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They know not what they do. Ivor Catt 31nov2006 |
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A Trade Union official of Indian extraction who said that he had spoken from the same platform as London's Mayor Livingstone told me; "A politician is careful to not understand something which it is in his interest to not understand."
This total contradiction of the epigram "Knowledge is power" goes to the heart of the mechanics of The End of the Enlightenment.
Is there any point in rising to the top of Science if one must become a puppet in order to do so, and remain a puppet in order to stay at the top? Dingle and many other cases show that if a Pillar of the Establishment, who rose to the top on a balloon of orthodoxy, then steps out of line, he is rapidly isolated and castrated.
Someone like Rees is at the top because of his past record, as a steady hand, and only remains in "power" if his hand remains steady. This means that he can be relied on to help to block major scientific advance. A "steady hand" takes one to the top of our scientific elite, along with other masters of "Crimestop" It is clear that everyone - Rees, Catt, Harold Hillman, is in the paralysing grip of the "thought-proles", or Intelligentsia .
When I was a college lecturer, the idea occurred to me of "education as a means of social control". I was not thinking of the attractive model - that in order to garner fruits, the young blood must wade through years of "education" and gain "qualifications" which classify him as a safe Defender of Agreed Knowledge. Rather, I was thnking of the sandle-clad "hippie" lecturer confronting 30 thrusting "students". A stable society needs protection against such elan vital. This multifarious threat includes, on the one hand, hippie "intellectuals", or "lecturers", and on the other hand truculent youth, in the ratio of about 1 to 30. The "college lecturer" kills, or defuses, two destabilising threats, one being himself, at the small cost of one "lecture room" to accommodate the defusing process.
Rather than the above, very attractive model for stabilising society, I was thinking of the complementary, cancelling, roles played by Catt and Rees.
Rees defends a dogma that he neither knows nor comprehends, while Catt is prevented from replacing it. Ivor Catt November 2006
Who wants the existing system? Who created it? Can it be reformed? See "The Rise and Fall of Bodies of Knowledge" See "The clever take the Brilliant". @@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Crimestop means the
faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any
dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of
failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest
arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of
being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading
in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short,
means protective stupidity. Comment from Forrest Bishop ; “Dingle puts his
finger on the phenomenon we are dealing with: "Part Two is of secondary - though I
believe still considerable -importance, but I should not have troubled to
write it had not the necessity of Part One afforded an opportunity, if not
issued a command, for it. I should have left it unsaid because I know its
futility, since those to whom it should be of concern have lost the ability
to read it. The eyes of a few of them might have passed along the lines, but
the meaning could not have entered their minds because those minds are closed
by an impenetrable barrier to any suggestion that special relativity is not
irrefragable truth." This same principle, which Orwell calls
"protective stupidity", is at the psychodynamic core of our
civilization's ongoing disintegration. They do not simply know not, they can not
become aware without a disintegration of their self
identity. This, particularly for the narcissist, but also for
anyone in general, is a form of psychic death, as real to the subconscious as
actual death. An additional barrier is put up in defense
of a perceived, potential loss of resource stream. We see this over and over in the
interpretations of Catt's work, most of which is put into plain English. The
ability to comprehend and to reason has been subsumbed
by the fight/flight/submit response, i.e. the infantile or animal response.
This is pervasive here (in the US) in every area, not just academia. As a
consequence, we are rapidly returning to the primitive state, with a brief,
current sojourn in semi-barbarism. I think we are witnessing the most rapid
decline of a civilization ever seen. Sometimes I call it quad-speed Rome, as
these degenerative processes are occuring at very
crudely that sort of pace.” -
Forrest Bishop,
30nov06 |
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