Schools and demoralised criminals

(copy of a letter)

As you know, I always notice when someone indicates agreement with something I have said, and I wonder what they may take me as endorsing when I do not endorse it at all.

You seemed to agree that schools are producing a population of ‘demoralised criminals’, so perhaps that means that you are in favour of ideas that schools, having become more boring and demoralising, and offering ever less scope for aspiration or ambition, should now superimpose on the existing system stricter discipline and regimentation, so that those who are least criminal and demoralised, as well as those who are those things most, will have their lives made even worse.

The modern solution to the consequences of socialism, taxation and intervention, is always more socialism, taxation and intervention.

In just the same way, having flooded the country with terrorists and immigrants, legal or otherwise, there will be ‘justification’ for greater interference with the liberty of the respectable non-criminal middle class by such means as identity cards and databases. Socialists say: ‘Why should they mind if they have nothing to hide, so long as only agents of the collective can access the data?’ But who is to say that agents of the collective will be any more scrupulous and any less spontaneously destructive than the agents of the collective in the educational and university systems who have slandered and persecuted me throughout my life, and my parents until they were dead?

It should not be necessary to discuss what schools ‘should’ be like. Schools are a very dubious concept anyway; that they were ever invented shows how nasty the human race is, and compulsory education is clearly absolutely immoral.

"Morality skills"

Another terrible article about IQ in The Times. I am being prevented from writing and publishing replies to the pernicious ideology that pours out.

Heading of article (18 December 2006):

We are about as smart as we're going to get, says IQ pioneer
- Test results are starting to level out
- Morality skills are the "next step"

My comments

It is only to be expected that the ‘rise’ in IQ consequent on the inception of the Welfare State will level out and eventually turn into a decline.

I do not place any particular reliance on the truthfulness or objectivity of academic research workers, so when I read that rises in IQ were reported, I used to think that they might well be shifting the mean, changing the types of question, or just fudging the results to suit themselves. But in fact there is a plausible way of accounting for any rise in average IQ that has really occurred.

Research in America, as reported in the controversial (i.e. largely suppressed) book Dysgenics (David Lynn, Praeger 1996) indicates that the rise may well have been caused by ironing out the effects on adult IQ of poor nutrition and medically untreated diseases, some of which cause brain damage, in early life. Those with the lowest IQs had suffered most from this double whammy, and the rises in IQ were commensurate with those resulting from the medical treatment of disease in control populations. The rise in IQ occurred only in the lowest strata of the population, although of course this raised the overall average IQ to a lesser extent.

A counteracting negative factor, although less immediately noticeable, arose from the provision of medical treatment in early life. A higher proportion of the least functional populations survived to reproductive age. Estimates have been made of the percentage increase per generation of various disabilities, including mental disabilities, resulting from genetic defects.

What are we supposed to understand by ‘morality skills’? Indoctrination in egalitarian collectivist ideology, one supposes, with its dogmatic but unstated beliefs. It takes a very high IQ, as well as some unusual personality factors, to realise what is behind these beliefs, as they depend on a large number of unexamined assumptions about underlying issues that are never even mentioned.

Ignored and/or misrepresented by the media - as usual

My Press Release about the new scheme for 'gifted' children has been rigorously ignored as usual. The one about the terrible proposals for increasing taxation (= confiscation of liberty), in order to interfere even more with children who are already deprived of their liberty by the immoral legislation that makes ‘education’ (= exposure to social hostility) compulsory.

If the media actually wanted some real information about the issues, they might have consulted me, given that I am actually a former gifted child, unlike all the 'experts' waffling about the supposed issues involved in being gifted.

People lift the odd word or quotation from my published material (as they did with Fabian’s book about the legalised crime of the medical ‘profession’) so that they can incorporate them in their own watered-down articles which ignore the real issues.

A Guardian online article about raising the school leaving age uses the word ‘incarceration’ from my November post on this topic in its headline, and gives an anonymous link to my blog, following the convention that I have no social identity. I am merely "one blogger" who thinks that "raising the school leaving age to 18 would be like sentencing intelligent, though not necessarily academically-minded, teenagers to jail", a very watered-down version of my views. Whereas the real point is that all compulsory education is immoral and should be abolished.

Aphorism of the month (January)

The only way most people show evidence of a brain is in the cunning of their stupidity.

(from the forthcoming book The Corpse and the Kingdom)

Further to injunctions

Whether or not descriptions are turned into injunctions, the only psychological allusions in Christianity are to psychological events in centralised psychology, subsequent to the rejection of society/other people as a source of significance. As the social environment is by far the most obviously available source of significance, this is a very important watershed, so one might wish for some indication of how to get there. But the descriptions of higher level (centralised) generosity encourage the Christian to focus his attention on interactions with other people and society at large, and to reinforce dependence on them as a source of significance.

