Hi Steve,
I am not sure about Google but many Internet Groups exhibit a bit of the conventional school yard bully tactics. In general this Friam Group seems relatively free from that sort of thing. At least no one is accusing me of thinking I am some "Kind of Scientist" I suspect that groups without the dirty deceit component are less stable. Members rotate in and out freely. However in a situation like Penn State there must have been a culture of entitlement. Entry into the Group was very selective. That made the difference. Such Groups could be called perverted. The local Gardening Club seems less vulnerable. The more nasty the hazing ritual and the membership fees the more likely it will dally with metaphysical rationalizations. ( Belief in the Un Believable.) Many such Groups apparently have a small cadre of cynics at the core cleverly disguised in heroic roles. Now these cynics do not really believe in the Group it is enough to have fools eager to believe for them. It seems the worst outcome arises when the fools learn or suspect they have been deceived. Bernie Madoff story. Denial coupled by a willingness to believe in the UnBelievable seems to create a stable structure. Eventually the game gets so common that everyone wants to run his own Group of Believers. This vector seems to explain the Blogging phenomenon in a small part. Typically one can test for a perverted Group Structure by simply asking the" uncomfortable question" and wait for a response. Such Groups seem very much used to slinging the dirt, what strikes me as odd is that ,however divergent such Groups, they use the same principles to attack and defend. False accusation , convenient accusation, religious heresy, or pederasty are the favorite tools of character assassination. Of all the range of evil and deviant acts a human being can perpetrate why only a handful are ever employed is curious and these seem to originate in the pre Christian period. I guess no one will get a public hearing for folding a document or collecting butterflies. But if someone declares the butterfly to be endangered then maybe some small action would be taken. But a sexual inpropriety Trumps all accusations. In the case of Penn State perhaps the collaborators understood how dangerous the evidence was and kept the secret to themselves, deluding themselves that there was no problem anymore. Delusion and Group Perversion seem inextricable. I might add entitlement, that feeling may have arisen simply because the cost of entry in the Group was so restricted/inflated. The openness of the internet may lead to the exposure of Group Perversion in the long run and curtail this phenomenon, but in the short term the special interest groups seem to be attempting to undermine the Net with much nonsense. Most people are very Gullible ,Some few less so. Education should have changed proportions but seems accidentally to have enhanced general Gullibility. For a time I simply assumed most people were pathologically stupid, I regret this assumption now. The truth seems more astonishing, even very brilliant people are Gullible in certain aspects. A good scientist never trusts his own judgment too easily except for microscopes and hotdogs. His fellows should provide criticism when he goes astray. Heroes never consider other options and therefore always end up as a scapegoat for their former supporters/collaborators. At Penn State there will be in time many more small voices of criticism there may already have been many plastered over. But eventually we all must understand that white lies to protect a colleague are insidious. You are just as guilty of a crime as he. Collegiality is not an excuse to break the law, nor is fear. The real mystery is why it is so easy for us to become collaborators. We actually operate like Mafia Gangs with a lot of Pomp and Ceremony. I was asked recently by friends fro North Africa, "What should be done with Collaborators" I have no answer, I am against capital punishment, but understand that collaborators will ultimately pervert the next reincarnation of government. Massive Jail sentences have been tried, the Chinese cultural revolution was a failure, Stalin and Lenin tried as well and seemed for a time to succeed. The problem is that there are so many collaborators even in one's own family. Every day more are born. Eric P Charles suggested we are selected to live in groups.. But perhaps we are selected to be Gullible as well. There is a world of difference between the stupid and the ruthless cunning but gullible. He insinuated that a Strong mind would refuse to believe nonsense. I agree but as my father warned me , you could just as easily be rewarded with a bullet between the eyes. If one examines political party structures in the West these entities should always be distinguished from Garden Clubs by a simple test of Group Perversion. It seems 99% of North Americans are outside of the Proper Group and either desire