Chapter 2 THINKING * Tools of Thought * Language * Strength And Leverage * IQ As A Potential * The Major High-IQ Societies * Useful Thinking Techniques * Procedures for Carrying on a Discussion * Criticism * The Scientific Method * The Military Staff Study * Notes on the Significance of Intellectual Context * Faulty Thought Processes * Piagetian Operational Stages * The Use Of Emotions As Tools Of Cognition * Orwell - Newspeak - Brainwashing - Prolefeed * Tools of Thought Most people believe that consciousness is some sort of indeterminate faculty which has no nature, no specific identity and, therefore, no requirements, no needs, no rules for being properly or improperly used. The simplest example of this belief is people's willingness to lie or cheat, to fake reality without any concern for what this does to their own minds. The man who lies, especially chronically, makes himself vulnerable to being deceived because he diminishes his capacity to discriminate truth from falsehood. And he may even reach the point where he CANNOT believe in truthfulness in others. Such people abuse, subvert and starve their consciousness in a manner they would not dream of applying to their hair, stomachs, or toenails. Even among those who realize that the mind has requirements, there are few who realize also that thinking is not an instinct. One of the most widespread myths is the belief that everyone "just knows" how to think and that no learning process is required. Assuming that the knowledge of how to think is self-evident, people take their own mental processes as necessarily valid; as not to be questioned or examined. People do not improve their thinking because it has not even occurred to them to consider the possibility of doing so. Thus the most important of human functions is left to blind chance - or worse, to subversive influences maliciously imposed upon them with the intent of subverting their thinking. Nothing can be more infamous than intellectual tyranny. To put chains upon the body is nothing compared with putting shackles on the brain. * Language "Man lives in a world of ideas. Any phenomenon is so complex that he cannot possibly grasp the whole of it. He abstracts certain characteristics of a given phenomenon as an idea, then represents that idea with a symbol, be it a word or a mathematical sign. Human reaction is almost entirely reaction to symbols. When we think, we let symbols operate on other symbols in certain, set fashions - rules of logic, or rules of mathematics. If the symbols have been abstracted so that they are structurally similar to the phenomena they stand for, and if the symbol operations are similar in structure and order to the operations of phenomena in the real world, we think sanely. If our logic- mathematics, or our word-symbols, have been poorly chosen, we think not- sanely." ......Robert Heinlein. The "logic-mathematics" that Heinlein speaks of is NOT an instinctive bundle of knowledge! It is something that each individual must recognize and learn, lest he be left floundering in a mire of intellectual chaos. "The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts." ...... George Orwell. There is perhaps no better analysis and critique of the corruption of language than that given by Orwell in his book, "1984." The world has long observed that small acts of immorality, if repeated, will destroy character. It is equally manifest, though rarely said, that uttering nonsense and half-truth without cease ends by destroying intellect. Just as a currency, through the process of becoming more and more inflated, has less and less purchasing power, so words, through an analogous process of inflation, through being used less and less discriminately, are progressively emptied of meaning. For example: developers that used to sell houses now sell homes. Even the word "townhouse", a relatively common term a few years ago, is falling aside, being replaced by the supposedly more sumptuous sounding "townhome." There used to be a good, clear, cognitive distinction between a house and a home. Now, that difference has been altered past the point of meaning. With thousands of "homes" springing up all over the country, how can we possibly still attach sentimental meaning to places that we can REALLY call home? This phenomenon severely restricts attempts to deal with derivative concepts also. Consider "homelessness." Attempts to combat homelessness are almost exclusively directed toward putting the homeless people back into dwellings. But this is a superficial approach to the real problem, for houselessness is only one aspect of homelessness. "Home" implies basic shelter, but it also entails connection to a community of supports, including friends, family, businesses, organizations that share common values and beliefs, such as clubs and churches, as well as caretaking institutions. Homelessness marks not merely a loss of residence - but a rupture in community and family ties in addition, and the mere fact that you live in a house does not entail that you are in a home. Orwell contends that political language has been corrupted by insincerity and that the debasement is aided by honest writers who adopt corrupted language by default. Many words have become almost meaningless, and to use them without defining in what sense they are being used is, at best, to foist that corruption upon the reader; at worst it is to commit outright fraud. Corruption of language blunts the edge of critical thought in favor of timid orthodoxy, a process necessary to both totalitarian ideology and religious dogma. To control language is to control people's thoughts - and ultimately to control people themselves. Without semantic competence, you have no means of identifying the essence of either your own ideas or opposing ideas. Integrity becomes dubious at best, self-contradiction becomes easily possible, and rational persuasion becomes meaningless. Besides engendering intellectual chaos, incompetence in language creates a social caste system. Those who can construct well-formed sentences can think and therefore be independent; those who cannot are more ignorant, less productive and more easily intimidated and manipulated. Those who don't (or can't) think for themselves become the slaves of those who do. The greatest weapon of exploitation, manipulation, and oppression is language. It is only by being aware of the