In fact, you could say that Christianity (as it is, which seems unlikely to have much to do with what anyone who got a higher level would want to promote) is designed to prevent the development of higher level psychology. People who have some higher level tendencies, without being centralised, are likely to want to see something in it, and be drawn into an occlusive kind of psychology (although certainly no worse than socialist egalitarianism).

We can take it as established that there was a higher level mixed up in the origins of Christianity somewhere, but Vladimir Lossky, for example, seems to prefer the idea that there was no psychological development in the life of Christ. That is, either he was in a deified (higher level) state throughout, or (Lossky’s preferred scenario) in a kenotic deified state throughout, which would appear to correspond approximately to a post-higher level state.

But there are many metaphorical references in the Gospels to the dramatic shifts in perspective that occur in pre-higher level psychology, and the Kingdom of Heaven is something that is "entered into", so it would appear that the person who got the higher level definitely got it at some point, and had not had it before then. It is possible to take all the transitional metaphors as referring to the final acquisition of the higher level, but if you assume that the preceding psychological transitions also occurred, it is possible to find what may plausibly be regarded as allusions to them.

Injunctions in the Gospels

(copy of a letter)

You asked why any bits of psychology in the Gospels (even Thomas) are almost always turned into injunctions. Well, a mass religion is not going to be an aid to developing higher level psychology.

But some psychological insight may go into selecting the descriptions of purely higher level psychological reactions in the Gospel of Luke:

… and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also. (Luke 6: 29.)

Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh
away thy goods ask them not again. (Luke 6: 30.)

which not only advocate behaving in a way depending on higher level motivation, but invert the crucial psychodynamic of normal or anti-higher level psychology. Not only does normal psychology have no psychodynamics in favour of acting in this kind of way, but its very strong and crucial psychodynamics is to act inversely. Meanness and refusal is the distinguishing characteristic arising from belief in society. Believers in society swarm past the Little Match Girl, refusing to buy her matches which she wants to sell them to save herself from freezing to death.

One may observe in passing that the idea in modern oppressive society is to turn the believers in society, who shun the matches of the Little Match Girl, into agents of the collective - social workers, doctors and teachers who will have power to interfere in her life, and so be able to oppose her and refuse to give her what she wants more actively and continually. This will save her from freezing to death until she dies in a decentralised state in an NHS hospital.

The obvious effect of injunctions to generosity is to associate them with a social ‘ought’. Anyone with a glimmer of pre-higher level psychology who finds attractive at least the idea of giving people what they want is likely to realise that he does not actually have the motivation to do this, at least not very much, and will feel guilty and inadequate. In any case, the injunctions associated with an authoritarian ‘ought’ will arouse resentment, by reference to childhood experience, especially in those who were not brought up as only children.

All other vague psychological directives in the New Testament are only applicable (I mean applicable in a sense that is any use for developing higher level psychology) after the belief in society has been eliminated. It is only then that injunctions to single-mindedness have any real point, and anyway would probably be unnecessary.

The need to repeat the factors of my position

(copy of a letter)

I am afraid I am likely to repeat myself in writing to you, but this is because I know that believers in society are unlikely to remember anything which a victim of society says to them except what is compatible with the approved social way of looking at their situation. (This is the way counsellors are recommended to proceed.)

So I may have said before, but will say again, that the educational and academic system cannot but be geared against ability if those who have the power to make decisions about other people are motivated to demonstrate that innate ability does not naturally correspond to a much higher level of achievement, in terms of both quality and quantity, than less remarkable ability. In order to bring about equality of outcome it is necessary to restrict the opportunities of the able, by deprivation of opportunity to take exams so long as they are supposed to be being educated, and by deprivation of money to keep them as inactive as possible in adult life (i.e. when they have been thrown out).

In fact everyone in my life has always behaved as if they understood this and the greatest storms have arisen whenever I was on the verge of getting an opportunity to take a public exam in a favourable way, or acquiring a financial advantage or a new associate who might relieve the constriction of my position.

I should also repeat that as soon as I was thrown out (50 years ago), I knew that my life could not become tolerable again until I was rich enough to provide myself with an institutional (hotel) environment, and also had the status of an Oxbridge professor.

Everything I have done ever since has been aimed at working towards one or both of these objectives. Most of my efforts have been made as abortive as possible, but my position now is just marginally less painful than 50 years ago, although still not the equivalent of that of a Professor with a research department to run and a residential college environment to provide hotel facilities.

The idea of anything I can do in my present circumstances being ‘interesting’ or rewarding to me in any way is ludicrous. I do not regard writing as a positive activity; it is chore which is dependent on one’s energy level, the energy level having to be raised by other activities. I regard it as a form of output rather than input.

Fathers and agents of the collective

(copy of a letter)

Well, I am as always grateful for the chance to see you, and as usual I am reminded of things I need to emphasise when writing for publication. The way your mind works continues to amaze me, although I know it is just like everybody else’s.