entry or desire justice. The poor slobs have been used by the ambitious for millennia, will anything ever change.? Perpetual Growth, unlimited energy , unlimited military power, unlimited manpower all seem to be current UnBelievable concepts. Without a convincing delusion most Groups would disintegrate. Human beings are not rational but have a strong belief that they are, because they are chosen by God ; again UnBelievable based on another UnBelievable. If we wish to model human behavior we have dispense with the unbelievable assumption that they are acting in their own best interests, they clearly are not and have never. Some do fit this concept but usually they are at the fringes of society. The UnBelievable ideas almost always stink of some form of self referential circuitous logic. The model of human societies should never include our own wishful imaginings about ourselves the evidence is plainly before our eyes but blindness obscures our thinking. There are the pleasant Garden Clubs for orchid fanciers and there are Academic Structures that protect crooks and paedophiles. In fact a person may actually occupy a position in both. I would be intrigued by what that implies. I was once shocked to learn of such a case while I was still attached to academia. I could not for the life of me understand who it could have gone undetected for so many years. The answer is willful blindness. Objecting to the blindness of others is a very dangerous sport. The willful blindness was pointed out in a different manner when the FBI itself revealed that a victim must tell his story to 7 people before one will act. I think that comes out to nearly 80% of us, who are functional collaborators. I suspect that 8 out of 10 "Occupy Wall Street " protestors would happily collaborate with a new regime if given the chance. While some of the issues are legitimate they will be quickly forgotten with some bribe, "Loaves to the masses" Vladimyr Ivan Burachynsky PhD <mailto:vbur...@shaw.ca> vbur...@shaw.ca 120-1053 Beaverhill Blvd. Winnipeg,Manitoba, R2J3R2 Canada (204) 2548321 Land (204) 8016064 Cell From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steve Smith Sent: November-12-11 1:30 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] 99%, occupyWallStreet, Santa Fe, etc. Does this apply to Google Groups as well ;^) How to make people feel they are part of a Group. If they collectively decide to cover up a crime through willful blindness then they establish some certainty that they belong. Groups seem to demand that individuals Believe the unBelievable. It seems that some human beings have the capacity to smooth out ethical contradictions by simply choosing to live in another reality. When many people choose to live in the same delusion they are effectively a Group. There seems to be a belief that Groups can exonerate the individual through Magic and Amnesia. The recent news of sexual crimes in Penn State reinforce this perspective. The Group seems able to deny it's crimes while selecting a scapegoat to carry their burdens. Groups seem much stronger when Criminality is involved even though each individual denies it's existence. The Group might be nothing more than a psychological construct to absorb Guilt and at a high price. Groups seem to choose Noble leaders to establish a pretense of heroicism and much later dispose of the leader along with the memory of their individual crimes This seems characteristic of much current political drama. Reluctant scapegoats fight tooth and nail to avoid the demand to be sacrificed for the good people. The Group has a fantastic attribute of Goodness which disguises the Dark side of perversity. People mostly use this contradiction to satisfy their own problems. I would have thought that as our population increases that corruption would prevail, however there do seem to be indications that many are bucking the trend. Groups seem very well devised to exclude individuals that have questionable ethics. These Groups have inadvertantly created their own nemesis. The history of confronting corruption is dismal overall. Managers seem particularly prone to Group Think and demonstrate that they are absolutely convinced that they can ignore all legal responsibility for individual acts. Society still is unprepared to prosecute Group Think in all its devilish rationalizations. The lack of meaningful leadership globally is perhaps due to so many living I a delusional state of mind where someone else will always end up being scapegoated. At least Pontius Pilot tried to wash his own hands. Vladimyr Ivan Burachynsky PhD vbur...