function of language as a tool of social, economic, and political control that we can begin to fight those who use language against us. Part of the fundamental nature of oppression is that by means of this semantic corruption it causes its victims to turn against each other instead of against their oppressors. Thus, in their rage against the beating of Rodney King, the citizens of LA beat up their neighbors and burned their own neighborhoods. They did not rise up against the police, for they do not know who their enemies are. Grammar is the science of formulating and applying the proper methods of verbal expression, i.e., the methods of organizing words (concepts) into coherent groups. We are able to recognize, remember and manipulate concepts only if their arrangements are coherent - only if the sentences we use to symbolize them are grammatical. We are able to follow a symbolic presentation - although the entire content cannot be presented simultaneously - because we have words first, then words organized into clauses, then sentences, and then paragraphs. We have to focus gradually and in installments, especially when a very complex issue is being presented. There may be a dozen concepts in a sentence, but if several of them are integrated into each clause, and the various clauses are integrated into one proposition, then, and only then, can we hold all dozen in our minds. If you just strung out a dozen words at random from the dictionary, you couldn't hold them all. This process of integration is made possible by automatization. If a concept automatically represents in your mind a certain kind of concrete, (if you don't have to take the time to remind yourself of all that you mean by the word "furniture," for example) then that instant integration of the referents of your concepts with your words permits you to understand language. Whenever you learn something sufficiently well, you cease to be aware of it. Only when ideas are automatized are you freed to use them without conscious thought and so to focus beyond them onto new goals. * Strength And Leverage I see two major aspects to intellectual competence: one is intelligence (that which supposedly is measured by an IQ test) and the other is the tools and procedures by which that intelligence is applied. I call these aspects Strength and Leverage. Strength pertains to the innate competence that is genetically built-in to the nervous system. Is this alterable? Is it enhanceable? Is it even measureable? I doubt it, but I do not know for sure. My only real knowledge of this attribute is a relative one - I can see that I possess a greater ability to perceive, identify and integrate the facts of reality than other people do (and, of course, that some other people possess a greater such ability than I do). When I make comparisons between myself and others I observe introspectively that there is a difference in fundamental understanding - a difference which, as far as I can tell, does not depend on the use of any acquired intellectual tools. I can identify that "fundamental understanding" only in a very subjective sense. I can not make a specific statement explicitly defining it or describing how it works. Leverage is quite a different thing. It consists of the intellectual methods by which Strength is applied to achieve an understanding of the world. Language is by far the first and most fundamental element of Leverage, followed closely by Mathematics. Some of the other elements are the Laws of Logic given us by Aristotle, the Scientific Method, the procedures of the Military Staff Study, and the principles of the philosophy of Objectivism. The first and foremost benefit of the application of these tools to one's life is that it puts you into close cognitive contact with reality. If the primary function of intelligence is to understand reality, then an intellectual tool which puts you in contact with reality enhances your life, and thus is a major benefit to you. Those creatures who find everyday experience a muddled jumble of events with no predictability, no regularity, are in grave peril. The universe belongs to those who, at least to some degree, have figured it out. Most of the elements of Leverage constitute a particular subset of acquired knowledge: knowledge of an epistemological nature. Knowledge of "how to think." It is clear that in regard to Leverage there is a great potential for enhancement of one's intellectual functioning, and, to the contrary, lack of Leverage or use of mistaken Leverage can seriously inhibit or even destructively interfere with this functioning. I believe strongly that the level of one's manifested intellectual competence can indeed be raised. It is clear to me that the best way, (and, perhaps, the only way?) to go about this is to improve one's Leverage. * IQ As A Potential As you know, there are aptitude tests for many fields of endeavor. They are tests designed to determine whether or not (or to what extent) you have a potential ability for a given activity. They can tell you if you have an aptitude for Mechanics, Mathematics, Gymnastics, Music, Chemistry, Cooking, or just about any other occupation you might care to consider. I submit that an IQ test is nothing more or less than an aptitude test for "Thinking." I would like to draw an analogy between Intellectuality and Music, in order to shed some light on just what the significance of a high IQ is. Consider that in the realm of music there are two things necessary to the formation of a musician. The first is, of course, an aptitude for this field of endeavor - what we might call an "M.Q." or musicality quotient, representing your potential ability to engage successfully in this activity. And the second is the means by which this potential is actualized. Having the highest MQ in the world will not automatically result in your being a good musician. To become one, you must undertake a lengthy period of study and diligent practice in order to master the procedures involved in transforming this potential into an actuality. No one will dispute this in regard to music, but how many realize that the same principle applies to intellectuality? You have to LEARN how to think, in just the same way that you have to learn how to make music. And when I say "learn how to think" I don't mean just "get educated." I don't mean just go to school and acquire a multitude of