely, "the map is not the territory" which
is of relevance to the foregoing. However, before
discussing this relevance, I find it interesting that
Bandler and Grinder who are considered the co-founders
of Neuro-linguistic programming are locked in bitter
legal disputes over such mundane issues as money,
recognition, and proprietary motives, although,
supposedly, NLP is the royal road to unlocking the
true potential of human beings - as someone once
said in conjunction with a friend's use of a rabbit
foot to ward off ill-luck: why are you using it, it
didn't do anything for the rabbit?
In any event, the fact of the matter is, our maps of
reality are not the same as reality iteself. In fact,
most of us live in the past, not in the present since
we are engaging reality through our maps, rather
than reality itself - we see reality through our belief
systems, many of which have been learned through
circumstances of classical and operarant conditioning
in which we may not even be aware of why we
become committed to such beliefs, or why we continue
to use them long after everyday experience indicates
that there is something dysfunctional about such
belief systems.
My first Sufi guide who, by the Grace of God, was
an authentic spiritual teacher once told me that
one should stay away from hypnosis. In essence,
he indicated that permitting oneself to enter into
a hypnotic state rendered one vulnerable to forces
about which most hypnotists had no knowledge or
understanding.
In some ways, many - although not necessarily
all - hypnotherapists are like medical doctors who
prescibe pharmaceuticals without any real understanding
of what such drugs do to a person or even how they
work. I remember someone I knew about thirty years
ago who suffered a mental breakdown and became
psychotic - that is, their beliefs about the nature of
reality were far removed from what reality appeared
to be to the rest of us (although one could say the
same of many saints, and, yet, there seems to be a
difference in moving away from consensual reality,
and moving toward a more fundamental dimension
of Reality).
This person was given chlorpromazine, which was one
of the first generation neuroleptics used to treat
people with psychosis of one kind or another. It helped
dampen hallucinations, and, thereby, brought a person
in closer touch with what the rest of us consider reality
to be, but, it did this with a huge price.
The youngster developed tartive dyskinesia which consists
of a series of uncontrollable twitches and tremors that
is brought on by one of the side-effects of this drug - namely,
that it depletes the neurotransmitter dopamine which
plays an important role in enabling human beings to have
control over their movements, even as an excess of dopamine
seems to play a role in the onset of certain psychotic
symptoms.
The doctors who prescribed chlorpromazine for the young
man did not intend for the latter to develop irreversible
twitches and tremors. But, this is what happened before
they understood why tardive dyskinesia would show up
in people taking chlorpromazine.
When the first Quranic injunction came with respect to
the use of alcohol, the Divine counsel was that there was
both good and bad in the use of alcohol, but that the
bad outweighed the good. Later on, another revelation
came which said that both alcohol and gambling were
the snares of Iblis, and, therefore, one should abstain
from them altogether.
Hypnotism is like alcohol. There is both good and bad
in it, but the bad outweighs the good - because every
time one induces a state of hypnosis in another human
being, one not only opens that individual up to other-
worldly forces which can be injurious to the individual (and,
like the prescribing of chlorpromazine in earlier days
has side-effects which are not properly understood
by the people prescribing such drugs), but, as well,
one renders the individual more susceptible to various
techniques of undue influence, mind-control, and the
like which are very prevalent in the modern world -
ranging from: education, to: politics, the media, and
religious institutions (in the form of terrorism, as well
as in the form of the abuse of religious leaders - mystical
or the common garden-variety of clerics who seek to
impose their beliefs on others).
The social construction of reality employs many techniques
of hypnosis, mind-control, and undue influence. Techniques
which exploit emotions such as fear, desire, greed, wanting
to belong, jealousy, and ego-enhancement - these are
employed through the 'teaching' systems of many facets of
socialization - especially, the process of education.
Many people have belief systems which are rooted in
motivations, emotions, biases, assumptions, and the
like which are very difficult to dislodge once they arise.
Many other individuals can be induced to adopt new
belief systems in which the same underlying system
of emotions, fears, anxieties, needs, and so on can
be used to motivate a transition from one belief system
to another, without reality ever being consulted.
Spiritual abuse - like political, economic or educational
abuse - is a reality which happens quite independently
of the issue of whether the person being abused deserves
to be abused. No one deserves to be abused, but people
can, and do, end up in circumstances in which, through
uninformed choices, they become vulnerable to the ravages
of abuse - domestic, spiritual, political, social, and economic.
The lessons of Arthur Miller's The Crucible are very wide-
ranging. Anything which is touched by belief systems, together
with a desire of people to exploit techniques which can manipulate such belief systems to serve the agenda of another human being through inducing heightened states of suggestibility by means of the use of undue influence is entailed by the central themes of Miller's play ... the evidence is all around us, and within us ... for those who have eyes to see and ears with which to listen and hearts with which to understand and discern.
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