@shaw.ca 120-1053 Beaverhill Blvd. Winnipeg,Manitoba, R2J3R2 Canada (204) 2548321 Land (204) 8016064 Cell From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of ERIC P. CHARLES Sent: October-27-11 9:32 PM To: Gillian Densmore Cc: Anne Rowland; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] 99%, occupyWallStreet, Santa Fe, etc. Gillian, Hmmmm.... trying to put my evolutionary psychology hat on, and feeling like I am not doing it quite as well as I should.... Humans ARE "programed" to do things for the good of their groups. The question then is: How do we get people to feel as if they are part of a group? and How do we get people to expand the size of the group they feel they are part of? One subsection of those questions, a small, but not insignificant part, is wondering: How do we get advantaged people to include the disadvantaged as part of 'their' group? Ultimately, if we had the right knowledge, this would be a perfect problem to tackle with agent based modeling. If we knew what types of experiences people needed to feel as if they were part of a group, and we knew what types of experiences were needed to expand felt-group size, then we start designing various worlds along various principles to see which produce the best outcome. The complexity will be too high to solve the problem any other way. Alas... what are the factors? Eric On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 05:17 PM, Gillian Densmore <gil.densm...@gmail.com> wrote: Interesting discution going on here. Feeling like one of the 99% on some levels. Rich Muray's proposed list on some levels makes sense. Higher min wage for example how are you suposed to actually live on $9.00 an hour? even full time that's only 360 a week (before tax). Ouch. Another one that stuck out was free health care- could work. Depending on how it's implimented. The general idea of more stuff taken for baseline for more (or all ) citizens and increasing the quality of life would seem to provide some net benifits. I think Nick asked how it gets funded wich might realy be asking: as humans are we willing to pool together a pot of money to increase the quality of life for all? Just as a here in the comunity example: I'm going to school to (theoreticly) increase my odds of being a productive citizen by X%. Should one of the applications and varius forms of asistance pan out I have a net X% extra chance of employment at the end of the week I'd rather my hard earned money going to a pot of money that helps raise quality of life for my self and others by X%. Theoreticly humans are programed to work together twards a better good. At some point of year N things get jaded or complicated and as Agents we loose sight that a healthy comunity of N people(or agents) makes for a stronger whole. Wouldn't it therefore be better to invest y sources of rescources twards things that achieve that goal? just my as a 0.2c as a agent among many. . On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 9:54 AM, Rich Murray <rmfor...@gmail.com> wrote: > Since my remarks were perhaps tersely shocking, here is a clear > overview by James Traverse: > > http://www.beingyoga.com/ > > [ For more, search Google "nonduality"... ] > > Know Thyself > > Be a Light unto Yourself > > "Form is Seeing and Seeing is Being." ~ Atmananda Krishna Menon > > "Being is Seeing and Seeing is Doing" ~ James Traverse > > "Liberation is from the person, not for the person" ~ Jean Klein > > Mistaken identity, the wrong turning of the mind, is the cause of all > conflict and discord. The solution is the living understanding of your > true nature which is not thought based knowledge as it is prior to > thinking. Awareness is the means and the end. > > There is nothing to become since Being Awareness is already happening > yet there is a returning to innocence knowingly as the false mentally > generated knowledge of mistaken identity is seen and allowed to fall > away. This Living Awareness as your true nature is the light of > understanding that dispels the darkness of ignorance that is the root > of mistaken identity and separation. > > "You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. > You must learn to see the world anew." ~ Albert Einstein > > The problem of mistaken identity is a problem of self-knowledge as > false knowledge of your true nature. It is a mentally generated > problem that is resolved by Awareness as the primal intelligence that > sees the false as false and no longer supports it. In this way the > impostor of mistaken identity dies through starvation - what remains > is pure Awareness wherein all of your faculties are free to function > without distortion. > > Enlightenment is a matter of discernment, not evolution. Thus there is > no becoming enlightened; instead the veil of ignorance falls away > through discrimination and there is seeing in-the-light of your true > nature. > > Enlightened Being - Being is happening - Breathing is happening > the Agent is the Actor - Love is what it does! > > "What nature makes you do instinctively you can optimise when you > understand the law governing the process." ~ James Traverse > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org Eric Charles Professional Student and Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