facts in a large number of fields of study. One would not become a musician merely by acquiring wide erudition in the fields of, say, Geology, Anthropology, Economics or Political Science. No, one must study a particular set of principles - those pertaining to the field of music. Just so, to transform a high IQ into a practicing intellectual proficiency you have to study a particular set of principles - epistemological principles. A person is no more born with an automatic knowledge of how to think than he is born with an automatic knowledge of how to make music. I'm sure that each of you is aware that there was a time (maybe, if you are younger than I am, you can even remember that time) when you first learned the proper formulation of a syllogism, the nature of an ad hominem argument, or the pitfalls of the post hoc fallacy. Just as there are proper ways and improper ways to address your hands to a musical instrument, so there are proper and improper ways to address your mind to the task of identifying reality. If a musically untrained person puts his hand to the keyboard of an accordion the result will be a discordant raucous racket, simply because he is ignorant of the proper procedures. Likewise, if an epistemologically untrained person puts his mind to a philosophical problem the result is likely to be a hideous hodge-podge of insane idiocy - for the same reason. You may have a very high potential - either MQ or IQ - but before you can actualize that potential you've got to learn how. * The Major High-IQ Societies IQ Annual %ile required Membership Dues ------ -------- ---------- ------ Triple Nine Society 99.9 150 500 $12 456 Coolidge Ave. Pittsburgh, Pa. 15228 Intertel 99 136 2000 $20 Box 15580 Lakewood, Colo. 80215 Mensa 98 132 60000 $45 2626 East 14 Street Brooklyn, N.Y. 11235 I have been rather disappointed with these people. In examining them I found that the possession of a high IQ is no guarantee at all of intellectual efficiency. Having a high intelligence does not remove a person's weaknesses, ignorances, prejudices, blind spots, or ambitions; it just gives him more power and energy to indulge them. An untrained mind cannot control its own power. On the other hand, I have known people whose IQs are not very high but who are much more worthwhile and competent intellectually because they have well- trained minds and are possessed of cognitive techniques enabling them to manipulate abstract ideas. The principles of Objectivism provide an enormously powerful intellectual tool. The incalculable value of these ideas makes their desirability seem blatantly obvious - to me. But I was very sad to discover that other high-IQ people are quite indifferent - or even hostile - to them. I found only about two dozen Mensans, half-dozen members of Intertel, and NO ONE above this level (except for myself) who was interested in applying these principles. * Useful Thinking Techniques When trying to define a concept, you may find it useful to consider its opposite and see if it would be appropriate to define the concept in terms of the negative (or absence) of its opposite. For example: Freedom as the absence of Slavery - Innocence as the absence of Guilt. Implicit knowledge is that which is available to your consciousness but which you have not conceptualized. Implicit knowledge is not a substitute for explicit knowledge. Values which you cannot identify, but merely sense implicitly, are not in your control. You cannot tell what they depend on or require, what course of action is needed to gain and/or keep them. And you cannot teach them to your children! Implicit knowledge, since it has not been identified, cannot be challenged. For successful goal-achievement, you should have a clear and explicit statement of your goals and the rationale for them. This provides you with a firm and constant awareness of the principles that guide and shape the actions you will take to achieve those goals. It will enable you to live according to your philosophy by taking the appropriate actions to implement its principles. I find that there are three levels of clarity to which I can hold an idea: The first, and lowest, is just having the thought inside my head, probably in a rather vague form. I can force myself to the second level of clarity by making a verbal statement of the idea. When I have to translate vague, unspecific mental images into spoken words, the idea becomes more precise and unambiguous. For this reason I deliberately talk to myself quite frequently - or talk to my cat (but he rarely finds any of my ideas worth commenting on!) The third, and highest, level of clarity is reached when I sit down and put the words into written form. This way they get saved as perceptual concretes and I can review them and rework them and rearrange them until I get a really accurate presentation of the idea. * Procedures for Carrying on a Discussion "Discussion among rational people is best conducted as a partnership in discovering the truth, not as combat or indoctrination. Discussion and debate are values only if they are means to the discovery of the truth." ... David Kelley If a sensible discussion is to occur, the participants must do several things: Agree on the subject to be discussed. Define the terms encompassing this subject. Identify the principles underlying the various approaches to dealing with this subject. Decide, by examining the consequences which ensue from the principles, which of these approaches is the proper one to use. Determine the best way to implement this approach. Each participant must make a reply appropriate to the presentation the others have made. Each must try to further the investigation. Discussion is futile when directed not toward general principles but merely toward the specific phenomena which are consequences of those principles. Perhaps the best examples of this are debates about legalizing drugs. They usually devolve quickly from a merely superficial consideration of the principles underlying the anti-drug laws into a dispute over the specific means for distributing the drugs if they were to be legalized. Thus the principles themselves are never fully examined. If you want to make a presentation to a hostile audience, here are some recommendations: Your purpose should be merely to make your position known, clearly and briefly, so that your audience can see what your ideas are. If