Everyone always focuses attention on conflicts with parents, while exonerating or making light of the hostility of agents of the collective. I have (and had at the time) no doubt that my parents’ remarkable treatment of me after the disastrous degree exam was really an expression of the hostility of the educational system - the latter seeing the situation as giving free rein to its wish to tear and rend me, only (as previously) they remained invisible and distant, using my parents as their channel of communication.

I blame the Essex education authority, Somerville and the educational system in general for destroying, not only my career prospects, but my relationship with my parents and the lives of my parents. It was, I thought, like pouring corrosive acid down a metal pipe. It reaches its target at the other end all right, but the pipe is itself damaged in the process. It should be possible to sue for very large financial damages, and the fact that it is not is a clear indication of the oppressiveness of modern society.

When my father ran from door to door blocking my exit I have no doubt he was implementing the ideas of the Essex Authority on how I should be treated. ‘She needs to learn that she can’t have everything she wants just when she wants it,’ had been quoted to me after one of his conversations with local people. My father was rigorous in his paternalistic concealments, and if he quoted anything to me from the outside world it meant that he wanted it to influence me.

The agents of the educational system were totally ruthless towards me (in the sense of merciless, although 'ruthless' is usually used in commercial contexts, where it is in fact less unmanageable). My parents were more ambivalent towards me, and would have treated me okay if they had not been told not to. As it was, although they had jealousies of their own that could be played on, my parents had a marginal sympathy with me, and their normal personalities broke down under the stress of being required to 'execute' their own offspring.

Rather like Abraham having to sacrifice Isaac really, especially as the concept of God is so close to that of Society in ‘normal’ psychology.

The Man in the Iron Mask

I just saw a film, a recent version of The Man in the Iron Mask, which seemed rather unusual for a recently made film, and reminded one of the way in which so many psychological dimensions are ironed out in the modern world.

I don’t really know modern actors, but somebody called Leonardo di Caprio was the young king and also his twin brother.

The film permitted itself to be rather glorifying of heroism and idealism, instead of insisting on prosaicness and physical degradation, as is usual these days. The Four Musketeers are in this film ("one for all, all for one") .

When d’Artagnan is trying to persuade the king’s brother, Philippe, whom they have just released from prison, to take his place because Louis is not making a good job of being the sort of ideal king they have always wanted to serve, Philippe demurs, saying he would rather just be free and live in the country tending lambs. Why should he take on this demanding and arduous role? D’Artagnan says, in effect, that one cannot go by what seems pleasant or attractive.

"We are all instruments of God", he says, "and sometimes it is very difficult but one has to keep faith."

I wonder what the affiliations of the producer and director of this film are. The modern view is so much that there cannot be any factors to be taken into account beyond what any social worker or counsellor would advise.

Your back to the wall

(copy of a letter)

I was saying to you the other day that there is a back to the wall quality in centralisation. Of course people have a great resistance to recognising that they are (or may be) alone against the world, because they cannot prevent other people being hostile if they choose to be.

All you can be in control of is a very small bit of your own psychological territory, so it is no use trying to operate within what other people think you ought to do, or thinking that you should be able to get other people’s permission or approval before you identify with wanting what you want and being what you want to be. People are, of course, tremendously conditioned to think you ought to be able to ‘prove yourself’ or something.

The fact is that the buck stops here, i.e. in your own mind. A successful child prodigy, allowed enough social territory within which to be fully functional and purposeful, can avoid realising this and think that one should be able to go with the social flow. As soon as I found that I wasn’t being able to be functional and purposeful within it, I became a criminal in everyone’s eyes.

I think that my father showed his own decentralisation in wishing to feel that he was supported by good advice and he had a tendency to seek it from some father figure or expert before making any important decisions.

When I complained to my mother that it had been crazy to get opinions from other people about whether I should take the School Certificate, she used to say, ‘He always did that. He went and asked the vicar if it would be right to marry me.’ In that case the advice did not seem to put him off doing the right thing, but he once bought a disadvantageous house on the advice of an estate agent who said he would treat him just like his own son.

So most people probably are going with the flow, and very much disinclined to do anything without social support.

Although the first form of back-to-the-wall centralisation makes you an outlaw and an outcast, you can see that it is actually quite closely related to the royalty development, in which also the buck stops here. A king has to make his own best guess because he is the best there is, and although he may consider other people’s points of view he has ultimately got to be prepared to oppose them if necessary.

And, of course, in relation to the existential situation, you have got to make your own best guess about what it is best to take a risk on.

It is of course perfectly valid to decide that someone else has more information in a certain area than you have yourself, and defer the decision-making to them. Also, of course, it would be quite acceptable for someone to ask another person, whether medically qualified or not, to decide on the details of what medication he should take.

What is not acceptable is to impose the judgements of agents of the collective on all and sundry so that they are not free to make their own decisions about things that vitally concern them. There is an ‘educational’ Mafia which is very nearly as criminal as the ‘medical’ Mafia, except that its powers of interference and oppression are less explicitly spelt out.