anyone wants to learn more about them, the burden of intellectual responsibility lies upon them to solicit - not upon you to impose. You owe a rational statement only to those whom it does concern and who are making an effort to know. Those who are making an effort to fail to understand you should not be a concern of yours. Your procedure in such a presentation should be: To educate only those sincerely interested in learning. Not to refute contentious assertions nor correct dogmatic errors nor challenge erroneous assumptions. Not to attempt discussion with intellectually loose people nor those whose approach involves ridiculing or belittling rationality. If you want to communicate with dummies you will have to make allowances for the dummies. * Criticism The experience of having my essays published, and dealing with the resulting feedback, has led me to identify several types of criticism: Irrelevant: Remarks that have no rational justification, do not in any way apply to the idea being criticized, and contribute nothing to the subject under discussion. But can this really be called criticism? Combative: Remarks intended mainly to provoke dispute. What I get from the kind of person who listens only for the purpose of contradicting me. Corrective: An analysis that exposes an important flaw in the presentation, thus clarifying the subject. Contributive: Commentary that expands upon the idea presented, furthering it and widening its applicability. The First Law of Debate: Anything is possible, if you don't know what you are talking about!! * The Scientific Method An epistemological technique used to form scientific concepts. 1) Recognition of facts that appear to be related, but whose relationship is unknown. 2) Observation and experimentation to collect data. 3) Analysis of the data. 4) Formulation of an hypothesis that attempts to explain the relationship. 5) Testing of the hypothesis against all known evidence. 6) Continual testing as new evidence is obtained. Fundamental precepts of Scientific Method: New and speculative hypotheses do not warrant consideration as long as the facts that are observed are adequately accounted for by the theories that already exist. A proposal should not be considered if no credible evidence has been adduced that it has any value. Those explanations should be accepted which involve the fewest assumptions. Virtually any scientifically conducted experiment can, at least ideally, be reduced to two broad steps: first, determining the variables that affect the outcome of the experiment; second, setting up conditions such that one of the variables can be altered while the rest are kept constant. From the data obtained in this way the experimenter can modify his hypothesis as to which variables matter, in what way they matter, to what degree they matter, and which don't. Thus his mental image grows closer and closer to an accurate representation of reality. Scientific knowledge (to be precise, the progress of scientific knowledge) is cumulative in nature. You start with a foundation and then you build upon that foundation. That's why science has progressed to such a tremendous extent during the past 300 years. If physicists spent all their time arguing about the validity of the First Law of Thermodynamics, they would never make any progress at all. And if mathematicians spent all their time arguing about whether or not 2+2=4 there would never be any progress in mathematics. But you must always remember that one of the really important skills of a scientist is in knowing what things to argue about. The doubt involved must be VERY carefully selective!! Its improper application has sometimes been disastrous for the progress of science. On the one hand there is the impulse to regard almost NOTHING as being open to question. On the other hand is the impulse to regard EVERYTHING as being open to question. On the one hand are the "know it alls" and on the other hand are the "know nothings." Obviously neither position is true. Humans are neither omniscient nor totally ignorant. Doubting is at least as important to the advance of science as believing is and, moreover, doubting is a serious business that requires extensive training to be handled properly. People without training in a particular field do not know what to doubt and what not to doubt; or, to put it conversely, what to believe and what not to believe. I am sorry to be undemocratic, but one man's opinion is not necessarily as good as the next man's. A scientist MUST doubt. It would take longer for valid theories to become established if overcredulity on the part of scientists led them into all the blind alleys indicated by newly-presented theories. Scientific manpower is too limited to investigate everything that occurs to everybody. The advance of science depends on scientists in general being kept firmly oriented to the direction of maximum possible return. * The Military Staff Study 1) Statement of the problem: One problem only, isolated and stated; not merely a description of a "bad" situation. 2) Assumptions: Make no assumptions unless absolutely necessary. One assumption must not conflict with another; if so, prepare a different study for each. 3) Facts bearing on the problem: A fact is a statement of conditions or affairs held to be true. Don't mix fact and opinion. 4) Discussion: Produce a logical and orderly critical analysis of the problem through the integration of the facts and the assumptions. 5) Conclusions: Not a continuation of the discussion. They must point directly to the need for certain actions. 6) Recommendations: The actions which, if taken, will solve the problem. They must not pose alternative courses of action, and must be susceptible to simple approval or disapproval. A reasoned solution might be overruled by other considerations; some of the noblest of human acts have been carried out in defiance of reason. It is also quite true that spectacular blunders occasionally follow in the wake of the keenest reasoning. But, by and large, clean and orderly thinking justifiably enjoys a most favorable reputation. * Notes on the Significance of Intellectual Context Why is it that so frequently when you are speaking to a person who believes in authoritarian, statist ideas, the person apears to listen but does not really hear what you are saying? Governmental Authority is, for him, an axiomatic concept. He literally cannot see any other starting point - cannot conceive of a society which is not founded on coercion - and if you try to go beyond his frame of thinking, he merely accuses you of expressing vague generalities. It is as Orwell said it would be: "You will lose the ability to think certain ideas, and then you will be totally incapable of ever trying to act on those ideas." In such a discussion, most people quickly reach a point where they are not able to respond even when they have the discussion in front of them in writing. This is because they have reached the boundary of their intellectual frame of reference and they cannot cope with the questions without the mental flexibility to expand that frame of reference so as to encompass an area which contains the answers. They are prisoners of an inadequate reality assessment, and it is usually a waste of your time to engage them in discussion, simply because they will find your presentation to be quite literally incomprehensible. This helps explain why the average journalist cannot get a sentence straight if it is phrased more subtly than his own mind can make phrases. It explains also much of the unresolvable controversy in the field of social science. The technique used by most contemporary social scientists restricts their analysis to relatively minor consequential details. Questions dealing with fundamental principles are outside their pale. Their analysis takes place within an institutional context that is itself taken for granted: the framework of government control. This profoundly affects how the questions are framed, and thus studied and answered. This thinking method renders social scientists incapable of questioning much that is fundamental to their fields, and creates an intellectual barrier which is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the furtherance of libertarianism. This phenomenon has an obverse side also: I have sometimes been so befuddled by a question or proposition that I had to stop for a while and figure out why it seemed so "out of whack." The answer lies in the fact that its underlying premises are so disparate from mine that it is not at all amenable to a direct response. I can't answer the question, because it is overflowing with assumptions that I reject. * Faulty Thought Processes In any argument between two people who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins. The inconsistent person will present his ideas in a weak, conflicting, and diluted form - and thus will create in the minds of the audience an impression of evasion and cowardice, while his adversary will appear to possess greater honesty and courage. (See "Anatomy of Compromise" in CAPITALISM THE UNKNOWN IDEAL.) A disagreement that does not challenge fundamentals serves only to reinforce them. If, for the question: "Do you want slavery?" your opponents manage to substitute the question: "What kind of slavery do you want?" then they can afford to let you argue indefinitely; they have already won their point. Consider a Determinist vs an advocate of Free Will. The Determinist, to the extent that he adheres to the principle, will be disinclined to engage in any great mental activity. His motivation to do so is undermined by his belief that the result of such activity is not subject to his volition. The free will advocate, however, suffers under no such handicap and will not thereby be deterred from making the fullest application of his intellectual faculties of which he is capable. People who believe that definitions are arbitrary, or are to be accepted or rejected according to their authoritarian backing, are people for whom there is no hope of meaningful intellectual interaction. They are in the same category as the Determinists - but whereas the Determinists believe that cognition is absolutely fixed and unalterable, these dummies believe the obverse: that cognition cannot be firmly tied to an objective reality. Reason is not automatic. If men were the automatons that behaviorists claim they are, the behaviorist psychologists could not have invented the amazing nonsense called "behaviorist psychology." So they are wrong from scratch. To argue against such persons is to apply to them a premise they spend all of their effort disproving: that reason is involved in their theories. You should consider those people only long enough to expose the specific nature of their irrationality. Those who deny reason cannot be conquered by it. Leave them alone, for they are in a mysterious mental state which is too lunatic for serious consideration. They have made a conscious choice to remain ignorant. You should make a conscious choice not to waste your time on them. Thus do the philosophical principles you choose have a considerable influence on the efficiency of your thought processes. * Piagetian Operational Stages Piagetians contend that children have their views of the world bound up in concretes. This they call the "concrete operational stage," when children are generally incapable of imagining a situation with any of its variables somehow different. Kids at this stage have a lot of difficulty with "what if" questions. Only sometime during adolescence do children become able to deal adequately with conceptual abstractions. This is called the "formal operational stage." It is during this stage that young adults become able to deal with propositions that are contrary to fact (What if there were no Federal Reserve Bank?) - to imagine several alternative explanations for the same phenomenon (What really caused the Great Depression?) - to deal with metaphor (What is meant by the market's "invisible hand"?) - to understand that classes are not only groups of concrete objects but may also be conceived as abstract entites (What are those elements that make up justice? How does justice become an element that makes up something called freedom?). Piagetians contend that nearly 50% of the adult population never adequately learns how to use the capacity for formal operational thought. Half the population is often bound to the reality of the moment, impotent to imagine how things might be under different circumstances. Just imagine yourself at a cocktail party and ask the person you've been randomly thrown up against, "What if there were no local zoning laws?" and you'll likely get a blank stare. Press him with, "What if there were no minimum-wage laws?" and you'll be getting rather close to his threshold of irritability. The ways of the economic world are pretty uncomplicated for this guy. When he thinks gasoline prices are too high, he wants someone to MAKE them lower. When he thinks his salary is too low, he wants someone to MAKE it higher. He has no notion of conceptual analysis, and is a walking example of what survives when a mind becomes a victim of infant mortality. Someone who does not think in principles tends to rely by default on social customs, and thus does not function independently in practice. The collectivist ideologies have a concrete model they can use to convey their view of society: the model of the family. Liberals stress the nurturing role of the family - its unconditional support for every member. Conservatives stress the authority of the parents in teaching virtue and enforcing standards of behavior. These aspects of the family are understood by preconceptual children, and can be grasped in a primitive form by non-conceptual adults. But there is no comparable form in which it is possible to grasp the concept of individualism, or any other of the principles of a free society, because they are based on the need of adults to function independently. To those who do not think conceptually, only what is immediately seen is real. At the level of principles, no ideology can be understood, much less consistently practiced or advocated, by those who function non-conceptually. This is why anti- ideological pragmatism is so popular. * The Use Of Emotions As Tools Of Cognition (This material is extracted from Lecture #6 of Barbara Branden's PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENT THINKING.) This is a process used by people whose intellectual focus is on feelings rather than on truth and knowledge. Their fundamental technique of thinking is to refer to their emotions rather than their rational faculty. They use reason only as a tool of rationalization - to justify ideas which have already been accepted on the basis of their feelings. Instead of storing conceptual integrations and evaluations in their subconscious, these people store specific memories of concrete events along with the emotional responses associated with those events. Then any new phenomenon which is perceived to be similar to (i.e., has an accidental resemblance to) the aggregate of stored memories will evoke the associated emotional response, and thus will be formed a judgement of the new phenomenon on the basis of associational connections rather than conceptual integrations. Notice that this process is based on irreducible concretes, and that no classification according to fundamental distinguishing characteristics is involved. That aspect of any phenomenon having the most striking emotional impact is considered to be its defining characteristic. Ideas are also stored as concretes: as memories of something heard, read, or thought. These concretes are not integrated with other concretes, but are stored as slogans. Conclusions about any subject consist of the memories of events, plus the corresponding emotions, plus the remembered slogans. People who function this way are typically unable to define their terms; for them, the meaning of a word is a jumble of memorized examples, emotional associations and floating images. Their primary focus is on the emotional connotations of phenomena. If a presentation does not arouse strong emotional response in them, it will have very little effect on them at all. Ideas themselves will have no motivating influence on them. They will respond not to the cognitive content of an idea but to the emotional content of its presentation (it is this response that gives demagogues so much of their following). They do not judge the truth by its correspondence to reality - they judge reality by its correspondence to their feelings. They are psychologically set to grant primacy to their emotions, which set and direct their perceptions. When necessary, their perceptions are distorted to fit the emotion, or simply ignored. Only what fits the emotions is permitted entry into consciousness. Thus they become intellectually self- blinded. They make no distinction between emotions and thoughts - they "feel" their thoughts simply because the thoughts are non-conceptualized. What they do not do is INITIATE a process of conceptualization. Theirs is a passive, not an active, consciousness. The end result is the explicit, open reliance on emotions and the rejection of conceptualization, which, in their minds, has become a meaningless process. This is the reason why some men jump to conclusions irrationally. They do not identify principles, but just act on an emotional response. This also explains much context-dropping. Without a principled basis of firmly-held concepts, it is impossible for them to hold an ideational context and relate specific concretes to that context. * Orwell - Newspeak - Brainwashing - Prolefeed 1984 by George Orwell - New American Library (Signet) #451 CY688 This is the most prophetic book of the 20th century. Orwell's concepts of Newspeak and Prolefeed are indispensable to an understanding of the development of American culture during the latter half of this century. A thorough knowledge of Newspeak, as it has been implemented in America, is the best means by which one can avoid an immense quagmire of faulty thinking. * Newspeak The effect of Newspeak is not to extend but to diminish the range of thought and to make all other modes of thought impossible, so that an idea divergent from the prevalent philosophy will be literally unthinkable. This is done partly by stripping undesirable words of unorthodox meanings. For example: The word "anarchy" still exists but it can only be understood as meaning a completely lawless and chaotic state of nihilistic destruction. It cannot be used in its old sense of "a social condition from which the institutionalized use of coercive aggression is absent" since politically such a condition no longer exists even as a concept, and is therefore nameless. Another example is "inflation." What people today call inflation is not an increase in the quantity of money substitutes, but the general rise in prices and wages which is the inevitable CONSEQUENCE of inflation. This semantic innovation is by no means harmless. First of all there is no longer any term available to signify what "inflation" used to signify. It is impossible to fight an evil which you cannot name. You no longer have the opportunity to resort to a terminology accepted and understood by the public when you want to describe the financial policy you are opposed to. You must enter into a detailed analysis and description of this policy with full particulars and minute accounts whenever you want to refer to it, and you must repeat this bothersome procedure in every sentence in which you deal with this subject. Second, those who wish to fight inflation are diverted in their struggle away from the fundamental nature of inflation and are forced to direct their attentions to the consequences. They end up snipping at the leaves of the weed rather than hacking at the root. An especially corrupting abuse of language can be seen in the ambiguous use of the words "think" and "feel." This equivocates cognitive assessment with emotional response, and leaves the victim unable to discriminate between his thoughts and his emotions. The special function of other Newspeak words is to destroy meaning. In Newspeak it is seldom possible to follow a heretical thought further than the perception that it IS heretical; beyond that point the required words are nonexistent. It would be possible to say, "government is unnecessary," but this statment could not be sustained by a comprehensible argument, because the requisite words (such as "anarchy") are not meaningfully available. An example of a phrase designed to destroy meaning is in this suggestion, made by a proponent of international trade barriers: "A more accurate name than the persuasive label 'free trade' - because who can be opposed to freedom? - is 'deregulated international commerce.'" If accepted, his proposal, that his adversaries use this mouthful of multi-syllabic obfuscation as the name of their political goal, would be the first step toward destruction of the concept "free" in the minds of his opponents. And in the minds of their audience. Nowhere is this semantic deception more blatant than in the government's dishonest descriptions of its own activities, in which words are used merely as tools to manipulate the social environment. In 1993, Congress required the Dept. of Health and Human Services to examine the feasibility of shifting some biological weapons research from the army to the National Institutes of Health. Thus, under the direction of the Dept. of Health, the National Institutes of Health will now be engaged in germ warfare. Orwell was right - "War is Peace" or, more appropriately, "Health is Death." Perhaps the most long-lasting and widespread manifestation of the government's use of another of Big Brother's slogans ("Freedom is Slavery") is the "selective service." In Newspeak, certain words are deliberately constructed for political purposes - words which are intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them and to make it impossible for him to hold any contrary attitude. This is the explicit goal of the "Politically Correct" movement. What a Newspeak user acquires is an outlook similar to that of the ancient Hebrew who knew, without knowing much else, that all nations other than his own worshipped "false gods." He did not need to know what these gods were, and probably the less he knew about them the better for his own orthodoxy. This sort of orthodoxy was explicitly fostered during the McCarthy era of the early 1950's, when accusations of "communist!" were thrown around indiscriminately while no one, neither the accusers nor the accused, had any idea of what a communist is. Nor did they dare ask publicly, for fear of being labeled a communist merely for making the inquiry. Thomas Szasz coined the very useful word "semanticide" to mean the murder of language. Semanticide is the ultimate goal of Newspeak. Many words, such as "freedom," "patriotism," "liberty," etc. have been appropriated by wanna-be tyrants (especially by Right-wing political Conservatives) who use those words to designate the opposite of their historical (and cognitively correct) meanings, thus leaving the majority of people with no way to distinguish libertarians from our totalitarian enemies. The only way I can see to combat this dismal situation is to attack it not on its surface - by making futile attempts to persuade people of the correct definitions of those critical words - but at its roots, by presenting the idea that Definitions Are Not Arbitrary. Unless your audience realizes this, any argument you engage in will be merely a verbal battle of wits with your adversary - the outcome dependent on who can make the most clever use of phrases that are meaningless in the minds of the audience. * Brainwashing These are the elements of brainwashing. At least some of them are used, in greater or lesser intensity, by all authoritarian organizations, and by anyone attempting to assert psychological dominance. Get your victim at your mercy. Take away his ordinary inputs - his accustomed environment. Isolate him and deprive him of social support, to develop an intense concern for himself. Deprive him of all opportunities for self-expression. Control his perceptions, with darkness or bright light, or by creating a barren environment and restricting movement, to fix the victim's attention on his predicament and to eliminate distractions. Inundate him with strong and novel sensory experiences. Subject him to physical degradation, by prevention of personal hygiene and imposing various other humiliations, so as to reduce the victim to concern with "animal values." Induce debilitation and exhaustion, by semi-starvation, exposure, sleep deprivation and induced illness, so as to weaken the victim's physical and mental ability to resist. Demonstrate omnipotence, to suggest the futility of resistance. This is carried out by such techniques as pretending to take cooperation for granted or demonstrating complete control over the victim's fate. Issue threats, to cultivate anxiety, dread and despair. Enforce trivial demands, to develop a habit of compliance. Perform occasional indulgences, such as unpredictable favors and unexpected kindness, to provide motivation for compliance. * Prolefeed The last-named element of brainwashing, "control of perceptions," gives rise to the phenomenon of "Prolefeed." Prolefeed augments Newspeak, in that its effect is to render people less able to make rationally-based value judgments. In doing so, it leaves them more receptive to judgments imposed on them by authority figures. Responsibility for the implementation of Newspeak must rest mainly with the government, but Prolefeed is the product of the advertising industry of America. There is nothing unethical in attempting to induce people to purchase your products, but the means the advertising industry has used to achieve this end have had unforeseen psychologically and intellectually devastating results. Prolefeed is a format of radio and TV programming whose result is intellectually debilitating. It is a format of information presentation which, by inducing psycho-epistemological programming and deprogramming, results in severe inhibition of cognitive efficiency. The cognitive debilitation results, in part, from continuous exposure to unceasing repetition of phrases or melodies which contain just enough cognitive content to possess a minimum of intelligible meaning, thereby distracting the mind from self-generated activity, without giving the mind sufficient content for significant externally-induced activity. Observe, please, that it is not the CONTENT of the input that induces the debility, but the FORMAT of its presentation. Consider a common phenomenon: there is a radio playing in the background at the place you are working. In order to concentrate on your work you "tune out" the radio - you make an alteration in your mental functioning which renders you unaware of the sounds of the radio. Since your ears (unlike your eyes which can be physically closed to sensory input) are continually feeding signals to sensory receptors in the brain, all the sound that enters the ears is transmitted into the brain. Thus there is a part of your mind that is always aware of this sound. The only way you can "tune out" the background noise is to erect a barrier between your conscious mind and that area of the subconscious mind that receives input from your ears, a barrier that prevents the awareness from getting through. The programming that erects these psycho- epistemological barriers is one of the most pernicious aspects of Prolefeed. Not just because it produces the psychological self-alienation of a divided mind, but because it goes further by inflicting a profound impairment of judgment, an impairment resulting from the conflict of the subconsciously acquired prolefeed information with consciously derived value-decisions. We're bombarded with advertising, so we learn to tune it out. All that advertising is like a steady chattering noise in our eyes and ears. In order to function, we have to make ourselves deliberately blind and deaf to that part of our environment. The advertisers know that we do this, so they increase the size, color, intensity, volume, and the repetitions of their ads. They give us more, better, and different ads. And we try even harder to tune them out. Commercials are designed to catch your attention and instill remembrance, an increasingly difficult process because its effects dampen its effectiveness. Eventually we are so tuned out that we can no longer see the sky, the stars, the souls of our lovers, and the reality of the world we live in. Such programming causes severe value heirarchy distortions. It does this by presenting mundane things as having supreme importance. Consider the advertisement showing a man about to bite into a hamburger. His facial expression clearly and blatantly portrays the idea that this hamburger is the greatest thing ever to enter his life. One wonders how he contemplates his wife when he goes home from work at night. After he has displayed such an attitude toward a hamburger, what could he have left to display toward her? Being continually bombarded with the notion that each product - whether it be a hamburger, chewing gum, the latest model chevy, or a political candidate - is a sine qua non of the utmost value and importance, is a process that severely distorts, or even destroys, any rational value heirarchy and leaves the victim in a judgmental vacuum, lacking a sensible means to evaluate the phenomena which are IN FACT crucial to his life. Frequent instantaneous shifts of subject matter - e.g., breaking up programs with commercials - inhibit the mental function of integration and diminish the attention span of the victim, thus promoting schizophrenia. Such an interruption immediately following an information presentation can inhibit the victim from consciously evaluating the information. Thus he will be more likely to subconsciously accept it as truth, and will be left in a condition wherein the ideas in his mind have not been critically examined. Without firm awareness of their truth value, he will experience a nebulous state of uncertainty regarding his knowledge. It is no mere coincidence that the rise of popular radio and TV programming in the 1950's and its widespread availability (the transistor was invented in 1948) immediately preceeded the plunge of the SAT scores reported by American high-school students from 1963 onward. (See Chapter 12) Prolefeed has had a devastating effect on American society. But while you are contemplating lugubriously the weltanschauung of Orwell's book, keep this in mind: the world Orwell depicts can have only a limited actualization. For this reason: the men in the white coats KNOW what is real. They HAVE to know. Without those men, there could be no technological civilization - there would be only barbarism. NO society rises above barbarism except by recognition of the Facts of Reality by someone who is instrumental in the conduct of society. This is why no matter what the State decrees, someone HAS to know reality: the scientists who conceive material wealth; the engineers who translate those conceptions into existing mechanisms; the mechanics who maintain this technology. These people have to be in cognitive contact with objective reality. That cognitive contact is an unconditional prerequisite to the existence of a technological civilization, and it is a continual barrier to government omnipotence. And here you can see one of the major contributions of Objectivism: Rand has made philosophically EXPLICIT the function of the men in the white coats (who are only briefly and tangentially referred to by Orwell). This explicit depiction carries within it the seed of destruction for Statism. Emmanuel Goldstein must live!